Morning Joe - James Comey wants 'vindictive' case dropped and Trump's prosecutor disqualified

Episode Date: October 21, 2025

James Comey wants 'vindictive' case dropped and Trump's prosecutor disqualified Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

A group of thieves broke into the Louvre and stole priceless Napoleon-era jewels in a seven-minute daytime heist. It's not good when the deodorant at CBS has better security than the Louvre. Can I just get the deodorant? I've got to get a key for my manager. Jimmy Fallon on The Manhunt, still underway for the robbers in France. That's just one of the stories we're tracking this morning. Another big story is the major trouble. facing the nation's airports, as staffing shortages force widespread delays.

The government shutdown is not helping that at all, as both parties dig in for the fight. We'll have the latest. This comes as President Trump takes a wrecking ball to part of the White House, while his hand-picked prosecutor faces a new challenge in her criminal case against James Comey. latest on that. Good morning. And welcome to morning, Joe. It is Tuesday, October 21st. With us, we have the co-host of our fourth hour, staff writer at the Atlantic, Jonathan Lemire, co-founder and CEO of Axis, Jim Vandahai, staff writer at the Atlantic, Frank Four, and opinion writer at the New York Times, Mara Gay, is with us this morning. Joe, a lot to get to

this morning and some sports. A little bit of sports, a lot of sports. I mean, Jonathan Lemire, we were talking about yesterday, possibly the greatest single performance by any player in history with Otani. But last night, man, won for the ages. That was an incredible, incredible ALCS. Yeah, a classic Game 7, all you could have wanted for last night, Toronto Blue Jays hosting the Seattle Mariner. Seattle never been to a World Series.

The only franchise in the MLB that's never even been to the fall. Classic, had a 3-1 lead into the 7th, heartbreaking. George Springer, we're going to see it right here. His October resume is pretty spectacular, and he added to it there. Three-run Homer in the bottom of the 7th to give Toronto the leads. Seattle's manager getting second-guessed about terms of his bullpen usage. Maybe he should have gone to his closure there against the top of the Blue Jays lineup, even though it was the 7th.

Seattle's bats stayed quiet in the last couple innings earlier in the game, both Louis Rieges and the Big Dumber, Cal Raleigh, did Homer. But the Toronto Blue Jays are going to the World Series. Their first one since 1993, there's the last out. J-Rodd strikes out. Blue Jays Dodgers starts Friday night. And Joe, it should be a good one. I mean, look, we have said for about a month now,

the Dodgers feel inevitable. And that still may be the case, the way they just eviscerated the Brewers with their pitching. And then, of course, Otani's three-run, three-homer classic in game four. but Toronto will have home field. They've got a deep lineup. Their pitching can't quite hold up with L.A.,

but it's not bad. It should be a good series, but it's certainly the Dodgers to lose. Well, this is going to be the best series. And it's something that, you know, even though the Blue Jays had one of the best records throughout the season, something we didn't see near the end of the season, this team didn't look that good.

They were stitching together, their pitching rotation. But this looks like a very good team. I mean, you see what happened last night. You also see Vlad just having an incredible postseason. This is a team that maybe can keep up Jim Van de High with the Dodgers better than the Milwaukee Brewers. Let's Valorhead and have a moment of silence for the Brewers. Here's a team that's got the best record all the years, the best baseball team all year. But then the Dodgers, man, it's just not fair, is it?

It's just not fair. I mean, that pitching staff is just outrageously good. I mean, we were so humbled. I can't think of a more boring, humbling series than we had against them. But that pitching staff is, it seems, like you said, inevitable. They seem unstoppable. The Blue Jays were good in the playoffs, like you said, kind of weak at the end of the season. But the Dodgers, man, that's a hell of a lineup.

Yeah. Well, and we're very fortunate. We have Jim Van der Heide this morning in front of the facade of the White House that is not being obliterated as Donald Trump, who promised that he was not going to take a wrecking ball to the existing structure, has taken a wrecking ball to existing structure. I'm going to say, Mick, it really is it's, it is hard to watch that. And it's hard to believe that any president could destroy the White House and take a wrecking ball to an existing structure so historic.

That is what's happening. It would be one thing if you were building on. or you were doing things inside, but to take literally a wrecking ball to the White House. I can't. It's grotesque. It's just grotesque. Yeah. And this after the Rose Garden and the, I guess the patio that they have put in, which you could argue.

Yeah, far different. Yeah. It's painful. I mean, this is historic structure. It's history being torn to shreds. And again, is everybody, I mean, so if somebody wants to go into the White House, the next person wants to just knock down all the walls and turn it into a disco, Congress can't do anything.

I mean, seriously. You're destroying, like, one of the most historic structures on the planet. Yeah, and the cost to happen. And are we saying that whoever we elect president has the right to destroy? Like, what, just tear things up, tear it to the ground, turn it into something else? Kind of crazy. I don't think it's not your home that you purchased in Jersey. No, no, it's not yours.

You rent it from the American people for four years. Let's get to our top story. Lawyers representing former FBI director, James Comey, are asking a federal judge to dismiss the criminal charges he's currently facing. In motions filed yesterday, Comey's attorneys argue the U.S. attorney who brought the case against him, Lindsey Halligan was unlawfully appointed. They also contend Comey is being unfairly targeted because of President Trump's, quote, personal spite against him.

Comey has pleaded not guilty to charges stemming from congressional testimony in 2020 when he stood by previous testimony he gave in 2017 regarding the authorization of leaks to the media when he was head of the FBI. Comey's team argued the indictment arose from, quote, multiple glaring constitutional violations and an egregious abuse of power by the federal government, and that the, quote, bedrock principles of due process and equal protection have long ensured that government officials may not use courts to punish and imprison their perceived personal and political enemies. Halligan's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Frank, what do you make of how this is proceeding so far? I mean, one of the things that people always said about Jim Comey is that he has this high-minded way of putting things. In some cases, that feels like a defect, but in this instance, it's kind of satisfying and on the nose

because he's coming at her on the kind of the most broad, constitutional grounds. Selective and vindictive prosecution is the term that he's using. And it's, it's like, it's so, so bang on in this instance. And there's no arguing with the, the ham-fisted slapdash way that this came about, where the social media, the true social quote, text, text, tweet about going after him that was, I guess, apparently broadcast to the entire world when it was intended for Pam Bondi, the replacing of Eric Siebert, who was so reluctant to bring this case, the replacement of him with this kind of political hack with no experience, just to get it in under the wire before the statute of limitations ran out. It feels like, at least spiritually,

the narrative is so on Jim Comey's side here that it's, He has to keep pushing this because he's right. And speaking of Lindsey Halligan, the legal publication law fair is reporting that the interim U.S. attorney started a 33-hour signal text exchange with one of their reporters discussing the recent indictment of New York Attorney General Letitia James. So in those messages, Halligan criticizes the reporter Anna Bowers' social media posts that summarize a New York Times report on grand jury testimony, calling them biased and not true. true. Bauer responded, my exchange wrote this in her piece. My exchange with Halligan was

highly unusual in a number of respects. She initiated a conversation with me, a reporter she barely knew, to discuss an ongoing prosecution that she is personally handling. She mostly criticized my reporting, or more precisely, my summary of someone else's reporting. But several of her messages contained language that touch on grand jury matters, even as she insisted that she could not reveal such information, which is protected from disclosure by prosecutors under federal law. What's more, Halligan never stated the conversation was off the record until after Bauer contacted the DOJ for comment.

A Justice Department spokesperson later confirmed the text messages and responded by defending Halligan. The indictment against James alleges that she misrepresented a Virginia property as a second home to secure a better mortgage rate. James has denied any wrongdoing. So, Mara, a couple things here. First of all, another example of the Trump administration being just entirely too online. I mean, responding to social media posts from a reporter that the interim at U.S. attorney barely knew, potentially revealing things she couldn't that could lead to, you know, that might not be well received by a judge or in court. But more than that, it just shows, again,

this overarching campaign of retribution where they're going to defy whatever norms, frankly, maybe laws in order to carry out President Trump's wishes. Well, it's disturbing, but it also tells us something about the kind of process that is at work. So we've gotten a look behind the scenes at the prosecution that is clearly politically motivated, clearly a campaign of retribution. And what better to show that than completely out of the ordinary and inappropriate you know, kind of outreach, I would say, from Lindsay Halligan, who, by the way, is not a prosecutor by training at all. So there's a question of competence here. There's a question

of due process. Experience for state attorney general, Letitia James. Absolutely, Mika. Experience. And it's also just embarrassing. You even just wonder if she even knew to say, if Lindsay how he'll even you to say this is off the record amateur hour i mean amateur hour i mean that's something by the way that local officials god how embarrassing know that they are on the record unless uh they say otherwise so i'm glad that this came out and and honestly it's probably good news for tish james joe yeah you know um and jim vanda hi mika said the word experience experience that of course so many people in the maga movement have absolute contempt for if you've ever done anything that you qualified for a job, many will start grousing, deep state, deep state, because you actually

know how to do your job, because you've actually been in these organizations and you know actually how to do your job competently for the president. Something I brought up after the peace agreement or at least a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas. You know, Jared Kushner's been there before. He was there for the Abraham Accords. He was there doing business for the four years that he was out of government. He knows everybody. there. Something strange happens when you're experienced and you actually know the players and you know the game. You can do much better. Here's a perfect example, again, of the young woman who was just, you know, pulled out of wherever Donald Trump pulled her out of. I think she was an insurance

lawyer, maybe an insurance defense lawyer. And suddenly it's saying, here, go prosecute this woman that nobody in your office is going to prosecute. You're setting somebody, first you're setting somebody up for failure. Secondly, they fail because they do something that if they had had any experience in that position, they would have known to never do. This is the problem with appointing all of these people that are so woefully ill-equipped and ill-qualified. That's not a knock against her personally. That's just saying you can't go from never prosecuting a case to prosecuting one of the most important cases in America without having that experience. Yeah, I think the bigger problem, right, is that the country is almost numb to nonsense.

Like, what pulls the stories together this morning? You're talking about the destruction of the East Wing, and you asked rhetorically whether or not the president can do whatever he wants to the White House, and then we talk about the appointment of people in real positions of absolute power, using that power to go after individuals. And what you have happening is just this, the answer is yes, actually, the president, if no one checking and balancing him, he could just take down the White House. He can do whatever he wants. And theoretically, he can appoint whoever he wants into these roles, including people

that a lot of people around them don't think they're up for the job, might find them to be incompetent, might find them to not have the requisite type of experience to be at the highest levels of government. And I think the danger for Trump, the danger for Republicans, it feels awesome in the moment, right? Like, you get to go back against your enemies, or you get to do whatever you want on your terms and you get to dunk on the media or dunk on on liberals. I think the danger is is if the economy continues to slip, if people continue to feel like things cost too much or jobs too hard to find or their kids are really struggling to find entry level work, then I think people really start to pay attention to like, why are you redoing the

White House? Why are you putting incompetent people into positions of power? Why aren't you doing in America what you were doing in Israel, right? Where you actually had that? the right people, probably doing the right work at the right time to get a good outcome. And so I think in the moment, it's easy for people to be dazed and confused. And why are you giving Argentina a 20, anywhere from a 20 to $40 billion bailout while people's health care insurance is being slashed? And billionaires are getting, you know, yeah, all of these questions add up. But Jim, you're right. This is going to turn a around and not just by this administration, but let me say it again and again and again because

you talk about it in a piece, what I've been warning about, what I've been warning Republicans about, you know, because they love to say, oh, we're owning the lips. No, you're taking a hammer to the 2027 and 2029 version of yourself, a ball peen hammer, and you're hammering yourself in the forehead. Like, the things they are doing now will be used against them. by a progressive president or an independent megalomaniac who is a billionaire who becomes president of the United States. They are setting precedents for an all-powerful president, which they're fine right now because it's their guy doing it. But as you ride an Axis, they're setting precedents that Ripdish Reds, the constitutional norms, that they've gone around, yelling about for 50 years, whether it's, you know, Article 1 powers like we did back

when we were in power there to say, hey, we've got the right to balance the budget or whether it's, you know, well, you pick whatever they were once champions of that they've abandoned. They're hurting themselves. This will come back to haunt them. Let's take it above Trump. Like the reason that people should care is that the more you consolidate the power in one person, the less power you have is an individual. The country was not set up to be an all-powerful monarchy. But over the last 25 years, you've had both parties make government a hell of a lot bigger and provide a hell of a lot more power to the president. Trump has taken that and he's put it on steroids. Republicans are gleeful because they have the power. But like you said, they will

do unto you what you did to them. You've been in the game longer than I have, Joe, and you know that there's no new power that is ever introduced into politics by one party that is not used and often abused and stretched to new lengths by the next one. And Jim, this is an executive power, but I was saying what a lot of conservatives were saying before Obama care was passed. I said, listen, think long and hard about this, because if you pass it, it will never be taken in a way. I mean, and it's the same thing with presidential power. Presidents are given power. And I've got to say the Roberts Court is just sitting by and letting this president just completely twist and distort, you know, Article 2 powers. He's not, no president's going to give that back,

Jim, just like you're saying in this article. No president's going to give it back. And you just you really do have this confluence of anomalies, right? You have the fact that, that you have a court that has a lot of members of the court who are well steeped in providing and extending executive power. And then you just have this Republican Congress that is absurdly compliant, right? That's not a partisan statement. They don't oppose the president on almost anything, including the things that they tell you and I privately that they abhor. And what happens is when you don't constrain the president, the president will do whatever he wants to do, including taking the powers that were enumerated in the Constitution.

For you, Congress, you have the right to do tariffs. You have the right to control spending. You have the right to provide oversight to the federal or to the executive branch. And you're not doing that. You're not doing it at all. And you're not doing it because you want to win the favor of Trump. You want to win the favor of the party at the moment. But like you said, for some reason, politicians are just losing their attachment to this

that this isn't just today. It's a 250-year experiment. And you are in some ways a steward of that experiment. Your job is to leave the country a little bit better than you inherited it. Maybe leave governance and leave politics a little bit better than you inherited it. And again, like for the individual saying, oh, Jim, you're a lib or Jim, you're in the media, whatever, at some point, they're going to come for you. What are you going to do when the government comes after you with a baseless lawsuit? Or it comes after your team with a baseless lawsuit? Or it comes after your team with a baseless lawsuit or comes after your university or raise your home. It will have happened. Yeah, you know, because people are willfully ignorant, Jim, they don't

understand that actually what you are is you, what you just said, that is conservative with a small sea. That is conservatism that has two centuries behind it. That's Burkeian. You know, As Burke said, radicals can tear down in one day institutions that it took a century to build up. And that's what we're seeing. And Mika, you know, over the past 25 years, and I'll just say it. You know, people are like, oh, how about when you're in Congress? I could talk about when I coached football or when I played Little League baseball, but this seems a bit more relevant. When I left Congress, we had fought like hell, fought like hell to balance the budget.

We did it four years in a row. And when I left Congress, to Jim's point, we had a balanced budget, and the national debt was like $4,5 trillion. As Jim said, over the past 25 years, and especially the last six months, the power of government has been consolidated under one man inside the White House in a way that is destructive. makes government bigger, makes it less democratic, makes it less along the lines of what James Madison and Alexander Hamilton expected. And again, this has been an ongoing process. It's just been expedited over the past six months. But we've gone from having a $5 trillion national debt to a $37 trillion national debt. I must ask, what the hell are those people doing on Capitol Hill? I will tell you, we wouldn't have to put up with any of this crap.

We just never would have. With a president in our party, a president of another party, with people trying to take our constitutional rights away from us. And the thing that we always talked about was, it's big government. If government's getting bigger, if the president's getting more powerful, that's not about the president's power. That's about the power he's taking away from you. Right. And we used it time and again, and this is not specific

just to Donald Trump. But it sure is hell has been accelerated over the past nine months in a way we have not seen yet. And it's, it's ongoing. We got a 37 trillion dollar debt. We've got power being yanked, well, not being torn from Congress. Congress is just giving up their Article I powers. Completely. And it's just the damnedest thing to see because this will be repeated when a Democrat's in power unless they straighten their act out now. And we're still in the middle of a government shutdown. Still ahead on morning, Joe, the latest on that. As Senate Republicans plan a visit to the White House today, plus Senate Majority Leader, John Thune says President Trump's embattled pick for Office of Special Counsel will not get confirmed.

Well, that's good. We'll explain why he's saying that. And a reminder that the Morning Joe podcast is available each weekday featuring our full conversations and analysis. You can listen wherever you get your podcasts. You're watching Morning Joe. We'll be right back. 25 past the hour, live look at Washington, D.C. Senate Majority Leader John Thune weighed in yesterday on President Trump's pick for the Office of Special Counsel, Paul Ingrosia, saying his confirmation, quote, is not going to pass. Ingracia, a far-right former podcaster was nominated in May and is set to appear before the Senate homeland. Security Committee on Thursday. But he faces stiff opposition from several GOP senators after Politico

reported on racist text messages allegedly sent by Ingracia to a group chat. Politico cited a text chat. It reviewed in reporting that Ingracio once said he has a, quote, Nazi streak and that Martin Luther King Jr. Day should be, quote, tossed into the seventh circle of hell. Politico also reported, Ingracia was accused of sexual harassment this year by a colleague citing three unnamed administration officials. His lawyer denied the harassment claims and said the texts were satirical humor and possibly AI generated. When asked whether the White House should pull the nomination, soon told reporters, I think so.

In Gracia's rejection would mark a rare Republican rebuke of a Trump nominee in the Senate where the GOP holds a majority and where the GOP holds a majority, Frank, for, and has the power to do things like this. Okay. So they're nominating a guy who has a self-proclaimed Nazi street to the office of special prosecutor where he's supposed to be in charge. somehow of protecting the ethics of the United States. You don't need a deep fake version of the video that we're seeing of the demolition of the White

House. I mean, it's amazing that a guy like this is able to find a place ensconced in the inner circle of this administration. And, I mean, surely, this is the dark underbelly of MAGA that all the responsible people within who have clung to to the Republican established in the Maga knows is there and it you know

they will only blanch when they see these quotes and it's not even clear that this is enough to derail the guy yet. Yeah I mean we heard it from the Senate Majority Leader Thune but it is as Mika noted so rare that Republicans stand up to Trump I don't think we should take it as a guarantee

that this does get pulled we'll have to see Mara of course it comes on the heels of other text messages that were revealed from those young Republicans, those threads, Politico doing good work on that as well. There's praise of Hitler in there, as well as other just extraordinarily offensive and racist comments. And we should note that those were defended by the Vice President of United States who J.D. Vance taking to Twitter and saying, oh, these people were young and they made, we shouldn't cancel everyone for foolish indiscretions. Mind you, a lot of those people were in their

20s and 30, some of them office holders, Paul and Grasseh here, also 30 years old. Yeah, these were not college. group chats, just to be clear, you know, and there are some local Republican leaders, state Republican leaders who have condemned this. But that's a good look at the future of Republican leadership. And now we have someone in Gracia who could be in a key role in the White House. You know, I think it's a good sign that Republicans are at least signaling through Thune a willingness to hold the line on this. It's a rare bright spot. But I think, You know, speaking as a black American, you know, there's no surprise here.

I mean, we see these views expressed from the White House, from officials, consistently about non-white Americans, but maybe through more polite language. So this is just open bigotry, which in some ways is actually easier to go up against and to refute than just, hatred overall and xenophobia and racism. So there's no surprise here, but we have to hold the line somewhere. And I think the question for Republicans is, where is the line? Is it Martin Luther King Jr.?

I think he was likened in this group chat to George Floyd, which I don't even want to go there. I mean, the disgusting, twisted nature of these text messages, it also just raises the question, you know, what does motivate these people? I mean, what kind of sick minds and sick individuals are going to be in this White House? I mean, racism is a sickness. And these are public servants.

I mean, it's horrendous. It's not surprising. And it's chilling. It's chilling. You know, what is surprising to Matt High is, though, it seems like the vice president of the United States, Jim, is, is, he's out there. He's the defender in chief of, like, the most shocking, outrageous things. And remember, I mean, this is the same guy. You just can't remind people of this enough because this is the same guy who wrote a book,

who built the eleogy, came on all of our shows, was the darling of the East Coast, like, cosmopolitan elite set, which remains one of my favorite. I don't know Steve Bannon coined that term or not, that somebody should trademark cosmopolitan elite. I like that a lot. I think of a guy you like in the 1950s and a hat smoking a cigar, about to go to the country club, cosmopolitan elites. But that's who J.D. Vance was. J.D. Vance was also the guy lecturing Republicans that Jesus Christ expected more of us than the vote for Donald Trump.

He was also the guy that said that, you know, Donald Trump, you know, vaguely reminded him of Hitler. I don't know the exact words. But you go down the list now. And he was most definitely in a four different space than he is right now. And now I get maybe it's because he wants to be the next not Republican nominee. But it seems like he's the guy out there defending the indefensible every day, especially online. And again, this isn't who we are. Like, I don't think we live in a racist nation.

I don't think most members of Meg or people who voted for Donald Trump are racist. think a lot of these racist people end up getting amplified on social media. Some of them end up in the White House. And there's only one response. This is where I worry. We're just losing our marbles. If someone says something mean, if someone says something moronic, if someone says something racist, I don't care if it's in your party or the other party. You just say it's wrong. We're intolerant of it. You're fired. You can't be around us. You can't be in a position of public power because you have nonsensical, ludicrous, and immoral views. And you can't just say, oh, look at that Democratic Attorney General over there.

He said something even crazier. He did say something that was crazy, and it probably makes him unelectable. But what was said in that tax change is equally crazy, equally wrong. And when you don't condone it, it tells this group of kids, this group of men, that it's okay. Like, step back, why was there a large string of men? men in their 20s and 30s who went to college, who were in the professional class, who were clearly highly educated, thinking it's okay to praise Nazism. It's okay to say the most hurtful, ludicrous things about their fellow black citizens. It's just wrong. And it doesn't

represent the vote of the Republican Party, I don't think, and doesn't reflect America. And so the only thing you could say is what I would say as an employer. You're fired. You can't say that. I don't care what our rivals are saying. I don't care what other people are saying. It's just plain wrong. It's not even a close calling, by the way, for people who don't watch the show every day, you know, we called, at least I called, for the candidate in Virginia running for Attorney General to drop out of the race and drop out of the race immediately. I so think Spamberger should demand that he drops out of the race immediately because I'm so glad Jim brought that up because that's an example. Somebody's, oh, I was just talking. No, no, who does that? And in what, in what, in what world do

do you do that? And it's the same thing with these Republicans, uh, leaders in some of their 20s and 30s, you know, praising Nazism. Or in this case, this guy's saying, yes, a Nazi streak and and, and saying horribly racist things. And I just want to say, Jim said, Jim said we don't live in a racist nation. I can only speak to my experience. I've lived in Georgia growing up. I lived in Alabama. I lived in Mississippi. I lived in northwest Florida, which is the deep south. I have lived the majority of my life in the deep south. And I will tell you through elementary school, middle school, high school, college. Perhaps somewhere else, the darkness on the edge of town, there were racists and bigots talking this way. I never once. Well, actually, I did one time.

I heard one time. One time. But other than this one time, I never heard this sort of talk. I never heard, and I grew up, not in a bubble. I was, we lived in a very middle class family, went to Southern Baptist churches. I never once heard this kind of talk growing up. This is not normal. Maybe it's been normalized over the past few years, but this is not normal. And I grew up in the deep, deep south.

And I'll just say, I've told this story before. I'll say it again, Amika, because it explains the remarkable change that the South went through and how we took great pride at one time and being part of the new South. I was in first grade. And Mississippi, 1969, got integrated.

That was just a few years after the civil rights killings in Philadelphia, Mississippi, which was just right down the road from where I went to elementary school. We were standing in line. We were about to get lunch. And this young kid said, it made a racist slur against a young black girl. I still remember all these years later,

a student teacher, she probably went to Mississippi State or Old Miss and was probably, you know, in her first year at Northeast Elementary School, she went over and she grabbed this kid by the ear and said, well, you might smell too if you didn't have indoor plumbing. And I remember her grabbing his ear, probably couldn't do that today,

dragging him out screaming, taking him to the principal's office, and we didn't see him in class again for three days. That was the example that was set in first grade. You don't. Even in the midst of the integration fights in 1969, in rural Mississippi, that was the message that was being sent to first grade.

No, we live in a new South. We live in a new nation. And that was the message that I received in Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Northwest Florida, whether I was in class, whether I was playing baseball, whether I was in the locker room playing football. You just didn't do it. And now for our leaders, they'll be nodding and winking, say, oh, kids will be kids. No, no, kids won't be kids. Not in this realm.

We teach our children better than that. We deserve. Our children deserve better than that. So just a shrug and say, kids will be kids. They're young. They're in their 20s and their 30s. No, these are four more than youthful indiscretions. This is a lurch back 70 years into a racist past that most Americans, most Republicans, most independents,

Most Democrats don't want to go back to, Mika. And we hope they step up. Axis co-founder and CEO, Jim Van de Haid, thank you for coming on this morning. His new column is available to read online right now. And coming up, the major impact the government shutdown is having on air travel in this country. Plus, the latest on a potential summit between President Trump and Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and Julia Yafi, joins us to take us through her brand new feminist history of modern Russia. She'll explain that straight ahead on Morning Joe.

Last the hour, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has signaled he would be willing to take part in the summit being arranged between President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Speaking to reporters yesterday, Zelensky said he would attend the talks in Budapest if invited. No date has been set for the meeting between Trump and Putin, although it will likely be held in the coming weeks. Joining us now, Washington correspondent for Puck News, Julia Yoffie. She's the author of the new book, Motherland, a feminist history of modern Russia from revolution to autocracy. And we'll get to that in a moment. How many years in the making is this book?

Seven? Oh, it's amazing. Congratulations. Let's first talk about the potential for this meeting to come together. What have you heard? Well, Zelensky has always been open from the very first days of the full-scale invasion in February of 2022, that he is willing to sit down and talk to Vladimir Putin, man to man, as he said, it is Putin who refuses to do so. He says that Putin is illegitimate, that he is not the rightful president of Ukraine.

He has been refusing to meet with him. He refuses to say his name publicly. And if you recall, after Anchorage, Trump said, oh, I got Putin to agree that the three of them are, the three of us are going to sit down. And the Kremlin slow rolled it and said, No, what we agreed to was to start talking about talking between the three of us. And I imagine that will be the case here, too. Yeah, I've been told by a few officials that Russia simply has not, Frank Ford, moved off their maximalist demands at all, that they're not willing to budge an inch, and that really it's going to be an inflection decision point for this administration. We saw Trump has been swinging wildly.

You know, he certainly been angry at Putin over the summer, but it seemed like last week he sort of swung back towards Hilton towards Moscow. No Tomahawks to Ukraine, sort of suggesting to Zelensky. It was a pretty heated meeting. I am told at the White House on Friday that maybe Zelensky does need to sort of accept Russia's terms here. And that the Russia now, with Lavrov and Rubio, set to meet, if Russia's not signaling that they won't move at all, I'm told, then there's a decision point for Trump, because you're going to meet with Putin and give him, you know, another summit when Putin is not

willing to budge in the slightest. If Trump does that, that's another sign that he's leaning towards Moscow. Maybe the question is, does he walk away? And we still have status quo in the conflict. Well, first, I'm so excited to read Julia's book. I know you're going to get to that, but I was Julia's editor for a long time back when I, my beard wasn't gray. And she's a phenomenal writer. And I know this book has been so long in the making. And I'm sure I just can't wait to read it. I think that when, you know, Trump right now is a little bit high on his own supply after what happened in the Middle East. And I think that he's wanted to end this war from the start of the administration, but he struggled to do that because Russia simply doesn't want

to end it. And I think in the course of his conversations with Zelensky, it's pretty clear that he's essentially come around to what would be, I think, in the status quo, Putin's a maximum vision for what he takes away from this war. And he's constantly undermining Zeletsky's leverage in negotiations by, you know, when these leaks come out about their conversations, by the fact that he's not supplying him with the Tomahawk. So if there were to actually be a summit, which I know is a big if, he's not exactly helping his ally.

All right, Frank Four. Thank you so much. We are grateful for the wisdom that we are beneficiaries of because of that gray beard of yours and working with Julia for so many years. Thank you so much for being with us. Mika, you know, I think you and I, I don't want to speak for you. I'll certainly say I was one that my head didn't blow up and my hair did not catch on fire after the president met with Vladimir Putin and Anchorage. I'm, as you know, I'm a big believer you talk to everybody. And despite the fact that it's not whether Putin deserved the meeting or not. It's about, okay, is this the first step in a process that

could kind of lead us to where we were led in the Middle East? I thought it was. You could say the same thing about Qatar. You can say the same thing about Hamas. But you take the first meeting. We've gone through this process. The president had that meeting. He had their extraordinary meeting with all the European allies. And we keep moving forward. At this point, point, though, at this point, with Russia's economy and tatters, with oil down to about $60 a barrel, you can just go down the list. There is no reason. I mean, with Putin, his army too weak to take over the very areas he wants to seize. He wants to seize areas at the negotiating table and steal from Donald Trump, areas that he's incapable.

of winning on the battlefield, there's really no justification at this stage of the process for the president to meet with Vladimir Putin unless Zelensky is there and they're negotiating in good faith, not at this point in the process. And also, we have all witnessed on the world stage, the heavy hand the president used with Zelensky himself. You don't have the cards and in the Middle East. And so at what point does he take the opportunity that is right in front of him to make a step toward peace between Russia and Ukraine and have a heavy hand with Putin? There's just, there's no explanation for it.

Julie, I want to turn to your book, which looks incredible. And you begin the book by writing this. This is so impressive. My little sister, an oncologist, is the fourth generation of women in our family to practice medicine. She follows our mother, a pathologist, our mother's mother, a cardiologist, our mother's mother, a pediatrician. In fact, two of our great-grandmothers were doctors. Another was a Ph.D. in chemistry, who in the 1930s ran her own lab and published scientific papers at a time when her peers in the West still needed their husband's permission to do much of anything.

Any American who hears this lineage assumes one thing, that the women in my family were extraordinary. That is because they measure them against American history and their own American families, even in educated families. Most of my peers' grandmothers didn't attend college. But measured against the history of their own country, the Soviet Union, The women from whom I descend were perfectly average people.

They were ordinary women who happened to be the subjects and products of one of the most radical social experiments in history, the attempt to emancipate women and build a new Soviet person. This book is in part an effort to explain the extraordinary circumstances that transform the lives of my rather ordinary for mothers. I will join you, although my grandmother was Czech and my father's mother was Polish. My grandmother spoke 11 languages. You know, I mean, there's just, again, there's the Eastern Europe and the European women and this history that you're tracking. Tell us why you wrote this book.

I mean, in part, I just explained it. That is simply remarkable, but you say ordinary. Yeah, it's remarkable in an American context. And I do want to add my grandmother, Hino, who passed in February. at the age of 96 was a chemical engineer who was in charge of the lab at the water purification plant that supplied drinking water to parts of Moscow and the Kremlin. But again, totally average people. And to explain that to an American, because the wow is the reaction I would always get, including from my literary agent, Gail Ross. Hello. She's glad you're done with the book.

Yes. She is so glad. But to explain the wow, you have to go, and why that's ordinary, you have to go all the way back and explain how the extraordinary became ordinary. And for that, I went back to the 19th century to explain the ideas that fed into the Russian revolution, the ideas to abolish the nuclear family, to make women work and parent in the same way as men, and to put most of their energy into productive labor. The idea was, so in 1918, the Soviet Union gave women the right to a free education, to no-fault civil divorce, to paid maternity leave, to the right to child support, even for children born out

of wedlock. And in 1920, it legalized abortion. In World War II, in World War II, over 800,000 young women fought an active combat. Like they were snipers, they were artillery gunners, they were all female fighter bomber regiments. The Nazis were totally freaked out by them, called them the night witches. And basically, by the time my mother went to medical school, 70% of Soviet doctors were women. So this is, but at the same time, the Soviet state failed Russian women, Soviet women, in providing them the support, the child's care, a household that, where they didn't have to cook from scratch every single day because there were no refrigerators, an economy where there was food and clothing for their children, right?

By the end, they were so tired. And for me, it was also, for myself, I was trying to answer the question of how do we go from that country to the country we have today in Russia, which is this far-right, revanchist, Christian nationalist state that in many ways foreshadows where we seem to be going as a country. So interesting, Joe. It's really just such a remarkable story and culturally something most of us are completely blind to in America. You know, you talked about women. Yeah, we had Rosie the Riveter here, right? Okay, we're going to let her go work on the assembly line in Detroit. But he was reading an article. Maybe it was three or four months ago about those women that they put in these silent gliders that would glide over

Nazi camps, bomb them, and they were absolutely, they would terrorize the Nazis. And I sat there thinking, wait a second, they were letting women do that. How was that part of the great Soviet experiment? Well, the women who do that, so this is remarkable. Basically, in June of 1941 when the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union, tens of thousands of Soviet women, and they were teenage girls. They were 16 years old. Some of them were 14. They were teenage girls who flooded the recruitment posts and were like, we are ready to go. And in part, they were ready to go because in the 20s and 30s, the Soviet Union made education co-ed. And it gave paramilitary training to girls alongside the boys. So they were all, all Soviet girls and boys throughout the 20s and 30s were

learning how to shoot a gun, how to read a topographical map, how to jump from a parachute stand, how to deal with an engine. And so many of them had sniper certificates, et cetera. They were ready to go in 1941. In fact, the Soviet Union's best sniper in the war was a woman. Okay. On that note, this is something remarkable. We're going to have much more with Julia Yafi on her new book, Motherland, after a quick break. Welcome back. We're speaking with Washington correspondent for Puck News, Julia Yafi, about her remarkable new book, Motherland, a feminist history of modern Russia, from revolution to autocracy. And there's so many surprising details about Russia's history in here.

Mara Gay, you have the next question. It's an extraordinary story. But in spite of the progress that women had made in the same. Soviet Union. You and your family, my understanding is that you fled the Soviet Union when you were seven years old in 1990, coming to the United States. Talk a little bit about why you decided to come here specifically to the U.S. And also, what is it like for you now when the country that offered freedom and safe haven is now having its own revanchionist moment, especially around immigration? Thank you. We came here as refugees because the Soviet Union had a policy, a government policy of state anti-Semitism. My parents, my grandparents, my great-grandparents, all experienced institutionalized anti-Semitism. There were jobs you couldn't have, universities you couldn't go to. I was told, you know, when I went to preschool, do not tell anyone you're Jewish. My first grade teacher always singled me out. And I was subject to.

to a lot of abuse because I was Jewish as a kid. And they finally decided to leave in the late 1980s in 1988 because there were rumors that there would be a pogrom against the Jews to celebrate the 1,000th anniversary of Russia becoming Christian in 98. And there was this moment, because there was this moment during the Pedestroika era of basically Russian nationalism. And the anti-Semitism that came with it, that might sound familiar, that nationalism often comes with anti-Semitism as Jews are other.

They're not really from here. They're cosmopolitan elites. And my parents decided to leave. It was the Cold War. And America had and has, until very recently, a very powerful message to people in countries that were enemies and all over the world, that we are a place of freedom, that we are a place of democracy, that we are a country of immigrants. And it was incredibly, it was an incredibly powerful draw for my parents. And to watch what's happening now, to watch the way immigrants are

being vilified, the way they're being snatched off the streets, stuffed into unmarked cars, disappeared, essentially. The way that the White House is cracking down on the press, that the Congress is becoming a rubber stamp for the president, the way that, I mean, the demolition of the part of the White House. My father texted me the other day and was like, what a metaphor. I mean, they're just stunned because they were like, this is not what we were coming to. I mean, it's been 35 years. They are such proud Americans. But this has been heartbreaking for all of us to watch what this president is doing to this country. So let's conclude by talking about what things are like in Russia now. For women like those in your family, if they were still there

today. What's life like? Life is hard, the way it has always been hard. And so, but for Russian women especially, because men are considered pretty useless. They are basically there to earn money and to impregnate you. So you can have a baby. Very important. Got to have a baby. Because that's always been part of the pro-natalist, traditionalist messaging of the Soviet state, including during these emancipatory years, because the men kept going to war, depopulating the country, and then turning to the women and saying, can you make some more? We need some more soldiers. And then also can you rebuild all the factories and rail tracks, et cetera, that we destroyed in the last war. And so women were incredibly tired by the end of this. And women have been craving this

traditional model where the man is the sole breadwinner, where they don't have to work anymore. And that, of course, proved a fertile ground for a traditionalist and a nationalist and a revanchist, like Vladimir Putin. The new book, Motherland, A Feminist History of Modern Russia, From Revolution to Autocracy, is available now. Author, Julia Yafi, thank you very, very much. Congratulations on the book. Thanks. All right, the FAA says staffing shortages caused thousands of flight delays across the U.S.

over the weekend due to the ongoing government shutdown. According to Flight Aware, at least 8,000 flights. were delayed from Friday to Monday at major airports, including Dallas, Newark, Chicago, and Atlanta. About 13,000 air traffic controllers and 50,000 TSA officers are working without pay during the shutdown. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy told Fox News that unpaid air traffic controllers are looking for other ways to make ends meet and warned disruptions could worsen as payday approaches. Well, you know, Mika, I mean, that would be very easy for them to figure out.

I mean, you know, it's like pay them, pay the military. Pay the military. I mean, they're Republicans and Democrats say pass a bill so you can actually pay our men and women in uniform that are working every day to defend this country. Well, you know, air traffic controllers, we had a crisis before the government shut down. This is not hard. Republicans and Democrats need to put a bill on the floor that pay our men and women in uniform and pay our air traffic controllers.

Start there and then continue your negotiations. I mean, this is insanity. Are they really going to prove a point? I mean, Republicans are in charge. They could very easily pass those bills today. The president, I would think, would sign it. I don't think he would say, hey, men and women in the military, you're working, but we're not going to pay you. Hey, air traffic controllers, we're going to keep the skies dangerous. I think they

do it. They could take care of that today. Yes, they could. And there's a lot of other things they could do as well. Meanwhile, three weeks into the government shutdown, the Senate yesterday failed for the 11th time to advance a House-passed measure to fund the government. House Speaker Mike Johnson continues to blame Democrats for prolonging the shutdown, even as he keeps House lawmakers out of session. Johnson also continued to defend his decision, not to swear in Democratic Congresswoman-elect Adelita Grahalva of Arizona, saying she could be using this time to help her constituents navigate the shutdown. The chronology is important. Rep. Grahaelva won her race in the, I think it was the last week of

September after we had already gone out of session. So I will administer the oath to her hope on the first day we come back, legislative session. I'm willing and anxious to do that. In the meantime, instead of doing TikTok videos, she should be serving her constituents. She could be taking their calls. She can be directing them, trying to help them through the crisis that the Democrats have created by shutting down the government. I mean, his arguments literally become more stupid by the day. I didn't think it was possible, but on this point, they become more stupid by the day you can help your constituents when they're officially your constituent speaker so mr speaker maker a member of congress yeah swear her in like everybody else in your position would do and then

she can go into the offices then she can help who will then be her constituents they are not constituents. Now, because you keep refusing to swear her in because you're afraid of what happens when the Epstein files are all released. That is what some people believe. Yes, but the more stupid the explanations get, the more that looks exactly like what's going on. Well, I mean, that's what people have been saying from the very beginning. So whatever the cause is, whatever the purpose is, again, he swears in Republicans when the House is not in session. so he's not swearing at this one Democrat and then he's saying oh she should be helping her constituent she should be answering call she no she can't she she doesn't have a congressional

office mr speaker because you won't give her one you were stopping her from helping her constituents get through this government shutdown and there's no excuse for it at all and mika this is This is about one of the reasons why Republicans are losing the political battle in the government shutdown.