Morning Joe - Morning Joe 1/8/25

Episode Date: January 8, 2025

Thousands evacuated as strong winds fuel at least 3 blazes in LA area

We're going to be changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. Yeah, let's do that. Why the hell not? I guess Gulf of America does have a ring to it, as in there is another horrific oil spill in the Gulf of America. So now if I understand this correctly the Gulf of Mexico will become the Gulf of America, New Mexico will be dry America, and Cinco de Mayo will be the fifth of mayo. Stayed up almost all night drinking diet codes to come up with the Gulf of America. And from now on tortillas will be known as little round blankets. All right, the late night shows reacting to Donald Trump's news conference yesterday, where he also suggested using military force to take control of both the Panama Canal and

Greenland. We're going to play for you his comments on that, and we will have a fact check on his claims that he is inheriting a bad economy. I think perhaps that might not be true. We'll check into it. Also ahead, we'll go through the major change coming to Facebook and Instagram. When it comes to fact checking, as Mark Zuckerberg says, it will be now up to users to combat misinformation on both platforms. Joe, this is, I think, one of the big stories of the day that we're going to be getting to.

Yeah, it really is. It is. And a lot going on in Washington, obviously. Jimmy Carter, the former president, is going to be celebrated and remembered all this week, lying in state, the United States Capitol rotunda, and bipartisanship. I'm sure everybody around the table will tell you it's certainly broken out when you hear leaders of both parties talking about President Carter, his character, the man he was and the life he lived. Also Gene Robinson proving once again that the debate between whether Washington is a northern city or a southern city operates.

The second there's an inch of snow in Washington. Exactly. Yeah. As once again, that adage is proven true? Yeah, it has proven true. It's a mess out there still. It hasn't been snowing for a couple of days actually. Either way, the fact that they haven't

plowed a single street is- Well, all right, the lack of plowing really, the gig sends me a message. And I mean yesterday was just ridiculous because it stops snowing. And it was basically impossible to get from my house to here. Now I was, I came in and I was- You came in early for me and I appreciate that.

I came in early, but it was touch and go because the entire downtown Washington was unplowed and blocked off. Here is the attitude in Mark Levovich it goes to one of the greats in Washington history Mayor Marion Barry on a vacation in Jamaica in the early 90s when there was a massive snowstorm and his quote which I believe is etched above the rotunda when asked what he was going to do about snow removal he said said, God brung it, God can take it away.

Can't argue with that. That might be his second most famous quote. Yeah, I was gonna say. Right, right, right. Very, very, very, you know. Here's an opposing view. I live here too. I don't think it's been that bad snow removal wise.

I, you know. Have you been out? I have been out. You've been out. Granted, you know, there's been those. It hasn't, I mean, look, we've got like a foot of snow or something. Hasn't been that? This is just in my experience.

In my lived experience. This is the tree of love. I want my voice to be heard. Mark has always been a glass half full kind of guy. And speaking of glasses half full, Willie Geist, New York, he's a great guy. He's a great guy. He's a great guy. He's a great guy.

He's a great guy. He's a great guy. He's a great guy. He's a great guy. He's a great guy. He's a great guy. He's a great guy. He's a great guy. He's a of guy. And speaking of glasses half full, Willie Geist, New York, they're looking at Rex Ryan and they're thinking,

this guy could make the difference. Wow. Are they going to do this again? Are they going to do this again? Wait a second, by the way, and Ford bringing back the Edsel. It's going to work this time. John has the, there's the way, and Ford bringing back the Edsel. It's gonna work this time. John has, there's the post, Rex appeal,

Daily News going with bringing Rex-y back. Rex Ryan, the former New York Jets coach, has been openly campaigning for the job. He wants back in, perhaps to pair up with Aaron Rodgers if he returns. We've seen this movie before in New York, Yeah, and now it looks like the Jets John are actually entertaining the idea of making Rex Ryan their coach again use the right word entertaining because that

would be what Rex Ryan would provide to the New York, I think the nation needs this right now return of Rex Ryan. Let's remember he was he had a couple years of success that he did and then flamed out spectacularly over several years. And he has been in the media ever since and has been remarkably openly lobbying for this job. Like every day saying, I'm the guy for it, I'm the guy for it. Not sure Jets fans would agree necessarily, but they have a lot of decisions to make.

And look, clearly Rex Ryan, the one to make the move. Well, really the sports world though, and Mark Leibovitch and Jonathan O'Meara will tell you the sports world has stopped with the news that Bobby Dahlbach is now going to be a Chicago White Sox. Right? We are all White Sox fans now. I think, yeah, I would say so. As go Bobby. Watch him hit like 40 bombs for the White Sox fans now. I think, yeah, I would say so. As go Bobby.

Watch him hit like 40 bombs for the White Sox. Of course he would. This is the only reason you wanted me and Jonathan to be on the first hour. This is when you sort of get rid of all the funny little inside jokes. You know what? What's more important than us being amused?

Yeah, well, exactly. No, actually, we kept going yesterday, Mika, all the way to the fourth hour with poor Andrew Ross Sorkin with his fake phony Churchill quote. Yeah, I'm going to put an end to that right now because we've got a lot to get to. You see who is in Washington, along with Joe Willey, Jonathan and me. We've got a full table there and a lot to get to this morning, including a state of emergency in Southern California this morning, as high winds around Los Angeles fuel a rapidly spreading wildfire that is destroying homes

and forcing mass evacuations right now. NBC News correspondent Liz Kreutz reports. Panic in the Pacific Palisades as a wind-driven wildfire blazes through one of Southern California's most iconic neighborhoods. People are panicking in the parking lot so there's about an hour wait at the bottom of Palisades Drive. I rushed over here to pack my belongings and I got the evacuation orders.

Multiple homes burning with residents told to get out, some people getting trapped. There's fire on both sides of the road. evacuation orders. Multiple homes burning with residents told to get out some people getting trapped. There's fire on both sides of the road. Many abandoning their cars in the gridlock traffic. Fire crews using a bulldozer to push cars out of the way to clear a path. We're in bumper to bumper traffic right now as hundreds

of people try to get out you can see flames here on both sides of the road with very little visibility. Evacuation orders are in place for approximately 30,000 residents. Households threatened. Approximately 10,367. RMBC Los Angeles station inside this hard-hit neighborhood. This is a large clock here. A large one looks like an antique, very beautiful family clock here on the ground. There are also photo albums that the firefighters pulled from the home just minutes before the flames overtook it because they said that they felt like they at least wanted to save

something. Smoke from the growing fire seen for miles around LA where another brush fire ignited in West Hollywood. This is something you hardly ever see we're in the heart of l a on sunset boulevard where there was a brush fire that shut down the road here all these firefighters trying to get ahead of the wind putting out the flames that were up in these hills firefighters using

air drops to put out the flames. 19 million people under red flag warnings with wind gusts throughout the state expected to reach a 100 miles per hour in some areas Sending trees onto cars and power lines. The only thing I heard above that wind was the power lines popping The intense smoke creating dangerous air quality across Southern, California With the firefight continuing where high winds are expected to only further fan the flames. Just incredible pictures there. NBC's Liz Kreutz reporting. Let's go over to meteorologist Angie Lassman for more on how winds are impacting these

fires. Angie, what are you looking at? Unfortunately, Willie, those winds are going to worsen here as the rest of the morning goes on and as the day goes on for folks in Southern California. No surprise we still have those 19 million people under these red flag warnings. This is going to be a particularly dangerous situation. When we look at the three main fires that we're watching, the Hearst fire, Palisades fire, and Eaton fire,

there's so much smoke in this area, so many particulates in the atmosphere that it's picking up on radar. So that just shows you how massive these are. And on top of that, the way that they're going to spread today is going to be immense. We've got 45 to 95 mile per hour winds already happening this morning in the area of Palisades. Those have been recorded, and we're likely going to be immense. We've got 45 to 95 mile per hour winds already happening this morning in the area of Palisades. Those have been recorded and we're likely going to see those destructive wind gusts up to 100 miles per hour through the day across much of this region.

Another note, relative humidity values dropping to single digits. So basically all of that just means explosive fire growth across this region. We've got of course the extreme fire risk stretching from Glendale to Santa Clarita out to Oxnard and towards the coast Of course including Malibu But notice that critical risk extends all the way down to basically the both the border that extreme fire behavior is going to be likely Through the day today and the wind alerts are up for the southwest We've got a high pressure and a low pressure that this area is kind of sandwiched between

That means that again the winds are going to stay destructive through at least the next couple of days. Willie, we'll see likely some weakening of those by the time we get to the end of the week and potentially into the weekend, but for now we'll continue to see that really those dangerous conditions lasting for folks in that region. Officials they're describing some of the winds as tornado-like just whipping through and carrying these flames, jumping highways, some people sheltering on the beach we're hearing this morning. Angie Latsman will stay on the story with you. Thanks so much. We should point out, John, too, President Biden is out there in Southern California.

What does his schedule look like? Yeah, he's had some unrelated events in California the last couple of days. He was had to cancel one yesterday. He was going to dedicate a new national park. They couldn't make that trip because of the dangerous winds and fire. He is still in L.A. he slated to return to Washington later today. He has put out a statement of course federal government is is monitoring this

offering assistance as they can vice president Harris similar statement was her she and the second general live in Los Angeles they have a home not far from where these fires are raging in and some of the footage that we saw last night we're seeing here song on social media truly truly terrible and already real concerns. Let's remember in just two weeks time it'll be Donald Trump as president of the United States. He in the past has threatened to withhold federal assistance for wildfire recovery because

of the feud he's had there with governor California governor Gavin Newsom. So but that is something for down the road right now, just of course, prayers for those there, including these first responders. The county of Los Angeles had to have it all hands, all members of the fire department, on or off duty, calling them back to work. Yeah. A very rare and dramatic step. Still very much developing, especially with those wind gusts.

Who knows where this could go? So we'll stay on this throughout the show, keep you updated. Also, in an hour-long news conference yesterday, President-elect Donald Trump suggested that he would consider military force to gain control of the Panama Canal and Greenland, and economic force to acquire Canada. NBC News senior White House correspondent Gabe Gutierrez has more from yesterday's news conference. In a marathon news conference at Mar-a-Lago, President-elect Trump not ruling out using

economic or military coercion to retake the Panama Canal and acquire Greenland. You're talking about Panama and Greenland. No, I can't assure you either of those two. But I can say this. We need them for economic security. The Panama Canal was built for our military. Trump saying the U.S. decision to return control of the canal to Panama in the 90s gave too

much influence to China. China's basically taken it over. And arguing the U.S. needs Greenland for national security. You have Russian ships all over the place. We're not letting that happen. The people are going to probably vote for independence or to come into the United States. The provocative comments come as Donald Trump,

Jr., visited Greenland, and the Danish prime minister vowed that his country's territory is not for sale. Here is tourists. Seeing it looks like an incredible place. But his father laying out an aggressive foreign policy expanding us influence even wanting to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico The Gulf of America. What a beautiful name and it's appropriate It's appropriate and Mexico has to stop allowing millions of people to pour into our country and after mocking

allowing millions of people to pour into our country. And after mocking Canada as the 51st state, Trump is floating the idea of using economic, non-military force to annex the U.S. ally. Because Canada and the United States, that would really be something. You get rid of that artificially drawn line and you take a look at what that looks like. And it would also be much better for national security. Outgoing Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau responding, there isn't a snowball's chance in hell that Canada would become part of the United States. While overseas, Trump is again warning Hamas to release its hostages soon.

If they're not back by the time I get into office, all hell will break out in the Middle East, and it will not be good for Hamas. Gabe Gutierrez reporting there. So, Jonathan Lemire, as we watched this yesterday, it was a return to, oh, yeah, this is what this is like. Donald Trump almost in a in rally mode campaign rally, just listing off grievances and whining about all the injustices that he perceives against him, even complaining about the election that he

won, suggesting there was something amiss with the election, saying, America, what a horrible place because we run our elections like this, musing about the potential of Hezbollah having been there on January 6th. I guess the question for viewers, for the news media, for others is, what do you do with this when most of it is trolling, most of it is not policy that he's actually going to pursue, but there it was for an hour again yesterday. Yeah, a stream of consciousness just rambling rant for an hour or so. Yes, indeed, a reminder of what it was like and a preview of likely what's to come. But I think there are a few things we should take away.

And you're right, this is going to be the challenge of the next four years, is try to parcel through what he says and how much of it to actually take seriously. But if we, at face value, some of this stuff is very troubling and dangerous. Suggesting that he would use military force to reclaim the Panama Canal, which as we have been talking about for a week or more, President Carter signed a treaty to give back to Panama, or Greenland. Meanwhile, Greenland, part of Denmark, a NATO ally. That would be an extraordinary step for he to actually take any sort of moves there.

We have seen with Canada, he says he won't be an invasion, but he wants an economic pressure to push Canada to become our 51st state. He also mused that Wayne Gretzky should follow Justin Trudeau as the new prime minister there. We should note the great one has decided to take a pass on that. He's already put a statement saying he's not interested. But there were more things that I think we have to look at more seriously as well. This idea of he acknowledged that Facebook and Metta's fact checking changes, that's because of the pressure he has put on them and sort of a signal to I think a lot in the

sort of social media and tech industry that you need to get on board or we will perhaps lean on you heavily. He talked, I mean, floated January 6 conspiracy theories. We can set those aside. But, Joe, this is something where Donald Trump is again reminding us and the world that this is gonna be, there's not gonna be consistency here.

There's not gonna be a reliable ally. And that is something, and we can sort of dismiss some of this as, oh, he's just talking or he's blustering. But you know, he is talking about tariffs. He's talking about economic pressure, talking about withholding aid. And I think global capitals are also, just like us in the media, trying to sort out how to handle this. And some of them, very clear, deeply alarmed.

Well, and there is also, there is blowback from that trolling actually for Trump allies. You look at Canada, Canada, for instance, and and talking about the 51st state or these other things. It certainly does not help the conservatives in Canada right now, who who want to take control. The same thing's happening in Britain, where Elon Musk continues to interfere in British politics, all that is doing is helping a severely weakened labor government by, again, so there's always blowback to this. And, Sam, so much of it is, if we are to judge over the last four years, signature trolling.

And as David Sanger said, when pressed on Greenland, when pressed on these other things, David Sanger with the New York Times wrote this morning that when asked those questions, he responded with, quote, signature vagueness. So guess what happens? We talk about it. Everybody talks about it. Everybody writes about it. Everybody's asking, is he or isn't he? And the signature vagueness is there.

The trolling is there. And he's in the middle of the conversation. Exactly. And then it becomes incumbent to separate the signal from the noise, right? What actually matters here? Does renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, is that gonna happen? No.

I mean, imagine all the maps we'd have to rewrite. Impossible. So we can put that aside. But there are some things that I think materially do matter. Threatening, or at least not ruling out military force to acquire the Panama Canal or Greenland, I think materially matters. If only because it sends a signal to Russia. Hey, go ahead.

We do territorial sovereignty, doesn't really matter. You can do what you want in Ukraine. It sends a signal to China, Taiwan, right? And so that's the signal, that's the noise. In terms of the vagueness, you know, and we've done this for, god, eight years now, geez, figuring out if this is just him kind of riffing or if this is some sort of negotiating play.

And in some cases, you can see the case where he's trying to, for instance, try to extract more concessions from Canada when it comes to trade, or from Denmark and Greenland, or from Panama, right? But ultimately, there is a cost to this, which is it's chaos. It deteriorates and hurts our allies. And it invites other foreign countries, world powers, to basically meddle in other sovereign nations the way

that we are meddling in Panama, Greenland, Canada. I had, Ali, I had somebody in talking about, it was very close to Donald Trump, talking about when you listen to him, always understand, if he talks about deporting 13 million illegal immigrants, always understand that's the opening hand. That's the that's the start of the negotiations. Everything. If he's talking about the Panama Canal and where you might take it over by force. They say, I'm not saying this, I bet, they say that's the opening hand. He doesn't like the fees or he doesn't like how it's being handled. Maybe he wants China's shipping to have a higher surcharge on it.

Always look at these things as the opening volley in negotiations. But that's always been what Trump has done. It's just different when you're president of the United States versus the head volley in negotiations. But that's always been what Trump has done. Right. It's just different when you're president of the United States versus the head of a company. I mean, you can talk about acquiring Canada if you're not a head of state. An acquisition and a merger doesn't work like that as a country. But I do think this is, once again, the place that we are in with the literal of Trump and

the negotiating of Trump. And we talked about this this morning on way too early from a diplomatic perspective. I think Sam makes an excellent point from a policy negotiating perspective. It's also the same. There are people on Capitol Hill that I've spoken to recently who say, all right, what happens if we all agree on something and then someone whispers something new to Trump and we all have to go back on what we've already moved down the policy and legislative line. It's not a way for success legislatively or policy-wise, but this is gonna be the central thesis

of the second Trump administration. I do think the best advice, and I never find political books to be instructive when they're written by the candidates, but the best advice I got back in 2015 was, read the art of the deal and you'll understand the way that Trump functions. And again, I think we all gotta go back and reread because that's where we're at.

And let's be really clear there. That's great advice. Actually read the first three pages. Yep. And he explains. He goes to the office, picks up the phone, he starts talking, he has no plans, he sees what happens. And that's where we are. Told you. I mean, I told you this would happen, everybody. This is who he is, this is what we're in store for America.

You wanted this. Sam, he told you. You got it. You were saying that this was gonna be easy. I thought it would be different. Yeah, walking in the car. this was gonna be E to Z. I just thought it would be different. Yeah. Walked in the car. Sure, never not listen to Eugene.

You know. The Gulf of Mexico, by the way, was the Gulf of Mexico before there was the United States of America. Doesn't matter, we name it. Details, details. Just like we renamed Freedom Fries. Yeah, exactly.

So it is still Freedom Fries, right? Absolutely. Yes, absolutely. In the lead with the castle. So Mika, you know, this is one of those moments where there's, you know, this is one of those moments where there's, you know, you've always got to separate the signal from the ground noise, as a great admiral once told me.

But this is one of those moments where we may look back and actually, you know, see Gulf of America, Greenland, all this other stuff. And we may realize that actually, the most important part of yesterday's press conference that may have the biggest impact on American politics may be what he said about Metta. Right. And Mark Zuckerberg's total and absolute collapse

on all fronts in that horrific video that he put out yesterday. That actually is something that may more dramatically change the landscape of American politics at least over the next two to four years until somebody else gets in control and Mark Zuckerberg decides, yes, yes, sir, overlord, I will now do what you want me to do than anything else. This is going to have sweeping impact. Absolutely. That's the story of the day amidst all the noise. And we're going to talk more about this topic in our seven o'clock hour, but we're going

to get to Metta next. Still ahead on Morning Joe, we'll get to the fallout from Metta CEO Mark Zuckerberg's decision to end fact checking on Facebook and Instagram, ahead of Donald Trump's return to the Oval Office. Plus, New York City Mayor Eric Adams could face more criminal charges ahead of his upcoming trial. What prosecutors are saying about that.

Also ahead, billionaire Elon Musk's war on America's allies. Ed Luce joins us with his latest piece for the Financial Times. Morning Joe is back in 90 seconds. Live picture Reagan National 625 in the morning as we just mentioned Metta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has announced major changes to the fact checking and content moderation practices for the company's social media platforms. NBC News senior Washington correspondent Hallie Jackson has details. New fallout after Metta's mega move to eliminate traditional fact-checking on the world's

biggest social media platform. We've reached a point where it's just too many mistakes and too much censorship. The fact-checkers have just been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they've created, especially in the U.S. It's a significant shift from the fact-checking put in place after Donald Trump's first win. Instead, Metta will now rely on community notes, in other words, user input, similar to what Elon Musk's X platform does as part of a broader move to loosen up how Metta moderates content.

The company will also lift restrictions on hot button topics like gender identity and immigration, allow more politics into people's feeds, and move its trust and safety team from liberal California to ruby red Texas, all just days before president-elect Trump retakes the White House. The recent elections also feel like a cultural tipping point towards once again prioritizing speech. It's a political evolution for Metta, four years after Facebook suspended Mr. Trump's account

in the wake of January 6th and just months after the president-elect accused Zuckerberg of plotting against him in 2020 calling for life in prison if Zuckerberg did it again but after Mister Trump's win Zuckerberg traveled to Marlago his company donated a million dollars to the Trump inaugural fund and now close Trump ally and UFC head Dana White is joining metas board. Facebook I think they've come a long way.

He's directing this on the press. Some critics concerned. Back checking is not censorship what do you see as the Trump factor if you will hear. This is very obviously a political decision over the next 4 years the Trump administration will set key policy on critical tech topics like antitrust and AI. And as Metta has pushed into the world of artificial intelligence, NBC News has found user generated AI chat

bots that seemingly violated Metta's policies against creating characters based on religious or real life figures. The NBC News review found some two dozen chatbots ranging from Hitler and Jesus Christ to Taylor Swift and Captain Jack Sparrow. NBC's Hallie Jackson reporting there. Joining us now, Professor of Marketing at the NYU Stern School of Business, our friend Scott Galloway. He also is co-host of the Raging Moderates podcast.

Scott, so glad you're here to walk us through this this morning. Remember, it was just four years ago, about right now, that Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook Metta pulled Donald Trump's accounts down after the attack on the Capitol on January 6. And now you fast forward four years, Donald Trump threatening Mark Zuckerberg during the campaign. And it does look, just the last few days, last couple of weeks, like full capitulation giving Donald Trump exactly what he wants. What do you see in this move?

First up, good to be with you, Willie. I see that all CEOs in tech should stop using the term stakeholders and just go back to really the truth here and talk about shareholders. Four years ago, the term was called moderation. Now it's being called censorship. And with this decision, the CEO of Metta, Mark Zuckerberg, gets kind of a twofer. He gets to placate, at least temporarily, the president who threatened to put him in jail for the rest of his life. And he gets to save maybe upwards of $5 billion, which is how much they spend on their safety

and security department. And at a price-earnings ratio of 30, that's potentially a $150 billion increase in market capitalization. Mark Zuckerberg owns 15% of the company. So you have what is effectively a get-out-of-jail card, potentially, from someone who appears to be an oligarch threatening to put people in jail and add 15 to 20 billion dollars to his net worth. The greatest trade of 2024, it wasn't Bitcoin, it wasn't Nvidia, it was Elon Musk investing a quarter of a billion dollars directly in the

Trump campaign. And then when Trump won since the election, Elon Musk's worth has gone up $140 billion. So that's effectively, I believe, about a 56,000% return on investment. So we've gone full kleptocracy. We can never, in my opinion, wave our finger at Russia again when the president, the elected president, is taking public trust and public authority and weaponizing governments and doling out capital and market share and contracts and threatening to use regulatory action against the competitors who don't give money to his inaugural committee or don't kind of bend the knee, we are effectively in a kleptocracy. I just, you know, this is, Russia is the role model. We are becoming more like Russia every day. That's where we are.

Hey, Scott, it's Sam Stein here. I looked at all these adjustments that Zuckerberg was announcing. Some of them I think were significant. Some I think were a bit overblown. For instance, they already have offices in Texas, but he made a big stink about moving the content moderation office to Texas. And then I saw Lena Kahn on CNBC who suggested that there is an FTC suit that is going to

be considered in the next couple months that looks at whether Facebook, sorry, Metta is a monopoly on the social media network. And she said, this is plainly Mark Zuckerberg trying to get a sweetheart deal from the FTC. Do you see it that way? I think that's part of it. Also, the move to Texas not only pleases the conservative side of the aisle, which he's trying to do and has made several actions to try and come across as more conservative, it's the ultimate quiet firing.

Because if you tell, rather than a series of bad press releases or uncomfortable all hands meetings, if you just decide you're moving your safety and security team from California to Texas, you're naturally going to lose probably 30% to 50% of the employees. So this is, again, nothing about placating the Republican Party and saving money and adding shareholder value. And what is so shocking, I mean, just from a personal standpoint, what's the point

of having all this money if you aren't at some point going to show some fidelity as a 40 or a 50 something year old man that has the wealth of the GDP of a Latin American nation to actually standing up and showing some fidelity to American values. Bezos has got the yacht. Tim Cook, Jensen Huang and Nvidia is worth more than Inteler Boeing. When do the men show up here? When do the Americans show up here? When did the Americans show up here? So this is not only incredibly shocking, but not disappointing from Trump. But but but where's the leadership? Where are the men

that have have have such blessings and such prosperity from the rule of law and capitalism and competition and we don't need we don't need more mergers and acquisitions we need more breakups one company owns two thirds of all social media globally meta one company has 93% of all share of all search Google and if you don't think every day we don't pay higher prices one company has 50% of all e-commerce, Amazon. The percentage of revenues that have gone to Amazon from third-party retailers has gone up from 24% to 50%. Look at the rents that parents are paying on Facebook when 24% of teen girls are now addicted to Facebook.

Six percent of our teenagers are clinically addicted to drugs and alcohol. 24% are addicted to Instagram. The number of teen girls self-harming has doubled. So, if you want higher rents as a consumer, as a retailer, and as a parent, that's where we're headed. You know, Scott, there's so much to discuss here. You've talked, though, for some time about how this entire system is rigged, and it is rigged against working Americans and rigged for billionaires. And you've said also people like yourself, who made a lot of money in the markets, been very successful, but the tax system is, and again, this was, you know, you've been saying this for years now. Talk about how this is accelerating.

You talked about the Elon Musk example. Talk about how this is accelerating and how this, and I say this as a small government conservative, this is a threat to American capitalism. You know, we can look at a lot of different threats facing this country, but moving towards this sort of oligarchy with all of these monopolies. I've always told the story. During COVID, somebody called me up and said, hey, you need to invest in the stock market. I don't really do that.

I don't trust the stock market. He goes, just invest in the monopolies. I go, the monopolies? He goes, yeah, Metta, you know, invest in Metta and Amazon and Microsoft and he named five or six and they are there. Like you just said, their monopolies, LeniCon tried to break it up and you seriously would have thought that Karl Marx was marching down Wall Street. And you combine that combination that you're talking about with the fact that billionaires

are getting richer and richer by the second while screaming socialism. And what does that say about where American capitalism is going over the next five, 10 years? I think it comes down to a basic question. What is America? And I would, my kind of economic role model is Peter Drucker. I think an economy in America exists to create a robust middle class. The most ascendant countries over the last 20 years have been China and India. And it's a one basic litmus test. How many people are you bringing into the middle class? The greatest innovation in history is not the iPhone or the semiconductor, it's the American middle class. The beat back fascism in the middle of World War II has financed and built the greatest

innovations whether it's radar, whether it's the internet, whether it's vaccines. The middle class in America is the greatest innovation in history. People like to fall back into this right-wing notion that it's naturally self-healing. It's not. It's an accident in history. Typically throughout history you have a small number of people who weaponize government. They're very talented. They aggregate power. They weaponize government. And they aggregate more and more spoils. And then the good news is it's self-correcting. This level of income inequality is usually self-correcting. The bad news is the means of self-correction are typically war, famine, or revolution. And if you want to talk about tax policy, the myth in tax policy is that the rich don't pay their taxes. That's just not true. The

fulcrum is the following. There's super earners and super owners. The folks around your table are probably considered super earners. You make exceptional livings, but it's all current income reported on a W-2. And if you live in New Jersey or New York, you're probably paying 48% to 52% tax rates. But if you're a super owner, I make my living starting and selling businesses. My last business, which was sold for $160 million, I'm very transparent about money. This Gestalt or Zeitgeist that people should not talk about money is nothing but an attempt to keep poor people down because rich people talk about money all the time.

It's important to be financially literate. The first $10 million for my $160 million sale was tax-free. My effective tax rate over the last 10 years has been 17%. The average tax rate on the wealthiest 25 Americans is 6%. Corporate tax rates are at their lowest point since 1939. At the same time, taxes have gone up for the super owners. Now, the bottom 50% don't pay much federal income tax, but they pay a lot in usage and consumption taxes. But this misdirect talking about tax rates misses the point. It's the tax code, which has gone from 400 pages

to 4,000. And that 3,600 pages, quite frankly, is there to screw the middle class and continue to transfer more money to the super wealthy. The fastest growing demographic group in America is not seniors. It's not Latins. It's billionaires. We had 500 billionaires 10 years ago. We now have 2,500. So if you want to cram more and more wealth into a smaller group of people, we're on our way. And the weird thing about America is that we support it because our superpowers, our optimism, the Achilles heel, is that 99%, the bottom 99%, who are getting screwed, don't

mind these policies because they believe at some point they're going to be in that 1%. But where are we? We're in a country that's had unprecedented prosperity, but similar to the way William Gibson described the future. It has not been evenly distributed. When 40% of U.S. households are struggling with some sort of medical or dental debt, when a quarter or 20% of households with kids

are food insecure, and yet we have one man, Jensen Huang, and I like Jensen, who is now worth more than Boeing. I mean, something is wrong here. And just let me go to the psychology of happiness. I think a lot about happiness because I struggle with it, Joe. You effectively, once you get above a certain level of wealth, you get no incremental happiness. So why on earth would you not go back to a tax policy of the 60s, 70s, and 80s where, say above, pick a big number, $10 million, you actually pay more than 10%, maybe more

than 20%, maybe more than 50%? Because the difference between $30,000 a year for a household and $50,000 is enormous to the well-being of that household. Low-income kids and low-income households have higher resting blood pressure. But the difference between making $10 million a year and $15 million a year offers you no happiness. But these individuals have weaponized government. And we risk revolution, whether it's CEOs being murdered in the street, whether it's a MeToo movement that had righteous components of it or Black Lives Matter, what are these movements? They are targeting the wealthy. We are in the midst of a series of small revolutions to correct income inequality. And the reason we put an insurrectionist and a rapist in

office is because for the first time in our nation's history, a 30-year-old man or woman isn't doing as well as his or her parents were at 30. Why? Because the majority of households are having the oxygen sucked out of the room, such that a small number of individuals and a small number of companies can be worth more than nation states. Income inequality is out of control. Our tax policy has gone full oligarch.

Scott, it's Ali Vitale. As you're thinking a lot about happiness, I often think about the forums in which Americans are having conversations about society and the political discourse. One of the first things that I thought about was the ways that Twitter used to be a place for that, to have a kind of healthier discussion about politics. It's of course become a silo now with the changes that Musk has made. But the same, I think, will also be true with Metta to the extent that it's not already. So what's the impact that this has on the political discourse writ large and the way

that people from different sides of the aisle engage with each other. It's not just a physical divide in Washington. It's now online. You only see what you want to see. And how do these changes reinforce that? My colleague at NYU, Jonathan Haidt, says to have a strong, thriving democracy, you need three things. You need trust in institutions. You need shared stories that we buy into that we were the good guys in World War II, that Americans are a generous, righteous people, and that you have small social networks that develop social capital because we trust each other at our church. We trust our neighbors. And effectively, we've

now gone into these hermetically sealed bubbles where, I mean, I affectionately refer to Twitter now as a Nazi porn bar. Do you know anybody that in our circle that trusts anything they read on Facebook? And two thirds of Americans now, or somewhere between half and two thirds, depending on the age, now get their news from social media. And unfortunately, the organizations that actually do the hard and expensive work of fact checking. If I do an article and it's published on your website or on the CNN side or the Wall Street Journal, people call me and ask me for references such that people have some trust in what they

learn. But we are all entering into these hermetically sealed bubbles that separate us, that polarize us from one another. And that not only has impact on our political discourse, it has impacts on things like household formation and mating. Young people are no longer dating because they don't like each other's political views. Do any of you remember the political views of the people you dated in your 20s? I don't. So you have these hermetically sealed bubbles, and it's not accidental that it's happening.

And I know this sounds paranoid, but it doesn't mean I'm wrong. But if I controlled the largest media platform in history for 18 to 25 year olds, that is TikTok, and I'm China and I have a vested interest in diminishing the global strategic power of the US, and I can't beat them kinetically, I can't beat them militarily, I can't beat them militarily. I can't beat

them economically. Why wouldn't I put my thumb on the scale of content that makes them hate each other? 40% more of Americans aren't speaking to their neighbors. A third of Americans think the election was stolen. Two thirds of Republicans, one in four Americans believe 9-11 was an inside job. We can beat anyone globally, anyone. Everyone would pray for our problems economically. We can add a quarter of a trillion dollars to the market cap of a company 15 minutes post an earnings call. But here's the thing, we don't like each other because we've all been shoved into these

algorithmically driven rage bubbles such that we've stopped getting along and we no longer have a shared truth. In sum, these algorithms that control our news, that now no longer have the cost or the expense of fact control or means of production or studios, are going to run away with it. And the few media institutions that actually had some fidelity to the truth and shared stories are quite frankly just becoming a shadow of themselves. Yeah.

You know, I was reading former President Jimmy Carter's speeches last night, and there's one in particular that warns of a moment just like this. Professor of marketing at the NYU Stern School of Business, Scott Galloway, thank you very much. His latest book is entitled The Algebra of Wealth, a simple formula for financial security. Great conversation. I want to make a comment though, just about a word that was used in this interview. Donald Trump was tried civilly and was found liable of sexual abuse, not rape. But the judge in the case likened his actions to rape, but the liability was officially called sexual abuse.

Coming up, Donald Trump says he will be inheriting a bad economy when he takes office later this month. Steve Ratner is standing by at the Southwest Wall with his charge to debunk that claim. Morning Joe will be right back. We are inheriting a difficult situation from the outgoing administration and they're trying everything they can to make it more difficult. Inflation is continuing to rage, and interest rates are far too high.

And I've been disappointed to see the Biden administration's attempt to block the reforms of the American people and that they voted for them. President-elect Donald Trump yesterday continuing to suggest he's inheriting a poor economy when he takes office in two weeks. Steve Ratner has been looking into this. He says nothing could be further from the truth and he joins us with charts. So Steve, let's break it down. We'll start with job growth. How is it? Yeah, Mika, the economy is incredibly strong, as you guys talked about a little bit yesterday. And in fact, Trump is inheriting the opposite of what he says is inheriting.

Jobs is a great place to start. You can see that we've been creating jobs consistently across both the prior Trump administration as well as Obama, of course, with the exception of COVID. But if you exclude COVID from the calculations, under Biden, we've been creating jobs at a rate of about 241,000 jobs per month. Under Trump, it was 180,000. So not only are we creating a lot of jobs,

we're creating at a faster rate than Trump 1.0 did. Manufacturing, we all know manufacturing's been a tough spot for the United States. We had been losing manufacturing jobs for many, many years. It was exacerbated by the financial crisis. But under Trump, but also under Biden, we have created a lot of manufacturing jobs, 693,000 under Biden, 425,000 under Trump. And so manufacturing jobs are actually back to the highest level they've been at since

the financial crisis. It's a tough job, but Biden has gotten a lot done on the manufacturing side and left Trump with a pretty decent tailwind there. So Steve, as we move to your second chart, we heard President-elect Trump mention inflation there. Goods are still too expensive for many Americans, for most Americans, but it is important to look at that number in relationship to how wages have risen as well lately. What does that look like? Yeah, two points on that, Willie. First of all, he said inflation was raging. We have to recognize

that inflation did rage. We had a really tough spot on inflation during COVID for a whole series of reasons, but what maybe Americans don't fully appreciate is how far down it's come. It's come all the way back down to between 2.5 and 3%, depending upon what measure you use, just above the Federal Reserve's target of 2%, not that far actually from where inflation was under Trump. And food prices, grocery prices, which are obviously one of the most important items to everyday Americans, which again did soar in fairness, are now running at about a 1.6%, 1.7% inflation rate.

So very, very low inflation in food. So inflation is not raging. So as inflation has come down, that's obviously been good for workers because their pay has been going up, but inflation had been taking a lot of that away from them. It's now the opposite, in fact. So real wages, wages adjusted for inflation since COVID ended under Biden have been growing one and a half percent a year. That's again, a pretty good tailwind.

It's an even better tailwind than Trump created where he had 1.3 percent annual growth in wages. So right now the American worker is seeing thereafter inflation paychecks going up by a reasonably significant number. So inflation may have been decisive in the election. Immigration also is very important as we move to your third chart Steve. What does the border look like today? Obviously it was a problem. There was a crisis the border during the Biden administration, but that has changed here in recent months. Yeah, again, Trump talks about the border

being out of control, and in fairness, again, like inflation, we had a tough run at the border. But again, what I think most Americans probably don't appreciate, and certainly Trump does not seem to appreciate, is how far down they've come. This blue area are people who cross between ports of entry, between recognized entry points, the films you see of people going across the Rio Grande River and things of that sort. The green are the people who present themselves at the ports of entry.

And you can see again how far it's dropped. And in fact, the blue is all the way down here at about $47,000 a month. And that is a lower number of crossings than we had when Trump left office when it was running at about $70,000 per month. So the border is actually quite secure at the moment. And contrary to what Trump says, it has come all the way down. And then there's energy. Another subject that he keeps saying, we've got a drill baby drill and we've got to create It has come all the way down. And then there's energy.

Another subject that he keeps saying, we've got a drill baby drill and we've got to create more energy. I'm not sure he's aware that we're actually already doing this. And so you can see here in fact that our energy production has been hitting records. We brought down our use of coal, so that's a really good thing for the environment. We have at least temporarily replaced it with natural gas and crude oil, record levels of production in our history. And then we have some nuclear and we have grown renewables.

And what also is probably not appreciated, and it did start in 2019, but it's accelerated under Biden, is the fact that we've become a net energy exporter. We actually export more energy, mostly in the form of oil, than we import. And so the idea that we're not producing a massive amount of oil and gas and all kinds of energy is also simply a fiction. There you go. Morning, Joe, economic analyst. Steve Ratner, thank you very much for that clarity.

We appreciate it.