Morning Joe - Morning Joe 2/3/23

Episode Date: February 3, 2023

Suspected Chinese spy balloon flying over the U.S.

A group of people that came from, I don't know where they came from. I'm looking at this Omar from Minnesota. And if one half of the things they're saying about her are true, she shouldn't even be in office. That was then President Trump back in 2019, around the time he told a group of congresswomen to go back where you came from. And if there's any doubt on whether the GOP still belongs to MAGA, just look at yesterday's vote to remove Ilhan Omar from her committee post. Meanwhile, the Pentagon continues to track what appears to be a Chinese surveillance balloon that flew over Montana. It comes as Secretary Anthony Blinken

makes his first trip to Beijing, plus a new estimate on the number of Russian soldiers who have died in Ukraine. It could show just how desperate Vladimir Putin has become in this nearly year-long war. And meteorologists are predicting

the worst wind chills in decades in the Northeast this weekend. Look at that. It could get as low as negative 50 in some parts. Negative 50. The Times said yesterday, like at the top of Mount Washington. Yeah.

Negative 100, Willie. Now, you and I, of course, have done that in some of our, you know, and we're, Willie and I, you know, sometimes we've done the Antarctica thing. Yeah. We do that extreme, like, mountain climbing stuff. I forget what you call it. I think this will be a little rough for you. Minus 100, Willie. Yeah, well, when we summited Norway, excuse me, when we summited Everest, it got pretty close to that cold as well.

Thank God for Intensic Norgay and the guys and the Sherpas who helped us get up there. But it gets breezy up there, too. It does. You get a breeze. Of the three of us who have actually climbed a mountain, that would not be either of you, but okay. What do you mean? We've climbed. You don't believe we went to the top

of Everest? Except for Parkman and Northeast Harbor. It was... It was... Listen, we lost a lot of good men up there, Willie, and I did. We did. Kind of like wedding crashers. All right. Good morning, everyone. And welcome to Morning Joe.

It's Friday, February 3rd. Did you hear what happened to Katty during way too early? Katty got really surprised by a thong story. There's a story. Yeah. Derek Jeter's story. You want to tell us about it, Katty? What happened?

No. I mean, what? A golden thong worn on the out? story. Yeah. Derek Jeter's story. You want to tell us about it, Katty? What happened? No. I mean, what? A golden song worn on the out? No, no. It was like 530 in the morning. You don't talk about. So actually, you don't talk about golden songs on television ever in my book. But 530 in the morning, that's just sort of like far too intimate to you. Willie, Willie, do you know that story to me? Well, Derek Jeter was on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon a couple nights ago. And during a segment about true confessions, he revealed that he once wore a gold thong to break out of a slump he was in at the plate. And it works. It was given to him by a teammate who said, trust me, this works. He wore it under the Yankee pinstripes and broke out of his slump.

So, Caddy had that one for you at 5.30 a.m. Are less dramatic ways to go about that. I think so. Like, just go to the batting cage a little longer. I have so many things I could say, but I'm not comfortable. Former chairman of the Republican National Committee, Michael Steele, is with us this morning. Good to have you. Look at Michael all in blue.

Nice to have you on this Friday. It's nice. And Michael's sitting here going, yeah, I mean, you know. He's going, why am I here today? He has better ways of breaking out of slums. Okay. Thought crossed my mind. Let's go right to the news. This morning, we are following a number of high stakes developments with China.

The lead in The New York Times has headlined U.S. aims to deter China with greater military presence in Philippines. This as Secretary of State Anthony Blinken is due to visit China on Sunday, where he is expected to meet with President Xi Jinping. It's the first by an American secretary of state in six years and comes amid rising tensions between the two nations. Against that backdrop, the spy drama that the Pentagon has been nervously following for a number of days now. Right now, a spy balloon believed to have been sent by China is flying over the United States. According to the Wall Street Journal, travelers on a commercial plane first spotted the high-altitude balloon on Wednesday as it hovered over Billings, Montana.

The Pentagon has since. By the way, by the way, if people are wondering why it's in Montana, it started in Alaska, the Lucian Islands, Alaska, and then came down through Canada. And it just crossed into the United States in Montana. I know Montana sounds kind of like a random place to start for a Chinese spy balloon. It's making its way. But yeah, it's making its way. The Pentagon has since confirmed the incident,

saying yesterday that it was tracking and monitoring the balloon, but declining to say where it was currently located. A senior White House official tells NBC News that they are confident the balloon was sent by China, though the administration has not said so publicly. The official added that President Biden was briefed on the matter and followed the recommendation of his advisers that the balloon not be shot out of the sky for concerns of safety of those on the ground. The White House does say,

however, that it acted immediately to protect against the collective, the collection of sensitive information. China has not admitted to sending the balloon and says it is working to learn more about the situation. A Beijing spokesperson added today that the country, quote, always abides by international law and has no intention of infringing on any country's territory. Yikes. Willie. So for some more detail on this, let's bring in NBC News national security and military correspondent Courtney Kuby, who broke the story for us at NBC. Courtney, wow. First of all, but listening and reading through some of the details of the story

and looking at the history of it, it turns out this happens from time to time. There are balloons floating around looking down on the United States, sometimes from China specifically, and also that it was within range of being shot down. But the Defense Department made a decision not to do that. Can you explain a little bit how often this happens and where the balloon may be now? So we know of at least two other times this has happened in the past, and it's not just during the Biden administration. This happened during past administrations as well. The difference about this one that has caused officials more concern is that the balloon, in past cases, these aerial surveillance assets will come near the U.S. or maybe go into the U.S.

for a short time and then they leave again. This one has been, it flew, as you can see from that map there, from the Aleutians down through Canada into Montana. And it's been hovering in the United States now for several days. That's what has U.S. officials more concerned about it. And then, you know, you mentioned it was in Montana. That's not too far from Malmstrom Air Force Base, which is where the U.S. has intercontinental ballistic missiles. It's one of the U.S.'s strategic ballistic missile sites in the United States. Now, as far as we know, it was never closer than about 200 miles.

But the balloon is still flying over the continental U.S. and officials are not telling us where it is at this point. So that's one of the things. Now, you mentioned also the potential for it to be shot down. This raised a level of concern that on Wednesday, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, who was traveling in Manila at the time, convened a meeting with his senior defense leaders that included Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Mark Milley, the head of NORTHCOM NORAD, General Glenn Van Herk. So Austin called them all together for a meeting. It was the middle of the night in the Philippines. And they talked about the potential track for this thing, where it was coming from,

where it was going, the potential collection, the intelligence collection capabilities, which they believe to be somewhat minimal. They don't think that this can collect very much. And they even brought in some aircraft, including AWACS, their surveillance aircraft and F-22 fighter jets with the potential to bring this thing down. They scrambled these aircraft to both look at it and the potential to shoot it down. Now, ultimately, they decided that given the fact that it didn't have a ton of collection capability and they looked at the potential for taking it down and the debris field that that would create on the ground,

they made a recommendation to President Biden not to shoot it down, but to continue to monitor and track it. And that's where they landed. President Biden agreed with that decision. And according to a senior defense official who I spoke with yesterday, they're literally monitoring this on a minute by minute basis. And they are maintaining the both the ability and the decision making space to take it down if need be. All right. NBC's Courtney Kuby, thank you very much. We appreciate your reporting. Greatly appreciate the reporting. Yeah. So, Cady, this comes amid a backdrop of rising tensions between the U.S. and China. But there's some cross currents here. First of all, Anthony Blinken,

secretary of state, invited to meet with President Xi. He would be the first member of the Biden administration, high ranking member of the Biden administration to do that. At the same time, Lloyd Austin, the secretary of defense, going to the Philippines and the Philippines, really committing to a strong military presence and talking about challenging some of China's expansions in the South China Seas. Of course, we've been beefing up our defense arrangements with Australia, with Japan, with other countries in that region. So it's interesting. The Blinken meeting with President Xi suggests an opening between the two nations. But there's a backdrop of a lot of drama here. There is a backdrop of a lot of drama here.

And there is also a backdrop of a certain amount of resolution amongst America's allies in the South Pacific area. The Australians you mentioned, and we covered that nuclear submarine deal extensively when that happened. But the Australians who had been kind of wondering whether they could play both sides of the China-U.S. kind of competition, if you like, have now clearly opted to be firmly in the U.S. camp. The Philippines look like they're doing the same. So Tony Blinken goes to China with a pretty strong hand in terms of allies coming on board to try and limit China's movements in the South China Sea. But I think the main thing I'm hearing from people who deal with China a lot, particularly actually in the business community, Joe, is that they are relieved that

there is any contact happening because during the years of COVID and the kind of Chinese lockdown, but really as the Chinese were getting more aggressive towards foreign investment and foreign companies in China, there was a total breakdown in communication between this White House and officials in China. And that is what people felt was particularly dangerous. So the fact that Blinken is going for this high level meeting, that they're showing that they are talking again, I think that will be quite a relief to certainly to American businessmen who are business people who are investing in China. It certainly may be a step in the right direction. I mean, China has had a brutal two, three, four years and it's been self-inflicted.

The damage to China's economy, to China's society has been self-inflicted. We'll see if this is the beginning of a new chapter for them as they move beyond COVID and also try to move a bit away from just an extreme totalitarian approach that they've opted for over the past three, four years. In just a few moments, we'll be joined by Admiral James DeBritas. We'll talk about this and also the developments overnight in Ukraine as well. Back to politics in D.C., though, Democratic Congresswoman Ilhan Omar of Minnesota has been formally removed from the House Foreign Affairs Committee. 218 Republicans voted to back the resolution, removing Omar from the committee and condemning her for her past anti-Semitic comments for which she has apologized.

One Republican, Dave Joyce of Ohio, a senior member of the Ethics Committee, voted present. All 211 House Democrats voted against Omar's removal. Omar spoke ahead of the vote, displaying a picture of herself as a nine-year-old girl in a refugee camp and calling on her experiences as a refugee from Somalia. Representation matters. Continuing to expand our ideas of who is American and who can partake in the American experience, experiment, is a good thing.

I am an American. An American who was sent here by her constituents to represent them in Congress. A refugee who survived the horrors of a civil war. Someone who spent her childhood in a refugee camp, someone who knows what it means to have a shot at a better life here in the United States, and someone who believes in the American dream and the American possibility and the promise and the ability to participate in the democratic process. The vote to remove Congresswoman Omar was along party lines 218 to 211. Some of those 211 Democrats spoke out in defense of Congresswoman Omar,

calling out Republican hypocrisy for not disciplining their own members. I think one of the things that we should talk about here is also one of the disgusting legacies after 9-11 has been the targeting and racism against Muslim Americans throughout the United States of America. And this is an extension of that legacy. Consistency. There is nothing consistent with the Republican Party's continued attack except for the racism and incitement of violence against women of color in this body. I had a member of the Republican caucus threaten my life, and you all and the Republican caucus rewarded him with one of the most prestigious committee assignments in this Congress. Don't tell me this is about consistency. Don't tell me that this is about a condemnation of anti-Semitic remarks when you have a member of the Republican caucus who has talked about Jewish space lasers and an entire amount of tropes and also elevated her to some of the

highest committee assignments in this body. This is about targeting women of color in the United States of America. Don't tell me because I didn't get a single apology. My life was threatened. Thank you. She has never posted a video depicting herself decapitating and killing fellow members of Congress. She doesn't question whether a plane really smashed into the Pentagon on 9-11. She does not wonder if school shootings in America are staged. She has not propagated the absurd notion that space lasers, financed by the Rothschild family are the cause of wildfires in California. She has never equated vaccine mandates with Adolf Hitler.

So it's pretty stark, Michael, still the hypocrisy and such a great point by AOC that she actually had somebody, Gosar, threatening her life, glorifying an image of her getting her head chopped off in a cartoon. And then you go down the MTG things, the killing, the decapitating. Well, the the the the all the other things and the space lasers financed by Jewish families. And of course, of course. She's holding a gun. I think it was an AR-15 in an ad and said that she needed to go on the electorate. So she'd go on the offensive against the squad. And there was a picture of Ilhan Omar AOC. I mean, it really is. The hypocrisy is absolutely, absolutely crazy. And I will say Congresswoman Omar made a couple of statements that were considered anti-Semitic. She apologized for them. I must say they certainly were no worse, and I would say far less egregious,

than what we hear from Donald Trump, what we hear from Donald Trump's guests, dinner guests, what we've been hearing from the Republican Party over the over the past five, six years, what we saw coming out of Charlottesville. This is this is not a close call. It's not a close call. When you step back and look at the egregious behavior of Republicans like Taylor Greene and Boebert, you know, particularly in Taylor Greene's situation, not only, you know, threatening with guns, showing these images, but attending, you know, rallies with Mr. Fuentes, you know, identified known Nazi. I mean, one who had dinner with the former president of the United States. But this has nothing to do with any of that. At the end of the day, this is Kevin McCarthy's payback. This is retributive politics. There would have been nothing that could have been said. There could have been nothing done to prevent this from happening, because it was ordained by Marjorie Taylor Greene and others in the Freedom Caucus that if you become Speaker, you take her out.

If you become Speaker, you take out Swalwell and others. So the reality now that we've done this, that's a checkbox, that retribution that's been paid back. It is not how you govern. But again, this is what the American people said they were OK with because they voted them into power. So I'm not letting people off the hook here. All the plaintiff pleas from people about what happened here, you knew it was going to happen. They told you this is what they were going to do and you voted for it anyway. So, you know, all of this, I just, I don't, I'm tired of folks just sort of, you know, wanting to focus it exclusively on these, on the bad behavior of

these members. These members are there because the American people put them there. Right. You get the consequences from their behavior when you vote for it. I mean, this is this is the way the democracy is set up. You don't like the behavior. You don't want to be governed this way. You don't put the idiots in charge of the House. They voted for him. You're exactly right. Again, we can look at the members. We should look at the people who voted for him.

You look at Boebert, who almost lost, but she won. Enough people voted for her. Here's a woman at a town hall meeting, went on a racist screed against Ilhan Omar. Think about that. President of the United States, a fascist screed at a rally saying she needed to go back to where she came from. I mean, all of these people attacking her, attacking A.O. And Ilhan Omar is the one who's stripped of her committee membership. I mean, the thing is, I know that this is far too. I know that this is far too difficult for Kevin McCarthy and other Republicans to understand.

But we don't need people on the committees that all look like me and have my background and have my family's background and have my worldview and my very, I think Mika might say, overly optimistic view of what America does at home and across the globe. Michael Steele, are even people with your background or people with traditional backgrounds that go on these committees. a civil war who may not have as, let's just say, traditional view about the United States of America as I do. I love the friction. I love the debate. It's how we get better as a people. So, yes, Ilhan Omar says a lot of things that I disagree with. AOC says a lot of things I disagree with. That's America. And we stand with them this morning.

Oh, my God. We stand with them this morning. Not only do we stand with them, we stand with something much, much bigger than just them. We stand again with this intellectual diversity, this friction where we get on these committees and we fight. I had not to go on, not to go on too long. But, you know, when when I was on the Judiciary Committee, my gosh, Maxine Waters and I had some knockdown drag out fights. We became great friends because of it. And we we got to understand each other much better because of it. They have they have they have damaged Congress by doing this.

And they have made it an intellectually weaker place to work. Now, intellectually weaker. You're presuming there's intellect to begin with. I mean, we haven't seen that in a long while. I mean, this goes beyond the pale. I mean, look, the reality of it is the concept is we come from all parts of the country. It's just as you said, Joe. You bring a Southern boy from Alabama, a Northern boy from New Hampshire, you know, a young woman from a refugee camp. You put these folks in this space to represent this great experiment. And the idea is that you not only get along,

but you actually try to solve the problems that come from your own personal experience that you know about and have lived, but you also help others solve those problems. We don't do that anymore. What we see now is the performative BS, which is the only thing this GOP can offer the American people. It has no policy. Its party has no platform. It has not put forth an idea except well-worn, baked-over ideas that they then don't even fashion into legislation. So this fulfills and checks the boxes they want to check with the base that is angry and pissed off and further stoked by the bad behavior. And instead of, you know, going to Ilhan and understanding and recognizing, OK, just like you did with Maxine, OK, we disagree

on policy. Let's try to work through this. I'm just going to show up at your office. I'm just going to, you know, protest you. I'm going to go after you personally. How do you govern in that space? Right. And the difference, the difference real quick, Joe, you know, this is the leadership, man. It's the leadership. But, you know, I'm so glad you said that. And I may have brought this up once before. But, Willie, when I first got to Congress, I was sitting there and talking to Floyd Spence. And Floyd Spence was an old conservative South Carolina representative. And he was he was about as conservative as it got. But let me tell you something. When I started talking to him about members on the Armed

Services Committee that he worked with, if I said anything bad about any of them, man, he would shut me down. He said, let me tell you something. They come from a different background than I do in South Carolina. We have differences of opinions. One is a former Black Panther, but they're men and women of honor. And when we get into the committee room, that's what it's about. We sit down and talk. And here you had this guy from the deep south raised in the segregation of the south talking about working with a ranking member, a former Black Panther. And he said he's a man of his word. I learned from him. He learns from me. I learned from he shows me my blind spots. I suggest to him where he may have his blind spots. And our committee is so much richer because of it. I was told that my first day in Washington, D.C. from a conservative conservative and man, Floyd Spence was so right. And I mean, Congress ran better because of it. These committees ran better because of it. Nobody's thinking like that in Washington, D.C. anymore. Yeah, that spirit is

gone. There's no question. We should note there were there was a small handful of Republicans who didn't want this to happen. Nancy Mace, Ken Buck. It was a small group. And Kevin McCarthy needed their votes. They went into a room yesterday. They negotiated a little bit. And they agreed to vote to oust Congresswoman Omar only after McCarthy promised them going forward there would be more due process than just a straight vote on this. Now, that doesn't do Congresswoman Omar any good here. But at least maybe there won't be this tit for tat going forward that we're talking about yesterday. But, Katty K., this is another case that speaks broadly to not just the hypocrisy, but people roll their eyes at the outrage of Republicans on this matter when they've stood by and continue to stand by members of their own caucus, but also the leader of their party, the man they've followed now for seven years, Donald Trump, with his anti-Semitism. It's beyond hypocrisy. It's preposterous to a lot of people to see them feign outrage here. Yeah, I mean, look, Marjorie Taylor Greene is somebody who's now sitting on

the Homeland Security Committee, and she flirted at one point with the idea that a plane didn't fly into the Pentagon. It was some kind of government hoax. And she kind of rolled back from that, but she did it in a pretty mealy-mouthed way. She sort of said, well, I followed some conspiracies and it's kind of the fault of the conspiracies that I believed some bad stuff. Ilhan Omar has had a real apology about what she has said. And she's actually used the word. She said, listen, I've learned from my fellow Jewish members of Congress and I realized the pain of these anti-Semitic tropes. Her apology, I felt, was far more authentic. But I think what Joe is getting to is right. This gets

to the need for diversity of thought. I mean, it's whether it's in Congress, whether it's at the top of corporations, whether it's in American universities, which are increasingly becoming monolithic in the way that they think. And yet we have study after study after study around the world that shows us that when we have diversity of opinion and experience in top leadership positions, wherever it is, whether it's in politics or whether it's in business or whether it's in academia, you get better results. You just do. I mean, it's all been measured. The metrics are all there. You get better results. And without that diversity of opinion, if we're going to get into a position and maybe the Republican Party needs to do some thinking because there is diversity of opinion within the current Republican congressional caucus. It's just it's being kind of drowned out by the loudest voices. And that, you know, that is not going to be good for the health of the party in the long run. No, this is sad and destructive. And I'll say just on a

personal note, I was sort of brought up on having a diversity of ideas at the dinner table. And anybody that my parents brought over in Washington for dinners and even state dinners, it would be, you know, who do we disagree with? Let's have them over. And it would be debates over the dinner table. And it was fascinating and it made everybody better. It also made me have one Republican brother, one Democrat, and then me waffling in the middle. And your dad also. From one family. Who worked for your dad. You had Condi Rice work for your dad. Madeleine Albright worked for your dad. Secretary Gates worked for your dad. He loved that. Like Republicans, Democrats, Republicans, Democrats challenged. He wasn't afraid to be challenged.

And this is really where your stories from Congress really apply, because you have amazing stories about people from very different sides of an opinion on something or the aisle getting along and finding ways to have a relationship. And I talked about Floyd Spence. One of the people he talked about was Ron Dellums, who I'm sure I had campaigned against, like on the campaign, some said, oh, Ron Dellums is a liberal radical. So what did I do after? And this goes to leadership,

which is something that Michael Steele said. So what did I do after I heard this from Floyd Spence? The next day on the floor, I walk up to Ron Dellums. We sit down and we have an hour talk in between votes. And I absolutely fell in love with the guy. He was one of my heroes the rest of the way through Congress. And the reason why was because anybody that knows Ron Delms knows he didn't come at you with saying, this is what I believe. He'd ask you, because, man, why do you believe what you believe? I'm just fascinated.

And we would sit there and we would talk. Just made me so much better. And also, again, you learn your own blind spots. You learn what you have right, what you may need to work on. This is this is what makes any organization. We built this show on that civil conversation. We'll continue the conversation. And it's really appears to be something that's dangerously broken in Washington. But we want to check in on the weather. We have some dangerous weather ahead. Let's go to meteorologist Angie Glassman for a check on the frigid forecast. And Angie, we mean frigid. What's going on? Yeah, dangerously cold for a lot of people. Looks great in Boston right now, but over the next 24 hours, we could be talking about record lows for them tomorrow morning. We have plenty of alerts up there, windchill alerts,

advisories, watches, warnings are all going to be on the table here as we look for 56 million people to be impacted by those windchill alerts right now. But check out how many people are going to see windchills below zero by the time we get into tomorrow. 100 million people are included in that. 18 million people are going to see windchills below 20, 20 below zero. So bitter cold temperatures settling in. And for some, we're waking up to minus eight. We're what it feels like in Detroit right now, minus 13 in Chicago, Washington, D.C. Not bad when we consider where we're going to go for tomorrow, especially in places like northern Maine, where we could see minus 50, minus 60 degree wind chills and temperatures, actual temperatures well below zero for a wide swath of the northeast. 10 degrees is what you'll wake up to tomorrow morning in New York, but it'll feel like minus

seven. If you don't like this forecast, just wait a little while. You see what happens by Sunday, 40s, mid 40s at that in New York, 50 degrees by Monday and Tuesday, Washington, D.C. You are nearing 60 degrees by the time we get to Tuesday. And it's even not that bad in Boston, where we will return back to those mid 40s by the time we head into next week. So, you know, if you don't like the weather, guys, just wait a while. But in the meantime, bundle up if you're heading out this weekend. All right, Angie Lastman, thank you very much. Still ahead on Morning Joe, the latest from Ukraine as Russia's soaring death toll gives new insight into the state of the war. Plus, former President Trump is going after Florida Governor Ron DeSantis again. And former Vice

President Mike Pence is teasing a possible 2024 White House run of his own. Oh, by the way, Donald Trump now saying he may not support the Republican who wins in 2024. That sounds just like Donald Trump. Also ahead, Republican Congresswoman Lauren Boebert, who celebrated metal detectors being removed from the House chamber last month, calls on Americans to buy more guns. We'll show you her new comments from the House floor. You're watching Morning Joe. We'll be right back. Live picture before the sun at 637 in the morning on a Friday morning in Washington, the United States and the Philippines announced plans to expand America's military presence in that country with access to four additional military sites. The move comes as China has

taken increasingly aggressive actions toward Taiwan, which it maintains is part of its territory. The new agreement would allow the United States to put military equipment and facilities in as many as nine locations inside the Philippines. That move would create the largest U.S. military presence in the Philippines in some 30 years. Joining us now, former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, retired four-star Navy Admiral James Stavridis. He is Chief International Analyst for NBC News. Admiral, it's good to see you this morning. So a fascinating move here by the United States to increase its footprint in the Philippines, particularly since the Secretary of State, Antony Blinken,

is headed to China on Sunday to meet with President Xi. Indeed, it is. And take a look at that map. The concept here, and it's a very smart one strategically, is simply this to create a string of bases that run from Japan in the north through South Korea, just south of that, through ultimately the Philippines, and then it curves around, Willie, down to Australia. So you really have a band of U.S. logistics capability that we could move forward if we had to, for example, defend South Korea, defend Japan, defend Taipei, Taiwan. All of those become real possibilities. And hooked to that, Willie, is the stand up of the first new U.S. Marine Corps base in 70 years. That one is a little ways back. That's in Guam. It's called Camp Blaze. The commandant of the Marine Corps

has been in Asia this week talking about that new base, as well as these new basing arrangements in the northern Philippines. It's smart strategy and tactics. From your experience, Admiral, do all of these moves put together signal the United States belief that China actually may move on Taiwan at some point in the near future? Or is it more deterrence? Is it, hey, don't think about moving on Taiwan? Willie, it's a little bit of both. You know, I'll make the worst pun of the morning and say that conversation with the Philippines and a new Marine base will go over like a lead balloon in China. But let's face it, it is going to create some deterrence and it really creates some uncertainty in the mind of President Xi. Hopefully that will have a chilling effect on any aspirations to move toward Taiwan. So, Admiral, we often look back and we've been talking about Harry

Truman over the past couple of years. We often look back at the Truman administration and how what they what Truman and Marshall and Atchison, what they all stitched together, created a postwar world that helped launch the American century. I know it may sound like a bit of an overstatement now, but I really I think we would be doing our viewers a disservice if we were so fearful of sounding like we were being cheerleaders for this administration that we didn't talk about the truth of what's happened over the past year. Quickly, I'll go through it very quickly in Europe. You have NATO, which was on the cusp of basically being thrown overboard by Donald Trump had he been reelected.

A strengthened NATO. You have Finland and Sweden. And as you've said, turning the Baltic Sea into the NATO lake. You have Germany committing to more defense spending than Russia spends annually. You have a permanent base in Poland, really the flexing of Poland's muscles militarily. Europe, which has just been transformed over the past year. And now we go to Asia. You look at Australia. We saw this very early on. Australia's new commitment to flex their muscles, to push back. Japan doing now what Germany was talking about doing, an extraordinary post-war move. We've talked about the Philippines this

morning. You've talked about Guam. This is something, is it not, that military historians are going to be looking back at if we continue on this arc 10, 20, 30 years from now and talking about what a remarkable year this has been for America's alliances, for the alliance of democratic nations to push back against the spread of these authoritarian regimes. Well said. And let's, by the way, underline that this has been Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin having these conversations, but it's very much part of Tony Blinken's wheelhouse. This is diplomacy coming up alongside defense. And, you know, I was often asked when I was NATO commander, oh, are we going to have a NATO in Asia? And the answer to that is no. The cultures are too different. The history is too different. The distance is immensely challenging in ways that

it is not. But, Joe, you're absolutely right to point out this glittering array of alliances, which is our most significant comparative advantage in the world. Final thought, the Philippines. You know, we were kind of pushed away from the Philippines during the previous administration there of Rodrigo Duterte. Now we've got a son of Ferdinand Marcus in there. Relations are a lot warmer. That may be the most significant move of all here on a comparative basis. And yes, if you're in Beijing, it creates real uncertainty in your mind. That creates deterrence that avoids conflict. That's the key.

All right. Russian President Vladimir Putin is warning the U.S. and its allies that Moscow cannot be defeated in Ukraine. His remarks came yesterday during a speech to mark the 80th anniversary of the Soviet triumph in the Battle of Stalingrad. But he said that as nearly 200,000 Russian troops have been killed or wounded in Ukraine. That number, according to The New York Times, the Times notes that U.S. officials say Moscow's been sending poorly trained recruits to the front lines, some that they just pulled straight out of prison, resulting in hundreds of troops being wiped,000. And by the way, that may be a conservative estimate. And now the Times, of course, the story goes on to say, oh, but Putin's

going to be able to keep his head down and and keep fighting this war. Those of us who remember how Afghanistan ended, not so sure of that. There comes a point even in Russian society, there even came a point in Soviet society where the mothers of young men said enough and the Soviet leaders had no choice but to listen. Interesting. Absolutely. And just to put that number in comparison, the 200,000 casualties in less than one year of war, just to put that in a context, in 20 years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, 20 years, the U.S. tragically had 7,000 killed in action. Here we're approaching somewhere between 100,000 and 200,000. My view, that's unsustainable. My fact set would include the fact that the last time Putin called up a draft just a few months ago, a conscription, somewhere between 200,000

and 300,000 young Russian males of military age departed the pattern. They left the country. They're in Kazakhstan. They're in Eastern Europe. They are anywhere but inside Vladimir Putin's Russia. I think he's going to have a hard time sustaining this going forward. But I will close on this note before we celebrate too much. Putin mentioned Stalingrad because, Joe, in a year of combat in Stalingrad, about a million Russians were killed. So he will like drawing that comparison and he will reach into Russian literature and point out books like one day in the life of Ivan Denisovich, Russia, as Mika and her family knows, can be a very difficult, very, very hard opponent. So yeah, the trend lines are going against Putin at the moment in that land war. But we need to continue to watch him and above all, provide the Ukrainians the material they need to push back on the next wave.

100%. Let's bring in New York Times reporter Anna Swanson, who writes about trade and international economics. She's been reporting on how Russia is importing Western products into the country despite sanctions. So has there been any consequence to them in this respect, or are they still getting everything they need from the West in terms of the different products that are still going in, shipments from all over the world, actually? Well, I would say there have been consequences, and Russians are not getting everything that they need. We're regularly hearing reports filtering out of Russia of people unable to access medicines or frustrated with the high price of goods on the shelves or inferior goods. But overall, if you look at the trade data, data is showing that there have been these

recent surges in trade with some of Russia's neighbors and allies. And that suggests that countries like Turkey, China, Belarus, the former Soviet republics, are stepping in to provide Russia with some of the goods that it used to get from the West before the invasion. And analysts estimate now that Russia's imports are actually probably back to pre-war levels. So I would certainly say the sanctions are having some consequences, but it does raise questions about how influential the sanctions will be in really changing the course of the war. So, Anna, if they're evading sanctions on a range of goods, what about things that they need for repairing and restocking their military,

for example, computer chips that are banned in terms of sales from the West, at least. Because I think one of the mysteries of what's happening in Ukraine is how the Russian military has managed to hold out as long as it can in terms of resupply. Does it suggest they're getting what they need from China or from Iran or from other countries, India perhaps? I don't know. But something is happening that means they can carry on restocking their military when the West thought it would be sooner than this that they would run out of the ability to do so. It's kind of a mixed picture.

So their imports of semiconductors, for example, are down overall, but there has been a kind of surge in imports of these products to Russia from countries like China, from areas like Hong Kong. So, you know, there are changes in trade patterns globally that are really helping to get some of these products back into Russia. You know, and it's important to note that not everything is sanctioned, obviously. The West did not put sanctions on consumer goods like smartphones or medicines. But, you know, there is some it does look like a suspicious picture as well for Russia trying to get around sanctions. And perhaps more to be done.

Ana Swanson, thank you very much for your reporting this morning. Retired Admiral James Tavridis, thank you, as always, for being on the show this morning. Coming up, should lawmakers be allowed to carry firearms into congressional hearings? No, no. OK. I just want to think I didn't have to worry. I want to know why we even have to ask this question. Here's the answer.

Republicans think so. We'll explain the clash among members of the House Natural Resources Committee. You need to be carrying in the Natural Resources Committee. Let's bring live bears into the, I mean, seriously. There's not a constitutional right to carry a life fair. Plus, five questions. One of our next guests says, Congress must urgently ask the CIA.

Morning, Joe. We'll be right back. Beautiful live picture of lower Manhattan in New York City, where it's about to get real cold here and across the Northeast. Time for a look at some of the morning papers. We start in Mississippi, where the Sun-Herald has a front page feature on a new bill that would make recording police in public places a misdemeanor. Under the legislation, anyone who records an officer performing his or her duties could face a fine and jail time if they are less than 15 feet away from that officer. In Maine, the Kennebec Journal reports the state has set a record in overdose deaths for the third consecutive year. Out of the more than 10,000 overdoses reported in 2022, 7% resulted in death.

Officials believe that number would have been greater if there had not been an increased availability of Narcan, which can reverse the effects of an opioid overdose if taken in time. Mika in Florida, the Miami Herald leads with a proposal to require high school athletes to disclose information regarding their menstrual cycle. Man, seriously, you're going to do that to young girls right now participation forms mark questions about a student's period as optional opponents say making this a requirement is an effort to quote demonize transgender people in sports i actually think it's a problem for everybody the percentage that's sort of private small, but they're doing this to every girl

in Florida schools. Talk about overkill. Talk about just stop. Political gestures. And the Herald Sun reports North Carolina lawmakers want to strengthen penalties for damages done to electrical substations. This is in response to an attack in December that left tens of thousands of people in the dark for days. The measure would make such attacks a felony that carries a sentence of up to 10 years in prison and a two hundred and fifty thousand dollar fine. To date, there have been no arrests connected to the December attack. Come on, let's talk about that Florida law. Oh, my God. You have to write. Can you imagine doing that as a young girl when you were like in high school, middle school? Caddy. Caddy. Come on. This is talk about again over 0.003% of the population.

And then the unbelievably small number of transgender students who are playing sports. The Florida Republican Party has gone crazy. They sent out tons of mailers on this. The obsession. And now they're making young girls self-report on menstrual cycles because of this bizarre obsession. It's like, you know, there's a very, very, very tiny problem, even if you call it a problem, which is not a problem. Having trans kids in schools is not a problem anyway, but even if you're on a Republican side and don't understand it, you see it is.

And then taking this absolutely massive hammer to attach it to, you know, do something about that, that the sticking up. I mean, and for every, you know what it's like having teenage girls. You've had teenage girls. Every single person watching this show knows teenage girls. It's the last thing you want to ask them to talk about. They hate talking about it. To do it in this intrusive way where they're going to have to, what, self?

What are they going to have to do? Fill in a chart? What happens if they're a couple of days late? Then what happens? I mean, it's kind of... I mean, this is a stupid... Michael, still, this is another stupid extension of a culture war where he's trying to create

a culture war around something where there's not a war. I've said it before on this show. Over 80 percent of Americans do not believe that males who transition post puberty should participate against young women in high school sports. The international, their international sports, this is almost a universal standard here. Ron DeSantis and Republicans are trying to make this the ultimate cultural war battle.

It's just not. It's such, again, 0.003% of the population. You take student athletes that transition, it's even less than that. So now they're going to make Florida girls report on their menstrual cycles as part of this culture. You talk about overkill. It's insanity. It for me, it's not a question of overkill. It is.

It is an absolute disregard and disrespect for women, regardless of age, regardless of circumstance. I'm not going to sit on this program as a man and opine about the menstrual cycles of women, nor should the Florida legislature. That's no place. Republicans, get your head out of your behinds. This is not the direction America wants to go. Ron DeSantis, you think this is going to help launch your bid to become the next president of the United States? Wait till you come to Maryland and have that conversation about the menstrual cycle of women. All right? Wait till you go to Montana. Wait till you go to Mississippi.

The reality of it is this may work in your backyard. And this may be what Floridians want for their young girls and for women, young women. But I don't think this is something that's going to translate across the country. And this whole I mean, these are the same people who decry wokeism and cancellation. You're canceling young women. You're being woke with respect to their bodies and their their maturity. And so this is no place for government. None. Just a lack of the lack of the lack of privacy. We've talked before about how Ron DeSantis is the opposite of conservative. He like he he he declares war on private industry that he disagrees with.

He, you know, won't wouldn't let small business owners make decisions during the pandemic that they wanted to make based on what they consider to be best for their own economic interest. Cruise liners that wanted to start back up. Ron DeSantis had a dictate coming out of Tallahassee telling what telling cruise lines what they could or couldn't do. Michael, still, there's nothing conservative about this guy. And now we're talking about forcing young girls to report on their menstrual cycles because of some obsession with's just like the abortion issue, the lack of privacy. We can talk about the 10 year old girl in Ohio, the 14 year old girl that was dreamed up by Tudor Dixon, rape victims from uncles and the state government saying you may not leave the state. You must have a forced pregnancy.

What is conservative about any of this madness? There is nothing conservative about it. In fact, it is antithetical to everything that Republicans like you and myself believed and adhere to with respect to the proper role of government in the lives of every citizen. There's no place for this. The big debates that we had, Joe, in 2010 about the emergence of a new health care system known as Obamacare and the role that government would play in that, what were these very self-same conservative saying about that? So now you're going to go from arguing against that type of government intrusion,

as you put, as we put it then to now saying the government wants you to check off a box, whether or not you've had a menstrual cycle and let us know what that, when that occurred, this is, you know what I tell you, what Ron DeSantis and all these woke conservatives need to do. They need to go check what's going on inside their own house between the guns and the groping by the leadership. Some of the leadership, they need to pay attention to what's going on in their own house before they start worrying about what's going on in mine. Well, this type of thing would only happen in Ron DeSantis's Florida, given the culture he's really kind of put forward in the state. And I don't know if on the national level, Ron DeSantis's political approach would work in a run for the presidency.