Morning Joe - Morning Joe 3/14/25

Episode Date: March 14, 2025

Town hall turns tense as constituents confront GOP lawmaker

I have supported, even as a state senator, the fact that we should abolish the U.S. Department of Education. The decisions need to be made back on the state level. I believe that the President is very supportive of Ukraine. Like him or not, Elon Musk has brought a lot of really smart people to Doge. You should also know that those employees and folks that serve with Doge have gone through the same exact security screens as everyone else. The questions are coming out of the box one at a time. I'm answering those for you.

You're not going to like a lot of them. And you certainly will have the right in the next election to cast your vote based off of what you hear coming from me now. Yes they will and that's how democracy works every two years. And right now, fascinating dynamics. That was another Republican town hall meeting that turned contentious over the Trump administration, sweeping cuts to the federal force, to Elon Musk, to Doge.

This time, it happened in Nashville, North Carolina, where Republican Congressman Chuck Edwards found himself on the receiving end of fury from constituents. It's happening whenever Republicans dare to hold down on meetings. Meanwhile, the president continues what's been an erratic trade policy,

threatening sky-high tariffs on goods from the European Union, a threat that's in stocks even lower yesterday. Also, Vladimir Putin has said no to a ceasefire proposal from the U.S. and Ukraine. Now, some Senate Republicans want President Trump to get tougher on the dictator. Good morning. It's Friday this morning, Joe. March 14th, we have, of course, Mika. She often does on weekends.

She's in the south of France. I think Willie's windsurfing in Mozambique. I, your long and faithful, loyal servant here, holding down the fort. And with us, with some of our best friends, co-host of The Fourth Hour, Jonathan O'Meara. He's a contributing writer of The Atlantic, covering the White House and national politics. And the host of Way Too Early, Ali early Ali Vitale also MSNBC political analyst and in gear Dardis he's a publisher newsletter of the ink available in substack for MSNBC host and contributor watching monthly Chris Matthews also

co-founder of Axios Mike Allen and Rogers chair an American presidency at Vanderbilt University historian John Meach, he's an MSNBC political analyst. And Chris, you know, I remember back in 2009 when Barack Obama was trying to sell Obamacare, we would see these town hall meetings all over the place. Democrats would go out and this would be the sort of response. It's not something that, you know, was manufactured. People were out there and, you know, the canary in the coal mine was when Democrats lost Ted

Kennedy's seat and after that, man, big off-year elections for Democrats. But this sort of thing always, for Republicans, this sort of thing always goes back and forth and you know front page of the Wall Street Journal business and finance talks about a massive correction on Wall Street 10% dip Elon Musk has lost like 50% of Tesla's market capitalization in the past couple months, and things just keep going down economically. Yeah, and the world has changed.

I was reading David Brooks this morning, and I have to tell you, I was made aware of this cultural change in the world. You know, when a kid graduated from high school like I did in 1963, we had a young president, 46-year-old Jack Kennedy, who went to Berlin, and we had a common reality with West Berlin. Democracy. You can lose an election. Billy Brown could lose the next election. Conrad Adenauer could lose the next election.

It was democracy, as you said at the beginning of the program today. It was a wealth of truth and justice and good democracy in the West. Us, the Germans, the British, the French, everybody. And now it's crushed. It is crushed. For some strange reason, and we've never gotten to it really, Trump has this love affair with the East. It's always to the East.

It's something about him. I can't figure him out, but he wants to, he cuddles up to Vladimir Putin. The guy rides around on a horse with his shirt off. Why does he like that dictator? And why does he not like Zelensky, who was elected? I mean, he freely liked they could lose the next election. What is Trump's problem with democracy in the West? He doesn't like the West.

Well, it's not just Zelensky. You can see he's had a long history of having problems and it's certainly his first term with leaders in the West. Things have started a little bit better for Keir Starmer and Macron. Their handshake, they didn't have that much of a wrestling match with their handshake, but you are right. And you know, a lot of questions this morning, The Wall Street Journal, front page of The Wall Street Journal, talking about how Vladimir Putin said no. Donald Trump said this was going to be easy. Putin was going to be there to support him.

Not the case now. Republicans on Capitol Hill starting to say, all right, so what are you going to do now, Mr. President? We will see. But right now, what they're hearing most about from the constituents is the fact that a lot of people's retirement accounts getting really hammered over the first few weeks of the Trump presidency. There's deep uncertainty on Wall Street over Donald Trump's economic policies that are impacting every American from coast to coast. The president's new tariffs, which again are taxes on consumers, sent the stock market even lower. Yesterday, the S&P hit the correction territory, which means a 10% drop from a record high.

NASDAQ already surpassed that mark, down 14%. Meanwhile, the Dow is on track for its worst week since June of 2022, growing pessimism over on again, off again,again, on-again-off-again, on-again-off-again tariffs, also mass layoffs of federal workers, and just a policy that changes every day. Declarations from the White House on a variety of policies are rattling investors. Tesla has lost so much value that analysts said they could not think of another comparable moment in automotive history. The company has lost nearly 49% of its market cap since Musk started working as the head of Doge. its peak value has fallen $763 billion, $763 billion. It's a Dr. Evil moment for those of you who saw us in Powers in just the last three months.

John Meacham, usually I ask you to dig through the mists of history, to tell us what happens when we see certain events unfold before our eyes on the national stage. Here, this is just not hard. You have, and we said it, we showed the tape before. When Joe Biden left office, we had a strong economy. And you look number after number after number, every foreign power would say the United States is the envy of the world. Three weeks later, four weeks later, six weeks later, as Jim Cramer said on CNBC, they're

not saying that because of a quote, manufactured crisis. What is the impact on Republicans who, after all, in off-year elections, they just don't run well without Donald Trump at the top of the ticket? No, they don't. And this is actually an interesting moment of testing, not just for the administration, which needs to realize that entertaining is not governing. Right? For the sake of action, to destabilize your perceived opponents is not the same as governing a vast and complicated and disputatious nation in a global era. But it's a test for those of us who did not think this was a great idea in 2024 to do this again. And Joe, you and I talked about this a lot.

The position a lot of us took in the days after the election in 2024 was prove us wrong. Right? I want to be wrong. I want to be wrong when I believe that President Trump would not be a risk worth taking because of his unconventional,

I'm being very, very generous on this Lenten Friday, his unconventional view of restraints on power and the Constitution and on basic economic policy as it's developed over the last 80 years or so. And I want to be wrong. It is in no one's interest, no one's interest for people to lose wealth, for people to be losing their jobs for no good reason, for people to now around the world have a default position not of trusting America but of distrusting America that makes the world less secure, makes the world less stable, it makes the world less prosperous. So the question actually is not what I think, but it's what does that 15 or 16%

of traditional Republicans who were going to bundling events for Jeb Bush in 2015 and yet bowed the knee and went with Trump, not once, but twice and maybe three times all the way through. What are they going to do now that they are 10% poorer than they were when President Biden went back to Wilmington? Yeah, and it's been such a whiplash for our fellow countries trying to figure out trade policy. We're seeing the impact on Wall Street. And new polling is starting to show us what a majority of Americans think about President Trump's economic policies. They conclude they've been unsteady since taking office.

A brand new Reuters Ipsos poll finds that 57% of Americans, including one in three Republicans, believe the president is being too erratic in his moves to shake up the US economy. And Mike Allen, the White House, is saying be patient. We've heard from Trump himself say, well, a little disturbance might be needed to get to where we want to go. That's been echoed by other administration officials, Republican lawmakers saying the same when they run into a bunch of reporters in the hallways of Capitol Hill. But when they run into constituents, including those lawmakers

who dare hold a town hall right now, they're getting a lot of anger. As Americans, they look at their 401ks, they look at the chaos on Wall Street, they look at the uncertainty in the global picture, they look at fights being picked with former allies like Canada. So the Republicans that you talk to, how worried are they right now? Well, the 401k point is a good one. And somebody pointed out to me that even MAGA foot soldiers have 401ks.

But Jonathan can tell you behind the scenes in Washington this week, when President Trump talked to the Business Roundtable CEOs of the largest companies in the country and therefore the world and by the way this was the biggest turnout the business roundtable has ever gotten they were all anxious to hear from the president it was off-camera but CEOs told me when I followed up with them that President Trump was not in a sales mode or convincing

mode. He was saying, I believe that I'm right about this. This is going to work out. Stick with me. And interestingly enough, when we talked to some of those CEOs after this event, they said they are willing to give him some time. But the new pressure comes from the daily headlines about the market, something that White House does not control, and for coming on 60 days, they have mostly controlled everything.

And so there's real concern about that. How do you get? They believe in their bones that where they're going to get is going to be successful. But these interim headlines, including about job cuts and pulling back the job cuts, all are starting to be painful for member senators back home. Yeah, and you're seeing it in conservative circles. You're seeing it on the Hill from Republicans. Real concern. Wall Street Journal editorial page, op-ed William McKinley's turning over in his grave. Phil Graham. Phil Graham, of course, the former Republican chairman of the banking committee

and a fiscal conservative, fiscal conservative, has written an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal morning, this morning, saying William McKinley is turning over in his grave. He used tariffs to expand trade, Graham explains. Donald Trump is using tariffs to isolate America and try to end globalism, and obviously not something that Wall Street believes is the wise thing to do. Now moving on to another story, big news. Two judges have ordered a number of federal agencies to rehire tens of thousands of employees who are laid off as a result of the Trump administration's plan to slash the federal workforce. First, a California district judge found the administration's firings were done unlawfully and ordered employees from a handful of agencies to be reinstated. In a statement, the White House press secretary, Carolyn Levitt, accused the judge of attempting

to unconstitutionally seize executive power and vowed to fight back. That first order was followed by another made by a district judge out in Maryland who temporarily blocked the government from carrying out any planned reductions in force. The language was especially bracing. Let's bring in right now, senior legal affairs reporter at Politico, Josh Gersting. Josh, I want you to talk about these cases, but I also want to talk about the one-two punch from federal judges.

Perkins Coy yesterday, hard to see a judge speak out more forcefully against something any president's done, saying that Donald Trump going after a law firm for what they did in 2016 politically would, in effect, undermine the entire legal system. And then yesterday, federal judge calling these firings illegal and, quote, a sham. Talk about the implications. Well, that's right.

We've seen more than about 120 lawsuits that have been filed since the beginning of the Trump administration, and they're really starting to sort of mature in the courts. There's been a little bit of fact-finding in some of the cases and a lot of briefs and so forth filed in other ones, and now you're having judges actually take on hearings about what should happen in these cases. And you're having judges actually take on hearings about what should happen in these cases. And you're quite right. We saw in Washington a decision from Barrel Howell, who had been the chief judge in Washington

for a long time, now still on the district court bench there, just basically tear apart a Trump executive order trying to punish a law firm specifically because of its role, Perkins Cooley, the law firm that has represented traditionally Democrats in political disputes, as well as doing a lot of ordinary commercial business, saying that Trump seemed intent on putting the law firm out of business, and that simply wasn't the American way. And then, as you say, two more rulings just yesterday, really a gut punch, I think, for the Trump administration's efforts to downsize the federal workforce, at least for its ability to do it in a rapid way and deliver that to its voters, which it thinks its voters want

to do that in a short order of a matter of a few weeks. These judges simply said you can't do that with the federal workforce and that they may have done it illegally by asserting that they were firing people for performance reasons when the sheer numbers obviously indicate that that wasn't the case. Josh, Ali Vitale here. I think it's important that we point out in these rulings they're talking about probationary employees and the casual observer, they might not know what that means.

But probationary employees are basically anyone who's even been recently promoted or newly hired by some of these agencies. It doesn't mean they're on probation or something. But when the judge makes this ruling, for some of these employees, depending on their agency, their offices might have been shuttered. There might not be physical desks to go back to.

They've turned in their laptops. HR has been fired. So if the Trump administration complies with this, and I do underscore the if, is it even possible to return to the status quo that the judge is talking about here? Because in some cases, the administration has already taken action for after these employees were fired. Right. I mean, it's hard to see at some agencies how you could get back to the status quo,

even if the Trump administration was willing to do that. You talk about the US Agency for International Development. Their building has literally been closed and handed over to another agency. So I think in the near term what we're talking about is these employees, and we don't have an exact number of how many are impacted by these rulings, but a lot of people believe it's somewhere on the order of 10,000 or maybe tens of thousands of employees, they'll probably be put back on administrative leave.

They'll begin to be paid again, but whether they're actually gonna be integrated back into the workforce is unclear. And at least the judge out in San Francisco did say that there is a mechanism for the federal government to shrink its workforce, but you simply cannot do it the way the Trump administration attempted to do it here with what he called sham letters. He also referred to it at one point as a gimmick to tell people that they were

being fired for performance when, in fact, it was obviously just a mass layoff of thousands and thousands of people. More legal showdowns sure to come. Ed Senior, Legal Affairs reporter at Politico, Josh Gerstein, thank you so much for reporting on those two massive rulings over the past several days. His latest piece is available online now. So Mike Allen and Annand, you all must have been calling each other because your stories that you're here to talk about today are really similar.

And Annan, we'll start with you. You're talking about Bernie Sanders going out across America in red districts, talking to Republicans, talking to independents and talking, listening, but explaining why Republican policies are damaging to their economic future. Tell us about it. Yeah, in many ways, it flows very much from the conversation we've been having, which is that this is the recruiting opportunity of a generation to the pro-democracy movement, because we, it turns out, 50-some days in, we are not getting the kind of concerted, intelligent,

focused authoritarianism that we've seen at some moments in history and places around the world, we see in some other places in the world now. This is, as Rebecca Solnit said to me yesterday in the Inc, the stupid coup. This is a highly incompetent, awkward, bumbling, chaotic coup. Doesn't mean it's great, but it is actually an opportunity to organize people because people don't like their stock portfolios diving. People don't like our allies being slapped in the face. People don't like a $2,000 per household tariff tax on Americans. So there's an organizing opportunity.

What Bernie Sanders is doing is very interesting because he's not doing what Bernie Sanders did in 2016, which is simply haranguing about the system, the people at the top. He's doing that, but he's starting in a lot of these rallies, as he did in the 2020 campaign, by asking people about their emotional experience of living in this America we're in now. Their stress, their pain. You should watch some of these videos if you haven't. People talk about,

I don't know if I should buy my self glasses or my child glasses. How do I prioritize that decision? child glasses, how do I prioritize that decision? Think about that. This is America. People are deciding which person needs glasses more, them or their child, they're coming to his rallies. And what he's doing in these rallies that I think a lot of people across the pro-democracy movement could be doing is helping people connect that kind of

personal lived experience of pain, stress, angst, connecting it to what is happening in Washington, connecting it to the Trump Musk coup, connecting it to oligarchy, but not just as I'm guilty of as much as anybody, not just talking to people about these big forces and structures, rooting it down into you can't buy those glasses

because of these things. You are worried about housing because of these things. I think not a lot of Democrats have been making those connections as well as they could. And I think there's something to watch in that approach. Yeah, and I mean, one of the things, talking about town hall meetings, one of the things I found out like 30 years ago

with my first town hall meetings, my first campaign is Americans just aren't as ideological as we think they are. At the end of the day, it does come down to basics. And even though we see a highly charged debate nationally, and sometimes you'll even see that locally, when people get into the voting booth, they're voting for what they think will help their families, themselves, their jobs, and it's not as ideological. And so, Mike Allen, a fascinating Axios piece about how Democrats are getting out of their bubble.

You talk about Gavin Newsom, you talk about Sam Seder, and I love this, 20 supporters against one progressive. And Sam Seder getting like tens of millions of views. Pete Buttigieg going on this surrounded podcast as well. It seems that, again, they're learning from the mistakes that Democrats have made in the past by not getting out there, getting on Fox News, going on right-wing podcasts. And what's the impact, Ben? Yeah, Joe, this is something that you have advocated all your career, and that is talk to the other side. You just might learn something. And we find more and

more Democrats following that prescription. So in addition to Senator Sanders who we were just talking about, Tim Walz, the VP candidate and others going into red districts where Republicans, for the reasons we were talking about at the top of the show, may be hesitant to do town halls. They're going in and doing town halls. You mentioned the Gavin Newsom podcast and between the lines what's interesting about these is the approach right now is not combative. They are listening and they are trying to be conciliatory to the other side. A second window for your viewers Joe into how Dems are

thinking. A brand new exclusive that just went up on Axios. Third way, the center left Democratic think tank is up with something they're calling the Signal Project and that is that the issues that make Democratic activists and leaders and donors feel good don't necessarily resonate with the voters that they need. So they say in the Signal Project, they say ironically, with democracy at risk, the word democracy does not work. What they say is anything that looks performative is either going to be tuned out or backfire. So the issue that they

are recommending at the very first and they're gonna do polling and have an 18-month project to look at what works but the first issue they're looking at something very real is risking Americans safety and security. So it's like the pair of glasses it's something real something I can visualize and hit home. And then you wrote about the persuaders. You talked about how to impact people. And you also talked about how, you know, mistakes that you've made. I've done the, you know, I think I've done the same thing.

I talked about things that matter a great deal to me. But you know, if you talk about democracy, if you talk about the threat of fascism, instead of talking about the price of groceries, the price of gasoline, the price of gas, again, you're talking up here where people are, this is where people live, not in the stratosphere. And talk about the importance. And Bernie Sanders is fascinating because I remember in 2016 seeing a story saying a lot of people that were going to vote for Bernie Sanders ended up voting for Donald Trump. Again, explaining, just like those people who voted for Bobby Kennedy in 68 voting for George Wallace afterwards, explaining a lot of times it doesn't have to do with the sort of partisanship that we think about or the issues that we think about. Talk about the importance again of going out, not just talking, but listening, listening. When I was in Congress, I would go on the House floor and I always sat on the Democratic

side and I just listened and learned. Yeah, you know, I remember when I was actually covering that Bernie campaign in spring 2019, there were a bunch of guys at these rallies who, if you were just doing like an AI, you know, visual processing of the guy you'd assume might be a Trump voter. And I would say like 55-year-old guys coming off in factory clothes right out of the factory to a rally, middle-aged, older middle-aged white guys. And I would get to my question about, well, Bernie's a socialist,

and often these guys would be like, oh, I hate socialism, but Bernie's fighting for me. And I think what sometimes we miss is that voters are much more motivated by a sense, a visceral sense of fighter for me or not fighter for me, rather than left, right, third way, progressive, whatever. That's background, that's stuff we maybe care about a lot in this show.

I think what voters are really actually very smart about is understanding fighter for me or kind of not really. Yeah, and certainly Barry Sanders has hit that, but we also know on the other side of the aisle, that has been Donald Trump's appeal. Even voters who couldn't be more different than the self-proclaimed billionaire who lives on Fifth Avenue, Joe, you know, that idea of having that he stands for them and is willing to fight for them.

That's resonated for some time. Yeah. Well, again, and we'll talk to Chris about this after the break. We got to go to break. But John and just put it perfectly. He's a fighter. He's fighting for me. You know, why? Why did somebody vote for Bernie Sanders decide to vote for Donald Trump? He's a fighter, right? He's a fighter. Bobby Kennedy. You know, how in the world could you go from voting for Bobby Kennedy for George Wallace? And it's the same thing, John.

There, you know, a lot of working voters were like, he's going to fight for me. And that is the key. You're fighting for these people's best interests, their self-interest, their family self-interest to make their lives better. Yeah, that's arguably the most powerful connection right now in American politics. Anna Girdardis and Mike Allen, thank you both. We really appreciate you being with us. Happy Friday!

Mike Allen, happy Friday indeed. Still ahead here on Morning Joe, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer now says that Democrats will go along with Republicans to pass the stopgap funding bill. We'll have the latest from Capitol Hill ahead of tonight's deadline to avoid a government shutdown. Some real division among Democrats as to what was the right approach. Plus Vladimir Putin says Russia is ready for a ceasefire but with some real conditions. We'll go over where things stand in the talks to end the war in Ukraine. You're

watching Morning Joe. We'll be back in just 90 seconds. A shutdown would give Donald Trump and Elon Musk carte blanche to destroy vital government services at a significantly faster rate than they can right now. Under a shutdown, the Trump administration would have full authority to deem whole agencies, programs, and personnel non-essential, furloughing staff with no promise they would ever be rehired. The decision on what is essential would be solely left to the executive branch with nobody left at the agencies to check them. That Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, he's switching gears saying he's now going to vote to advance the Republican-backed funding bill to try to avoid a government shutdown

tonight. The announcement comes one day after Schumer declared Democrats were unified against the bill. During a private luncheon yesterday, the majority leader suggested there are enough votes to break that 60-vote filibuster threshold. But the only other Democratic senator who's publicly said he's going to vote for the measure is John Fetterman of Pennsylvania. Senate Republicans need eight Democrats to advance the bill, and Congress has until midnight to pass the stopgap funding measure. It would fund the government through September. The Senate is set to begin voting later this afternoon. And Chuck Schumer has a guest essay this morning in the New York Times titled,

Trump and Musk Would Love a Shutdown. We Must Not Give Them One. And Chris, we were just talking about the importance of people that were fighting, but when you fight, you also have to fight smart. And while I think Democrats would love the opportunity to push back against Republicans, again, as we found out, because we went through one or two government shutdowns, when you shut down the government, it, you know, the president is the one that decides what's needed, what's needed, not needed, and a shutdown would just hand over a lot more power to Elon Musk. Yeah I mean I imagine that Chuck Schumer went through a lot of hell to get to

this decision yesterday. He did not want to be there he didn't want to be the odd man out the leader that hadn't fought but if you look at the House of Representatives the the speaker was very smart to get a majority support for his budget, for the CR. He got it through. He didn't need any Democrats in the House, and then he sent them all home. The whole House of Representatives has been sent home. They're not in Washington. And then the Senate has a majority.

Even without Rand Paul, they've got 52 votes. They have a majority. So to beat them, you have to filibuster. Well, it used to be Democrats didn't like to filibuster on the issues, but everybody said he should have filibustered. Chuck Schumer was in a problem. He also saw what it was going to look like two or three weeks from now. If they hadn't gotten back to the government, if the government had shot down for a couple

of weeks, then who are you going to blame? Trump and his tariff craziness, his trade war? Are you going to blame the Democrats for shutting the government debt? You've got to look forward. You can't all be Bernie Sanders. You can't all be in the back room. You cannot be sitting in the back benches and blaming the leadership. The leadership has to make tough decisions. Schumer made his, and he's going to have to pay for it. If he gets the votes to support the Republicans, this thing will be through this weekend, and we'll see who looks better later. But Schumer's in a tough spot,

and it was because the House was much smarter than the Democrats overall, the whole party, when they passed the House resolution and sent everybody home. Mike Johnson sent everybody home. That's the situation right now. Yeah, the argument that Schumer laid out there, Ali, is one that had definitely gained steam among Democrats the last couple of days,

that a shutdown really could have actually empowered Trump and Musk to do, and Russ voted OMB, to do even more to cull the federal government. There's also some suggestion, a senior Democrat told me yesterday, look, Trump's flailing this week. Let him flail. Don't change the topic of conversation. But it has been, Ali, this has been a real contentious moment for Democrats, real division in the party. And we even saw some House Democrats takes pretty extraordinary steps criticizing what Schumer is doing. Take us into the party here as to what this debate has been.

There is a palpable sense of betrayal that I'm hearing from my sources in that side of the building. They are saying that they wanted the Senate to do as they did, which is hold firm, hold together and be unified against this. And I'm really glad that Chris laid out, as he always does, the way that the Senate actually works here, because this is not Schumer saying that he's voting for this continuing resolution. It's him saying that he's basically dropping the filibuster threat. Now, we don't know if he actually has the rest of the votes that he needs to do that. We know we were counting to eight.

With Schumer, that makes two Democrats who are at least on the record saying they'll vote for something like cloture. I know that this might be a distinction without a difference to some viewers who are just upset that this is basically going to allow Republicans to go on and pass this continuing resolution by themselves. But it is a needle that Schumer basically going to allow Republicans to go on and pass this continuing resolution by themselves. But it is a needle that Schumer is trying to thread here. And the conversation, I think, is twofold. On the one hand, you have a lot of people, and I think the backlash against Schumer is

going to continue. You look online last night, but it's not just on the Twitterverse. It's in my conversations with other elected officials who in some cases feel like he lost the plot here, like he wasn't clear on the strategy, that he reversed course without actually gaining anything for the party. So I think that's going to be a long thread for us to follow. But then the other piece of this, and again, we'll watch how the votes unfold later, the other piece of this is going to be the palpable fear and concern that I was hearing from electeds that's now spilling out into the

public, which is they felt like it was a situation where there was no good choice, but then also an open question about if the government was able to shut down, how would they actually get out of it, and would there be, because it would have to be bipartisan to get out

of a shutdown posture, would there be enough pressure on the right to actually do that? They thought that there actually was some Republican interest in doing this shorter 30-day CR, and that, of course, didn't manifest.

And so there was a question of how do you get out of a shutdown posture, but a lot of frustration right now on Capitol Hill, and we'll see how this unfolds. Well, you know, John Meacham, there may be a lot of frustration

here, but there's no... If a government shutdown came along, there'd be no reason why Donald Trump or Elon Musk would want to get out of that shutdown, because they would have even more power to dismantle the government, even more power to decide without Congress what needed to be done to keep things going.

And so, again, this is not going to be a popular decision by Chuck Schumer, but my gosh, he didn't really have a good alternative, did he? Sure didn't sound like it. And I think you're right. I mean, it'd be like President Trump has manufactured a great deal of chaos. If chaos gets, if people are complicit in creating more chaos, I think that the result would end up being far less appealing than anybody would want. And I think, look, I think we're right here in saying that these are tough choices, as Chris said.

These are difficult times. The ordinary political calculus of supporting or not supporting an incumbent president just doesn't really apply here because he's, president Trump's not bringing conventional tactics to the political battlefield he's totally changed it and so to expect people to on the other side to follow traditional patterns i think is is kind of a fool's errand fool's errand indeed Chris Massie's thank you so much for joining us this morning.

Allie Vitale, thank you as well. Good weekend to you both. Coming up here on Morning Joe, we're going to take a quick break from news and politics to discuss today's biggest sports headlines. We'll be joined by MSNBC contributors Mike Barnicle and Pablo Torre, as well as former New York Daily News sports editor Dave Cappa. Look at this group assembled. Morning Joe coming It is 6 44 a.m. as Washington DC wakes up on this

national Pi Day. No, not that kind of Pi, the mathematical pie. Pie Day. I have no idea why it's Pie Day, but Joanna tells me it is, so I pass that along to you. From Washington to New York, I've gotta tell you, the sun shines brighter in New York City, and on Long Island especially, anytime St. John's is in March Madness a front page of the New

York Times today Jonathan O'Meara st. John's is back and it's a fun run a quick note on Pi Day the mathematical expression starts 3.14 today's March 14th that's why it's Pi Day yeah I could go for a slice of the cake. Hey hold on, hold on, hold on. When I'm playing dumb country lawyer, you just go with it. You go, thank you, Matlock. And then you go, yeah, that is something about St. John. No, you're right.

Thank you for explaining that. Matlock will get you a piece of pumpkin pie later. Yeah. Very good. But St. John's is a fascinating story. Some billionaire decides, I love St. John's. They're doing pretty bad. Here's some money.

They're now the sixth ranked team in the nation. Welcome to college basketball. Totally right. You couldn't have said it better. This is a new era of college sports. And we've seen it in football. Last couple of years, it's really taken hold in basketball as well. You have a big time head coach, Rick Petino.

You keep winning. They won your first round game yesterday in the conference tournament they they're seen as someone who could make some real noise. Come March madness now just I'm happy to say yeah a week or so away a lot of New York sports fans talking about that that's not the only subject they're discussing because for the first time in his Hall of Fame career quarterback Aaron Rogers is now free agent he of course is with the Jets for two memorable years,

but the Jets cut him earlier this week after two very disappointing seasons, the first of which Rodgers missed entirely due to injuries suffered in the fourth play of the season. Rodgers did play every game this past year, but the Jets missed the playoffs going five and 12 on this season. Among Rodgers' potential suitorsors according to ESPN are the

Pittsburgh Steelers and the New York Giants. You think the Giants could have looked across the complex there and realized that was a mistake. The Minnesota Vikings who of course were Rogers former division rival from his many years in Green Bay are considered an outside possibility as well according to that ESPN report. Let's now bring in MSNBC contributor Mike Barnicle. Okay. Flipping through the sports pages. The host of Pablo Torre Finds Out on MetalArk Media, MSNBC contributor Pablo Torre, and

journalism professor at Montclair State University, former New York Daily News sports editor, my alma mater, the Daily News, Dave Kaplan. He's the author of a new piece in New York Magazine which profiles three of the, quote, last sports writers of New York. We'll get to that story in just a moment. But let's start, Pablo, with this Aaron Rodgers news, of course, NFL free agency is a very condensed thing.

It's like two days, everyone signs. But not Aaron Rodgers, he's gonna take his time so we can all talk about him a little bit longer. And there he is, in fact. Oh, do we have him on the beach? On the beach. Yes, just pondering his place on this planet, wondering how many cameras maybe will show up

to see him in a blanket. My question is, why would someone want him? He was downright, he was bad last year. Because right now it's 3 a.m. at the club and you need someone to go home with. And every team right now is pondering what they always ponder when Aaron Rodgers comes up, which is maybe we can fix him.

Maybe the problem was the Jets and not him, despite the fact that by the way, Joe, every Barrymore got isolated, right? Okay, new head coach, new assistant coach, who wants a new offensive coordinator, new wide receivers, a weird ownership situation. Aaron Rodgers persisted until he didn't. And I don't get it.

It feels like, it just feels like the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again. And we are doing the same thing over and over again with this guy. I don't, it's bizarre. The Jets, the Jets, they toss him, you know, a bottle of whiskey and car keys. I mean, and say go! You got the franchise! He drives it into a ditch like two seconds later. The only

thing that was more, you know, iconic for Aaron Rodgers in New York was when he ran to the middle of field, the flag and three plays later stumbled and was out for the season. Who would have get this guy? You know, but Joe, you answered the only question there is about the Jets. It's called the Jets. It's always the last good thing the Jets did management wise was hire Bill Parcells and even Bill Parcells had trouble with the Jets, but he managed to pull it off for a couple of years. But the Jets are the Jets.

Yeah, they are. But I got to say, Dave Cavanaugh, I'm sorry to hear, Dave, the Jets have a good team. Like, I have unfortunately followed the Jets from a distance because the first Super Bowl I remembered was Joe Nama the Super Bowl. This is a good Jets team top to bottom, or at least it was at the

beginning of last season before Aaron Rodgers drove it into the ditch. There's a problem at the top. You know it all starts with the ownership. It's a it's a it's a comedy show. I mean just in fact that he was

having his son's sort of critique the players and their transactions. It's just you don't run a professional organization, particularly in New York City like that. It's just unbecoming to say the least. Yeah, and certainly we'll see. The Giants aren't going anywhere next year. Maybe they need a veteran caretaker.

But the Steelers have some legitimate Super Bowl hopes and two temperamental wide receivers. Ryder seems like an odd fit there. We'll see if they just flip flop right so Justin Fields goes to the Jets. Right. Joe your guy and now maybe Rodgers to Pittsburgh is again like good luck man. Good luck giving that guy more power. Please play on the field has suffered and we know what a detriment he is the clubhouse. He got everyone in New York fired.

Meanwhile, let's turn now, Dave, to your new piece as you profile three long-serving New York Post sports columnists. This was in a recent piece for New York Magazine. You write in part this, along with 75-year-old Steve Sirby and 74-year-old Larry Brooks, Phil Muschnick is part of a holy trinity of snowy-haired sports writers who anchor a section that trumpets itself as the best sports in New York. The paper covers the city's sports scene like it's still 1985 while navigating a vastly changed sports media landscape.

Despite the fact that their careers collectively span 150 years in the post, none of them has plans to quit. As my old editor said, you don't retire, you expire, says Mushnick. Cereby says, I wouldn't change my life for anyone. And though they may seem like anachronisms in today's information environment, they have shown by putting their personalities first

and never forsaking their credibility, that they are forefathers of a new sports media. I think I have a tabloid mentality in a digital world, says Brooks. So Dave, let's dig into this a little bit more. I mean, it can't be overstated. In the 80s, 90s, even into the early 2000s, the sports pages, the Post and the Daily News just were behemoths.

It mattered so much what was in there each and every day. We've seen their influence fade, particularly the news of late, but these three, The New York Post, the last of their era, perhaps, but also, as you say, sort of setting a template for others. Absolutely, John. You know, New York City was really like a city of newsprint. I mean, this is pre-internet, before cable news. The digital revolution

was a long ways away. And the fact that these guys, you know, who came of age really during the Watergate era, you know, that was a time when kind of inspired a whole generation of idealized journalists to get into the profession. So they started at a time when the Post, how long ago, this was a very liberal, liberalized and progressive newspaper. It was a beacon of progressivism, you know, back in the early 70s before Murdoch took over. And they've been the constant. They have never changed. They love what they do. They love writing. They have an important voice, and they've adapted, but, you know, it's in their veins. So Dave, with all due respect to New York, New York is New York, it's different.

It's the universe in and of itself. I would like to ask you about the greatest sports section in my opinion, ever, ever. In the late 60s and 1970s, Boston and Globe, Will McDonough, Peter Gammon, Bob Ryan, Lee Monfil, Ray Fitzgerald. Just an incredible sports section that drove the paper's growth and made more people, the casual sports fan, more interested in the world of sports. They told stories about human beings who played sports.

The Globe really set an amazing standard with Peter Gammon's notes, columns, and just the great writers that you just mentioned. Also, Mike, I just mentioned to you, I thought it was interesting that The Globe also was at the forefront of their print people, their journalists, moving into television and other media. The old line was, you didn't know whether a Globe reporter

was on Deadline or in Makeup. But those guys really, no. No. But it was really. Some of us may resemble that remark. Yeah, yeah. Just gonna. There's that rivalry.

There's that New York Boston rivalry coming up. But those three guys, Mushnick and Serebiy and Brooks are print guys. They never made that move. They still have an important, authoritative voice. People pick up the post just to read the sports, like you just said. Pablo, you weren't born, I don't think you were born to 2014. I'm not really sure but I certainly know that we're talking about the glory age starting you know

these guys coming on to the early 70s I you need to write a book someday about the greatest five years like in American sports history like and it all happening in New York think about this these guys came of age. The Jets won the Super Bowl in 69. The Knicks win the NBA Championship in 70. The fight of the century and it was the fight of the century. Olly and Frazier, Madison Square Garden 71. The Knicks win the championship again in 73 and I'm sorry I maybe it's because my dad was born in Kentucky. Perhaps the most monumental achievement that happened in New York State in that period. Secretariat at the Belmont in June of 73. Think about that.

Secretariat, the fight of the century, the Knicks, Joe Willie Namath guaranteeing a super. I got chills just thinking about those four or five years. I often think at this table, I was born too late. That era is the that's what I would go to in my time machine. And by the way, the persistence of the back pages, just for the people who are not familiar with New York culture, I did grow up, born and raised in New York.

The thing that makes New York special is the thing that makes it torture. I happened to be very randomly at lunch yesterday with former New York Yankee pitcher Carl Povano. Carl Povano, if you don't remember, a guy who went around the world in baseball, but his memories of New York, when I asked him yesterday, coincidentally,

he starts with how tough the back page is, how the Post and the Daily News tortured him. And there's a bit of valor in that, right? You survive it, you are tested it, or you don't survive it and you leave. But the point is, media and sports have been intertwined, and the toughness of the columnists and the reporters at the print institutions

that shaped the history Joe, you just described. That's the stuff that made New York special and I miss it already. So Dave, you obviously lived and covered through that, through that very era here in New York, that definitive time. What are some of the things that stand out to you? Oh gosh, you know, like Pablo was saying,

I got to the daily news in the mid 80s. I mean, the Mets are winning the World Series. I mean, New Pablo was saying, I got to the Daily News in the mid-80s. I mean, the Mets are winning the World Series. I mean, New York was just crazy. That, obviously, the Giants win the two Super Bowls. That's how long ago this was. You know, just the Howie Spears stuff with Steinbrenner. I mean, just on and on. So the tabloids just had so much fodder

to do every single day. We had an amazing staff too. I just wanna point out, you know, you talk about the Globe, we had a kid who was riding high school sports for us named Stephen A. Smith. Yeah. Yeah.

You know. President Smith. Whatever became of that guy. I don't know, I'm not sure. But it was really a fun time. It was really exciting coming into the newsroom. And the competition with the Post was ferocious. We did not want to be beat.

No, you did not. I can speak to that firsthand as well. The new piece online now for New York Magazine. Journalism professor at Montclair State University and former New York Daily News sports editor Dave Kaplan. Dave, thank you so much for being with us this morning. How host of Pablo Torre finds out on Metal Arch Media MSNBC contributor Pablo Torre reading the daily news as we speak Pablo thank you.