Morning Joe - Gloria Steinem dies at age 92

Episode Date: September 3, 2026

September 3, 2026: 7am — Gloria Steinem dies at age 92 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.

Feeling trouble for that? Yeah, he'll go. Apparently not a lot of good. Ronald Acuna Jr. hits it deep to left. Lyle is out of room and that is career home run number 200 for Ronald Acuna Jr. And he sent that one to the move. For manager Stephen vote. Guerrero hits it high.

Bryce Eldridge just got up for a while. He's, uh, that's driven to right field by Soto and that's gone. Juan Soto with a bolt into the seats in right field. Debman at first. One over to the plate, and Freeman cracks one in the air. Deep Center field. Church is going back against the seats. First home run since the 4th of July.

Through ball, they're a fan. Fan caught if this kid deserves some really good mojo. He gives it to a kid. He gets a high five. The kid comes back and says, thanks, man. That's a nice moment. I'll look at some of the best moments around the big leagues, including that one. Out in Colorado, John, a clear anti-Northeast bias.

No Yankees or Red Sox? This show has been accused of that for years. We never talk Red Sox or Yankees here. We never show their highlights. Frankly, I'm glad we skipped yesterday's Red Sox. Right. Let's stay away from that for now. All right, join us now. Pulitzer Prize winning host of Pablo Tori finds out. MSN. Now contributor Pablo, a lot to talk to you about right now. The NBA with a major move yesterday, punishing the Los Angeles Clippers for violating salary. cap circumvention rules. The league suspended the team's owner, Steve Balmer for a year, fined the team $30 million, and

forced the clippers to forfeit five first round draft picks, a sweeping punishment. Two-time NBA finals MVP, Kauai Leonard, also hit with a $700,000 fine, which he makes in a day. The NBA began investigating the team last September, over a $28

million endorsement contract between Leonard and Aspiration Fund Advisor LLC, a company that filed for bankruptcy last year. This came about after Pablo's investigation, his reporting that the team may have been involved in under-the-table endorsement deals for Kauai Leonard. The league said Balmer was suspended for, quote, knowingly seeking to help Leonard obtain off-court income opportunities, among other issues. The Clippers have said several times they've done nothing wrong. They expect to be exonerated. The team maintaining that stance yesterday. So, Pablo,

Hello. Let's take a step back. We were saying when you came here with this last September, I think, with this... A year ago today. Was it today? Okay. One year exactly. A year ago, you came and you were explaining this to us and we're sports guys and we were into it, but it felt kind of arcane and we weren't sure. My gosh, are you shocked even by the punishment the NBA handed down here? Yeah, I was not sure whether the reporting that we've done for a year, which continues, by the way, as Steve Ballmer continues to attest to his own innocence. I wasn't sure if this was going to be reflected. in anything resembling accountability because I've been trained as I observe politics, as I observe sports broadly, to be cynical around whether truth and evidence matters. And in this case, the scheme that has been now reported by Wachtel Lippen the NBA's outside council, as well as our reporting certainly, it is vast. It is deeper than even I realized.

It is more sweeping and therefore more undeniable. And so the NBA and Adam Silver had a question. What do we do with this? And the evidence left them unable to do anything but levy the highest and most significant punishment that the NBA has ever seen. And perhaps American professional sports, certainly in the realm of CAP circumvention. So, Pablo, can you just go back and kind of explain in basic terms what the Clippers did that was wrong? Because I think people say, well, I don't know. They facilitated some endorsement deals for Kauai.

Why is that such an egregious thing to do? What was the time here? The Cardinal Rule in Professional Sports, the NBA, in which there's a salary cap, is you cannot pay players beyond what everybody has agreed. In the NBA, a superstar's most valuable asset, the most valuable part of your team. And everyone knows it. And so what Steve Ballmer, the richest owner in American sports, a man, depending on Microsoft stock, who has $145 billion to play with, what he did, according to reporting and now this investigation by the NBA, is he flagrantly funneled money through part of the company. partners that the Clippers had business partners, largely in the building of the most expensive arena in the history of sports, the Intuit Dome, to get Kauai Leonard money with fake

jobs and fake sponsorship deals, consulting agreements with those companies themselves. And so why does this matter? In sports ostensibly, there are rules that prevent you from buying whatever it is you want, even if you have the money. It's an element of attempted meritocracy. And if you break that cardinal rule, as Adam Silver has warned the Clippers previously in 2015 and 2019 when they were investigated previously but cleared, he's warned them that this is something that we cannot abide by because it speaks to what every other owner and every fan requires,

which is something like a level playing field, something like the rules mattering. And if the rules don't matter in sports, then the game can't be trusted. And here they decided we need to make this matter. It sort of defies credulently, though, that the Clippers would be the only team to be doing this. I know you have some other investigations to work. You don't need to divulge it out. But I think that there's a lot of speculation here that other franchises may have been doing similar maneuvers. We'll see if that is the Clippers, as you're right, they were hammered here.

This was a massive blow. Kauai Leonard, though, slap on the wrist. And it's interesting. He sort of said, like, yeah, I made some mistakes. Or people might, better yet, people in my inner circle made some mistakes. because he's been traded to Toronto and, as Willie said, you know, pennies out of his pockets for a fine. I will say there's that moment in Christopher Nolan's Batman,

when Bain says they expect one of us in the records brother. And Kauai kind of parachuted out of this. And what's fascinating, right? Balmer initially, when this report came out, said, we are going to go to arbitration. But what has become clear is that arbitration, this is very in the weeds, but bear with me. Arbitration is only activated by the player and the union.

And when Kauai settled, via the union and said, oh, a slap on the wrist, $700,000, and I can go to Toronto. What the Clippers maybe didn't realize, even as of yesterday, was that that arbitration option evaporated. And so now all The Bomber has left to do is, if he wants, sue the NBA, sue Adam Silver, sue Wachtell Lipton for a raft now of documentation. And so we will see if he does that. But when Kauai got the slap on the wrist, the thing the Clippers had been threatening the entire

time went away. And were they aware of that? And who decided to maybe parachute out first? And Gene Robinson, does Steve Palmer want to sue and have all these documents out in the open at a trial? Yeah, really. I mean, we'll see discovery is a powerful thing, isn't it? But, you know, Pablo, I have a question. Adam Silver clearly knows how to read the room. What is your sense of what the other owners, who are not poor. people there, they are, but they're not as rich as Steve Balmer. What are they thinking about this? Have they had a sense that maybe the clippers were playing it fast and loose with the salary cap? And do you think they're applauding this? Yeah. Adam Silver is a guy who has proven with

this punishment that he knows how to read the room. And the room, the NBA's Board of Governors, the most exclusive country club in basketball, the sense I've had from the entire beginning of this is that other owners looked at this and said, whatever you think we're doing, this is beyond even that pale. This is beyond what we have been bold enough to attempt. We don't have the money of Steve Balmer. We don't have the cahones, frankly, of Steve Balmer.

And so when it comes to the politics of the sport, just know that the NBA commissioner does not do an unprecedented punishment like this unless he has the cosigns of the other owners in the sport. And so what this says is that those other owners, they were along for what this punishment was going to do to the clippers. Palmer mocked you, attacked you, did all of those things. And it turns out this morning you had the goods on them and the NBA really did it as well. MS Now contributor Pablo Torre, Pablo, great reporting, great investigation. I know you're into more of it.

I also want to be back soon to talk about NFL players playing in college under Lane Kiffin. I was going to say. That's a whole other conversation. Everybody's Van Wilder again. Or Rodney Dangerfield and back to school. Perhaps. Pick your reference. Maybe I'm a little older.

They're looking for their respect. That's right. Let's talk about that later this week. Pablo, thanks so much. We are back at the top of the hour just after 7 o'clock here on the East Coast. And some breaking news we brought to you a little while ago. Pioneering activist Gloria Steinem died on Tuesday at the age of 92. She, of course, was a crusader for feminism during the 1960s, a leader of the movement,

advocating for social justice, reproductive freedom, domestic violence, prevention, gender equality. Emma Snau's Ariel Rechev has more on the legacy Steinem leaves behind. Gloria Steinem was a seminal figure in politics, culture, and the feminist movement, bursting into the 1960s mainstream with a bunny's tale, an expose of how women were treated in Hugh Heffner's playboy clubs. Born in 1934 in Toledo, Ohio, Steinem grew up caring for her mother, a former writer who suffered with mental illness. She was a pioneer newspaper reporter and even an editor, but she just couldn't make it all work together, you know, to be the perfect wife and mother and to have a pioneering career at the same time. She had what was then called a nervous breakdown and was in a sanatorium for quite a while.

After graduating from Smith College in 1956 and studying abroad in India, Steinem set out to forge her career in journalism, but became frustrated. by limitations, often relegated to cover stereotypically female stories like fashion and relationship advice. In 1963, she made a seismic splash when she accepted an assignment to go undercover at the Playboy Club. Applying under an assumed name, Steinem underwent weeks of training to become a cocktail waitress and hostess known as a bunny. The article exposed the grueling hours, low pay, and rampant sexism, women working at the clubs faced and brought a critical eye to Hugh Hefner's empire of sexual liberation. I mean, the Playboy clubs are closing. The customers are getting older and older. The readers of Playboy, apparently, are getting older and older. Yeah. And in any case, even if that weren't true,

I personally would not want to go down in history as Hugh Heffner. In 1971, Steinem changed the media landscape once again with the launch of Miss Magazine, a women-led publication that focused on politics, business, and cultural topics that had been traditionally reserved for men. As her profile and cultural cachet grew, so did her influence, joining with other prominent feminists to form the National Women's Political Caucus to support female candidates like Bella Absog and Shirley Chisholm. In 1978, Steinem and others led a massive march on Washington in support of the Equal Rights Amendment. Crowds of more than 10,000 women swarmed the capital in support of the ERA, which aimed to abolish discrimination against women in politics,

courts, and workplaces. A staunchly independent woman famous for saying, a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle. Steinem avoided marriage until her mid-60s, marrying entrepreneur and activist David Bale in 2000. I actually sometimes introduce myself as Mr. Steinem. Do you really? That's fine. Why not? Their marriage would be tragically short-lived. Bale passed away after a battle with brain cancer just three years later. Steinem's decades of advocacy were recognized with America's highest civilian honor. She was awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2013. Because of her work across America and around the world, more women are afforded the respect and opportunities that they deserve.

But she also changed how women thought about themselves. Through the rest of her life, she remained a steadfast champion for women's equality, fiercely defending a woman's right to have an abortion, joining with the 2017 Women's March to protest Donald Trump's first term and speaking out in support of the Me Too movement against harassment and sexual assault in the workplace. Gloria Steinem remembered as a powerful leader and the defining voice for generations of women.

Ariel Rechev reporting there. Let's bring in Washington Bureau Chief at USA Today. Susan Page, Susan, thanks for hopping on with us this morning as this news broke in the last hour or so. Your reflections on the life of Gloria Steinem and the impact she left behind. I'm not sure younger generations perhaps appreciate how much change she brought.

Well, when your producer called me, it was the first I had heard. She had passed away. She said, can you come on the air to talk about Gloria? And I said, Gloria Steinem died because there is only one Gloria. So I knew immediately who she was referring to. You know, the piece you just ran mentioned

found her co-founding of Ms. Magazine. I was a journalism student at Northwestern when Ms. was founded. And you can imagine here was a magazine founded by women, edited by women, that dealt with the most serious of topics. And that was revolutionary. That was a very powerful statement to women and girls like myself who were looking at a future and trying to figure out what it was we might be able to do. Susan, I remember when Ms. was founded too, I was at the University of Michigan, working at the student newspaper. And I remember how particularly women on the staff of the Michigan Daily were electrified by this fact, by this happening, as we would have said back then. And Gloria Steinem had a knack for being at the center of happenings, of events that sort of surfed the zeitgeist.

What was that gift in her? What gave her the ability to be sort of right there where the culture was going to be five minutes from now? You know, she was smart. and she was interesting. She was never dull. I mean, I didn't know. I knew her. She didn't know me,

but you knew that when Gloria Steinem came on, she was going to have somebody to stay. And she was fearless. You know, one thing I think that we lose, or perhaps is not fully realized now, is how much ridicule she endured. And even when, you know, we're talking about Ms. Magazine

and the reaction of student journalists to that, But the world was not all enamored with this idea. She put up with a lot of abuse, but she did things. She's an activist and organizer, a political thought leader. But I remember her as a journalist. And you think about that 1963 article about Playboy Bunches. Barbara Walters did a feature about being a bunny about the same time. And it was a feature.

It was kind of cute. Gloria Steinem did a piece about being a Playboy. Bunny. And it was an expose. It was an expose that examined kind of the finances and that, being a Playboy Bunny, the life, the really tough life, work life that people had and that generated all this money for Hugh Hefner. It was a very different and bold kind of piece. And, you know, in hearing her interviews in the, in more recent years, you know, there was a time, I think, when she a little embarrassed that this was her breakthrough as a Playboy Bunny. But it really reflected her attitude about being willing to kind of go anywhere, explore anything, and talk about it

in an honest way, sometimes in an honest way that had not been discussed before. Yes, Susan, her legacy, obviously so remarkable. But just speak, what do you think it means at this current moment? At a time where, of course, so much progress for women has made in decades since, but there have also been real setbacks in recent years. So many women feel feel differently, and they feel like they have taken a step backwards after Roe v. Wade, after some presidential elections, after some of the changes in the culture. The list goes on and on. What do you think about, as you think about that as the backdrop here, what are some thoughts

that come to you about Gloria Steinem? Well, of course, lots of progress for women, lots of opportunities that women didn't use to have. On the other hand, the Equal Rights Amendment never passed. We've never elected a woman president. And some women's rights are now under-challenged, something Gloria Steinem herself recognized when she spoke just recently, I mean, just in the last few years, about her concerns about the direction that President Trump was taking the country. Washington Bureau Chief for USA Today, Susan Page, helping us to remember Gloria Steinem, who has died at the age of 92. Susan, thanks so much.

We appreciate it. Coming up, we'll dig in a new reporting on how the White House is preparing for a Democratic takeover. Should Republicans lose control of Congress this November? That's straight ahead on Morning Joe. A new report reveals the White House is preparing for a potential barrage of Democratic investigations if Republicans, in fact, lose control of Congress in the November midterms. Politico reports President Trump, his family, and officials close to him now are preparing for a Democratic takeover next year. Specifically, they're looking for lawyers, expanding the,

Definition of executive privilege, briefing political appointees, and reviewing oversight materials from Trump's last term to prepare for another onslaught from Democrats. Politico reports Trump aides inside the White House began to prepare for Democratic investigations as early as this spring, with the council's office holding private briefings for political appointees. That's according to two former administration officials familiar with those briefings. One of the former officials and another Trump ally told Politico, current and former administration, officials are asking each other for recommendations about who could represent them in a personal capacity if they are subpoenaed in 2027. At the same time, the Washington Post reports the White House counsel's office has encouraged staff to be careful about what they put in writing and offered guidance about how to respond to congressional inquiries. Let's bring in now MS Now

contributor Mike Barnacle, staff writer at the Atlantic Mark Leibovic, and MS Now Senior Capital Hill Reporter and host of way too early Ali Vitale. So Libo, perhaps not surprising that there's at least preparations underway for what could be just a rash of democratic investigations, even if they just take the House. You're going to see a lot of that around so many issues. You could look at the Pentagon. You could look at immigration policy on down the line. But are you surprised the level to which this administration, this White House, appears to be preparing itself for next year? I mean, not at all surprised.

I think what's what you probably have going on behind the scenes is the president, I'm guessing, looks above all to people who can be theatrical about this, people who can argue his case in the media. And I think that's probably going to be his primary strategy here because, I mean, as we saw in the first term, their MO after a while is just to blow off what Congress asked for to defy subpoenas as much as possible. but also to really put in the crosshairs the people who are doing the investigating, to go on the offensive, to ignore the pointed questions, and basically treat this as another political campaign. So I'm guessing that he will be looking for people who are versed in that and who are willing to do the job that way. I also think, like, for me, as I talk to Democrats on the Hill, the thing that they're going to have to strategize around is how do you deal with the fact that these subpoenas are going to be postponed and pushed? as much as the White House and Republicans are preparing for what the legal fight might look like, getting personal attorneys and all of that, like, Democrats are going to have to figure out, A, what do they focus on and what are the most salient lines of attack on accountability?

But then also, how do they actually get the answers so that these committees aren't just sitting there with empty chairs and unanswered subpoenas? And I think, Lamere, that's going to be like the political strategy piece of this for Democrats who, yes, they have a slew of things, as Libo was saying, that they want to investigate. But which are the ones that are the most salient after an election cycle that is likely to hinge on affordability, anti-corruption, systems that work for the wealthy and well-connected, but not Americans at home? And I think that's where we've got to kind of see the way that they prioritize these things,

both at the Oversight Committee with Robert Garcia, at Judiciary with Jamie Raskin, and, of course, the way that lawmakers attack it if Democrats take the House. Yeah, so much of this might depend on the margins this fall. Like, if the Democrats sort of squeak out a win in the House, there might be less of an appetite. They'll have to do some, to be sure. Less of an appetite for sweeping investigations. But if it is a landslide, if they are able to flip the Senate, that will change things dramatically. And also, they'll have to confront whether they want to go down the road of impeachment again. A lot of the base is going to demand that. You know, but we can know that

at least Trump's first impeachment, the Ukraine one, actually helped him in the polls briefly anyway. But I think there's going to be a sensitive for history. They need to do that. But Mike Barnacle, weigh in on that if you think that's a good avenue. But I also think it's possible. We may be barreling towards a real confrontation moment where the Congress, if the Democrats get some of it, are going to demand things to the White House. And the White House is simply going to say no. I mean, this White House has shown very little respect for the building on the other side of Pennsylvania Avenue, even when Republicans are in charge. If Democrats are there, they might just be saying, look, we don't even recognize your authority. Well, first of all,

there's so much to investigate and so little time to finish the investigations. I mean, the Trump family wealth alone is topic A, I would I think among a lot of members of Congress, Democrats. But the idea that we don't have a functioning government is more important than all of this. I mean, on a day-to-day basis, we seem not to have a functioning government, whether it's regard to what we ought to be doing more for Ukraine, whether we ought to be paying more attention to what's happening to the United States armed forces, not just the Navy, but the Army, the Marine Corps, the whole thing.

There's a policy that we're at war now with Iran when we have a president who has a president who can't really explain why we're there. Can't they explain how long we're going to be there? And certainly none of them have even touched upon the daily cost of this war. Or just the baseline constitutional responsibility of Congress would be nice. Vote on a war. Vote on tariffs. Well, they don't want to cross Donald Trump, obviously. Meanwhile, Dan Driscoll said yesterday was his last full day as U.S. Army Secretary. Driscoll posted on social media, the role is the honor of a lifetime praising soldiers and their families, adding, we could not have made the progress we did without the support of Secretary Hegzith.

Interesting there, he offered no explanation for his exit, but it comes as we've been reporting. Driscoll submitted his resignation amid tension with Hegseth, following firings by the Defense Secretary of several senior military officials overseeing the next generation of warfare and strategic projects amid the Iran War. Meanwhile, Republican Senator Tom Tillis of North Carolina is urging President Trump to fire Secretary Hegseth in the way of Driscoll's exit. In a long post on social media yesterday, Senator Tillis thanked Driscoll for his service before rebuking Hegit for, quote, creating a leadership void at the top of our military

ranks. Tillis goes on to write, I served on Senate Armed Services for eight years and as chair or ranking member of the Personnel and Readiness Committee. I have never witnessed more inept management of the brave men and women who serve our country. He is intimidated by competence, writes Senator Tillis, and retreats to ginning up culture wars instead of soberly attending to the vital work of our national defense and the health and well-being of our fighting force. Tillis concludes writing, I urge the president to find a new leader at the Pentagon who will retain and empower our military talent rather than diminish it. Obviously,

Libos Senator Tillis is on his way out of town. He's kind of liberated to say what he wants to say, what a lot of Republicans are thinking about Pete Hegseth, but President Trump still holds Hegseth tight. We just learned again this morning that he's quietly. Secretary Hagsit extending troop deployments into next year, signaling that this war could go on and on. Obviously, readiness has been a problem. And also using, frankly, woke methods to go through the military and get rid of leaders of color, leaders who are women,

talking a lot about masculinity and testosterone levels and things that don't have a whole hell of a lot to do with the war in Iran. I mean, look, I mean, if Tom, Hillis wanted to like ensure that Donald Trump is going to stand by Pete Hagsit, he could have said exactly what he just did. I mean, not only is he on the way out and, you know, whether he feels liberated or not, the president has no use for him whatsoever. He's going to do whatever he can, probably to defy a guy like this, especially when he speaks publicly. And Pete Hexeth has been under siege from day one. And the president loves people like that when he feels like they are

fighting for him and they are sort of reading from his script, whether it's culture wars or whatever. I mean, Driscoll is an interesting guy, though, because he, in addition to being one of the rare people who had some bipartisan support in the Pentagon in this regime, he also seemed to have the support of the president. And I'll be really interested to see how the president does respond to what seems like a pretty candid conversation he had and, you know, an informative conversation he had with Driscoll on the way out. I mean, he probably will stand down, but who knows? I mean, Lamere has talked so much about the isolation of this president right now. And so now,

at least we have an understanding that Driscoll took his concerns about modernization and other efforts within the army to the president before resigning. I think that's notable. And certainly the reverberations on Capitol Hill have been there. There have been several Republican members who have said that they think that Hegsef has gone too far on these firings or forced resignations. There are concerns about the future modernization of the military because someone like Driscoll was so focused on that and now obviously is no longer in that post. I also think that for someone like Tillis who has been clear that he regrets his vote to confirm Hegsseth to the role, his statement only bears out that the concerns he had before voting yes on Hegseth are still the exact concerns that have been the reality of the Hegseth tenure atop the Pentagon. managerial concerns. It is a massive bureaucracy and oversight of it has been slim to none from Capitol Hill. But that's also that Hegset hasn't been giving them regular briefings on things that I think they expected they would continue to be briefed on.

And so there is a real concern here, even though the speaker the other day said to me, like, I can't, I'm not equipped to judge the firings, the resignations, the way that Hegset is running that building. I mean, there's oversight. That's the central role of Congress when it comes to the executive. But if you put that aside, there are Republicans who are concerned about this pattern at the Pentagon. At the end of the day, though, their opportunity to register those concerns was during the confirmation process. And they voted to confirm this guy. And how many times have we seen that where senators have now decided to be unleashed to be critical of cabinet members who they already voted for? Like, the list is endless. But you're certainly right to bring up the isolation of Trump right now.

He exists far more so in the first term in a real bubble and more so than any of his predecessors. You know, in terms of his news, it's Fox News. It's a couple of the right-wing channels. It's not even Twitter anymore, X. It's true social, which is just AI slop in an echo chamber. He's very rarely out in the country. He's surrounded by billionaires or lackeys. It's all true believers.

And that includes how he gets his news, which Mike, you know, I mean, AIDS have said to me, on this very topic, like, he gets it from like whatever Natalie Hart prints out for him. as opposed to actually talking to the experts, he was surprised per reporting. When Driscoll came in and expressed these concerns about readiness at the Pentagon, Trump says he didn't know that. And he is still a Heggseth fan. He likes Heggseth fight and the way he looks on TV.

But there are real worries about the Pentagon in the present, as we are still in a war with Iran, but absolutely in the future. Is it going to be ready for what comes next? Look, the president of the United States has sat there in the Oval Office doing his dealy, shenanigans, press conferences, he calls them, as Pete Hagseth has presided over the diminution of a generation of military leaders. General George fired. General Donahue, one of the most

capable officers anyone has seen in the last 10 or 15 years, fired, along with a number of others in all of the services. He has gutted the top of the house of the next future generation of leaders. And he does so as the President of the United States sits there, you would know more about this than I do, seemingly getting more and more withdrawn unto himself. It's always been about him. Everything is always about him, but it's seemingly more so today. And the bubble gets smaller by the day. We remind viewers that the Hegsith confirmation vote was 50-50. Three Republicans dissented, Collins Murkowski-McConnell. J.D. Vance, the vice president, had to come in to break the tie at 5150. MS. Now's Ali Vitale, the Atlantic's Mark Leibovic. Thank you, both, as always.

is still ahead on Morning Joe. Our next guest argues President Trump's attacks on elections, including calls for restricting mail-in voting are 250 years in the making. The author of the new book, Stealing Elections American Style, joins us next on Morning Joe. Our next guest argues in a new book that while free and fair elections are the foundation of American democracy, they also are a bit of a myth and have been for most of our nation's history. The book is titled Stealing Elections American Style. In it, author and attorney David Walbert, it's today's headlines into some historical context, saying they are alarming, of course, but not unprecedented, asking readers, will we learn from our history and build a stronger

democracy based on fair, honest elections, or will we repeat the mistakes of the past? David joins us now. He's been an attorney for more than four decades, arguing countless voting rights cases, including before the Supreme Court. David, thanks so much for being with us this morning. I want to talk about the here and now a little bit, but first, some of the history that you see of elections being manipulated in this country? Yeah, well, the book makes the point that election skullduggery goes way back. And it is, the first chapter in the book is a story about the 1876 presidential election. And one of the famous statements that is in there is by one of the people on the state Louisiana

canvassing board. And that's the state board that would collect all the returns from all the parishes in the state. and they report out what the final total for the state was for all statewide elections. And this one individual on the board said, well, they may have us in the vote, but we got them in the count. And a Tilden win of 8,000 votes in Louisiana, which in a state where it's 150,000 votes were cast statewide. So it's pretty good margin. And that's even with an awful lot of cheating where Republicans had disenfranchised about 8,000 registered Democrats were right. before the election where they didn't have a chance to contest it, it made a big difference.

So you've got that kind of stealing in a very flagrant way in our history. And you've got things like the Johnson famous 1948, Lundon Johnson Senate election in Texas. Actually, the 1941 one had the same problem in terms of vote count and cheating. In the South, I look at the locations, there's two different size elections. is controlling who votes. The other side is controlling the count. And of course, in the South, and I've practiced my career as men in the South, tried cases elsewhere,

but my voting career is focused on the South. And we have, of course, a miserable history in terms of allowing African-Americans to participate in politics during the 1900s. And up until really 1965, when the Voting Rights Act was first passed by Congress and some of the flagrant barriers that kept black people from voting. A lot of people don't know the fact that black weren't even allowed to vote in the South until

1945. There was something called the white primary, and black people were not allowed to vote in the Democratic primary by rule. And the Supreme Court said, well, that's fine. That's constitutional. So we've got this pretty bad history. Yeah. Yeah, no, your book opens with the flagrant fraud, as you argue,

that had Reverend Rutherford B. Hayes the presidency in 1876. So we certainly have a checkered history here. Talk to us, though, as you obviously have examined the past, parallels you see with the future, like with Donald Trump in particular, who claimed without evidence that there was election fraud in 2020, but now many people fear might be trying to set up an efforts to tamper with things, whether that's in 2026 midterms or helping whatever comes next in 2008. Well, to a certainty, after looking at all the history and knowing the history and litigating this stuff for four and a half decades, we're in a unique period. Never since, never in the history country, I was going to say since the Civil War when the federal government

got more involved in elections with the 14th, 13th, 15th amendments, never has the federal government been opposed to open voting and trying to liberalize voting and permit it. So we're in a unique situation here where the White House is leading the charge to restrict voting on the first side of the coin. So we've seen everything possible to control who votes through gerrymandering, trying to take away mail voting, and then this nonsense about citizen, non-citizens voting, which is completely fabricated. And, you know, I love the story in Louisiana state. Mike Johnson does the party line, says, non-citizens voting, we've got to have Save Act. We've got to have documentary proof of citizenship because all this problem with non-citizen voting.

Well, the truth of the matter is, in Louisiana, for example, the secretary of state did, a study going back 40 years of all the elections in Louisiana, and out of 77 million votes cast in that time, there was a possible 79 non-citizens might have voted out of 77 million. That's one out of a million. So we've got to pass the SAVE Act in order to require more and more and more barriers to voting and more and more documentary proof. So maybe you would catch 79 people who were non-citizens. And in the process, you're going to lose hundreds of thousands of legitimate citizen voters because you're making this system more and more complicated and cumbersome. And that's the goal. That's the purpose. Because those voters, it's crystal

clear that those voters are predominantly democratic because they are less likely to have passports, have a convenience birth certificate, prove their citizenship, and so on. So the sole purpose of it is political. And Donald Trump's semi-honest about that. He says, we want to have 50 years of Republican hegemony and Republican Empire. That's what we've got to get rid of mail voting and have the Save Act. So that is that. Let me ask you a question, David, is it harder or easier to bag an election today than it was in 1960? It's much harder. The modern technology makes election cheating on the front end really hard. I think that's why you're seeing so much about, you know, the gerrymander effort that Trump did during the summer this year is probably Democrats have to win five million more votes than Republicans in order to break even in the House.

That's a pretty big gap. And that and mail-in voting, so you're trying to whack it on the front end. You're trying to cheat on that side. You know, ballot box stuffing like it happened in the old days. That really doesn't happen. And that really is pretty close to impossible. And even, you know, all the studies of voter fraud, and that's been the standard Republican mantra for the last 20 years to justify making it hard.

Every study shows a voter fraud, and I think the Kato Institute, very conservative group, they said it is so slight as to be unmeasurable. You know, you're talking about one in a hundred million votes may be fraudulent. So again, every time you tighten up the rules, you're just knocking out. legitimate citizen voters to read out, you know, one voter. And so it's just an excuse. It's a red herring and it's a fake excuse to try and justify making voting harder and harder. David, I suspect we'll be speaking more in the months to come here. This is a really important book, especially at this time in our history. It's titled Stealing Elections American Style.

It's available now. Author attorney, David Walbert, who's spent more than 40 years working on cases around elections. We really appreciate your insight. and hope to talk to you again soon. Thank you. Thank you. Coming up, President Trump is promising to help incumbent Republicans locked in tight re-election races, but is he actually going to spend the massive campaign cash he is sitting on? We'll dig into that ahead on Morning Joe. Next Friday marks 25 years since the attacks of September 11th, if you can believe it. Less than two weeks after that tragic day a quarter century ago, Congress created an unprecedented victim compensation fund to support the families of those killed or injured. That effort led to very difficult

questions about how to place monetary value on lives lost, injuries suffered, and futures forever change. Special Master Kenneth Feinberg, who oversaw the fund chronicled his experience in the 2005 book, What is Life Worth, now being re-released with new reflections on what that experience can teach a divided America. And Ken Feinberg joins us now. Ken, it's good to have you back. We were just remarking, it's just staggering to me that that was 25 years ago, something that for a lot of us who were around at that time is so fresh in our mind. It's been a quarter of a century. And you write some new reflections in the new book about that. One reason I wrote the new reflections and had the book republished is just what you've said, Willie, there are millions of Americans that don't

know about 9-11, have no idea about the victim compensation fund. And I thought it was in important to re-educate America about how that fund was created, how it was supported by the American people, and how ultimately the victims of 9-11 voluntarily joined that fund when they had an option of litigating if they wanted to, but we basically got all but a handful to come into the fund voluntarily, which was Congress's objective in setting up the fund. Well, that's the thing. I mean, it's for people who are living in this political world and don't remember that time on September 12th, how united the country was. Congress kind of gave you the check you needed to say, go take care of these people. And one of the things you write in these new reflections is you're not sure that would happen today. I'm pretty sure it wouldn't. Don't forget. Congress created that fund with public taxpayer money, all taxpayer money. No roll call, unanimous consent. voted without objection through both houses, signed immediately by President Push, and Attorney General John Ashcroft interviewed me and told me to get going on this fund.

You know, Ken, this was unique in American history, and you were in charge of distributing funds, millions and millions of dollars of funds, to the survivors, families of those who were lost in 9-11. And through this latest edition, I was just reading it over the weekend, there came a point in time when you were at a meeting of citizens, relatives in Brooklyn. And you described the process that you were going through in towards distributing the money. And you said, it's a tough business. And a guy stood up in the back of the hall and said, excuse me, this is not a business.

We're talking about my wife in terms of a victim. What did that do to your view of your job at that point? That's a great question. I learned the hard way. I made mistake after mistake in dealing with this very unique program and dealing directly with individuals who lost loved ones or who burned and seriously injured. I learned fairly quickly my law degree wasn't much help. Better a divinity degree or a degree in psychiatry.

when you're dealing with very emotional people who are rightfully angry, frustrated, worry about the future. And you learn the hard way because you make mistakes and you learn that empathy and sensitivity is a lot more important than your law degree in trying to calculate damages. And one of the most important things we did in that fund, which wasn't even in the statute, we gave anybody who wanted to say, see me privately, privately. And over 33 months, I must have held 900 hearings privately. My colleague, who you know, of course, Camille Byros, she held a series of hearings, it will overflow. And the stories you heard privately, Mr. Feinberg, a woman, 26 years old, comes in, never met her. Mr. Feinberg, I lost my husband. He was a fireman at the World Trade Center.

And he left me with our three children, six, four, and two. Now, Mr. Feinberg, you're going to give me $1.8 million tax-free. I want it in 30 days. And I said to her, Mrs. Jones, why do you need the money in 30 days? She said, why? I'll tell you why, Mr. Feinberg. I have terminal cancer. Oh.

I have 10 weeks to live. My husband was going to survive me, and now my three little ones are going to be orphans. I have got to get this money while I still have my faculties. I got to find a trust. I have to find a trustee, a guardian, my kid's education, their health care. We ran down to the treasury. We ushered that check through. Got her the check in third.

30 days, eight weeks later, she died. When you hear hundreds of stories like this, it was easily the most debilitating part of this assignment, and to this day, you remember these stories. But it were these private hearings with victims that were the difference between, I'm not interested in Feinberg's listening, Camille's listening, let's go into the fund.

It's a heartbreaking, heartbreaking story. Sadly, I agree that I don't know that the nation would rally in the same way. We didn't when the pandemic happened. We were very, very polarized. But speak to us just a little bit briefly before you go about how the other part of legacy of 9-11 is that people are still dying. People are still growing sick because of what happened that day 25 years ago. There's been in 2015. See, we couldn't pay in 2001 all of these latent cancer claims.

We didn't even know about them. But around 2015, Congress stepped up and filled that void by reopening the fund, saying if you were a first responder or somebody injured on 9-11, and your cancer didn't develop for a decade. And the doctors and the scientists say there is a link. To this day, Congress has permitted those individual claimants to get paid for health-related illnesses. And I think there's a fund still in perpetuity until something like 2090 to pay all the legacy claims of those victims. So it's a marvelous unique, you put it best Willie, a unique consensus that I don't think today, as I reflect, not going to get Congress to unanimously ratify without a roll call, just unanimous consensus. and everybody's agree.

We're one community. That was a singular moment in time, and it'll be a lasting historical plus for the country, I think. You had a difficult job, and you did it well in that trying moment. The updated version of What is Life Worth available next Tuesday, September 8th, in the week of the commemorations of the 25th anniversary of 9-11. Author, Special Master of the September 11th Victims Compensation Fund, Ken, thanks so much for being here.

Thank you so much for him. Still ahead, Treasury Secretary Scott Besant weighs in on rising U.S. gas prices, pointing the finger at Ukraine. We'll show you his new comments. Plus, several Republican candidates say they will skip President Trump's midterm convention in Dallas next week. I'm in criticism over the $25,000 price of a ticket. We'll go through that and other issues with the event. That and much more. Morning Joe comes right back.