Morning Joe - Morning Joe 11/18/22

Episode Date: November 18, 2022

GOP doubles down on extremism after party takes House

American democracy is majestic, but it is fragile. Many of us here have witnessed its fragility firsthand, tragically, in this chamber. And so democracy must be forever defended from forces that wish it harm. Last week, the American people spoke, and their voices were raised in defense of liberty, of the rule of law, and of democracy itself.

With these elections, the people stood in the breach and repelled the assault on democracy. They resoundingly rejected violence and insurrection and in doing so gave proof through the night that our flag was still there. Thank you. And now we owe to the American people our very best to deliver on their faith, to forever reach for the more perfect union, the glorious horizon that our founders promised. It is the end of an era in Washington as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announces she is stepping

away from party leadership. This is a seismic shift for Democrats on the Hill who have been under her guidance for decades. We're going to discuss her groundbreaking career, the role she will play in the future, and who may be next to lead the party. That's a big story we're covering this morning. Also, House Republicans doubling down on extremism as they prepare to take control of the House. They promised to tackle inflation, crime and the border. That was everything they were talking about. But it seems that they are much more interested in settling scores now. We'll explain and we'll talk about whether or not they've learned their lesson of Trumpism

and what might be a better way forward. Good morning and welcome to Morning Joe. It is Friday, November 18th. We're here in Washington and with us we have columnist and associate editor for The Washington Post, David Ignatius, Pulitzer Prize winning columnist at The Washington Post, Eugene Robinson, attorney and contributing columnist for The Washington Post, George Conway, and Washington Bureau Chief for USA Today, Susan Page, is with us. And she is the author of the bestselling biography entitled Madam Speaker, Nancy Pelosi and the Lessons of Power.

And what a day to have you on with us. You were there yesterday, especially afterwards. I want to hear about the mother-in-law moment. We'll get to that. Also with us, White House editor for Politico, Sam Stein. He's been filling in on way too early all week and he's still with still standing, still standing on Friday. Very good, Sam. All right. So, boy, some pretty staggering moments during Nancy Pelosi's speech yesterday with the Republicans. And I want to start with that because they won control of the

House by a razor thin margin. You would think there's a lot of lessons there. And the question political observers were asking is how they're going to use their power. If you thought House Republicans would learn their lesson from the voters, what they said during the midterms to maybe moderate their divisive message even a little bit? The answer came very swiftly yesterday. They apparently are going full steam ahead with an extreme polarizing agenda. The New York Times offers this analysis, quote, the only results that interest many in the House majority are those that inflict political pain on Joe Biden and congressional Democrats as demanded by their MAGA constituents.

In a closed door meeting of Republicans on Monday, right wing lawmakers, including Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, extracted a promise that their leaders would investigate Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Justice Department for their treatment of, get this, defendants jailed in connection with the January 6th attack on the Capitol. Everyone at the table is now looking down in a sad kind of forlorn way. It is sick. It is disgusting. It's also really heartbreaking. The GOP's swift snapback to true form was quicker than when Kevin McCarthy denounced Trump after January 6th. Remember that? Only to resurrect the disgraced former president's political career weeks later by flying down to Mar-a-Lago and kissing the ring. This time it played out like this. The GOP panicked in the wake of the midterms with one longtime Trump adviser saying the party has followed him off a cliff. Then, just a day after clinching the House, former Trump adviser Stephen Miller was spotted walking into Kevin McCarthy's office.

The hot stove. They just keep putting their hand on it. In the campaign leading up to the midterms, most Republicans said they would be focused on inflation, crime and addressing the issues impacting the American people. They were trying to own those messages, in some ways even steal them from the Democrats. But let's see how long that lasted. Take a look. What Americans want, need and deserve is a clear common sense alternative. And that's what's happening with the House Republicans. We will provide to the American public a commitment to America. Between inflation, crime and open borders, I think voters all across the country are ready to change the path we're on. No more inflation, no more paying people not to work, no more broken supply chains and

abandoned borders. The Democratic Party, they have a majority. They could stop this crime today. Some people say, well, they're soft on crime. No, they're not soft on crime. They're pro crime. They want crime. These are not good numbers, guys.

Eight percent inflation. That's a bad number. Well, the Republican plan to improve the economy is twofold. First of all, we want to stop unnecessary spending. We have record inflation because Democrats spent like crazy. They paid people not to work and they drove up the cost of energy. So that's what Republicans will focus on. So this is the focus on the Judiciary Committee,

the political nature of the Justice Department, and the linkage now to what was happening with the Hunter Biden story. And my last question is, what are the grounds to keep it about Hunter Biden? This is kind of a big deal. We think if we can keep it about Hunter Biden, that would be great. Wow. They cared so much. Dave Ignatius, they cared so much about the issues confronting this country.

There's a party that's seeking to reach out to America, be a governing party. And then it all came down one day later when they finally got their slim majority. They should have gotten a much bigger majority. They should have historically also gotten the Senate. They got just creamed in the midterms. The Republicans are already back backed into a corner and they just keep retreating. They keep narrowing their their focus, their appeal. It's it's it's fascinating to see one thing Nancy Pelosi was good at was leading her caucus. Kevin McCarthy shows no sign. It's a tough job leading the Republican caucus. It is. But he shows no sign of having the ability to do that. Certainly not now. I mean, remember, he's still running for speaker, right?

He still has to get those 218 votes on the floor to be speaker. And he's got to get them from the likes of Marjorie Taylor Greene and Jim Jordan and, you know, all the Republicans out there in the loony bin caucus. And so if you could take an optimistic reading, if you didn't know Kevin McCarthy, that he's, you know, he's playing to them now and that maybe when he becomes speaker, things change. However, I know Kevin McCarthy. I don't think it's going to change. But they lost. I mean, they've lost. Trump has lost them time and time and time again. George Conway. I mean, I know we're supposed to be looking at legal angles and boy, Trump has many. But what are what are they missing? Because the midterms was a lesson. They even said that they're not missing anything because these the loony bin caucus runs for reelection in districts that are purely red and they have to cater to the MAGA base.

And so that's it's all about them getting their pusses on Fox News and and talking about Hunter Biden and all this stuff and impeaching Joe Biden. And that's that's what we're going to see, because there's just too many of them in the caucus that want that, because that's what gets them in office. But wait, wait, hold on. It gets them reelected. OK, but if you're leading Susan Page, the Republican GOP, the Republicans in Congress, and you're looking at Steve Kornacki's big board, what are you saying? What do you what do you bring what you get your pointer out and you say, here's what happened and here's the lesson of the midterms. Do they want to learn it again over the next two years? What then do we look forward to for Republicans in terms of if they go this way, does this work again? Because it didn't work three times before.

Well, the problem they have, I think, Kevin McCarthy or whoever becomes speaker, we don't know for sure that it will end up being Kevin McCarthy. Everybody's Joe Manchin in the House Republican caucus, right? Every single Republican member of the House is now a kingmaker because he has no votes to lose. So how do you hold together a party that has these as Marjorie Taylor Greene, but also has some members who were elected in districts that Joe Biden carried? You know, this is this is this would test someone with the skills of Nancy Pelosi. So speaking of Marjorie Taylor Greene, we don't usually like want, you know, we don't

really talk about her that much. It just is too crazy. But this is worth looking at in terms of what portends over the next two years. House Republicans are promising tougher scrutiny of financial aid to Ukraine when the new term begins next year. Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene has announced a resolution to audit funds allocated to the war-torn country and yesterday made this comparison. We had 5 million people cross our border illegally since Joe Biden took office. And let's compare that to how many Russians have invaded Ukraine. 82,000 Russians have invaded Ukraine. I think the American people and the taxpayers of this country deserve to know why the Biden administration and this Congress is so

interested in funding the protection of Ukraine's border and not the protection of our border. That's a very good question. I don't even know where to begin. Is she willingly ignorant? Is she trying very, very hard to push some buttons? What what? David, how do you even respond to that? You respond by saying it's outrageous. Anyone who's seen the photographs of Bucha, the corpses on the ground in Bucha, who's seen the ruins of Mariupol, a beautiful city in southern Ukraine. This is a brutal investigation by Russia. And to compare it to America's border problems, which are serious and need to be addressed. But to compare it to a savage war just makes me wonder, you know, what planet she's on. What planet is she on?

She was actually critical of there were some Ukrainian soldiers that were brought up to the hill yesterday. And she was essentially saying, oh, if you don't want to see these wounded Ukrainian soldiers, we have to audit, see what these funds are going to. Cut it off. I want to get to Sam Stein in just a moment. But I have a question for Susan, who knows Nancy Pelosi better than anybody. This was a crazy, ignorant, nasty, dangerous statement that this woman made, Marjorie Taylor Greene, ignorant, just as ignorant as it gets. If someone in the Democratic caucus of Speaker Pelosi said something of the same milk, of the same level of ignorance and also cruelty, given the fact that the Ukrainians are working and killing themselves and fighting to the bone, dying for the safety of the world.

If someone in her caucus did something like that, what would she do? Well, and of course, there have been occasions where Nancy Pelosi disciplined members of her own caucus. Sometimes she worked behind the scenes when she felt a member of the caucus was saying things that were unwise or untrue. Although I can't remember an example of her facing a member of her party who said something like this. And she did make that, you know, you called it dangerous. She did make the point yesterday about how dangerous our politics continue to be at this moment, as we saw not just on January 6th, but what she saw, you know, in her own household when her husband was attacked. Absolutely. I mean, she's been through hell over the past few weeks

and would know more than anybody how dangerous our politics have become. Sam Stein, I know that you've been following a lot of polls. Politico's been doing a lot of polls in terms of how the Republican extremism is playing in this country. We've seen, though, the actual results in the midterms about behavior like this, and yet they double down. Yeah, and let me just say one thing about the comparison between the southern border and the war in Ukraine. It's, you know, first of all, it reflects a thinking in the Republican Party

that this war, we need to stop the funding for it. But it's not insensitive just to Ukrainians. It's also insensitive to the people crossing the border. It's comparing them to an invading army, which, as we know, is the type of rhetoric that has, you know, really resonated in bad ways online. So I just wanted to make that point. But I think, and this gets to what you were sort of hinting at, Mika, Marjorie Taylor Greene for a couple of years has been sort of this odd gadfly in the House minority who you could no less ignore,

even though she said deliberately outrageous things because she ultimately had no power. And the issue now is that she not only is in the majority, but because of the slimness of the majority, she has a tremendous amount of power. She can extract concessions from Kevin McCarthy and others to pursue her agenda. And her agenda is objectively quite out there. The report that I was shocked by is that she wants House Republicans to investigate the trials and jailing of January

6th riot attendees, which seems like a very peculiar priority for the new Republican Party. But if that's where they're going, that's where they're going. And so I do think that it's very valid at this point to actually cover her because the power that she's accrued through this election process is enormous relative to her position. So, Gene Robinson, is this our future? Will aid to Ukraine truly be debated? Are we going to be looking at possibly people who committed crimes against our democracy, who went into our Capitol and broke windows, hurt people, defecated in the hallways, tried to kill Nancy Pelosi and Mike Pence, getting some sort of,

I don't know, new day in court? Well, look, there's going to be this crazy circus happening in the House because of the new Republican majority and, as was said, the influence that the likes of Marjorie Taylor Greene will have over it. So, you know, is that going to materially affect the way the the trials of those who invaded the Capitol are proceeding or the jail time they're getting? I doubt it. But it but people will be hauled up to the hill to testify, I guess. Maybe the attorney general, who knows? The big question, I think, is will the House be able to do its duty? What will it be able to do in terms of passing needed appropriations, keeping the government running, you know, just the basic stuff?

I don't think we can expect much more than that from the House for the next couple of years. But the question is, will we get even that? That's a good one at this point. You know, there was this notable reaction. We all saw it as we were watching the video yesterday by many House Republicans to Nancy Pelosi's speech, announcing that she is stepping down from leadership. The House chamber was packed with Democratic lawmakers, while the Republican side was largely empty. At several points, Democrats stood for applause, while Republicans sat in silence. But Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who is hoping to succeed Pelosi as House Speaker next term,

did not even attend her speech. Here's what he told reporters about why he didn't go. I had meetings, but normally the others would do it during votes. I wish I could have done that. I could have been there. Minority Whip Steve Scalise was the only member of the House GOP leadership to attend Pelosi's speech, and he showed up late. Compare that to the Senate side, where minority leader Mitch McConnell put out a gracious statement offering his congratulations. He wrote in part this, the speaker and I have disagreed frequently and forcefully over the years, but I have seen

firsthand the depth and intensity of her commitment to public service. There is no question that the impact of Speaker Pelosi's consequential and pathbreaking career will long endure. That is what, well, that's a kind. Old school. Elegant and now old school. It's the way our politics used to be. You know, if big retirement like this, the other side,

we're out of first woman to serve as speaker, an amazing career, a mother of five. And by the way, her husband was just attacked as the result of political violence. This would have been the moment to step up and show some grace.

Who raised you? Who raised these people? I'm sorry. Who raised you? Who raised you, Kevin McCarthy? Who raised you? Who raised these people? I'm sorry. Who raised you? Who raised you, Kevin McCarthy? Who raised you, Republicans in the House? Seriously, try and imitate somebody with just an ounce of grace. Try and make your mother proud for one second. It's disgusting. It's disappointing. And not to me. You're the one who has to look in the mirror every day. Anyhow, I digress.

It's not like, do you feel strongly about this? It's not like Mitch McConnell was embracing Nancy Pelosi's record, her policies. He was saying she's been dedicated to this country, she's been an effective leader, she's been a patriot. Thank you. That's all he was saying. So, you know, the one question that interests me is whether the Republicans will continue trying to get over the craziness of Donald Trump. The midterm elections really were about Republicans emerging from that period, a repudiation of Trump's candidates, a party that was rejecting some of its most extreme elements, it seemed. You have people now who are running for president who want to actively reject the Trump legacy.

They want to make a break. And we fascinated to see how the House is pulled in that in that in that ballot. It may be that, as as Gene says, that the Looney Tunes wing just dominates and Marjorie Taylor Greene's run the show. It may be that other Republicans who are running who want to be president, who want to pull the party away from Trump, may over the course of this Congress have more influence than we might we might think. We will see. I mean, you have to watch this day by day. But the first signs out of the box are really bad.

I mean, honestly, a little lesson in grace. I mean, you can't find one thing about Nancy Pelosi, her career, or even the fact that she's stepping down that could have you show up and stand up and say thank you for your groundbreaking leadership. Maybe, I don't know, the doors she's opened for women, the glass ceiling that she's broken. You can't find anything. You can find nothing. You have to be disgraceful. It's impossible. It's going to be a really tough time for the Republican Party moving forward. You would think that you would want to put yourself back together after demeaning yourself to Donald Trump for so many

years after he loses for you over and over and over again. You lose and then you keep bowing to his behavior, thinking that's going to win. That's just stupid. That's just short-sighted. Trumpism doesn't work. It doesn't bring the country together. It might work for a very small, very angry group of people who feel left out. And I would argue there might be a better way to communicate to people who feel left out. I think you could do it without being destructive to the country, but you just can't stop. It's like you're addicted. Oh, they are addicted. It's a cult. Yeah, that's exactly the point. I mean, they made a conscious decision to turn the party, allow the party to be turned into a personality cult. And a colleague, former colleague

of mine put it on Twitter yesterday. If you make that decision, how do you jettison the personality that the cultists follow? How does that work? It's a good question. Still ahead on Morning Joe, we're going to be joined by House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, who is also stepping down from Democratic leadership. It will be his first interview since he made that announcement. Big changes are ahead. Plus, the Biden administration grants legal immunity to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. David Ignatius has some thoughts on that.

Also ahead on the heels of her projected loss in the race for Arizona governor, Republican Carrie Lake makes a trip to Mar-a-Lago just to add to her playbook of denial. And Twitter is temporarily closing its offices amid a huge new wave of resignations. What's going on at Twitter? And like, who's watching? Who's watching it right now from the inside? What it means for Elon Musk and the future of the social media site. You're watching Morning Joe as we bump out with a beautiful shot of Washington, D.C. on this Friday morning. We'll be right back. The hours come for a new generation to lead the Democratic caucus that I so deeply respect. And I'm grateful that so many are ready and willing to shoulder this awesome responsibility. A new day is dawning on the horizon,

and I look forward, always forward, to the unfolding story of our nation, a story of light and love, of patriotism and progress, of many becoming one, and always an unfinished mission to make the dreams of today the reality of tomorrow.

Thank you all. May God bless you and your families, and may God continue to bless our veterans and the United States of America. It's been my privilege to play a part in forging extraordinary progress for the American people. I have enjoyed working with three presidents, achieving historic investments in clean energy with President George Bush. Transformative health care reform with President Barack Obama. And forging the future from infrastructure to healthcare to climate action with President Joe Biden. Well, there's one notable president that she left out.

She said she enjoyed working with three presidents. She did enjoy that. And she left out Trump because that was just not enjoyable. I'll just say it. But let's go right to the author of the book about the great Nancy Pelosi and the end of the era that we're seeing right now, Susan Page. I mean, she started her career, her political career in her 40s after having five kids. Her Catholic religion really helped mold her values in terms of how she led. And it's actually one of the reasons why her great success in her 80s, really. We had her on the very first last year Forbes 50 over 50 list because she's a woman

who's achieved her greatest success and impact well over the age of 50 and paid it forward. And here she is doing it again. Talk a little bit about the end of this era and the legacy that she leaves behind as a leader. She's still going to serve. So she wasn't a candidate until she was in her 40s. Right. But she was in a political household in a world of politics. When she was seven years old, that is the Bible. Yes. For her father to be inaugurated for the first time of his first or three terms as mayor of Baltimore. Her mother ran her husband's political operation. So she has politics in her DNA. Yes. But she didn't run for office and didn't even consider herself a potential candidate until late in life,

really a second career after being a mother and working as a volunteer and fundraiser and organizer in politics. And she turned out to have this enormous political skill. She's not, you know, she wouldn't be a good presidential candidate. She's not a great orator. But when it comes to getting legislation passed, getting the votes together to pass a big controversial piece of legislation like the Affordable Care Act, we haven't seen anyone in modern times with the skills that she's shown. Yes, her skills are amazing. And so one thing about Nancy Pelosi that I didn't really

learn until earlier this year, I happened to run into her at a reception during the NBA playoffs. And she was a little sleepy because she had stayed up late the previous night watching a Golden State Warriors game on the West Coast, which, you know, didn't finish till like two in the morning here. And it was a game that they lost by 39 points. She's a very knowledgeable NBA fan, a Warriors fan. And actually somebody else was during the conversation. I said, oh, yeah, the Warriors lost by 40 points. And she's like, no, it was 39.

They lost by 39 points. It was not 40. Yesterday, she not only likes basketball, she drew a political lesson from basketball in her conversation yesterday with a small group of reporters. She said the rule of basketball is if in doubt, shoot. And number two, always if in doubt, shoot. And number two, always be in doubt. Yeah. And some of the most incredible scenes. First of all, she's also a star like on TikTok or whatever memes like clapping for Trump, like nice job, idiot. And also ripping the script up. I mean, trying to deal with that presidency, her facial expressions and sometimes even her her, you know, physical reactions were were humorous. And at least they got us through

it because it was a very dangerous and still is dangerous time for our country, for sure. Sam Stein, the Wall Street Journal editorial board, has a new piece entitled Nancy Pelosi's lesson in power for House Republicans. And it reads in part, Republicans who disagree with Mrs. Pelosi on practically everything can still learn from her how to effectively wield power. There's no denying that Mrs. Pelosi has been an effective House leader, the most powerful speaker in decades. Were Republicans paying attention? In last week's elections, the GOP regained the House, but its new majority will be as small as Mrs. Pelosi's current one.

The narrow margin next year calls for a strong speaker and Republican unity. If the GOP wants to convince the electorate to give it a real mandate in 2024, it needs to show it can govern. Instead, the old circular firing squad may be forming. Mr. McCarthy's majority will be 222 at most. That number was enough for Mrs. Pelosi to avoid pointless brinksmanship over the past two years and pass an ambitious agenda for Mr. Biden. Mr. McCarthy and Republicans could learn from the example. And Sam Stein, I mean, that's a really good point. Whoever leads the House Republicans is going to have to make make it work with a lot of different factions. And in the next two years, they're going to want to have shown they have done something

to improve the lives of the American people, aren't they? Maybe not. Honestly, they may be just as transparent about it as possible, knowing they can't get legislation through a Democratic Senate. They may just stick to investigations and call it a day. But yeah, they could probably use a lesson from Nancy Pelosi in terms of how to organize and pass legislation. I mean, the touchstone for me, the Pelosi story that is the biggest encapsulation of her abilities was, of course, with Obamacare, when it looked like it was going to blow up and Democrats were eager to just scale it back and do a piecemeal approach, I think she had a quote, I'm going to butcher it, but she's like, if you're encountering a fence, you beat down the fence. If it's a wall, you catapult over the wall.

And if it's too high, you parachute in and we will get it done. And that was just sort of grit and determination, but also savvy and vote counting. And she never brought legislation to the floor unless she had votes. She loved to win, but she also did the hard work. And I guess I have a question for Susan, who is just the best chronicler of Pelosi, which was, what was it that was her secret sauce? Was it fear? Was it empathy? She knew everyone's names.

She knew everyone's family members and birthdays and things like that. But what was that personal touch or was it just simply indefinable about how she was able to get those votes, count those votes and rarely, if ever, miss a vote? Yeah, it's not it's not undefinable. It's all of the above. I mean, she understood every member in her caucus. She understood their districts and the history of their districts. She understood what would be the history of their districts. She understood what would be a big favor for them. She raised a ton of dough, $1.3 billion since she went into the leadership. That is just a jaw dropping amount of money. And she also sometimes ruled by fear. You know, members of Congress, Democratic members of Congress respect and adore Nancy Pelosi, but a lot of them are kind of afraid of her.

And one of them told me that when she was pushing for passage of the Affordable Care Act and he said, if I vote for this, it will cost me my seat. And she said, yes, it might do that. But, you know, we came here to do a job, not to have a job. He voted for it. In fact, he lost his seat the next day. So there are things that she thought were worth losing a seat over. And the Affordable Care Act was one of those. David, I'm struck by what a tough leader policy was. And I think the Journal captured it right. The Democratic caucus is fractious, not as much as the Republican caucus. But she had a lot of issues to deal with. She had a progressive wing of her caucus that she had to disband, had to send them the message.

And Kevin McCarthy, if he's going to be an effective speaker, is going to have to take a caucus that's just notoriously out of control and turn it into a legislative force. I think with Pelosi, of the footage that we all were able to see of her behavior on January 6th, when they're in that undisclosed room and, you know, who knows what's happening? Their lives are threatened. And she's cool as a cucumber. And she's saying, she's saying to people, do you do this? And we need to have this done. And, you know, she's not she's not frightened. She's not agitated. She is she is the essence of a leader.

And that's the person who over all these years ran this clock. It's new to be afraid of the first impeachment when when she called the vote for impeaching donald trump the first time and she had the gavel and people started to cheer and she did that and it was quiet hard worker too yes you know she the way she knew every member and every, you know, whatever member needed and whatever caucus needed was she just met with them constantly. And she took their temperature. She was very organized. Of course, she had her deputies out there feeling, you know, and counting votes for her. And she could count.

She could really, really count. She could turn out the count. No, it's the end of an era and an incredible one. And I mean, whether you're a Republican or a Democrat, it's sort of hard not to be in awe of what she has accomplished unless you're in a cult. Coming up, we'll get much more reaction on Nancy Pelosi's legacy when we're joined by Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota. The senator is also calling out the companies involved in a major merger that is causing chaos in the concert industry as Taylor Swift's fans struggle to get tickets for a highly anticipated tour.

That's all straight ahead on Morning Joe. Welcome back to Morning Joe. 44 past the hour. Some of the other stories we're following this morning. North Korea fired an intercontinental ballistic missile that landed near Japanese waters. A major weapons test that showed the potential to launch nuclear strikes that could reach the entirety of the U.S. mainland. David Ignatius, is this something we should be concerned about? Yes. The simple reason is that North Korea has been very specific in saying that it no longer seeks dialogue with the United States as a counterweight to Russia and China.

The days when its nuclear program would be a bargaining chip for some future relations is finished. Kim Jong-un was very specific in September in saying that these tests have followed. And I think many people are afraid that what comes next is another nuclear test. Not good. The U.S. quickly condemned the launch and vowed to take all necessary measures to guarantee the safety of its territory and its allies. The launch comes one day after a smaller missile launch by the North and its warning of fiercer military responses to the U.S., boosting its regional security presence. We will be watching that story. And workers at more than 100 U.S. Starbucks locations have gone on strike. The largest labor action since a push began last year to unionize the company's stores. Workers chose one of the company's busiest days of the year,

Red Cup Day, when the company gives free, reusable cups to customers who order a holiday drink. The striking workers are seeking better pay, more consistent schedules, and higher staffing levels in busy stores. We'll be following that. And hundreds of Twitter employees appear to have called Elon Musk's bluff, resigning en masse after he delivered an ultimatum to stay or to leave. Musk gave employees until 5 p.m. yesterday to stay and follow his vision or leave with three-month severance. Musk and his advisors were left scrambling when hundreds opted to leave, forcing the company to try and persuade many to stay. I'm just curious.

I'm just curious. When we're in this sort of labor environment, Gene Robinson, where people, I mean, overall, there are a lot of articles out there and anecdotal evidence that people are pulling back from jobs they don't like. Right. Fair to say that's what they're doing. This seems like a dumb thing to offer to people if you don't want them to leave. And, you know, despite some layoffs in Silicon Valley, it's pretty easy to find a job these days still. And so, you know, I don't Elon Musk. He's really $4 billion. And he just seems to, you know, take every week, take $10 billion and set it on fire. Double down on it. Musk appeared to soften his stance on remote work with Twitter later announcing it would deactivate

employees badge access at the office until Monday. Twitter previously laid off half of its 7,500 person staff, fired dissenters, sometimes publicly, causing many people to question the future of the social media site. I think Twitter, Dave Ignatius, is in question. Yeah, I'll say. I'm not sure that's a bad thing. Musk's tweets have been, for the most part, painful to read. But he did have one yesterday. It was pretty funny.

He said, how do you lose? How do you make a large fortune in social media? So I got this backwards. How do you how do you make a small fortune in social media? Answer. Start with a large. And that's what Elon Musk did. He started with an enormous stack of capital, and he's just whittling it down day by day. Yeah, and you know what? In a lot of ways, it's a sewer, and really bad things

happen on Twitter. I'm just not sure. I'm not sure where this is going to go, but it hasn't been a completely positive thing for our civil conversation, our discourse across the country. But it's been useful for a lot of people. I know. It really has been.

There is always another side to it with social media. Oh, absolutely. Facebook, too. Absolutely. I mean, I, you know, don't get me started on Facebook. So, you know, it's absolutely there are two sides of the coin. Now, however, we're at the point where can the site run? Are there enough people there to run it?

And what's going to happen? And, you know, one day, will it just like freeze up and that's that? Or it just becomes even worse on its negative sides. We have Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota standing by. Why don't I I was going to actually do the Taylor Swift story and ask you about that. We'll get to it because you have some things to say. But Twitter, go. Yeah.

Yeah. So as you know, I've been way up front on this for a long time. And this isn't just Twitter, as you just pointed out, Eugene. This is also about all of these companies. There are no rules of the road in place. We have no federal privacy law. We have state ones. Right. We have no competition policy for tech that applies to tech, something I've been trying to change. We have no rules when it comes to do they get to keep their immunity

when they're actually amplifying hate speech or misinformation and making money off it. It is one thing when someone just posts something and sends an email, put something out there and you own a company on which they did it. It is another when you are amplifying it and making money off it. There are ways as other countries have done that we could put rules in place. So I think this should be a major focus for the Congress next year. I think we have to, as well as getting everything we can get done by the end of this year, because nothing has happened. Yes, he is seems to be with unexplainably doing everything to run this company into the ground. I don't understand it. It is

cyber employees, all kinds of things, engineers leaving. But there is more than that. That is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to no than that. That is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to no rules in place. It is the tip of the iceberg. And it's not the only social media site that we as a country are struggling with. And you have been working on trying to get some accountability. And I ask, why would your Republican counterparts or anybody in Washington not want to fix what is a growing problem of disinformation flying across, you know, I guess the Internet airwaves or whatever you want to call it, whether it's Facebook, Twitter and becoming destructive to our not only our discourse, but to people's lives. Exactly. Well, there have been Republicans that have been willing to talk about eliminating

or limiting Section 230 immunity, which means you can be sued if you're amplifying and making money off that. That's the bottom line. Right now they're protected. Other companies aren't protected. Networks aren't protected. That's the first thing. The second thing is strengthening our antitrust laws. We have a chance right now of allowing our FTC and our Justice Department enforcers to get more funds by just passing the bill that Senator Grassley and I have, which has already passed the House now, to change the merger fees so they have more resources. Do you think that will— So that's where I want to put the Taylor Swift fans.

Yeah. Right on that. Exactly. Right on antitrust, because that story of Ticketmaster, separate from the tech companies, that is a story of a monopoly gone wild. So here's the Ticketmaster story and then hold and then continue. But Ticketmaster has now canceled planned public sale of tickets for Taylor Swift's upcoming tour. This is a mess, citing, quote, extraordinary high demand on ticketing systems and insufficient inventory.

The public scale planned for today was for any tickets left over from this week's pre-sales. Ticketmaster says it received three and a half billion ticket requests on the first day of pre-sales on Tuesday. I mean, I saw it coming. Taylor Swift, you guys, come on. Come on, Ticketmaster. It's Swift. That's nearly four times its previous peak. Two million tickets were sold that day. Taylor Swift has not responded for a request for comment. But go ahead, antitrust. Have soft.

So in 2010, Live Nation and Ticketmaster were allowed to merge. The combined company now has 70% of ticket sales. So in truth, there's no other choice. And that's what's going on. There is a monopoly. They also have quickly and quietly bought so many venues and arenas. So it is a vertical integration. That's why we are pushing the Justice Department to look at this and to look back at that consent decree of which they have power over that consent decree. I talked to Senator Mike Lee last night. We chair the committee on antitrust. We are going to go ahead with a hearing on Ticketmaster this year.

And so I think you're going to start seeing a lot of questions. It is not just about Taylor Swift. Right. This has been going on. It's about prices, hidden fees that are way too high. It's about site disruptions and the kind of thing. And of course, you could anticipate it. But where else are you going to go to sell your tickets when there's only one game in town?

So from Taylor Swift, one powerful woman to another speaker, Nancy Pelosi, Susan Page wrote the book. You've worked alongside side by side with her for years. And I just would love for you to talk a little bit about your experiences with her and also this moment of her stepping down. I believe, my gosh, the second time she served as the first woman speaker with second in line to the presidency, one of the most powerful people in the world. And what comes to mind when you think of this moment? I say gratitude, number one, for her service, but for you as a friend, as well as a colleague. I say strength.

That moment when she walked out of the White House and flipped on those sunglasses after taking on Trump on another government shutdown, that was it for me. Because I just think it just shows at any moment she has in her small frame, she is able to exhibit strength, strength in dealing with a closed caucus many times with a lot of different views, keeping her eyes on what matters, getting the Affordable Care Act passed,

investing more in bringing down greenhouse gases, doing something about climate change than any leader working with Senator Schumer, our leader over in the Senate to get things done, working with presidents from George Bush on. It's just an incredible story. And first woman speaker. And we are so proud of her. And I just I loved when actually Senator McConnell made those beautiful comments about her, because there is no doubt there is respect about for her, no matter how strongly they disagreed with her. Absolutely. She was able to get things done because she would never she would never turn. Yeah. She would always straight on lead. Susan, your thoughts, given what Senator Pelosi has had to say, and I'll just add that when I interviewed Nancy Pelosi about what her greatest achievement was in life, in her work, she did say it was the Affordable Care.

I mean, right right from the get go Affordable Care Act, that that was just the bit. But you look at what happened after and how she stood up to President Trump time and time again, having him even at times lorded over him. This is a powerful woman. This is a woman who, if I may, knew her value and absolutely used it to the full extent of her ability for this country. And demonized by Republicans. The favorite target of Republicans, depicted as a witch and a devil. Some of that was misogyny and also routinely underestimated. You know, I think that through her career until the end, others often did not understand exactly

what they were coming up against when they were facing Nancy Pelosi. Just one other thing, looking at what she's going to do now. Yeah. So, you know, it was a little bit of a surprise that she decided to stay in the Congress even after stepping back from the leadership. She told us yesterday that when her husband was attacked, some people assumed that meant she would feel compelled to go home to California. She said it made her more likely to stay in Washington because she did not want to give them the satisfaction

of having her leave town. That's right. You're damn right. And I'm glad that, I mean, that seems very what we know of her. But just really quickly, sorry Alex, the mother-in-law line. So yeah, after her speech. We asked her yesterday what advice was she going to give her, we asked her yesterday, uh, what advice was

she going to give her successor? And she said she was not Thanksgiving is coming. She said, I'm not going to be the mother-in-law who goes into the kitchen and says, you're making the stuffing wrong. That's not how we make the stuff in this family. So she said she was not going to give advice to her successor, which is a statement I believe will be untrue. Oh, absolutely. I hope not. She has commented about stuffing before Thanksgiving and giving interviews. Nancy, you can come into my kitchen and you can tell me what to do. I'm like all, I would take it.

Just give the advice to whoever's getting that advice. Take it. Senator Amy Klobuchar, it's always good to see you. Thank you for coming in. I know you had a late night last night. Yeah, presiding till midnight. Good Lord. No problem. It's 7 in the morning. What are you doing? It's all good to see you. Thank you for coming in. I know you had a late night last night. Yeah, presiding till midnight. Good Lord. No problem.

It's seven in the morning. What are you doing? It's all good. Okay. And Susan, oh, and this is Amy's book. Her new memoir is entitled The Joy of Politics. Boy, did we just talk about it, actually, in a way, because- Exactly.

It is. You can choose cynicism and fear, or you can choose joy in this job. So this comes out in May? Yeah. Oh, congratulations. Overcoming a lot of obstacles. All right. Well, we look forward to that. Thank you very much.

Susan Page, thank you as well. Your book, Madam Speaker. This is what needs to fly off the shelves. Once again, it already has. But my God, what an incredible time to really look back on the career and the legacy of Nancy Pelosi. She's still serving, but stepping down as the first woman Speaker of the House. And Sam Stein, congrats on surviving this week. It was a lot. It was a lot. That was a lot. Yeah.

Babies and everything that you do. But we appreciate it. You did good. Thank you. Almost as good as Lamir. Yeah. OK. Thank you, Sam.

We really appreciate you. You're wonderful. Still ahead, the nation is facing a new housing crisis that is squeezing potential first-time home buyers out of the market. Steve Ratner will join us with charts that explain why. Plus, Congressman Steny Hoyer is among the top Democrats stepping away from positions at the head of the party. The House majority leader will be our guest this morning. Morning Joe will be right back live from Washington.