Morning Joe - Morning Joe 2/5/25

Episode Date: February 5, 2025

Trump proposes U.S. control of Gaza in move that would permanently displace Palestinians

by the United States with its stability and strength, owning it, especially the strength that we're developing and developed over the last fairly short period of time, I would say really since the election, I think we'll be a great keeper of something that is very, very strong, very powerful and very, very good for the area, not just for Israel, for the entire Middle East, very important. OK. the entire Middle East, very important. OK, that was President Trump yesterday after suggesting the United States should take control of Gaza and permanently displace Palestinians. We'll have more of those comments, as well as the bipartisan backlash to the president's

proposal. Also ahead, Speaker Mike Johnson was asked flat out if the president has the authority to shut down government agencies without approval from Congress. We'll play for you his careful response. Meanwhile, Democrats continue to protest. Elon Musk's seemingly unchecked power within the Trump administration. But Republicans insist Musk isn't in charge. They are.

Plus, the CIA is now offering federal buyouts as the Trump administration attempts to gut the government workforce. It comes as the FBI agents are suing the Justice Department, accusing the Trump administration of politically motivated retribution. We'll go through all of that. We'll also bring you the lettuce from Capitol Hill, following key votes yesterday on two of the president's most controversial cabinet nominees.

Good morning and welcome to Morning Joe. It is Wednesday, February 5th. With us, we have the cohost of the fourth hour, Jonathan LaMaire. He's a contributing writer at the Atlantic, covering the White House and national politics. He has a piece out right now on Elon Musk. We'll get to that.

And the host of Way Too Early, Ali Vitale, joins us. We're going to start this morning with President Trump's brazen proposal for Gaza. Yesterday, the president announced the United States should seek control of the enclave and that the nearly 2 million Palestinians living there should relocate to Egypt or Jordan, a move both countries have vehemently opposed. The president made the comment during a joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The two leaders met at the White House yesterday, and it comes as negotiators are discussing the next phase of the Israel Hamas ceasefire agreement, which is supposed to include more humanitarian aid and reconstruction supplies for the people of Gaza. We should go to other countries of interest with humanitarian hearts, and there are many of them that want to do this and build various domains that will ultimately be occupied by the 1.8 million Palestinians living in Gaza, ending the death and destruction and frankly bad luck.

This can be paid for by neighboring countries of great wealth. It could be one, two, three, four, five, seven, eight, 12. It could be numerous sites or it could be one, two, three, four, five, seven, eight, twelve. It could be numerous sites or it could be one large site. But the people will be able to live in comfort and peace. The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip and we will do a job with it too. We'll own it and be responsible for dismantling all of the dangerous unexploded bombs and other weapons

on the site. Level the site and get rid of the destroyed buildings, level it out, create an economic development that will supply unlimited numbers of jobs and housing for the people of the area. I envision the world, people living there, the world's people. I think you'll make that into an international, unbelievable place. I think the potential and the Gaza Strip is unbelievable. And I think the entire world, representatives from all over the world will be there and

they'll live there. Palestinians also, Palestinians will live there. Many people will live there. Palestinians also. Palestinians will live there. Many people will live there. We have an opportunity to do something that could be phenomenal. And I don't want to be cute. I don't want to be a wise guy. But the Riviera of the Middle East, this could be something that could be so —

this could be so magnificent. Trump's comments have sent shockwaves throughout the region and here at home. In Saudi Arabia, the country's Foreign Affairs Ministry said its stance on the establishment of a Palestinian state remains a firm, unwavering position. Hamas released a statement rejecting Trump's plans, calling his comments a recipe for creating chaos and tension in the region. Meanwhile, NBC News caught up with several senators yesterday to ask them about what

the president said. At first I heard of it. I said, it seems like there's a few kinks in that slinky. We'll see what he meant. What do you mean by kinks in that slinky? Well, I don't know if you know about a slinky, but if it kinks, you can't use it anymore. I don't know how it would play out if what he's saying would be true. I don't know if you know about slinky, but if it kinks, you can't use it anymore.

I don't know how it would play out if what he's saying would be true. I don't know if you know about slinky, but if it kinks, you can't use it anymore. I don't know how it would play out if what he's saying would be true. I don't know if you know about slinky, but if it kinks, you can't use it anymore. I don't know how it would play out if what he's saying would be true. I don't know if you know about slinky, but if it kinks, you can't use it anymore. I don't know how it would play out if what he's saying would be true. I don't know how it would play out if what he's. What do you mean by King's and that slinky? Well, I don't know if you know about a slinky, but if it King's you can't use it anymore. I don't know how it would play out if what he said or what you all have said. I haven't seen the firsthand account, but obviously that's not going to happen. I think that'd be a tough place to be assigned if you're an American soldier. So I, yeah, we'll see what the Arab world says, but you know, that'd be problematic at many, many levels.

I'm speechless. That's insane. I can't think of a place on earth that would welcome American troops less and where any positive outcome is less likely and why on earth we would abandon decades of well-established humanitarian programs around the world and now launch into one

of the world's greatest humanitarian challenges. I mean A, we don't, yes, the United States should not take anybody's home. Number two, us nation-building in the Middle East, if you haven't learned anything from 2001 to 2025, you haven't been paying attention. We are very bad at that. All right, some bipartisan condemnation there. Jonathan Lumiere, your latest reporting for The Atlantic references Senator Graham's response. It's entitled Trump's Wild Plan for Gaza.

And you write in part this, any direct US intervention in Gaza would fly in the face of Trump's longstanding desire to disengage from foreign entanglements. He began negotiations to withdraw US forces from Afghanistan, wants to slash aid to Ukraine, and has threatened to abandon military positions in Korea, Europe and Syria.

And it may face pushback at home from some usually reliable allies. I think that would be an interesting proposal. Senator Lindsey Graham told reporters on Capitol Hill after Trump spoke. We'll see what our Arab friends say about that. I think most South Carolinians would probably not be excited about sending Americans to take over Gaza. It might be problematic. And Jonathan Lemire, Tom Telles, I think, had the quote of the day, a few kinks in the slinky. Yeah, that's a new one. I'm not aware of that particular phrase, but it does it. But it works. We'll run with it this morning. But yeah, it is works. It is a breathtakingly audacious proposal here from Donald Trump one

That was indeed met with a lot of pushback immediately first as noted this flies in the face of how Trump views foreign policy He wants to pull back US engagement and yesterday he was asked repeatedly whether or not US troops would be sent to Gaza To help secure it while it's being rebuilt. He did not rule that out. This of course is a conflict that has been in the Gaza. There's decades in the making, contested land since Israel's creation in 1948.

This is the first time a US president has suggested something like this with the US being in occupying force. We have seen that Saudi Arabia, as you just said already, which is seemingly close to normalizing relations with Israel, has already said, we're not going to do this. And that is just a preview of what is expected to be the reaction from throughout the Arab world, who want to see the Palestinians get their own state, who don't want to be taking Palestinian refugees into their own country, who don't want to be taking Palestinian refugees into their own country, who don't want to hand Israel potentially that territory.

It's certainly a significant win for Prime Minister Netanyahu were this to happen. The right wing elements in his coalition want to move in both on Gaza and of course the West Bank. And we also, this is Donald Trump, the White House aide told me last night, who does feel emboldened with a swagger, if you will, in this second term, believing that he could get a big deal done. Few would be bigger than this, even though part of this might even be a real estate transaction,

something that he has considered in the past, talking about Gaza's beachfront property, even the Riviera of the Middle East. For much, much more on this, let's bring in President Emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, Richard Haas. He is author of the weekly newsletter, Home and Away, which is, of course, available on Substack, as well as retired CIA officer Mark Palmaropoulos. He is an NBC News security and intelligence analyst. Richard, let's start with you.

I mean, your reaction, it is hard to know at a time whether, how seriously to take this. Is this something, is Donald Trump actually suggesting sending military troops to the Middle East, to Gaza, or is this the beginning of some sort of negotiation, an extreme position, if you will, perhaps to apply pressure on the region and allows him to maybe dial it back

a little bit to get something done. But even that seems so far-fetched. It seems far-fetched. We're all used to the idea of an opening bid. And so one of my first reactions was to try to play this out. Where could this lead? You've got, for example, the King of Jordan showing up in Washington in a few days. One of the dangers is that Donald Trump actually tries to follow this up, puts enormous pressure

on countries like Jordan, which are already vulnerable, threatens to remove what, the 1.7 billion in aid. So I worry that this is a nonstarter. Let me just say that with the Palestinians, Jonathan. Let's just posit that. This is going to be unacceptable to the Palestinians. The question is, is there a follow-up? Does this cause crises in Jordan? Does this cause crises in Jordan?

Does this cause crises in Egypt? Does this encourage some of the worst elements in Israel? It's one thing to think big about the Middle East. When I thought the Trump administration might think big about the Middle East, I assumed it was to maybe press Bibi to go in the direction of some type of a Palestinian state, which among other things would bring the Saudis on board and so forth. This is thinking big, but in a way that's totally at odds with the history and political realities of the region.

So it makes me think, one, what you mentioned, the swagger. There's a grandiosity to this, as though history doesn't matter. I think there's a little bit of that here, that in a sense that Donald Trump is not bounded by history. And also, it raises fundamental questions, and you're closer to it than I am, as is Ali, about the policy process. You could not have a rigorous policy process filled with experts on the Middle East and

come up with this proposal. There is no way you could get from there to where we now are. And Miki, as we see these images here of the devastation in Gaza 15 months of conflict But this is still home to 2.2 million people and Donald Trump is talking about displacement on just a staggering scale I've heard a lot of different words about this, but the ones that stand out to me is this is impossible This will never happen, maybe he doesn't mean it. And I would like to try and put a pause on that thinking to an extent, because I think we've learned by now, and a lot of what we talked about here on Morning Joe during the

campaign is Donald Trump does mean it. He means it. This is a man who said during the campaign he wouldn't pardon January 6 rioters and he has done so. This is a man who said that he would be your retribution and threatened retribution to people who worked on cases against him. That is happening right now in the FBI. Let's stop surmising as to whether or not he means it, because he means it, okay? So, Mark Polymeropoulos, my question to you is,

what will the promotion of this idea do to the delicate state of affairs in the region? Right, Mika, and so I think every CIA station chief in the Middle East woke up this morning with a migraine headache headache because there's a potential for a generational counterterrorism nightmare here. You have to look at the words that Donald Trump used yesterday, quote, take over Gaza, own Gaza. These are triggering mechanisms for Islamic extremist groups. Remember, Osama bin Laden's biggest beef with the United States decades ago was the US troop presence

in Saudi Arabia. Al-Qaeda in Iraq, same thing, the insurgency based on US troops in Iraq. So this kind of language only is going to galvanize groups that want to kill Americans. And if I was in the CIA and is still in the CIA and the counterterrorism community, I'd be monitoring the Islamic extremist forums, because this is just a tremendous own goal. And I worry that even if these are just words as Richard said perhaps part of some strange negotiating gambit Americans might be less safe now and I can't imagine anybody in the CIA or the State Department who would have advocated this

approach. Talk about the ceasefire agreement in place I mean there are hostages still due to come home. We are watching these reunions. They're incredibly emotional. I know President Trump is very much into seeing these reunions and positive things like that happening, hoping to take credit for them and things like that. What could these comments and this intention do to the ceasefire agreement that's in place right now? Well, sure, Mika, because there's a delicate balance that's going on right now, and we're trying to get through this phase one, perhaps to get to phase two.

But there are still hostages who need to be released. And so if you're Hamas right now and you hear these comments, you know, how do you, even if there was some distrust in the past, but how do you see the US as an interlocutor that you can agree with when they're saying all of the Palestinians have to be removed from the Gaza Strip with all of this kind of fanciful language. So you know, even this kind of strange rhetoric from Trump could really alter a very delicate negotiating pattern right now, which has seen hostages released. More are supposed to come this weekend.

We'll see. All right. NBC News security and intelligence analyst Mark Polymeropoulos, thank you very much for coming on the show this morning. Let's go live to Tel Aviv, Israel. NBC News correspondent Yasmin Vesugin is standing by there. Yasmin, what's the reaction that you're hearing so far? I think, Mika, it's important to be frank about the situation here in the Middle East.

And it feels as if President Trump has literally dropped a nuclear bomb on the Middle East. Lamir is right in that Donald Trump campaigned on getting the United States out of foreign wars. It feels as if after yesterday evening, standing aside, Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, that Donald Trump may very well have gotten the United States into another war. This is the type of rhetoric that will unite, that can feasibly unite the Middle East, right? We have heard from MBS of Saudi Arabia denouncing what Donald Trump has said. We have heard, obviously, from Islamic militants, from the Palestinian Authority to Islamic Jihad to Hamas,

who have all understandably denounced what Donald Trump has said. We have heard Iran denouncing what Donald Trump has said. We have heard Iran denouncing what Donald Trump has said. Even from Egypt and the foreign minister, not necessarily directly addressing, but instead saying we will continue to rebuild Gaza. As Richard mentioned, we know that the Jordanian king will be heading to Washington on February 11th. The president of Egypt heading to Washington Thursday as well.

Obviously, Donald Trump wanting to bring key players to try and put this plan into motion. But across the Middle East, there is a real deep dissatisfaction and anger with what President Trump is proposing. And yet if you look to the right wing of the Israeli government, they in fact are celebrating this notion of the United States taking over Gaza. But it's the Israeli citizens that I've spoken to here in Tel Aviv, and the Palestinians in Gaza, who our team on the ground has spoken to as well, who also think this idea is out of the realm of possibility

and not something anyone wants for a real lasting peace. Let's take a listen to them, Mika, and then we'll talk on the other side. We can't leave our homes. How we can, how you dare, how dare you to say you should leave your homes? We can't, we can't. This is Palestine.

And we Palestinians are the only ones who have the right to live here and never to leave it. We will never leave our town. Palestine for us, this is never changing. I mean, there are people who live there. There is Gazan civilians who lives in Gaza. I don't understand the idea of just taking over. Richard is right. Is that it feels as if Donald Trump is forgetting about history. One of the reasons why Hamas Mika came into power in 2006 is because Hamas essentially promised infrastructure,

right? They promised schooling, they promised food, they promised aid. The person, the people, the organizations, the country that will win the hearts and the minds, for instance, of the Palestinians remaining on their land will be the people that are providing them with the infrastructure, the aid, the food, the water that they desperately need and the infrastructure, for instance, to rebuild. I just want to say one final thing, right? As we were looking to Los Angeles and the wildfires that happened there in the palaces, you saw major destruction and people were incredibly upset over losing their personal belongings and their homes.

But it was really about the community, right? The churches, the schools, the coffee shops in which so many of them convened. These Gazans have walked, marched, driven thousands of miles, right? Back to their homes in North Gaza after this ceasefire to commune in rubble because this is their homeland. This is where they want to remain, not because of the structures in which they have lived in Mecca, but because of the community they

have been surrounded by, the families and the people they know. And that it seems is something that is being lost by both the president of the United States along with prime minister Biminet Niyahumika. NBC's Yasmin Vesugian, thank you so much for your coverage live from Tel Aviv. We appreciate it. And before we go to break, Ali Vitale, just back on Capitol Hill, are you getting a sense from your sources, your contacts there, that especially Republicans, are they still standing behind this president, especially given the judgment on this issue?

This issue, this judgment on this issue is potentially extremely dangerous. There are clear ripple effects. Yasmin is talking about some of them. I do think that we're now getting a little bit of a clearer sense, too, of what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was talking about when he said just a day or so ago, before meeting with Trump, that there was going to be conversations about remaking the map. It's a reminder of the longstanding and close relationship that Netanyahu and Trump have enjoyed over the course of these last many years.

On Capitol Hill, we've heard bipartisan condemnation of what we heard from the president there but it strikes me and let me and I want your take on this because we did the 2016 campaign together when Tim Kaine talks about this being a deranged idea but then also brings up nation building harkening back to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. It strikes me that Trump speaking so hawkishly. He talks like a hawk, but he doesn't always walk like a hawk. And he has made it a mission to pull troops out of American war zones. He was critical of the Iraq war.

Does this strike you as seemingly out of step with the way that Trump has talked about potential use of U.S. military troops? Yeah, on that 2016 campaign, he vowed to end the so-called forever wars. That he said that he tapped into the real frustration in the U.S. about the everlasting presence in Afghanistan and Iraq. Although we should note that he did say that the U.S. went in, the mistake they made was they didn't take the oil. In this case, it seems like he's trying to take the beachfront property.

Richard, it also, this comes as a moment though, where the Middle East is a decisive moment already, right? The aftermath of October 7th and that terror attack has left Hamas, devastated Gaza in ruins. But Israel's counter-strike also took out Hezbollah and Lebanon. We've seen the collapse of Syria. We have seen Iran at its weakest moment in decades. There was opportunity here for a big move.

I'm not sure this was that move. I'm not sure this was that move at all, Jonathan. It takes Iran off the hook. And funny is that we've made ourselves the issue. We had a moment in the Middle East where Iran was on its heels. As you know, Assad was going from Syria, opportunities in Lebanon, first phase of the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. And what are we talking about this morning?

Plans for the Middle East that are non-starters, unsatisfying, rejected by Palestinians, and could cause the destabilization of the throne in Jordan. So that's what we've done. We've changed the conversation in a way that doesn't make sense. We've made ourselves the issue. It's not clear to me why. Also, one other thing, and I think Yasmine was getting at it, in Israel, this will set a precedent.

This sets the precedent of what's known as transfer. The answer to the Palestinian problem is not something that gives Palestinians a home of their own, but it denies them one. First Gaza, then the West Bank. This is a radical idea that the Israeli right will end with. This is not a peace process. This potentially sets in motion the end of what has been a peace process.

All right. And again, talking like a war hawk is one way of looking at it. What I heard more was more like a developer of beachfront property with no censor mention of the war-inducing side effects of this. We'll continue to cover this. There's much more still ahead on Morning Joe as the Trump administration looks to slash the federal workforce. We've learned tens of thousands of government employees are lining up to take a buyout offer. Plus, there's a new legal fight between the FBI and the Justice Department.

We're going to dig into the two new lawsuits claiming agents are being targeted for retribution. And what exactly is Elon Musk doing? And why does he have so much power? We'll ask that question. Morning Joe is back in 90 Second. Looking back 25 past the hour, a spokesperson for the Office of Personnel Management says that more than 20,000 federal employees have accepted the buyout offer put forward by the Trump administration. The OPM office says the number of resignations has been rapidly growing

ahead of tomorrow's deadline. Unions representing government employees have filed a lawsuit to block the plan calling the buyout offer arbitrary and capricious, saying it violates federal law. They also allege the administration cannot guarantee the plan will be funded and that it has failed to consider the consequences of mass resignations and how it may affect the government's ability to function. Some might say they have considered that, actually. We also learned the CIA is now offering those buyouts to some of its workforce. Under the offer, federal employees can resign and still receive roughly eight months of pay and benefits,

but some CIA workers, including those handling high-priority tasks, will not be eligible. A spokesperson for the agency says Director John Ratcliffe is moving swiftly to ensure the CIA workforce is responsive to the administration's national security priorities. Meanwhile, FBI agents have filed two new lawsuits pushing back against the Justice Department amid growing concerns about a Trump administration purge within the bureau. The lawsuits allege agents are being targeted for politically motivated retribution after employees were asked to fill out surveys about their role in various January 6th criminal cases.

The agents are calling for a judge to stop the publication of any list of employees who worked on those cases. NBC News has learned the FBI turned over a list of agents involved in January 6 cases to the Justice Department, but it includes identification numbers instead of names. Let's bring in NBC News justice and intelligence correspondent Ken Delaney who has been reporting on these lawsuits. So Ken, how many agents are suing and what are the next steps? Can they keep their jobs in this environment? Good morning, Mika.

Well, that's the big question. Right now, there's about nine or so agents suing anonymously in each one of these class action lawsuits and the second one was also brought by the FBI agents association but they say they represent a class of as many as six thousand people who were involved with these January 6th cases and I think one of the really interesting and important things that happened yesterday was more evidence of quiet resistance by the acting FBI leadership, including acting director Brian Driscoll, who was appointed by the Trump administration.

They were struggling over in recent days about whether they would even comply with this directive to provide the names to the Justice Department of all the agents and personnel who worked on January 6th cases. They thought it was inappropriate. But at the end of the day, their office of general counsel told them,

look, this is a lawful order. We work for the justice department. We have to do it. But at the end of the day, he did not turn over a list of names. Now he turned over employee numbers. And of course the justice department can match those employee numbers

with the payroll that they have at their disposal. But what they did by doing this was ensure that there is no master list of January 6 agents floating around that could be released because that is the main allegation in these lawsuits and the thing they're most concerned about. They can't prevent the Justice Department from creating lists of employees who worked on particular cases. What they're concerned about is the release of the names.

And what they say is, look, this is a retribution purge. It's very obvious based on the comments that members of the administration have made and that Donald Trump has made. And they said they're concerned that the real intent here is to release the names of these agents. They're already seeing some of these felons who were pardoned by Donald Trump, who committed violence on January 6th, posting the names of FBI agents on social media or on the dark web.

And they say this is a major security concern. But stepping back, I mean, what hasn't happened yet is any firings beyond the eight people, the eight senior executives that we reported on a couple of days ago. So we're in a bit of a standoff right now. The FBI has managed to push back on what did seem like a plan

for mass firings. Whether they will ultimately be successful remains to be seen, but it's a reminder that the FBI is not USAID. The FBI has leverage. Donald Trump needs the FBI. They're protecting this country from terrorist attacks. They're enforcing the law. And if they were to get rid of even a large number of the agents that were involved in

January 6, that is a huge part of the counterterrorism section of the number of the agents that were involved in January 6th. That is a huge part of the counterterrorism section of the FBI, the people that we most need at this moment when the threat from ISIS and as you guys articulated in the last segment is only rising. So Ken, let's talk a little more about that dynamic and some dissent in the Bureau and how it could change. Now, FBI Director nominee Cash Patel, Democrats won a second hearing with him in wake of all this turmoil there. We'll see if they get it.

Chuck Grassley, the Republican senator, says his vote could come up, confirmation vote, as early as next week. So we don't have Patel in place yet, but Pam Bondi was confirmed late last night as attorney general. Talk to us about how any of this could change this ongoing debate within the bureau.

You know, Jonathan, that is a huge question that those of us who have been watching this closely are really wondering about. Does Pam Bondi come in and put a stop to this or make a show of putting a stop to this? Or does Cash Patel do that? Or is he, the other thing could happen, which is Cash Patel could get confirmed

and then decide to carry out mass firings. And there's very little that could stop him at this point. What's really remarkable though, is that while all the Democrats have been complaining about this and urging that Cash Patel answer questions about it, which he has not, the Republicans haven't set a peep. Chuck Grassley, who for decades has been a champion of good government and of whistleblowers and of integrity

at the FBI, has not said a word about the fact that Cash Patel got up in front of his committee under oath and said he wasn't aware of any plans for retribution or mass firing when there are people very close to him who are working on the seventh floor of the FBI right now, who my sources say were deeply involved in this. So how all this plays out remains to be seen. There is a there's a political atmosphere here, though, where the FBI really has managed to push back and gin up public sentiment in their favor. Because look, you know, FBI agents, they're mostly Republicans and they are now

up in arms against this plan by the Trump administration to identify January 6th, people who worked on those cases, because they say, I mean, this is what they see as a campaign of intimidation. How could anybody now work on a case that could get them crosswise with a Trump political appointee after this has happened?

That's bad enough, but if it goes any further, it will only be worse as far as they're concerned. Very twisted. NBC's Ken Delaney, and thank you very much. We have still more to cover here because there is a lot going on at the same time. So hang in there. An official memo says nearly the entire global workforce of USAID will be placed on administrative leave by Friday. The online posting says there would be exceptions for people responsible for mission-critical functions. This comes after the agency's acting chief human capital officer

was pushed out for refusing to place employees on leave yesterday. So the memo came from Pete Morocco, who Secretary of State Marco Rubio empowered to review the work done by USAID. Morocco held several national security positions during the first Trump administration, including at the agency, but multiple sources tell NBC News he was ultimately pushed out of office. Online sleuths have also identified Morocco as being among the rioters who stormed the capital on January 6th. Legal experts say the president does not have authority to abolish a federal agency created by Congress, but in a letter to lawmakers, Secretary Rubio cited a law requiring the executive branch

notify and consult with Congress on any proposed reorganization, which could signal a potential loophole. When asked about Trump's authority to shut down government agencies, House Speaker Mike Johnson had this to say. The details, it all depends on the details. Well, look, what they're doing with the USAID is an analysis of the expenditures and as you've seen there have been a lot of abuses in that agency so they'll be an appropriate action I think for Congress to take but we haven't yet sorted out exactly what's happening with it.

But yes or no, does Trump have the authority to shut down government agencies without Congress? Like, yes or no? If—it's not that simple, because if they're executive branch agencies— The Constitution says it is. If they're executive branch agencies, the executive is in charge of them. Congress funds them, but there are important, you know, questions to be asked about all the parameters of that. So I don't have all the answers.

So you've got Republicans seemingly supporting everything that is happening here, or at least muddling the message so they don't have to answer the question. I want to point out the man who's in charge of basically breaking down USAID, Pete Morocco. So he was there during this. We have video for you of that, the January 6 riot. He's in there, meandering among the rioters. I don't know if he actually participated, but he was there as these rioters committed countless as these rioters committed countless criminal acts against our Capitol, against the peaceful transition of power, against our Capitol police officers, threatening our lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. This man, tasked with dismantling USAID, which is the humanitarian arm of the government, but also

USAID serves a major foreign policy function as well, keeping us tapped in to dangerous places. The man who was meandering among those people is tasked with breaking down something that has taken decades to build up, a presence around the world that makes America greater and strong. And so while that's happening, there are other things to cover as well. And what we're going to try and do here is stay on top of everything, because there is an onslaught of signals and a lot of noise. But I thought that was worth pointing out. And Republicans, again, don't seem to have a voice on

any of this. Democrats yesterday, they used their voices holding, quote, a nobody-elected Elon rally outside the U.S. Treasury building. They're vowing to fight what they call a hostile seizure of power by Elon Musk. Since Friday, the billionaire has gained access to payment systems at the Treasury Department and has been the driving force behind the closure of the government's leading international humanitarian aid agency. When we open up the Senate every single morning, we don't pledge allegiance to the billionaires. agency. We pledge allegiance to the United States of America. And so I want to make sure that my mother gets her Social Security check not because she pledges allegiance to Elon, but because she pledges allegiance to the United States

of America. I want to make sure your neighbor gets their tax refund not because they pledge allegiance to the billionaire class, but because they pledge allegiance to the United States of America. A few months ago Elon Musk spent 280 million dollars to buy an election for Donald Trump. Now, Elon Musk is here to collect on his investment. He is here to seize power for himself. We are here to fight back. Chris Murphy, Senator Murphy that you saw there will be our guest at the top of the next hour of morning show.

Meanwhile, top Republicans in the Senate are defending Musk's actions, insisting he's not in charge and that Congress will have to approve any major changes. Elon Musk is a—he reminds me of a strategist that I used to engage in big transformation projects back when I was in the private sector. He's throwing out big ideas. And if anybody thinks that all of these big ideas are going to be implemented to conclusion, they don't understand the process of disruption.

He is identifying some things that I do think need to be looked at. And many of those things would require congressional... Everybody's acting like Congress doesn't exist anymore. Do you and the other senators know what... ...about what would require congressional approval to actually structurally change them, but I'm glad people are asking questions because I'm sick of people for the last 10 years I've been here looking the other way. Actually, I think he's been a very positive influence and his notoriety to raise the visibility of the excessive spending and waste and fraud in the way the federal government does its business.

Obviously, he doesn't have the authority to legislate, and that's going to be up to Congress, but I think his highlighting some of these stories has been and will continue to be very helpful. So wait, I just, the speaker earlier was saying it's so complicated and, you know, so they do have the power to approve these things. Which is it with these Republicans? I can't tell. Are they powerful? Are they strong?

Can they hold the line? Can they protect the Constitution? Or maybe not. Can't tell. Joining us now, MSNBC political analyst Anand Girdardas. He is publisher of the newsletter, the Inc., available on Substack. Anand, where do we begin? There's a lot going on.

And Elon Musk, it seems that Republicans are kind of tiptoeing around him, but they actually do say when you ask about Elon Musk that things actually have to be approved, that there is a process. But you ask them about purges or USAID or all these other things that are happening, and it's badda badda badda badda badda bad, da, da, da, not much to say. So which is it? And is Elon Musk getting under their skin? Yeah, you know, I woke up very early this morning

to come see you and I was trying to think about exactly what you were saying before, the onslaught, right? The onslaught that we've been promised, Steve Bannon telegraphed, they would be trying to flood the zone. He said specifically they would be trying to overwhelm the media's capacity. And I was trying to think about what I wanted to write this morning about how we find that signal amid the noise, as you were saying.

And looking at all these things from trade wars that are stupid and ill-advised to, frankly, the ethnic cleansing that the president proposed yesterday in the Gaza Strip to turn it into the third 51st state that he has proposed. All these things. But I think one of these things is not like the other. And I think Elon Musk right now, it should be said, is waging an anti-constitutional coup in this country, attempting to usurp as a wealthy private citizen the power of Congress. Frankly he's usurping some of the president's power but he's certainly usurping Congress's power. He is unilaterally trying to go in to agencies

and shut them down, not advise, but go in physically into offices, secure access to information in the Treasury Department elsewhere that he is not entitled to, that he's not of clearance for. He is nobody to the American constitutional order, and yet he is trying to unravel it. And I think amid all the attentional pressures of the onslaught that you rightly named, we need to focus on this,

because this is an attack on the system that decides all the other systems, the system that decides whether we go to war or not, the system that decides whether people are fired or not. This is the meta threat. And lastly, I will say, I think a lot of us in particularly the traditional elements of the media, and I, like many of us around the table straddle both, have struggled to name this, particularly our newspapers, our old venerable newspapers,

are struggling to name this very clearly. There is a kind of old thing of, well, he proposed this and some call it this, this old form of reporting. A coup is a word with a meaning. We have no problem in America describing it when it happens in Africa. We should be able to describe it when it happens here. So now let's also, of course, remember, Elon Musk received not a single vote. describing it when it happens in Africa, we should be able to describe it when it happens here.

So let's also of course remember, Elon Musk received not a single vote. He has not been confirmed to any position. He has a nebulous White House job. He doesn't even draw a government paycheck. He's a private citizen. And as I wrote this week too about him, the headline, he's president. He's acting like he's president right now. That Musk has been empowered in a way by Trump, Trump willing to let Musk take some arrows,

some criticism he might receive, but he is broadly reshaping the institution and destroying, slashing the institutions of this government. Yeah, Tom Tillis said people act like Congress doesn't exist anymore. In this case, it's not. Congress has rolled over here for Trump and Musk. We did see though, for the first time perhaps in the two weeks that Trump's been in office, Democrats have found their voice. They've really pushed back against this. Do you, as someone who would have counseled them to be more active, is this something, do you think they're doing it the right way? What more do they need to be saying to call attention to everything Musk is laying waste to right now? I mean of all, that the Democrats transition from being asleep during a coup to being awake

during a coup is a trend in the right direction. Being awake is certainly preferable to being asleep. And some of that, you know, I think Chris Murphy has been someone who's been a real leader early in this. You had Senator Brian Schatz this week, his colleague, talking about using the power to confirm or not confirm appointees, using that against these kind of anti-constitutional maneuvers. So that's great.

But at the end of the day, the Democratic Party right now is completely leaderless. And they can say that, you know, well, we have a lot of leaders. That's not really what a leader is. They have to show. They've elected someone who was sort of, I think, bland, if you just ask regular people. And there's no real clear message. There's no real clear sense of fight. You still have these messages of, well, we've got to trust in God or, well, we'll pass a law to regulate the Treasury. There's no understanding that this is a very serious concerted anti-constitutional coup

being waged by very determined actors. And it is going to take, as I was saying in the media, a level of seeing and clarity in the media, but it's going to take among the Democratic Party a level of fight, a willingness to use tactics. I think probably having some kind of clear leader who speaks out of the out of the morass for everyone to be able to be adequate to responding to this anti-constitutional coup. Ali, you follow politics as closely as anyone I know.

We're not structured by like the British government, where you have an opposition party and shadow cabinet and leader of the opposition. What is the conversation on the Democratic side? Is there a collective conversation or are there 26 conversations with all the would-be self-appointed leaders of the opposition? What's going on? It's an excellent question. And over the weekend, we saw the Democratic National Committee elect a new chair.

That person is not going to be seen though as the new leader. Instead, they're going to be the person that tries to herd all of the cats that think they could be the leader heading into the 2028 presidential election, which I cannot even believe I am talking that far in advance, but that's where the Democratic conversation is going. And it hearkens me back, frankly, to last week when we had Governor Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan on Morning Joe and I asked her who is the leader of the Democratic Party right now.

It wasn't a question to be cute. Her answer was that there are many leaders, which is exactly what Anand is saying there. But the idea of being a leader is exactly that there is one person out in front. And that's exactly what Ed

Luce, who is the national editor at the Financial Times and who is sitting at this table with me right now, is writing about in his new piece titled While Democrats Sleep. In it, you write in part, quote, Trump is burning America's rule book. If he carries on like this, Democrats will have no choice but to send him a strongly worded letter to claim that America's minority party is too punch drunk to get its act together would be charitable. Not being parliamentary, the U.S. lacks an opposition leader to spearhead the fight back.

The system's closest approximation, Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, is following the rules of a vanished age. It's not as if Schumer is being outshone by colleagues. A few days after Trump's inauguration, Hakeem Jeffries, who's the Democratic leader in the House of Representatives, posted, Presidents come and presidents go. Through it all, God is still on the throne. That is as may be, but fatalism

has no track record of stopping revolutions. It's a bleak view that you give here, and it's one that makes this idea of Democrats lacking a message seem like a very quaint calculus of what's actually going on here within this party.

Yeah, I think, Ali, that that we all at some level in our brains have the Sinclair Lewis novel, It Can't Happen Here in our head. We have that sort of deeply ingrained complacency. And not only can it happen here, it is happening here. And I don't think that Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries and other leaders, when've yet to see what Ken Martin will be like as a DNC chair, I don't think they've really taken that on board.

Yesterday, Senator, Minority Leader Schumer and Jeffries announced they'd have a stop the steal bill to prevent Musk from taking control of federal payment system. This is something that's already illegal and it's a bill that would stand no chance of passing. So it's a kind of gimmickry that we'd have in a normal time of politics. This is, I think as Anand says, I fully agree, this is a coup that's happening.

It is happening here, it's happening now. Strategies based on winning the midterm elections 21 months from now could be completely hypothetical if they carry on at the speed they're going and with the intention they are signaling to us every single day. So I think this requires a far more radical and drastic sort of rethink of what the Democrats, democratic strategies should be. And I hear that from my democratic sources who privately will engage on the idea that

the party is adrift even as they have forceful responses like the one we saw outside the Treasury Department. So what does it look like to do not the ordinary pushback, but the stepped up pushback? So I mean, it's worth studying, I think, what Mitch McConnell did as Senate minority leader during Barack Obama's presidency during those two terms. He managed to use every trick in the book to delay, to filibuster, to deprive the majority of time, to basically frustrate and force them into sort of tradeoffs they didn't want to make. That is one thing I think Chuck Schumer should be doing.

There should be blanket holds on Trump's nominees until the real one, Elon Musk, is actually subjected to questioning and is actually subjected to conflict of interest rules and ethics regulations that the tiniest bureaucrat, you know, who can't accept a $20 lunch, Musk can waltz past a $20 billion conflict of interest, and they don't have the right to question him.

This makes a mockery of democracy, of a constitution, of the rule of law. So that would be a start. Yeah, and you know, Ali, and to all of us here, it's like a thought experiment. I'm curious that we could ruminate on the answer, because there is a limit to what the Democrats can do at this point. Are we to discount the Republicans as incapable of having values and valor at this time and the ability to see what's going on? Are they just counted out?

That's my sort of big question of the day. Is there not one, not one, that would step up and say something? We're going to ask this and much more after a quick break. Coming up, we have the latest on the confirmation hearings for two of President Trump's most controversial cabinet picks as the Senate advances nominations for Tulsi Gabbard and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Morning Joe, we'll be right back. 55 past the hour, crews have recovered the remains of all 67 victims from that deadly midair collision in the Washington, D.C. area. Sixty-four people were aboard the American Airlines flight when it crashed into the Potomac

River near Reagan National Airport last week. There were three soldiers on the Black Hawk helipad. Sixty-six bodies have been identified so far. Now this week, salvage crews began removing the wreckage from the river. Large parts of the passenger jet have already been lifted out of the water, including parts of the wings, one of the engines, and the fuselage. Crews are expected to begin recovering the helicopter's wreckage today.