Morning Joe - Morning Joe 4/25/25

Episode Date: April 25, 2025

'Vladimir, STOP!' Trump says as Putin launches worst attack on Ukraine in months

We also learned, according to CBS News, that Pete Hagstaff had a little makeup studio built at the Pentagon to get his face ready for TV interviews. He has strongly denied this. He called it a totally fake story, and a Defense Department official added that he said it makes no sense because Pete does his own makeup, which is more embarrassing. By the way, you know who this is? This is Lloyd Austin. He is a four-star general.

He was the previous Secretary of Defense. You ever seen him before? No. You know why? He was inside the Pentagon doing his job. He was not on TV every day. Pete Hexth is on TV now more than Ryan Seacrest. We're back with another DOD reform.

Americans want to join a military with high, clear standards. We can meet those standards. Biden couldn't. President Trump has. Well, you know what? He does do a nice job. He's very pretty. The good news is when he gets booted from the Pentagon, he'll be able to get a job at Sephora.

One of those filters. Jimmy Kimmel's take on the headlines tied to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth comes amid increased scrutiny of Hegseth's leadership and new reporting on the chaos he is creating inside the Pentagon. We'll be joined by one of the reporters of that piece in the Wall Street Journal. Also ahead we'll go through President Trump's new comments on the concessions he says Russia is making as negotiations between the Kremlin and Ukraine drag on. Plus, a lot of ground to cover on the legal front with the Trump administration. MSNBC legal correspondent, former litigator Lisa Rubin will join us with her expert analysis. And as expected last night, the Tennessee Titans drafted quarterback Cam Ward of Miami with the number one pick in the NFL draft. But there were some surprises throughout the first round, including at the second pick.

Good morning, welcome to Morning Joe. It's Friday, April 25th with us, MSNBC contributor Mike Barnicle, President Emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations Richard Haas. He's the author of of the weekly newsletter Home and Away, available on Substack. Also Washington Bureau Chief at USA Today, Susan Page, and Pulitzer Prize winning columnist MSNBC political analyst Eugene Robinson. Good morning, happy Friday to you all. Richard, you know where we have to start. Draft.

Kim Ward goes one, Travis Hunter at number two. The reason I said there was a surprise, the Jags traded up to get him. And then we can talk about the Giants. As expected, they took Abdul Carter from Penn State, defender, at number three. But then the fun began later when they traded up late in the first round to choose a quarterback, not Chidur Sanders, who by the way is still on the board as we sit here this morning. It's never good when you schedule your watch party for the draft and you basically end up watching. And they kept cutting to him and it wasn't his day. But the Giants took Jackson Dart of Ole Miss. Do you like the move?

I do and you never know if these things pan out with quarterbacks but I thought it was as good a night as the Giants have had in years and makes me looking forward yet again to another season. You know what I found kind of surprising about the draft? I'm not a draft aficionado, but the emphasis on defensive players rather than offensive players. I think there was only one running back taken in the first round and everything else was an offensive defensive tackle, you know, cornerback, stuff like that.

And also a lot of offensive linemen. Offensive linemen. A lot of big guys. A lot of big guys. A lot of big guys. The kid from LSU was taken by the Patriots. The short arms kid. Despite the fact his arms were an inch shorter than initially reported. Unbelievable.

We'll dig into the draft a little deeper a little bit later in the show. But let's start with President Trump calling on Russian President Vladimir Putin to stop attacking the Ukrainian capital of Kiev. Yesterday morning on social media, Trump wrote, I am not happy with the Russian strikes on Kiev. Not necessary and very bad timing. Vladimir, stop, writes the president. 5,000 soldiers a week are dying.

Let's get the peace deal done. End quote. This comes after Russia launched a missile attack on the Ukrainian capital early Thursday that's left at least 12 people dead and 90 injured in the deadliest attack on Kyiv since the summer. President Trump later was asked about his call for Putin to stop the strikes. President Trump, sir, today you told Vladimir Putin to stop with the attack. Do you think he'll listen to you?

I do. Yeah. He said, I do. Yeah. Later in the Oval Office, the president was asked if he expects Ukraine to give up territory in exchange for peace. We'll do the best we can, but they lost a lot of territory. When you say Crimea, that was handed over during a president named Barack Hussein Obama. That had nothing to do with me, Crimea. That was 11 years ago with Obama. And they

made a decision. There wasn't a bullet fire. There was no fighting. There was no anything. They just handed it over. Now they say, well, can you get it back? I think that's going to be a very difficult thing to do. That was given by Barack Obama when he was president, not by Donald Trump. In concessions, Mr. President, and to your national security team, what concessions has Russia offered up thus far to get to the point where you're closer to peace? Stopping the war, stopping taking the whole country. Pretty big concession.

So, Richard, to underline that, he says the big concession is that Vladimir Putin has agreed not to take the whole country. What do you make of what you heard from the president and where, if there really are peace talks going on, where this deal is right now? Well, you know, the statement critical of Putin, you know, just with the old line, sticks and stones will break my bones. I don't think Vladimir Putin's going to be particularly worried. It's not clear to me, Willie, at this point, why we need more than just a clean ceasefire.

I think the president's right to push for an end to the war. Don't get me wrong. But ceasefires, you think about the Korean Peninsula, you think about Cyprus, you think about the Middle East. When do ceasefires work? When they don't try to do too much. They just basically try to get a cessation of hostilities. Why are we talking about final status issues, the legal disposition of Crimea?

Why are we talking about Ukraine and NATO? None of this to me is necessary. And when we are talking about these issues, why is every single position essentially a reflection of what Moscow wants? So yeah, Russia should stop. It's not a concession for Russia to stop the war. Both sides should be stopping the war. And no one's missing from all of this.

What worries me, all this talk about walking away from the process, are we really going to walk away from Ukraine? I don't know about you. I've not once heard this president or anyone else said, we are going to continue to provide Ukraine with arm support or intelligence support to incentivize Vladimir Putin, not just to get to a ceasefire, but to keep a ceasefire. We don't want a ceasefire to be a pause. We want a ceasefire to be enduring.

The only way to do that is to keep Ukraine strong enough so Vladimir Putin disagrees with the president, in a sense, and says, gee, as much as I want to take the whole country, I cannot. We have got to get things to that point. And that is missing from the administration. So along this line of thinking about the pause in the fighting and the ceasefire, the all-caps warnings that the president issues on truth social, where is the European Union's role in this with regard to Ukraine?

Couple of things. One is they're really talking to Ukraine. It's almost a slight division of labor here at the United States, and Steve Witkoff has kind of the Putin account. Europeans are increasingly talking to Zelensky because the Trump-Zelensky relationship is so dysfunctional for all sorts of reasons. Plus, the Europeans are going to possibly have to arm Ukraine. They can't substitute for us, but they can do a few things.

And if there is a ceasefire, Mike, they are talking about some kind of a European force that would help stabilize the ceasefire. Let me ask you about Steve Witkoff. He gets very high marks from people who know him here in New York City. But he's the president's principal negotiator. He's been to Moscow to talk to Putin for a couple of hours. He goes to Ukraine. He sees Zelensky. He goes to the Middle East. He talks to Bibi Netanyahu, he goes to Gaza and takes a look at Gaza and reports back. He goes to Oman and sits with people.

Who is this man and what is this role, this all-encompassing role he has? Well, he's by far the most significant foreign policy figure in this administration. It's not the Secretary of State Marco Rubio, it's not the National Security Vice and not Mike Waltz. It's clearly not the Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth. It is Steve Wyckoff who comes into this job with zero experience. He obviously has some experience, if you will, negotiating, doing deals in real estate. Most important, he has the President's year. He's taken as an envoy because people know he has access and influence with Donald Trump.

We'll see how he does. I think he's, funnily enough, and I never thought I'd say this, I think he has his best chance on Iran, in part because of the administration approach, the threat of force and all that. He may have his best chance there, but clearly I think he's kind of walked away from the Middle East a little bit. And again, he's taken this one-sided approach, a pro-Russian tilt, to be generous in his policy. The Wall Street Journal editorial board this morning is calling this a moment of truth

in Ukraine. The new piece reads, in part, Vladimir Putin's overnight missile assault on civilians in Kiev is a grim moment that strips away the false pretenses and excuses about the Russian dictator's invasion of Ukraine. It's also an opening for President Trump to rethink his strategy, which is failing to produce peace. President Trump responded to Mr. Putin's indiscriminate killing with a post on social media writing,

Vladimir, stop. But such pleading only works if backed by consequences. If Mr. Putin does not stop, Mr. Trump has given Mr. Putin chances to make peace. His plan of preemptive concessions is contradicted by Russian missiles. Mr. Trump can't want his legacy to be handing Ukraine to Mr. Putin. And there's still an opening to start dealing with the Russian as the tiger who ignores the president's on treaties and shoots missiles at apartment buildings. I point out to Gene Robinson, front page of the New York Post, referencing the president's true social post saying, stop, that words are not enough with a gruesome image of civilians

hurt in those attacks on Kiev. We heard some mild pressure yesterday in that social media post from President Trump on Putin, but as Richard says, by and large, the onus has been placed almost entirely in these negotiations on Ukraine. It absolutely has been. And of course, we all remember that incredible scene in the White House when Trump and Vice President Vance ganged up on President Zelensky of Ukraine in a way that none of us has ever seen in an Oval Office meeting. It sort of definitely showed you what side they're on, and that vibe was not promising

at all for the future of Ukraine. Nonetheless, I want to point everybody to some reporting by our friend David Ignatius in the Washington Post this morning in his column, which is surprisingly optimistic about those discussions in London over peace, essentially that the negotiators, the Europeans and the Americans, are talking about a deal that does what Richard Haas says, that essentially fudges those final status issues about NATO and about Crimea, and is more of a classic sort of ceasefire. Now we'll see if that actually is acceptable in Washington and Moscow and Kiev, but it was a surprisingly optimistic tone to that.

Susan, I wonder if this doesn't show something about the Trump administration, which is President Zelensky, despite that dressing down in the O'Rosses, has just been firm. He's said, no, we're not going to ever recognize Crimea as Russian. And in the end, he may get that. He may get a good deal of what he needs out of this agreement.

Similarly, China is pushing back on the trade talks, for example, and China is just not having any—there's no olive branch from China toward President Trump's 145 percent tariffs. They just said, you know, talk to the hand, basically. Is this a pattern? Are we seeing that people learning that if you push back against Trump, eventually he's going to cave? Well, that's what some—that's the lesson some have taken.

Harvard has taken that lesson, instead of folding like Colombia did, fighting back on some of the university—the pressures he's put on universities. But going back to the issue of Ukraine, it seems to me the biggest pressure on the players here is the idea of a clock ticking for Donald Trump and the United States. You know, he said he'd have a settlement in a day. Obviously, that's long gone. I think he has, in his mind, a general deadline of perhaps 100 days, or he moves on. And Richard was asking what comes next.

I think it's pretty clear that move on means extracting the United States from playing a kind of activist role in Ukraine, from standing up for the Western alliance there, and leaving it to the Europeans, which would be, I think, probably fine with Vladimir Putin. All right, Richard. That would be great. Do you see a world, Richard, where the United States walks away from these negotiations, given the central role they played from the beginning here? Well, worries me more, Willie. They're not only willing to walk away from the negotiations,

they'd walk away from Ukraine. And I think that's possible. I think the president feels if he does that, or the threat of doing that, or the rally doing that, somehow will force Ukraine to make these big compromises. I don't think so. One of the things Ukraine has shown is its ability to produce enormous numbers of drones. And I actually think if the United States backs away from supporting Ukraine, up to now when we provide arms, we attach conditions. You can only use them in this way. I can imagine a future where Ukraine

basically says, we're going to use these drones, we're going to expand the battlefield. And if the United States, I think it's a real risk, if we walk away from Ukraine and walk away from the negotiations, we're going to see this war not come to an end, which the president seems to think. I think we're going to see it expand. Ukraine's going to basically say, we've got to attack every Russian city. That's the only chance we have to raise the price of a continued war of Vladimir Putin. So I actually think the assumptions of U.S. policy, if we put the screws on Ukraine, that'll get things to end. Maybe not.

We said yesterday that Vladimir Zelensky, to your point in responding to this proposal, this peace deal, said there's nothing to talk about here. There's nothing, no chance. Not just Zelensky, any Ukrainian figure. The idea that they are going to give up Crimea or formally give up these eastern provinces, it's not going to happen. We should not be pressing for that. Again, ceasefires are best when they're kept simple. What about the fuse that's still burning a lot today in Ukraine, Russia versus the Ukrainians, and the buildup of Russian forces over the past couple of months? According to some reports, I think David Ignatius cited in the piece that Gene just mentioned

today, Russia is up to 600,000 in terms of soldiers, troops along the borders of Ukraine. Yeah. What's so interesting, Mike, and again, it goes against what the president said, Russia's not really gaining. You know, they still control roughly 20% of Ukrainian territory. Where it was after 2014. Some minor adjustments on the battlefield. Russia's been unable to translate its mass into significant battlefield gains.

These attacks on cities and urban areas and its civilians, like we saw, they've got a cover picture. They don't change the battlefield situation. And rather than breaking Ukraine's will, as we saw during World War II, if anything, it straightens it. So I don't think Ukraine feels the pressure to end the war at any cost, which is what the administration's policy seems to be predicated on. All right. We're going to take a quick break.

When we come back, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, according to multiple reports, appears to be increasingly insecure about his job and his standing within the Trump administration. Those details straight ahead on Morning Joe. A lot of picture of the Capitol, 618 on this Friday morning. Sources tell NBC News Defense Secretary Pete Hegs' behavior has become erratic, and he's focusing more on public appearances in an effort to show the president that he is a fighter. Officials say there is a tense environment in the Pentagon with disputes and even yelling

among Hegseth's senior staff. This comes amid a slew of controversies. The White House has dismissed all of this. Two U.S. officials say President Trump spoke to Hegseth over the phone after the New York Times revealed the secretary disclosed military plans in two different signal group chats, one of which included his wife and his brother. The sources say the president made clear to Hegseth he did not approve, calling his use of signal, quote, childish.

One official says the phone call ended with Trump telling Hegseth to keep fighting. According to the Wall Street Journal, when news broke about Elon Musk possibly attending a classified briefing on China, Hegseth reportedly accused several people of the leak, including his then acting chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Two sources tell the Journal Hegseth shouted at Admiral Christopher Grady, threatening to quote, hook him up to a polygraph, marking what the journal calls a turning point in an already rocky tenure. Let's bring one of the reporters on that Wall Street Journal Peace National Security correspondent for the Wall Street

Journal, Nancy Youssef. Nancy, good morning. Great to have you back with us. So a lot of rich detail in your piece this morning for the journal. I guess the question is, how long can this go on? Pete Hags is clearly scrambling, trying to save his reputation, save his image, save his job, sending signals to the president with notable media appearances, including

a long interview a couple of days ago on Fox News. How long is he for this job? Well, he so far continues to have the support of the president who has said that he is backed him. He's called these these charges a waste of time to discuss and that he still has the president's backing because I think the president sees someone who is Really focused on how the president receives him He's focused on the war fighter getting rid of DEI some of the things that the president's interested in. But there are other constituencies, including the Hill.

We will find out more next week in terms of where he stands on Capitol Hill, because legislators were out this week. It will be particularly interesting what Senator Wicker, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has to say as he was key to Hegsett's confirmation. And then within the building itself is a constituency in that there's a real climate of dysfunction, frankly, as people are trying to navigate a building in which they're seeing a frequent turnover among their leadership, fear about what they can and can't do, and an uncertainty

about how to conduct themselves in such a way that doesn't cross wires with the secretary. And it sounds like the planned briefing, as I mentioned, of Elon Trump, excuse me, Elon Musk, excuse me, on China really infuriated the president and was maybe a turning point here. That's right. Because I think one of the most important people that Hag Satha is looking at is the president.

And that was the first time he had really sort of drawn the ire of the White House. And so, in pursuit of figuring out who was behind that leak, he made a lot of accusations in the building, went up to senior military officers, including the then acting chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, remembered that the chairman, C.Q. Brown, had been fired a few weeks earlier, and threatened to polygraph them. To be clear, he did not polygraph them, but you can imagine the kind of climate that creates when we're threatening senior military officers with polygraph that shows a sort of level of distrust.

And from there, we started to see a secretary that became more and more concerned about who was revealing information. He already had a small coterie of staffers around him because he'd gotten rid of so many long time Pentagon employees when he arrived to the Pentagon. And so now we're in a building where the staffing is quite, quite small. And because of it, you're seeing a secretary

who appears to almost be isolated from the rest of the building. And I think we're at a point now where we'll start to see a rebuild of that staff what it looks like and whether he can sort of reset the relationship within the building is yet to be seen but that March 21st meeting and the with Elon Musk and the reports that that was happening really sort of started to unravel the the relationship between the secretary and the higher ranking military officers and even some of his own staff who he brought in to the building. Nancy, it's Richard Haass here.

Amidst all this turbulence and all this theater, whatever you want to call it, the purging of the generals and admirals, the unraveling of the staff, what's actually going on in terms of policy? This guy's been in the job for nearly 100 hundred days. What has he done? What has he done about pivoting to Asia? What has he done about US forces, about the budget, about new technologies? What is the, what if any impact has he had substantively on US defense policy and national security? I'm so glad you asked the question because that is the ultimate impact of all of this is on national

security. When we're talking about Whether there's a makeup room or who's who's been fired this week. We're not talking about key national security issues I would note that the US has been doing strikes in Yemen every day since March 15th The Yemenis have said that that the US has damaged hospitals killed civilians We have yet to get any detailed breakdown in terms of how many strikes have been conducted, what has been hit, at what cost, and where the U.S. is in the mission. And so, the ultimate impact is that we're not talking about what's happening in Yemen, what U.S. support in Ukraine could look like, military budgets, what the pivot towards threats

from Asia could look like, because everything is so focused on sort of the dynamics within the building. Nancy, I think that Washington assumes Hague says, is not going to serve four years as secretary of defense and maybe not four more weeks, that in the short term he's going to be replaced. If so, if that happens, either next week or in six months, who are the names that are would drop like the place, who could also get through Senate confirmation, which was no easy task the last time around? It's sort of the parlor talk within the building.

How long does he last and who comes in next? You're absolutely right. And we're starting to hear rumored names. I wouldn't say anything confirmed. I think among the names we've heard are, to your point, people like Secretary of Army Dan Driscoll, because he's already been confirmed. We've heard names like Bridge Colby, who was just confirmed as undersecretary for defense

policy. So, those are sort of internal names. But we've also heard talk about looking at industry and other parts of the sort of national security apparatus to find names. I think what will be interesting, too, is this someone who is more loyal to sort of the MAGA message as Hegseth has been or more sort of hawkish in terms of defense policy. Will they make a shift there, too? Or is the president really looking at someone who's above all loyal to the MAGA message?

National security correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Nancy Youssef, her new piece you can read this morning at the Journal's website. Nancy thanks so much, appreciate it. Still ahead on Morning Joe, President Trump was handed a number of legal setbacks in court yesterday from efforts to block sanctuary city funding to eliminating diversity initiatives in public schools. We'll run through those new rulings with Lisa Rubin. Plus, a look at where markets stand this morning after three consecutive days of gains as the administration tones down the rhetoric, at least, over tariffs.

And later this morning, Emmy Award-winning actress Kerry Washington is our guest. She joins us with a look at her new movie, Shadow Force. Morning Joe's coming right back. Wow. So we'd like to take credit, but we've got to give credit to WNBC. Chopper 4, our friends here in the building delivering us that beautiful shot high above New York City at 630 on a Friday morning. Federal judges across the nation yesterday issued judicial roadblocks to some of the Trump administration's

key initiatives. A judge in Florida blocked the White House from its effort to halt federal funds from going to sanctuary cities. The judge, who stopped a similar move in Trump's first term, wrote, quote, here we go again. The 2025 executive orders violated the Constitution's separation of powers principles and the spending clause. Meanwhile, three separate judges, two of which were appointed by Donald Trump, barred an effort by the Department of Education that pushed public universities in K through 12 schools to ban DEI programs and a federal judge in Washington blocked parts of an executive order that attempted

to require proof of citizenship to register to vote. Joining us now, MSNBC legal correspondent, former litigator Lisa Rubin-Lusa. Good morning. So I think fair to say I have a bad day for the Trump administration in court. We can start at the top of those rulings. Here we go again about sanctuary cities. What should people know about that ruling? I think what people should know is the last time around there was a divide in the courts of appeals. There was one court of appeal at least that found

that it was okay to condition funding on participation or cooperation in the administration's immigration priorities. However, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which oversees this same district court in California, never went along with that. And that's why you have this judge saying, here we go again. The other thing that I think people should know is that the judge said the possibilities of enforcement this time around in terms of the revocation of funding, they're all the more real in trump 2.0 than they were in 1.0. And that was a factor in his ruling yesterday as well. Meaning, for all of these municipalities

that were the plainest in the suit, the cost of not participating, not deputizing their officers to participate in immigration roundups and the like, the possibility that they would lose federal funding as a result of that, that's a real thing now. Not necessarily something we expected to happen in the first Trump administration,

absolutely something we've seen a predicate for in the second one. So as a practical question, what does that mean now for these cities with these ruling? What changes now? Nothing changes for them. They can continue to do what they were doing unless and until a court of appeals reverses that holding. You can count on the Trump administration to appeal that. They very much want to get rid of sanctuary cities.

And we see here in New York, for example, how they are trying to do that, even installing ICE, for example, at Rikers Island as a tool of enforcement. But for right now, those cities that have sued everyone from San Mateo County to the city of San Francisco to the city of New Haven, they can continue to do what they've been doing, Willie. So, Lisa, through all these rejected proposals from the Trump administration by the courts,

the Trump administration is pushing back, saying, you know, this is the courts ganging up on the executive powers of the president. But what about the root of this, the way these proposed changes that the Trump administration wants to make are drawn up? Is there something incompetent about the lawyers drawing them up, or what is the story there? No, I don't think the lawyers are incompetent. I think the issue is, to the extent that the Trump administration is saying these judges are trying

to arrogate for themselves powers of the presidency, I would push back on that and say the Trump administration is trying to take for itself powers that belong to Congress. The fact that Congress has abdicated some of those responsibilities or isn't, for example, implementing policies that it would like to see is of no moment. What the Trump administration is trying to do here is an absolute power grab. And you see that in one of the other decisions from yesterday. When we talk about that election administration executive order where Trump tried by fiat to require that states who register new voters

require proof of citizenship and have a state or local official even attest to that on voter registration forms, we see in the Constitution and in federal statute that the people who are supposed to control time, place, and manner of elections are states themselves, not the federal government and certainly not the presidency. That's a great example of where you see this president trying to grab for himself powers that belong to others. Gene? Lisa, where does the fight over DEI stand now?

The administration is attempting to ban words in the English language or at least initials in the English language or at least initials in the English language. Where is that now and is diversity itself still a thing in the United States or is the Trump administration succeeding in getting rid of it? Jean, that's such a hard question to answer because their definition of what's at stake here is so amorphous. And that's one of the things that one of the judges

yesterday blocking this policy focused on. You can't tell people that you're banning, quote unquote, DEI policies without defining what that is. And all they said, the Department of Education that is, in that letter is you can't discriminate against students or segregate them on the basis of race. We all understand that to be true. How that translates though into educational policies and practices that are meant to honor

diversity and the gains all students make when we have a more diverse educational environment is something that the plaintiffs in these lawsuits didn't understand. And indeed, the judges said, look, this is viewpoint discrimination. discrimination and on top of that it's impermissibly vague you're not giving people enough guidance as to what they can do there will be school districts across the country that will adhere to the Trump administration's edict to get rid of DEI so I don't mean to make light of that edict but at the same time where there is pushback I think you will find judges continue to sustain that and say, what you're asking people to do doesn't even make sense.

You can't take the words race out of the conversation. You can't tell somebody that, for example, acknowledging structural racism is impermissible, while at the same time saying that our nation's history is one that should be acknowledged and represented. Yeah, basically one of these judges said that the Department of Education doesn't make clear what's a lawful DEI policy or an unlawful one so that administrators would have no idea how to lay it out effectively or to execute it.

So again, three separate judges ruling against this idea of pulling back public funding unless schools get rid of DEI. MSNBC legal correspondent, the host of Can They Do That on YouTube, Lisa Rubin. Lisa, always great to talk to you. Thanks for being here. Thanks, Willie, for having me. Coming up, we'll have the latest on President Trump's trade war with Beijing, as some analysts warn the tariffs could cause a recession.

Morning Joe is coming right back. Businesses are frozen right now, ratcheting back their spending. And so it's their planning as if these things are still in place. One other thing you should point out is that we have a weak negotiating hand here. I know the president keeps saying we're... Right, right, right. We're almost in a recession. We have markets that are on edge. We need people to buy our debt.

And China supplies us with a lot of cheap goods. We can see inflation ratchet up dramatically if we don't need to deal with them, and Xi knows this. That is Fox Business correspondent Charlie Gasparino with an assessment of the economic impact of President Trump's tariffs. Wall Street saw a third straight day of gains though yesterday amid President Trump's toned down rhetoric on tariffs. But when it comes to the trade war with China, Washington, Beijing, sending mixed messages

on whether talks actually even are taking place. Several Chinese officials have said there are absolutely no negotiations happening. While President Trump suggested yesterday some talks had taken place earlier in the day. Well, they had a meeting this morning, so I can't tell you. It doesn't matter who they is. We may reveal it later, but they had meetings this morning and we've been meeting with China. The general they. Meanwhile, we've learned U.S. officials did hold trade talks with South Korea yesterday. South Korea represents Asia's fourth largest economy.

Leaders there reportedly hoping to work out a deal by July to avoid tariffs. Let's bring in former Treasury official, Morning Joe economic analyst Steve Ratner. Steve, good morning. So are they talking? Are they not talking? US and China. China says no, there's no serious negotiation going on. Trump floated a vague meeting that he says took place yesterday, but are they talking at all from what you can tell? What you have going on here is that Trump now is desperate to show some progress on these tariffs because every time it looks like nothing good is happening, the stock market plunges and then he throws out these feelers or makes some other announcement about a delay and the stock market goes up. And we do know he does care about the stock market. So I think they're desperately trying to show some kind of progress.

They talk about Indianness and that. I think China is the really tough nut. We have these huge, huge reciprocal tariffs on both sides now. I think my personal view, which based on I'm not obviously in the White House, is that I think Trump did not expect this kind of reaction from China when he put them on. I think he thought they would quickly come to the table because we buy so much stuff from them. But instead, Xi basically said, I'm a real country,

my economy is essentially as big as yours, a lot more people, I make all kinds of stuff that you need, and I'm not gonna be pushed around by you. And so he put on his tariffs, Trump put on more tariffs, and here we sit with 154% tariffs on imports from them, which basically means no imports. So the answer is, look, at some point, I think there will be conversations with China.

I just don't believe at this point we're really making any progress. What's your sense, Steve? Obviously, you're not in this White House, as you said, but you know people, you're connected to people. What I've heard from people on Wall Street is they're comforted to some extent that Scott Besant is there, at least providing some reality checks about what tariffs do and what is going to happen to the economy despite his public support of President Trump. What's your sense, though, of the conversations going on behind the scenes about the value

or the damage being done by these tariffs? Yeah, I think Scott Bessent understands it. I think Keith Hennessey, who runs the National Economic Council, understands it and is on the right side of the issue. But this, as we've talked about before, is the one issue that Trump believes that he and he alone, to use one of his famous phrases, is really understands how valuable tariffs are. And he's got Peter Navarro, who Elon Musk more or less correctly described as Denver than a sack of bricks, kind of egging him on. And so people are critical of best for not having made more progress styling this back.

But you've got a guy who's got the bit between his teeth and he's just running for it. Steve, why don't we bring on the conversation we were having privately, which is about what the effect is on American business. And what will it take for the people you talk with every day, CEOs and so forth, to essentially start making investments again? To basically say, okay, I can sell this or buy this because I now have confidence that the price that it's at now is reflective of its real value and in the same zip code as where it'll be in six months.

What has to happen and what's your sense of the timing? What's the most optimistic we could be on that? Well, as it happens, I was just two days at a conference in Washington with a lot of CEOs. And what is striking is the unanimity of view among CEOs about how bad this policy is. You cannot find, I haven't yet to find, a single CEO who says, hey, this is great.

It's going to solve this problem or that problem. So they are deeply, deeply unhappy about the situation. And it has affected all kinds of business. Absolutely deals have more or less come to a halt, as you know, now that you're in the investment banking world. And why wouldn't they? Who would buy or sell something when you have no idea what it might be worth six months from now when the whole tariff thing hopefully does get resolved?

But all kinds of other decisions, investment decisions, do I build a plant, do I not build a plant, where do I build it? Everything is kind of on hold in this economy at the moment. And you have a very unhappy business community, and you also are going to start to see shortages of things. This is going to be, I'm going to exaggerate slightly, like the Soviet Union in the 1960s or something. Empty shells.

Empty shells. You're going to see empty shells where you can't, you know, 90% of our toys are imported and virtually all those come from China. This goes on until Christmas. Not so many toys at Christmas for the kids. Not so many. You know, Susan Page, I think one of the hopes of people who oppose these policies and see the damage they're doing to the economy is that at least President Trump would view the damage it's doing to

him and that might prompt him to reverse the policies you're writing this morning about economic polling we've seen over the last couple of days that show his approval rating down generally, but really specifically down on the economy, down at 37 percent in one poll and 40 percent or so in another. Is there any sense that perhaps these numbers might give him some pause about the policies that he's endorsed and sticking by to this point? Yeah, absolutely. I think only two issues matter front and center for President Trump.

One is immigration. The other is the economy. And, of course, the feeling Americans had of trust in him to handle the economy in a smart way was one of the fundamental reasons he was elected president both times. Both times he won elections. And yet that has been really undermined by the chaos that we've seen, by the turmoil in the stock market, by the concern that we heard in the clip that began this segment that we are at this moment almost in a recession or nearly in a recession. So this was a—in the pupil that just came out, this was a 19-point advantage, confidence in Trump on the economy when he was elected.

It's now a 9-point negative. That's a huge swing of 28 percentage points of undermining of erosion in confidence in him to handle the economy since he was elected on election day last November. All right Susan stay with us Steve you're going to head over the southwest wall to break down a different issue why Americans are having fewer babies it's a hot issue right now with the on Musk and others talking about pro natalism will explain all that plus we're getting a look Time Magazine's new cover story and exclusive interview with

President Trump on his first 100 days in office. Morning Joe's coming right back. If from the CDC shows the United States birth rate increased just 1% last year, the number of American women having children has been trending downward for decades and now the White House is floating ideas for how to change that. One proposal includes a $5,000 so-called baby bonus to every mother after delivery. Steve Ratner now over at the Southwest Wall with some charts on this. Alright so you have more detail Steve but first of all about the declining birth rates and then we'll get into why this is happening but why don't you start with those first numbers.

Yeah, I'm also going to get into why the White House is so focused on this because it dovetails with another very interesting issue that's going on. But first, let's take a look at what's been happening. So birth rates have actually been dropping across the world for a long time and for various different reasons that you can imagine. But we'll just focus on the U.S. down here. So back in the 1950s, the so-called baby boomer era, of which I was one, the birth rate peaked at about 3.7 children per family.

I was born right over here, was a little over three then. We had three kids in my family. That was pretty typical. But then it's come down, down, down, down, down, and now we're sitting down here at 1.6 percent. At 1.6 births per mother, sorry about that. And Europe, China being even below us. Now what are the implications of that?

The implications of that are actually quite serious, which is what happens to our population. 1.6 is well below what we call the replacement rate, the number of kids somebody has to, a mother has to have, in order simply to keep our population stable, let alone growing. And of course, keeping our population growing is really important because otherwise you have fewer and fewer working people supporting more and more people who are elderly, and that raises all kinds of fiscal and budgetary and cost issues for the economy and for the government. That raises all kinds of fiscal and budgetary and cost issues for the economy and for the government. So on present course and speed, without any immigration, our population would peak very,

very soon in the next 10 or so years, around 2038. And then it would continue to decline and it will go from 330 million now down to 294 million. The difference would, in a normal world, be made up with immigration. We allow about this many people to immigrate, roughly about 900,000 people a year is the average. And so if you assume that the average of 900,000 continues, our population grows slowly to 366 million. and this is where you get into the whole question of immigration and we know this administration has a different

policy on administration and immigration which is part of why they're talking about things like these $5,000 credits to try to get kids to parents to have more kids. Steve it's an issue that Elon Musk in particular has been talking about a lot, pronatalism is a popular movement, especially in some conservative circles. Is that also tied to immigration? Yeah. I think this whole narrative out of there, J.D. Vance called women were childless cat ladies, the whole narrative out of there about children and so forth is a mix of Elon Musk,

as we think, 14 children plus or minus, his belief in more children, but also the fact that without that you're going to have to have immigration, and this is not an administration dying to have a lot more immigration. All right. So let's... You got the numbers. That's a good backdrop for why this has been happening. What's changed, Steve?

Well, it's interesting. And there are polls and things, and everybody on the set's opinion it would be as good as mine on this, but here's one poll anyway with a whole variety of reasons. These don't add up to a hundred because people had multiple answers. They had several different reasons. Some say they just don't want to. There seems to be some kind of a cultural shift going on out there about having kids and the relevance of a family to one's life.

Focus on other things, concerned about the world, can't afford to raise one, we're gonna come back to this because I think in these sort of more vague answers I suspect some of this can't afford is embedded up here somewhere. Concerns about the environment, right partner, don't like children, 20% don't like children, I don't know who those are, and then roughly 20% had negative experiences with their own family growing up. But the affordability thing is, I think, a big part of this and a big deal. So let's take a look at something involving that.

So if you want to look at housing and healthcare, if you go back to 1984 and you divide the country into five sections based on income, so top 20%, next 20%, and so forth, let's see what's happened. So average home prices have gone up like this, which meant that they have outstripped even people very close to the top. Out-of-pocket healthcare also has gone up a lot, but not quite as much as incomes for people very much at the top. pocket health care also has gone up a lot, but not quite as much as incomes for people, very much at the top. But everybody else down here, the 80s, 60s, 40s, 20s, all these people below 80 have had

to face much higher housing, much higher health care costs relative to their incomes, and so affordability becomes a real problem for these families. Steve, it's so interesting, it sort of underscores these reasons on how individual the decision of whether or not to have children is. Let's assume people who don't like children are not the target audience for this message. But when you look at other people who have either chosen not to have children or have fewer children than they might have had in the past. To what degree can the government effectively encourage them to have more children through

paid family leave or through improving housing prospects? To what degree is this within the control of the government to do something about? I think there is some control. What I would say is that the $5,000 is not going to solve this problem. It's a lot of money for some families, but relative to all this other stuff, are they really going to go have kids for $5,000? My own view is the only way to really solve this problem is to attack these kinds of issues. We have to make people feel like they have the financial ability to afford a kid, or

otherwise they're just going to say, I can't do that. And so these are mega challenges that require big changes in government policy, lots of ability to afford a kid or otherwise they're just going to say I can't do that. And so these are mega challenges that require big changes in government policy, lots of initiatives, not simply $5,000. And at the moment there does not seem to be any real impetus for doing that down in Washington. All right. So Steve, we're proving that you can bring us a chart on just about anything. So separate topic, there have been obviously air tragedies, air disasters.

We saw an incident the other day where an engine exploded on a Delta flight and people had to jump out the slide and all this. But as we're reminded every time we do one of these stories, flying is safer than it's ever been, broadly speaking. What are the numbers there? Well, I'm disappointed Mika's not here because I know that Mika is not that fond of flying, shall we say, and I wanted to show Mika that, you know, she's got to deal with the world as it is, not as she's watching. She's watching, Steve, don't worry, she's watching. Yes, Mika, this one's for you.

So, interestingly, contrary to sort of the perception that really started with that Washington, that terrible Washington crash, flying this year has not been any less safe than in other years. So this compares non-fatal accidents against all accidents over the last, from 2006 to 2024, and it includes private planes as well as commercial planes, and that's why this spikes up like this. A lot of what we call weekend warriors in the flying business come out in the warm weather months and get themselves in trouble doing stuff they shouldn't do. But nonetheless, the pace is no different this year than it's been over this long period of time that I show you here.

Fatal accidents are actually running below their historic rate. And so this year is not aberrational. But here's the key point for anyone who's thinking that, worrying at all about flying. So we compare the safety rate of flying versus other modes of transport. Motorcycles, as you would imagine, are pretty dangerous. These are injuries per 100 million passenger miles, so still not that many, but motorcycles are tough. Buses, cars, trucks.

But here's air travel down here at.007. So what does this mean? This means that you are 67 times less likely to get injured flying on a commercial plane than getting on a train. .007, that's right. .007 that's 0.007 and the fatality rate down here at 0.003 we've only had really two commercial airplane crashes in this country in the last 15 or more years the one that just happened of course in the one outside Buffalo and I think it was 2008 or 2009 so it has been an

unbelievably safe mode of transport so to all those of you who take a Valium or worry a lot about getting on a plane, and for you especially, Mika,.007, that's your chance. You can take the Valium if you need to, but just know you're going to get there safely. Morning, Joe, economic analyst and pilot and so much more. Renaissance man Steve Ratner. Steve, thanks so much. We always appreciate it.