Morning Joe - Morning Joe 2/12/25

Episode Date: February 12, 2025

Trump suggests release of American teacher held by Russia could help end war in Ukraine

Jalen, you scored three touchdowns on Sunday. You did, but the first one was doing what people are calling the tush-push. Yeah. Is that what you call it? It's not what I call it. It's not what you call it. It's not what I call it. What do you call it? You know, I'm not gonna say what I call it.

Okay, but it's not... I was shocked, too, because when I got there, I'd known it as the tush-push, but I didn't know if that's what it would be called, but I thought it was called it, but it's not... Okay, but it's not... I was shocked, too, because when I got there, I'd known it as the tush push, but I didn't know if that's what it would be called, but I thought it was called that, and it's not called the tush push, actually. No. What is your role in the, quote-unquote, tush push?

I think I have the easiest job, to be honest. I think I'm the one who pushes the tush. I'm definitely the one. There you go. Philadelphia Eagles star Shaquan Barkley and Jalen Hurts last night on the night show, Jimmy Fallon fresh off their Super Bowl victory man, Philadelphia still celebrating, still reeling. I suspect that will last for a while. They don't, they don't take things halfway.

Sports fans in that city. Not in Philadelphia, no doubt about it. Good morning. Welcome morning show. It's halfway, sports fans in the city? Not in Philadelphia, no doubt about it. Good morning, welcome to the Morning Show. It's Wednesday, February 12th. With us, we have co-host of our fourth hour and contributing writer of the Atlantic, Jonathan Lumiere. Member of the New York Times editorial board, Mara Gaye, president emeritus

of Council on Foreign Relations, Richard Haas. Columnist and associate editor for the Washington Post, David Ignatius. The host of Way Too Early, Ali Vitale, an NBC News National Affairs analyst, and a partner and chief columnist at Puck, John Heilman. So a lot of news yesterday. Some of it good?

Some of it good. Some of it good? Some of it good. Let's start there. Anytime an American returns home, American who was wrongfully in prison returns home, that is good news. And that's where we're gonna start this morning before we get to the less good news. That American who was wrongfully detained in Russia now back on US soil, a man named Mark Fogel. He was released

yesterday in a deal brokered by President Trump's special envoy. The 63 year old teacher from Pennsylvania was held captive for more than three years. He was arrested in Moscow back in 2021 for traveling with 17 grams of medical cannabis. Fogel was found guilty a year later for supposedly engaging in what was deemed large scale drug smuggling. He was sentenced to 14 years at a labor camp. Last night, President Trump welcomed Fogel to the White House. Fogel thanked the president for securing his release.

Meanwhile, Trump did not talk about the terms of the deal that led to Fogel's freedom, but suggested this could help to end the war in Ukraine. Love that I was given sustained me for three and a half years in a prison that had me in hospitals for more than 100 days. I was given more than 400 injections in that time. And knowing I had the support of my fellow Pennsylvanians, my family, my friends, it was so overwhelming that

it brought me to my knees and it brought me to tears, but it was, it was my energy, it was my being that kept me going that whole time, and I will forever be indebted to President Trump. Did you speak directly to President Putin about what... Well, I don't want to say that. I just want to say that I appreciate very much what they did in letting Mark go home. What were the terms of this deal, Mr. President?

Very fair. Very, very fair. Very reasonable. Not like deals you've seen over the years. They were very fair. I think this could be the very important element. You could be a big part of it, actually, because it could be a big, important part of getting the war over with Ukraine.

And we appreciate President Putin's, what he did. He was able to pull it off for you, right? He was able to pull it off. We think, and you're here. I'm here. So it was great. We'll tell you a little bit more about it tomorrow. But I think we've made great progress on the war also. Getting the war, I want to get the war ended.

The president also announced that another American will be released today, but did not say who or from where. So reporting this morning that there would, Russians would be receiving some exchange, some sort of prisoner swap, but Joe unconfirmed too. But always good to see someone home like that. Western Pennsylvania, Mark Fogel came home wearing a Steelers cap as he kissed the ground at Joint Base Andrews and holding in his hand an Iron City beer, which is a beer right there in Pittsburgh.

There you go. So Richard, what are some of the ramifications of this? The president talked about the possibility of ending the war in Ukraine. Obviously, they're talking. What's the latest that you're hearing? A couple of things. It shows this president, like many of his predecessors, Joe, great believer in personal diplomacy.

I think it also signals that this administration will see Putin a little bit less as a pariah, somebody more you can quote unquote to do business with. JD Vance, the vice president, is going to the Munich Security Conference this week. We'll be meeting with President Zelensky. I think what you're going to see is the pace of diplomacy towards Ukraine picking up. Ukraine is increasingly on board the idea of some type of a ceasefire roughly in place. A lot of detailed talk about European security measures that would help Ukraine, potentially even boots on the ground from Poland and other countries.

And I think what's happening then is the administration is pivoting to say, look, we've got Ukraine willing to accept some version of a ceasefire in place. What are you, Vladimir Putin, willing to do? So I don't see this as directly involved, but indirectly, I think what you're now seeing is the American-Russian negotiation essentially beginning. Right. They're talking, David Ignatius, and obviously the devastation on both sides, obviously a little more obvious to Ukraine because it is a smaller country than Russia, but this

war has just been so devastating on Russia. It continues to be devastating. The drone warfare continues to exact terrible, terrible casualties on Russians. Are we getting closer from what you saw yesterday, from what you're reporting on? Are we getting closer at least to peace talks? If not an actual peace deal or an actual ceasefire? Well, President Trump says that we are says that we're moving forward.

My concern is that all of this action is happening over the heads of the Ukrainians. And the big danger here has always been that President Trump would come in and do a deal with his friend, President Putin of Russia, and then impose that on the Ukrainians who suffered so brutally in trying to repel the invasion by Putin of their country three years ago. So that continues to be a worry. You're always joyous to see a hostage released, but this was, in a sense, a transactional move by Russia to begin the next phase of negotiations, and Russia will expect something from President Trump

in response to what it's done in releasing Foley. Meanwhile, President Trump remains optimistic. He can carry out his plan of taking over Gaza. Still, the King of Jordan appeared skeptical yesterday. The two leaders, of course, met at the White House. The president wants Jordan to permanently take in some of the more than 2 million Palestinians currently living in Gaza

while the U.S. redevelops the enclave. The King of Jordan is, of course, against that idea. He told the president he's willing to take in 2,000 Palestinian children who are very sick. That idea was well received by President Trump. But then later in the day, the king posted on social media that he only supports a two-state solution saying, quote, I reiterated Jordan's steadfast position against the displacement of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.

Still, the president told reporters he thinks his plan can be achieved, especially if Egypt helps out. But Egypt has also voiced its opposition to resettling Palestinians. With Egypt, I think you're gonna see some great progress. I think with Jordan, you're gonna see some great progress. Three of us, we'll have some others helping,

and we're gonna have some others that are very high-level helping, and the whole thing some others helping. And we're going to have some others at a very high level helping, and the whole thing will come. It's not a complex thing to do. And with the United States being in control of that piece of land, a fairly large piece of land, you're going to have stability in the Middle East for the first time. And the Palestinians, or the people that live now in Gaza,

will be living beautifully in another location. They're going to be living safely. They're not going to be killed, murdered, and having to leave every 10 years because I've been watching this for so many years. It's nothing but trouble. David, this conversation that the president is having on the world stage in full view of this outside-of-the-box, that's-been-trampled-on-the-box idea of redevelop of the box that's been trampled on the box idea of redeveloping Gaza, it's happening against the backdrop of an already tenuous ceasefire

agreement where Trump and now Netanyahu are saying, if Hamas does not release all of the rest of the hostages by Saturday at noon, all hell will break loose. Can you talk about these various pieces and how they all really do funnel through the same thread? So, Ali, I think you put it just right. The Middle East crisis that's surrounded this war that's been going on for 15 months was finally beginning to ease when President Trump arrived with the startling new proposal that the United States would take over Gaza and expel the Palestinians, forcibly relocate

them to other countries, primarily Egypt and Jordan. And we've been watching the aftermath of that ever since. It was excruciating yesterday to see King Abdullah of Jordan visiting President Trump, trying very hard not to disagree with him in public about a proposal that could have the effect of destabilizing the Jordanian monarchy to the point that it really can't survive. This is really a deadly threat to Jordan.

Jordan's stability matters most of all to its neighbor Israel. An unstable Jordan where you have the Palestinian population in a revolt is the last thing that Israel needs. But these are now, because of President Trump's initiative, new facts that people are going to have to deal with. King Abdullah of Jordan's approach was to try to delay this. He said, Mr. President, I need to talk to the Egyptians and the Saudis. We need some time to think about this.

And as you saw from the clips, Trump wants to go now. He keeps repeating his phrases to me to describe the forcible relocation of a population as a very beautiful thing, you know, as if you're talking about putting people on a cruise ship. That really troubles me. So Richard, let's just, if you're looking at the scorecard here, Jordan's against this, the Saudis are against this, Egypt's against this, the Emiratis are against this. And there's no way the American people are going to want to send troops and send money into Gaza to try to rebuild Gaza for whatever purposes President Trump says he wants to rebuild.

So I just, again, it seems the world is against this. And even Republican lawmakers are saying, wait, what? No, we're not. America first thing is not about getting entangled in another Middle East war. So what's the end game here for President Trump? This is not going to happen. The danger is that if the president keeps pushing it, you won't resolve the Palestinian issue.

But as David was saying... Any theories, best theories on why he is pushing this right now? No, but this is, you know, these are ideas that have come out of the right in Israel that they want to do this in Gaza in part as a precedent for the West Bank, the settler movement, the annexationists and so forth. What I think is interesting here though, Joe, let me give you a slightly different thing. Presidents put this out, again, I think it's a non-starter. President King of Jordan didn't want to say this is a terrible idea in front of him.

He kind of managed the situation awkwardly, but somewhat deftly. So what's going to happen, I think, is the Arabs are going to come together and say, we, you know, they'll do like Jordan will take in 2,000 kids or something. I think what's going to happen, though, is if they're smart, they would put forth a radical proposal. They're always saying, we're in favor of rebuilding Gaza with the people there, but here's what Israel needs to do. What they should do, and I think what they will do, is basically say, we need a day after.

What this Israeli government has refused to talk about as a Palestinian-led rebuilding of Gaza with an Arab stabilization force, with Arab money. My hunch is they will put that forward, and then this president's going to have to decide, will he put pressure on Bibi Netanyahu to come up with an approach to Gaza, to support an approach to Gaza that the Arab countries and the Palestinians are all willing to sign on to? That's where I think this is heading. Mara, you talk to any Arab leader, you talk to any Arab diplomat, and they'll say, we're

not backing off of a two-state solution. It seems to me that Abraham Accords, which did many wonderful things, went in a good direction. But the one failure of it was they thought they could make peace in the Middle East by pushing the Palestinians off to the side. We learned on October 7th that doesn't work. And it appears that there's sort of the same mindset. The Palestinians are just sort of extras in this play.

We're going to just push them off to the side and everything will be wonderful. That's ignoring three, four thousand years of history. I'm so glad that it's a great transition to the point I wanted to make, which is that we may not be talking enough about how old these ideas are that Donald Trump is pushing. The language that he is using is just old, imperialistic adventure language. Harkens back to a time where empires around the world would take out a map and draw on it, ignoring the history and the people who lived on the land. This took place all across Africa, the scramble for Africa.

This took place all across South America. After World War I. It took place after World War I. After World War II. That's where World War I was actually fought over this exact issue. So I think to your point, Joe, you know, this is very classic anti-democratic behavior from Donald Trump because the values that underlie diplomacy and democracy in our modern world are self-determination of every people. And the Palestinians, too, deserve self-termination.

That is the basis for the two-state solution. And I think when we ignore that, there will never be peace. And it would be really the equivalent of saying to Americans, you know what, you speak English, just go to Canada. You have no claim to be American, despite the fact that we are deeply American. The Palestinians also have a history on this land. And I just think it's sad, but politically to your initial question,

you just have to wonder if this is just all about a distraction for the American people as well for Donald Trump. That's why I keep asking what this is all about because, Jonathan, this is... the president has to know this is not gonna happen, first of all. Secondly, it runs counter to everything he campaigned on. It runs counter to everything that his base supports. We've talked about the divide between, let's say, the Steve Bannon wing of MAGA and the Elon Musk wing of MAGA, and we saw that played out in full form. But man, I would think almost all of the MAGA base would be against wars in Greenland, wars

in Panama, wars in Gaza, especially Gaza so much. I think of sort of the counter-conservative movement in the Republican Party, I'm talking traditional conservative movement, came because of the war in Iraq. I think that was a defining moment in what I saw a rejection of the Bush wing of the Republican Party, the Cheney wing of the Republican Party. And so this is doubling, tripling, quadrupling down things that Dick Cheney would have never

suggested. And when I say that, I'm saying the Dick Cheney and the George W. Bush that, again, you know, conservative Republicans with a small C would say ran a Wilsonian sort of foreign policy where they were going to wave a magic wand, reshape how America looked. And of course, that's what led us to Iraq. That's what led us to Vietnam. And that's what led to an America first Republican party.

Yeah. And to your point, it's been overshadowed by so much which has come afterwards. But I remember being there night after night during the 2016 campaign at these rallies when Trump would rail against the forever wars of Iraq and Afghanistan. That was an extraordinarily popular thing among the people he was winning over to his side. They did not want that.

They wanted to bring American troops home. And he and his fellow Republicans conditioned them also to try to pull back from supporting Ukraine. And now to suddenly go completely the other direction. You know, they've now ruled out the idea of US troops on the ground in Gaza, but still floating though one wonders how they'd control it without that. You know, but to continue to say, to double down, to triple down now of US control in Gaza when it is clear that no Arab neighbor would be for this.

They're insisting on a two-state solution and Trump, at least in the Israeli government right now, not embracing that. Have we had a clarification I asked earlier this week when President Trump said I'm going to take it over and develop it, it's gonna be beautiful development, have we had any clarification from the White House whether that I meant the United States or Donald Trump personally? I know the White House, I know White House officials were asked that and and brushed it off. Have we gotten any clarification?

It still makes signals. The belief it would be the government, but perhaps Trump org would have a role here as well. We know that members of Trump's family have previously suggested that Gaza would be such good beachfront property to develop. We will see what happens. But the White House, it's sort of last couple days, been backing away from this idea until Trump grabbed it by the collar again yesterday

and said no this is what we're gonna do. Yeah you almost sense and again I have no reporting on this at all but the only thing that makes any strategic sense is he's doing Netanyahu's bidding. He's doing the bidding of the right-wing parties who Netanyahu may be in trouble with because of this ceasefire deal. That's the only thing that makes sense that he because he's channeling he's channeling the far-right in Israel right now who do not believe that the Palestinians have any right to the West Bank or Gaza. And what this you know know, we've been focused for the last 15 months for good reason on Gaza. I will bet you before this year is over, the focus shifts to the West Bank.

It could be becoming more and more of a conflict zone. The dynamic between the 500,000 Israeli settlers and the 3 million Palestinians here is getting more and more violent. Before this year is over, that could become the new center of Middle Eastern friction. It's been happening there for the past year so it's just been heinous, just been heinous and and you know we used to talk about an illegal settlement here and illegal settlement there just the most extreme right-wing settlers have just been set loose on the West Bank. And getting worse.

And no one happier by Trump's proposal then, Prime Minister Netanyahu. We'll return to this later in the show, but next up here on Morning Joe, President Trump also giving the Department of Government Efficiency even more power. Doge will break down the executive order Trump signed and what it could mean for Elon Musk. Plus, we'll play for you some of the tech billionaire's comments about his role in the Trump administration amid concerns there may be significant conflicts of interests. You're watching Morning Joe.

We're back, 90 seconds. We're not going to buy anything. We're going to have it. We're going to keep it. And we're going to make sure that there's going to be peace. And there's not going to be any problem. And nobody's going to keep it and we're going to make sure that there's going to be peace and there's not going to be any problem and nobody's going to question it. And we're going to run it very properly and eventually we'll have economic development

at a very large scale, maybe the largest scale on that site. We're going to have Gaza. We don't have to buy. There's nothing to buy. We will have Gaza. What is that? No reason to buy. There is nothing to buy. We will have Gaza. What is that? No reason to buy. There is nothing to buy.

It's Gaza. It's a war-torn area. We're going to take it. We're going to hold it. We're going to cherish it. President Trump signed an executive order yesterday giving Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency more power. According to a fact sheet provided by the White House, the Orders Direct agency heads across government to work with DOJ to take

multiple steps to cut the size of the federal workforce. Those steps include only hiring employees for every four that leave. One employee establishing new criteria for hiring, giving a DOJ team-led hiring approval over new career appointment hires, and preparing the agency for large-scale reductions in the workforce by figuring out which components our agencies themselves may be eliminated or combined. Meanwhile, Musk answered questions from media yesterday for the first time about the work of the Doge team. Musk stood next to President Trump at the Resolute Desk, trying to defend the work that his staffers have done,

which has been criticized for operating with unchecked power. Musk railed against bureaucracy, calling it unelected, fourth unconstitutional branch of government. He was also pressed multiple times on his conflicts of interest, connected to the massive government contracts his companies receive.

At a high level, if you say what is the goal of Doge or, and I think a significant part of the presidency is to restore democracy. This may seem like, well, aren't we in a democracy? Rule of the bureaucrat, if the bureaucracy is in charge, and then what meaning does democracy actually have? If the people cannot vote and have their will be decided by their elected representatives in the form of the president and the Senate and the House, then we don't live in a democracy.

We live in a bureaucracy. But if there is a conflict of interest when it comes to you yourself, for instance, you've received billions of dollars in federal contracts. When it comes to you yourself, for instance, you've received billions of dollars in federal contracts. When it comes to the Pentagon, for instance, which the president I know has directed you to look into, are you policing yourself in that? Is there any sort of accountability check and balance in place that would provide any transparency for the American people?

Well, all of our actions are fully public. So if you see anything you say like wait a second hey you know that doesn't that seems like maybe that's you know that there's a conflict there. I thought like people are gonna be shy about saying that they'll say it immediately. Mr. Musk you said on X that an example of the fraud that you have cited was 50 million dollar of condoms was sent to Gaza but after fact check this apparently Gaza in Mozambique and the program was to predict them against HIV so can you correct the statements it wasn't sent to

Hamas actually it was sent to Mozambique which makes sense why condoms was sent there and how can we make sure that all the statements that you said were correct so we can trust what you say? Well, first of all, some of the things that I say will be incorrect and should be corrected. So nobody's going to bet a thousand. I mean, we will make mistakes, but we'll act quickly to correct any mistakes. So, you know, I'm not sure we should be sending $15 million with the condoms to anywhere, frankly. I think that there are some worthy things, but overall, if you say what is the bang for the buck, I would say it was not very good.

And there was far too much of what USAID was doing was influencing elections in ways that I think were dubious and do not stand the light of day. Elon Musk gave one example of a possible reform to the bureaucratic process. He explained how antiquated record keeping in a limestone mine is preventing government workers from retiring. This is actually, I think, a great anecdote because we're told that the most number of people that could retire possibly in a month is 10,000.

We're like, well, why is that? Well, because all the retirement paperwork is manual on paper. It's manually calculated, then written down on a piece of paper. Then it goes down a mine. And like, what do you mean a mine? Like yeah, there's a limestone mine where we store all the retirement paperwork. And you look at a picture of this mine, we'll post some pictures afterwards. And this mine looks like something out of the 50s because it was started

in 1955. So it looks like it's like a time warp. And then the speed, then the limiting factor is the speed at which the mine shaft elevator can move determines how many people can retire from the federal government. And the elevator breaks down sometimes and then nobody can retire. So the mine musk was describing is a real thing. David Farinhold of the Washington Post covered it back in 2014, calling it the quote sinkhole of bureaucracy. So David Ignatius, first of all, my chief complaint since Doge began has been the lack of transparency.

I do think it's good that Elon Musk went before reporters and answered questions. That's number one. Number two, let's just admit a few things here before we talk about conflicts of interest for people that are watching at home going, well, why are they doing this? How could they do this? How could the American people go along with this? Most Americans, a majority of Americans think that the government is inefficient. Most presidents from Ronald Reagan to Bill Clinton think that the bureaucracy is inefficient

and antiquated and they've tried to update it and, you know, Al Gore famously going on David Letterman to try to show his examples. I remember at one point the Reagan administration, somebody saying to the Washington Post, you know, why did we even come here? You can't do anything. You can't update anything. So this is something that we've heard administrations complain about for 40 years. The biggest concern, of course, has been one, whether they were doing it in a constitutional, lawful manner, and two, the lack of transparency. I'm curious what you saw yesterday in this press conference by Elon Musk.

We will get to the conflicts of interest, which obviously is a glaring red light there. But on these other issues, what were your thoughts about the press conference? So the scene itself was bizarre. You had Musk in his MAGA hat, dressed all in black, a long coat that looked almost like a cape, with his young son X climbing all over him, climbing on the floor, President Trump often looking uncomfortable at the scene.

So the scene. So the scene itself was bizarre. The point you make that there is a fundamental problem here of a federal government bureaucracy that is too bureaucratic, too big, ill-managed. Every American has experience of that. And the idea of trying to make the government more efficient Reduce the level of spending improve the technology That's one of the worst things about how the federal government works that works off of the adequate in computers

That's an idea that people can support but work a country of laws. You can't just do things by edict This is a problem that as you said Al Gore and so many other people tried hard to address, but you have to do it carefully because it's a pain in the neck, you'd love just smash through, but we're a country of laws. That's the way we were designed. And I think that's the part of the Musk rush to change everything in sight that's most worrying. It seems to be being conducted without regard for our legal procedures. We're going to have some big court tests coming up in the coming weeks that are going to be

decisive in showing what are the limits of what Trump's trying to do. Should there be efforts to reform the federal government and make it more efficient? Absolutely. No question about it. Absolutely, and if you talk, I mean, there's some... We interviewed the Secretary of Defense a few years ago talking about computers from the 1980s. So, again, in theory, this would be wonderful. In theory, this is wonderful whether you're talking about the Pentagon, whether you're talking about the VA, whether you're talking about Social

Security, anybody that has tried to deal with the IRS and how antiquated, and I may say too for Republicans understaffed. All these agencies are. They're not going to tackle the 36 trillion dollar debt by doing all the things they want to do and cutting some employees here and there. So yeah, this is, I think, a concept that many Americans would support, a lot of independents would support. The question though is though, is it being done legally? Is it being done constitutionally?

And is it being done constitutionally? And is it being done transparently? I think Elon Musk getting before reporters, I actually think, is much as possible since his people are running through these government agencies. I think that is extraordinarily important. And it's also, of course, most important that the letter of the law is followed, that the Constitution is followed, that actually Congress cares about its Article 1 powers. And interesting yesterday the response to the court cases.

We didn't get the sort of response that we heard from JD Vance and Mike Lee this weekend. You had President Trump saying he was disappointed by it and of course he would follow the law but they would appeal some of these cases. So very interesting where we're going here. But again I think we were talking in the break about Gaza. So much of that I still think is a smokescreen for something else. I could be completely wrong. I think it's a distraction to distract the public from other things. Again, I could be completely wrong there.

But again, we all know they came fast to push all of these executive orders in the early days to throw people off balance. They threw Democrats off balance. They threw Republicans off balance. The Republican senators have been around for decades and were like, I have no idea what's going on here. This is insane. They threw the media off.

So that was the purpose. And now, as things settle a bit, maybe we start to see the contours of what's legal, what's constitutional, and how the White House is going gonna respond to reforming government within those confines. Yeah, and Trump did say yesterday that he'd be willing to work through Congress to get congressional approval for some of what Doge is doing. So perhaps that's warding off that constitutional crisis of the defiance of court orders, at least for now.

But the administration's really not backing away from that option down the road. There is so much to say about this moment here. John Haman, let's just, we talked about, we played the clip there of Elon Musk suggesting, yeah, I'll be wrong sometimes. He also said, we're going really fast, we're gonna make mistakes.

And if we make mistakes, we'll correct them. But some of those mistakes could have real world implications, we're already seeing talk about massive research done for the Department of Education as to how to better serve students, that's to be cut. We know about health research as such that could be cut. We know USAID blown up and we've cataloged for weeks now on the show. Isn't NIH already frozen? It's already frozen. NIH I don't think again I think I think they're moving so fast I actually think there's some

things that they don't understand. Like cancer trials, Alzheimer's trials. I think even some inside the administration don't understand that by moving this fast, they're stopping, research said, is critical for red state America, for blue state America, for plaid America. Trials that are stopped halfway through, suddenly run out of money.

And this is happening before RFK Jr. even gets that confirmation vote. So that's the danger here, what Musk is doing, John Holman. You're right, we've just discussed, others have said, some government reform needed. But he's, not only are there real security concerns, that's where Democrats perhaps rightly are focused, some of Musk's staff having no clearance to be an extraordinarily sensitive Treasury Department systems just to name one example

and yet they're doing it, but they're cutting so much they're cutting things that people need, things that will be politically very unpopular and weigh in also if you will on that body language in the Oval Office. It's so striking. When was the last time Donald Trump was in a press availability where he only got a couple questions and Elon Musk got the vast majority? Didn't seem to be sitting too well with the commander in chief. Well, I think if there was any question, Jonathan, about who is the president right now and who is the co-president, at least the semiotics of that scene made

that pretty clear. Musk in the position of total dominance, the notion that they were standing, that they were next to each other, it doesn't really give an accurate picture of what was happening to have Musk towering over Trump, Trump at his desk, kind of looking at Musk's kid, barely kind of contributing to the conversation. I just, there's so many things to unpack here, but I contributing to the conversation. There's so many things to unpack here, but I want to go back. Like everyone who is in favor of reforming government, I'm in favor of reforming government,

too. Like everyone who's in favor of transparency, I, too, am in favor of transparency. But what happened yesterday was not transparency. Elon Musk, just taking questions from reporters is not, I'm for it, I'm for it. But that's not a metric of transparency. And maybe the opening of the door towards something that looked like transparency. But we don't know, we know some of the things they're doing. We don't know many of the things we're doing.

There is no complete comprehensive doge-provided list of the actions that it has taken, of the systems that it has penetrated, of its ultimate ambition or agenda. It's all basically being done by tweet. And you have Elon Musk not merely standing up there talking about all the things he talked about yesterday, but he's also up there saying things, making unfounded evidence-free allegations about massive fraud and corruption within these agencies that they have sought to cut back. He claimed yesterday that they had evidence of multiple people in the bureaucracy who now have net worths of tens of millions of dollars.

No evidence provided, no transparency to those claims. How does he know that? He made dozens of totally unsupported statements, largely to justify what he's been doing, while providing no backup whatsoever and saying that we are the most transparent, I don't know of an organization ever that's been more transparent than we are, then referred people to go look at the employee's accounts on X and didn't make note of the fact that he is operating under the guise of a special government employee, which means he's exempted from financial disclosures. So I don't know, just on the basis of those simple facts, that doesn't look a lot like transparency to me.

If somebody wanted to sit down and talk about what transparency would look like, I could make a very, I could find a way what that looked like. Like, what that looked like was filibustering and making stuff up. Well, and Ali, that's exactly why I think it's important. If he's going to be doing this and taking really the pivotal role in this administration, he needs to have a presser every single day and he needs to answer those questions every day that John Heilman was asking. I do think that some transparency comes from being able to ask Musk about this.

I'm glad we drilled down deeper on the optics of what was happening in the oval yesterday because it was striking to see Musk standing, the attention of the room seemingly oriented around him, the tone that he used I think was also instructive, this flippant tone of we're doing things quickly we may be wrong but there are real impacts to that flippant tone and the fast pace that they're trying to enact here. So that's the optics and the tone. But then on the substance piece of it, I think the transparency has been one of the largest concerns.

And Joe, you're right to point out that a press conference would help alleviate some of that. But the other thing that strikes me is that there are the conflicts of interest from Musk that he was asked about in part. And there was something that took my attention this morning in the New York Times. They found 11 of the federal agencies impacted by Doge's actions have more than 32 pending actions or complaints into Musk's six companies. So there's that piece of it.

And then there's the role that Congress could play here. And it's the one that I'm the most fascinated in, because we talk a lot about how Democrats are stymied because they're in the minority. That's true. That's the way that Congress is set up. It's a majority run body and Republicans have the majority on both sides. But starting this morning, there's a hearing in a subcommittee that's focused on Doge. For them, it's delivering on government efficiency. But Democrats on that committee have the charge of wanting to lend some light to what is happening within Doge because it's not just questions about Musk's conflicts of interest. It's also basic questions about who are the staffers that are making up the so-called

Doge entity. We've gotten a little bit of information about some of them, that they're 20-somethings with some concerning backgrounds. But this morning, my understanding is that Democrats on that committee do have subpoena power. They've been blocked at various points, but they are going to try to do some public records requests that could shed some light. And on that, I want to bring in staff writer from the Atlantic, Mark Leibovitch.

You and I were having this conversation on way too early, just a little while ago. But this, to me, feels like a place that Democrats could make up some ground and show the American public something that they didn't know or necessarily were aware of beforehand when it comes to Musk and when it comes to his employees really at Doge. Yeah I mean I do think this gets to the larger issue of the role of Elon Musk here. I mean you know obviously he could get up and talk about unelected bureaucrats and bureaucracies and so forth. Obviously, he himself was not elected. I do agree that it's good that he is answering questions and transparency is being displayed in some ways.

I don't think it seemed like what we saw yesterday is going to be repeated anytime soon, certainly without a kind of split screen scenario with Donald Trump sitting there and whatever, as David said, the bizarre sort of spectacle that it was but yeah Taken alone. This could be a piece of Real political hay that Democrats could make here. The thing is though that this is not taken alone. This is part of a larger blizzard of activity and and seemingly the shock and awe Image that keeps playing over and over and over again. I mean, this obviously does not sit alone.

And it's unclear if Democrats will have the wherewithal or even the knowledge at this point to focus on this and to really benefit from it politically. Well, and I've got to say, Mark, I'm a bit frustrated when I hear about how helpless Democrats are because they're in the minority in the Senate, because they're in the minority in the House. I've seen Democrats in the minority, in the Senate especially, do a lot of things to get in the way, to investigate, to slow down, to drive a message. I mean, seen it time and time again. I mean, you are probably old enough to remember the Hillary Clinton healthcare rollout. I mean, one Republican after another, in the

minority, I believe, one Republican after another would have minority I believe one Republican after another would have you know would would would figure out ways to poke holes in that plan and they really did they not only dominated the debate but you had the Chaffey plan and you had you know all these other other Republican senators had their own plans, they were being debated. So I keep hearing about how the Democrats, poor Democrats are so helpless, they can't do anything.

No, they're elected, and they're elected to do just this. I mean, the minority in the United States Senate always, always has power. Yeah, I would agree with you, although when you sort of mentioned the Clinton age, you do get a sense of how different that world was when actually Washington could be singularly focused on a issue like healthcare, really to the exclusion of everything else. I also think about, remember, I guess in the aughts

when George W. Bush was targeting social security at a time when Democrats seemed very much back on their heels, and yet they could focus on Social Security as the way to sort of get back in the game and ultimately reclaim power in Washington in the 2006 elections. Here you have a number of issues. I mean, obviously, the Doge stuff, the Musk stuff, this was one of what, again, were several big stories yesterday. You had the Gaza press conference, you had all these court decisions, and so forth.

And look, I mean, this is a larger blizzard that's in some ways enabled by the communication strategy of the Trump administration, the internet, and just the changing landscape in general. But yeah, you're right, though. The Democrats are not as helpless as I think they're clearly manifesting at this point. Yeah. Richard, final thoughts. Yeah. DOJ is about government efficiency, Joe. Efficiency traditionally means, last I checked the dictionary, this is ways of taking what you're doing, what your mission

is and performing in ways where you reduce costs, where you reduce the amount of inputs and you get the same or better amounts of outputs. What's going on is a lot more than efficiency. What's happening at AID, that is not an efficiency exercise. That is essentially ending the operations of an agency. What's going on at NIH, that's not an efficiency exercise. And that's what I don't understand. Like David Ignatius, there are so many things.

You can get examples of every agency where there's waste, fraud, and abuse, and you could call those out. And I mean, there's a way to do this that's legal, constitutional, transparent, and extraordinarily popular with the American people. That's why this sort of politically shoot first and ask questions later approach, again, it seems, again, seems to be reckless, could

be unlawful, seems to be unconstitutional in places, but mainly short-sighted politically for the Trump administration. So, Joe, the rules are going to have to be set here by the courts. The Wall Street Journal this morning has a very useful editorial that distinguishes between the probably legal things that Trump and Musk are doing, the clearly debatable things they're doing, like dissolving whole agencies like USAID without any legal mandate, and then the obviously illegal things they're doing, like birthright citizenship is the most obvious example So the courts are going to have to make decisions about this whole

Raft of things so some of these being challenged every day I Disagreeing a bit with with mark. I don't think that there's all that much that the Democrats can can do absent these final decisions by the courts. Once they come, we have to see whether the Trump administration is going to obey them. The real constitutional crisis comes if the Supreme Court rules that these things are illegal and Trump tries to keep doing them anyway. Then we have a real full-blown crisis.

All right, The Washington Post, David Ignatius and The Atlantic's Mark Levovitch and Pucks, John Heilman, thank you all so much, greatly appreciate it. President Emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, Richard Haas, thank you as well. Coming up, today marks the unofficial start of the Major League Baseball season. As pitchers and catchers report for spring training, Paolo Torri joins us for an early

preview and what he learned from Mets president David Stearns about the deal to bring Juan Soto to Queens. Morning Jail will be right back. Time now for a look at some of the other stories making headlines this morning. A California teenager was sentenced to four years in federal prison for calling in hundreds of shooting and bombing threats. Alan Fillian targeted religious institutions, high schools, colleges, and government officials with the fake reports. Prosecutors say these hoaxes, calls put in the public in danger and wasted valuable resources swatting there.

Meanwhile, snow and freezing rain pummeled the mid-Atlantic overnight while California now prepares for likely flooding. Good Lord. Sleet and freezing rain are expected to continue there today. Parts of Virginia could get nearly 14 inches of snow. Heavy rain out west meanwhile has Southern California bracing for potential flooding in areas devastated by recent wildfires. We're also seeing this live shot snow there in Kansas City, Missouri. And here in New York, legendary singer-songwriter Paul McCartney held a surprise concert yesterday. The former Beatles member announced the show online at noon

yesterday. It was gonna be held later that evening. Tickets were priced at a steal, just $50, but they were available in person, only available in person on a first come first serve basis. After the announcement, a line quickly wrapped around the block and the tickets, as you might imagine, sold out within the hour. McCartney's 100 minute set list included hits like A Hard Day's Night, Let It Be, Jet, and more. For the intimate 500-person audience, Joe Scarborough, I assume you have a little FOMO for this show. Wow. Pretty great. That's amazing. I mean, yeah, that doesn't happen much.

No, it does not. In fact, that doesn't happen. Never happens. Paul McGarty in a club setting.