Morning Joe - Morning Joe 1/30/24

Episode Date: January 30, 2024

U.S. identifies three soldiers killed in Jordan attack

The jury in former President Trump's defamation trial has ordered him to pay $83 million in damages. In a related story, a bunch of classified documents just turned up on eBay. Carol appeared on Good Morning America today to talk about her plans for the settlement. I'd like to give the money to something Donald Trump hates. Well, wow. Well, congratulations on the payday, Eric. Good morning and welcome to Morning Joe. It is Tuesday, January 30th.

That's a big day for me. I have a 28-year-old now. My daughter's birthday. Happy birthday. Wow, I have a 28-year-old. Along with Joe, Willie, and me, we have the host of way too early, White House Bureau Chief at Politico, Jonathan Lemire, former White House Director of Communications to President Obama, Jennifer Palmieri.

She and Claire McCaskill are co-hosts of the MSNBC podcast, How to Win 2024. Joe, just sit down. There he is. Good to see you. Good to see you. I'm so glad you could be here. I want to know you're the most valued member of this team. I appreciate that.

It is so good to see you. Thank you for being here. It's my honor. You know that thing you did over there up and, you know, all forgotten, all forgotten. It's good. It's good. Willie, you're also the most valued member. Yeah, of course. All forgotten. It's good. It's good. I want you to know American democracy is riding

on your shoulders. You won't let us down. No, I got it, sir. Yeah, we got it. Okay. What's up? Sure. Get a handshake. Not a hug? Nothing for Richard. President Emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, Richard Koss. Don't get, just get a shot of Richard, please. They're coming back. I'm from the South. I can't do that. It was all for a fact, Richard. Thank you for your service to America.

All right. Willie, would you like, I don't even know. What's going on? I just. What's up? It's a dramatic walk. Johnny Carson come through the curtain. Yeah, exactly. I need a multi-color curtain is what I need. By the way, yo, I will say when I was a young guy, I did realize at the time, Willie, that every night I got to see Johnny Carson, I knew it was special. Yeah. I knew at the time. It's like, wait, we get to see this guy every night.

Kind of crazy. It's an event and, what, 25, 30 million people were watching the Tonight Show in those days. Just incredible. Yeah. Not as many as watched Lemire. Well. A little more than watched NFL.

But, yeah. Unfair comparison, given your numbers. No, the advantages that we have. It's really significant. But Carson did his best. Who he did. Yeah, that's what I mean. But Carson did his best.

We try. But yeah, the NFL also did put up record ratings again this weekend. Huge. I would guess the Super Bowl will do pretty well. I think so. With a special guest in the crowd. NFL's pleased. Yeah. Not unhappy with the matchup. I would guess the Super Bowl will do pretty well with a special guest in the crowd. NFL's pleased.

Not unhappy with the matchup. So, Jen, I understand the president's going to deploy Taylor Swift at this strategic time. Oh, my God. Pentagon asset, Taylor Swift. I mean, are you up on the whole conspiracy theories? No, but we might as well. Every other network's like bathing in conspiracy theories. Why can't we? Should I walk through it? So that Taylor that the that the Taylor Swift, Travis Kelsey romance is a concoction for her.

And the NFL is in on it to like make to to draw to give the give the Chiefs a win against the Ravens and others so that she can be at the Super Bowl. He can be the big star. And then together they can endorse Joe Biden. And then that started her. Who did this? The deep state or was that is unclear. We don't know. We don't know. And MAGA. And, you know, there was a segment on Fox about this last night. And Matt, they're encouraging MAGA supporters to become San Francisco 49er fans. Uh-huh. Because that somehow is behind it.

Wait, hold on. San Francisco? Because Kansas City is in on the, apparently Kansas City, Missouri, is in on the deep state left wing. In on the voting for Republicans every, like, four years. Yeah, Missouri, yeah. And then now San Francisco is going to stop this from happening by beating them, by beating the Chiefs. You know, you've got to tap dance pretty hard, you know, some of these places.

I remember after the E. Jean Carroll verdict came in, 83 million, million just because Mika just likes likes to be irritated. She turned over to Fox and they were talking about it was hilarious. Joe Biden had a hat on backwards. He wore literally that. That's what they were on during the breaking news of this epic verdict. Eighty three point three million dollars defamation damages against a former president facing the civil fraud verdict judgment, you know, in a week or so, possibly crippling him financially. But they have Joe Biden with a hard hat on. Which, of course, a hard hat. If you it was it was the tip of it was like the sting where they started the conspiracy theory right there. Right. No, I mean, it was a the sting where they started the conspiracy theory right there right

then no i mean it was assigned to taylor swift probably it was pathetic there was no conspiracy theory ask lamar jackson i don't even get how that works but let's not say it doesn't like no it's all i mean i think it may happen so they're just trying to prevent against if it does actually happen and the other piece and swift come out for biden now they've explained why the other piece of this conspiracy theory is the post game travis kelsey right before the endorsement is going to propose to taylor swift and they newly engaged and then endorsed joe biden together i like that wow i like that well that's just so i will say that i'm still hurting from the Lions. I know.

Devastating. Really. City deserved it. Those fans deserved it. You're up 24-7 at the half. They looked so good in the first half. And then the 49ers, I guess, woke up at halftime. The Lions kind of, they lost their magic a little bit.

Some tough call, the fourth down call. You know, people wonder about that. But that's the way he coaches. But dropped passes. And a key fumble. And a fumble. Well, you know what? There's a first time there. And the question is, do they learn from it?

Because there are a lot of teams in Super Bowl history that lost and went back and won the next year. And then you've got the Buffalo Bills. It's going to be a long, long offseason for the Bills and the Ravens. Yeah, but not the Giants. It's only an offseason for the Giants. All right, Mika, are we going to ever get to news or what? Yes, let's get to our top story. Willie is going to start us off. Oh, is Willie going to do this? Sure.

Yeah, he's got it. Let you get settled. I need my smoking jacket. Yes, you do. And a cocktail. All right. Let's dive right in this morning. The Department of Defense has identified now the three Army Reserve soldiers killed by a drone strike at a U.S. base in Jordan. They are 46 year old Sergeant William Jerome Rivers, 24 year old specialist Kennedy LaDawn Sanders and 23 year old specialist Brianna Alexandria Moffitt. The soldiers were deployed to the Middle East as part of a combined task force targeting ISIS. According to The New York Times, they were part of a team trained to build roads and landing fields. They were killed when a drone packed with explosives struck near the barracks where they were sleeping. In a statement, President Biden said the attack was carried out by radical Iran-backed militant groups operating in Syria

and Iraq. The attack was the third on that logistics support base in just the past six months, according to two Pentagon officials. Neither of the previous attempts caused casualties. Officials suggest the drone may have passed through U.S. air defenses because the base was expecting an American drone to return around the same time, and it did not recognize the attack drone as a threat. Some officials tell NBC News the drone's low altitude also may have been a factor. Vowing to retaliate, President Biden met with members of his national security team in the White House Situation Room yesterday to discuss options. Meanwhile, Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned of what may come next. of his national security team in the White House situation room yesterday to discuss options. Meanwhile, Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned of what may come next.

We will respond. We will respond strongly. We will respond at a time and place of our choosing. And obviously, I'm not going to telegraph what we might do in this instance or get ahead of the president. But I can, again, tell you that, as the president said yesterday, we will respond. And that response could be multi-leveled, come in stages, and be sustained over time. We do not seek conflict with Iran. We do not seek war with Iran, but we have and we will continue to defend our personnel and to take every action necessary to do that. So, Richard, we heard in the statement from the president yesterday, we heard from John Kirby at the podium as well. Iran, Iran, Iran. They're pretty clear about where this came from, who

backed it and who backed the effort. So you have some Republican senators saying, attack Tehran, go right inside the borders of Iran. You have others suggesting there are other ways to go about this. What are some of the options on the table to retaliate here for the president? Well, you've got a whole menu of options. I think the sense is you have to do something. The menu goes from slightly increased either economic sanctions or enforced better existing economic sanctions. That's probably at the low end, Willie. I think in the middle is to go after some of the Iranian-backed groups out of Iraq, more likely Syria, perhaps this explicit group involved in launching this drone. There's also Iranian IRGC troops inside of Syria and Iraq.

Maybe go after them at the high end is going after Iran itself. As certain people are calling for. I understand the argument. But that is that would be a major potential escalation. And, you know, it's not just the United States already has its hands full in the Middle East. We also have our hands full around the world. And we've got to ask ourselves if the entire strategic logic of the last decade or so has been to dial down American involvement in the Middle East to free us up initially to deal with China and North Korea. But Richard, when they're killing Americans, when they continue to target Americans,

when it's always funded by Iran, we're not waiting for Iran to declare war against us. They already have. And this has been our post since 1979. We're not going to go into Iran. We're not going to do this, but we'll do that. I have for some reason, I don't know why, but it's one of the one of those editorials that survived. It was from 2008 and it was talking about George W. Bush being weak on Iran. That that that editorial in The Wall Street Journal has been written for every administration since 1979. We keep Ronald Reagan tried to do deals with Iran. We all keep trying to do deals with Iran. When are we going to make Iran understand that attacking United States soldiers and killing them is just not worth it for them.

Look, Joe, there's things we could do against Iran. We could go after ships. We could go after Iranian soldiers. Why don't we? Because, again, the question is, we've got to play chess here. We've got to think several steps ahead. Do we think? They've already kicked their chessboard over. I don't think so. They're killing Americans.

There's nothing new about the attack that happened the other day. And that's the problem. There's nothing new with Iran attacking and killing Americans. So the question is, think this through. I'm not making their case. Do we want to have a prolonged set of exchanges with Iran and its proxies that are worse than what we already have? Do we want them to do more things? Is that what we're looking for in the region? Is that what we're looking for globally? I would say that's what I've been looking for in Iran since 1979. What makes you think it would be decisive?

What makes you think that the United States right now could do things with Iran that would reduce the threat and strategically leave us better off in three days or three weeks. You think if we go in and we go after their oil infrastructure and warn them that more is to come, do you think that doesn't deter them? But this is about deterrence, Richard. What have we done to deter Iran from killing three more Americans tonight? Well, one thing I would do is I know what have we done? What happened? No, we haven't. What have we done to deter Iran from doing that? We're doing it again tonight. We've not. Why don't we go on the the ship that Iran has, the spy ship? Why don't we board it, strip it of all of its intel information, as James Trevita said, and then sink it,

bury it at the bottom of the Red Sea and say, come after us again. Things will get worse. So that's OK. That's different than attacking Iran itself. Let's do this. OK, sink in their ship. Let's think about measured escalation. So let's go after Iranian. Let's first of all go after Iranian proxies much more than we have. Let's go after Iranian troops in places like Syria or Iraq. We could go after specific Iranian vessels. What I'm saying, let's do a lot of things, Joe, before we do a direct war against Iran proper. And the oil situation, if you want to go after that, do you necessarily want to do that to oil markets? You may. You may decide it's important enough and necessary.

All I'm saying is we have got to think this through. That's the day after and the day after the day after Iran gets all their funding from oil. That's how they find Hezbollah. That's how they find Hamas. That's how they find the Houthis. That's how they fund all of these terror organizations that kill Americans in their name. And I'm just wondering what what is what would the Biden administration's problem be with going in and taking out some of their oil infrastructure and just sending the message, you know, it keep going. It gets a lot worse. Higher gas prices. I don't care. Dead Americans. I think that I mean, I think, you know, well, Richard has laid out some of the possible consequences. But anytime you're messing, anytime you do anything that's going to mess with oil markets, higher gas prices are can be an existential threat to a presidency. Right. Well, OK, so military targets. What's the

problem with military targets? So I have new reporting on this this morning about the menu, and it's much what Richard said, that they have not taken off the table going in Iran itself. That is not the favorite option, at least for now. More likely they will hit Iranian troops in other countries, maybe the Revolutionary Guard, proxy groups in Syria and Iraq, naval vessels in play in the Persian Gulf. I feel like that they feel that's the escalation that they can live with, because as we heard from the secretary of state here, it's a balancing act. They do want to hit Iran and hit them hard. Three Americans are dead. They do want to do something that would act as a deterrence to prevent Iran from doing it again.

That said, they also don't want to escalate this into a food conflict. Do they understand, though, the more Americans that die, the more the escalation is going to be cranked up quickly? There will come a time when this administration and this Congress has no choice but to go into Iran if they continue to sit back while Americans get killed. The U.S., the Biden White House believes, the administration believes at a certain point, Iran will blink. They do not. Tehran does not want a full out war. Well, what do we do to make them blink? That's what I guess that's what I'm asking. What have

we done to make them to this point? Clearly not. And even officials in the Biden administration acknowledge their deterrence policy has not been effective yet. Why have we not deterred Iran? This has been, at least for this administration, they're active deliberately. They act carefully on when they use military force, even with the Houthi strikes. They've only responded to about 10 percent of what the Houthis have done to this point because they again, they are fearful of a wider conflict and they it has to reach a certain threshold when Americans get injured or there's a Red Sea, there's a ship that's damaged. That's when they strike back on the Houthis. Here, and I'm told the response will begin potentially as early as

today, next couple of days, and will come in waves. It is going to be a sustained retaliation from the United States that they believe that that will be enough of deterrence. And if it's not, they'll up it further. But they're going to do it in ladder. It's going to be a ladder. They're going to do it in stages. That was the nature of Tony Blinken's comments. We're thinking of the idea of a response as a single action. What it really is, is going to be a sustained set of actions. Could be in different places, could be a different source. I'm told it could be a weaker one. And there'll be messaging with Iran. Again, what to me is so interesting is that the drone strike that had this tragic effect was not fundamentally new or different.

And so it'll be really interesting that the Iranians who probably didn't count on this result, whether now they basically pull themselves in a little bit simply because they don't want things to go down this path. This regime does not need a confrontation with the United States. Well, I keep hearing this, Willie, but that's what we heard after October the 7th. Oh, you know, the Iranians, they kind of they didn't really know what was going on. I've checked, you know, people, even the Trump administration, we've checked Intel sources. And they the Iranians were really surprised. And oh, the Iranians don't want

this. Everything that's happened on October 7th and since October 7th has been brought to you by Iran. Everything. Everything. And we keep sitting

back going, what can we do? What can we do what can we do like we're like great britain in 1959 for f sake what can we do we can did i'm sorry willie what what did did did i wake up in luxembourg is this what's going on here? Beautiful part of the world. I love Luxembourg. Exactly. But if you're going to go after Iran, you'd rather have the United States. But to Joe's point, Richard, for a country that claims in Iran, it doesn't want an escalation.

It doesn't want a war. It sure seems to be attacking American and other Western interests a lot. So what if we look at it from their point of view, what are they up to here? What do they want? Because they're going to get a retaliation from the United States here. What Iran wants to do is use its proxies one step removed to get the United States out of the Middle East. They want the United States forces out of Iraq, which Iran increasingly dominates. They want United States forces out of Syria essentially to complete the civil war, Iran already dominates Lebanon. What they are looking for is to essentially dominate big chunks of the Middle East. They've got Hamas and Hezbollah on Israel. But what started all this? It was Saudi Arabia. I mean, it was Saudi Arabia getting closer to

Israel, doing the deal. what started October 7th, which, again, everything we this these are just the trailers from October the 7th. All of this is in reaction to October the 7th. Right. So, Joe, my point is, if there's things we want to do against Iran, I'm just saying is Iran has a lot of tools. And the idea that we can somehow deal them a decisive blow is unlikely. And we've got to say, given what's going on in Europe, which given what's going on potentially in Asia, how much how much of our resources, how much of our time do we want to devote to this part of the world? Again, we have spent the last several decades devoting a disproportionate amount of American lives and dollars and time to the greater Middle East. And you've said that you've said that consistently. And you have people like, well, the Trump administration that thought they could do these great Middle East plans

without the Palestinian minor omission. Guess what? We can't move on from the Middle East until we take care of the Palestinians. We have to have a two state solution. So here history finds us again. Hundred percent. And that's one of the tools that's been missing is exactly the one you just put your finger on. It's the diplomatic tool. And the idea that we could walk away from the Middle East without a without a Palestinian dimension was clearly a major fallacy. And that is what I think we are coming up against now. The problem is we have neither an Israeli nor a Palestinian partner. Senator Geist and Senator Lemire, I have here in my hands some documents that suggest that Mr. Haas in retirement is open to have a seaside villa in Iran.

And that is why he is speaking this way. All right. I will show you the evidence. That's why. That's a good place. Still ahead on Morning Joe. Satisfying exchange. Bringing it together here.

Still ahead on Morning Joe. Nikki Haley again stands up for American juries. The rule of law will show you what she said in defense of the verdict against Donald Trump in his most recent defamation case. Plus, our next guest says a new, powerful, well-funded political movement is rising fast in America. Jim VandeHei of Axios will join us to talk about the emergence of the so-called techno-optimists.

I don't like them. Who are these people? I don't know who they are, and I do not like them. Also ahead, the president of the United Auto Workers Union will join us to talk about the organization's endorsement of President Biden's re-election campaign. I want the other guy, too. We'll be right back. His fame. That's all. The Biden campaign is planning a first of its kind fundraiser with President Biden and former Presidents Clinton and Obama. Yeah, three presidents that all had classic lines. I mean, there was Bill Clinton's... We can seize this moment.

There was Obama's... Yes, we can. And, of course, Joe Biden's... I got hairy legs that turn... that turn blonde in the sun. All right. 2024 presidential candidate Nikki Haley is standing by. I just said that clip.

I know, you know, that's funny. It reminds us and he he needs to give some royalties to David Letterman. But David Letterman did every night with George W. Bush. It's just classic. That was funny, too. Great moments, then it ended up with W at the end. Or maybe W trying to open the door in China or bouncing the basketball. There were many options. You know who loved it?

George W. Bush. Oh, yeah. No, it was just the best. Nobody loved it more. Okay, back to politics. Nikki Haley standing by comments that she made supporting the jury in writer E. Jean Carroll's $83 million defamation verdict against Donald Trump. Take a look at what she had to say on Fox News yesterday.

You're taking some new fire from Donald Trump's campaign and supporters for what you said about the E. Jean Carroll case on Meet the Press yesterday. Of course, the president was found liable in that case. A jury awarded her eighty three point three million dollars. Here's what you said when you were asked about it. I absolutely trust the jury and I think that they made their decision based on the evidence. So the New York Times wrote an article around that in which it said in part, quote, four weeks before what could be the decisive Republican primary in South Carolina.

Ms. Haley is trying to navigate an extremely narrow and treacherous path, finding a way to diminish Mr. Trump's hold on her party's electorate without decisively turning conservative voters against her the way they have destroyed other Trump critics. How do you navigate that path? It cracks me up that people try and overanalyze. I just tell the truth as I see it. I think there have been politics played with prosecutors that have brought on some of these cases. I think there's been politics played even with the judges. But I do think American juries still get it right. They listen to the evidence. They make the decision based on the evidence. And I do still trust any American that sits on a jury. I trust that they're making the right decision. Well, we just have to. I mean, that is the center of our judicial system. You have to

trust fellow voters that get in the jury pool and sometimes they seem to get it right and sometimes they seem to get it wrong. But you have to have faith in the system that more often than not, they get it right. Well, compare the Constitution to Republican senators who defended Trump last spring after he was found liable for sexual assault and defamation. In the words of Marco Rubio at that time, quote, that jury is a joke. The whole case is a joke. Jen, can you imagine that?

I mean, can you? I guess we can imagine six years later. But any United States senator and they do it, they will trash any institution that checks Donald Trump's absolute lust for absolute power. And in this case, Marco Rubio called a jury a joke. Marco Rubio, who wasn't in the courtroom, didn't hear any of the evidence, didn't have any of the judge's instructions, didn't know what the law was in that particular case. And again, just attack the judge, attack the jury system, attack American democracy, attack whatever it takes to lift up Donald Trump.

Yeah. And Trump saying that it's part of a Biden-only ton, even though it's happening wholly independently of Biden. And this case was filed in 2019 before Joe Biden was president. I think it's important that, I mean, Haley walks a fine line and she never criticizes Trump at the foundation of what he, you know, she'll never go to the conduct. Right. Right. She won't, she won't go that far. She won't go to the conduct on the Jan six cases or on the Mar-a-Lago case or on the E.G. Carroll case. But to defend the jury, that's, that's like defending the election. That's

defending, you know, that's, that's defending the election. That's defending, you know, that's that's defending the process. That's actually an important thing. It's important for Republicans to hear this. It's important for Republicans and swing voters and independents to hear a Republican say, you know, to attack Trump and for a Republican to uphold the jury system. You know, Richard, it was it was always conservatives who were supposed to defend institutions going all the way back to Edmund Burke, who talked about how, you know, radical zealots could tear down institutions in a day that were built up over centuries of time. And here you have, ironically, the same, you know, the same people that were running around defending

institutions in the late 60s and early 70s that were under attack from the far left. Now they're the ones attacking those same institutions that are foundational to this republic. That's what's stunning about it. The idea that what Nikki Haley is saying is in any way remarkable. This is pure American classic conservatism, trial by jury. It's an institution. That's what conservatives used to believe in. And the Republican Party has so strayed from conservatism, it's become a populist, personalist party. And this is the consequence. Well, and just think about how dangerous the consequences will be.

Now that we have a Texas governor. Yes. Just saying I'm going to I'm going to ignore a Supreme Court ruling. See, because we talk about all the dangers that Donald Trump poses. That's one of them. Donald Trump, if he gets into power again, he's going to be Orban. He's going he's going to, you know, I don't think he's going to even try to do what Netanyahu is trying to do in Israel. I think he's just going to go straight there and he's going to ignore the Supreme Court's rulings. And then we have a constitutional crisis of the first order. Yeah. Republicans suggesting they get to pick and choose which Supreme Court decisions they want to abide by or not is so dangerous.

I think we're going to see in the year ahead as these Trump legal cases move forward and decisions come down against him, we will see them reject those and move forward. Even before Trump were to get in office and to your point where he elected again, I do think that would all go out the window. He will he will just simply do what he wants. And I think this is part of that argument that the democracy argument that the president, President Biden is trying to make. And the Biden team really thinks that it is important to Tamika's point that like Republicans are hearing this from Nikki Haley. I mean, that that's the bare minimum. Nikki Haley is doing the bare minimum. That's a low bar to clear. But she did clear it. And she's doing it in places like on Fox, where Republicans, viewers who love Trump are hearing it maybe for the first time.

They're not going to listen to Joe Biden say it. It's such a commentary on the state of the Republican Party to stop and congratulate Nikki Haley for supporting the jury system in America. But here we are talking about Governor Abbott and the border issue. We're learning more about the border security provisions in the bipartisan Senate deal. Negotiators have been working on for months. Two sources tell NBC News that legislation would grant the federal government new authority to shut down the border once crossings reach a certain threshold. In addition, there would be new restrictions on how approved migrants are released into the country. The sources say the Senate team hopes to make the text of the bill

public this week, but Republicans continue to actively trash a bill they have not read. Former President Trump is claiming a border bill is not even needed. Speaker Mike Johnson posted on X yesterday, the bill is a non-starter in the House. And many House Republicans echoed that sentiment yesterday. Joe Biden has the power to address this unprecedented crisis tomorrow by reversing the 64 executive actions he took to effectively open our southern border. The president has the ability right now, the power to stop it. 212F, he could use that power. He could undo many of the orders that Tom referenced.

But he chooses not to because this is all a sham and it's purposeful. It is a purposeful effort to deluge our society and to undermine our way of life, to destroy Western civilization. Biden is salivating at the prospect of some staggeringly horrible Senate compromise bill to enshrine that this ongoing disaster continues. You never give in when our national security is constantly being threatened by the traitorous actions of the executive branch. The traitorous actions? Wait, but wait, they're the ones. I thought they wanted this. They wanted it. And now they don't want it. They care so much about not caring at all.

They throw around words like, by the way, I'm sorry, but going back to Edmund Burke, what was he writing about? The radicalism, the zealotry of the French Revolution. Do you know what the Jacobins, what the zealots did? They accused everybody of being zealots, anybody, and being traitors. And then they take them to the guillotine. Everybody was a traitor. And here these people are calling Joe Biden a traitor for doing what Joe Biden has heard them saying he wanted him to do all along. And in Oklahoma, poor James Langford, one of the most conservative guys who criticizes

Biden almost every day on Twitter. You see him and he's put together the most conservative bill on the border in a generation. Everybody says that that's serious. And now you got these clowns going up there saying he's traitorous. You've got Hugh Hewitt, who was for it, but now he's against it. J.V. last wrote an article about this. He was for it, but now he's against it because Donald Trump's against it. JV last wrote an article about this. He was for it, but now he's against it because Donald Trump's against it. Newt Gingrich goes on Fox News last night and says this is the worst thing that's ever, ever, ever, ever happened. It's the dumbest, stupidest, this, that, the other. All because Donald Trump one day, they all liked the bill. And then Donald Trump said, don't pass a bill. It might hurt me politically. And now traitorous, stupid car around. Yeah, they've turned the car

around. How sad and how pathetic. I mean, if somebody had come up to me when I was in Congress and told me to do that, I would have I'd have two words for him. the second would be off and I would keep walking. I wouldn't even break a stride. And most of the people I served with were that way, too, which again begs the question, who are these cowards that will just completely comply with everything? Dear leader says, is there anything they wouldn't do for him? You have to ask the question. I mean, there's nothing. Mike Johnson has said publicly on TV and interviews. Yes, I talked to the press, former president almost every day, and he's telling us not to do this. So the thing we've been clamoring for for generations and more specifically in recent months, all of a sudden we're against. Really, they they will not fund Israel right now because Donald Trump does not want this bill to go through. They are allowing Vladimir Putin to beat Ukraine.

He now has the advantage over there because Donald Trump wants Vladimir Putin to win. And Mike Johnson has gone right along voting against every bit of funding all along for Ukraine. And, you know, I do wonder where where where are the pro-Ukrainian Republicans, where the pro-freedom Republicans, where the Reagan Republicans? I thought Chairman McCaul would be fighting. I haven't heard anything from Chairman McCaul about this. Does he want the Ukrainians to keep dying? Does he want the Ukrainians to keep getting pounded by the Russian invaders? Is this his legacy? This is the House's legacy, by the way. This is the House's legacy right now. And I hope McCaul and I hope the rest of them have a great time telling their children and the grandchildren that Vladimir Putin was back on his heels.

But he rushed through. He finally got Ukraine. Then he started going to the Balkan states. Then he started going across the rest of Eastern Europe, all because they were more afraid of Donald Trump than than than they were for freedom. It's really it's just it's and the leadership in Ukraine now just says out loud the future of this war is in the hands of the United States Congress. That's it. Full stop. So it's up to them, says Ukraine. Let's bring into the conversation the co-founder and CEO of Axios, Jim Vande Heide. Jim, good morning. So what's your view on let's go back to the immigration deal for just a second. As Joe said, Senator Lankford has the Biden administration now agreeing to things that would have been unthinkable just a few months ago on immigration policy. They feel like they have the best available deal and that the House should take it while they can.

What's your sense? Does have any chance at all? First of getting out of the Senate, because all of a sudden that's falling apart a little bit on the Republican side. But then when it gets to the House, we just heard from a whole host of Republicans that it's going nowhere. Yeah, I think it has a realistic chance of getting out of the Senate. I agree with you that it's one of the most conservative, if not the most conservative bill that we've seen maybe in our lifetime in terms of clamping down on what's going to happen at the southern border. It has no chance whatsoever being signed into law, even though President Biden has made it clear he would sign it. And it's because it's Trump's party and Trump's opposed to it.

And he's got his executioner and that's Johnson and the rest of the leadership in the House. They've made it clear it's dead. It's dead. I don't see any chance that it would pass. Jen, is this something that Democrats can use against Republicans for killing the best border bill? Yeah. I mean, I think that the the the though on, you know, on Friday, the president said he would sign this bill. He said he would shut down the I mean, said he would shut down and get given the authority to shut down the border. And he will do it the day that he signs the bill. The people who have no credibility are the House Republicans. Right. Yeah.

And you have Senate Republicans have credibility. You had Mitt Romney come out and say out loud what happened in the Senate Republican caucus that we're not going to act on, that the leader does not want to move this bill because Trump doesn't want it. You've had House Republicans say the same thing out loud. You've had Biden say, I will do this. I mean, this is this is maybe his biggest vulnerability. President Biden's biggest vulnerability in the election. And Trump and the

House Republicans have mismanaged us in a way that they've handed him the ability finally to break through about what they have been doing on the border, what they're willing to do. And it's not going to convince Trump supporters, but it's going to convince swing voters. He needs to go to the border. He needs to stand at the border and he needs to say, I want to shut down the border. And everything he has done. Donald Trump won't let me. I want to shut down the border with a bill that Republicans call the toughest border security bill ever. I want to shut down the border. Donald Trump won't let Republicans do it. He needs to go to the border and do that. And he needs to go to the Knesset and have the same conversation with the Israelis in both cases. Yeah. Joe Biden has to confront the opposition

and just use the power of the bully pulpit. That is the Oval Office. Because that's what's left now. And in both cases, he's got implacable people who won't go along. Hey, Jim, tell us about these techno-optimists or happy. Techno-optimists? I don't know, micro-dosers. What are you talking about? I'm happy to illuminate for you.

Thank you. Illuminate. I don't love the name techno optimist, but I do think you have to look at what's been happening with that group of people, whether it's Mark Andreessen, Ben Horowitz, Elon Musk, David Sachs, Bill Ackman. You have this large group of people who really helped, I think, bring RFK to life. A lot of them have raised money for him, made him a somewhat formidable third-party candidate.

It's the way that DeSantis actually got into the campaign initially. David Sachs was helping him out. They made the announcement on Axe on Twitter. They now have a platform. If you just look at Step Back, you might love or hate Twitter or Axe, as it's now known, but it's very much went from kind of mainstream media group think to very much this group of tech folks who have a very clear ideology,

which is kind of what they would say is anti-DEI, anti-woke, anti-elite conventional thought. They would say it's very much optimism around technology. It's kind of like this this bro culture and it's sort of like this libertarian bro culture. They hate the media. They hate, you know, government stepping in unless they need billions of dollars from the government. Yeah. I mean, it's it's a bunch of bros that have a ton of money and don't want anybody telling them anything. Right. Is that a good way? It's mainly white middle aged men. So you can say it's definitely bros that have a ton of money and don't want anybody telling them anything, right? Is that a good way to say it? It's mainly white middle-aged men. So you can say it's definitely bros. I would not underestimate the number though. You look at podcasting where a lot of people do get their news. You look at Joe Rogan, you look at all in, you look at Lex Friedman, like there's a very, that network is, is real. And I think that there's obviously I think their following is largely white working

class men. Do they matter in elections? Seems like they kind of do. Right. Especially in swing states. Yeah, no, no, I'm not. I'm not underestimating. I'm just I'm just saying they see and you're a big fan. Yeah. It's all the time. A tight black t-shirt. It is kind of like Donnie when Donnie would wear the baby gown. T-shirts. Yeah.

But you know, it is out of the Peter Thiel school and they all look up to Elon Musk. They think Elon is like king and they think he's really cool. And they hate the media. And again, they hate anybody that tries to hold anybody to account out there. Yeah. And there's like a sports overlap with Joe Rogan and Aaron Rogers and all that. And, you know, they do matter because this is this is a Trump base in some ways.

I'm not sure. I mean, how much influence have they really had? They got Ron DeSantis into the race. How did that turn out? RFK is pulling at whatever RFK is pulling at. But how much is that? I like the vague. I mean, they like a lot of things that get going, but never quite take off. OK. Co-founder and CEO of Axios. By the way, Jim, we wanted to get you the morning after, uh, the Packers had just, I thought it just extraordinary showing you the playoffs, man. We, you know, that, uh, that NFC North has gone from like one of the weakest divisions to

the one to watch next year. It's going to be great, huh? I'm with you on the Lions. I mean, for one day, the only day in my life I was a Lions fan. I actually wish they would have won. But whatever. Packers, future's bright. We've got Jordan Love.

We'll be all right. Yeah. And the Bears coming right behind you. The Bears are looking good, too. It's going to be great. Joe, the Bears suck. Good for that question. There we go. coming up former president trump tries to take credit for the booming stock market

but the biden white house isn't having it steve ratner is standing by at the Southwest Wall to explain what's really going on with the U.S. economy. The Morning Joe is coming right back. Everybody's talking about Taylor Swift, right? Well, because thanks to Taylor Swift, we all know who Travis Kelsey is now. Oh, God. Stop that. I mean, I had no idea who he was. By the way, that is a funny meme.

She tells me about the funny memes. No, he's a big star now. Yeah, exactly. By the way, he had a kind of rough season. You know, kind of halfway through, he's dropping the ball, and you're like, is this because Taylor's up there and it's too much pressure? Boy, he was. No, I'm serious.

11 for 11. He was off his game about halfway through the year, and you just had to. Maybe it's his Newfoundland stardom. You know, it was a distraction. But, boy, man, he was freaking focused. He was huge in that game. He was like, suddenly people were going, okay, maybe the greatest tight end of all time. Well, that's not true.

Right. It's Rob Gronkowski. But there is a similarity here. I do think the Chiefs were strategic. Kelsey's older. He was breaking down. I think they deliberately paced him during the season to unleash him in the playoffs, try to keep him healthy.

When Gronk was breaking down at the end of the page, they did the same thing. You need him for those three games in January. And Kelsey has stepped up. He was terrific this weekend. He was terrific. I don't know why TJ's showing the end of the Lions game. It's almost like he wants to break my heart bit by bit. Okay.

Hey, we need to do a show live from Detroit next year. We need to go to a Lions game next year. I love that. A lot of exciting things happening in the city. The draft is in

Detroit. It's a draft in Detroit. You'll recall I am the nfl yes so naturally i'm like locked in on this i got hotel rooms and everything okay so we need april 25th through 27th just saying we need to get the boston you think we can get a dan interview you know everybody you can get a day yeah yeah we a couple others. We got to go to the draft. The commish? Of course, the commish.

If it doesn't conflict with the Boston Marathon. No, it doesn't. Are you running the Boston Marathon? No, my daughter is. Not the one whose birthday it is today. Okay, Donald Trump is trying to take credit. I'm thinking about running the marathon. You want to run it?

It's the last minute thing. I can do the Rosie Ruiz. I can have a smoke, run the first mile, get on the subway, get off the last mile, one more smoke, finish. Come on. Go back and read that. That was a bold move by Rosie. She wants to step off the train and kind of waltz across the finish line. And by the way, do you know who won the marathon that year?

Why do you know this? Do you know who won the marathon? Of course you don't. Right. But you know who Rosie Ruiz is. Right. Kids, take a lesson from that. And throw it away immediately.

All right. Donald Trump is trying to take credit for the booming U.S. stock market that we're seeing. But he can't do that. He said he said the stock market would crash. He wants it to so that he can be. Nobody here said in 2020, if Joe Biden is president, it's going to crash. Oh, it's not doing that. On a day where both the Dow and S&P closed at record highs, the former president wrote on social media in all caps, quote,

All right, we're not going to read this. No, no, no, no, no. But here's the thing. You don't get it both ways, big boy. He has to do something with his fingers because he can't contain each one. The Biden campaign responded to Trump's claims, writing in a statement to The Hill, quote, Thank you, Donald, for lifting up today's strong economic news. But on this planet, Joe Biden is the president.

Meanwhile, even critics of the Biden administration are having to admit how well the economy is doing. The Washington Post on Sunday laid out the case that the United States has had the world's best recovery post pandemicpandemic. On Fox Business yesterday, Steve Forbes was asked about that headline. But are they right? Is America, does America now have the best recovery? Well, yes, because the rest of the world is doing so poorly. Germany is now the weakest developed country in the world. Phenomenal. And one big reason, because of their green policies, which have tripled the price of electricity. Britain, the same thing, barely

registering any growth. Japan, dead in the water. China, we know the problems there. The key thing is, the reason the economy is doing so well is government spending. How long can you keep that up? Ask Argentina where eventually that leads you. Well, the thing about the crazy way they do GDP is they count government spending as a plus. So that's why the Soviet Union looks so good for so long and East Germany looks so good for so long. His government spending counts as a positive thing like private investment. We know that's nonsense.

I'll bet that the next time KJP or the president takes any kind of questions of any kind on the economy, that Washington Post article is going to be right there front and center. We've got the best recovery. And that's a pretty good political slogan in an election year. Well, because we have the best recovery. I'm not exactly I know, Steve, I love Steve. Not exactly sure the middle part, what he was saying after he said, yeah, we have the best. But we have the best recovery, the best post-COVID recovery. We got into a little trouble because Donald Trump had two massive COVID spending bills that dwarfed Joe Biden's. After he kept COVID from the country. After there was way too much money there. People died.

But yeah, we have the best economy in the world. And you can go, I mean, ask anybody. You can ask the most conservative writers for the Wall Street Journal. We're saying it on the editorial page. Why? Because we have the best economy in the world since Donald Trump left office. Let's bring in right now. Should I go over and talk?

No, please don't. Stay right here in your chair. I'm kind of I'm a rambling man. Steve Ratner's got it and he's going to handle it from here on. OK, Steve Ratner. Hi, Steve. What's going on with the economy? What's going on with the economy? What's going on with the economy?

I think Joe should just come over here and do my charts for me. No. No. He'd be much better at it than I would. I want to touch the screen. Like Vanna. No. Abating inflation.

Steve, take it away. Do your thing. Look, the idea of Steve Forbes comparing us to Argentina and the Soviet Union is so utterly and completely ridiculous. We have, in fact, the best economy in the world, and we have it for a whole variety of reasons, including a lot of the policies that were put in place in the last year over Joe Biden. So let's take a look at economic growth. Many people have talked, including myself, had worried about recession as we tried to

wring out inflation. That's not what we've gotten. We've gotten incredibly strong growth that has exceeded estimates in almost every quarter. We grew three percent last year. That is a very healthy rate of growth. And perhaps the best news for Joe Biden is that the idea of a recession has come out of economists' forecasts for the most part. And while growth might be a bit slower this year than it was in the past. It is still strong, healthy and consistent. So on the growth side, the economy is looking really good. Obviously, we were at an enormous amount about inflation and inflation has well outperformed in the positive sense of coming down. What I think almost any of us thought was possible. You can see that this is what we call core inflation. This takes out energy and food,

which tend to bounce around a lot and looks at the core of the economy. This is what the Fed likes to look at when it sets interest rates. And you can see the core inflation got up to 6%. That was unfortunate, variety of reasons. But the drop in it has been really almost faster than anything I can remember in my time doing this. And in the last two quarters, the core inflation rate was down to 2%. That is the Fed's target. Hey, Steve, what's caused the fast growth? You said that's one of the fastest drops you've seen. What's caused that? Well, a lot of it was the fact that the government spent money. And it's not what Steve Forbes was saying about how government spending is in the GDP and all this stuff.

It's what happened was that the government leaned in variety of programs, the infrastructure bill, the clean the IRA for the Inflation Reduction Act and so forth. And it created jobs and it got the economy going. We have this incredibly fast rate, for example, of production of alternative energy sources right now, solar and wind and all that creates jobs. And that's a lot of what's been going on here. Well, let's talk about the jobs. Talk about how the job growth just keeps going on and on. Sure. So again, the great American jobs machine, as we like to call it, has been has been chugging along. You can see down here the 2000 to 2019 average. That's Donald Trump's average. We have exceeded that in most

months. We have also exceeded this little green stuff are the months in which we've exceeded what the economists thought was going to happen. And it's regularly outperformed. So we've had this very steady, consistent jobs growth. We're going to have another number on Friday. Looks like it'll be one hundred and seventy five thousand new jobs again created. Unemployment rate is down below 4%. That has long been considered full employment. And so we're doing great on that front. And then the part that, again, many people don't appreciate. Look, inflation was worse than we wanted it to be, worse than we hoped it would be. But nonetheless, people have continued to actually outpace inflation. In 2004, the average worker's income went up by 1.6 percent more than inflation. In other words,

real wage increases. You look down here at the 2017 to 2019 average. You can call that the Donald Trump era. You had barely any, like a tenth of a percent of growth in wages after inflation. We had one point six percent last year. And what also isn't on this chart, but an important fact is wages are growing faster for those at the bottom than those at the top for the first time in a very long time. So income inequality is still huge, but it is narrowing. So, Steve, talk about consumer confidence, if you will. I think that's another thing that Steve may have overlooked, the fact that this is not an economy that's been been growing because the federal government's been pumping cash out.

It's been a consumer driven economy and consumers are more confident now than they've been in quite some time. And you look at those numbers, man, they're going up pretty quickly. Yeah. Look, one of the conundrums for the Biden administration, as you were just talking about, is how do you why is this good news not reached the American people? Why are American people still so pessimistic about the economy, even in light of everything I said? Well, there's a bit of a delayed reaction often in this in this kind of a thing where people have to process the numbers. They have to see them repeated. They have to believe that they're actually sustainable. And so for again, for the first time, you are seeing this enormous jump in consumer confidence. I think this is the largest jump in 30 years and a month in consumer confidence from the American

from the University of Michigan. What's interesting is that Democrats and Republicans feel differently. Democrats are much more optimistic about the economy, Republicans less so. But in total, again, the number has jumped up. And if you want to see a fun thing, back when Trump was president, it was the other way around. The day Biden got elected, essentially, the views of the economy switched between Republicans and Democrats. Now, we haven't seen this yet, yet, because I think we will, in the polling data about right track, wrong track and the Biden approval ratings and things like that. But there are some other polls out there that do start to show this. This is a poll where people were asked, is the economy getting worse or better?

And you can see here in the last couple of months, it has started to turn back up again. And you can see that the getting worse category has started to turn down again. And so this would, with some luck, this is a leading indicator of how consumer and public opinion may shift in the months ahead as we have it. And one last point, because of that low inflation rate, the Fed is pretty much, not pretty pretty much is presumed to be done raising interest rates. They have a meeting next week. They will probably not increase interest rates. But and indeed, over the next few months, the market is expecting several interest rate cuts. So President Biden could go in to the election with a tailwind from interest rates,

i.e. with interest rates coming down, which is good news for mortgage seekers and for consumer credit borrowers and for many, many Americans. All right. Steve Ratner at the big wall, the Southwest. Well done. The Southwest wall. Thank you so much, Steve. We appreciate it as always. All right. So.