Morning Joe - Morning Joe 1/23/25

Episode Date: January 23, 2025

Trump administration directs DOJ to step up immigration enforcement

It was a terrible time and a terrible chapter in America's history. The presidents made his decision. I don't second guess those. And yes, you know, it's kind of my ethos, my worldview. We believe in redemption. We believe in second chances. If you could, you would argue that those people didn't pay a heavy penalty having been incarcerated and all of that, that that's up to you.

But the presidents made a decision. We move forward. There are better days ahead of us. That's what we're excited about. We're not looking backwards. We're looking forward. It was shocking. I mean, it was shocking what President Biden did on the way out,

pardoning his family for more than a decade of whatever activity, any nonviolent offenses. It was breathtaking to us. I don't think anything like that's ever been anticipated. And by the way, go look at the tape. Four years ago, when it was just implied that President Trump might do something similar, they were apoplectic. Joe Biden himself, Adam Schiff, Chuck Schumer, roll the tape.

They all said that would be crazy and unconscionable. And now they're cheering it along. To us, it is disgusting. To us, it probably proves the point, the suspicion that, you know, they call it the Biden crime family. If they weren't the crime family, why do they need pardons? Right? Look, there's a lot of attention that's going to be paid to this, and I think that is appropriate.

And we will be looking at it as well. All right. Just to recap what we saw there for Speaker Johnson, it's time to move on from President Trump's pardons of January 6 rioters. But President Biden's pardons of January 6 rioters, but President Biden's pardons deserve more investigation. We're going to bring you the president's new comments defending his clemency for the mob that attacked the Capitol, including those who assaulted police officers. We'll also go through the president's threats to

sanction Russia over the war in Ukraine. Plus, we'll dig into Elon Musk undercutting the president's major investment in AI and his feud with the project's partners. And in sports, Philadelphia is gearing up for Sunday's big NFL playoff game, but the mayor needs a little work on the team's chant. Let me hear you all say, E-L-G-L-E-S-E-L-G-L-E-S-E-L-G-L-E-S-E-L-G-L-E-S-E-L-G-L-E-S-E-L-G-L-E-S-E-L-G-L-E-S-E-L-G-L-E-S-E-L-G-L-E-S-E-L-G-L-E-S-E-L-G-L-E-S-E-L-G-L-E-S-E-L-G-L-E-S-E-L-G-L-E-S-E-L-G-L-E-S-E-L-G-L-E-S-E-L-G-L-E-S-E-L-G-L-E-S-E-L-G-L-E-S-E-L-G-L-E-S-E-L-G-L-E-S-E-L-G-L-E-S-E-L-G-L-E-S-E-L-G-L-E-S-E-L-G-L-E-S-E-L-G-L-E-S-E-L-G-L-E-S-E-L-G-L-E-S-E-L-G-L-E-S, Eagles! Yay! I like the energy. It's E-A-G-L-E-S, but that's okay.

They're excited. It's fun. Good morning and welcome to Morning Joe. That's it. I mean, give her cue cards if she needs them. I would totally do that. Get excited sometimes. My mouth is freezing out in the cold. People are looking at me. All right.

With us we have the co-host of The Fourth Hour, Jonathan Lemire. He's a contributing writer at The Atlantic covering the White House and national politics. Member of the New York Times editorial board, Mara Gaye. Managing editor at the Bulwark Sam Stein's with us, US national editor at the Financial Times Ed Luce is here and senior writer for the Dispatch David Drucker. So Joe a lot going on but we kind of need to remain focused here. Signal versus noise. Signal versus noise.

And you know, we just heard Christina Greer last hour telling Ali, we have to be careful to continue to separate what she calls performative acts versus what is actually meaningful change in yesterday. I think that's a great way to frame this because there are a flurry of things that are out there, including stories in the New York Times about how Donald Trump, you know, has things in the inauguration that look like thrones, etc., etc. Again, signal versus noise. Yesterday, I thought it was so helpful. The Pod Save America guys that came on who were just absolutely great. I love having them. Love having them on yesterday. But they said at one point, they said,

what we have to do is we have to stop telling people about how what Donald Trump says shocks people and instead talk about how what he does affects people, how it affects their lives. So yes, signal versus noise. We're going to get to all of that. But I do feel like we need to go to the member of the New York Times editorial board and ask her the question, when exactly, when exactly did the Democratic Party leave Mayor Eric Adams? What investigation launched made him suddenly decide that he was no longer a Democrat? This wasn't exactly a Ronald Reagan moment, was it, Maura?

Oh, yeah. It's interesting because maybe it was the moment when the Democratic Party refused to look away at allegations of corruption into his administration in the same way that the Republican Party just allowed Donald Trump to do whatever he pleased. I guess that's the standard that Eric Adams is potentially looking for from the Democratic

Party. He has made no secret of his attempt to seek a pardon from the president of the United States now. It has led to a lot of embarrassment, not only for the mayor personally, but among a lot of constituents in this city, to the Democratic town. You know, at the same time, he has a base,

some of whom, black men, for example, in Southeast Queens, just one slice of his base, you know, who I've talked to some of them and they say hey there's a double standards so we kind of see how the mayor might feel persecuted and maybe we agree, but I think that is a narrow interpretation and I do believe that depending on how every day New Yorkers experience the next few months of the Trump administration,

and depending on how Adams' competition in the primary perform, he may be up for a serious challenge. Yeah, and I think we need to go to our daily news alum who spent much of his early career harassing New York City mayors, even chasing Bill de Blasio to his daily gym trips in Brooklyn.

Jonathan Lemire, you're both daily news alums, right? You're both daily news alums. So, yeah, John, really quickly, I'm sorry, it's just too rich. I didn't leave the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party left me. I mean, come on, really? Has there ever been like a more sort of air of corruption around not only the mayor, but everybody?

Everybody, it seems, it works for him. Yeah, there was certainly that wave of indictments and FBI raids that surrounded Adams is in our circle a few months ago, I just note many New Yorker still hold those Jim trips against the Blasio but this has been a such a blatant effort here from Adams to court favor from Trump he attend you you got a middle of the night invitation to the inauguration skipping MLK day events in New York City so we could drive down to Washington at one in the morning and attend that.

He has been to pump tomorrow a lot. Yes, there are real, of course, real reasons for the mayor of the nation's largest city to talk to the then president-elect, but the speculation was about a pardon. He did an interview with Tucker Carlson the other night. He's doing everything he can to move in on Trump. He's withheld criticism of a lot of Trump's more controversial policies, but at least to this point, his efforts for pardon may not be working

because just yesterday, the interim US attorney appointed by Trump until the normal US attorney for the Southern District could be appointed basically dismissed Adams' public claims, Mika, that the investigation into him was somehow ordered by the Biden Department of Justice because it was revenge because Adams criticized Biden's migrant policy and this attorney, again, pointed into the interim basis by Donald Trump, suggests no, that's not it. There's a there there and the prosecution is going to continue. Oh my. OK. And of course, all this may lead to, ultimately, Mika, the return of one Andrew Cuomo.

So there you go. It's going to be an interesting mayor's race. All right. Our top story this morning, the Republican-led House has passed the Lakin-Riley Act, a strict immigration detention bill named for a 22-year-old Georgian nursing student murdered last year by an undocumented immigrant. The legislation targets undocumented individuals who commit crimes and is expected to become the first bill signed into law by President Trump in his second term. The House passed the bill, 263 to 156, with 46 Democrats joining every Republican in support. The Senate passed the bill on Monday by a vote of 64 to 35, which included 12 Democrats,

among them senators Gary Peters, John Osoff, Gene Shaheen, and Mark Warner, all of whom are up for re-election next year. The act requires ICE to take custody of and detain undocumented immigrants who are charged, arrested or convicted of committing acts of burglary, theft, larceny or shoplifting. The Venezuelan citizen who was found guilty of kidnapping, assaulting, and murdering Riley while she was out for a job near the University of Georgia was in the US illegally. He had been cited for shoplifting by a Georgia Police Department but ICE did not issue a detainer for him and he was not taken into custody. So this is one of the first pieces of legislation passed. Joe?

Right. And again, this is where we're talking about signal versus noise, performative acts versus actually actions that are going to be impactful. This is obviously, David Drucker, something that the overwhelming majority of Americans support. I think you go all the way up into the 80s. There's some people that suggest it goes too far. But even that argument, you're getting into the old broken windows argument. For instance, Rudy Giuliani and police officers going after, in some cases, shoplifting,

that when they go after the smaller crimes, that leads to larger crimes. And, you know, right now, in 2025, the overwhelming majority of Americans support this act. And it's one of the reasons why, when it passed, it passed with strong bipartisan support. Yeah, look, if you want to, you know, try and understand one of the reasons why Donald Trump was sent back to the White House after, you know, everything that he said and did during his first term and in the aftermath of his first term, you don't have to look any farther than how, you know, President Biden and the views of so many voters mismanaged border security.

And this is just not complicated, Joe, right? I mean, some things take political explainers and, you know, we've got to say, you know, point A to point B to point C, and that, you know, explains why things happen. People of all political backgrounds, even if they draw different conclusions on exact policy prescriptions, are probably going to tell you that if you're in this country illegally and you commit crimes that shouldn't happen and the government ought to do something about it particularly when it becomes an issue of public safety concern for so many voters and so you saw the political marketplace and work here with

Democrats in the Senate where this needed 60 votes participating with Republicans to advance this legislation. It was of course going to clear the Republican House and the number of Democrats in the House that voted for this wasn't inconsequential, but it's the Senate that really tells you what's happening, where you have Democrats up for reelection in 2026 that help make sure this is law. One thing that I'd add guys is if the president, the new president wants to have a real impact on immigration policy, it's going to happen through legislation like this

versus executive orders, which are ephemeral and can be reversed when the next president takes office, particularly if that president's a Democrat and they take issue with some of the things that the president, current president's doing on immigration. All right. All right. And, David, we actually saw that with Joe Biden. You know, think about all the executive orders that Joe Biden signed to reverse what Donald Trump put into effect. And Donald Trump spent his first day in office reversing so many of those.

I mean, this is so key that, again, there's a lot of reformative actions over the past several days. There have been some things that we're going to talk about, J6 in a second. There have been some also some things that are going to have a significant impact on this country. But if you're going to change immigration in particular, unilateral acts are only going to change things so much. It's legislation like this that actually

is going to bend history. Correct, and President Trump actually understands what he's doing this time around. You may disagree with him, but when he came into the presidency the first time, he barely understood how Congress works. And I mean that at a very basic level, just understanding the process, let alone do you get what you want or not.

This time, he understands the process. He understands, as presidents before him did, how to exert executive authority that may be questionable, but presidents are never shy and using every piece of authority that they may or may not have, which stands in so different to Congress, which is happy to give power away to the executive and judicial branches. Also, I think President Trump has more latitude this time. Whatever people thought about the border, and there was a huge concern about the border in 2017 as he entered office in that first term, given how things went for most of the Biden administration,

President Trump has more political latitude, I believe, in the country to be aggressive in how he brings the border and immigration, both legal and illegal, under control from his perspective. And so I don't think that you're gonna see necessarily the same kind of pushback, at least initially, that we saw at times during that first term. You know, Ed Luce, you've written about, and we discussed at length last time you were here, Joe Biden's tragic legacy. Of course, there are many points to that. There are also, of course, Mika will be glad to tell you, as will I,

there are also some really great achievements during his first term, but she'll probably tell us this after I finish this question with you. But one of the sad legacies is the fact that there were some blind spots in the administration, blind spots that you and I over dinner at times, even two years ago, three years ago, we're talking about blind spots not only in the Biden administration, but also among Democrats. One was what was going on on campus even before the protests last year. And another was, again, the flood of illegal immigrants over the southern border and just something that neither Joe Biden nor the Democratic Party as a whole got their arms around.

And it did. Illegal immigration hasn't been an issue that has changed presidential races in the past. But boy, it sure did this time, didn't it? Yeah, it sure did. I mean, I think back to the 2019-2020 Democratic primaries and that sort of competitive amongst the candidates for the Democratic nomination competing to see who could scream open border more loudly than others. I think Beto O'Rourke, people like that.

And Biden, you know, Biden was on that stage. He was actually the moderate on that stage and wasn't calling for open borders. But it captured the spirit of a party that I think had lost all touch with American public opinion, with the median voter on that issue. And yes, during the early Biden years, partly because the pandemic ended, there was a surge of immigration. There were also changes to regulations that made it easier for them to come through with or without a pandemic. But that ended. By the end of the Biden term, we've had illegal immigration drop very, very sharply. It's a really eccentric moment. Precipitously, yeah.

For President Trump to be declaring a national emergency. I think he's devaluing the word emerge- he's talking about an energy emergency, a crime emergency, a border emergency, on all these issues. Biden's left him a pretty good situation. So you know, call me a pedantic, but I think the word emergency is being misused. Well you're not alone. The conservative Wall Street Journal editorial page has pretty much said the same thing. Don't devalue the word emergency when right now at this moment there's not an emergency. Just like when Donald Trump got into office in 2017, illegal border crossings on the southern border were

actually at 50 year lows. At the same time, he was talking about and his supporters were running about building the wall, building the wall, we've got to stop the invasion. They were at 50 year lows, not at 50 year lows now but they are at five year lows. So to declare a national emergency at this time actually is as the Wall Street Journal editorial page says seems to be devaluing the word emergency. That said, at the same time, this is an issue that matters a great deal to Americans. But you look at the Reuters poll, we showed the overwhelming majority of Americans want people that came here illegally who have committed crimes in America to be deported.

That is where the overwhelming majority of Americans are right now. And that's why this legislation passed in such a bipartisan manner. Yeah. Our other top story this morning, President Trump continues to defend his pardons for all of the January 6 rioters. The president last night downplayed the violence against police officers that day in the first Oval Office interview of his new term. Take a listen.

Number of reasons. Number one, they were in there for three and a half years, a long time. And in many solitary confinement, treated like nobody's ever been treated so badly. They were treated like the worst criminals in history. And you know what they were there for? They were protesting the vote because they knew the election was rigged and they were protesting the vote. And that, you know, should be allowed to protest a vote. You should be allowed to. You know, the day—when the day comes—

But you shouldn't be able to invade the Capitol. No. Ready? Most of the people were absolutely innocent. OK, but forgetting all about that, these people have served horribly a long time. It would be very, very cumbersome to go and look. You know how many people are talking about? 1,500 people. Almost all of them are—should not have been—this should not have happened. And the other thing is this. Some of those people were the police, too, but they were very minor incidents, OK?

You know, they get built up by that couple of fake guys that are on CNN all the time. Everybody watches it. They were very minor incidents, and it was time. You had 1,500 people that suffered. That's a lot of people. You know, they were looking for new people two weeks ago. They were looking—wait a minute. They were looking to charge new people.

They have a woman who's 76 years old that they said was—made a statement that was a little bit out of line years after the fact. This was a political hoax. And you know what? Those people, and I'm not saying in every single case, but there was a lot of patriotism with those people. So, Sam Pesci, you just heard it.

In the friendly confines of Sean Hannity, Oval Office interview. Donald Trump continues to downplay what happened there, suggesting that officers were exaggerating their injuries. We had Michael Fanon on our area yesterday talk about how he suffered a heart attack, went into cardiac arrest, was beaten within an inch of his life. We talked about how members, some of the rioters would use flagpoles, baseball bats, whatever it might be. The cops own weapons, their batons, to attack them. And yet, this for Donald Trump seems to be, closing the book after four years of, in his

mind, a successful effort to downplay what we're seeing right there in our screens. I mean, obviously, it's ridiculous and insulting to the officers who went through that traumatic ordeal. Several officers took their lives. I don't consider that minor in the slightest. I don't think anyone would objectively consider that minor. I should note that it was interesting to see Hannity kind of sheepishly say, you shouldn't be able to invade the Capitol, right?

Of course you shouldn't be able to be in the Capitol. It goes without saying. But this is Trump at his peak. He wants to erase this part of history. And I'm not honestly, nothing about it surprises me. I think the more interesting, more surprising element of this was Mike Johnson, which the video we played, which is Mike Johnson sort of saying, well, let's just move on. That's in the past.

We don't need to relitigate this. Let's go forward. And then hours later, launching an investigative committee in Congress to investigate the preceding days of January 6 and what happened after January 6, basically investing the investigators. And so they are trying to recast this entire history. It begins with Trump's blanket pardon, which in that interview, he said, it would have been too cumbersome to go through individual cases.

So just do all 1,500. And then it continues into the use of congressional resources, congressional authorities to try to cast doubt on the prosecution, the legitimate prosecution of the people who rioted, who tried to stop peaceful transfer of power. It is a deliberate and comprehensive attempt to try to rewrite one of the darker chapters of our political history.

Well, you know, we've seen before when Congress and others have tried to investigate the investigators regarding Trump administration, it never ends well for those investigating the investigators. And in this case, you better believe that if you open this door back up and you really want to go back to January the 6th and you were a supporter of Donald Trump, you're going to not only see this, you're going to see cops as as the Wall Street Journal called them cop beaters. You're going to see the people that walked free after beating the hell out of cops, after doing things that led to the death of several cops,

talk to their families, they'll tell you that. You'll hear more people like Michael Fanon, who went to work that day to do their job to protect the United States Capitol, who had the hell beaten out of them. They were kicked, they were tased, and by these people that were bragging, they were bragging about beating the hell out of law enforcement officers. So the elevation of cop beaters, yeah, by Mike Johnson saying, oh listen, let's not focus on the cop beaters.

Let's focus on the Biden pardons. Good luck with that. It's just not going to end well. It's really not. It's not going to end well for Republicans. It's not going to end well for the White House. David Drucker, let's talk, though, about the impact and the blowback on this. I've already talked about how the Wall Street Journal editorial page was sufficiently shocked

at clemency for cop beaters. And there were about half a dozen Republicans that came out yesterday in the Senate and actually condemned this, said it was a bad thing to do. They wouldn't do it. That said, from Republicans I spoke to, and I'm really curious what you heard, whether they said it in front of microphones or not, there was a deep abiding unease all across the Capitol yesterday among Republicans, seeing that some of the worst of the worst actually

got to walk free after beating the hell out of law enforcement officers. Yeah, look, I mean, how often is there a deep abiding unease about something Donald Trump says or does? And it really doesn't matter. He campaigned on this. He said he was going to do this. This is not shocking, and all that matters politically is what do voters think, and voters voted for him anyway.

So I'm not saying it doesn't matter, and I am not saying people shouldn't be upset, but this is not going to surprise anybody, and it's the sort of thing that could end up blowing back on Trump if the things he was really elected to do, which is get the border under control and improve the economy by bringing down inflation, bringing down costs, I mean these are things that voters really want from him, not all of this other stuff.

If he gets that wrong, then it becomes death by a thousand cuts and it's like, oh you did this and you did that. But all of these things were very well known. So this is not to excuse it, but just to point out politically, this is not going to be a shock to the system or a shock to the public, nor is it a shock to Republicans. They knew he would do this and they have been okay with this because their voters have been okay with this. And look, we could end up being wrong.

There could be some sort of immediate pushback broadly throughout the country. But everybody knows who Donald Trump is at this point. They've listened to him for almost a decade. And I'd be surprised if initially there was a big uproar. Well, Mika, this is what you've been saying is. Yeah. He campaigned on this. He promised to do this. dig up for. Well, because this is what you've been saying is he campaigned on this. He promised to do this. I mean, the only caveat to that, of course, is talking about doing it by case by case basis. J.D. Vance saying, no, we're

not going to let the violent criminals out, the ones that beat up the cops. And we heard that from a lot of Republicans. But that is a caveat to a much bigger campaign thing where he glorified throughout the campaign the January 6 rioters. Voters knew he was glorifying them, calling them patriots, and they voted for him and elected him. So David makes a very good point. Yeah. And not only did he campaign on this, this is his right.

As hard as it is to say, this is his right as president. And yesterday I was reading a lot about this and watching the coverage and I was seeing reporters getting into huge fights with Republican congressmen. And they just kept going around in circles because, of course, Donald Trump kept his word and Joe Biden did not. That's also true. And so that's the trap. You know, reporters are going to get in. They're going to go around in circles.

That's only going to feed into the negative narrative about the media. It's going to do nothing to prove a point about this. Nothing. It actually may undermine it. And Maragay, I feel like editorial writers need to step up. Democrats need to step up. Voices like Michael Fanon's need to be heard. I was listening to him all day and we had him on the show yesterday gripping

and absolutely to the point of the problem here. And so there's a role here for those who need to step up. And by the way, I would really hope that some Republicans would step up. But again, there are some potholes here that I think the media falls into, and we can't let that happen because there are some realities about this that are undeniable. It is his right and he promised. And then there's the counter narrative, which is also undeniable. Joe Biden promised that he would not pardon his son or his family, and he did.

And he also pardoned others who have done things. And it's extremely muddled. And it's not a fight that I think personally, reporters and hosts want to get in to have moments. I think I really don't. I think we're getting in the way of things. So I'm looking at this from a coverage perspective to someone who works at the New York Times. I think that's exactly the right question.

You know, during Trump's first term, there was a lot of both on the part of the Democratic Party and even from voters, in the media, there was kind of a grasping at normalcy. So an attempt to excuse away, to minimize some of what Donald Trump was not only doing in office, but said that he was about. It was clear that he was not committed to democracy. But there was a lot of kind of handholding of Donald Trump.

Well, surely you want to actually support democracy. Surely you couldn't mean the things that you're saying. And I think this is a moment where the opposition, and that is not just the Democratic Party, but that's any American who's committed to democracy, has to look at this and say, this is about raw power. And this is a man who promised some really shocking things that are destructive to our democracy,

and he is delivering on them. There is no excusing it away. And I think the other moment, the pardons are one moment, the Nazi salute from Elon Musk was another. So this is a challenge to not excuse away, not minimize, to call a spade a spade. But cover it. And those who should call a spade a spade,

especially Republicans and Democrats in Washington, editorial writers, victims. You know, ultimately, Americans will have to see what is happening here as he delivers on his promises, and they will decide whether or not this is what they really wanted. I do talk to a lot of people who voted for Trump who don't think these things would have happened so I wonder where that leads. Senior writer David Drucker thank you very much for joining us this morning. We'll be reading your new reporting for The Dispatch online now and still ahead on

Morning Joe. A new fast-moving wildfire breaks out in Los Angeles County burning more than 10,000 acres in just a matter of hours. We'll have the latest from that already hard-hit area. Plus, a live report from Davos as President Trump prepares to address global business leaders today. Also ahead, we'll get to President Trump's new threat to hit Russia with tariffs if Vladimir Putin doesn't end the war in Ukraine.

We're back in 90 seconds. All right. Past the hour. Time now for a look at some of the other stories making headlines this morning. A new wildfire exploded north of Los Angeles yesterday, forcing tens of thousands of people to evacuate. The flames shut down schools and businesses and temporarily closed parts of Interstate 5. It comes more than two weeks after the first wave of deadly infernos tore through the region.

We'll stay on that. Overnight, we learned that seven police officers in San Antonio, Texas were shot while responding to a suicide in progress call. According to authorities, none of the officers' injuries are believed to be life-threatening. The shooting happened just before 8.30 p.m. local time. Police say the original call to authorities came from a family member. The suspect, who is described to be in his 40s, barricaded himself

inside an apartment for several hours when SWAT teams arrived on the scene. In the end, he was found dead inside the complex. Police are still unsure if the suspect's death was self-inflicted or whether he was shot by officers. And a 17-year year old opened fire inside a school cafeteria in Nashville, Tennessee. It happened around 11 a.m. yesterday morning at Eniyak High School. We've learned the shooter confronted his classmates in the cafeteria and then proceeded to fire multiple shots. A 16 year old student was killed and another was grazed by a bullet

and treated at a nearby hospital. The gunman then fatally shot himself with a handgun. At this moment, a motive remains unclear, but police say they are reviewing very concerning online writings and social media posts linked to the gunman. The shooting comes nearly two years after another deadly shooting in the city that took the lives of six people. As of now, the high school will be closed for the rest of the week. Joe.

Yeah, just a shock to the people of Nashville again, coming two years after another deadly shooting at a school. Our prayers are certainly with those families affected and the schools affected. And for the people of Nashville, the madness has to stop. President Trump's threatening new tariffs and sanctions against Russia if a deal to stop fighting in Ukraine isn't reached soon. In a lengthy media post yesterday, Trump explained he's not going to, he's not looking to hurt Russia and that he loves the Russian people, but that Vladimir Putin must settle now because

it's only going to get worse. Trump said if a deal isn't reached soon, he won't have any other choice but to put high levels of tariffs and sanctions imported on Russian products. The Wall Street Journal cites Census Bureau data that shows the rate at which imported Russian goods enter the U.S. has dropped drastically since Putin launched his war. Let's bring it right now Wall Street Journal reporter Alan Cullison. He's a former Moscow correspondent for the journal reporting from Russia for over 20 years. Alan, thank you so much for being with us. I guess this is, you know, the economic impact is not going to be quite so great on any tariffs

because trade has dwindled so rapidly since the invasion. But what does this statement by President Trump say about how far he's willing to push Vladimir Putin on getting the sides to the negotiating table? I think the statement's actually quite significant. It meant more than tariffs, clearly. Yeah, the trade with Russia has dwindled a lot over the years. It never was that significant to begin with, because of our distance, of course. But, you know, the United States has waged a pretty breathtaking sanction regime against him.

And this statement by Trump is the strongest indication yet that he's going to continue it and maybe even ramp it up. I think probably he was quite surprised to the Kremlin that he would say this. This was even before Trump and Putin have had an official phone call. Yeah, you know, you've obviously covered Russia a great deal of your adult life and understand the relationship between Vladimir Putin and the United States. I always thought there was a fascinating split screen in the first Trump administration where Donald Trump would go to Helsinki, he would say things that would horrify Americans, and at the same time, Congress, with Donald Trump's support, would pass some of the toughest sanctions, a Republican Congress would pass some of the toughest sanctions against Vladimir Putin.

I'm wondering if that's a continuation of that. I'm also wondering, economically, where is Putin right now? Where is Russia right now as this war grinds on? Yeah, I think the split screen is likely to continue. I think that Trump himself is probably relishing the fact that people expect him to be conciliatory towards Putin, but he's not in action here, and this is a signal of it.

I think that the economic sanctions are getting more and more important to Putin. The Biden administration unleashed some sanctions that were really unprecedented against a country so large. I don't think it's ever been done in really in the history of sanctions making. And the Russian economy is feeling some strains on it. The inflation is ramping up and they're having to raise interest rates. The economy is going to cough. I think that there's also a pretty bad labor shortage.

The big question right now is whether sanctions alone are really going to be enough to stop the war. The Russians think that they're winning the war, and they don't really see a whole lot of reason to negotiate. So I think that- I was going to ask you, Alan. Go ahead. Oh, I'm so sorry.

Yeah, I'm so sorry. Yeah, I'm so sorry. I was going to ask you about the state of the war from all that you know, all you hear, from all of your reporting in the United States. It seems that one week we will get news stories and headlines that say Russia is gaining ground, pushing westward, Kyiv's even at risk. And then next week, we'll hear about Ukrainian attacks going deep into Russia. And it's really hard to tell what the stage of this war is at and who has the momentum. Right now, you take everything you read in the United States, and I'm sure across the West, and it seems that it is an ugly war of attrition,

sort of 2025 version of World War I. What are your sources telling you inside of Russia and Ukraine about the state of this war? Well, I think that the Russians do have the momentum right now. It's dearly bought. They have very high casualty rate, and it is taking a toll on their economy. But the Russian calculation is that the pain, of course, is felt on both sides. And I think the hope was that the Ukrainians were going to crack sometime this year, and that they might even crack before half the year is over.

But if they can be persuaded that the war will continue not only this year, but the Ukrainians can continue to stand next year, then I think it might be a force, you know, a recalculation in how they're doing things. I think that's why this discussion of economic sanctions and Trump's desire to stand up and force a change is significant. Yeah. All right. Wall Street Journal reporter Alan Colison, thank you so much. We hope you come back soon.

Thank you. All right. Ed Luce, I'm curious. Your take, you obviously have been following this for the Financial Times, from the Europeans' perspective. Donald Trump's statement, obviously, not only causing surprise, I'm sure, in Moscow, but also across some of the capitals of Europe that he is pushing. The belief in the campaign was always going to be that the pressure was going to all be on Zelensky. That's certainly not the signal he sent last night.

Yeah, I mean, this was a very pleasant surprise. I'm not used to pleasant surprises. None of us are at the moment. It was a positive shock, I think, what Trump said yesterday. And I think my guesswork as to why he did this is that I think as Alan just laid out, Putin is not interested in talks at the moment. He believes he's gaining and has more to gain on the battlefield. And remember, you know, the war is now almost three years old.

It'll be three years next month. He's actually got less territory today than he had before he invaded of Ukraine. Less. So having lost 200,000 men and another sort of several hundred thousand casualties who weren't killed, this is an extraordinary high cost for no gain. So clearly Putin doesn't want to talk. Trump has campaigned on saying,

I'll fix it in 24 hours. Keith Kellogg, his former general, who's there to be the envoy on this, is saying 100 days. But even 100 days sounds short if one of the parties, the aggressor, isn't interested in talking. So I think this riles up Trump's pride that he is the dealmaker. Putin isn't even responding. And so he's got to apply some pressure, some arm twisting, to get Putin to think again. And I'm hoping for some more pleasant surprises.

I'm not forecasting them, but I like pleasant surprises. It's such an odd feeling. And Mika, I've been talking to some Trump officials in recent days. The unpredictability here is the point. He's trying to keep Putin and Russia and those in the conflict off guard. He does want this war to end sooner or later, in part because of the possible economic toll that could take the longer it stretches. We'll see if he follows through.

That's the great unknown. But at least right now, it feels like some saber-rattling might be helpful. Interesting. Ukrainian President Zelensky was at the World Economic Forum in Davos earlier this week. And today, President Trump is expected to address the global business leader at the gathering. He will do so virtually. With us now, from the World Economic Forum in Davos, chief content officer and

editor in chief at Forbes, Randall Lane. So Randall, tell us what you're hearing there, reaction, world reaction to the Trump presidency overall, his first moves in office, and looking ahead to his address. Yeah, well, you know, he's obviously it's quite a week to be here and you could actually see the world kind of react in real time to this flurry of actions he's been taking. But I got to say, a lot of this seems to be baked in. It's not. I was here eight years ago when he was inaugurated and that was kind of shock. This year, it seems like everyone is right. You know, a lot of this, you know're here at the, this is the capital of multilateralism

and everyone seems to accept that multilateralism for at least the next four years isn't happening. And you see it, we talk about Zelensky, even Ukraine has a space here where they're doing meetings and lobbying and whatnot. And the theme is every country first. They're mimicking the language of America first and actually pivoting from the idea,

and I could have spent time with Zelensky on Tuesday, he took a small group of leaders in chief and kind of had a little meeting, and you could see him pivot where instead of him talking about the moral needs to support Ukraine, which you saw last year he came and he had a standing ovation. This year he spoke, there was no standing ovation,

he talked about the self-interest of America and Europe to help in Ukraine. Big pivot, you see it, and you see that up and down here in Davos, everybody accepting that the world has changed and they're reacting to it. Hey, Randall, Sam Stein here. I'm kind of curious beyond the countries, Davos obviously a huge gathering of some of the wealthiest people on the planet. What we've seen here in the United States, obviously, is that our tech titans and some of our leading financiers have all made the calculated decision that they are going to

cozy up to Trump, flatter him, work with him, pledge billions of dollars to projects, although maybe some question about whether that financing will come through. That's another point. But I'm curious at Davos, is it the same vibe? Are the wealthy also saying, you know what, all that kind of quasi-protesting we did eight years ago, all that moral high ground stuff, we're done with that and we're going to actually be partners with this administration. You are feeling some of that and the discussion here you would think and again to watch all that happened from afar. What's going on in the last 72 hours has been really interesting, but you would think everybody's

nonstop talking about Trump. They're not. You know what everyone's talking about here and last year was crypto crypto. This year it's maybe 10% trip crypto, 30% Trump, it's 60% AI. So if you look at the tech community, but also the business community of Wall Street, everyone's talking about AI here. And to the extent the Trump administration there, people, listen, business people don't like tariffs.

Tariffs are tax hikes, period, end, stop. Bad idea from where 95% of business leaders sit. But there's also less regulation coming, and there's a chance to change things and make money. And you're seeing people lean into that. So there's actually a lot of a lot of optimism and buoyancy of the vibe in terms of a chance to really leapfrog in terms of making progress in some areas with AI first and foremost. My Forbes editor in chief Randall Lane, look forward to talking to you in the coming days. We've got some 50, over 50 global announcements to make, as well as a 30-50 summit to announce some major names, some of which you may be with there.

U.S. national editor for the Financial Times, Ed Luce, thank you as well. We'll be reading your new piece, which is online now. And coming up, we'll take a closer look at some of the executive orders Donald Trump signed on his first day in office Steve Ratner standing by at the Southwest wall to break down the potential impact these actions could have on our economy and Environment morning Joe will be right back. Welcome back. Within hours of taking office, President Trump signed a slew of executive actions underscoring his intent to promote fossil fuels and roll back America's progress on climate

change and clean energy. Let's bring in former Treasury official and Morning Joe economic analyst Steve Ratner and as Los Angeles burns, Steve, tell us about it. Yeah, Mika, it's really quite extraordinary the number of things he's done. But let's start with drill baby drill, what Trump is talking about in terms of really ramping up our oil and gas production. And he also declared a national energy emergency. But it's really perplexing as to why he called for a national energy emergency. Given that we are actually producing oil and gas at record amounts. We have gone from being a significant importer of oil in particular, as everybody knows, briefly became an exporter during COVID, but that was COVID related.

But then under Biden, we've become a bigger exporter of oil and gas than we have ever been before in our history. And so who knows where this whole idea of a national energy emergency and drill baby drill comes from. But at the same time, he has also pulled us out of the Paris Climate Accord. And this is a really big deal, because obviously as things like Los Angeles demonstrate,

we have to address our impact on the climate and global warming. In 2018, we were pretty much on a flatline trajectory in terms of not increasing but not decreasing our emissions. But a whole bunch of stuff that happened since then, the Inflation Reduction Act, limits on tailpipe emissions, the emphasis on renewable energy, had put us on an extraordinary path down really to almost meet the targets that have been set for our energy emissions. Rolling this back probably puts us more back to here.

And so instead of helping the world's climate problem, we go back to hurting it at a time when as we can see the planet is literally burning up. Of course, Steve, this is the second time that Donald Trump has pulled us out of the Paris climate agreement. He pulled us out of the first term, Joe Biden put us back in. And now, yet again, the United States has departed. But this is all just that's just one of the ways that climate change perhaps being exacerbated by what Donald Trump is doing. He's also taken aim at electric vehicle incentives, dismantling them.

Talk to us why that's important. Yeah. So about half of the fuel that we use, of the gasoline we use in this country is for cars. And so reducing the amount of gasoline that we use is a critical part of reducing our energy usage and climate. And he is pulling back on our subsidies that were put in place as part of the Inflation Reduction Act at a time when America is actually lagging the world in terms of our adoption

of electric vehicles. China, maybe surprisingly, maybe not to people, is actually the leader. Over 40% now, a little bit less than 40% last year of all the cars and vehicles sold in China were electric. Even Europe at about 20% is way ahead of us. We're down here at 10% and so obviously pulling back on the incentives and the other restrictions on gasoline-powered vehicles does nothing to help us. Now one person who might be helped by all this is Elon Musk. So Tesla had about a 75 percent share of electric vehicles, electric cars sold in this country. That's not unusual. They were the first mover. They had a great

product. He did really well. The shares been coming down again. That's probably a natural effect of all the other car companies coming into the electric vehicle business. But Musk himself is on record as saying that pulling back these subsidies is actually good for him because his customers are stickier and they're more likely to keep buying these cars and his share will go up. And one little interesting fact, the stock market agrees with Musk.

Since the election, Tesla stock is up 67%, which brings it to a $1.3 trillion market value. General Motors, by comparison, has a $60 billion market value. And Steve, take us to your third chart now, which are two early Trump priorities. First, the border, and the second, taking aim at the federal workforce. Yeah so let's talk about two other things that he's been doing. Obviously the border as you guys have already talked about is front and center on Trump's mind but what's interesting is that if you go back to the first Trump term he actually released an

average of about 30,000 undocumented immigrants a year who crossed the border but had been either charged or convicted of crimes back in their home country. And so you can see that. And this includes, by the way, 309 people who were either charged or convicted of murder. He released them into the country. And that was a reaction actually to an Obama policy. Obama had prioritized this Trump, deprioritized it in favor of things like family separation and other policies.

Biden turned that around and you can see here how much the number of people who are charged or were charged or convicted of crimes back home got released in the country. So Trump's record in the first term is really quite extraordinary compared to what happened under Biden. Let's talk about another issue, which is the federal workforce. He's already put a 90-day freeze on hiring in the federal government, taking a bunch of other steps that we're aware of to try to what he calls rein in the federal workforce. But what is it we're reining in?

The federal civilian workforce, which is just under 2.3 million people, has actually grown very slowly. It's only up by 100,000, about 4%, all the way back to 1981 at the time of Ronald Reagan. The US population is up 30%. What's also interesting to note, and by the way, these little spikes are census hiring, but what's interesting to note is that the biggest reduction in the federal workforce actually came under Clinton in the 90s. And in fact, the increases in the federal workforce have all come under Republicans, from Reagan Bush to G.W. Bush, and then to Trump himself actually increased the federal

workforce during his first term. Morning, Joe. Economic analyst Steve Ratner with his charts. Thank you very much for coming on this morning.