Morning Joe - Morning Joe 12/15/22

Episode Date: December 15, 2022

Former House Speaker John Boehner tears up at Pelosi portrait unveiling

Madam Speaker, you and I have disagreed politically on many things over the years, but we were never disagreeable to each other. And, Madam Speaker, I have to say, my girls told me, tell the Speaker how much we admire her. You've been incredibly effective as the leader of your caucus you know the younger generation today has a saying game recognizes game former house speaker john boehner in a touching tribute to nancy pelosi as she prepares to end her historic tenure as speaker. Wow. Plus the latest on efforts to prevent a government shutdown as lawmakers buy more time to hammer out a deal.

We'll have the latest from Capitol Hill. And we're also digging into the latest polling that shows Donald Trump way behind Florida Governor Ron DeSantis for the next Republican presidential nomination. And Ron DeSantis hasn't even said whether he's running or not. The numbers also come with a warning sign that may explain why the governor is constantly trying to prove that he can out-Trump Trump. And we'll explain that. Yeah, it's really something. I mean, you even look at the Hill headline this morning about a Quinnipiac poll that has Donald Trump at his lowest approval rating since 2015. He's down to 31 percent. I heard Lemire coming in.

You know, you got the movie, I think it was a Pacino movie, Sin of a Lady. Sin of a Woman. Classic. Sin of a Woman. Thereino movie, Sin of a Lady. Sin of a Woman. Classic. Sin of a Woman. There you go. Where's this going? Sin of a Woman. Well, Lemire has a movie title for Donald Trump, A Whiff of a Loser.

I did hear that. He said he's got a whiff of a loser. Yeah. And I was like, wow, OK, listen, Boston misses a couple of couple of trades. This guy just the teeth. There's a bitterness there, isn't there? It's just coming through everything. Sin of a woman, whiff of a loser. Starring Donald Trump. But but really, we talk about that. But let's go back. John Boehner wasn't Speaker of the House that long ago. And, you know, that's the way

when I was there and and before I got to Congress, after I left Congress, that's the way leaders treated each other, Republicans and Democrats. I remember Newt Gingrich, a guy who by the time he left was loathed. I remember having so much respect for Democrats who Newt had tried to destroy individuals in the chamber when he was saying goodbye, giving him a standing ovation out of respect from someone who chose to serve their country and who had worked with them sometimes. This is this is, by the way, what Republicans used to do, what John Boehner did when they didn't lose elections every year. Let me say that again. They think it's weak. Like who's the guy who wants to be speaker now? Kevin. My Kevin. Kevin, my Kevin. Kevin McCarthy didn't go to Nancy Pelosi's farewell speech. Unheard of. That would have never happened before. He said he was busy. He was busy.

That he may have been in a meeting with Stephen Miller. You tell your staff, I need to be on the floor when Nancy Pelosi has her farewell address. You don't worry. If people in your caucus don't like that, you say, listen, I'm in the game to win here. And there's nothing wrong with being nice and respectful to people we work with. It sounds radical to Republicans. But again, these Republicans are Republicans that lose every year now. So maybe they should try being like nice, respectful, decent, at least pretend, even if they don't feel it in their hearts.

Yeah, that was such a striking moment, not just because it was kind of sweet to see, but for exactly the reasons you just laid out, which is John Boehner was speaker of the House until fall of 2015. That was only seven years ago. Think of where we are now and what a marker that speech was yesterday to remind us how low the Republican Party has sunk, where just two months ago, less than two months ago, you had prominent Republicans mocking Nancy Pelosi after her husband was almost killed inside their house by a man who was looking for Nancy Pelosi, perhaps to assassinate her. So just think about that space of seven years. John Boehner, a man who now weeps for Speaker Pelosi because of the way he feels about her, what she represents, the example she set for his own daughters. And now you have members of the Republican Party mocking Nancy Pelosi in an assassination attempt at her home. It is a really stunning snapshot of what's happened to the party in such a short time.

And that's what they did. And Kevin McCarthy, remember his statement that when he was handing the gavel to then-Speaker Pelosi, saying that he wanted to hit her with it, hit her in the head or something like that? Again, this is third grade stuff. You think you're going to get a laugh from something like this when actually people just look at you and say you don't deserve to actually represent anybody. And again, Mika, this is just just let's just keep we make and I did something last night. We practiced mindfulness. We watched a couple of shows on another network.

And it really is extraordinary how stupid they are. When it comes to accept that they're trying their best, they're trying their best when it comes to what they think like strategy is like what will work for them. They think they're owning the libs and they're not. You just sit there going, oh, come on. You. They think they're owning the libs, and they're not. You just sit there going, oh, come on, man. No, you have to accept they're doing the best they can. Okay, I accept they're doing the best they can. They need to do better, not for me, not for you, not for themselves.

And again, they need to recalibrate because when they think, Willie, that they're owning the libs, when they think they're like getting a shot off at their political opponents politically, they're just shooting themselves in the foot. And I just I put my head in my hands last night. Oh, my God. The Washington generals, they're never going to be able to stop Meadowlark Lemon like this. Joe, you've got to stop watching that. Just go back and watch Arrested Development. Just something that brings joy to your life. Let Bateman and Arnett and Tambor and all the rest of them guide you through your evenings.

Yeah, I mean, how much more evidence do you need that it loses elections, that it's not working? I mean, just look at, we're going to talk about Donald Trump's poll numbers again now sliding the party. Look at the results of the midterm elections. People looked at all of this stuff and said, no, thank you. On the other hand, for some of the people you're talking about, their ratings in that world are good. They get people listening to their podcast. The echo chamber is echoing back to them and giving them the things they want out of it. So I don't suspect they'll stop. But if you're a politician, if you're a Republican

interested in winning elections, there's just a whole lot of evidence that it's not working for you right now. Along with Joe, by the way, the evidence 2017, they lost. Oh, my God. 2018. I mean, you do have to say it. I'm hoping somebody will hear you lost Rana 2020. They lost Kev 2022, as Peter Till said at the Reagan library was a disaster. Yeah, it was an absolute disaster. And it was a disaster. The thing is, Donald Trump doesn't care. Well, no. And the thing he doesn't care about anybody doesn't, especially you Republicans who are still, for some reason, walk in the plank for him. Along with Joe, Willie and me, we have former White House communications director under President Obama, Jen Palmieri. She's the co-host of Showtime's The Circus.

Presidential historian John Meacham is with us this morning and the host of Way Too Early. His next book is called Whiff of a Loser. Whiff of a Loser. Why is your house peer chief at Politico, Jonathan Lemire? And let's just jump right into it. Is Donald Trump's final reality show about to be canceled? Yet another poll this morning shows the former president, who in recent weeks dined with a Holocaust denier and anti-Semite

and who expressed his desire to cancel the Constitution because he lost the 2020 election, is now being rejected by some of the same Republican base that had stood by him over the past six years. The new poll from The Wall Street Journal shows Florida Governor Ron DeSantis cementing an early lead over Donald Trump in the race for the next Republican presidential nominee. DeSantis leading Trump by double digits, 14 points. He also hasn't even announced he may run for president. DeSantis also beats Trump in terms of likability. Eighty six percent of Republicans hold a favorable view of the governor compared to 74 percent for Trump. Trump leads DeSantis by 16 points among Republican voters who describe themselves as very conservative, while DeSantis leads among those who describe themselves as somewhat conservative. This comes on the heels of a USA

Today Suffolk poll showing Trump trailing DeSantis by 23. John, John, Ronald Reagan famously said that democracy has to be fought for every generation and that every generation has to remain vigilant. That said, I do wonder whether if the past six years, if the past six years have been perhaps the greatest threat to American democracy, where you have a president openly talking about his attorney general arresting his presidential candidate, trying to bribe foreign leaders and, oh, my God, trying to stop the peaceful transition of power. I'm wondering if these polls suggest that maybe just maybe that the doomsday clock has ticked back from 5 till 12 to maybe 1145? I hope so.

And I think that there's something both thrilling and terrifying about that proposition. It's thrilling because it means that American democracy may in fact survive and even thrive. And that's what a lot of us have been arguing for and pounding on our high chairs about for a long time now. It's terrifying or unsettling, I should say, because and I was thinking about this last night. I was not watching what you were watching, but it occurred to me because because the worst did not happen. It's going to be incumbent on thoughtful, engaged citizens to enabling caucus to say, oh, you all were, you know, you were exaggerating. It was chicken little. But just because something horrible did not fully come to fruition does not mean that something horrible did not very nearly come to fruition. And how fascinating that the same people who said, oh, we were always hyperventilating, catastrophizing, overplaying the Trump threat are the same people who are deadly silent

when Donald Trump calls about terminating the United States Constitution. So everything we warned about, whether it was his racism, his anti-Semitism, whether it was his bigotry, has all been confirmed over the past several weeks. I do wonder, John, because your Lincoln book is extraordinary. And I don't I don't have favorite children and I don't have favorite John Meacham presidential presidential biographies. But if I did, this one would be right there. I'm wondering, what do you learn about this moment over the past six years from the year or two that you spent with Abraham Lincoln? What has he taught you, not only about the past five, six years, but about the years to come, how vigilant we need to be?

That democracy is entirely a human enterprise and it's as fragile and as fallible as we are. The substance of our laws is vital. I mean, we have to have that. But there's also the spirit of it. Lincoln said, as I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. That expresses my definition of democracy. And if we don't recognize each other as inherently equal and dignified, then the enterprise collapses. If power is the most important thing, as opposed to any kind of principle, and I'm not playing the organ here or the kettle drums. This is pretty straightforward. You just have to believe something other than I should be in power. And that's what the 45th president believes. And if you have that moral commitment, then you are more likely to do the right thing in extremists and in hours of crisis, which is what Lincoln did. I think, you know, we're in exactly the season that I think shaped us ever since, which is that there was a compromise on the table in 1860, 61

to extend slavery to the southern parts of the Western territories and therefore avoid war. It was the kind of thing we always did. That was the kind of compromise we used to strike. And Lincoln said no. And everybody around him was saying yes. And his reason was, we have said that slavery is wrong and cannot be extended. They believe, the white South, that slavery is right and should be. And on that question hangs the entire union. And he was like Winston Churchill in 1940. He knew that appeasement had not worked. And that's a vital lesson for us now. And it's really, really tricky, which is people don't like being told they were wrong. But people have. But we owe a duty to the truth, a duty to the facts of the matter to remember how close we have come. And I think that, as you say, it's not over, not over.

But it is. Look, this is a better December than we've had in six years. Yes, it is. So, you know, obviously, the sense that perhaps the show is shutting down, the Trump show, you know, it starts with the January 6th convictions that we're seeing along the way. The results of the midterm elections, these polls showing Ron DeSantis beating Trump in a matchup that doesn't even exist because Ron DeSantis hasn't even announced. He hasn't even decided what he's going to do. Obviously, some experts would see this as like the fish flapping on the dock, but the fish could fall back in the water.

And here's Donald Trump. One way to put it. Here's Donald Trump announcing something. Doing a little flopping, flipping and flopping here. Take a look. America needs a superhero. We are in third grade. I mean, we are in third grade.

I thought that was going to be in it. That's what it was. Well, you better take it. I'm about to start laughing. It's heartbreaking in a way, isn't it? It's it's heartbreaking for him. Jen, I mean, you look at there's going to be a major announcement. Who knows what that will be tonight? But this this clearly, if you look at the data, if you look at these polls from the last couple of days, there have to be meetings going on in Tallahassee where Ron DeSantis and his team are saying, we're up by 20 points in this guy.

Maybe we don't miss our moment. Maybe we jump in the race. That's going to take some nerve to cross the guy who helped him get in to where he is right now. But they have to be having those conversations at this point. Yeah. Just figuring out when is the right, when is the right time? Because right now you see Trump is just sort of flailing and he's doing nothing to help himself. I mean, at other times he's found an ability to sort of to recalibrate. You know, I could imagine him having gone, you know, maybe after after Walker lost in Georgia in the runoff, go to each of these states where people lost and then point out all the things that these candidates did wrong, that the people he endorsed, like that they failed him.

Only I can fix this. Right. That's like a big thing with this. Only I can fix it. And he could have said he could have torn down those candidates. He could have. And by doing so, sort of get at the pseudo Trump that that DeSantis is. You know, he tried that a little bit.

He called him Ron Deonda Sanctimonious. I thought that was pretty good. But he's not showing it, right? That was pretty good, Rhonda Sanctimonious. But he's not showing any of that game. Meanwhile, in Tallahassee, you know, DeSantis did try, did sort of push out a couple nights ago talking about hitting lockdowns and mandates and sort of getting that COVID and maybe how he might attack Trump by by allowing, you know, by by having these

these federal federal lockdowns during COVID. So you can see DeSantis does seem like he's he's feeling this out. But, you know, DeSantis may fall in the same trap that a lot of the Trump endorsed Republican primary candidates did in 2022, which is whatever he has to do to win the primary may kill him in the in the general. And, you know, DeSantis was great at owning the libs in Florida and having a strategy for that. He's very good at synthetic issues. Stop woke act, which, like, you know, was a bill to deal with made up problems, something that does not exist. But that didn't work in 22 anywhere outside of the state of Florida. Well, and that's a lot to calibrate for them. Yeah, I mean, and that's the thing. A lot to calibrate for them. Yeah. I mean, and that's the thing again. And good Lord, I just keep talking about it for Republicans.

And I just wonder when they are when they're going to stop putting their hand on the hot stove. It burns. Right. Right. So you go out, you do these stupid things. You go too extreme. You jump up and down, playing to your base. You're in your little bubble. You get this feedback loop that makes you feel really good, like the Romney campaign

had in 2012. You get fake confidence. And then you run a general election and then voters in the northern and now southern suburbs of Atlanta go, yeah, no, those progressive Democrats, they make me uncomfortable on some of their issues. But you're just crazy. And that's what happens in the suburbs of Philly. That's what happens in the suburbs of Pittsburgh. That's what happens in the suburbs of Atlanta. That's what and that's obviously what happens in Maricopa County. That's what happens in Tucson. That's what happens in Clark County, Nevada. And that is why Republicans keep losing. I feel like I'm preaching to the choir and they're all asleep because they just keep losing. Mika doing the same stupid thing. You could do the list, but instead, why don't we

talk to you about a little bit of Governor DeSantis and what we're seeing? Because yesterday we reported on the announcement from Governor DeSantis that he we're seeing, because yesterday we reported on the announcement from Governor DeSantis that he's forming a new state committee to counter policy recommendations from federal health agencies. And he's requesting a statewide grand jury investigation into alleged, quote, crimes and wrongdoing related to the coronavirus vaccine that will own the libs. And now it seems. It's also very stupid. DeSantis is against something he was once for. Look. Today is the day we're going to hit our 2 million senior vaccinated.

And I couldn't think of a better fella to be able to have that honor. So I think we have the Pfizer vaccine ready to go. I had also the privilege to be able to actually sign for the vaccines from FedEx. It's a single dose. You take it one time. You don't have to worry about it. Florida, to be at almost 50 percent statewide, that's much better than almost probably 45 or 46 other states. And we're going to give them more because we want to want the shots to go in the arms. Maybe we can get. I thought I got to say in general, understand I'm talking about here.

Maybe we can get him wind sailing and we have flipping back and forth and back and forth. And then we can say Ron DeSantis was for the vaccine before he was against the vaccine. This is so stupidly transparent, especially after all long peer reviewed studies show that millions of Americans lives were saved by the vaccine. And Ron DeSantis knows that that's why he was pushing Floridians to get the vaccines as quickly as possible, Jonathan Lemire. But now, I mean, this is a play against Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, for the vaccine before he was against the vaccine. And now he's going to use this again to try to own the libs and try to make gains with a part of the Republican base that will take him over the cliff, just like they took Republican candidates over the cliff. Wait for it. Wait for it. Wait for it. In 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2022.

The list goes on. And you're right, DeSantis' flip-flop here certainly would be good fodder for a John Kerry-esque ad. DeSantis has tried to stake a position to the right of Trump on the pandemic. He won't even say whether he got a booster, or even Trump admitted to doing that, that he feels like this is a winning argument in his ongoing quest to own the libs. And that's what this campaign has been about so far, gestures

and using the levers of government to make political statements. As we covered yesterday, some of those have been walked back since, but he got the headlines he wanted on Fox News and other places. And right now he comes into this in a position of strength. Those poll numbers look pretty good, though, to be clear, Sanders has not been nationally vetted. You know, he's right now as sort of a blank canvas where Republicans can project their hopes and dreams and they can have Trumpism without the baggage of Donald Trump. But you'd rather be Ron DeSantis at this moment than Donald Trump. And certainly on Trump, people around him are sort of baffled at the utter inertia. Nothing's happened. He hasn't had a campaign. We just ticked through all those missteps, which has given him this whiff of a loser, including the election failures in the

midterms. But after his terrible announcement and a few misguided dinners with white supremacists and the Truth Social posts in which he says he wants to terminate the Constitution. He hasn't done anything. To Jen's point, he hasn't gone to these states and said, hey, these candidates let you down. I can fix it. He hasn't done anything. He's simply been at Mar-a-Lago rage posting and yelling at aides. And now we get this announcement today, Joe, to wrap up here. You'll recall that he has expressed regret that when he left Walter Reed

Medical Center after recovering from covid that he didn't open his shirt to reveal the Superman logo. That's what you're seeing there in that graphic. He's finally getting a chance to do that. That's his regret. There's speculation it could be about his business or speculation. Maybe he announces a return to Twitter. Who knows? The odds are, though, it's not going to change much in those polls right now. And guys, just to put a return to exclamation point on the DeSantis conversation. Remember, in 2008, Rudy Giuliani was a lock for the nomination. He felt like he looked like the guy who should be the nominee and should be the president. It's very early. And DeSantis is only the alternative to Donald Trump right now. We'll

see if more Republicans smell the weakness on Donald Trump or the whiff of a loser, as Lemire put it, and say, maybe I should get in the race, too. Also on DeSantis, where he did well during the pandemic, was talking about excessive lockdowns and getting kids back into school and our businesses need to be open. People understood that and like that. But now you're saying that people who made the vaccines in record time, the geniuses, the scientists, the doctors, the pharmaceutical companies, the politicians who helped push it through, they're the villains, the people who saved all these lives with the vaccine that you supported for a couple of years. They're the bad guys now. He's taken a step into a new place.

Well, it's a really it's a stupid place because, again, there will be a small slice of the far right that will be all in with him, which will make up about 15 percent, 20 percent of the population. And you're going to have you're going to have people who actually know how to read and read newspapers instead of those people who know how to read the 15 percent. But they read websites run by Chinese religious cults and by QAnon fanatics and by people, other people that don't care about the facts. But three million people's lives, according to the latest study, were saved by the vaccine. And you also look at the fact that it's very interesting, even at the height of all of this garbage that people are saying about the vaccines and it's horrible and it's going to make you grow a third arm and a fourth nose and all this crazy, crazy stuff. Ninety percent of senior citizens, 90 percent of senior citizens took the vaccine. You know why? Because talk is cheap, you know, and they understood, as Ross Perot would say, where the rubber met the road. And they knew in their gut, they got off of Facebook.

Listened to their doctor. They listened to their doctor and they said, yeah, OK, we're going to do this and save our lives. And that's where Americans are. They may not love the vaccine, but most Americans, unless they're really caught up in this QAnon swirl, unless they're really caught up in the conspiracy theories, they know the vaccine saves lives. So I'm not sure where Ron DeSantis is going, but wherever it is, it ends in a cul-de-sac on a street in Alpharetta, Georgia. And it doesn't end well. Okay, still ahead on Morning Show.

A top official in Georgia says it's time to make a major change to the state's election system. We'll explain why the move could get a lot of support from voters. Also ahead, the markets are deep in the red following the Federal Reserve's latest interest rate decision. Steve Ratner is here to break down the latest hike and whether it signals we're headed for a recession. And it appears Congress will keep the government from shutting down for now. We'll tell you where negotiations stand on a new spending bill. You're watching Morning Joe. We will be right back. I heard you say. 33 past the hour. So beautiful. Oh, it's Christmas.

Look at that. It is hard. I love it. It is so hard for me to take Jack. I get so excited. To Midtown. I've done all my Christmas shopping. As we go past the Comcast Commerce tree,

Willie, you know what he says. Papa, papa. Give me Lego. Let's go in and get Uncle Willie clogs for Sunday today. He does like the clogs that Willie wears. We go in there. He does like the Willie guys approved Sunday today clogs. Are they comfortable, Willie?

They're very comfortable. They're fur lined. You're going to love them, Mika. I didn't know we had clogs. Are they comfortable, Willie? They're very comfortable. They're fur-lined. You're going to love them, Mika. I didn't know we had clogs, but if we do, they sound great. I just like the image show of little Jack at your knee, tugging at your sleeve. Pa-pa, pa-pa, take me inside. He's 6'4". And, you know, this is as good a time as any.

If you want that Sunday, today mug expedited shipping, we'll get it to you by Christmas. Just pop right into the store. What's cool is the clogs match the mug. They're yellow as well. And so it's just a great look. I'm going for it. Check that out. Check that out and look for that on the NBC Experience.

All right, guys. Elon Musk. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Speaking of clogs. At some point, Jack's going to walk in from school all six, four of him. And he's going to push me against the wall. He's going to go, oh, man, stop using that voice on me. It's true. That's going to happen. Elon Musk says that he is taking legal action against a Twitter. Oh, come on, Elon. Just make rocket ships to Mars.

Who runs an account that tracks the movement of Musk's private jet. You're owning yourself, Elon. Please stop. Yesterday, Musk suspended the account at Elon Jet, where 20-year-old, a 20-year-old, Jack Sweeney posted publicly available flight data. Musk tweeted he will suspend any account doxing real time location because it's a physical safety violation. Really? Can he help us out? He went on to claim someone attacked a car that was carrying his child. Last month, Musk said his commitment to free speech extended to not blocking the account. Meanwhile, the guy who runs the account told the Daily Beast he has not received any legal notices

from Musk or his reps. But you look at that headline and when Matt Drudge is putting you at the top of the headline and calling you the world's richest hypocrite, Willie, maybe at that point it's time to go back to making rocket ships and turning your car company around. Again, let me just say, I really, Twitter's been a nice experience.

It's good. I've got a lot of friends there, but we could all do without Twitter. Yeah. Like he he's got he's got time, bigger fish to fry than continuing to wallow around, wallow around in that hurting his his businesses, harming his reputation, harming his brand. It's a question we've been asking for months now. We've asked smart people. We've asked business people. We've asked people who know Elon Musk. Why? Why? Why? What is he doing with this thing he overpaid for? Why is he getting down in the in the sewers of Twitter and fighting with people and doing all this, owning the libs and everything when he is, as you said, he is objectively a genius. Right. He's driven the electric vehicle market, taking it to new places. He's sending sending us back to places like where we've never been, getting us

to Mars and all of the rest of these doing with SpaceX. So I still don't have a good answer to the question of what he's doing. Steve Ratner is here. We're not going to ask him again. We asked him yesterday. He threw up his hands. He's, of course, former Treasury official, Morning Joe economic analyst. Steve, I assume you don't have a new answer since we asked you 24 hours ago about what Elon Musk is doing with Twitter. No, I don't. Although the weird thing about this latest episode is that you can as a few of an airplane, you can block the tail number so no one can find it in the FAA database. Oh, that would be. I don't understand why he's doing this so publicly this way when there's another way to do it. Presumably someone could tell him that maybe

he's just enjoying the fight. All right. Let's talk about interest rates, rate hikes, perhaps threatening a new recession. They went up again. What's the pattern you're seeing here with the Fed? Sure. Well, they went up again by this time, a half a percentage point. We'd had four rate hikes in a row at three quarters of a percentage point. The Fed is slowing down. It's getting closer to where it thinks it needs to be. And you can see that here on this chart, how high it's taken it, the highest since back in the 2000s. And what I would note here, and it's not a prediction, is that if you look at the first two rate hikes runs on the left side, one is right before the dot-com implosion, if you want to call it that, and the second before the GFC,

rate hikes of this magnitude, and if I went back further, you would see a similar pattern, rate hikes of this magnitude are often, if not usually, associated with a recession. Something out of 11 or 14 times that the Fed has engaged in a rate hike episode like this has ended in a recession. They didn't predict it yesterday. I'm not necessarily predicting it today, but I think most economists think it's likely. Was that about where you thought it was going to be, the half a point, Steve? The half a point was totally in line with the market. What was less in line with the market was some of what the Fed said about what they expect to have happen. And so we can turn to what's happening. Higher rates for a longer period of time. Higher rates for longer and more of an economic impact.

And so the inflation numbers we talked about yesterday were slightly better than expected. That was good news. We talked about that. They weren't, however, good enough for the Fed to not raise rates and to issue its own set of projections, which we'll talk about in a second. But on the right, you can see in the blue and the dark colored dotted lines, this is what the Fed expected. They predict their rate hikes for us. They tell us what they think is going to happen. And this is what they thought was going to happen over the last several months, the bottom being June and then September and now current. And you

can see each time they've made a set of projections, it has been higher rates for longer. And so they have gradually come to the realization that dealing with inflation is going to take a little bit longer. The red line is what the market, the bond market basically thinks is going to happen. It's somewhat optimistic, more optimistic than the Fed, but both of them have been way overly optimistic throughout this period of time. And as you mentioned, Steve, the Fed expressed a little bit of pessimism about where we're headed here. That inflation number caused some people to say, OK, maybe we are trending in the right direction. A couple of days ago, Fed not necessarily sharing that view.

Correct. It was we all like that number, but it wasn't good enough, as I said. And so the Fed also issues a set of projections every three months for where they think the economy is going. And with this basically, again, takes your June, your September, your December projections, light blue, middle blue, and then dark color, and lines them up. And you can see that on inflation, the Fed has become consistently more pessimistic, gone from 2.7% expected inflation in 2023 up to 3.5%. It's taken its GDP growth estimate down to only 0.5%. So that's not quite a recession, but it's very close to a recession. And you can see on the right, it's taken its expected unemployment number up higher, up to 4.5%. And so that's the basis for which those higher rates

appear to be going for longer. And yes, the Fed has not predicted a recession. Most economists have predicted one in there. But we're even in the Fed's view, we're going to be scraping along the bottom next year in terms of economic growth. And John Meacham, I we talked about Ronald Reagan earlier and and and Lincoln. It's interesting. You look at how this is lining up. We all we all remember the stories of Morning in America in 84. I remember the ad. Everybody thought, God, the economy is really turned around. Things are going so wonderfully. You go back and look and unemployment was it's

like seven point four percent wasn't doing that strong. It was all relative. And sometimes and I'm sure 41 told you this a great deal when whenever you had discussions with him, sometimes it's just all about timing. The economy turned around the fourth quarter of 1992. If it turned around a quarter or two earlier, George H.W. Bush would have been reelected and would have beaten Bill Clinton. So it's all about timing. But you look at these numbers. They seem to be lining up fairly well for Joe Biden if he decides to run for reelection in 24. Well, this the inflation and some of these the recessionary problems get washed out in 23. And by 24, it looks like we're moving to where we were in 1984.

I think that's right. Steve has forgotten more about this than I know. But yes, I think that the infrastructure pieces, literally and figuratively, are in place. And to connect these two parts of the conversation, what President Biden offers is sanity and stability. And even if you don't agree with him on 100 percent of policy, you know he's not going to suspend the Constitution one afternoon because he is grumpy. And that's kind of a low bar, I guess, for an American president. But as you say, everything is relative. You know, it's been a remarkable couple of years. To me, the really interesting question, and you and I have talked about this before, is are too many people, are there too many people who have a reflexively partisan disposition that is that no matter what the

facts are, they can't vote for a Democrat or they can't vote for a Republican? Is there something that's just so ingrained? What we saw, it seems to me, in the midterm was people saying that they were worried about some issue, perhaps it was Dobbs, perhaps it was something else, plus this threat to democracy. And I don't know if the democracy issue was the single driver. Anecdotally, I doubt it, but I think it was part of a matrix of decision. And I think what the president offers here is a restoration of a conversation about where we should be and where we should go as a country. That's a conversation that may not be perfect, but is rational and durable. And what the 45th president represents is the end of that conversation and the replacement of it at first with political laser tag. And that political laser

tag then became physical insurrection. And the choice is pretty clear here. Pretty, pretty clear. And so clear that I suppose the one thing, Jen, that we can thank Donald Trump for is the return of of of split ticket splitters. I mean, let's go state by state. You look at Georgia. Georgia voters elected a Republican governor, a Democratic senator. A lot of people that voted for that Republican governor voted for the Democratic senator. You go to Arizona. They said all of these statewide candidates are crazy and they went all Democratic. But when they were voting for members of Congress, they found some people that weren't crazy. They voted for those members of Congress.

Pennsylvania, a hell of a lot of people that voted for Dr. Oz also voted for Governor Shapiro there. You can go to Wisconsin in close races. A Democratic governor, a Republican senator, ticket splitters in every single swing state. Yeah. And I mean, first of all, I have to say I'm still processing the news that Patti Smith is going to be on this show that I am on. I'm I'm I'm overwhelmed. I texted with Willie about it and he noted that the show is so long. I'm in D.C. I could actually get on the shuttle and get to New York in time to meet Patti Smith at 30 Rock. Take a train.

It's literally true. I mean, it's literally true. It is literally true. But, I mean, I think that about the ticket splitters, it shows that voters are smart. They are capable of holding a few ideas in their heads at the same time. And they are very concerned

about democracy. And the Democratic candidates managed to make that a real issue, a real present issue for people in their lives. And that was a question about whether or not Democrats could do that.

You know, the last six years of Trumpism made Democrats great. They have, we talk about how Trump had bad candidates, had picked bad candidates to endorse in the 2022 midterms. And the Democrats had good ones, good candidates, but we don't really talk about how those things are related. We have been so freaked out by Trump and the threat that Trump and Trumpism represents.

We picked very good candidates. Candidates worked really hard. Democrats worked together on the ground to support each other. We put up an entire infrastructure around challenging the votes and how you protect the votes and how you challenge them, protect them in courts and all the way, along the way, all the way to Congress if you need to. And so this and I don't it wasn't just that we defeated candidates that were bad. Democrats proved in 2022 that they can defeat Trumpism. And it included a coalition of sometimes Republican voters, moderate voters. I don't know that that coalition can come together again in 2024, maybe it can, but the point is,

for Democrats, what happened was, when the chips were down, right, they met the moment and they proved that they could put the coalition together, they could make the right arguments, they understood what was happening in the country, they understood, as Meacham says, sort of, you know, the threat that was present,

and were able to deliver even even ticket splitters. I found it to be one of the most positive things coming out of 2022. That and the fact the Republicans who lost were actually willing to concede. All right, John Meacham, thank you so much for coming on this morning. His book, of course, by the way, this book, I know it just may be his best. It's a good Christmas. It's an incredible Christmas present. Yeah. And there was like Abraham Lincoln and the American struggle. That is what you want for Christmas. Your kids keep asking you.

Well, I can always count on getting 12 of Meacham's books. Yeah. And all my kids will pile them up. So I just I've got like Meacham's books and any Paul McCartney books, all of my kids will pile them up. So I've got Meacham books, McCartney books. I know what I'm going to get you. And McCartney has a new book coming out too. So it's just, yeah. I'm going to get you Laminated Charts by Steve Ratner. Oh, my God.

Just to say quickly, I'm like a dork fruitcake. I can just be there in the house and anybody who comes by, you can hand them one. So we're in good shape. I can pass them around. I can just be there in the house, and anybody who comes by, you can hand them one. So we're in good shape. I can pass them around. I can pass them to everybody. And by the way, I think what I'm going to do is... York fruitcake. So this is what I want.

Can you do this for me? Laminated charts. Can you do this for me? Yes. We're going to get Ratner's charts, right? Yeah, I'm going to laminate them for you. PDFs. No, I don't want them laminated.

Why not? I want to send them off, and I want to wallpaper the entire house. Let's just start with the bathroom. Okay? Let's start with the bathroom. Yeah, well, that's what I was talking about. I'm sorry to be polite. All right.

And by the way, it was a twofer this week, Steve Ratner. Two straight days of charts. That's amazing. That's going to cover half the wall there. All right, still ahead. That's what my grandma would call gracious plenty. Yeah. It's fantastic.

Still ahead of morning, Joe. We saw a unanimous show of bipartisanship agreement in the Senate yesterday. We're going to tell you what issue drew that extremely rare feat as we look at a beautiful shot of New York City this morning. New York in December. Morning, Joe. We'll be right back. Wow. Wow. And the truth is plain to see But I wander through my playing cards

54 past the hour, extremely sad news to report out of the entertainment world. Stephen Twitch Boss, known to millions as the longtime DJ on the Ellen DeGeneres Show, has died by suicide at the age of 40. NBC News senior national correspondent Kate Snow has the reaction from loved ones and fans. He was a regular on the ellen show for years over a decade ago i met someone who changed my life steven twitch boss twitch was the dj but more ellen's favorite dancer and partner eventually executive producer when the show was ending back in may twitch reflected on his time there on today it was so emotional and and what was crazy though it was like you know it was a lot of the the little things that started to really get me not even the big moments. As recently as Sunday tWitch was dancing with his wife Allison Holker in front of

their Christmas tree. They just posted celebrating their ninth wedding anniversary. Friends and fans stunned by the news he took his own life Tuesday. He was the backbone of our family, the best husband and father, and an inspiration to his fans, Holker said. To say he left a legacy would be an understatement. His death adding to a devastating trend, suicide rates up nationally over the last two decades, the highest spike in recent years among Black Americans. One of the things that we will hear oftentimes in the Black community is just this pride in not looking like what I'm going through so that folks don't know when they're actually struggling. Back in May, Twitch was overcome talking about his time on The Ellen Show. You gave me a place where I could just be myself.

When we say goodbye after the show, we both say love you. He says love you much, and I say love you. And so he's never going to be out of my life. Ellen writing, I'm heartbroken. Twitch was pure love and light. To many following along on social media, the 40-year-old father of three seemed so full of joy, a reminder that pain can remain hidden. His wife writing, Stephen, we love you, we miss you, and I will always save the last dance for you. NBC's Kate Snow with that report.