Morning Joe - Morning Joe 2/17/25
Episode Date: February 17, 2025Zelenskyy tells aides to reject U.S. pitch for 50% of Ukraine’s rare earth minerals ...
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Can Ukraine survive without US military support?
Probably it will be very, very difficult.
Of course, in all the difficult situations, you have a chance, but we will have low chance,
low chance to survive without support of the United States.
That was Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky telling NBC's Kristen Welker that Ukraine's
survival hinges on U.S. military support.
We'll go over the latest in Ukraine's fight against Russia and where peace negotiations
now stand.
Plus, President Donald Trump is now alluding that the law does not apply to him.
We'll dig into the criticism he's now facing over his cryptic social media post over the
weekend invoking Napoleon and what this means as he tests his limits of presidential power.
And also ahead, it was a big night for Saturday Night Live as the iconic show celebrated 50
years with comedy, music, and special guest appearances. And in a moment, we'll have someone
who was featured in last night's show joining us. You won't want to miss that. Good morning and
welcome to Morning Joe. It is Monday, February 17th. I'm Jonathan Lemire. I'm alongside US special correspondent for BBC News
and host of The Rest is Politics podcast,
Cady K. We're in for Joe, Mika and Willie
on this President's Day.
Always good to start with Napoleon, right?
Yeah.
On President's Day, I mean, particularly, I feel.
Yeah, he that's-
The timing was impeccable.
Yeah, he was not a US president.
But-
I'm sure he would have liked to have been
if he'd had a chance and then stayed for a
very long time.
Yeah, we have a lengthy segment later on, Franklin Pierce.
You won't want to miss that.
But we have a very, very busy show this morning.
We're grateful to have with us MSNBC political analyst Elise Jordan.
She is a former aide to the George W. Bush White House and State Department.
Also with us, the host of Way Too Early, Ali Vitale, columnist and associate editor for the Washington Post, David Ignatius, and Rogers Chair in the American Presidency at Vanderbilt
University, historian John Meacham.
He is contractually obligated to be with us on each and every Presidents Day.
We will go to him later for thoughts on Pierce.
President Bonaparte.
Yeah, President Bonaparte.
I know you're from over across the Atlantic,
but we'll have to straighten a few things out.
But yes, for talk, Pierson, Coolidge,
and the rest with Professor Meechum in a little bit.
But right now, we do begin overseas this morning,
where several top Trump administration officials
are preparing to meet with Russian leaders in Saudi Arabia
to begin talks about ending the war in Ukraine.
But Ukrainian President Zelensky insists that his country will never accept a peace deal
struck by the U.S. and Russia if Ukraine does not have a seat at the negotiating table.
Zelensky made the comments to NBC's Kristen Welker during an exclusive interview
on Meet the Press that aired yesterday.
during an exclusive interview on Meet the Press that aired yesterday. Can you accept any peace deal that is cut without Ukraine?
No.
I'm sure that we have to be there.
Otherwise, it's not acceptable.
But if there is a decision without us and Putin will go out from all our land, we will
be in NATO and Putin will be in the
prison so President Trump can do it without us.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio arrived in Saudi Arabia a short time ago, a little earlier
today to initiate negotiations toward peace.
Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov also heading to Saudi Arabia.
But President Zelensky indicated that Ukraine had not been invited.
Zelensky spoke to NBC News amid a high stakes security gathering in Munich, Germany over
the weekend.
While there, he did meet with U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance.
You had a message to Vice President Vance about the potential implications of pulling
out of NATO.
What was your message to the Vice President?
That will be destroying of NATO.
President Zelensky also shared details about what he said to President Trump during a phone
call between the two last week.
Is it true that you told President Trump during that phone call that Putin is only pretending to want peace because he is afraid of Mr. Trump?
Yes. Yes, I said that he's a liar. And he said, I think that my feeling he said that he's ready for peace negotiations.
And I said to him, no, he's a liar.
He doesn't want any peace.
But I think he's really a little bit scared about the president Trump.
And I think the president has this chance and he's strong.
And I think that really he can, he can push Putin to peace negotiations.
Yes, I think so.
I think so he can, but don't trust him.
Don't trust Putin.
While at the Munich Security Conference, Volensky said that he has intelligence that Russian
President Vladimir Putin is amassing more troops on the Belarus
border to potentially invade other NATO countries.
Additionally, Zelensky called for the creation of a European army to deter Russia.
Let's be honest.
Now we can't rule out the possibility that America might say no to Europe on issues that threaten it.
We must build the armed forces of Europe so that Europe's future depends only on Europeans.
We've also learned that Zelensky has instructed his aides not to sign off on a proposal that
would give the U.S. access to Ukraine's rare minerals.
Last week, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Besson proposed a deal that would have granted the
U.S. 50% ownership of Ukraine's rare minerals as a form of repayment for the support Washington
has already provided Kyiv.
But Zelensky says that agreement does not include adequate future security guarantees
for Ukraine.
And, Cady, a lot of thought here that Zelensky and Ukraine simply doesn't have a seat at
the table necessarily with these negotiations.
Conflict reports whether Ukrainian officials will be in Riyadh at all.
They're not clear about that.
For the talks that are set to potentially begin tomorrow between U.S. officials and
Russian officials that also seem to be paving the way for a Trump-Putin summit sooner than later.
It looks like the Europeans are going to try and get the least of Ukrainians to a European
summit where they're going to be talking because a lot is going on in Europe at the moment,
particularly with the relationship with the United States.
Vice President JD Vance delivered his first major speech on that international stage at
the Munich Security Conference on Friday. Vance used his time to essentially scold attendees,
specifically America's European allies,
by telling them they are not doing enough to uphold democratic values.
The threat that I worry the most about vis-Ã -vis Europe
is not Russia, it's not China, it's not any other external actor.
And what I worry about is the threat from within, the retreat of Europe from some of
its most fundamental values, values shared with the United States of America.
For years, we've been told that everything we fund and support is in the name of our
shared democratic values.
Everything from our Ukraine policy to digital censorship is billed as a defense of democracy.
But when we see European courts canceling elections and senior officials threatening
to cancel others, we ought to ask whether we're holding ourselves to an appropriately
high standard. And I say ourselves because I fundamentally believe that we are on the same team.
We must do more than talk about democratic values. We must live them.
So know what European leaders have been used to for the last four years. And some were said to be
stunned by those remarks from the vice president. President Trump was later asked for his response.
Vice President Vance's speech to the conference has ruffled by a few feathers in Europe.
What did he say to ruffle them?
He was talking about the freedom of speech and migration in Europe.
Do you believe that European leaders have a fundamentally different view of the world
than this administration's?
Well, I heard his speech.
And I tell you, you're talking about JD's speech, right?
Yes, sir.
I heard his speech and he talked about freedom of speech.
And I think it's true in Europe.
It's losing.
They're losing their wonderful right of freedom of speech.
I see it.
I mean, I thought he made a very good speech, actually a very brilliant
speech. Yeah. Europe has to be careful. And he talked about immigration. And Europe has
a big immigration problem. Just take a look at what's happened with crime. Take a look
at what's happening in various parts of Europe. I thought his speech was very well received,
actually. I've heard very good remarks.
So David Ignatius, you were reporting at the Munich Security Conference this past week.
We spoke to you from there.
Your latest piece for the Post is titled, At Munich, Trump's Chaotic Approach Has Allies
Rattled.
So what did you see in reaction to JD Vance?
Because I've heard some reports that you had Europeans saying, OK, at least we now know
where the Americans stand,
that they're being clear about this, and maybe it is time for Europe to stand up for more
of its own defense.
So, Katie, I think there has been a two-stage reaction in the hall when he was speaking.
There was what I've described as a stunned silence.
The German defense minister was heard muttering, this is unacceptable.
And I think that was the feeling of the audience in general here, and American vice president
had come to Munich and essentially insulted the European audience, lecturing them about
democracy at a time when there are so many questions about democratic values being observed and
upheld in the United States, it seemed particularly inappropriate.
But I think the second reaction has been for Europe understanding that it's threatened
from the East by a very determined war-like Vladimir Putin to know that it has to stand together.
Zelensky, in a clip that you played earlier, said, let's be honest.
America may not come to the rescue.
America may stand back.
And it's us Europeans, Ukraine and the European countries, that have got to defend ourselves
against this strong, advancing
Russia.
And I found across Europe agreement that they do need to spend more for defense, which Trump
has been lecturing them to do for years, and he was right about that, but more fundamentally
to stand opposed to Putin and Putin's expansion
because America may not be prepared to play that role anymore. So David, Vance's
talks there about the freedom of speech interpreted by many to, you know, his
belief that some of the far-right, the right-wing parties in Europe have been
muzzled, you know, and he compared that to the situation in the United States.
But you're right, this is more than that.
This is about a fundamental, potentially a fundamental change in the relationship between
the US and Europe, these long-time alliances, those ties really being strained.
And we're seeing that on full display with how the Ukraine matter is being handled, where
it seems like President Trump's inclination is to go over the head of the Ukrainians and
deal just with the Russians and Putin.
What's the latest you've heard about what we should expect this week in Saudi Arabia?
Who's going to be there?
What's going to be the goal of these talks?
So at this moment, and obviously everything that involves this administration is subject
to change, this is going to be a meeting in Saudi Arabia between Marco Rubio, our secretary
of state, and a Russian delegation
led by their Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
I have not seen any indication that any high-level Ukrainian will be there.
There may be observers, but it's not the same thing.
So in effect, what we are seeing is the beginning of peace negotiations over the head of Ukraine,
one of the key combatants, a country that's lost
hundreds of thousands of young people trying to defend its freedom.
It's something that I find really difficult to accept, that we would in effect try to
orchestrate a peace agreement without our partner.
But we'll see.
You know, any time peace agreements, peace negotiations begin, that's cause for happiness.
And I'm glad that Rubio is going to Saudi Arabia and that Saudi Arabia is playing a role
as a broker.
But it is absolutely crucial that Ukraine be involved in this, not least so that the
peace, any peace agreement that's made will be durable.
It has to have security guarantees for Ukraine.
Ukraine has to feel confident that Russia won't come back
across that line six months after the agreement is signed.
Otherwise, we're just going to have a continuation of what
we've seen there since 2014.
So, John Meacham, let's go to you for a big picture look here.
This does seem to be what the vice president said in Munich
and the signs we're hearing from President Trump
and others at the White House, a fundamental reevaluation of how the U.S. deals with Europe,
particularly in being a bulwark against Russian aggression, which would just change the post-World
War II order.
It changed the post-World War II order.
It changes the Republican Party in a deep and fundamental way.
The party of Ronald Reagan is fully the party of Donald Trump, which is a hugely significant
historical shift where the center of gravity moves from trust but verify.
Mr. Gorbachev teared down this wall.
Ronald Reagan was one of the great negotiators
in American history, the only union president to ever be president of the United States.
And he starts out his term in 1981 saying to the Soviet's reserve under themselves,
there's right to lie, to cheat, to steal. And then he ends it literally in the spring of 1988, playing with
babies in Red Square. That's where the Republican Party was 40 years ago. Now it's in a place
where, as you suggest, Jonathan, it basically is going back to a pre-World War II, great power politics, where the rule of the strong predominates.
And principle, which is always, as David knows far better than I do, principle is always
a flexible matter in geopolitics.
But we have at least tried since we entered the Second World War, after Nazi Germany declared war on us in the first
week of December 1941, the United States has attempted to ground its policy in a principled
ethos.
This becomes a moment where if you are Russia, if you are China, if you are a foreign power,
what is the lesson of this?
The lesson is aggression will be rewarded.
And the fundamental principle since 1945 has been that we cannot reward aggression.
It's a deep and fundamental thing.
So, Elise, I think John seems to be right.
What you're saying is right.
We had 80 years of a wonderful relationship, and now it's time for a rethink.
And arguably, the person you serve, George W. Bush, and then Joe Biden, were the last
transatlantic presidents.
Obama wasn't.
Clearly, Donald Trump isn't.
America first is Europe last, in Donald Trump's mind.
But what are the specific openings this gives to, in the short-term, we can talk about
China later, but in the short term to Russia? I mean, if you're sitting in Moscow right now,
what are you thinking beyond Ukraine? Or are you thinking, listen, I mean, there's another point of
view. I've lost so much in Ukraine. It's cost me so much in terms of people. I really don't want
to go any further. Or do you think Zelensky is right when he starts warning, listen, they're
having exercises in Belarus just like they did before they invaded Ukraine. Where's next?
Well, for Putin, he sees how a clearly transactional relationship with Donald Trump pays off. And
he also, though, has to be wary of what he is causing among the European allies right
outside his borders, who are really rising to this moment.
And I think that's what I would ask David Ignatius, does it seem like at the Munich
conference that our allies are seeing that this is not just passing talk from Donald
Trump and they're really going to have to step up and provide more of European security
and fill the vacuum that's going to be left
by the united states
so at least uh...
they're hoping that
united states will remain a solid partner
uh...
i heard people you know you could say hoping against hope after hearing the
jd man speech that america would continue its traditional role
uh... but but they're trying to prepare for a different kind of future it's so J.D. Manz speech that America would continue its traditional role.
But they're trying to prepare for a different kind of future.
It's so extraordinary.
This Munich conference that I've just come back to, every year is a celebration of the
Transatlantic Alliance.
The whole idea was to bring Germany, the defeated power in World War II, into the order that
would maintain peace and security across Europe
around the world.
It's been successful to have this attack on Europe take place at that event was unusual.
But I don't want your viewers to think that Europe is giving up on America.
I don't think they're there yet.
They're hoping, but they're making prudent plans.
They're thinking about their own defense because they know they may be, in the end, left alone
facing Putin, who is, I just would note, the intelligence reports are clear, Putin has
not given up on his desire to dominate Ukraine.
He thinks he's winning.
He may go into a negotiation, but that doesn't mean he's giving up his basic goal of overcoming Ukraine's desire to be
an independent European nation.
Yeah, and certainly Ukrainians fear that the Russians, maybe there is a year or two pause
in the fighting, but their whole economy has turned into a military-based one, and they
could rearm and try again before too long.
So Ali Vatali, to John Meacham's point earlier, the Republican Party, this is such a change
for them.
It's not so inconsistent from what we've heard from Trump before, but for the traditional
Republicans it is.
And we did hear a little bit of pushback from Republican senators at the end of last week
when Defense Secretary Hegseth seemed to leverage away much of what Ukraine could get at the
peace table, the settlement talks, saying it couldn't go into NATO, saying it wouldn't
get its territory back.
But what about some of these other Republican senators, those, yes, who are normally Trump
allies like Lindsey Graham and the rest, what are they saying?
Who have been strong throughout, pre-Trump, post-Trump, being anti-Putin.
What are they saying here about this potential fundamental shift?
They have been strong throughout, and yet the America first policy that Trump is now
bringing right back to the forefront of this new administration is something that these
senators have known and had to adapt to over the course of the last nearly 10 years that
Trump has really grabbed their party and pulled it in the direction that he wants it to go.
And so yes, you're right that some like Senator Roger Wicker offered some
chastisement from Munich that Hegseth and others were basically pre-negotiating
before negotiations were even on the table, that they weren't leaving
themselves much room to maneuver. But we've watched the way that this Republican party,
senators on Capitol Hill, have all largely allowed themselves
to be remade in Trump's image.
So yes, you look at some folks like Senator Lindsey Graham.
Certainly Mitch McConnell is going
to try to be at the forefront of this battle,
especially as it comes to Ukraine.
He's talked about the fact that national security
and the role of America on the world
stage is going to be his calling card in these waning years of his Senate career.
The question is, though, A, will it be enough?
And B, we were talking at the end of way too early about the permission structure and why
sometimes for these Republican senators who may have true disagreements, there's not really
an upside to speaking out because it's not going to change
the direction that this administration is going
and they are going to face the political consequences.
That's been true on everything from confirmation battles,
domestic politics, all the way through potentially
the way that foreign policy is done in this administration.
But of course, as we talk about the Ukraine war,
we are also of course speaking about the ongoing conflict the Ukraine war, we are also, of course, speaking about
the ongoing conflict in the Middle East as the Israel-Hamas war enters its 500th day.
That fragile ceasefire brokered by the Biden administration is still holding, at least
at this point.
Hamas released three hostages in exchange for over 300 Palestinian prisoners and detainees
over the weekend.
This is the sixth swap to occur under that ceasefire deal.
The three hostages, which include an American-Israeli dual citizen, were forced to give a speech
on a stage with a backdrop of Hamas leaders.
All of this comes as Secretary of State Marco Rubio was in Israel over the weekend.
Rubio met there with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday, as well as an
Israeli opposition leader, Yair Lapid.
And so, David, as you watch these concurrent parallel conflicts, what do you make?
Of course, we've talked about the way that the Ukraine-Russia conflict is unfolding.
What do you make about the way the Trump administration is potentially trying to carry this tenuous
ceasefire into its next phase. So we have the disruption of President Trump's proposal
to turn Gaza into an American-owned Riviera.
Putting that aside, there had been the expectation
that the hostage release deal,
which was negotiated by outgoing Biden
and incoming Trump people,
would be the prelude to a true end to this war,
that the war in Gaza was
going to end.
We'd move into phase two.
It now appears to me as if that transition to a real ending is not going to happen anytime
soon.
The Israelis, I talked to say, we see Hamas in the streets as the hostages are released,
strutting around with their guns.
There's still very much a military power.
They have not been defeated.
And there's a broad feeling, I think, in Israel that for all the anguish about the hostages,
Hamas needs to be militarily and politically finished before we talk about the next stage.
So I begin to think that this war isn't ending.
It's likely to go on for a while.
Much, much more on these developments overseas later in the show. But next here on Morning
Joe, the jobs of thousands of federal employees are in jeopardy this morning as the Trump
administration expands its efforts to slash government spending. We'll go over the agencies
impacted, including the fired nuclear safety workers that officials now are trying to get back on the clock.
Those seem like important posts.
Plus, the Department of Justice officially moves to dismiss corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams.
We're bringing the latest in the legal saga that has led to the resignations of at least seven federal prosecutors.
You're watching Morning Joe.
We'll be back in just 90 seconds.
Back very busy Monday morning here, we turn now to some news at home.
Thousands more federal workers were laid off last week as President Trump and Elon Musk
continue to drastically cut and reshape the federal workforce.
The Trump administration has ordered terminations for thousands of jobs ranging from wildfire
prevention to medical research, that's according to reporting from Axios and others. Sources say agencies have also been given until 8 p.m. tomorrow to fire probationary workers on a
case-by-case basis. Across the government, there are around 200,000 probationary workers who have
been in agencies for less than one to two years. Employees at the Consumer Financial Protection
Bureau and the Department
of Agriculture have reported layoffs. And according to some reports, the Veteran Affairs
Department dismissed more than 1,000 employees on Thursday. Politico also reports that many
terminations came from within the Health and Human Services Department, hitting staffers
at the FDA and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Katie.
Yeah, the Trump administration has also terminated
hundreds of employees at the Centers for Disease Control
as well and prevention, including people responsible
for supporting disease outbreaks
and the response efforts to those.
NBC News spoke to two people at the agency
who spoke on the condition of anonymity
out of concern over retaliation.
And they said that two dozen of the so-called disease detectors in the program received
termination emails Saturday that cited poor performance as the reason for the layoffs,
even though most of the people who were dismissed had been given excellent performance reviews. Still on health, the Trump administration has also fired 25 percent of the federal workers
in a program that's responsible for tracking and monitoring the bird flu outbreak, according
to new reporting.
State and local health officials say they've gone weeks without getting regular updates
on avian flu from the CDC after Trump froze nearly all external
communications from the agency.
As the virus continues to spread, the administration has not yet outlined a strategy to stop it.
Cuts to USAID have also limited monitoring of the virus overseas, while top roles in
the Trump administration central to responding to a pandemic remain
empty.
And of course, all of these disruptions come as the virus has been decimating poultry
flocks and has been showing signs it can evolve to more easily thrive in other species.
At least 68 people have contracted avian flu in the U.S. and one person has died.
That's according to the CDC.
And the average price of eggs, well, those famous egg prices, a dozen grade A eggs in
the US, the price hit a record breaking $4.95 in January due to the outbreak.
I mean, the level, even if you ascribe to the theory that, yes, you have to have whatever
it is, 20% cut in the federal workforce, at a moment when you have a Navy and flu outbreak
that we are watching happening around the country, you've got a measles outbreak happening
down in Texas at the moment, to be cutting the people who are specifically monitoring,
this is the problem.
We're taking a hatchet.
These things need to be done with a very fine tool to make sure that you save the people
like the nuclear health workers that we're going to talk about later, nuclear safety
workers.
But why attack the people that you need in this particular moment?
This seems like-
Who have that specialism.
Exactly the wrong moment to do this.
And so much of it seems to be the Silicon Valley tech startup ethos of go real fast,
break things, and then if needed, go back and fix it afterwards.
But John Meacham, that seems like a very dangerous game to play right now, particularly in matters
of health.
And there's such a difference, though, between perhaps trimming government, reshaping government,
and dismantling government.
And right now, it seems like what Trump and Muskin are doing is far more the latter.
Well, one of the benefits of being a kind of conspiracy theorist is you can always find someone else,
some other force to blame.
If tragically these forces that Cady lays out become national and international problems,
it won't be that we cut, the incumbent administration cut people.
It will be, see, we told you they were bad.
Right?
So if you keep moving the goalposts up and down the field, which is part of this mindset,
and it's what the country, I know there's some debate about this, the country didn't vote for this.
They did.
this, the country didn't vote for this? They did. There was no mystery about the chaotic factor
that was going to be part of a second Trump administration. Now, specifically, did they think that Elon Musk was going to be running around, allegedly, I think the Post reported,
trying to get into IRS information, that sort of thing.
The details, no.
But the basic disruption is something that the country,
49.9% of the country decided to do.
So one of the things that I've been struggling with,
and I suspect you all have too,
is how to best think about a political policy world
is how to best think about a political policy world that is now almost entirely chaotic. And one of the things we've learned, I think, in the last decade is that howling against
the storm, you know, sort of the King Lear approach, doesn't work.
And it may just be that these more specific, clear case studies where you lay out, you
know what, the federal government does a lot of things they probably shouldn't do.
There's a lot of inefficiency.
There's a lot of inefficiency in the private sector too.
You know, inefficiency is a human force.
But let's pick these things.
Let's pick the right places to cut.
And it goes to a President's State point, if I may, which is, you know, there's not
a, I know it's surprising, I promise you I will, I'm going to quote John Quincy Adams
in a second.
But what I think, what we have here is to there are ways both in
foreign policy, both in domestic policy, to do big things without burning the
entire place down. Right? And as Sam Rayburn once said, a Speaker of the House,
any jackass can kick down a barn, it takes a carpenter
to build one.
Doesn't mean you can't fix the barn.
Doesn't mean you don't have to do maintenance to it.
But just to kick it down because you can, I think is going to hurt some folks.
And the place to argue this, I think is exactly on questions like public health, I would argue
on foreign policy as well, rewarding aggression.
Let's pick the conversations where you can make an appeal for a more balanced approach.
Yeah, and to John's point, he watched a post reporting late last night that Musk and his
Doge team trying to access sensitive taxpayer
information at the IRS.
We'll see where that goes today.
But amid the onslaught of federal firings, the Trump administration is apparently looking
to reinstate some of the nuclear safety workers that they had previously fired, but now they
can't get a hold of them.
Multiple staffers within the National Nuclear Security Administration were let go on Thursday.
Then on Friday, officials with that agency frantically attempted to rehire some of those
employees but struggled to get in touch with them because they no longer had access to
their federal government email accounts.
And at least this is no better case study than this in terms of the dangers of going too fast, not thinking it through,
and targeting workers and departments that should be protected because they perform such
crucial roles.
Yeah.
Leave the people we need at the FAA, maybe within nuclear agencies.
Let's not just get everyone, kick them off the block immediately.
I keep going back to, this does remind me of the federal government version of the Afghanistan
drawdown.
Everyone agreed it was pretty much a bipartisan consensus we needed to get out of Afghanistan.
The way it went about, we went about doing it was horrible.
We could have done it in a better way.
Right now we agree that there's waste
in the federal government and that everyone
would like to cut the deficit and cut spending.
The way they're going about it, it makes no sense.
They need to be more strategic about what they're cutting
and where and have some success, have some early success
to show that the mission can continue
before you just decimate and hollow out critical areas like nuclear security.
So, Ali, I know that you're still in touch with everybody on Capitol Hill, even though
you're getting up terribly early, to do another job as well.
We haven't heard much complaint yet from members on the Republican side about giving away so
much of the power of the purse
as they seem happy to have done over the last month.
But as these cuts start to take effect, particularly on the public health side, to John Meacham's
point, are you getting any members of Congress, on the Republican side in particular, starting
to get a little anxious about whether their constituents might have some
of their funding cut.
We know that quite a lot of this health funding, for example, quite a lot of the NIH money
that goes to research programs is going to universities in red states.
But if members of Congress are starting to hear from constituents that their nephew is
in a cancer trial program can no longer be on that program because the program is cut,
is there a point at which the general public starts to feel the impact of what Elon
Musk is doing?
Yes.
And we've started to hear from some Republican senators who are recognizing that while they
might broadly support making these cuts within government, they might not support it when
it comes to the one line item in the budget that goes directly to their constituents.
You talk specifically about where some of the NIH funding and grant money might be going.
You look at states like Alabama and Maine.
I bring those two up because Senators Katie Britt and Susan Collins respectively have spoken
about the impacts in their states.
But when we're watching Republican senators speak out, it's not some kind of full-throated standing on business
for their constituents.
They are doing it with a subtle message of,
well, maybe we don't like the way
that these cuts are coming down.
Maybe we should rethink that.
So we're not listening to some kind of full-throated rebuke.
Instead, we are listening to senators
trying to make the point subtly
that this is coming for their constituents.
I wonder if as we get deeper into this, we will end up hearing more forcefully from some
of these senators. But certainly you look at the fact that they're trying to claw back some of the
employees that they've gotten rid of. It almost feels like, well, if this isn't the result of my
actions coming back to bite us, looking at those nuclear regulators, among others, don't forget,
David Ignatius, that it's tax season, and they're also looking to not just
access IRS systems, but also potentially lay off IRS workers there.
I mean, this is a full-scale assault on government, and it's going to have impact.
I said to a Trump supporter during my trip to Munich over the weekend that this is looking
to me like a case
of ready, fire, aim.
The aim only comes at the end.
And that's no way to run a government, but no way to run a reformer government.
And I think the point that you and Kadhi and john are making that that when this comes home to roost when people in your district are getting their clinics
closed or their checks aren't arriving or other basic services that they depend
on or when the avian flu which could be really deadly that begins to sweep
across the country people will say where is government where's the help i need
and then maybe we'll have a congressional response that we haven't to sweep across the country, people will say, where is government? Where's the help I need?
And then maybe we'll have a congressional response that we haven't seen so far.
But the way in which this group of young people working for the world's richest man are sitting
in this kind of pinnacle, pushing buttons on algorithms and systems and deciding who stays and who goes.
If you try to write a plot with that novel, people will laugh at you, but it's happening.
Yeah, it is happening, and it's happening just as much in red states as blue states,
but yet to this point, almost no criticism from Trump's fellow Republicans.
Coming up next, the president is now facing rebuke
for appearing to quote a French monarch,
and yes, that one, while suggesting he's above the law.
The criticism includes one prominent conservative voice
who says, this is not restoring the way
the Justice Department is supposed to work.
We'll read from that new piece in the National Review
when Morning Joe comes right back.
We had the extraordinary events at home this week, the breathtaking actions which President
Trump is taking, much of it following
what he promised on the campaign trail, pink slips for thousands of federal employees,
some fired, others taking a now expired offer to leave their jobs in exchange for being
paid without working until September.
And in New York, a tense standoff played out over the Trump Justice Department's efforts to drop, at
least for now, corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams.
The top prosecutor in the Southern District of New York, Danielle Sassoon, a highly respected
conservative who was appointed by Donald Trump, blasted the move and she resigned in protest.
Six other career prosecutors followed her lead and resigned,
an exodus that has drawn comparisons to the darkest days of Watergate.
That's ABC's Jonathan Karl sounding the alarm about what he termed the exodus of prosecutors
in President Trump's Justice Department, comparing it to the darkest days of Watergate. He was referring to events surrounding the SDNY corruption case against New York City
Mayor Eric Adams, which has been submitted now for dismissal.
On Friday, an attorney at the Department of Justice officially signed off on the order
to drop the charges.
This after a total of seven federal prosecutors tendered their resignations in
protest. The final prosecutor to leave rather than comply was Hagen Scotton. He was one
of the leads on the Adams case. Scotton has impeccable conservative credentials, having
clerked for both Supreme Court Justice John Roberts and then DC Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Brett Kavanaugh.
He slammed the decision to drop the charges in his resignation letter, specifically pointing
to the order to dismiss the case without prejudice, meaning that the DOJ could refile it in the
future.
Quote, no system of ordered liberty can allow the government to use the carrot of dismissing charges or the stick
of threatening to bring them again to induce an elected official to support its policy objectives.
Late last year Mayor Adams was indicted on multiple charges including bribery and fraud.
He has maintained his innocence. Last week the acting Deputy Attorney General,
Emil Bovi, ordered the Southern District
of New York to dismiss the charges in an explosive memo that triggered a massive revolt within
the DOJ in New York and Washington.
The filing to dismiss the case does not immediately release Adams from the charges.
A federal judge must now approve of the order.
So let's see where that one goes.
Yeah. I mean, extraordinary kind of quipro quo. And see where that one goes. Yeah, just-
I mean, extraordinary kind of quipro quo.
And the people going around saying,
well, Eric Adams is now walking around in a t-shirt
that says, property of the US government.
Just seemingly so blatant.
And then some of the city and states top Democrats
are saying exactly that,
that Adams is beholden now to Trump,
will have to do his agenda.
Can he really govern with New York City's citizens
at the forefront of his mind?
We'll have more on that a little later in the show.
Meanwhile, amid the numerous legal challenges
to many of the moves by his administration,
President Trump posted a single sentence message
to his social media accounts on Saturday.
While he was out golfing, I might add, he wrote this.
He who saves his country does not violate any law.
That line has sometimes been attributed to the French emperor and military leader Napoleon
Bonaparte. Yes, Napoleon. Keeping that in mind, we want to read from a new column from the
conservative national review, which bears this title. This is not restoring the way the Justice Department is supposed to work.
And it's by senior fellow Andrew McCarthy, who writes in part this.
Pam Bondi now represents the Justice Department, in fact, leads it.
It is thus her ethical duty to advance whatever good faith defense there is of the government's
conduct.
If she is just going to spout Trump's grievances without putting the Justice Department's response
to egregious behavior and context, then she's engaging in partisan law enforcement.
Exactly the noxious practice she claims to be rooting out.
The weaponization directive is doing politics, not removing politics from law enforcement.
Plainly, the weaponization working group exists to settle the president's scores and rewrite
dark chapters of his history while providing him with quarterly assurances of Attorney
General Bondi's progress on what is now the Justice Department's core mission.
So, John Meacham, you're the historian here.
Napoleon got mentioned, so therefore,
obviously we're coming to you.
But this is, I mean, this is Napoleon, of course,
not exactly the model of a democratic leader.
Talk to us about what this really means, because as we just read from, there's all kinds of
echoes of Watergate here.
This is a president who's basically saying, I am the law.
I'm above the law.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Napoleon Bonaparte, of course, declared himself emperor of France in the wake of a revolution intimately linked with ours. Sorry, Cady, I know this
is a rough day for you, given 1776 through the...Cady actually has a...on Yorktown, she
wears black at the anniversary. But the point of the United States of America, as Thomas Bain said, is that in America, the
law would be king.
Now, I am not going to naively or sentimentally sit here and say that no American president
in history has ever gone beyond the bounds of the Constitution in order to govern.
They have always followed the letter of the law.
That is not true.
Right? they have always followed the letter of the law. That is not true, right?
Thomas Jefferson bought Louisiana, from Napoleon by the way, calling it a fugitive occurrence.
It was not strictly within the bounds of the law.
If Alexander Hamilton had tried to do it,
Jefferson, his head would have exploded.
But people tend to be against executive power
until they have it, which is an important thing to remember.
This is about context, balance, and scope.
Did Abraham Lincoln go beyond the bounds of the Constitution
to save the Constitution?
Yes.
I just ask you and I ask
the country to think about is this a
crisis on the scale of
the Civil War is
when President Trump came in to Pat now it's
emerging as a very important
critically important moment about the rule of law.
But it begins with President Trump telling us essentially that the country
is in the, I'm paraphrasing but only narrowly, is in the grip of a dark and
even evil force and that he alone is going to break that grip.
And therefore, enter Napoleon from the internet, therefore anyone who saves the country and
breaks that grip is intrinsically heroic. And the danger we have here is that if in fact President Trump believes that anything he does is justified,
then we are in a place where we genuinely have not been before. for. Having presidents who have violated the letter and even at times the spirit of the
Constitution, the Declaration, is something we have had before. Sometimes we view it well,
which I think Lincoln ultimately is redeemed by saving the Union by suspending, you know,
when he suspended habeas corpus, shouldn't have done it ideally, did it, Union survives, we still go to the Lincoln
Memorial. But some of the dark chapters that presidents then have to
endure for all of history, the internment of the Japanese Americans
during World War II is something that Franklin Roosevelt's administration
always has to bear and
that was a violation of the spirit of the Declaration and the Constitution. To
me that's the question is are we doing things, is the President Trump doing
something that if it's in a particularly vociferous way, is it justified by the circumstances
or is he doing it simply because he can?
So David, listening to what John's just saying,
and in the context of how Europe,
where you've just come back from, responds,
I mean, there's always been a sense about America,
the pendulum swings, it goes one way and then it goes another,
but it comes back to the center.
If the rest of the world is now looking at America thinking,
you know what, America's not that reliable.
We could get tariffs.
I mean, we may not get them, but we could get them.
The rule of law may be a little bit more fluid
than we're used to it being
if we wanted to invest our money there.
And we know that the Europeans are trying to mount
more of their own operations.
There's been a lot of talk of that over the last few days.
They are having meetings with the Ukrainians,
for example, over Ukraine.
I think the calculation in the Trump administration is
America is the strongest, this is the biggest market.
They have no choice.
What was your feeling in Europe?
Was there a feeling that actually now
they will start to look elsewhere, or is there
a feeling that actually, okay, we would love to look elsewhere, but Trump is right.
America is the biggest game in town, and we have to be part of that market.
The United States is so dominant in the world that there isn't really a good option for
walking away from America for Europe, or indeed right now for China. So that American power, the
momentum of our power continues. People are worried, but as Warren Buffett likes
to say, anybody, whoever in our history bet against America lost money. That's
just been a bad bet that even in our worst periods, periods of greatest instability, worst leadership,
the country has recovered and prospered in amazing ways.
And I think that feeling is still embedded in Europe.
I would just say to what John Meacham said so thoughtfully, we're now in a situation that tests the ideas that our founders put
at the center of our Constitution, how we're ruled.
They thought a lot about executive power being abused.
They just had broken away from a king whose abusive power had caused a revolution, and
they wanted to make sure that there were checks and balances, as we always say, against abuse of that power.
We're now seeing cases in which people are asking, and the courts will ask, is this an
abuse of presidential power or is it legitimate?
And I think, you know, hopefully at the center of how this is resolved will be our system,
system the founders created to resolve differences in moments like this.