Morning Joe - Morning Joe 3/28/25

Episode Date: March 28, 2025

From chainsaw to 'careful': Musk claims DOGE cuts are not haphazard

Obviously, lawmakers on the other side of the aisle are attacking you, and they characterize the approach as this, fire ready and then aim. And how do you approach that? How do you respond to that? Well, I do agree that we actually want to be careful in the cuts. So we want to measure twice, if not thrice, and cut once. And actually, that is our approach. They may characterize it as shooting from the hip,

but it is anything but that, which does not say that we don't make mistakes. If we were to approach this with the standard of making no mistakes at all, that would be like saying someone in baseball's got a bad 1,000. That's impossible. So when we do make mistakes, we correct them quickly and we move on. Well, first, a correction.

Willier Abreu with the Red Sox is batting a thousand. So there are some people who bat a thousand. Red Sox want to know, by the way, friends, just in case anybody wants to know. But what a difference a few months make, right? I mean, sitting there going, you know, measure twice, cut once. This is Jim Van De Hei, the guy that has the chainsaw, you know, and going after. I mean, the biggest complaint that I think most people had early on was, even some that believed there was waste, fraud, and abuse in the

government was, it was just so indiscriminate. And they were getting rid of people that were trying to stop the bird flu from becoming a pandemic, helping with nuclear safety. You go down the list. This is certainly, this is, there's a positive development if this is where they're going, but to act like that this has been some well thought out, measured approach is just not believable. No, when had they done that, they'd be in a much different place. I think you talk to Republicans, or like it's been kind of sloppy and cruel, when in fact, probably a lot of American people agree with the direction they're going.

Had they spent a month or two and done this more methodically, measured the programs that should be cut, articulated what they're cutting, give people appropriate notice, I think most people and probably even a lot of Democrats would be applauding a lot of the work that they do. But instead, they have a much bigger mess on their hands and probably don't get the uptick that they wanted from it. As we say in LA, lower Alabama, you know, when you're talking about waste, fraud and abuse, that's like shooting catfish in a barrel.

This is easy stuff and for them to mess it up the way they did. Again, because Elon Musk has an approach that's always worked for him. Just go into a company, you know, and break it, rebuild it in his image, go. And some CEOs do it that way. Jack Welch would fire 10 percent, you know, of what he considered to be the bottom performers. I'm not comparing their approaches, but what works in government, and I learned this my first day in Washington, D.C., is not what works in corporations. And this is why CEOs time and time again swagger into this city and after six months throw up their arms and go home.

Yeah, government is actually not a business. It should run more efficiently. There's business-like characteristics about government management that could be applied and should be applied, but it's not the same thing. And so what is Measuring Twice about coming in and offering this buyout, willy-nilly, to federal employees across the board? What is measuring twice about saying all probationary employees are fired, including those who are dealing with things like AI, right? It's going to be the new employees who

actually know something about AI and where it is and where it's headed. But you're out. I mean, that's not measuring at all. But the Musk approach, we're acting like it works across at it, but you're out. I mean, that's not measuring at all. Well, and- But the Musk, one point I make, the Musk approach, we're acting like it works across business. It doesn't actually work in most businesses. No.

It works uniquely for him. For him. Because he's running technology businesses with a lot of dudes who are really fired up to do it the Musk way. Like, as someone who runs a company, I couldn't run a company and get away with the things that he does, and most CEOs can't,

and therefore they don't. By the way, who agrees with you? Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs, I saw in an interview that Steve Jobs had after he'd been in business for a long time, Julia, he said, you know, he said, what's the lesson you learned? He said, I learned I have to be more patient with people. I have to understand that maybe somebody that I wanted to fire this instance, I worked through it and they became some of my top performers.

You look at the CEO of Nvidia, he says, there have been people that have cost his company a billion dollars and they come up and say, I guess you want me to quit. He goes, are you kidding me? You just learned a billion dollar mistake and I'm going to let you go take that billion dollar lesson to another company. And that's again, this is Jim is right. This is unique even among CEOs to break stuff first and see how it works out.

That's true. Well, and you know, I see things through the lens of Department of Homeland Security, which of course is its priority for this administration, anything having to do with immigration, but we've even seen cuts there. We talk about the probationary employees, people who had been newly hired

into roles within CBP and ICE, the very thing Trump campaigned on, not being able to keep those jobs. And we've also seen just last week a complete gutting across civil rights and civil liberties, which are the people who are supposed to do investigations in case anything goes wrong when those apprehensions take place. Right. And we have separate two things out here.

There are the ideological moves, which Julie just talked about, whether it's about DEI. But then there's also just the management mishaps, where you're going in and you're cutting people that should not be cut for America's safety. And it causes alarm even among Republicans. But you also have cuts, indiscriminate cuts. We use this term probationary status. Well, there are veterans who have served in military for 20 years who got into the Pentagon and wanted to continue serving America. They get fired because they are in quote probationary status because they'd only

been there like a year or so. A lot of vets being fired here. There are very few people who would disagree that the federal government is inefficient, has too many people, uses outmoded technology, needs change. People have understood that for a couple decades. But it doesn't need change with a chainsaw. I mean that was a pretty good metaphor for how Elon Musk is behaving. It needs change that's thought through carefully, done with a mind of not hurting the most vulnerable people. That's one of the things that bothers I think many of us the most. The people who are really going to pay the price here are the ones who can't afford it. And especially...

And tell me about vets, the cuts at the VA, especially horrifying to me, because even when I was in town here, the VA was one of the least responsive agencies, one of the most bureaucratic agencies. Vets would say they would engage in what they called the slow roll, where they would just grind them down. They didn't have enough people working there. We were in a series in the Washington Post about the shocking conditions in which vets were treated.

And it's so infuriated that then Secretary of Defense Bob Gates, that he just went out and fired each of the people who were responsible for it. He was outraged. So it's not as if there isn't a need for change. The other thing I wanted to mention, Joe, is combining this chainsaw approach to cutting the federal government with a revenge agenda, a personal revenge agenda against individuals, law firms, go down the list, has made this a particularly poisonous moment in our country's history.

And I think it's going to have to hit the people who get the social security checks, going to have to hit that veteran who's depending on care before you get a genuine popular recognition. This isn't good for us. Well, I think the things that you're talking about really lead to what we saw yesterday, where Donald Trump told his UN nominee he needed to go back up to the upstate New York district, Jim, which could be competitive. And you said, well, Trump won that by 21 points. Well, Trump won a district, a state Senate district in Lancaster County by 15.

And Democrats won there for the first time in a hundred years. You know, we know people up there who say, we don't like Democratic Senators up here. It just doesn't happen. I think they were even shocked. But again, this, we've all seen this. We've all been here long enough. This is what happens when you overreach. It's what I've been talking about this for 15 years. There's always back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. I've just got to say this back and forth, this happened more quickly because of the pace of events and the shocks

over the past eight years. For sure. And I think that's the shocks over the past eight weeks. For sure. And I think that's the danger. We have this special election in Pennsylvania. We've got two House races in Florida. We've got the Supreme Court race in Wisconsin. If Democrats win all of those, it's not necessarily a massive repudiation of Trump. Right.

Sure as hell going to be a massive energizer of Democrats who have been totally demoralized and are looking for some glimmer of hope. And when you talk to members of Congress, you talk to senatorsized and they're looking for some glimmer of hope and when you talk to members of Congress you talk to senators when they're going home some of these cuts are starting to hit home people do get social security they do need their veterans benefits and so maybe Trump is directionally correct but if in terms of like the changes that need to be made long-term but if they start to affect people at the grassroots that's when you start to get the backlash

The flip of that is Trump keeps looking at polls that are showing him. We are relatively popular very popular among Republicans. He feels Impenetrable he doesn't really want to deviate from the things that he's doing So this is really the first test where all he's trying to do is colliding with a reality that might get really uncomfortable for Republicans. Well, as long as Jonathan Amir goes socks, as long as you keep this general, and you look at what Donald Trump's talking about doing generally, a lot of these issues, as we've been saying around the table, would be very popular. Cut, waste, fraud, and abuse in government. Trim back federal employees if the federal government's too bloated. Most Americans believe they are.

Get the bad guys out of America, right? If they're here illegally, most Americans would agree with that. But it's the specifics. When you start hearing about Social Security Administration services being cut, when you have the acting Social Security Administrator saying, I'm going to just shut this place down because they don't like a federal district court judge's ruling, when you've got a billionaire running the Department of Commerce saying it's really no big deal if a senior citizen misses their Social Security check.

My God, I can't even imagine if my grandmom, when she were alive, if she had missed a Social Security check. She depended on it. So many Americans depend on it. When you have Elon Musk, literally, literally the richest man in the world, calling Social Security a Ponzi scheme. I will just tell you, I would not want to go back to my home district. I'd hold about 100 town hall meetings, right, every year. I would know what was going to happen. I'd be like Bear Bryant back when they played Georgia Tech in the 1960s.

I'd walk out onto the field wearing a football helmet because these Republicans were getting set up. And you'll notice most of the yelling is not about Donald Trump. Most of it is about Elon Musk. Yeah, I think Americans, and polling suggests this, largely approve of this idea of getting rid of this waste, fraud, and abuse. They like the idea. They don't like how this

administration is doing it is so so hurry you know with the chainsaw so it is indiscriminately we should note Robert F Kennedy junior yesterday announced that there will be sweeping cuts coming to HHS which is including at the CDC these are things that impact a lot of Americans we know reporting from the Washington Post and up to perhaps half the staff and HUD has a real bit could get cut the need some of these and then we and you

have well chronicled the problems with the VA which is something that really hits home with the Trump voters and also remind a lot of people this is the messiness the chaos of what they didn't like about Trump the first time around that sense of the sense that no one really knows what they didn't like about Trump the first time around. That sense of, the sense that no one really knows what they're doing. Joe, the idea that, you know, particularly with the pandemic response,

that it was unorganized and not getting the job done for Americans. That this is not actually what they voted for. Yeah, it's going to be very interesting to see what happens over the next eight weeks. People are predicting a quickening pace of events. I don't know when you have Donald Trump talking to again, who he was going to send to the United Nations saying, you need to go back to the House.

And then saying in his statement, you know, we know that if you run, you can win. We don't know if somebody else running for this seat would win. That certainly is the beginning of some warning flags. I will say, all of this is a reaction, what we're talking about right now, to Elon Musk and others talking. I've said all along, they need to be transparent. They need to talk to the press. If he has that much power, going, talking to the press is a good thing to do. And also, it shows us that's, again,

a more measured approach over the next eight weeks would be a positive thing. I'll get back to you in a second, but David gave me a look. And I know when David gives me a look, I should go to him. I always think it's a good thing. Just like it's a good thing when you go talk to, you know, dictators in other countries, we try to figure out. I think talking to people and hearing what they have to say

is important. I think Elon Musk, going out before cameras and talking and saying, this is what we're doing, is a good thing. So just as somebody who's out there trying to talk to people every day, I can't remember a time when access to agencies, the people who are making decisions, just the basic material of decision making has been so limited. They've been moving very fast over the first two months in issuing executive orders.

They have not been moving fast in setting up coherent public affairs offices. Just going to websites and getting the basics of government is hard these days. Maybe they think they can move so fast that it'll all be done before anybody can pay attention. That's proving it's not going to work that way. It doesn't work that way.

But this is a very difficult administration to cover. In Parkash, you have no access. Take foreign policy. What are they trying to do? What is the strategy with Russia? How are they going to get a peace deal in Ukraine? It is very hard to find anybody who can speak authoritatively. Or Elon Musk's Doge, for example.

We don't have an organization chart. We don't know who worked for him. Yeah, one of the lessons I learned in politics, and I always would tell people, they got into politics, don't sneak up on people. When I talked to presidential candidates that were going through vice presidential selections, I said, go back to 1988. Don't show up in the river, Riverwalk, and say, and here's Dan Quill, or, and here's Sarah Palin.

Don't sneak up on people. Let people know what you're doing. And unfortunately, we don't have that transparency here. And it's obviously very concerning for Americans, but also not being helpful for the administration. We'll be right back. We're going to talk to Jonathan Amir, who's going to take us through the news on this ongoing signal. Do we call it Signalgate yet? I don't know. Also, Axios published gate yet. I don't know. Also, Axios published some really surprising polls that show it's not just Democrats, it's members of the lame stream media who are upset by what happened. Do they still call it the lame stream media? No. The dominant media? No, they never call it that. What do they call it?

I don't know what they call it, but whatever they call it. It's also Republicans. 60% of Republicans think it's a big deal what happened with Signalgate. We're going to go through all of that when we return on Morning Joe. Welcome back to Morning Joe. Live shot there. Washington, DC. Live shot there, Washington D.C. Sun not yet up. And that is a town that has been consumed by Signalgate. We're dubbing it that. And amid the fallout over the Trump administration's Signal Group chat that included journalist Jeffrey Goldberg,

senators on both sides of the aisle are now calling for the Defense Department's Inspector General to look into the incident. Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Roger Wicker of Mississippi and ranking member Jack Reed of Rhode Island sent a letter to the Pentagon's acting IG over their concerns about the group chat, ending with a request for an investigation. Meanwhile, a chief U.S. district judge has ordered top officials to preserve all records of those communications regarding military strikes in Yemen against the Houthis.

This comes after a government watchdog group filed a lawsuit arguing that administration officials may have violated federal records law in using the Signal app, which allows users to set an expiration date on their messages. While federal courts are taking action, it appears though the Department of Justice will not be getting involved. Take a look at what Attorney General Pam Bodney had to say on this yesterday. In terms of the Signals Chat controversy that's going on, is DOJ involved at this point? If so, why? why if not why not

well first it was sensitive information not classified and inadvertently released and what we should be talking about is it was a very successful mission Our world is now safer because of that mission We're not going to comment any further on that. If you wanna talk about classified information, talk about what was at Hillary Clinton's home that she was trying to bleach bit, talk about the classified documents in Joe Biden's garage

that Hunter Biden had access to. This was not classified information and we are very pleased with the results of that operation and that the entire world is safer because of it. That's not great. And despite her bravado there, new polling shows Americans see the incident more concerning than her emails, i.e.

the Clinton email server. A new YouGov poll finds that three out of four Americans believe the signal chat about strikes in Yemen is a serious problem. That includes 53% who called it very serious and another 21% who said it was somewhat serious. When broken down by party, 89% of Democrats, 72% of independents, and look at this, 60% of Republicans believe the situation is a serious problem. And of note, a higher share of adults said the signal chat was indeed more serious than Hillary Clinton's personal email use.

A YouGov poll from September 2022 found that about three out of five Americans viewed that controversy as a serious problem. And Joe, the White House is aware of this. I have new reporting out last night. President Trump privately, still very angry about this, about what a distraction it's become. He can't talk about what he wants to talk about. Tariffs, immigration, the like. At the moment, signals from the White House, no heads will roll, but there's a lot of scrutiny

on both the Secretary of Defense and especially the National Security Advisor about how they handled this. And this is a story that is simply not going away. And that poll suggests has really permeated both sides of the aisle. Well, and we all noticed your understatement after Pam Bondi. Not great. Going back to Hillary Clinton in 2016, Jim Van De Hei, Axios actually published this new poll and you guys actually explained how more Americans are concerned about what happened

with Signalgate, so to speak, than they ever were at any point during the Hillary Clinton email story. Sixty percent of Republicans saying it was a serious thing. Again, this was all avoidable. I remember all of us going on that morning after Jeffrey Goldberg had released the first bit of this tape when they were pushing, going,, going, nothing, there's nothing to see here. We all said, just admit you made a mistake, move on. They refused to do it, they dug in, they were arrogant, they attacked Jeffrey Goldberg and the Atlantic.

And so Jeffrey said, okay, well, if you're saying that this is what you do about nothing, then he released everything else. And, you know, Republicans,. And Republicans horrified as well. I would say if you step way back, the reason to have some confidence after that poll would be that I think if you think about media right now, it is very much, it's not about fact checking, it's not about winning the news cycle, it's about shaping reality. And if you look at what happened the second that that story broke, if you went away from

us and you zoomed into MAGA media, all of the podcasts, all of the sites, the conversation on X, it was all that this is a hoax or it's not a big deal, nothing to see here. And so the entire part of the infrastructure that helped elect Trump was making the exact same argument that a lot of these officials were making. It's the first time that you've had that argument run into a reality where you had the receipts where any human being could just pick it up and read it. And you can say, oh, this isn't a war plan. Well, wait, it tells me what the plane is, what the time is.

What the time is. What is the weather like? It might be a war plan, but like, that seems pretty precise. And so people are looking at those two. And so I think it's interesting that, you know, sort of the legacy media, the normal media that you see that people are trusting what they're looking at with their own eyes, which I think is a pleasant outcome. But I don't see anybody in MAGA media, very few.

You see some Republicans outside of MAGA media making the argument that this is a big deal, you should apologize and you should do it again. And Julia, we've heard other people say, if this had happened to somebody else in government who'd release this information, they would be investigated. Pam Bondi wouldn't be saying, going back talking about Hillary Clinton in 2016. Instead, they would disperse. And I mean, I just know this from our time.

Again, when we talked about classified information, we ran upstairs, we went in the skiff, we got the briefing. We didn't take our...we took nothing in. We brought nothing out. No papers, no notes, no nothing. And if even a member of Congress had done something like this, the investigations would start and it wouldn't end very well. But we don't have to say, what if you have a real life instance of something that's happened

along these lines. That's right. And very recently, we know that there was a career DHS employee. This is someone who's worked in the George W. Bush administration, all through the first Trump administration. And the early days of this administration accidentally put the name of a reporter on an internal email. You know, sometimes you can populate when you're typing up names to go on an email that had details of a Denver ICE raid. Remember the Denver ICE raids

that were coming up. We heard a lot of blame from Tom Homan and others that, oh, it was media leaks. What happened is this email accidentally went out to a reporter. The official called the reporter, said that was a mistake, you know, and the reporter agreed not to do anything. That was the end. Well, someone else copied on that email, told superiors, this career employee was immediately put on administrative leave pending investigation, asked to be polygraphed, asked to hand over her personal cell phone, and just in the last week has been told that her security clearance may be revoked, which would really keep her from working in this space for the rest of her career, even outside of government space for the Homeland Security.

So we have a real life example. First of all, that was law enforcement sensitive information, not classified, but a real life example of exactly how this administration treats an inadvertent leak of information. And you can see the difference when it's a career person and someone who most people would not know versus someone like a Pete Hegseth or a Mike Waltz. And I will say, you know, a lot of people would want this person's name, but this is such a retaliatory environment we're in that this person didn't want to share their name.

And by the way, did not speak to us about this story because it's still very afraid to talk to the media. But there were enough colleagues around this person were able to get it. So I think this is the question now we've been looking for an example to be able to take to the White House, to others, and we haven't gotten a response yet to say, what is your policy when something like this happens? Well, I mean, it is, David, this is not even a close call. I mean, all the years that you've been covering defense, foreign affairs, the Pentagon, if

anybody had done what Pete Haggis did, anybody had done this on a commercial app, on his iPhone, on his iPhone. It really doesn't matter what they want to call it, what semantics game they want to play. Here were plans, were whatever strategy, et cetera. He had launch times, he had targets, he had talking about when the target was in sight, talking about the second fighter jet, second wave of fighter jets taking off, the times when the bombs were going to drop. Again, this is not, I mean, just not a close call.

Anybody else that served in any Republican or Democratic administration would be packing his bags, walking toward the exits of the Pentagon right now, wouldn't they? So, without question, Julia's example is great because it takes a specific case that illustrates what we all know and have seen, which is that people are held accountable for small lapses in operational security. If you go into a war zone, the kind of details that we're talking about, when something's going to happen, where something's going to happen, what weapons suite is going to be used in the operation, those things are so closely held.

If you're a journalist, you basically button it down until you're out of that place. And it's understood by journalists, but certainly by enlisted soldiers, men and women, that the discipline has to be complete because lives are at risk. And I think for people to watch these senior officials arrogantly dismiss criticism, not even say they made a mistake. Marco Rubio was the exception, right? Yes, he made a big mistake. Marco Rubio was, the Secretary of State was an exception. He did, and that was that was welcome, but the general tone has been, this is Jeffrey Goldberg's fault, you know, this is,

this is, you know, what about Hillary Clinton's email service? We're going to get Elon Musk to investigate how he got on it. You added it to it. You added it, exactly. But again, the adding was one thing, but again, the SECDEF using his iPhone to send out all of this intel, some of it Israeli intel. How is it that Israelis always get caught in the middle of this stuff? It happened with Lavrov in 2017 in the White House, when they gave up sources that could have gotten some of their people killed

when ISIS information was released, and it's Israelis again who issued a complaint to the government. And as well they should, because there were details when they talked about what happened in the raid, was it successful? And they said, yeah, the target was going into his girlfriend's house at the right time or whatever. That is reportedly the movements, the pattern of this person's life,

that they were the person they were aiming at, was that's reportedly Israeli intelligence. And so, is there an asset on the ground, there now an Israeli asset on the ground in Yemen, who is either has to be pulled out or is it for his- Sure they're out. They're already out. Or their life is in danger.

Sure, I'm sure they're out. The second, Jeffrey Goldberg got this in a Safeway parking lot and that became evident. They had to pull that force out. Exactly, they had to. I mean, there are consequences for this sort of thing. There are reasons why you don't plan a war on signal. Maybe instead of calling this like signal gate, we can call this like the Safeway scandal.

It's so bizarre. It's surreal. Julia, I just have to ask you, we weren't going to talk about this. I saw an extraordinarily disturbing image of Kristi Noem standing in front of prisoners in cages, standing there straight, shaved heads, no shirts, stacked high, obviously posing for Christine Aum, we are sure, the guards orders. Can you give me some background on that? Because that was such a jarring, disturbing image and something that I don't think I've ever seen in American government. Yeah, I think that that deserved more attention this week. I'm glad you brought that up. That's when just this week, actually just two days ago, Chris Duhnaum, Secretary of Homeland Security, went to El Salvador's CICOT prison, where they just sent

over 200 people that the administration says is tied to the gang trained in Iraq. Although, as we've heard in circuit court, it was very hard for them to prove those connections, but they used the Alien Enemies Act to do it anyway. I think what you saw there, though, really gets us outside of this back and forth about what's going on with Trump in the courts, and it shows the reality of that prison and people who were sent there without due process in our country. She's standing in front of these men, as you see there, many of them shirtless. They put 80 men in those cells for 23 and a half hours a day. They sleep like that.

There's no individual beds. They are only—they're not allowed to talk. There are no mattresses, sheets. We've heard about some pretty disturbing—I mean, notorious—it's notorious for human rights abuses. I won't get into all of those details. She's seen there to show how tough she is on this. And of course, it's one of the reasons why Trump picked her.

Many people thought it would be Chad Wolf. He picked her mainly for the reason that she wrote in her memoir that she shot her dog, who was untrainable. Trump likes her toughness, and she wants to put that toughness on display. And she said in that video that this should serve as a warning to anyone who comes to the United States illegally. Now, to cross the border illegally is a misdemeanor, something that's not usually even prosecuted in federal court, something that really doesn't even keep you from getting asylum.

There are plenty of people who historically have claimed asylum by crossing the border illegally. Now, under this administration, you could end up in those situations. The other thing we should be asking is, how do we know that everyone there was even illegally in the United States without due process? You could potentially have American citizens. A judge even asked the Justice Department, could you put me on one of those planes and send me there?

So there are a lot of questions behind that. They wanna use this as a deterrence measure, but one of the things we're trying to get to the bottom of is how long are those people gonna be there? Because when she was asked that, she could not answer that question. All right, NBC News Senior Homeland Security correspondent Julie Ainsley, thank you so much.

And coming up, Canada's Prime Minister is vowing to fight back against President Trump's tariffs, saying Canada's economic relationship with the U.S. is over. That's a little early for that, I think. We're going to play those comments for you. What's at a boot? Plus, the mayor of Toronto is going to join the conversation with a look how her city is planning to retaliate.

Blame Canada. This is seriously, it's a South Park movie. Except it's real, it's stunning. A beautiful, beautiful shot of New York City. What's the song, TJ? Is this Rush? Okay, yeah. Not a rush guy.

The debate. Let the debate begin. We'll be right back. We will f**k tariffs with retaliatory trade actions of our own that will have maximum impact in the United States and minimum impacts here in Canada. The old relationship we had with the United States based on deepening integration of our economies

and tight security and military cooperation is over. What exactly the United States does next is over. But exactly what the United States does next is unclear. But what is clear, what is clear, is that we as Canadians have agency. We can give ourselves much more than any foreign government, including the United States, can ever take away. Says it's over, I feel like yelling, Shane, come back. Shane! We like the Canadians!

I like Canada! Everybody likes, who doesn't like Canadians? Great place for great people! You know, yeah! We literally had comics in the 80s and 90s because it was so preposterous talking about a war with Canada What's that about there?

I don't know. I don't understand. That's why I'm here to learn Okay, well that was new Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney Responding to President Trump's latest tariff announcement in which he plans to impose a 25 percent levy on cars and auto parts that are made outside the United States. This comes as Toronto's mayor is also looking to retaliate by restricting U.S. companies from bidding on the city's contracts. And we have the mayor of Toronto, Olivia Chow, is joining us now. She's going to explain all of this to us.

She's in Washington today to attend a trilateral trade summit hosted by the U.S. Conference of Mayors, which will also include mayors from Canada and Mexico. And first of all, I mean, all kidding aside, I'm sure you understand and the Canadians, the Canadian people understand how much Americans love Canadians. I mean, there's a little skirmishing right now. Obviously, the government is. But just just the relations between our countries have been so positive for so long. Americans and Canadians continue to love each other. My brother lives in Seattle, is an American.

He's been American since the 70s. So we have a lot of families, American Canadians. We do a huge amount of trade in Toronto to US. We buy a lot of American goods. Actually, we buy more goods than China, Japan, France combined. Canada does. Yes. Really?

Yeah, because you're so close to us. We buy all sorts of things. And this tariff business, totally senseless, I don't like, hurtful, have just stopped everybody in this track. And it's gonna hurt, it's gonna hurt the cost of living of Americans because it means the gasoline price is gonna go up, grocery price is gonna go up, housing price is gonna go up,

everything is gonna go up, like why? On both sides. And hey, Jim, as far as the explainer goes, just for viewers, it's really come more into focus over the past week or so for me as I'm trying to sort through what the world's going on here. When you and I were first bumping into each other on the Hill back in the mid 1990s, NAFTA was a huge thing. And that really was a dividing line, NAFTA, which was hailed by Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich, leaders on both sides, but populists,

and I'll say, such as myself, were very concerned about jobs that could leave America. And I think we're seeing, 30 years later, the impact of that. There are so many bonuses, but why would any politician be doing this? Because that lingering resentment that remains with a lot of working Americans, right? Yeah, but I've never heard too many Americans who have a lot of resent towards the Canadians. No, not towards the Canadians.

Good to know. But it is about the populist movement to trade. And I think this is a little less about populism, and it's a co-mingling of two things that are on Trump's mind a lot these days. One is he does see all of these tariffs and tariff threats as bargaining chips. So he, some of it's real, some of it's not,

some of it's on, some of it's off. That is being co-mingled, I think, in his mind, with this idea that in the future the the war America's greatness is going to be defined by artificial intelligence which is going to require a lot of chips a lot of data a lot of compute that's going to require a lot of minerals a lot of energy so he feels like we're going to need a lot of leverage with Canada on different parts of that does he really think that Canada should become the 51st state? I think it started as a joke,

but I think it now is something that is really top of mind. I don't think he's joking at all about Greenland. I think they want the minerals that sit under your land, that sit under Greenland's land. So there is like an overall theory that's driving it. And in the US, I think we're all pretty baffled. Like you can understand getting angry with some of our European partners about, are you funding NATO or not? But looking at

Canada and saying, ah, like, that's a threat. And yes, like, our problems are the result of Canadian behavior, I think is baffling. I think it is tiered. I think it is, first of all, China. I think most Americans would welcome a trade war with China. Europe. I've heard Americans—Barney, Frank and I went on the floor, and actually one thing we agreed on was Europeans, back in the 90s, needed to pull their weight when it came to the military. The war was 40 years back.

But you are right. It is surprising to Americans that Canada has gotten in the political target of this administration. And I don't think Americans want to take over Canada. I don't think Americans want us to be the 51st state. Certainly Canadians have no interest on it. It is just, it has ignited huge amount of uncertainty, nationalistic pride. We are strong Canadians, we're gonna fight back,

we're gonna defend ourselves. Are you kidding me? Don't you dare do that to us. And so first it was surprised. Now the angry face is coming in and we're saying that we're not going to buy any Americans' goods anymore. So there's all these bi-Canadian apps

that are happening across our nation. As the city of Toronto, we have put up love local sign. We've mounted a buy Canadian campaign. And well, fine, if you don't want our goods, we will also not buy your goods. It's going to hurt both sides, but we have to defend ourselves. Canadians are not coming to the US to travel either, by the way. I mean, that's almost ended. They're just, the numbers of Gordella from like,

you know, from a million something to like, you know, tens of thousands or so, it's huge. Yeah. It's, you know, it's taken me a long time to realize, and I'm sure it's taken Canadians months too, to see that what initially seemed like it was about bargaining and extorting concessions reflects something deeper. I mean, Donald Trump really does want to be this 19th century president.

He wants to make America great again, but he also wants to make America bigger. He has this idea of extending boundaries. There is a manifest destiny quality, and Canada's in the way. I'm pleased to see Carney explicitly and forthrightly say, no, we will resist this. That's right. You know, the relationship we had is over, implicitly meaning as long as you talk this

way. I'm curious how you think Canada is going to come back from where it is now. I mean, Donald Trump won't be president forever. Is this story going to revert to the U.S.-Canada relations that we know, or are we really in a different era now forever? I can't really tell. That's what's a bit scary about it. Toronto is the fourth largest city in North America.

We have a budget that's $79 billion. The tone of feeling that I'm getting from Torontonians is that we're hurt, we're gonna fight back, we're going to really be more resilient. We are always resilient and strong. We are feeling very united right now and we're going to rely on ourselves. We're going to make our own things, buy our own goods.

And once you have established that, you feel, well, we don't need to depend on Americans anymore in many areas. I think the mutual feelings of Americans and Canadians, when really like each other, that will continue. But in terms of government to government, is there gonna be that trust anymore? I'm not sure. It depends on what happens in these four years. I think the term astonishing has been devalued.

But just think about what we just talked about here. It is astonishing that you have the leader of Canada saying that the relationship with America is over, that you have a mayor of one of the biggest cities in North America saying that it might not recover from being over. No one thought that was coming in November. No, and the Wall Street Journal editorial page,

Trump's giant new car tax, had any belief that these tariffs were ever opening round of negotiations, talking tariffs, that that has been shattered now. And the Wall Street Journal editorial page just talks numbers. Tariffs are going to raise car prices even more, as much as $10,000 per car. This will reduce sales and hurt domestic auto dealers and workers. U.S. manufacturers will suffer most because of a relatively larger share of their sales or in the U.S. Thinner margins will dent auto workers' profit sharing."

So, there's a belief, certainly among conservative economists conservative economists also that this will really hurt American consumers badly. Mayor of Toronto, and we found out from Mike Myers and the new prime minister that there are two seasons in Toronto, winter and construction. So that was quite a political ad, Olivia Cheung. Thank you so much for being with us. We greatly appreciate it. Thank you.

And please send the message back to all Canadians. We love them. Oh, thank you. We do.