Morning Joe - Morning Joe 2/23/23

Episode Date: February 23, 2023

50 percent of Dems says Biden gives party best chance in 2024

Did the grand jury recommend an indictment of former President Trump? I'm not going to speak on exact indictments. Nothing that would surprise people who have been following this? Probably not. I had no idea a 12-year-old Amish girl could even serve on a grand jury. I guess she did. Oh, my goodness. Wow.

As the forewoman of the Georgia grand jury on election interference goes rogue with a media tour, we'll explain how it may complicate things for the Fulton County DA. What a nightmare. Come on. Wow. A nightmare. Plus, President Joe Biden is back at the White House this morning following his momentous three-day trip to Eastern Europe.

Before he left, the president took time once again to reassure allies that America will not tolerate Russian aggression into NATO territory. We'll also play for you President Biden's comments on Vladimir Putin's decision to pull out of a nuclear arms treaty with the U.S. And we'll show you how former President Trump turned his trip to East Palestine, Ohio,

into a branding operation. Well, I mean, no. He didn't throw paper towels, did he? Not paper towels. He brought Trump-branded water bottles. He did. Pallets of it.

I don't know. Pallets of it. I don't know. Pallets of Trump branded water. That's just tap water, guys. So anyway, so Biden returns. President Biden, Willie, returns last night. Fascinating. Absolutely fascinating week. And I've got to say, historic, people are going to remember an American president going into a war zone,

risking his life to show support for the people of Kiev and for democracy in the West. Absolutely. The visit through Kiev, through the streets of Kiev, just less than a year after the war began, a year after Vladimir Putin thought he'd be walking through the streets of Kiev. And then that speech will be remembered as well. Standing in front of that castle in Warsaw with flags from the United States waving in the middle of Eastern Europe at this moment in history. Truly extraordinary speech. And frankly, a lot of Republicans have said the same about the president's visit. The usual suspects have been criticizing him, of course. But if you are an American and a lot of Republicans are saying this,

this isn't just me saying it. That was a proud moment for democracy. That was a proud moment for freedom. Well, and we're hearing, Mika, from some areas that are usually critical of Joe Biden, just that just that response, including some people at Fox News questioning why any Republicans would be attacking the president of the United States. The American president, by the way, the American president fighting for freedom, defending Western democracy, defending the values that. Well, my gosh, so many are criticizing him now, used to claim to support. Absolutely. Along with Joe, Willie and me, we have the host of Way Too Early, White House bureau chief at Politico, Jonathan Lemire, of course, and former White House press secretary, now an MSNBC host, Jen Psaki. Her new show, Inside with Jen Psaki, debuts on Sunday, March 19th. Very excited for that. And that's so

awesome. That is. All right. So as President Biden returns home from Europe, there is new polling that is showing support for his possible reelection bid. The numbers are changing a little bit. Yeah, they're changing a lot. The latest mayor survey, half of all Democrats and Democratic leaning independents say their party has a better chance of winning the White House in 2024 with Biden at the top of the ticket. Forty-five percent say they should give another candidate a chance. They'll give a better chance. But you look in November, Willie, those numbers, it jumped up from 38 percent to 50 percent. Again, this poll right now is just a snapshot. It really doesn't mean a whole lot if Joe Biden decides that he wants to run for reelection. He's going to run for reelection and Democrats would be stupid to run against him unless something changes dramatically. who was constantly underestimated throughout his entire political career, constantly underestimated during the political campaign in 2020,

mocked, ridiculed, abused by the right and the progressive left, constantly underestimated even over the past two years. We keep hearing, you know, we quietly hear whispers, oh, you know, somebody has to run instead of Biden. Somebody has to run instead of Biden. And then the midterms come. They're like, oh, OK, well, no, he agrees. And then it's like, you know what?

A week later, wait, you know, he's too old. Somebody has to run instead of Biden. He's just not going to be up to it. And then he does the State of the Union. They go, OK, we're fine. OK, don't worry. Then two nights later, the bed wedding begins again from people in the Democratic Party. Oh, we can't do that.

Suddenly, the guy's showing up on a secret trip to Kiev after taking a 10-hour train ride in where he could have very easily been killed by enemy troops as he went through the war zone. And now people are like, oh, well, you know, maybe. Walking the streets of Kiev. Maybe this guy that was like, you know, they did 20 hours of train rides that that I will guarantee you, Donald Trump would have never had the you know what to do, never had the guts to do. And that all of the fat white pink boys who are criticizing Joe Biden on the far right in their suspenders would never have had the nerve to do what he did. He did it. He went to Kiev and he sent a strong message not only to Ukraine, but to the entire world about what America, not what Democrats, not what Joe Biden, but what America thinks of democracy and how we're behind Ukraine.

It's a strong message. And I think you're going to start seeing it in the polls more, especially among Democrats. Yeah. OK, yeah. This guy that went into a war zone in a way that no other president did since Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War. Yeah, maybe he's up to running for reelection. Yeah.

And here's something interesting, Joe, that poll was taken before the events of the last four days. So that doesn't even factor in for Democrats thinking about whether Joe Biden should run again, the trip into the war zone, the speech on Tuesday, the meeting yesterday, he's back home now. And Jen Psaki, I think if you look at the timeline of the leap from November to now, November was a time of great concern. I mean, there was gnashing of teeth and everything else that you're going to lose the Senate. The House was going to go by a huge margin. We're going to lose the country.

Effectively, Democrats thought to Republicans. And it didn't turn out that way. And also the specter of Donald Trump getting into the race becomes more and more real. And Democrats say, oh, that's right. Joe Biden is the guy who's already beaten him. Maybe he is the right man to run again. That's right, Willie. I mean, when you're sitting in a White House and months like this, as you said, back to November, where you're kind of bracing for impact and waiting for this terrible outcome in November. I mean, even they, I think, were surprised in some ways by how well the

Democrats did, given what the expectations were in November. But for months, they have been waiting inside the White House for something to break in the polls their way. Right. I mean, there were great bills passed, historic bills on climate change and rebuilding roads. Nothing seemed to move. There was obviously an election that went better than expected. Nothing seemed to move. The good thing for them and really for Joe Biden, as he looks to likely run in the next two years, is that he was born with a good, healthy chip on his shoulder because he's always been underestimated. And because of that, it means he always feels like he has something to prove. And that's what you kind of need.

I mean, that's what motivates him to give it, frankly, a State of the Union address that would have made me tired because it was almost an hour and a half and to go sit on a train for 10 hours. And I think some of it is also that that intangible like this guy actually does have energy. Oh, and also he has experience. And we'll see how that plays out in the polls in the weeks ahead. But they've been waiting for something to break. I know for a couple of months now. And it looks like something finally is. Well, you know, Jonathan Amir, I'm so glad that Jen brought up being underestimated. Reminds me of another president that there's some parallels here.

The man who talked about being miss underestimated. Of course, I'm talking about George W. Bush. Forty three Democrats still can't believe they lost to him two times. You still can't believe it. And yet he's a guy that they underestimated. We've talked about Reagan, Newt Gingrich, writing after the midterms that the Biden's another Reagan. He's another Ike. People don't remember, but, you know, Democrats made fun of Ike as being this sort of simple, dumb soldier who, you know, golfed all day. And and so Ike was always underestimated while he was quietly, you know, the guy who helped us win World War Two.

It sounds crazy, but that's what some people thought about him. The guy was figuring out how to run government to his advantage. So and you've seen this from the beginning. You've seen Biden underestimated from the beginning. You've seen for a year, year and a half, even progressives saying, why are you trying to work with the Republicans? You're never going to pass any bipartisan legislation. You're being naive. It's not 1974, old man. You can't work with the Republicans. We get to the end of the session and Joe Biden has more bipartisan legislation passed than anybody. My God, maybe you have to go back to FDR or maybe you have to go back to LBJ. It's pretty extraordinary. And then you do have to go back to FDR.

If you want to look at some of the things he accomplished in the midterms for a president in his first midterm election. He did things that no president had done since FDR. Yeah, I mean, White House aides point to the record. They say it speaks for itself that this is a president who took office just two weeks after an insurrection at the citadel of our democracy. He took office at the height of the pandemic with economic turmoil. And he has steadied the ship not just on those fronts. He has passed an extraordinary amount of legislation, the most since LBJ in his first two years. He has also held together a global alliance backing Ukraine in its trying to repel an invasion from its much larger neighbor.

And yeah, they understand there's going to be speculation about President Biden. He is 80 years old. He has not yet announced that he's running for president again. And there are some Democrats who are taking steps to create a plan B just in case. But most believe he will and he will go into this next race in a far stronger position than most would have anticipated, particularly coming off of last November's successful midterms for the Democrats. And they think they like the contrast between this and the Republican field. And, Joe, we should also note the same polling that suggests Democrats are warming to the idea of another Biden run, there are actually far fewer Republicans who want another Trump run, who think that Trump would be their best chance to win in 2024. So you're telling me more Democrats want Joe Biden to run for president

than Republicans want Donald Trump to run for president? That is what the new Marist poll suggests, that more Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents back Biden than Republicans and Republican-leaning independents. Thanks, Rhonda Santus. I think Rhonda Santus is responsible for this. He can't get the Miami airport done, but he is responsible here. Don't do that. Damn it, Warren.

Don't do that. That's early. Let's not even start. Hey, you started me up. Now I'm going to keep going with it. No, no, no. OK. Before President Biden traveled back to the White House, he concluded his historic European trip would defend any NATO ally if Vladimir Putin pushed his military campaign beyond Ukraine. As NATO's eastern flank, you're the front lines of our collective defense and you know better than anyone what's at stake in this conflict, not just for Ukraine, but for the

freedom of democracies throughout Europe and around the world. Article five is a sacred commitment the United States has made. We will defend literally every inch of NATO, every inch of NATO. You know, Jen, I just we just have to stop right there for a second. You actually had Ron DeSantis coming out the other day going, oh, Vladimir Putin doesn't pose any risk at all to any NATO countries. Those nine countries have lived in mortal, mortal fear of Vladimir Putin doing to them the same exact thing that he did to Ukraine. I wouldn't we don't have to even ask what the leaders of Estonia, of Latvia, of Lithuania, of Poland, of those other countries on the border of Russia are close to Russia. We don't have to ask the fear that they literally live in every day. The leader of Estonia, by the way, her family was hauled off.

Her mother was hauled off to to to prison camps in Russia, relocated. I think when when her mom was like six years old. So the idea that some guy, some Ivy League boy who goes to Ivy League schools can sit like in the Sunshine State and go, oh, Vladimir Putin doesn't pose any risk to the book, you know, to Estonia or left. I mean, that has to be just dumbfounding to people who have lived in the shadow of Vladimir Putin's imperialistic designs for decades. No doubt. I mean, Joe, we're hearing that those comments from Governor DeSantis. I was thinking, wow, what if he answered five more questions on this? What would he exactly say? I mean, the thing that was as much as a lot of many Republicans think he is

their next great hope and maybe he is in some ways, it wasn't a particularly sophisticated answer. And it was not it was very out of whack with what we've just seen happen over the last year. And what's true, I mean, the B-9 Amika was referencing. I remember a year and a half ago, we used to have a weekly meeting with the national security team, the scheduling team, and Jake Sullivan and others from the national security team, to their credit, would say, I talked to the president about doing a call with the B9. And some other people in the room would say, what's the B9, right? And he would say, these are the countries that are on the front lines. It's Poland, of course, but it's Estonia, it's Latvia.

It's all these countries that are literally right near the border of Russia. They are pivotal in our diplomatic engagement. And, you know, President Biden, you know, he has been working on these issues, national security issues for decades. And he knew early then that it wasn't just having conversations with France, very important, and the United Kingdom. It was also about making sure these benign countries, these countries on the front lines, were a pivotal part of that. And that's what a sophisticated, experienced approach to this looks like. And by the way, Memo de Ron DeSantis, every one of those countries have had have people inside those countries who lived under Russian tyranny,

who lived with Russian troops dominating their everything, who lived with KGB agents going through their country, who live with the fear of that happening again, again in their lifetime. 1989 wasn't that long ago. It was just a really ignorant statement. I hope people that want him to win take him to the side and actually prepare him better for answering foreign policy questions. That was just an ignorant answer. Unfortunately, understanding these issues takes years.

It's not something you can be read in on. And I think it's it's safe to say that I don't think enough people understand the importance of having somebody with decades of experience on foreign policy issues at the front of something like this. It's very easy to attack Mickey Mouse. It's very easy to try to take uh books out of school take books out of school or are are to to take talking about the future money away from baseball teams uh you've got to be uh it's not quite so easy figuring out how to deal with russian aggression and so again needs to be careful so president biden also commented commented on Russia suspending its involvement

in a nuclear arms control treaty with the United States. Here's what he said in an interview with ABC News yesterday. A big mistake to do that. Not very responsible. I think we're less safe when we walk away from arms control agreements that are very much in both parties' interest and the world's interest. But I've not seen anything, we've not seen anything where there's a change in its posture, what they're doing. The idea that somehow this means they're thinking of using nuclear weapons, international continental ballistic missiles, there's no evidence of that. Joining us now from Moscow, NBC News chief international correspondent, Keir Simmons.

So, Keir, let's put this week in total. When you look at the president's visit to Kiev, you look at his speech in Warsaw, you look at the meeting with the Bucharest Nine yesterday with the president of the United States, President Putin's speech a couple of days ago. How is it all landing in the capital where you're standing today? Well, Willie, you did have another stunning split screen yesterday, didn't you, with President Biden standing with the Bucharest Nine at the same time as President Putin here in Moscow, standing on a stage at another rally with Russian fans, you could call them supporters anyway, waving Russian flags, telling them that if we are united, we have no equal. So certainly it has been a week of

incredible images. And we really got into sharp focus, I think, this battle, frankly, between two men, President Biden and President Putin. What we have had this morning, Willie, is President Putin, after that announcement that he would suspend Russia's involvement in the New START treaty, saying that we will pay increased attention to strengthening our nuclear capabilities on land, sea and air. So more nuclear sabre rattling. I will say about that, I think when it comes to that nuclear announcement by President Putin, if you look back to last year, President Putin argued that the inspections couldn't work because of U.S. sanctions, that Russians couldn't inspect in the U.S US sanctions. And I think that gives you a glimmer of what the Russians think they're trying to do here, what President Putin thinks he's trying to do. I think what he's trying to do is to set up an argument to say, well, we'll come back to your

nuclear agreement if you drop sanctions. Now, frankly, it's unlikely to work plainly. And we're talking about sometime in the future. But what it does tell you is that despite all of the rhetoric and the fears of escalation, which are real, there is still this part of President Putin who is trying to figure out how to get from A to B now, how to negotiate at some point in the future. And again, and I've said it this week, Willie, I do think that we've stopped talking about an off-ramp for good reason. And President Biden is being very clear that this is an ideological battle that has to be won, in his view, and that the Ukrainians have to decide that. But at some point, there is going to need to be a conversation again about where do we go from here? Can there be a ceasefire? Will it only be an armistice or can NATO win? And again, that will be decided on the battlefield by the Ukrainians. Fascinating. NBC's Keir Simmons in Moscow. Keir, thanks so much. We appreciate it. And Mika,

we should point out that Russia will be conducting joint military exercises tomorrow on the one year anniversary of the war with China in South Africa. And China's top diplomat was in Moscow yesterday as well. Wow. A lot going on. We have a programming note for you tonight at eight o'clock p.m. Joe hosts a special primetime hour marking. Not usually up at 8 p.m. I know, but this is really important. It's a special primetime hour marking the one-year date since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The special hour features Joe's sit-down interviews with Secretary of State Anthony Blinken,

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley, and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, plus frontline reporter reporting from Richard Engel and Clint Watts at the maps at the big board and analysis from top foreign policy experts. The packed special hour premieres tonight at 8 p.m. Eastern right here on MSNBC. That will really be an important hour for everyone to get completely updated on the state of the war, the state of the world. Still ahead on Morning Joe, Donald Trump visits the site of the Ohio train derailment and criticizes President Biden for not doing the same. But he did get fact checked by a surprising source. We'll show you that.

Plus, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner get subpoenaed by the special counsel investigating efforts to overturn the 2020 election. What that new development could mean for the former president also ahead. Israel has launched airstrikes on Gaza after a deadly raid sparked a series of rocket attacks. We'll get a live reporting on the escalating violence. You're watching Morning attacks. We'll get a live reporting on the escalating violence. You're watching Morning Joe. We'll be right back. We have a story out of the Middle East this morning. Israeli jets are conducting airstrikes against targets in Gaza in response to six rockets fired into Israel overnight. Joining us live from Tel Aviv is NBC News foreign correspondent Raf Sanchez.

And Raf, this all happened after an Israeli raid in the West Bank yesterday that left 11 Palestinians dead. That's right, Willie. Israeli forces storming into the center of the city of Nablus in the occupied West Bank yesterday. A very unusual raid happening in broad daylight. And you saw these Israeli special forces confronted by very large crowds of angry Palestinians hurling both rocks and Molotov cocktails.

Now, the Israeli military says they were pursuing senior members of a terrorist group called the Lion's Den. They say they surrounded those terrorists in a house, and when they refused to surrender, Israeli forces used a rocket to destroy the building. But as you said, 11 Palestinians killed in total, both militants and civilians, and hundreds, more than 100 rather,

wounded, according to the Palestinian health ministry. Among the dead, three elderly civilian men. And Willie, there is just a heartbreaking video making the rounds on Palestinian social media this morning showing a nurse in one of the hospitals in Nablus. He's just pronounced one of these elderly men dead. And then he realizes that the body lying on the operating table in front of him is his own father. Now, the Biden administration is calling for calm. But Willie, when you speak to U.S. officials, there is no real plan here to fundamentally try to shift the status quo, to try to restart peace talks that have been going nowhere for years now.

Instead, there is a hope that things can just quieten down. But the major fear among the Biden administration is at this point, there really are no cooler heads who can prevail on either side. You are seeing the Palestinian Authority, which has absolutely lost credibility with the Palestinian people, now really losing security control in the northern West Bank, in the cities like Nablus. They are either unable or unwilling to stop these Palestinian militant attacks on Israel. And on the Israeli side, you have this new government led by Prime Minister Benjamin

Netanyahu, the most right wing in Israel's history, and they are showing absolutely no interest in de-escalation, quite the opposite. Just the last week or so, they have retroactively approved a number of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank that were considered illegal, even under Israel's own law. That is in open defiance of the Biden administration and the U.S. joining a number of other countries at the U.N. to condemn that settlement expansion. If history is any guide, it only escalates from here. NBC's Raf Sanchez in Tel Aviv this morning. Raf, thanks so much. Coming up next, Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene made headlines this week for pushing what she called a national divorce of red and blue states. We'll explain why her proposal would be a terrible deal for those deep red states. Steve Ratner has charts on that. And a little later, we'll dig in to a new report that gives

a candid assessment of why Democrats are struggling to connect with blue collar workers. Morning Joe's coming right back. We're bringing thousands of bottles of water, Trump water, actually, most of it. Some of it we had to go to a much lesser quality water. You want to get those Trump bottles, I think, more than anybody else. But we're bringing a lot of water, thousands of bottles, and we have it in trucks and we brought some on my plane today. But to that end, I'm pleased to announce that we've helped coordinate the delivery of the water and bottled water as well as the tractor trail is full of it. We have big tractor trailers full of water. I think you're going to have plenty

of water for a long time, maybe. The guy's just so gross. He really is. I mean, talking about Trump water, branded Trump water. And by the way, he's such a hypocrite to talking about attacking Joe Biden while Joe Biden is going, you know, risking his life fighting for Western democracy, something he doesn't give a damn about something. You know, we have a guy that talks about suspending the Constitution. It's just absolutely. So that was. And by the way, where was that guy when there were were disasters, when there were train disasters, when he was president of the United States? Exactly. I never saw him out. I never saw him out.

Where was he? Why did he decide to go here? Well, he did go through a paper tells of people at one point. Former President Donald Trump bringing Trump water with him on a visit to East Palestine, Ohio, yesterday. That's where the Norfolk Southern train derailed and spilled toxic chemicals. Trump spent his time criticizing President Biden's handling of the crisis and said he had a stronger working relationship with FEMA when he was in power. Trump also claimed, without evidence,

that the Biden administration only directed more resources to East Palestine because Trump announced that he's just a liar visiting the area. FEMA said specifically this doesn't meet the criteria and that's horrible and somebody has to do something for those people. I said back when I announced that I was coming, they changed their tune. It was an amazing phenomena. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is set to visit East Palestine today. This is his first trip to the area since the derailment happened nearly three weeks ago. Buttigieg has received a lot of criticism for his handling of the disaster.

His spokesperson says he wanted to visit. So he waited to visit so it would not detract from emergency response efforts. While Trump was criticizing President Biden and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg for not visiting East Palestine yet, Fox News had this fact check last night. Take a look. There is this political moment and there's been a lot of criticism of the transportation secretary, Politico, pointing out that Buttigieg, Secretary Buttigieg, will visit their Ohio crash tomorrow. Quote, he's also expected to meet with DOT officials who arrived on the ground within hours of the derailment. They point out it's exceedingly rare for a transportation secretary to visit the site of a train derailment, especially one that resulted in no fatalities.

And the reason they're pointing that out, it's fair. That's accurate. And there were train derailments in the Trump administration that actually had fatalities that didn't have a visit by transportation secretary Elaine Chao. The key thing always is what is what, if if anything is an administration obliged to do when something like this happens. And visits by officials are nice, but they're essentially political gestures. I mean, I don't think the administration's policy and actions toward East Palestine would

be any different if more officials had gone there. The president's overseas, I completely reject the parallel that's been drawn between his going to Ukraine and not going, so far at least, to East Palestine. Let's remember this, Brett, about these issues. The federal government preeminently has the responsibility for our national defense. Now, he may ultimately go to East Palestine, and Pete Buttigieg probably would have done himself some good by going out there and might have made people feel better. But substantively, it doesn't make much difference.

You know, and it's a very good point, Willie, that the president of the United States, the commander-in-chief, his preeminent responsibility constitutionally, you know, is to protect this country, protect the country as commander in chief. And you can do two things at once. And as Brad Hume also said, just because officials show up to get their pictures taken doesn't doesn't really mean anything. The question is, what policies are being put in place now? Listen, could could Pete Buttigieg and other officials at the Biden in the Biden administration gone there sooner? Yeah, even Pete Buttigieg says he could have gone there sooner, should have gone there sooner. A lot of them should have gone there

sooner. But but it's just idiocy to be attacking a president of the United States for risking his life, going into a war zone to send a strong message, pushing back against Russian tyranny. And I just I mean, hell, do we do we go back and look at every time Ronald Reagan was going across the world to push back against communism, to see what disaster was going on in America and criticize him? Because I didn't hear Republicans do that. This is where reactionary partisanship lands you. Whatever the president is doing, I have to find some way to criticize it, even if I know it's an objectively good thing for the president to have shown his face inside of Kiev and to make that speech this week. I've got to find some way to criticize him. So I guess it shouldn't come as a surprise that Donald Trump and some of the members of the Republican

Party are conducting themselves this way. But Brit Hume, for example, has been around for more than five minutes and understands the importance of Donald, excuse me, of Joe Biden's visit, Jen Psaki, to Eastern Europe and to Ukraine. And I suspect, and you would understand the inner workings of this better than anyone on the panel, that the president may make a visit. But in a case like this to East Palestine, he would send a cabinet official first and perhaps Buttigieg should have been there sooner. But the president may well go there to Ohio as well. Yeah, that's right, Willie. I mean, typically there's an order of events, as you said here, and it may have been

that it was too early for him to go before the trip. And there was a sequencing where certain cabinet officials should go first. There's no question there would have been a little bit easier for them optically if Secretary Buttigieg had gone a little bit earlier. I believe the EPA administrator has been there and, of course, FEMA. But what's also true and, you know, in moments like this, it's a little bit of a case study as I was watching this all happen yesterday of what the White House is going to do and how they're going to handle it when Trump attacks Biden, because they don't want to elevate Trump. Right. They don't even know for sure he'll be the nominee, even though I bet at this point he will be. But what they did yesterday was kind of interesting because they didn't just ignore it. They punched back substantively, which that may not make a difference in the Ohio coverage

of Trump's visit. But they basically made the case that the Trump administration, they pushed for deregulation that made it so that faster breaks were not in place. And the Republicans in the House supported defunding cleanup. So it is a substantive argument, which is sometimes harder to break through. But it was interesting to see that they didn't just sit back and let it happen. They punched back. And we'll see how that kind of plays out as Trump does this more in the months ahead.

Obviously, Willie, there's a lot of work to do in East Palestine. And I think Trump's gesturing with his branding and his water aside, the transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg, did make it clear that he should have gone there sooner. And let's just put put a pin on that. He should have gone there sooner. And the White House should have done a better job, even though they were in a major transatlantic moment dealing with the future of the safety of the world. The people of East Palestine need to feel seen and heard.

And I think that Pete Buttigieg is taking it on board that he needs to go there and do that. These are people who right now are very uncertain about their health and the future of their town. And it is definitely a little bit of a bump for the White House to not make sure they shined a big light on what was happening there. And hopefully in the weeks, days and weeks to come, they'll be able to do that because it's frightening for those people to see dead fish in the rivers and to not be able to run water. I mean, whether the EPA testing is coming back clean or not. I mean, I covered 9-11 and I covered the air after 9-11 and all the different things that happened down the road because of the air coming out of

the pit. You don't really know what's happening in East Palestine. You don't really understand what's happening and you won't for a long time. We won't. We won't for some time. No, I mean, there's no question about it. And these assurances, I probably feel a little bit hollow to the people who actually live there and have to send their children back into those houses and play in those yards and and drink all that water. Jonathan Lemire, Jen's right. The EPA has been there. The EPA administrator has been there for several days on the ground. But it sends a signal of the importance of it. If you send someone like Secretary Buttigieg and perhaps the president down the road that, yes, we are focused on this and we will be here for the long haul.

Yeah, Buttigieg going today now at last. And they, as just noted, they're definitely acknowledged he should have been there sooner. There's no presidential trip scheduled yet to Ohio. That certainly could change whether the president or the vice president go in a week or two is certainly possible. But I think that White House aides have signaled to me yesterday, they recognize this is the storyline that's not going away, that there are going to be, to Mika's point, potentially ill health effects, not just in the weeks and months ahead, but maybe years ahead. And that's going to be the federal government with the White House at the forefront of that is going to need to indicate that they're going to be here and they'll set up procedures and safety mechanisms in place to make sure the people who live in that area, Ohio and just over the border in Pennsylvania, receive the care and treatment

and monitoring health monitoring that they need in the years ahead. We'll stay on this story. We'll back to it a little bit later in the show. Meanwhile, Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia made headlines earlier this week calling for Republican states effectively to secede from the union. The Georgia Republican posted her proposal on Twitter, writing the U.S. should be separated by red and blue states because of, quote, woke culture issues. Morning, Joe. Economic analyst Steve Ratner here with charts that show why a national divorce would not work out so well for those deep red states. Steve, good morning. What do you have for us?

Good morning. Well, first of all, Marjorie Taylor Greene is not alone. There have been a number of polls. There was one in 2021 that two thirds of Southern Republicans wanted to secede from the rest of the country. And it's not going to work out well because when you take a look at how the balance of spending versus taxes goes across the country, what you can see here is that on the left side are the states carried by Joe Biden. The green are states in which the state paid more to Washington in taxes than it got back in other benefits. The orange colors, and they're shaded depending upon the degree of disparity, are the states where the states got back more from Washington than they sent. And you can see on the left, a lot of green on the Biden states,

nine states altogether, as a matter of fact. And on the right, the Trump states, virtually every single state except for Utah, don't ask me why Utah, got back more from Washington than it paid. And so it would not really work very well to their advantage to leave. In fact, the top states for getting a better deal from Washington are Kentucky, Mississippi, and West Virginia. Yeah. And if you look at poverty rates as well, Steve, higher poverty rates correlate by and large with some of these red states. Yeah. So you can say, well, why is this happening? And poverty rates plays the major role. And first, let's look at what the poverty rates are. The chart on the left graphs the amount, the extent to which a state is a Republican state. The further

to the right is more Republican. As you go up the scale, more poverty. And you can see with your eye that the red states tend to be above the national average in poverty. The blue states tend to be below the national average in poverty. Another way to look at it is if you this happens to be by counties, but you get to the same place on the right, how much GDP, how much of the nation's economy is produced in these places? The red states, 20 of the red counties, 29 percent, the blue counties, 71 percent. So they're suffering more economically. And that does lead to the question of how does that result in more money going to these states? I mean, Steve, that's incredible. 71 percent of America's GDP comes from counties that voted for Joe Biden, 71%. So again, this just underlines the fact

that it would be devastating for there to be a divide for those areas that voted for Donald Trump to want a, quote, you know, separation, a divorce from the United States. I mean, yeah, what do you think? What other chart? Do you have any other charts that we can move along to here? Yeah, I've got one that sort of breaks it down and shows you how that works and why it happens that way. And so this chart takes the United States in the center and then the two states on the left that get the best deal, the two states on the right get the worst deal. And what you can see is the main driver of that are tax revenues, because if a state

is poorer, it's going to pay less in federal taxes. So you can see on the left, Kentucky and Mississippi, which on average pay $5,600 and $5,700 a year in taxes. And all the way on the right, you can see Massachusetts and Connecticut, which pay far more, almost $15,000 in taxes to Washington. So they pay a lot more in taxes. But then you look at the top part of the chart, what do they get back? And you can see that, let's start with the green because it's the most interesting. The green is federal money that they get back for projects, infrastructure projects, military and so forth. And you can see Kentucky all the way on the left. Why is Kentucky all the way on the left? Mitch McConnell

is the Republican leader, has been for a long time. You may remember, for example, Joe Biden going down to the Kentucky, Ohio border with Mitch McConnell to break a bottle of champagne or whatever they did over that new billion-dollar bridge that is being paid for by Washington, Fort Knox is in Kentucky. There's stuff all over Kentucky that Mitch McConnell has delivered to Kentucky. It's a very unusual situation. For most of the states that do better, you can see, for example, Mississippi, which is the poorest state in the country, that light blue are programs like Medicaid. The dark blue includes programs like food stamps. And so because they are poor or pay less, I shouldn't say it quite that way, because they pay less and have lower income residents, they get back more in federal benefits toward those programs.

So, Steve, you've laid out the numbers here. income residents, they get back more in federal benefits toward those programs. So, Steve, you've laid out the numbers here. If this hypothetical were to happen, if Marjorie Taylor Greene were to get her wish and these states were to succeed, what are some of the practical real world impacts it would have on those states? Yeah, they would be they would have huge sort of deficits, economic deficits. They wouldn't have money for their projects. They wouldn't have new bridges. They wouldn't have federal installations in their districts. They wouldn't have food stamps and they wouldn't have Medicaid to help cushion their residents against pretty extreme poverty. It would be a really tough and stupid economic decision. And again, the whole irony of this is you've got Republicans who oppose kind of almost every kind of federal spending, who are the biggest

beneficiaries of the federal spending that they oppose. So in summary, a terrible idea for everyone involved. And a hypocritical one. Let's knock it off. Terrible idea for everyone in those red states. All right. Steve Ratner with the chart. Steve, thanks so much.

Good to see you.