Morning Joe - Financial Times: Trump's approval rating falls to 33%

Episode Date: September 9, 2026

September 9, 2026: 7 am — Financial Times: Trump's approval rating falls to 33% 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.

All right, to the top of the second hour of morning, Joe. Welcome back. It's Wednesday, September 9th. Jonathan Lemay are still with us. And joining the conversation, we have MS now contributor, Mike Barnacle, the host of On Brand with Donny Deutsch, Donnie Deutsch, and Politics Bureau Chief and Senior Political columnist at Politico, Jonathan, Jonathan joins us.

He is. He is at the Lane Kiffin Bureau. We're going to get them in a second online. But before we do that, I get to say, John Lamere has had a very tough morning this morning. Is he okay? Well, you know, for him. For him, the two biggest days of the year, the opening pitch in Fenway.

Okay. Yeah. Right. And when he picks his fantasy football team. And so he picked his fantasy football team through Yahoo. Yahoo, very good in fantasy sports. Okay. But Jonathan, they have some little bastard AI bot now who rates your team.

What did this little bastard AI say about your fantasy football game? Had my draft last night. It's running 20 plus years since college. Came out of the draft room feeling pretty good. Yahoo gave me an F. Wow. Willie has good news, though. I was flying high.

Yeah, I got Josh Allen. I got Seeklon. That's great. Williams. That has to be like a minus B plus. High five in my son. We're feeling great. You come out.

You get this snarky AI email from Yahoo. D plus draft grade. D plus. Yeah. I thought I had a great trip. It opens with, have you ever watched football before? Wow. Okay.

We think they're just trying to motivate us. We've got a lot to get to this morning. So, Donnie, is there a more New York event, New York sports event than the U.S. Open? I mean, not really. For people that aren't New Yorkers, they see a lot of things going on. They see the Yankees playing. They see, you know, the Giants when they're winning Super Bowls. But is there a sports event in New York?

more that more sort of brings the city end than the U.S. Open. Other than the next, I'm going to say next. Other than the next. Other than the next. There is something, the energy that we went last year. Oh, it was fun. There's just, New York just comes together. And this year, for some reason, it just seems to have gone to another level.

I mean, with the two American men in the finals. But there is a New York state of mind to the whole thing. The celebrities there, the food, the everything. it is New York at its best. And it's like the beginning of the year. It's just like there's something about when the U.S. Open kicks off that we're into election season, we're into everything, it's just back to school.

We've got our crayons, we've got a 64 box of crayons. Here we go. Yeah, you're talking about your dates there. Let's let you keep that. Wait. There. Wow. Like, I wouldn't even do that.

They're 35 years old, but still, they're sort of immature. What's wrong with that? Mike, if you were still writing columns, I have no doubt that this morning you would be telling this story of a young boy whose parents fled civil war in Sierra Leone. He lives in an abandoned office on a construction site where his dad builds a tennis center in Maryland. And then he learns growing up on the tennis courts of where his dad watched the grounds and ends up being Tiafo, the toast of New York City, a guy heading to the semifinals. It's just, this is a story.

This is a story. And I don't, I don't like mixing sports and politics, but you cannot help when you see this. You just can't. And see, this is the American success story that we Americans love. That makes us cry. That we Americans have always loved that for some reason, some people in the White House hate. the story of immigrants coming from places they call shithole countries and becoming great Americans that are great examples for our own children.

What's the origin of the story? The origin of the story is a country in distant Africa. What's the fulmination, the culmination of the story? The culmination story is in the United States of America by a young man. Look at him. Look at him. He represents America. That's what America is all about.

tragedy of the Trump administration, both administrations, is they have spent now a decade together, four years out of office, but a decade running this country down. They pose as great patriots. They pose as, we're going to make America strong again. We're going to bring back America. Nobody has to bring back America. The United States of America is the greatest goddamn country on the earth. People don't travel. They don't realize it, but it is. It's the greatest country in the world. No doubt about it. You saw, and you saw it was wonderful this summer during the World Cup. People coming from all over the world going, wait, this, wait, you get this, you get this? You know, there's so much here. And I remember Boris Yeltsin, the story of Boris

Yeltsin going to a grocery store and becoming depressed in America and saying if people in Russia just saw this, there would be a revolt. Because you Americans, again, I'm not talking about material goods only. I'm saying we are, most people that come here, and they still want to come here, say we're the greatest country on the face of the earth. And really, one of the things that makes us great, I'll say it again. Go back to Ronald Reagan's final speech. He said you can You can move to France, but you'll never be a Frenchman. You can move to Turkey. You'll never be Turkish.

You move to America that day. Put up your right hand, pledged the oath to the Constitution. You are an American. And as Ronald Reagan said, that's the secret. That's what separates us from every other country in the world. And he said, and when we close those doors to immigrants, the next wave of immigrants, we will become older, we will become weaker, we will become less vital and less strong. That's what makes us strong.

And you know who else says that, that America is the best damn country in the world? Tiapo himself, every time he's asked, this country has given me everything. And when he plays, his family is from Sierra Leone, and you look it up on ESPN.com, there's a little American flag next to his name, and you watch it advance along with him. And it brings us pride, and it brings him pride that he got the opportunity, that his parents got to leave Sierra Leone, the conflict there, come to America, find safety, and build a life through hard work that has now delivered their son to center court at the U.S.O. Greatness.

That's amazing. Where do you go to be free? You come here. You come to America. Right. All right. Let's get to our other top stories. We'll go to politics now.

President Trump's approval ratings has fallen to its lowest level yet in a new poll by the Financial Times. With less than two months to go until the midterms, the president. poll conducted by focal data found that just 33% of registered voters approve of Trump's performance as president. That is the lowest number recorded since the Financial Times first started asking the question in May and a three-point drop from the previous month. The poll indicates that voters' worsening view of the economy and cost of living is to blame for Trump's falling numbers. If you want to understand why, a new survey reveals that Americans remain deeply pessimistic about the state of America's economy with rising costs, leaving so many Americans behind.

In a new Gallup survey, 45% of Americans rate the economy as poor. 45%. I can't afford anything. Well, only 19% rated positively. Here's a look at the latest economic confidence index from Gallup, showing the number of people who rate the economy is good or excellent. you can see the trend line dropping during President Trump's current term. When it comes to political affiliation, consumer sentiment is down among Democrats, independents and Republicans.

That's, of course, the University of Michigan survey. The top bar graph shows the average consumer sentiment by party affiliation during Donald Trump's first term, the bottom during this last term and last month. One key contributor as why Americans are so down on economy, mortgage rates. The Wall Street Journal points out the average rate on 30-year fixed mortgage reached 6.7% 1% last week compared to 3.51% in late January of 2020 and the highest level in over a year. And look at this chart. The gray line represents a median household income since 2005.

The blue line shows qualifying income needed to buy a median priced home. Look at the gap. You want to know why younger Americans, can't buy a home. You want to know why so many people are working harder and feel like they're being left further and further behind. That's one reason. Then go to credit cards. Credit card interest rates also much higher. This chart showing the average rate on commercial bank credit card plans. As you can see, those rates massively increasing in just the past few years. Jaymark, we can let's just take Donald Trump and this Republican Party out of it and let's just say

generic party A and generic party B. If you're just looking at generic party A and they have a president with a 32% approval rating with only 72% of their own party supporting that president, 26% of independence and 4% of Democrats supporting that party, tell me where does that midterm election go? I'm reminded of the great philosopher who said that it would be a thumping. Of course, that was George W. Bush in 2006. Yeah, no, if you just look at those numbers separately, obviously this is going to be a brutal election for the party in power. And by the way, props to Alex Horson and the crew for those incredible charts that really puts it in stark relief.

The danger for Republicans just twofold. One is, Joe, part of their problem. I think that will jumps out to me from that FT poll is it's not. not how bad Trump is with Dems. It's not even how bad he is with the Indies, although it's pretty bad. He's down the low 70s now with his own party. This is somebody who's had a hammerlock on his own party for a decade. He's only at 72 now. That's the problem is that you've got some folks who won't come out. And then you've got other Republicans called them pre-Maga Republicans, BT, before Trump folks. And they may show up and vote for a Democratic candidate on the ballot. That's part of it.

the problem in Ohio is that Sherrod Brown, for example, is getting non-Magre Republicans if you look deep into the data. So, you know, terrible with A&Ds and softer than he's ever been with his own party is a recipe for a white ballot of an election. And if it doesn't change soon, that's the other challenge is, Joe, pretty soon, these gas prices are pretty much irreversible. They're not going to go back down. And with early voting now in this country becoming such a permanent, part of our political landscape, this thing's a couple of weeks away from being locked in. Yeah, I mean, Donnie, this just this morning, we were talking oil is $100 a barrel again. The gas prices are doing the opposite of going down.

They're actually rising now as we tackle oil tankers. By and large, Democratic candidates have done a pretty good job of staying on this message, of the economic message, when Talariko was asked about some of the nicknames thrown at him and all the other stuff about impacts, and he said, none of that brings prices down. None of that. Even El-Said, who we can quibble with some of his views on. certain issues, he always goes back to the economic message. It's the core stupid.

If you go back to Carville thing, it's simple. And they've stayed away from the cultural wars. That's the interesting. Somebody sent out the memo to the Democratic Party. Just focus on kitchen table issues. And we're not even talking about health care. We're not even talking about the Iranian war. And we're 55 days out.

And you go, what could possibly happen that would change this trajectory? And the answer is nothing. And Joe, you've said this often, that after Labor Day, it's kind of baked in. I mean, it's the start of the election, but it's the start of kind of like the reality of the election. and we're going to have a blue wave, and I think they take the House and the Senate. Yeah, and Republicans don't have a story to tell. I was talking to some strategists in the last week or so.

You asked them, like, what can you base this campaign on, these midterms? And they don't, you know, you're not going to do it on tariffs. You're not going to do it on the war. The president has not fulfilled his signature promises. So, Mike, that leaves them with a dilemma that, you know, we're kicking off tonight in Dallas, this unprecedented midterms convention, which is going to be all about Donald Trump. We'll see how many people actually watch it, considering it's opposite the football. But, like, other than simply a culture of personality-like revival, what argument can they make to the American people?

They seem to be they're grasping at straws. And to Donnie's point, Democrats feel like they got the win of their back. Cult of personality revival, are you talking about the president of the United States' personality? Because that's not going to do the trick. That is not going to do the trick. I mean, everything that Donnie was just saying is absolutely true. This campaign comes down to a uniquely friendly, at-man. for Democrats, it's basically based on how people live today in America. People live from day

to day in America. People are upset. I mean, I was thinking about the home heating oil costs, as we were talking about costs. Those are going to be through the roof in the Northeast and living in cold weather states. It's going to be incredible to be able to afford to heat your house this winter. Gas and groceries, that's what it always comes down to. And gas and groceries are bothering a lot of people a lot of the time all day long. country. And we talk about all these different issues we get. Let's just talk about the top issues. Top issues are going to be gas prices, diesel prices, home heating oil prices, grocery prices, health care, rent prices. And I think the hidden issue, healthcare prices, they continue to skyrocket.

People continue to get ripped off by insurance companies. Republicans have gutted Medicaid, and that's not just for blue state recipients. gutted it for red state recipients. More people in red states and rural America depend on Medicaid. Yeah. Those Medicaid cuts will hit them harder than they'll actually hit blue state. Almost every aspect of American life in terms of basic necessities is either too expensive or inaccessible at this moment. Jay Mort, for the new episode of your On the Road YouTube series and podcast, you sat down with Republican governor, Spencer Cox,

of Utah. And you asked him about his new book, Off Rimp, how to be a peacemaker in an age of contempt. And here's what he had to say. Too many Americans have lost a close friend or a member of their family to politics, where they don't talk anymore. They've disowned each other. And that is not healthy. It's bad for our souls. It sounds like a fatal disease. It is a fatal disease. Lost a friend to politics. It's not cancer or heart disease, man. But it might as well be. I mean, It feels that way when it's happened to you. And my hope is, again, the research shows that you can break that cycle.

You really can. But it has to be a conscious choice. You have to work at it. Okay. Tell us more about your interview and the connection also with the lead-up to the midterm elections and how people are feeling. I mean, there is divisiveness in politics. There are also some realities that are really making life hard for people.

Yeah. It's a fascinating book. He's been thinking about this for years, Governor Cox, and sort of what politics has done to families. You heard him talk about it there and sort of really dire ways. But all of us talking today know folks and families that have had challenges. You know, don't get along with a sibling or a parent or a cousin because politics has intruded. It's like sand at the beach. It gets in everything now. And whether it's a Facebook comment thread or a family text chain, it can be pretty divisive. I think he's trying to find a way forward for that. He's in kind of a tough spot, though, right? In a deep red state, Trump's numbers are still okay there. He's got to work with the administration to get stuff done. And plus, he wants a political future for being totally honest. So he's a little gentle when it comes to Trump.

But maybe you make a very good point that, you know, the fact is most Americans right now are focused on the day-to-day quality of their lives and don't have the sort of time to think about this larger issue of what politics is. doing to us because what politics is doing to them is causing their groceries to be higher and their gas to be more expensive. But Cox guys is somebody to watch. He's a fascinating person. I think whether there's a Democrat or a Republican who wins in 28, he's going to find a place in the future administration because he gets along with all those Democratic governors. So you can see him being an obvious Republican appointee in a future Democratic White House.

The new episode of On the Road is online now. Jonathan Martin, thank you. so much for coming on the show this morning. Thank you, Jonathan. And still ahead on Morning Joe, a doctor filed hundreds of lawsuits against patients with outstanding medical bills. A lot of them went in jail. He is a Republican senator in Capitol Hill. We'll dig into that new reporting on Roger Marshall.

And we'll get reaction from his Democratic Challenger, U.S. Senate nominee, Reverend Adam Hamilton, straight ahead. Also, we are so excited to a. announce the MS now membership. It's our new experience that lets you connect with MS now hosts and reporters. Can I do it? No, Donnie, you can't do it. Stay away. Participate in real-time daily discussions and find a community that cares about democracy as much as you do. Simply scan the QR code on your screen or head to MS. Now slash membership to become a member. Donnie, you can't, Joe. Actually, Donnie, you know what?

If you want to be on my town hall meeting, she can be in my town hall. Oh, God. I'm coming, Joe. All right. Oh, look at that. Donnie, that's a Donnie Deutsch Tissues. Put that back. All right.

Exactly. Look at that. Listen, once you're there, you will not see that picture. Wow. I don't know where that came from. You'll actually see that down now. You can join us for our exclusive live Q&A every Tuesday at 12 p.m. Who is that guy?

Can you please take that down? That's a baby guy t-shirt. Yeah, really? Caught up with a few members yesterday in a wide-ranging conversation about politics, music, travel. And of course, Mika made a surprise appearance just to mess up my hair. Yes. Welcome to the morning, Joe. Family meetings.

Let's go to questions. Who's up first? Life after Trump. What will the Republican Party look like in the future? Samantha. Yes. Give us your thoughts. Do you think JD or Marco or Tucker?

Who do you think the next Republican nominee? and E'll be. Sweetie, would you like it? Would you like an earplug? Are you going to go, go eat at lunch? Okay. So she just did that to mess up my hair and then late. Story of my life. What time are we on in Honolulu? You started about midnight. Okay. I live kind of the medieval lifestyle where you go to sleep when it's dark, wake up five or six hours. I like it. I like it. Are you sure you're not a conservative because we conservatives always say things are bad, they could get a lot worse. That's how real conservatives think. We don't like to take chances unlike the radicals that are running my former party now. What I really want to know is should or do you use music as a coping

strategy? What's your philosophy behind the using music as a coping strategy? Oh my gosh, There's a great question. I really appreciate it. I appreciate you watching. Appreciate you guys doing this. This is a lot of fun. It's been fun for us. All right.

Welcome back. Live look at the Capitol for you. Beautiful day in Washington. So Haretz has new reporting about the days leading up to October 7th, revealing through an extensive investigation that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu received an explicit warning before the attack and did not brief Israel's security chiefs. The outlet reports that a week and a half before the 7th, the president of the UAE called Netanyahu and spoke with him for 45 minutes warning that Hamas's leader in Gaza was planning a major operation against Israel. The Emirati ruler reportedly expressed concern that the event in quest,

would not only lead to bloodshed, but also destabilize the entire region and undermine the Abraham Accords. Haredes goes on to report that Netanyahu reacted with relative calm, saying that in his assessment, Hamas intended to operate in the West Bank area, and that Israel was prepared for any scenario. The outlet cites three, foreign senior sources familiar with the contents of the conversation, along with extensive research based on dozens of sources in Israel and worldwide. Netanyahu's office called the investigation an absolute lie, saying the prime minister didn't speak to the president of the UAE during the period in question and received no warning from him.

By the way, government officials around Netanyahu said they are lying. He did, in fact, get that call. He did, in fact, get that. warning. We have been asking for an official government inquiry into October 7th, since October the 8th. It's now a central issue in the upcoming election. But for Benjamin Netanyahu to go on and on and on about Hamas being the terrorist threat that they are, while he funded, he was responsible for the funding of Hamas for years, billions of dollars, three weeks before. Qatar asked, should we continue funding Hamas? And the answer they get back from that Yahoo's government, the head of

the side, yes, yes, keep funding them. At the same time, he's getting a warning, an explicit warning, Israel's about to be attacked from Hamas. Now he's lying through his teeth in the campaign saying, know if they only woke me up. They did wake him up. He knew. He froze. He did nothing all day. While Jews were getting raped and killed, beaten alive, while children were being tortured, while parents were being shot in front of children and children were being shot in front of their parents, he did nothing. He did nothing. But make sure that Hamas get billions and billions of dollars. now we find out. They were prepared, really, because the response time was quite...

13 hours in some... Donnie, why... I know you obviously care deeply about this issue. You care deeply about Israel. Have you been able to figure out in all of your reading and all of your... All of your talking about this? You've been being able to figure out, why not... Netanyahu funded Hamas, an organization that said our goal is to exterminate Jews,

why he funded Hamas who said they were going to wipe Israel out, even three weeks before the attack was still doing it, you know, that would mean that he said keep funding Hamas through Qatar after he'd gotten the warning from the UAE that, hey, a major attack is coming. I can't explain, Bibi, but I just don't want us to forget, that is we're close to three years, October 7th, that Hamas, to your point, slaughtered, raped, mutilated, 1,200 Jews. Right, so back to my question, Donnie.

I can't, I can't. Back to my question, Donnie. Why? It's not like Netanyahu didn't know he was going to do that because Hamas said, we're going to exterminate Jews. And Mediang, I can't, I can't, the prime minister. I can only say that let's not forget that Hamas. Who is forgotten it?

That's it. Listen, who do I look like? Do I look stupid? Do I look at me. Look at me in my eyes, Donnie. And do you think that I'm going to be distracted by you saying what I've said a million times? By the way, I'm not here to defend me, Nanyahu. I've said a million times.

It's very easy to lose trash. Okay, let's not lose that fact. Okay, I'm not here to defend me Nanyahu. Okay, hold on. We'll take judicial notice of what I've said a billion times. Hamas are terrorists. Now, can we talk about? Netanyahu or do you just not want to talk about that?

I want to say I'm not here to defend BB Netanyahu. I don't know what went down. We don't know. Does that not concern you? That's the question. If it happened in America, it would concern me. We ask questions about 9-11. Are you willing to ask questions about Netanyahu?

I'm willing to answer questions. I'm willing to ask the questions. Is the strategy of giving them money a smart thing to keep them quiet, whatever his logic was? No. All I'm just saying is that we, in the discussions about BB, I don't want it to get lost on where the evil starts here. Okay? I'm not defending BB. Netanyo. I don't know. We don't know what went down there. And hopefully history will teach us. But again, Donnie, you're making a fact up that doesn't exist. Nobody here has forgotten that Hamas is an evil. I have been saying for years that Hamas is a terrorist organization. I have been saying for years, there is no peace. There is

There's no two-state solution with Hamas. I have been talking about it since I was 31 years old in Congress. As somebody, they have money from APAC, as somebody who has fought, and you know better than anybody else, spoken out against anti-Semitism. Amen. My entire life defending students like Barry Weiss on Scarborough country in 2003, which he was at Columbia. I've been at this route here for very long time.

So can we now please talk about Benjamin Netanyahu? I don't have any answers to Benjamin Netany. I just, what I feel, what I'm reacting to so emotionally is that I don't want whatever baby either does or doesn't do to lose the fact of where the evil sits in this argument. Right. Okay. So let me ask Jonathan Lemire. Okay.

So we all know. And Donnie, for some reason, is pretending that we don't know. We all know that Hamas is evil. We all know that Hamas's founding documents said that they would find Jews behind trees and bushes and kill them. We all know their goal is to eradicate Jews to wipe them off the face of the earth. We all know Hamas wants to clear Jews out from the river to the sea. We understand that. They are terrorists.

So we put that right here. And then the follow-up question is, if I know that to be. be the case. And you know that to be the case. And Benjamin Etm yahoo knows that to be the case. Why does he give these group of terrorists whose stated goal is to wipe Jews off the face of the earth? Why does he give them billions and billions and billions of dollars? Why does he continue to give them billions of dollars three weeks before the attacks, which now, we know, his approval for Qatar continuing to funnel billions of dollars to Hamas came after he was warned by MBZ in the UAE. Hey, an earthquake is coming. And people is an administration.

An earthquake's coming. Hamas is going to slaughter you, your people. Be ready. Be prepared. We don't want this to destabilize the region, which, of course, it has. And because of all, this has happened, Netanyahu has slow-rolled, if not stopped, the internal investigations as to what happened, because he knows it is so damning to him. And he will now face, in the weeks ahead, finally, an election that could potentially hold him accountable. We know his poll numbers after October 7th in Israel were very poor. He has prolonged the conflict there in Gaza, a conflict that has been criticized by many, in an effort to keep on to power. So he is going to have to face these questions. We are still learning about what happened. But certainly, his

leadership there has come under intense scrutiny, and there is a sense that, you know, that this here is something, I mean, he's going to have to handle the judgment of history, but also the judgment of his own people. So, Donnie, for people that are watching at home, you and I are very close friends. Are we good? And we talk about this offline. We're very close friends. We talk offline. These are two close friends talking. Of course, you all are watching us talk. And then we'll walk out of the room. together and whatever. So we're close friends. So I ask you this as a close friend.

Yeah. And I'm not being. I know. I hear you, brother. Why can't you just talk about about what happened on October 7th? I'll tell you. And because we talked about George Bush. Yeah.

George Bush had warnings that Al-Qaeda was going to use airplanes. And George Bush got raked over the colds. We did it. We criticized American. We criticized American foreign policy after 9-11 saying, you know, why did he go into Iraq? I'll tell you, I'm going to give you really honest. Why can't you talk about the horrible mistakes that ended up causing the death of Israelis? Here's why.

Here's the honest answer. Because I feel sometimes when we focus on BB, we get lost. And it's just we forget. Who is we? Because it's not me. Okay. I think we forget that the, the, the, Vile evil. Who is we? I think the world. I think the world. When we focus on Bibi has got to go,

but when we focus on Bibi as the bad guy here, I think we're forgetting the biggest picture of who the real bad guys here. There are evil terrorists. And the simple discussion is, if Israel put down their guns right now, they'd be slaughtered. If the other side put down their guns, we would build them up. Do you think Bibi has been good for Israel? Right now, no. Right now, no. Well, that, that's just right there. I think Bibi's got to, wherever your discussions are I think BB's got to go right now. He is not good if he's where we need a new coach. I don't think things are going to dramatically change

if he coached. This report from Horat's revisits the question that's being asked since October the 8th on that horrific day, which is why the vaunted Israeli military and vaunted for good reason. The vaunted Israeli intelligence Mossad vaunted for good reason

how this happened and why the response time was so far and those are fair questions. I need to be asked. You know, I I want to know. I want to know how it could be that the Mossad that was able to push a button and make pagers blow up in the pants pockets in a years long intel operation and make it blow up in the pants members and how they could kill Hamas leaders who were sleeping in safe houses in Israel

by blowing up their beds. I want to know why they were asleep for 12, 13 hours while Israelis were being raped, tortured, killed. I don't understand, Willie, and we've been asking this now since 2003. why there hasn't been an investigation. I don't understand. And that's what this report gets at. That was one of the worst days in world history. I think we can, I'll safely argue, and why.

Again, this is, beside, we've heard, and they can, can see when a member of Hamas across the border moves from the bedroom to the bathroom. They have that much intelligence on what's going on. So how and why did this happen? The question has to be asked again and again, and it's got to be answered at some point. The question has to be asked,

And I just, as we get farther away, I just don't want people to. Israel is on the defensive. And what they're doing, the West Bank is horrible. But there is a moral clarity to me about where this thing started. BB's got to answer questions. Let's just not forget what the brutality that happened there. I'm not saying you're forgetting. I'm not saying anybody's forgetting.

But history has a way of moving away. And we're seeing this now, even September 11th. That as people question, what did America do to deserve this? It's a little bit of the same math. All right. Stay with us, Donnie. Okay, we're going to move on now. Republican Senator Roger Marshall of Kansas is facing backlash this morning after a New York Times report revealed.

He filed hundreds of debt collection lawsuits against former patients during his time as an OBGYN. Dozens were later arrested for missing court dates. According to the Times, Marshall's office routinely, charged patients an 18% annual interest rate, raising debts even higher, the Times notes. Some facing lawsuits were new mothers with outstanding bills from their deliveries. Most lived in Barton County, a rural area with above-averageed, uninsured, and poverty rates. One patient who was arrested three times in connection to bills from Senator Marshall said she was handcuffed at eight months pregnant in front of her two-year-old. She said, quote, I asked them quietly, can you not handcuff me

in front of my daughter? I explained to my daughter I was going for a ride. A spokesperson for Senator Marshall responded to the report, writing 60 days before an election, the New York Times has decided that a rural doctor keeping the hospital's lights on is. some kind of scandal, Kansans know better. Well, you get, you got to arrest? 18%. Poor moms, single moms? Wait, you make it impossible for them to pay when you do that.

So then you can get them arrested. Yeah, 18% interest rates? That seems extreme. Predatory. Marshall's Democratic Challenger. At a most vulnerable time in a woman's life. US Senate nominee Reverend Adam Hamilton's criticizing the Senator First Pragis is writing a social media.

medical bills should not ruin lives. We must do better than this. And Adam Hamilton joins us now, Reverend, I didn't know there were still debtors prison in America, but apparently there is in Kansas when Roger Marshall's your doctor. Yeah, good morning, guys. Thank you for having me on the program. This is a huge issue. It's a huge issue for Roger Marshall. It doesn't reflect our values in Kansas. It's not who we are. When you find vulnerable people, you know, you're treating them.

They can't pay. You don't lock them up. You don't continue to harass them. You don't charge them to 18% interest rates. It's just not okay. And you guys know this is a much bigger issue across America. There are 300,000 people who filed bankruptcy last year, more than 300,000. You followed bankruptcy last year, last year citing medical.

debt as a part of the reason for their bankruptcies. People are struggling. And the real issue here to me is not just what Roger Marshall chose to do, which reflects something about who he is and his character, I think. But it's also the fact that this last year, when he could have made sure that people who were vulnerable had health insurance, he voted not to include the subsidies into what they call the one big beautiful bill and stripped 31,000 to 36,000 Kansans of their health insurance. People couldn't afford to pay anymore without the subsidies. And another 15,000 cancers who lost Medicaid because of the bill, which took, you know, a trillion dollars out of Medicaid over a 10-year period of time. So it's, you know, seemingly a hard heart towards

people that were his own patients. And then a hard heart when it comes to the people in his own state who are struggling to pay for health insurance. Reverend, good morning. I want to ask you about tariffs and how they're impacting your state. We've talked broadly how they've raised prices. But there's something specific just in the last few days when President Trump said, we're going to stop buying Bombardier planes. Those are generally private planes. I didn't realize until reading deeper into the story that the U.S. headquarters for that company are in Wichita, Kansas. Can you talk about how that particular and then even more broadly tariffs are impacting your state? Yeah, tariffs are having a huge negative impact on our state and really every state, I would argue.

But yes, Bombadier's headquarters is in Wichita, our U.S. headquarters in Wichita. There's 1,400 to 1,400, are high-paying jobs there. We're really proud to have them in Wichita. And then once more, when the president makes a threat, we find that it could be 1,500 jobs, 1,400 jobs that are lost in Wichita. And then every one of those jobs has other people who, you know, who are employed because of those folks who are working there. It's a great employer in Wichita. We love having them there. We're very proud that they're in Wichita, and this is not okay. And again, you know, we're used to the president saying things. You just go, really? Did he just say that? Is this? You know, is this how you win friends and influence people?

And when it comes to Canada, our second largest trading partner, Kansas ships $4 billion worth of goods to Canada, but we insult them. But we're kind of used to the president doing that. We shouldn't be, but we're used to it. What you expect is that your senator, and in this case, Roger Marshall, it took him a day before he responded, but to be able to say, Mr. President, this is not okay. This is going to hurt people in my home state. More broadly, tariffs, they're costing the average American $150 a month.

When you look in Kansas, there are many farmers and ag people who are used to voting for Republicans who are saying, wait a minute, we're losing trade deals with a tweet and a tariff. The trade deal that we negotiated years to get is gone. They saw that in the first Trump administration. They're seeing it again today. It's disastrous there. I was at a manufacturing plant in Salina, Kansas. And they described this, you know, this cabota tractor that they were making this skid steer or track steer. They just got it from Japan.

I mean, you know, it's bringing hundreds of jobs to, to, to, you know, it's bringing hundreds of jobs to, to, you know, central Kansas, and now that one item alone, you know, you're talking almost $2,000 worth of additional tariffs to it. It's just not okay. Adam, you mentioned the rollback and subsidies to the Affordable Care Act that the incumbent supported and the level of Medicare cuts that have been made by the one big, beautiful bill. I'm wondering how that level of cruelty, inflicted cruelty, legislatively inflicted cruelty, is working out for so many Kansas people who are losing health care, losing benefits, things like that.

Yeah, let me tell you the story. I was in Hutchinson, Kansas, and a woman came up to me after a campaign event, and she said, I'm one of those people who's lost my health insurance. She said, you know, now this is a woman who's a working person, and, you know, it's not like she's on, you know,

on public subsidies of other kinds, but she said, when they took away the subsidies, my health insurance went up almost $3,000 a month. And I had to decide, am I going to pay my house payment or my health insurance? She's, I couldn't do both. And I kept the house. And so she says, my family's one of those that we no longer have health insurance as a result of this. Now, you was about my age.

And I'm thinking, what's it like when you are? I'm 62. And what's it like when you're 62 and you decide you're going to roll the dice and not carry health insurance anymore? We have to do better. This was a conscious decision, Roger Marshall and others made in his party to just ignore these, again in Kansas, it's about 36,000 people so far, probably more. And how do you do that? How do you, how do you ignore that? And I think part of the way you do it is you don't sit and listen to people's stories. So you're in Washington 180 days. You visit Florida for a while. You come back for photo

ops in Kansas. And so you show up at little events, you know, very carefully guarded, you know, the people that you really want to be there because when there were town halls, he walked out of that. So you're not actually listening and hearing people's pain. And that's, I think, where we're at today in Washington. It's got that Florida. All right. Democrat Senate candidate, Reverend Adam Hamilton. I really appreciate the openness of the forum of this place. It's important. Do you? I do. Thank you for coming on the show this morning. Can I say one thing, could I just say if anybody's interested in more information about me,

Hamilton for Kansas.com, I'd love for them to check us out. We've got a real race in Kansas, and it's going to be fun on November 3rd when people across the nation here, the Republicans and Democrats in Kansas sent a message to Washington DC that what's happening there is not okay. And that's what's going to happen a bit of a third. Hey, Reverend. I'm sorry, Reverend. My earpiece cut out. What was that website again?

Yes. Thank you, Hamilton for Kansas.com. All right. Thank you so much. Thank you, sir. And coming up, our next guest is known for his exclusive interviews with some of the top musicians from around the world. YouTube creator, musician and music producer Rick Beato. We'll join us ahead of his live event tonight in Brooklyn.

And his show has become the soundtrack of our household. Let me tell you something. You're looking right now at the most important interview in rock music, the most important interview in country music. And your new friend. In classical music. And exactly, my new YouTube friend, I said, Mika walks through and she goes, really again? All the time.

Can we watch Ted Lassel? I go, wait, wait. Hold on. He's got Rick Waitman coming up. Yeah. That's straight ahead right here on Morning Show. The first really big hit I had was a song called Just the Way You Are. Yeah.

I didn't even want to put it on the album because I thought it was too mushy. Oh, changing to try and please me. You never let me down before. I thought it was too soft, too mushy. Linda Ronstadt and Phoebe Snow are in the studio, and we played the song for them. I said, I don't like this song that much. Linda Ronstadt goes, Are you out of your mind? That's a hit record.

You got to put that on it. on the album. That's a great song. Really, you talk me into it. So we have to thank Linda Ronstadt for that song. Another thing and another reason to love Linda Ross. I know. That is an incredible backstory to the 1977, massive hit song, Just the Way You Are, as told by Billy Joel. Of course, that's a song that made Billy Joel a worldwide phenomenon. It was during an interview with renowned YouTube creator, musician, a musical producer, everything involving music, Rick Biodo, and fans can expect. more stories like that tonight.

When he entertains crowds with his live conversation, the music breakdown show in Brooklyn. Beato's interviews, he interviews legendary artists and acts on his YouTube channel, which currently has more than 5.8 million subscribers. And before his online start, he spent decades working as a university music lecturer, multi-instrumentalist, audio engineer, and record producer.

And Rick Beato joins us now. This is so exciting. Your show is so cool. You know, I don't get out often. I don't get on social media often, but I stumbled across you on YouTube, and I was stunned. And I will tell you, one of the things that stunned me was, I go, wait, wait a second, Billy Joel. He doesn't talk to people anymore. He had a great, amazing documentary, but you just don't see Billy Joel out there anymore.

And then I looked, I looked below, and I was like, 3 million views in one week. Oh, okay. So musicians can come to you and know you have 5 million people following you. And they're not there for politics. They're not there for fashion. They're not there for culture. They're not there for book clubs. They're there for music, man.

Talk to us about this amazing phenomenon and where it started. So I only talk about music in my interviews. I don't care about personal things. I don't care about politics, anything like that. I started in 2015, not on YouTube, but I had this massive viral video. My son did on Facebook that he has insanely good perfect pitch. And this video got 80 million views. And people...

By the way, I've never heard perfect pitch like that. Like, Rick would play two chords, like D minor seventh to saying 14th over an F sharp. I mean, like, the most bizarre chords. And he would just like spit him out. Yeah, Dylan is so unusually good. I'll play these incredibly discordant chords. And he can pick out every note. He can tell you what the theory is and things like that.

And he was eight years old. And so this was viral. It went really viral. Yeah. So about six months later, I started my YouTube channel because people had asked me, can you teach that or how did Dylan learn this? And so I started teaching music theory. And then I started branching out from that, doing song breakdowns and things like that.

Yeah. And then the stars came. And the first star, what a star to come, Peter Frampton shows up. Yeah, so Peter, I met a guy at a music convention, and he said, I saw a breakdown you did of a Peter Frampton solo. I'm friends with them, would you like to interview him? And I said, yes. So I went to Peter's studio up in Nashville, and I just had two cameras and a little recorder,

and he must have thought, oh, this is so low tech. But he was so cool about it, and I filmed it and edited it, and that was the beginning of it. And now other musicians are getting in line to come on. I mean, David Gilmore, you interview him quickly here, and he says, hey, why don't you come to London and let me take you through all of my work with Pink Floyd? Yeah, that was incredible because to be in David Gilmore's studio, listen to Comfortably Numb with him, have him demonstrate all these Pink Floyd guitar parts and all his original gear was unbelievable. So we saw Billy Corgan there, Smasher Pumpkins. parts of half a Pearl Jam sat down. So why do you think artists must, it must be such relief for them to, first of all, talk about just the music and not the nonsense that goes with it,

but also how into the weeds they like to get, or as they describe how these songs came to be? They love getting into the weeds. First of all, artists love their own music. When you record something, you spend time making a record, you love listening to it. So when I play their music for them and ask them about it, it's, it's exhilarating for them. They love, love the sound of it. And it's exciting. Plus, when you ask them about how they created it, it's, you know, they love talking about that because they never get a chance. So, Rick, we have a clip from your interview with Sting about how the music industry has changed over the years. Let's take a look. There's so many good things about the way you can stream anything that you can think of.

Yeah. If any recording, you can access almost immediately. And that's a wonderful. tool for a learning tool. At the same time, it reduces music into a commodity where you can turn on like coffee and respected less. You know, 200 years ago, you had to go and walk 20 miles, maybe on a Sunday to hear it in church or a concert once in a blue moon or buying a record. You'd take it out of the sleeve and the inner sleeve and he'd lovingly, ritually place it on the thing and the stylists would go on and the white noise. That was a religious exercise for me. The liner notes. You'd, He would pour through every sentence and every, you knew who played on it, who engineered the thing. You knew all that information.

None of the commodity just fills the glass. How cool to get that level of discourse and detail with sting. I mean, it's incredible. One of the things, too, what I interview musicians that I love is you get the details of the actual music, but kind of where they were in their lives, sometimes physically, like Billy Joel with Piano Man, he was in this pathetic piano bar in Los Angeles, wondering what the hell he was going to do with his life, watching these businessmen come in and telling their stories or to the other extreme, like the stones doing exile of that, you know,

in the south of France and all that was going on in there, but sort of those, the conditions also that made the songs. The thing that I'm interested in is that the fact that these songs start, there's with a blank tape. Yeah. So they have the ideas. They write them. They write the songs.

And then you have to record them. And that is the really fascinating thing. What is the process? How do you go from that to a song that everyone in the world knows? That's what I want to find out about. Any thread with all these guys that just kind of you learned over the years that you just go, you know, here's the magic sauce. Including you. I think that they're driven and they have incredible taste in not only in music and art.

They're to write these kind of. great songs, you need to have an inherent sense of melody and things that connect with people. And that's the one thing I think that they all share. So you interviewed the leader, lead singer of Goo Goo Goo Dolls, Songwriter a couple weeks ago. And we've been having this fascinating conversation about the Goo Goo Dolls and Iris going viral on, you know, TikTok and Instagram and everything else. and what that has done for their following. I want you, I asked you to bring a list

because you say this is a game you play with your friends. So set this up for us and see, Donnie, you can't look, don't cheat. So he's going to ask us some questions about the most followed musical acts on YouTube from our days. Okay, so I ask my friends, I go to the Spotify monthly listeners, and I ask people how many monthly listeners do you think they have? So, for example, the Rolling Stones, just take a guess. Jonathan, Willie, what do you think? How many months of this?

I don't even know. 10 million. 29 million. 29 million. Okay. The Beatles, in comparison. 50. Yeah.

36 million. What? Okay. The Goo Goo Goo Dolls. Oh, I see where you're going here. Uh-huh. Far more. Probably, like 50 million because of this hit?

About 42 million. That's insane. Whoa. 42 million, the goo-go-dolls over the Beatles, because Iris went viral on social media. That's the currency. Oh. That's fascinating.

Nirvana, for example, has, what do you think, Nirvana? Poor Willie. I'm going to go back to 15 million. Yeah. 39 million. What? Okay. Stop asking.

You always. Hey, by the way, these are impossible. And as a Beatles fan, as a Beatles freak, I would never guess. Here comes a song. It's the most streamed Beatles song. But it is. I would have never guessed that. But these things are crazy.

But can anybody guess, and I only know this because Rick told me, can anybody guess what the number one legacy band is, like with the most streams? So not Taylor Swift. We're talking legacy. Is it Pinkwood? Zeppelin? No. Pink Floyd does very well.

Queen. Oh, my God. Queen has five or six songs that have over two billion plays. And they have 48 million monthly listeners. I totally agree with that. And you think that comes from the movie? I think the movie helped a lot. And also Brian May has been out there for years.

On social media. Yeah. Okay. That's really helpful. This has been fascinating. Rick's live conversation and music breakdown show is tonight. In Brooklyn at Warsaw, YouTube creator, musician and music producer Rick Biotto. Thank you so much for coming on the show.

Will you come back? Absolutely. I love it. Up next, we're going to go through the latest from the Middle East where more military action is driving oil prices toward triple-digit territory. Plus, Nate Silver, who's known for his prolific breakdowns of polling data, launching a new podcast called Still Counting. He'll join us just ahead. Morning Joe continues right now with an incredible moment. Well, Donnie, I love you.

Of sportsmanship. Yeah, no, we're not. No, at the U.S. Open. Too much, too, as always, too much.