Morning Joe - Morning Joe 10/23/24

Episode Date: October 23, 2024

Trump would rule like a dictator, says former WH chief of staff

Going into this election, the spotlight is on us more than ever, and I think it's important to use your voice. So I'm encouraging everybody to get out and vote, please. I also think that people shouldn't be afraid to express their opinions. And I don't think anyone wants an America where people are worried about retribution of what people will do if you make your opinion known. I think Vice President Harris supports a future for this country where these freedoms and many others will be protected and upheld. And here to tell you much more about that, President Barack Obama. I got to say, you know, I have done a lot of rallies, so I don't usually get nervous. But I was feeling some kind of way following Eminem. I notice my palms are sweaty, knees weak, arms are heavy, vomit on my sweater already, mom's spaghetti.

I'm nervous, but on the surface I look calm and ready to drop bombs, but I keep bomb. Forget it. Damn, damn, damn, damn, damn, damn, damn, damn, damn, damn. I thought Eminem was going to be performing. I was going to jump out. Former President Obama channeling rap superstar Eminem after being introduced by the Grammy Award winner at a rally in the artist's hometown of Detroit. It was Obama's second event of the day. Earlier, he was in Madison, Wisconsin, for a rally with Kamala Harris's running mate, Governor Tim Walz. Meanwhile, Bruce Springsteen will headline a series of concerts and rallies with former President Obama for the Harris-Walz campaign in the coming days, one set for Thursday in Atlanta and another on Monday in Philadelphia. As for Vice President Harris, she sat down for multiple interviews, including NBC's Spanish-language sister network Telemundo, in which she called herself a pragmatic capitalist, pushing back on the misconception pushed by Donald Trump that she is a socialist. grows ever darker. And we are now hearing from Trump's longest serving chief of staff,

retired General John Kelly, describing the former president's praise for Hitler and issuing dire warnings about his former boss. Good morning and welcome to Morning Joe. It's Wednesday, October 23rd. With this, we have the host of Way Too Early, White House Beer Chief at Politico, Jonathan Lemire, U.S. Special Correspondent for BBC News, Katty Kay, MSNBC political analyst and publisher of the newsletter, The Inc., available on Substack, Anand Giridharadas, and former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, retired four-star Navy Admiral James Stavridis. He is chief international analyst for NBC News and New York Times investigative reporter. Michael Schmidt is with us. So, Willie, a lot to talk about this morning.

Of course, last night's rally in Detroit, it's kind of hard to find somebody that fits the moment as far as politically and demographically more than Eminem regarding regarding showing up at a rally. He and Barack Obama at that Michigan rally, really something to behold. At the same time, of course, we're just getting dark news, dismal news from Donald Trump's longest serving chief of staff, a general who committed his life to protecting and defending Americans, defending our shores and defending the Constitution of the United States. Yeah, a general who served the country, who lost a son to war, a general who served as chief of staff to Donald Trump for a couple of years during that first term and who now is so deeply concerned that we're going to talk to Michael Schmidt, has gone on the a general who served as chief of staff to Donald Trump for a couple of years during that first term

and who now is so deeply concerned that we're going to talk to Michael Schmidt, has gone on the record for several interviews talking about his concerns about Donald Trump's obsession with autocrats, with fascism. And as Mika read that in our open saying Donald Trump's praise for Hitler, it's one of those moments where we just have to stop and consider what is being said about this man. I mean, we can't blow past that. He's got so many passes. He's so graded on a curve. Praise for Hitler. That's disqualifying in any other political campaign in the history of politics. And yet Donald Trump skates by among many of his supporters.

And by the way, many people in Congress and senators, people who know better about this man. So we'll get into some of the details of it. But this is some we've heard whispers about this. But now General Kelly going on the record to talk about it. Yeah, this is a moment that will stand out as we look back on how this plays out. Yeah. Well, let's go into the absolutely and see, of course. So what this is, Michael Smith's own to to defend. OK, we'll do that as well. This is Michael Smith's interview with Donald Trump's former chief of staff, John Kelly.

In taped conversation, Kelly said the former president meets the definition of a fascist and would rule like a dictator if he wins another term. Here you can hear them. Certainly the former president is in the far right area. He's certainly an authoritarian. Admires people who are dictators. He has said that. So he certainly falls into the general definition of fascist, for sure. If he was left to his own devices, would he be a dictator if he didn't have people around him? Oh, I think he'd love to be. I think he'd love to be just like he was in business.

He could tell people to do things and they would do it. And not really bother too much about what the legalities were and whatnot. Kelly, a retired general, held the position of chief of staff longer than anyone in the Trump administration. He called the former president's recent comments about possibly using the military on American citizens disturbing, adding the remarks prompted him to speak out. And I think this issue of using the military to go after American citizens is one of those things I think

is a very, very bad thing. Even to say it for political purposes, to get elected, I think it's a very, very bad thing, let alone actually doing it. He's certainly the only president that has all but rejected what America is all about and what makes America America in terms of our Constitution, in terms of our values, the way we look at everything, to include family and government. He's certainly the only president that I know of that was certainly in my certainly in my lifetime that was like that.

Kelly also said Trump, quote, never accepted the fact that he wasn't the most powerful man in the world. And by power, I mean an ability to do anything he wanted, any time he wanted. Kelly confirmed previous reports that the former president spoke positively of Hitler. He commented more than once that, you know, that Hitler did some good things, too. And of course, if you know history, again, I think he's lacking in that. But if you know what his, you know, Hitler was all about, it would be pretty hard to make an argument that he did anything good. A Trump campaign spokesperson said in a statement that Kelly totally beclowned himself by recounting debunked stories about the Trump administration. Should remind everybody that the chief of staff is about as close as it gets to the president. And this is a respected retired general. Well, I mean, imagine a punk talking about an American general that way. I don't even know who the spokesperson was. So I would say that

of anybody, Democratic or Republican or independent, attacking a man who's committed his life to the United States military and protecting America. Lost a son. Lost a son who was who gave his life to protect America. The word beclowned. And these aren't debunked stories. These are incidences where as chief of staff, he was talking to Donald Trump. Admiral Stravitas, I don't really know where to begin here. So let me why don't we just begin at the beginning, start at the very beginning. One of the reasons the general said he had to come out was when Donald Trump started saying and let us say he continues to say, that he's going to use the United States military against his political enemies. He's going to use the United States military against

his political opponents. First of all, please tell us again what an absolute breach this is, not only from American history, but the American Constitution, from everything that you have fought for and have given your entire life for in defending this Constitution. Thanks, Joe. Let's really go back to the beginning. I met John Kelly when we were in our 20s and serving together on an aircraft carrier forward deployed to the Middle East. I've known John Kelly since 1979. I watched his children grow up. Two of his sons became Marine officers. Never forget, he is a gold star father. His son died under my command in Afghanistan on the 9th of November in 2010, 2009. So I've known John Kelly forever. And I just want to start by saying he is as truthful, as honest, as genuine and as authentic as anyone I have ever met. He's also, as you say, a four-star general. That means

throughout the course of his career, Joe, again and again, he raised his right hand and swore an oath, not to the president of the United States, the commander in chief. He swore that oath like every military member does to the Constitution of the United States. I solemnly swear to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. So let's bring it home. What is an enemy to the Constitution? I would say it's someone who wants to take control, take power, and use it to disassemble our democracy. That's the threat John Kelly was describing so well and so authentically and so honestly in the superb article by Michael. So, Michael Schmidt, let's get into some more detail about what John Kelly told you and how troubled in your conversations you thought he really was, why he felt like he needed to step forward.

He talked about fascism. He talked about Trump governing like a dictator. He talked about his affinity for Adolf Hitler, talked about personal loyalty above the Constitution. He talked about Donald Trump just not understanding fundamental American values. What was exceptional to you? What stood out? We've heard criticism from General Kelly of Donald Trump before, but what stood out to you this time? I think the most important thing about it was the fact that we could hear the audio. I think that as reporters, we run into different obstacles in terms of telling a story. And when we think that there's an important story, we have to continue to look for new and different ways to tell it.

And I think the most important thing here is that you can hear Kelly himself in his own words expressing it and people can hear it for themselves. I think, to your point, a lot has been written about Kelly. A lot has been written about his relationship with Trump, about what he has seen. But I thought that the most important thing was to capture him actually saying that. And that was not, you know, logistically, that wasn't a hard thing to do. But to get Kelly to that point was, you know, a very, very hard thing to do and something that took, you know, in some time, in some ways it took many years. This is not what John Kelly wants to be doing. John Kelly wants to be going to talk to young Marines, to talk to college students about the United States, about service. He wants to be

going to see Gold Star families and VFW halls. You're not, you know, John Kelly is not someone who's on television. He's not someone you'll see on the campaign trail. He's not someone that's really that easy to find. He's off doing those those types of things. And I thought that, you know, he I didn't think that John Kelly was going to sit down and go on television. I didn't think that John Kelly was going to allow a camera near him. I didn't think he certainly wasn't going to go on the campaign trail to do this. So trying to get him to talk in a way that was more than just text, I thought was really important here. Text is important. It's the basis of what we do as reporters.

But I thought we needed to look for another way to communicate his story and what he had to say. And that's why we put so much of the audio out. You know, we've seen over the past, Mika, over the past eight years, Donald Trump praising one autocrat after another. Right. We've seen him praise President Xi. We've seen him praising President Putin. We've seen him praising Kim Jong Un, talking about love letters. And now we hear about this this praise all. Twenty six years before Donald Trump ran, Vanity Fair had an article in 1990, 26 years. So this is politics aside. No politics. 1990, where Ivana Trump talked to her lawyer about how Donald Trump would keep speeches of Hitler by his bedside

and would read them. And so that's bizarre enough. But you keep hearing and we saw it. We're going to talk about it with Jeffrey Goldberg from The Atlantic. Seven o'clock, the obsession with Hitler and Hitler's generals. And it again, it's it's just it fits a pattern. Yes. What you would think, though, and that at some point there would be one thing. And Hitler seems like it would be a pretty good line in the sand to draw that Republicans wouldn't reflexively defend him. And yet, if you were watching another network last night, well, you're watching CNN. You actually heard a Republican former congressman defending Donald Trump by saying, again, it's this this false equivalency that we've been talking about in the media for a very

long time this one takes the cake where you say oh you don't know about context to this and also there are a lot of his words a lot of hitlers running around college campuses i'm not aware no way of any staff member any professor any administrator that's killed six million Jews or started a war that killed like 150, 200 million people. Again, it's the grotesque, the grotesque fawning and rationalizing for a man who is promising in his words to be an autocrat. You know, when I asked to arrest, I'm sorry to arrest. It's really just hard to grasp that. And promising every day to arrest his political opponents every day to arrest his political opponents with the military. Again, it's just hard to grasp. And yet Republicans continue to go along for the ride. Yeah, you know, I think one of

the features of distinctive features of the United States compared to other countries is that we don't necessarily think always in historical terms. We're a country that lives in the present, thinks a lot about the future. A lot of other countries are obsessed with their past. But one, when I was growing up, one element of history that all Americans, including children, quote repeatedly, is kind of Hitler bad, right? If Americans don't know anything else about history, Hitler bad is a pretty universal article of faith. That message has really broken through. Even America, Americans who are not interested in history don't read history books. Hitler bad, very well, firmly established foundation of the American mind. And so now

a former American president trying to be an American president again is is trying to run on Hitler. Good. I think what John Kelly did with Mike's admirable reporting, only only he could do this, is is the opposite of gaslighting. Right. Because John Kelly is not the first person to call Donald Trump a fascist. It's been said many times on this show. It's been said on other shows. It's been said by many courageous writers. It's been said by some people going back years. But when it's the former chief of staff to that person, when it's someone with that kind of military record that the admiral described, when it's not an activist on campus, when it's someone who chose after that career in the military to work for Donald Trump and try to implement his plans with whatever discomfort he harbored all along. It should be taken seriously. It should be

a validation of some of the things other people have been saying. And it should be a reminder, I think, particularly to those people who are most stubbornly in this kind of fascist camp right now or are fasc-curious, that if a person with John Kelly's mind and training and history of service and up-close proximity to Donald Trump is saying he is a fascist, he is an authoritarian, he has serious vision around this, and he loves himself some Hitler, he thinks Hitler good, that should be taken seriously by maybe people who won't take me seriously or activists seriously or anybody else. Take John Kelly seriously if you don't take us seriously.

Well, part of this deadly, serious, deeply dangerous playbook we've already seen. And to your point, Joe, Donald Trump's repeated praise for autocrats, Kim Jong Un, Putin. in a way, inuring this country and turning Americans almost toward our enemies, all the work that has been done over decades. Well, Mika, it's what I said, the Vanderbilt survey of MAGA supporters, who is a better president, Vladimir Putin, an autocrat that kills his political opponents and kills journalists, or Joe Biden. And among self-described Trump voters, 54 percent chose Putin. 18 percent chose Joe Biden. So then you see the same thing happening with January 6th. Jonathan Lemire actually changing America's sentiment sentiment toward an insurrection to the point where he's calling it a day of love, but he's always talking

about it. He wants to pardon the insurrectionists. There was a convict's choir, insurrectionists cry, support, even a vent to support the families of those convicted for raging on the Capitol and threatening the lives of Mike Pence and Nancy Pelosi and defecating on the walls and the floors of the Capitol. He is repeatedly trying to change American sentiment about it. And I see it happening, especially in TV news networks that bend to his will and have millions of viewers and influence over these viewers, I worry, will be at a point where a good part of the public by the time if there is another Trump presidency, he pardons those folks. It's not going to matter to people. And it's exactly what is happening with this enemies from

within narrative that he is repeating over and over again. Also putting out crazy distractions, jokes, weird comments. You don't really know he's serious. He's serious. This is a predicate for action that people can't comprehend. And Jonathan Lemire, my point to you, because you wrote the big lie, is here we are at a moment where it's very hard to explain to people what they simply cannot comprehend. Trump spent four years in office cozying up two strong men, and he spent four years out of office trying to normalize what happened on January 6th, trying to take the impact out of that day, to try to almost lean into what was an event that we'd see under fascist rule, who use violence to maintain their grip on power. That is something

that he has made very clear. He's not just telegraphing. He's plainly saying would be part of a second Trump term. And that's why, Caddy, I think why General Kelly's comments are so important is because they are reluctant. He didn't want to have to do this. There's been criticism of some of the other generals, Mattis, McMaster, and the like, who used to work for Trump. Why aren't you out there putting your name to it?

Mark Milley, who's quoted on background a lot, but hasn't gotten in front of a camera and said, this is a problem. He could be a fascist. I don't believe in our democracy if he's president again. And these comments from Kelly, you know, they're important because of the un-American nature he's saying that Donald Trump displayed, but they're also important because they come 13 days from an election. And we should not overlook the political aspect of this. Do comments like this from Kelly, are they going to move any minds at all?

At this point, I've spent the last few days going around Pennsylvania and talking to voters and going on doorstopping along with doorstoppers. And I don't know that any singular event moves the needle very much. Does it get incrementally a few people out to vote who may have been reluctant to vote? Possibly. It's incredibly hard to measure. And I think you're right. The degree to which Donald Trump has managed to normalize January the 6th over the last four years has been one of the more remarkable things in a very remarkable political period we've had. But Mike, there are a couple of things I wanted to ask you about earlier before the show started. You and I were talking about the kind

of idea of guardrails and the individual. And one of the questions I noticed that you ask him was left about being a dictator. And you say, if he was left to his own devices, would he like to be a dictator? And John Kelly said to you, yeah, I think he would love to be just as he was in business. And I suppose that is the question that many people have, is that the devices are still there or have held or did hold after 2020 and even after January the 6th. There was a transfer of power. Do people feel those devices, the guardrails against him, are still in place in 2024 in the way that they were in 2020? I think there's sort of like two different types of guardrails. So there's the guardrails directly

around the president. And those are the people like aides like Kelly who try and keep them on the tracks on a day to day basis. And I think the administration largely fell into sort of two different periods of time. There is the first two years when Kelly's there. And then there's the two years after Kelly's there. The first two years are far from textbook, well-run, you know, years. But there is a different tone to them to Trump's unshackled behavior that you see in the final two years and particularly in the final two months. So so there's that first ring around the president that's that sort of managing and dealing with the president on a day to day basis. John Kelly and people like Don McGahn and such will not be there, obviously, in a second Trump presidency. Those types of people will be nowhere near the White House.

There will be people who are much more enablers. That means that Trump will be able to proactively use his power in ways that he may have been shy about in those first two years or may have been shy about up until those final two months of his presidency. The second layer is the system. It's the three branches. And we saw a lot of tests of the guardrails around Trump in that inner circle around Trump in the White House. And a lot of the stories that are about Trump and what happens in the Trump administration are Trump in the White House, those aides, those tensions, all these anecdotes that we know over the years about John Kelly and people like that. What we saw less of was Trump versus the three branches. Look, yes, he was impeached twice. Yes, the courts knocked down a lot of stuff that he did. But what would happen if there was truly

a clash between the three branches? If the judicial branch said, no, you can't do that, and Trump said, I'm going to go ahead and do it anyway. How is the judicial branch going to enforce the fact that that decision is followed through on? In this country, many, if not all times that the judicial branch makes a decision, people accept it and they go along with it. They simply accept it. The U.S. marshals are not often knocking on your door because, you know, on the executive branch's door to enforce something. But that's what I think would be different, is that because there wouldn't be that first inner layer, you would see the test of the three branches in a different way. And if

Trump tries to rule like an autocrat and a dictator and a fascist, like Kelly said that he would like to, you would see that play out in a more dramatic, different way. That that is something that's different. And that's and that's different than just some aides in the White House trying to make sure that he doesn't tweet something stupid. So, Admiral, let's extend Michael's point out to the military and talk about what might come up. I mean, it's rare, as you know, generals try to stay out of politics. But now we have General Kelly on the record. We've heard from General Milley recently, even General Mattis and Bob Woodward's book talking about Donald Trump being a threat, Donald Trump being a fascist.

But those guys will not be there if Donald Trump is reelected. So if you have some of the characters that Donald Trump will like to install in his government, what will they do in the military from that side of things if presented with a scenario where Donald Trump says, you need to go into the streets and put down that right, or I need you to go arrest to this person. All the things that Donald Trump is talking about openly and repeatedly, what is the duty first of all,

but what might those people put in the jobs because of their loyalty to Donald Trump? What might they do? Right question to ask. I worry a lot about that. And by the way, to your point about others who have spoken out, General Stan McChrystal, Admiral Bill McRaven, there are other voices out here in that retired flag community. I think inside on active duty, as I said before, I continue to believe the U.S. military will hew to the Constitution of the United States. Every member of the military,

all volunteers have stood and taken that oath again and again and again. I watched the plebes, the freshmen arriving at the Naval Academy do it this past summer. It's very moving. And you do it again and again. It is woven into the DNA of the military. And you just would have to reach so deep into the military. I think it would be very difficult to find a U.S. military general or admiral who would be willing to go back up the arrest of a former political opponent. It's just unthinkable to me. And yes, the counter to that would be, well, you know, Admiral, it was probably unthinkable in Hitler's Germany in 1939 or in Pinochet's Chile or in many other countries. It has happened.

I like to think our U.S. military would stand and deliver in those circumstances. I truly believe they would. But to the conversation we're having this morning, it bears deep watching storm warnings out there. And yet, unfortunately, Admiral, so many have grown numb and are now kowtowing to Donald Trump. The Wall Street Journal editorial page just two days ago mocked what they called, quote, the fascist meme. And they mocked it after Donald Trump had been promising for days to use the National Guard and the military and kept calling Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff the enemies from within, as if he was going to do what America did during the war on terror and arrest people, not have Article III courts beyond Article III courts jurisdiction. And just let's go through this. The fascist meme two days after saying that, a general who served as Donald Trump's longest serving chief of staff said, yes, he's a fascist.

The Wall Street Journal opinion page might want to revisit this sneer while Donald Trump's saying these things and his chief of staff and the general saying this. But I guess Donald Trump has promised over the past couple of weeks. To arrest Nancy Pelosi. Adam Schiff, call them the enemies from within to go after political opponents, to go after people in the media, to take CBS off the air because he didn't like a 60 Minutes interview. He's talked before about about trying Comcast for treason. He's talked about taking ABC off the air. He's talked about all of these things. And I just I'm just let me ask you, do you agree with General Kelly? That. Saying that Donald Trump is behaving like a fascist, is at the Wall Street Journal, should be deeply concerned about for themselves? This is more than an election to see who the next president is.

This is an election to determine the future fate of what form of government we have and if Madisonian democracy survives. John Kelly, honest, true, genuine, has spent more time around Donald Trump one on one than almost anybody else during that presidential period. I take great faith in what he says and his judgments, and I agree with him. I also, even though it's on background with a number of other sources, Mark Milley, another very senior officer like John Kelly, a Bostonian, honest, true, genuine, looks like a bouncer in a bar in Boston, went to Princeton. He on background has said that Trump is a fascist to his core. That's the quote in the most recent book. So I repose a lot of trust in those officers, both of whom I know intimately. And I am very worried. Final thought, this is not only playing in this arena here in

the United States. Katty Kay would tell you this is echoing enormously in Europe. I spent time yesterday with a group of very senior Koreans. This is echoing around the world, what is happening. The world's eyes are on us. And a final thought, perhaps the most chilling thing in a worrisome conversation this morning was the percentage of Americans you quoted who believe that these authoritarian figures are the answer. In some sense, the real concern is not just Donald Trump. It's who we are as a country. The world is watching. This is the most important election of my lifetime. Yeah. I mean, this is what Kamala Harris meant when she was reaching out to the 800000 Polish Americans who live in northeastern,

mostly northeastern Pennsylvania, 5 percent of Pennsylvania's vote. There's a volunteer effort underway to get Polish Americans to vote because they step up, because they have a shared history with Ukraine and with countries that have been stricken in a way that perhaps American Americans cannot comprehend. Well, and that your father and mother comprehended well because they had to flee political persecution in 1938. That's right. Retired four-star. It's not a meme. It's not a meme. It's not a meme. Yeah. And Admiral, when you have, let's just break this down for Republicans that still, and for people who are just numbed by by the talk. You have Donald Trump's longest serving chief of staff, General Kelly, saying Donald Trump's a

fascist. And you have Donald Trump's last chairman of the Joint Chiefs saying that Donald Trump is, quote, a fascist to his core. That doesn't sound like a meme to you, does it? That's the least meme ish thing I've heard in a long time. This is very real. Retired four star Navy Admiral James Tavridis. Thank you very much for coming out this morning. And New York Times investigative reporter Michael Schmidt, incredible reporting. Thank you very much for bringing it to us. And stay with us, if you will, and still ahead on Morning Joe.

Going to be joined by The Atlantic's editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, on the heels of his own interview with retired General John Kelly. You're watching Morning Joe. We're back in just 90 seconds. I am a capitalist. I am a pragmatic capitalist. I believe that we need a new generation of leadership in America that actively works with the private sector to build up the new industries of America,

to build up small business owners, to allow us to increase home ownership, to allow people and their families to build intergenerational wealth. I believe in supporting workers. Vice President Kamala Harris speaking last night with NBC's Spanish language sister network Telemundo. The interview is part of a Latino media blitz. The Harris campaign recently announced, which also includes radio interviews with running mate Tim Waltz and second gentleman Doug Emhoff. So, you know, Katty, we've we've heard time and time again Donald Trump talking to Spanish speaking audiences are having ads talking about Kamala Harris being a socialist, Biden being a socialist. It's exhausting. Yesterday, the IMF reported the United States leading the world.

Its economy, the envy of the world. We've talked about this before, but the Dow at record highs, the S&P 500 at record highs. The United States has taken more oil from the ground this year, produced more oil than any country ever. We've got a $26 trillion GDP. Nobody else is remotely close. California has a larger GDP than all but four countries on the planet. Texas has a larger GDP than Russia. I could go on and on.

The jobs numbers, unbelievably great over the past several years. Gas prices are plummeting. Inflation going down. Interest rates going down. And Kamala Harris, what's she talking about? She's not talking about five-year plans. She's talking about tax cuts for small businesses, for entrepreneurs, for first-time homebuyers. The sort of thing that lifts up the middle class

and actually grows capitalism. Yeah, I mean, not terribly socialist, right? And yet there is this sense, and I think it dates back a few years, particularly to some of the newer Hispanic immigrants who've come in from countries like Venezuela, where they really have seen socialism and any kind of accusation or prospect that there could be a socialist leader in this country, true or not true, does resonate. I mean, why was Florida so firmly in the tank for Donald Trump? It was partly because the Trump campaign's outreach to the Venezuelan opposition and standing up against socialism. So some of these things can work. One of the things that's been a little puzzling over the last four years, actually, ever since Joe Biden took back the White House is you listen to Donald Trump in office. And I remember speaking to Republican pollsters about this. What are the things that resonated? The way he railed against

political correctness and the way he talked about my stock market and how strong the stock market was. And I know that for Democrats, perhaps they feel that it is elitist to talk about how the stock market is doing well. It plays to the haves and to the have nots rather than the have nots. But there is something confidence inspiring that spreads throughout the economy or throughout the public when you keep reminding people. It's like the kind of stock market is a symbol of how well the American economy is doing. And maybe there is something there, you know, reminding Americans of exactly what you just said, Joe, time and again, every single day, how well the United States economy is doing. And it's not just the IMF staying at every country in Europe is looking at America with envy at the moment saying, wow, we want that.

So on and geared artists, we heard a couple of interviews, including one with Hallie Jackson yesterday from Vice President Harris. You've been talking for a long time about Democrats needing to tell a story. And here we are with less than two weeks until Election Day. Kamala Harris is telling kind of a two track story, one about the opportunity she wants to create for Americans and also about the dangers of the other path of going back to Donald Trump. Is that the effective tactic here as we bear down an election day? Yeah, I mean, I think it's important to understand in a in a larger context why she's doing some of those things that you saw in that interview. I think part of it is that, you know, inoculation against the socialism charge. But I think there's something deeper going on

that they are trying to take on, which is men, which is American men right now. A majority of American men are supporting, to our last segment, American fascism, right? And I think there is a, beneath the labels of socialism and capitalism and everything else, there is a deep problem in American, many American men's sense of themselves, fear of the future, sense that they don't quite know who they will be

and how they will provide for their families and their communities in the future that's coming. I think a lot of these fears have been manufactured by places like Fox News, but some of those fears are real and based on real changes in our society, housing prices, food prices, things like that. And so what you're seeing the vice president do is answer some of that by saying, you'll be able to create wealth, you'll be able to start a business. All of that is great. I think what it doesn't quite do that she still has and Tim Walz has the opportunity to do the next two weeks is speak to millions of American men at that deeper guttural level. Because again, going back to the last conversation, it doesn't so much matter that Donald Trump is selling

fascism. What really matters is that roughly half of Americans, including a clear majority of American men, are buying it. The buy side is much more scary than the sell side right now. And we all focus on deploring the sale of it. But the real problem is the buying of it. People should be rejecting this and not most men. The average American man is saying yes to fascism right now. Why? And so I think what she needs to understand, as I'm sure her team does, that in this era of rapid change, the future feels to a lot of men, a lot of people in general, like a kind of pair of jeans that doesn't quite fit.

And you have to speak to people, not just in terms of economic policy, if that's the case. You have to say, hey, I see you and I recognize you. I understand the future feels bewildering. I understand you sometimes feel like you don't know what to say or you don't know quite how you're going to take care of your family. But real men don't outsource the protection of their family to dictators. Real men don't turn to fascists to solve their problems. They create things, they build things, they do things. I think men need to be invited into an aspirational picture, an aspirational story of a progress that has a place for them, too. Very well said. Anand Giridharadas, thank you very much for coming

on this morning. All right. Coming up on Morning Joe, it's been two decades since the Boston Red Sox completed one of the greatest comebacks in baseball history en route to their first World Series title in 86 years. We're going to be joined by the Barnacle Boys, who produced a new docuseries about the Red Sox 2004 championship run. That is next on Morning Joe. Boston fans, they don't know what it's like to be on a winning club. Dropped by Damon. That might send the Yankees to the World Series. Boston fans, they don't know what it's like to be on a winning club. Dropped by David. That might send the Yankees to the World Series.

Really? We're just going to be another in the long line of teams that fall short? That curse was just lingering. We hadn't won. The only way to make it go away is to finally win. The Red Sox decided to compete player for player, dollar for dollar. Let's go. From that point on, I got high. David Ortiz, Jackson. Cowboy up, son. That's us.

Just a bunch of goofballs. The Yankees are clean-shaven, good-looking, rich. He had a bloody sock. It was a nightmare. The Yankees have hounded their way with three games to none lead in this ALCS. No team has ever come back from a 3-0 deficit. You're going to tell me the Red Sox are going to do it to the Yankees? Wow. That was a look at the new Netflix documentary, The Comeback, 2004 Boston Red Sox. It's extraordinary. The three-part series goes behind the scenes with a team that staged the greatest comeback in baseball history.

Racing a 3-0 deficit in the 2004 American League Championship against their arch rival New York Yankees. And then sweeping the St. Louis Cardinals in the Fall Classic to break Boston's 86-year World Series title drought. It was nothing short of extraordinary. My son and I watched this a couple of nights ago and between cheering for plays that were performed 20 years ago and wiping tears from our eyes repeatedly. It was just an extraordinary story, not just of baseball, but of just love between teammates, heartbreak, and just unimaginable joy. Let's bring in now the Emmy Award-winning

creators of The Comeback, director and executive producer Colin Barnicle, executive producer Nick Barnicle. The Barnicle Boys. Also with us, proud father, Mike Barnacle. Hey, Colin, if you could, just for people, your boy's done good, Mike. Just for those people, Colin, that may not know just the massive history behind what happened 20 years ago.

And also, just to repeat it one more time for Willie Geist and other Yankee fans, what exactly happened in 2004 that was the center of this documentary? Yeah. So the documentary is really about how the Red Sox were able to change their culture from eight decades of losing to, you know, coming back from three down versus the Yankees, which nobody had done before. And for all intents and purposes, no Red Sox fan remembers. Mike's not that old. You weren't born in 19. I'm close, though. Yeah, you're close. Won the World Series in 1918. So it's about how you change the culture of an organization to become winners, you know, kind of the what it takes and, you know, how you get down 3-0 and you have the confidence that you're going to come back.

That's kind of what it's about. You're just following these characters through it. your dad the other night and I said, I at times I felt a little foolish watching this documentary because I would see things happening and I would jump out of my chair like it was happening in real time. There was such an emotional connection and yelling and cheering because it it it took you back to 2004. And, of course, moments when they were talking about Tim Wakefield, wiping tears from my eyes. I will say being able to see a man who's really been excluded from Red Sox Nation, you guys talking to him and bringing him back, Curt Schilling, to one of the most remarkable pitching performances ever. It was so great to see all of them back there. And I know this happened. Mike told me this

happened at the premiere. People were jumping and screaming in their seats and yelling and cheering. They were weeping. You could hear crying through the theater at the end. What is it about this documentary and this story that so connects people emotionally? Well, I'll tell you what, we lived it and then we made it. And then we watched it Sunday night with our friends at the Boston Red Sox up in Boston. And you still are gripping your chair as nervous as I am right now on television, not knowing how it might end. And there were tears, there was laughter. And in the end, yes, right here, they win this. And it was just a tremendous experience making it.

And it was a tremendous experience reliving it. But it comes down to kind of great teamwork between Colin and I and our family. And we are a fantastic production team. But you do have moments of doubt, even having made it and lived it. Mike, I sat down to watch this excellent series last night, and I immediately thought, why am I doing this to myself as a Yankee fan? What am I doing to myself? So I flipped over to the Knicks game, and the Celtics were beating the Knicks by 40. So I went back and finished it.

But the boys did such a great job telling this story from start to finish. And, you know, I had forgotten even the way they went about building this team like Big Papi most certainly was not Big Papi when they brought him over from the Twins. He was a guy kind of a middling guy who couldn't find a home, weren't quite sure where to put him. Did he play defense? Was he a DH? Obviously goes on to become this Boston icon. And also to Colin's point about creating a winner, this tension between the old and the new.

So you've got the old school guy in Grady Little, the manager who goes on his gut. And then here comes 28-year-old Theo Epstein, who's going on data from the Billy Beans school and totally revolutionizes that franchise. So I'm curious what you thought reliving it as a Boston fan. Well, the first thing that I'm still reliving is I'm wondering, looking at Colin and Nick here, am I going to be able to get them to school on time this morning? But that's a long time ago. You know, Colin and Nick just alluded to the Red Sox mystery of how that's happened, how they came back and won three straight. The culture of the Red Sox was always captured by a quote from a no utility player named Frank Duffy, a Stanford graduate who played for the Red Sox in the early 90s. And he was so abhorred by the uniqueness of the selfishness of the players

that he was playing alongside that he captured the phrase Red Sox, 25 guys, 25 cabs. What happened, I think, in 2003, 2004, two elements that are not underplayed in the documentary, but I think people underplay it in their minds. One was the addition to the roster of Kevin Millar, who was a natural team molder, bringing people together. And the other was the arrival of a new manager, Tito Francona, who was funny, knew a lot about baseball, and knew how to deal with players one-on-one, individually or as a group. And I think that was really the core of why the trajectory kept going. You know, Mike, what was so crazy, I always remember, of course, I was, because of a back injury, I was laid up on my back and wasn't able to be there,

but you were kind enough to call me every night. And I remember after we were down 3-0 and then won the first game, I remember us calling each other, and both of us just had this really strange sense of confidence down 3-1. It's like Millar saying, and by the way, Millar is such a star here. He's incredible. But Millar over and over again going, saying to Dan Shaughnessy and everybody else, don't let us win tonight. Don't let us win tonight. Don't let us win tonight. You see it

in the documentary. He goes, if you let us win tonight, you're going to be sorry. And it's weird, even you and me talking back and forth every day. We had a sense of confidence after that first win going, man, anything's possible. They believed that they could do something no other team in over a century had ever done, didn't they? Yeah, they did. They did. And that was another amazing element of it. I mean, Kevin Millar pumping his fist in his glove, talking to Dan Shaughnessy, the Boston Globes, saying, you know, you let us win tonight. We got Pedro tomorrow. We got Derek Lowe coming up. You never know. Game seven. You never know. Game seven. Let's go. We're going to win this thing. And they did. Amazing. It's 20 years later and I still can't believe that it

happened. And I mean, this 2004 Red Sox is a team that changed my life, changed my family's life, changed everyone in the region's life. It can't be overstated. And I've always thought that part of why this could happen is because of some of the personalities on the team. Kevin Millar, for sure, we already mentioned. But other guys who just simply, by their own admission, the idiots, who didn't kind of give into the pressure of Boston and the pressure of 86 years, whether that's Johnny Damon, Manny Ramirez, Pedro Martinez, David Ortiz. Talk to us as you revisited these characters. And character is the right word. Tell us the role of character, how it played to let them have a comeback like this. Well, a lot of it is, you know, these characters working through self-doubt,

you know, it's John Henry paid three quarters of a billion dollars for the Red Sox. And he hired a 28 year old kid who lived down the street with two other guys. It wasn't exactly, he wasn't uber confident in that. He knew Theo was very smart, analytically driven. And Theo working through his own self-doubt of having to be, he's from Boston, he knows the stakes. I think the way he put it to us is, when things are going good at Fenway Park and you're the GM, it's alive, it's electric. When you're not doing well, it's like a six-month death march. It's awful. Working through the self-doubt, Kevin Millar, he's going to Japan, he's out of baseball. His career is over in Major League Baseball. David Ortiz is a scrap heap guy, released.

These kind of characters coming together and saying, in a way, this is almost our chance here. Some of us are at the beginning of the journey. Some of us are toward the end. But this is our chance to come together. We've got to do something different here. We've got to put together a clubhouse. Our old man knows Boston can be a pressure cooker, you know, and a lot of those teams, the downward pressure on them, the clubhouse is about the size of this table. You know, there's 40 of media members in there. It's hard not to break apart.

And Kevin Millar had a lot to do with kind of making that a walled garden where we're like, we're we're good in here. We're safe. We can be who we are. And he and CEO and John Henry, those three elements of just kind of allowing your character to come out and going through it personally is one of the things we're trying to achieve. And, you know, it's not it's not hard to make a good documentary when you have David Ortiz, Kevin Millar, Derek Lowe. I mean, these guys are great talkers. They're very funny and great storytellers. It's just incredible. I learned so much about the Red Sox.

I thought I knew everything about them. One thing I learned, I had no idea that Theo and Sam Kennedy grew up together and everything. But it was so tight-knit. It was such a family. But I want to talk about culture because I obsess on culture, Nick, all the time, a culture of teams, culture of businesses. It's such a predictor of success. And for the Red Sox, you know, Mike was talking about 25 players, 25 caps. For the Red Sox, first thing they have to do is they have to get rid of their superstar, Nomar, who is a god for many Red Sox sports fans.

But he was clubhouse poison. They had to get rid of him. And then suddenly you guys tell the story. One guy goes out to eat. Then it's two guys going out to eat. Then it's five guys. Then it's ten. Then every night the whole team's going out.

They're eating together. They're talking together. they're living together. And man, you see that when their backs are against the wall and they're fighting over a century of history, don't you? Well, Joe, you know, Jonathan, Mike, Colin, Mike, dad, you guys know that there is a huge change in culture from the previous ownership group to the new ownership group. John Henry, Tom Werner, and of course, Larry Lucchino totally changed the way they thought about winning, thought about building teams and empowering Theo Epstein to be able to make the moves he had to make. 28 years old, 29 at the time.

And he's got Nomar, number five, Nomar. He's got the name, as we say in the doc. And he decides this is not going to happen. We've got to get rid of him and deals him. And the deal does not come through as something that's like spectacular, right? You know, it's Mankiewicz and Cabrera. These are two guys who don't hit, but they can field. And who knows how this is going to work out? And it becomes a real nerve wracking thing for Theo.

And he just decides we're going to do this. And even Jed Hoyer, his deputy at the time, who's in the doc, who's fantastic, says, you know, we don't know if this is a bottoms-up trade or if this is going to work out. And it ends up working out. Yeah. And it's, you know, 25 guys going to a restaurant. I'm sure they were going to a restaurant, not a bar. Sure, 25 guys, big reservation. The new three-part docuseries the comeback 2004 boston red sox is streaming right now on netflix director and executive producer colin barnacle and executive producer nick barnacle thank you both it's weird to say that because we've known them for 18 years. OK, boys. How did we ever get on the show? Calling us. I don't know. Actually, it ends now.

You did something great.