Morning Joe - Morning Joe 2/26/25

Episode Date: February 26, 2025

House adopts Republican budget framework

I knew that my vote could make the difference and however hard it was, I wasn't going to let their denial of my ability to vote by proxy get in the way. So Sam and I took a trip across the country. I had a knee surgery and a blood clot, an infection in my knee, two clean out surgeries. I've been in the hospital the last 10 days. This is a centerpiece of tropagetta and I wanted to get my vote on the record. All right, Democrats doing everything they can to challenge the Republican-led House's budget proposal. That was Congresswoman Brittany Peterson of Colorado, who brought her four-week-old son, and Congressman Kevin Mullen of California, who traveled to D.C. after being released from the hospital on Monday, will go through what comes next for that bill.

Plus, we'll have the latest on all things Doge as the White House finally reveals who is legally in charge of the task force and the new reporting from the New York Times on Doge's inaccurate savings claims. Meanwhile, some Republican lawmakers are backing away from town halls after contentious meetings with constituents. We'll tell you why. And we'll have an update for you on the near miss at Chicago's Midway Airport after a Southwest Airlines jet ditched its landing just in

the nick of time. Good morning and welcome to Morning Joke. It is Wednesday, everybody. Just so you know, informing you, Wednesday, February 26th, along with Joe, Willie and me, we have MSNBC contributor Mike Barnicle, the host of way too early, Ali Vitale, chief White House correspondent for the New York Times, Peter Baker, and co-founder of Axios, Mike Allen is with us this morning. Joe, we have so much to get to today, as we do every day.

We really do. And I mean, you look at the near miss in Chicago, you look at all the other problems that we're having right now. This is the last time. This is this is the last thing you'd want to do right now is cut FAA workers. So last thing you would want to do is do anything that could get an inhibit air safety. You can go out, you can talk about DEI all you want to. This is something that has nothing to do with DEI. This is something we've been talking about on this show since COVID about right now. We have a crisis. We need more people actually up in the tower. So we need more people in the FAA. We need more people

keeping the skies safe. And I really just really quickly we're going to talk about Doge. We have Mike Allen, who along with Jim Van De Heide, wrote an extraordinary column talking about how Doge, they didn't say this, I am. It's mainly when it comes to budget issues, it's smoke and mirrors. Think about this. That from the founding of our republic through 2001, it's the year I left Congress, so I know, over those 220 years, the United States accumulated five trillion dollars debt. In the last twenty years, five trillion over two centuries, over the last twenty or so years, we've accumulated up to 36 trillion dollars now. The Congressional Budget Office says

that if these Republicans pass what they're about to pass, and if they move forward with tax cuts, and they move forward with massive spending increases in defense, and they move forward with all the things they're talking about moving forward with. The budget, let me get this number right, the budget is going to increase another $23 trillion over the next decade. Over the next decade.

And this is something I've been warning about my entire adult life. Let me tell you something though, there are no warnings for this. We are in meltdown mode here and they're sitting around talking about and you know passing legislation that's going to increase the debt another 20 trillion dollars over the next decade and not even they're talking about doge it's smoke and mirrors you're talking about a small small percentage of what actually drives the debt what drive what they're going to do is they're going to slash medicaid and they may think that only hurts minorities in inner cities they are so wrong the people who were most devastated are those who live in red state America. Those who have watched rural hospitals around them

shut down when governors wouldn't accept Medicaid expansion. They slash Medicaid, they are slashing rural healthcare that's already in crisis. So everything seems backwards here. They may think it's all smoke and mirrors and not to go on too long, but I am obsessed about it. Neil Ferguson talks about Ferguson's law, not his law, but someone else from the 1800s. And Ferguson's law states that any great power that spends more money on servicing their debt than on defense risks ceasing to become a great power. The United States is doing that, Willie. Right now, we spend more money on interest on our federal debt than we do in defending this country. And it's only going to get so much worse

because of the nonsense that's going on in Washington, D.C. right now. Yeah, so much of what Doge is doing is performative, as we said yesterday, literally sometimes, with Elon Musk wielding a chainsaw. But even these cuts, if you're actually serious about getting debt and deficit under control, which so many Republicans have spent their careers talking about, calling themselves hawks.

That went away, of course, in the first Trump administration when he added more debt than any president had previously. And now you're exactly right. The outlines of this deal that Republicans struck barely by the skin of their teeth by two votes in the House, and we'll get into some of the details. It does extend the Trump tax cuts from 2017, blowing a massive hole in the debt. Again, those cuts, of course, go into the wealthiest Americans

and trying to find the savings, as you said, in places like Medicaid and food assistance. 72 million Americans rely on Medicaid for their healthcare. That is not, as you say, just inner city minorities, as perhaps they think so. That is health care for people. That is food for people across the country, urban and rural. So, Mika, what Elon Musk is doing might feel good to the base.

It might look good, like he's finally getting some efficiency in the government. But it doesn't actually do anything to get to the core of our debt and deficit. We'll get more on this later, but the backlash also continues. A group of 21 civil service employees whose team was folded into Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency all resigned yesterday. That's according to a letter posted online and shared with media outlets. The letter stated the career staffers refused to use their technical skills to quote,

compromise core government systems, jeopardize American sensitive data, or dismantle critical public services. A person familiar with the letter confirmed its authenticity to NBC News. The news was first reported by the Associated Press. In a social media post, Musk called the AP report more fake news and added, these were Dem political holdovers who refused to return to the office. They would have been fired had they not resigned. OK. The White House now finally has named the person it says is officially in charge of Doge.

It comes after lawyers for the Trump administration could not tell a judge on Monday who is running the task force created by Elon Musk. White House press secretary, Caroline Levitt, was asked about that yesterday. Elon Musk is overseeing Doge. There are career... Administge. There are career... Administrator. There are... No.

Elon Musk is a special government employee, which I've also been asked and have answered that question as well. Administrator. There are career officials at Doge. There are political appointees at Doge. I'm not going to reveal the name of that individual from this podium. I'm happy to follow up and provide that to you. But we've been incredibly transparent about the way that Doge is working.

Except we won't reveal the name. Despite making it clear that Musk is overseeing Doge, that was a quote there, the White House shortly after that briefing said Amy Gleason now holds the title of acting Doge administrator. The White House did not say when Gleason was appointed, but the decision appeared rushed

because Gleason is on vacation in Mexico. According to the New York Times, she told Associates she was not aware ahead of time that the White House planned to make public her role. Her LinkedIn profile has her listed as the senior advisor at the U.S. Digital Service, a department that Musk folded into Doge. Meanwhile, Musk will be a part of President Trump's first cabinet meeting later today. The billionaire is not a member of the president's cabinet. Levitt yesterday said Musk will be there because he's working alongside the president and the

administration's cabinet secretary. So Peter Baker, it's pretty clear and frankly an insult to most Americans' intelligence to say that Elon Musk is not the one making these calls and running Doge. He's going to be sitting in that cabinet meeting today. But does the White House have a sense that the clunky way in which these cuts are being made and then being withdrawn in some cases, emails threatening employees are being sent out and then departments are saying, no, actually you don't have to abide by that email. Is the White House worried about this at all?

It doesn't sound like it from the president's point of view. He says, must should be more aggressive. Yeah, I don't think they're worried too much about it. I think some of the confusion and chaos is baked in. I think it's kind of in some ways the goal. They're trying to keep people off their, you know, trying to keep people confused and off their back heels. You know, I think that if you look at this Department of Government Efficiency, the name

that they have chosen for themselves, the tricky thing is it hasn't been all that efficient, right? So they had a list up, for instance, of the largest cuts that they say that they have made to government programs. Well, the five largest savings that they claimed have now been deleted from the site after reporters, including some of my colleagues, point out that they were riddled with errors. So they're trying to get their feet planted on something that's very complicated.

The government here is a $6 trillion a year operation for outsiders to come in with no experience there and just suddenly be able to make the kind of sweeping decisions that they're making without any kind of background in it, I think you're going to have the kind of screw-ups that we've seen so far. Well, meanwhile, some Republican lawmakers are starting to push back against the Department of Government Efficiency. This is their constituents are complaining about the federal government layoffs. Lawmakers are now publicly raising those concerns, toeing the line between criticizing the department

and supporting its efforts. I think that any process you undergo where you're trying to find efficiencies and if that involves some reductions in force, it needs to be done in a respectful way. Obviously, that's respectful of people involved. But I do think as they go through this process, the objective of DOGE is to try and figure out ways

to make government run more efficiently, more effectively, and reduce its cost and make sure that the American taxpayer is getting a good deal on the tax dollars that they put into the federal government. I'm all for the government. I'm all for all civilians in a deliberate manner that allows people to adjust in their lifestyle. Do you believe that Elon Musk and Joe should have a little bit more compassion? Is that what you're saying? I think the messaging has to be one long line.

This is good for America, but also we need to do it in a little bit more, in my opinion, and I understand, I always have to have some kind of a plan, but in my opinion, we have to be a little bit more, give people more time to adjust. Things are happening a little bit too fast and furiously, I think, and that's why we've had some of these unintended consequences.

We also saw the National Park Service, some seasonal hires, that being reversed as well to reinstate those individuals. So instead of doing this in a very broad way and then having to retroactively reverse your decision, why don't we take a little time, do it more thoughtfully and thoroughly, making sure we're actually addressing the waste of mismanagement and the unnecessary overhead as opposed to making these rash decisions and then having to backtrack. My district is firmly behind what President Trump is doing and what Doge is doing to right this ship before that ship crashes into a reef of despair and we go broke as a nation.

I do think there are some valid concerns about the speed that this is happening. Layoffs happen every day in America when companies are bought out through consolidation and automation and other things that no longer require services of sometimes hardworking people. But that's what happens, and government employees are not immune from that. Just because you have a government job, it's not a lifetime appointment like the Supreme Court over there. Well, I mean, I think we all agree on that. And we all agree on waste, fraud and abuse. But again, I must correct the congressman what he said at first, we have to do this to somehow save our ship from crashing under the shore, you

know, because of public debt. Again, I would hope he knows. And if he doesn't, I would hope he'd read Axios in the newsletter they put out or just look at the Congressional Budget Office because Mike Allen, the column that you and Jim Van De Hei wrote a couple days ago really clarifies everything in his follow up. I followed up on it this morning with what I was saying about the debt. This is, as you say right here, trimming the Fed is harder than it looks. 37% of the contract terminations aren't expected to save any money. And you also, you talk about how actually about how actually the interest that we accumulate on the debt is more than they're going to be able to ever cut at Doge and that's the interest we

accumulate on the debt every day. This is we've heard of no pain no gain. Well Republican members are going to soon find this is all pain, no gain. It does nothing to get us closer to being fiscally responsible and and and and not see the this government and and our economy melt down under a pile of debt. Yeah, Joe, I've heard you talking about these issues for years, including when I had to call you congressman. And this is what we explain in our column, hard truths about Trump's budget cuts. And those are just putting out examples of silly government programs, mistaken government programs, contract excesses. But what we show with the math is that these are drops of water in the leaky bucket of

the U.S. budget. And you look at the numbers, 60 percent of what's in the budget is going to programs the government absolutely has to spend. Throw in defense, throw in interest you're left with 16% of the budget like very little for those in the government to work with that Joe super important to say the idea of those and what those is doing is super popular both in polls and in my conversation with friends relatives coast to coast. They like the idea idea of it it's always been that it's always been

popular has that as you as you point out here it would approximate the Golden Fleece Award what was that back in the 60s and 70s Al Gore went on David Letterman to talk about rooting out waste fraud and abuse we've been around but I will tell you this. What I found, and I'm not talking about those two gentlemen, but what I found when we were trying to do the hard work to balance the budget, and we did it four years in a row, when people started talking about things like this,

it was to distract from the fact that you have to find savings in Medicare, in Social Security, in defense spending, in these other areas that take up 85 to 90 percent of the budget. So they'll go, oh look over there, look at the bird over there, and then they can will the chainsaw, and yet they do nothing as again the Congressional Budget Office, the Congressional Budget Office says our debt's gonna go up another $23 trillion over the next decade. That will cripple America, Mike.

That's right, Joe, and you can add Senator Alan Simpson, who Peter knows very well, to that list. I remember like growing up in Orange County, California hearing about the the bill proxmire golden fleece awards government access is the sort of Paul Harvey stuff Ronald Reagan of course you on the after dinner circuit really played those up but what we point out in this column that's up now on axios is that president Trump is heightened in by 3 things. One, political reality including his need to keep House Republicans who Ali knows. So while second

he's hemmed in by what he has said about what he's not going to touch including recently in his interview with Sean Hannity. He talked about what he would not touch and of, three is the math that you've been talking through. So one of the things, Joe, you've always shared with me about what you loved about and learned the most from during your time in Congress was town halls that you did every time you went home to learn about whether or not you're doing a good job for your constituents. And now some House Republicans are putting the brakes on town halls after pushback over

the Trump administration's cuts. The decision comes after a number of lawmakers faced angry crowds in their home districts last week. Republican leaders are urging lawmakers to stop engaging in them altogether or to do tell-a-town hauls to avoid similar incidents, GOP sources tell NBC News. The new reluctance to hold them indicates there are bubbling concerns about the impact the cuts could have on the GOP's chances of holding its thin majority in the House next year.

The viral nature of video clips are spreading from one district to another means a bad confrontation and safe Republican territory could influence voters in battlegrounds. And Mike Barnicle, at the same time, aren't the town halls where you, you know, as a public servant, get feedback from the very people who voted you into office? Well, you know, the furor at the town halls over the weekend with Republican congressmen, that's a window of opportunity for the Democrats. The Democrats' best hope is what is going on right now today in Washington DC. I was

stunned yesterday talking to a member of the Ways and Means Committee who told me that 20% of the revenue that goes into the United States Treasury goes to pay off debt service. And the Republicans are talking now about perhaps cutting Medicare benefits, Medicaid benefits, some Social Security benefits, some VA benefits, a lot of benefits that people are used to getting and have been used to getting for years, decades actually, will now be cut in favor of a $4.5 trillion tax cut that they will propose that will largely go to billionaires and millionaires and large corporations.

The corporate tax rate will be lowered perhaps even more than it was lowered. This is a disaster in the making for the Republican Party. But worse than that, Mika, it's a disaster for the United States of America. All right. Still ahead on Morning Joe, federal workers staged protests across D.C. yesterday to voice frustrations with the sweeping government layoffs. What some of those employees are saying about the administration's slash and burn approach. Plus, the White House says it will decide which news outlets get to cover

President Trump going forward. A sharp break from tradition. What the White House Correspondents Association is saying about that. Morning Joe is back in 90 seconds. Welcome back. 23 past the hour. Time now for a look at some of the other stories making headlines this morning. Hamas is mapping out its battle strategy for a potential return to war with Israel. It comes as mediators work to salvage the ceasefire that expires this weekend in the Gaza Strip. Although the terror group has been badly weakened after 15 months of fighting,

it has started regrouping its military forces, repairing its underground tunnel network, and training new recruits on how to use weapons. More than 1,000 musicians, including Annie Lennox, Kate Bush and Cat Stevens are protesting a proposal in the UK that would give artificial intelligence firms access to copyrighted music. To push back on the proposed law, the artists released an album that is mostly silent except for white noise recorded in empty studios. According to the Washington Post, a number of big name artists, including Elton John and Paul McCartney, have spoken out against the plan, which they say could undermine the

recording industry by making it more difficult for artists to protect their work. Astronomers say the Earth is no longer in danger of being struck by an asteroid in the year of 2032. OK. The chances of impact have dropped to nearly zero. Last week, the odds of an impact were more than 3%. That probability was the highest ever recorded for an object of this size or bigger.

I don't know. These odds are all over the place. I know. It might come back. What's it going to be? I'm not sure. We're not going to see. It's going to change course?

Yeah. We'll see. All right. There is new concern this morning at the nation's all over the plane. I know I'm back to going to be that's we're going to change course that will see all right there is new concern this morning at the nation's airports after the latest incident involving air travel with a Southwest Airlines plane nearly collided with a private jet on the runway yesterday at Chicago's Midway International Airport NBC news correspondent Aaron mclaughlin has details.

At Chicago's Midway International Airport an investigation after yet another stunningly close call. The video captured on an airport webcam show Southwest flight 2504 nearly touching down the same moment to private jet crosses the runway. The flight abruptly pulls up averting potential disaster. About 25 04 going around. It was surreal. Passengers, Emily Novak and Kaylee Mask were on board the Southwest flight from Omaha. What went through your mind when you saw the video?

Shock. Yeah. Because we were so oblivious to what was happening because the pilot was so calm and it acted like it was just an everyday, you know, thing. The FAA says the FlexJet private jet entered the runway without authorization. FlexJet released a statement saying it's investigating and adheres to the highest safety standards. Meanwhile, Southwest says its crew

followed safety procedures, circled the airport, and landed safely. It's the latest in a string of air disasters and mishaps. From the midair collision that killed 67 near Reagan National Airport to the air disaster in Philadelphia, a crash landing in Toronto and most recently an emergency landing after a cabin filled with haze over Atlanta. The circumstances have been quite different in each one of these accidents or incidents.

So it's still too early to draw a common thread through all of them. All of it rattling travelers nationwide. From a consumer confidence standpoint, are we nearing a tipping point? No, I don't think we're nearing a tipping point, but aviation is still incredibly safe. And hopefully this is not the beginning of some long-term trend.

NBC's Aaron McLaughlin reporting there, Joe, just a hell of a job by that pilot to lift a commercial airline in that touch and go to have the presence of mind to get it up, circle, and land safely. Obviously, some bad communication on the ground there. Well, we've been talking about this for quite some time.

Last couple of years, we've seen some near misses on runways, in part, again, because increased traffic coming out of Coming out of the the pandemic but also Because we need more people working for air traffic control We need more people in the FAA we need more people in the TSA and you're having all of these cuts and slashing all these expenses. Again, I want to go back to this Axios article, Willie.

If you look at this, this is where the money goes. Social Security, health, net, interest on the debt, Medicare. You go down all of these numbers. FAA, it's not even a dot here. So slashing air safety, slashing safety for people that make sure that our nuclear stockpile is safe. I mean, you could go down the list. They're not even dots on this budget. And you know, Ali, I want to take two quotes from this Axios article,

and then have you talk about what's going on in the Hill versus Doge. As Mike Allen and Jim Van De Hei write, when you consider where federal money really goes, most Doge oddities and outrages amount to rounding errors and a sea of government obligations. And they do. And those rounding errors that they're supposedly taking a chainsaw to, they're not, I mean, hardly even cutting.

But what they're cutting is dangerous. And then there's an old saying, the US government consists of a military attached to an insurance company. And that is true. Add up the defense budget, add up Medicare, add up Social Security, add up Medicaid, add up interest on the debt, and you're getting close to 90% of what the federal government spends every year. And so, this, I mean, you've got theatrics with Doge, but nothing that's actually going

to help us move closer to a balanced budget are not increasing the sea of debt by $23 trillion over the next decade, as the Congressional Budget Office says. And the CBO, of course, is regularly included in these conversations as they move forward on these kinds of legislative pieces. The CBO always has a score attached to them. So we always know what it's going to look like, how much it's going to cost, and then how much it's going to add to the debt over time. So I think it's really important the way that you're highlighting this Axios piece where

you basically show that Doge is nibbling around the edges. Now one of the pieces I think that's the common thread here when we talk about the town halls that Republicans are now so weary and wary of actually continuing with one of the things that I heard from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle is that after they came back from being in their home districts last week, some of them having town halls that were publicized others just having these kinds of conversations with their constituents Medicaid was the key thing that continued coming up in these conversations and I asked Democrats if it's that voters and constituents are at

an outrage point or if they're just in a questioning and concerned point and it is the latter according to most of my conversations which puts Democrats in the positions of having to educate people about what's actually at play in these budget reconciliation talks. And that's why you hear the House Minority Leader, Hakeem Jeffries, talking like this, watch. The House Republican budget resolution

will set in motion the largest Medicaid cut in American history. It's outrageous. In many ways, this is a matter of life and death. And so every day, every week, every month, however long it takes, we're going to push back and do everything we can to stop this budget from passing the House of Representatives in final form and ever becoming law. So of course we saw Democrats scrambling on attendance issues that actually had been kind of a thorny issue within the caucus.

I had been hearing yesterday as I was on the Hill that Democrats were getting a little bit annoyed that there were some really close bills that attendance issues could have forced not to pass. But then of course we saw members flying across the country despite health issues to be there to try to make a show of not letting this reconciliation procedural vote pass. But look on Medicaid this is going to be the key issue Joe because the speaker says he didn't give concessions but moderate members that ultimately fell in line with the rest of the party were voicing concerns about Medicaid.

And that's going to be a continuous conversation. Jeff Van Drew apparently had conversations with President Trump yesterday in his quest to get to yes. Congresswoman Nicole Maliotakis, also of the New

York area, had conversations apparently on this issue. So it's an issue that maybe it's put away for now, but it's not gonna be for long. No, it's not. You're so right. And the biggest problem, if you look at this, Peter Baker,

is we're talking about Doge and the problems they're having at town hall meetings in red state America right now with Doge. Listen to some of these numbers. When it comes to cutting of Medicaid, Medicaid, and what that would do to red state America, it would lead to rural hospital closures. Medicaid accounts for up to 15% of rural hospitals' revenue.

And those hospitals are already struggling as you know. Over the past 10 years, 120 rural hospitals have had to close down. They're having trouble getting doctors there. And also, as you know, as you go to Red State America and a lot of cities and towns in Red State America, they're number one employers. I mean, I saw this when I went to Little Rock and interviewed Bill Clinton on the 20th anniversary of his presidential library opening up. The number one employer, health care providers, hospitals, and that's in one red state after

another red state. So I'm saying all this just to say, if these Republicans think they're having problems now with cuts here and there with Doge, when they start talking about slashing Medicaid to give billionaires tax cuts, that's when, as Ross Perot would say, the rubber hits the road. And then that's when things get really tough. Well, and you understand that President Trump understands that too, right?

From the beginning, 10 years ago when he started running, he said Medicare and Social Security were always going to be off the table. He said just the other day that Medicaid was off the table too, but it's obviously not. And I think that that's going to cause a lot of conniptions. I think you're right. The trick is we're in this loop, right?

If you want to be serious about tackling the deficit and the issues, Joe, that you're talking about, you're going to have to look at the big ticket items that Mike refers to in his column. But if you go after those big ticket items, there's a lot of pain involved. And if you think that there's pain so far with these Doge cuts, as you rightly say, this is, as you say say niggling around the edges the big stuff is still to come especially if you make the deficit even wider with more tax cuts any rational look at

the budget over the last decade or so has involved serious cuts as well as tax increases because there's a lot of of red ink there and if you're going gonna try to close that red ink, you're gonna have to look at a lot of different things, much of which would cause pain for people. But that's not where this is happening here. What we're seeing here is a lot of gains politically because we get to give tax cuts to people

that's always politically popular. And we get to showcase things that look like waste and fraud through this doge process, but really don't really amount to much although it hurts individuals and employees and science funding and all these other things that actually matter to a lot of Americans. And the bottom line is you haven't really solved the problem that you allegedly, ostensibly are set out to tackle in the first place.

All right, coming up we're going to take a closer look at President Trump's executive order that goes after a law firm representing former special counsel Jack Smith. Morning, Joe. We'll be right back. Welcome back. The Trump administration says it will now hand select the press outlets that will be given pool access to cover the president, bucking years of bipartisan precedent. Moving forward, the White House press pool will be determined by the White House press team. A select group of DC based journalists should no longer have a monopoly over the privilege

of press access at the White House. All journalists, outlets, and voices deserve a seat at this highly coveted table. So by deciding which outlets make up the limited press pool on a day-to-day basis, the White House will be restoring power back to the American people who President Trump was elected to serve. So the White House press pool is a small group of seasoned journalists based in the nation's Capitol who report on the president's daily schedule. Hand-picking, which outlets get intimate access to the president, would give the administration

more control over how it is covered. Historically, the members of the White House press pool had been chosen on a rotating basis by the White House Correspondents Association, a century-old group representing the journalists on the White House beat. The WHCA responded to the change in a statement, writing in part, this move tears at the independence of a free press in the United States. It suggests the government will choose the journalists who cover the president. In a free country, leaders must not be able to choose their own press corps. This comes

as a federal judge declined to issue a temporary restraining order against the White House for denying the Associated Press full access in covering the administration. The AP was barred indefinitely from the Oval Office and Air Force One because of its refusal to change its style on the Gulf of Mexico after President Trump renamed it the Gulf of America. This isn't the first time the Trump White House has attempted to limit press access. Back in 2018, it temporarily suspended the press credentials of CNN's Jim Acosta for what the White House called behaving disrespectfully. A U.S. district judge later forced the White House to reinstate Acosta's press credentials. Mike Barnicle, your thoughts. You know, there's a lot going on here, and there's a lot going on in that story. And it's part of, I would think, a troika, if you really pay attention to what's going

on. Intimidate the press. They're doing that kind of successfully. Co-op the federal police force, the FBI, try and co-opt the military, the Defense Department through an appointed Secretary of Defense who is totally unqualified to be Secretary of Defense. I'm just saying pay attention to what's happening around us. Yeah.

And Mike Allen, this is a real change in tradition, which will have, I think, a big response from members of the press corps. No question, because Jim Vanaheim and I are up with a column this morning on Trump's media control strategy, pulling back the camera and looking at the fact that this is of a piece with the lawsuits, with the control of workspace at the Pentagon, with the actions against AP. And just around this table, off camera, we've been talking about how there's going to be a Democratic president.

And that's one of the reasons that you see some conservative news organizations backing up Fox backing up AP signing on to protest of how this is being done now what the White House told us for this column is we're trying to open up new opportunities for people who think differently are doing things different ways that the old system didn't serve people and they say we're going to be responsible about this that the old system didn't serve people and they say we're going to be responsible about this that the legacy

traditional outlets are going to be very represented they say we want the eyeballs they even in our column use the phrase a ratings bonanza they say they want to leverage legacy outlets with new different maga nonpartisan other outlets but this is a massive change like Peter and I've been walking into those gates for decades. Now there was always a certain way was done and mika Joe one of the reasons was that the occupants of those

chairs the staff in their thought the institution is bigger than us the institution will go on after us. We are holding these roles in stewardship for the people who came before and after us. That is not the mindset of this crowd. Peter, it seems so short-sighted. Again, you've been going in there and out of there for a very long time.

I've been in Washington on and off for 30 years. And you know, you don't buy the place, you just rent it, and it's not even yours at the end of the day. I remember walking around, forgive me for talking about my time in Congress again, but I remember walking around during impeachment and talking to my fellow Republicans on the floor. I said, you guys are talking and voting like there's never going to be another

Republican president, we better hold him to the same standard. We would want a Republican president held to. Well, that's the same thing here. I mean, we're seeing all these norms broken. And if Republicans and if conservative outlets don't think, as Mike said, that when a Democratic president comes in, he or she is going to do the same thing, they're sadly mistaken. I mean, first of all, there's a question of whether they can even do this. You remember when the White House tried to take Jim Acosta's badge, White House badge, and a judge stepped in and said,

no, not your decision to make. But talk about this, the short side to this, of this, and also how it'll be limiting to the White House, actually, getting its message out to voters all across the ideological spectrum. Yeah, I think first of all, the difference with the Acosta thing in the first term was at least on the surface, they said the reason they were taking his pass was decorum. In other words, that he had behaved badly at a news conference. We can argue about that and whether in fact that was really the reason.

But that at least was the stated reason. The reason that they have given as a stated reason to get rid of the Associated Press is very openly and overtly about content, about what they say in their coverage. The fact that they won't use Trump's preferred phrase, Gulf of America, and they stick with the traditional phrase, Gulf of Mexico, which is still recognized

by most of the world. The fact that is the White House is saying, we will punish you, we will take something away from you if you don't conform your coverage to what we want it to be. So they can say it's all about opening up seats to other organizations. That's fine. I think most reporters there support that. The White House Correspondence Association for years has adapted and changed and admitted new and different types of media organizations in the pool already are liberal oriented, conservative oriented, as well as traditional legacy mainstream media. That's been true for years.

Fox is there. And I remember to your point about there is, you know, to Mike's point about there will be a day where this precedent will be used in a way that the Trump White House might not want it to. I remember during the Obama White House when they tried to keep Fox out of a press pool event and the other reporters, all of us said no, that's not right and basically forced the Obama people to back down and say, if you're going to invite all of us, then you have to invite all of us.

You can't make a distinction based on an organization that you just don't like. And so I think you're right. They don't seem to understand that. They want to be able to pick who asked the president questions. That goes against decades and decades of tradition. And the press office trying to sell this as an act of populism, giving power back to the people, when of course, as Peter says, it just gives power to the administration to control the message.

Peter, stay with us. Mike Allen of Axios, thanks so much. We've gives power to the administration to control the message. Peter, stay with us. Mike Allen of Axios. Thanks so much. We've been talking a lot about your work this morning. Those pieces available online now. President Trump is stripping the security clearances of lawyers who provided free legal services to special counsel Jack Smith.

The proposal signed yesterday points to staff at Covington and Burling law firm, which represented Smith before he resigned from the Justice Department last month. The move comes after Smith declared in a financial disclosure he received a gift of $140,000 of legal services from the firm while in government service. Smith brought two criminal cases, of course, against Trump that then were dropped after the election. Let's bring in former litigator and MSNBC legal correspondent Lisa Rubin and NBC News national security editor David Rode.

Good morning to you both. So Lisa, what's going on here? Is this as plain as it seems a way to get back at Jack Smith? I think it is exactly what it seems, Willie, a way to get back at Jack Smith. Not necessarily a particularly efficacious one because if you look at what Trump signed yesterday, it revokes security clearances from Peter Koski, who is said to be Jack Smith's lawyer at Covington and Burling, and any other lawyers who assisted in what they call, let's see, it says, who assisted former special counsel Jack Smith during his time as a special counsel.

There may be an assumption in there that is completely belied by the truth. It's our understanding that Covington and Burling provided personal services, individual services to Jack Smith, not to the office of the special counsel. So it's premised on a false premise. But the other thing that it does is it revokes security clearances. It says that the government should review contracts

and that if Covington and Burling represents the government in any capacity, those should be reviewed as well. It's not clear that there are any contracts with Covington and Burling according to the Washington Post this morning. So this may be symbolic. What it is though is a shot across the bow

at law firms all throughout the country. Think very carefully about who you hire and who you represent in this era, because we are watching. And we intend to investigate these people as part of our weaponization of the federal government executive order. David, the crackdown by the administration

on certain people, certain lawyers, law firms, that's one thing. But it's now seemingly extended into the national security space itself. I mean, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff basically fired things like that. That's what's happening. And it's a narrative of like corruption, that somehow this law firm was doing something improper because they worked with Jack Smith. And again, and you talked about earlier in the week, but Dan Bongino being this right-wing

podcaster who has said Trump won the 2020 election, who has said that January 6th was somehow staged is now going to essentially run the daily operations of the most powerful federal law enforcement agency in this country. And I was speaking with a Justice Department official, former Justice Department official yesterday, and their concern is that there you know, there is a terrorist threat in this country. There's lots of turmoil around the world. And these moves, you know, essentially someone who says things that President Trump wants

to hear gets to run the most powerful law enforcement agencies in the country. Morale is terrible. And they will be distracted. And that could be a consequence. Where I was going, I wonder how much this destabilizes and weakens America in the face of what seems to be setting up sort of a pattern for retribution. It's retribution, and you have to back Trump's narrative. You have to say the FBI is corrupt.

You have to say that Jack is corrupt. You have to say that Jack Smith had no right whatsoever to investigate him, that there was no reason to search Mar-a-Lago. A judge issued a search warrant for that. Again, Dan Bongino has said that, you know, there never should have been that search. So it's just this narrative creating a reality that helps a President Trump politically that doesn't fit facts on the ground. And for effective law enforcement and intelligence agencies, you have to have a basis in reality and not just have loyalists processing the information. To David's point, there's reporting this morning that the FBI is launching an investigation

into James Comey, the former director of the FBI for the investigation. He initiated 10 years ago, beginning to look into the Trump campaign. So Lisa, what does someone like Jack Smith do with this? What are these people who know they're about to be targets or already are targets? How do they brace themselves for this? Well, I would say there is no neutrality right now. There are a number of law firms all throughout the country

who I think are at a crossroads right now. Do we hire people, for example, who have come out of the Biden Department of Justice? Do we hire them understanding that hiring them might mean indemnifying them for the investigations of them that might be coming their way? There is no more neutrality anymore. And Covington and Burling has put out a statement essentially saying we stand behind the decisions that we've made. Jax Smith is a client of the firm. He hired us in his personal individual capacity, but that's the line that they have drawn. To the extent that other law firms throughout the country

are gonna try and put their heads in the sand, there will be decisions to be made throughout. There are going to be people, line prosecutors whose names we do not know, who are subject to congressional investigations, Department of Justice investigations, and the like, who are subject to congressional investigations Department of Justice investigations and the like who are going to need lawyers and similar to what we saw for example during Trump impeachment one those people are going to need counsel there is

a large group of people who are experienced in congressional investigations, but it's not limitless right and so at some point law firms in Washington and New York and in other places across the country are gonna have to Have tough conversations. Are we willing to risk? being in the spotlight and Potentially losing some clients if we do the right thing here and offer representation To people who themselves are being targeted because they try to follow the facts and follow the law MSNBC legal correspondent Lisa Rubin and NBC News national security editor David Rode.

Thank you both very much for being on this morning.