Morning Joe - Morning Joe 4/30/25

Episode Date: April 30, 2025

Trump returns to his roots with a campaign-style rally to mark 100 days in office

We're making America great again and it's happening fast too. What the world has witnessed in the past 14 weeks is a revolution of common sense. That's all it is really. In 100 days we have delivered the most profound change in Washington in nearly 100 years. Front row Joe. Look at you. Front row Joe's. I miss you guys. I miss the campaign. Nearly 100 years, Front Row Joe. Look at you, Front Row Joe's.

I miss you guys. I miss the campaign. We've opened up your faucets, and we've opened up, especially me. I don't like taking a shower where the water goes drip, drip, drip onto my luxuriant hair. I need a lot of water. I need everything I can get. We terminated the left-wing money-laundering scam

known as USAID. How about the money that was going out? How about the money that was going out, billions and billions? We will end inflation, slash prices. We have already ended inflation. Raise wages and give you the greatest economy in the history of the world. That's already happening. President Trump last night in Michigan marking the first 100 days in office with a campaign

style rally. We'll have more of his comments just ahead. Plus, Amazon will not display the tariff costs for consumers after complaints from the president and the White House. We'll go through what happened yesterday and the response from Jeff Bezos. Also ahead, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth yesterday bragged about ending a DOD program. Just one problem, the Biden initiative that he proudly terminated was actually from Trump's first term.

We'll get to that. Good morning and welcome to Morning Joe. It's Wednesday, April 30th. With us we have the cohost of our fourth hour, contributing writer at the Atlantic, Jonathan Lumiere, President Emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, Richard Haas with his new piece in Substack this morning, NBC News and MSNBC legal analyst Danny Savalos is here and New York Times opinion columnist David French. Good to have you all on board this morning.

Willie, did Bezos blink? You think you got a phone call from the president of the United States? So perhaps he explained that we'll get into the story in some detail that Amazon wasn't doing this broadly on all of its purchases, but it was in one small specific area of Amazon's business and they're no longer going to be showing the impact of tariffs on a receipt. Yeah, seems like a blink to me. Wall Street Journal. Yeah, we'll be reading from the Wall Street Journal in

just a moment. But we begin with new comments from President Trump defending his administration's decision to send a Maryland man to a prison in El Salvador. In an interview with ABC News yesterday, the president was asked about the wrongful removal of Kilmar Abrego-Garcia from the United States. The president denied any mistake was made and dodged questions about following the Supreme Court's order to facilitate his return. Well, the lawyer that said it was a mistake, was here a long time, was not appointed by us, should not have said that, should not have said that. And just so you understand,

the person that you're talking about, you know, you're making this person sound, this is a MS-13 gang member, a tough cookie, been in lots of skirmishes, beat the hell out of his wife, and the wife was petrified to even talk about him, okay? This is not an innocent, wonderful gentleman from Maryland. I'm not saying he's a good guy. It's about the rule of law. The order from the Supreme Court stands, sir. You came into our country illegally.

You could get him back. There's a phone on this desk. I could. You could pick it up and with all the power of the presidency, you could call up the president of El Salvador and say send him back right now. And if he were the gentleman that you say he is, I would do that. But the court has ordered you to facilitate that. I'm not the one making this decision. We have lawyers that don't want to do this.

But the buck stops in his office. No, no, no, no. I follow the law. You want me to follow the law? If I were the president that just wanted to do anything, But the buck stops in his office. No, no, no, no. I follow the law. You want me to follow the law? If I were the president that just wanted to do anything, I'd probably keep him right where he is. The law is saying something different. The president also got into a heated exchange about whether Abrego Garcia is a gang member,

claiming Abrego Garcia has the tattoos to prove it. Even the man that you picked out, he said he wasn't a member of a gang. And then they looked, and on his knuckles he had MS-13. There's a dispute over that. Well, wait a minute. Wait a minute. He had MS-13 on his knuckles tattoo. He had some tattoos that are interpreted that way.

But let's move on. Wait a minute. Hey, Terry, Terry, Terry. He did not have the letter MS-13. But let's move on. Wait a minute. Terry, Terry, Terry. He did not have the letter MS-13. It says MS-13. That was Photoshopped. So let me just... That was Photoshopped.

Terry, you can't do that. Hey, they're giving you the big break of a lifetime. You know, you're doing the interview. I picked you because, frankly, I never heard of you, but that's okay. I picked you, Terry. But you're not being very nice. Last week, President Trump posted this photo on Truth Social, claiming this is the knuckle of Abrego Garcia.

But the words MS-13 are photoshopped onto the image. The actual tattoos are of various symbols. Where do we begin with this? I mean, on a number of levels, and Danny, we have questions for you about this specific case, but you know, Willie, he's been moved, Ibraico Garcia's been moved to another prison.

He's been sent to a prison in El Salvador. He's moved from the notorious prison to another one, and there's still several hundred other people who didn't get due process who are in the most miserable place on earth, as it's described. And the president is just letting them all just hang there. And no less than the Supreme Court, as Terry Moran pointed out, has ordered the president to facilitate the return of Abreu-Garcia. That's as high up as you can go.

And yet he says, I'm following the law. The lawyers have said I can't do this. I believe I've heard that the president doesn't like the idea that that's out there that he's too weak to bring back. Remember, they've said, well, we can't. Now that he's in El Salvador, the Justice Department said, there's nothing we could do. Well, of course he could.

He's Donald Trump. He's the president of the United States. He could call because obviously he has the president of El Salvador under his thumb and say, send him back. It's just that he doesn't want to get him back. I think politically there would be value in bringing him back. But daddy, let's get to the legality of all this. What, first of all, Abrego Garcia,

is the president following the law? Probably not. And I've been in that camp of not ready to declare constitutional crisis yet. I have been a staunch, I've been committed to the idea that I'm not ready to say that until and unless the president says, I have an order and I am openly defying it. And after this interview, there's not a lot of wiggle room left for the president because he said he conceded in a very smart question and answer designed to get that exact answer. I could pick up the phone and return him right now. The Supreme Court has ordered,

more specifically the Maryland District Court, has ordered that the president or the administration facilitate Abrego Garcia's return. But I want to be clear, it's not his return forever and ever, happily ever after. Understood. We need to be realistic about this. If the administration wants to remove Kilmar Abrego Garcia, in the end, the odds are it will be able to. The only thing the Supreme Court and the district court has ordered is that he be returned as

if he was not removed in this improper way. So what the administration could do is just bring him back, give him what we call due process. And you know, people have been talking a lot about due process, like it's a magic talisman. The reality is, and as a criminal defense attorney, I think a lot of criminal defense attorneys would agree that due process is a nice thing, but a lot of times it doesn't change the inevitable outcome of a case.

So if they bring him back, they give him due process, they go to the court, they try to get rid of this withholding of removal order, they might be able to do it, and he might be right back where the administration wanted him in the first place. But as it stands now, and Trump rarely shows a knowledge of the legal, he has like sort of a surface knowledge of what's going on legally. And he says immediately after he says that I could bring him back, that I'm going to follow the law or something to that effect.

But that may be exactly what he's not doing if he concedes that he's able to bring him back. And what's been going on is this sort of cat and mouse game between presidents, where one president says, I can't send him back to the United States. What am I going to do? Smuggle him in. And then our president says, well, I don't have any control over it. But now he's just said, oh, yeah, I do have control over it. You better believe that Kilmar Abrego Garcia's attorneys are going to get the transcript of that interview and shove it in front of the judge as fast as they can.

This is a major concession by the administration. And there's sort of these competing impulses on display here from Trump, who at times sort of acts almost as an observer to his own presidency. We saw that the first time. We see it now, too, where he kind of comments along with things, often on social media, without realizing, hey, you're the one who actually could do something about it.

Like, hey, inflation's bad. OK, do something about it. And there are many other examples. With this, Danny, as you rightly say, this is hatred of the idea of weakness. So with this now out there in the public realm, this comment, let's not just talk about this particular individual. There's dozens of people taken from the United States without the due process whose names we don't know yet because the administration hasn't even revealed them.

So talk to us about just like a bigger template here for others who are trying to say, look, this was not done in an appropriate fashion. Yeah, the Trump administration is removing people with ruthless efficiency. Let me just give you an example. The habeas petitions are the petitions that people are filing to challenge their detention.

The rules for this kind of petition are that it has to be filed in the place where you're being detained. One thing they've been doing is transferring people so quickly that they don't have a chance to file that petition. And in some cases, they're already out of the country. So where is the jurisdiction once they're out of the country? And once they're out of the country, the administration takes the position that, hey, it's no longer our problem. So one of the things the Trump administration has been unbelievably good at

in the last few weeks and months is finding legal ways to achieve what it wants. Ways that are often parts of a subsection of a statute that no one has ever really used before. I mean, for example, the provision of federal law that allows removal of people who the Secretary of State deems would have adverse foreign policy consequences.

When Congress passed that legislation, they said, hey, listen, this is supposed to be used rarely. This is not supposed to be used all the time for people that you just don't want in the country. It's for a situation where some foreign visitor is causing a major foreign policy crisis, not just because you don't like the guy or you don't like what he or she is saying. So one of the things the Trump administration is doing very well with ruthless efficiency is finding legal means or at least legal basis to do the things that it wants to do and at least argue that in court. But they may be coming to the end of the road in the Garcia case. And by the way, in a way, it's an unforced error because, as I said before,

they could just bring him back, put him through some kind of due process. And if the administration really wants, they probably get that withholding of removal order overturned and send him back exactly where they want to send him. As Donald Trump conceded, the president's saying, of course I can get him back. I'll pick up that phone and make a phone call. David French, you've been writing a lot about the Abrego Garcia case and the absence of due process here. One comment that the president made in that interview

yesterday with Terry Moran was that we can't have hearings for everyone who's in the country. Illegally, there'd be 10, 11 million hearings. Who has time for that? Well, that's a dangerous path to go down because then you could just summarily deport everyone without a hearing. Well, look, we already have processes in place that allow people to contest their status if they're subject to deportation.

And this has been used by presidents for years and years and years to deport people by the millions. So it is not actually that difficult to deport people. It is not actually some sort of full-blown criminal trial, like administration officials keep misleading the public about, to deport people. What we're talking about are just use the procedures that are already established in law. What Trump did with Abrego Garcia and the other people sent to El Salvador is just this very minimal process that's established in law was too much for him. He didn't want to do that.

So he invokes this Alien Enemies Act, as was just discussed. This is a legal provision not invoked but three times in American history, War of 1812, World War I, World War II. So he pulls this statute from 1798, invokes it against a Venezuelan drug gang, all for the purpose of evading due process. And he keeps doubling down because he knows that he is attacking an unpopular population here. He sees this as a political winner to continue to do this, but I'm not so sure he's right. It is absolutely the case that he has an electoral mandate to do something about

illegal immigration. He does not have an electoral mandate to violate the Constitution. And I think that distinction is getting through to the public right now. All right, David, thank you and stand by. And Dennis Velos, thank you very much for your insights this morning. So Amazon says it will not display additional tariff costs next to the product prices on its site. Despite a report, the company would be doing so. Punchbowl reported yesterday the retail giant would post import charges for some items as a transparent way to show why some prices have gone up.

Hours later, during a press briefing, press secretary Caroline Levitt called the reported move by Amazon a, quote, hustle and political act. The White House later confirmed President Trump had called Amazon chief Jeff Bezos yesterday morning to express his displeasure over the report about Amazon displaying tariff costs on its site. Jeff Bezos was very nice. He was terrific. He solved the problem very quickly.

And he did the right thing. And he's a good guy. An Amazon spokesperson issued this statement, quote, the team that runs our ultra low cost Amazon haul store considered the idea of listing import charges on certain products. This was never approved and not going to happen. The Wall Street Journal editorial board is writing this morning about all this.

The piece titled Trump versus Amazon's brilliant tariff idea. The journal writes this. President Trump says his tariffs may raise enough revenue to replace the income tax. So why is he afraid to let Americans see what they're paying? Instead of owning his policy, the White House has bullied Amazon to keep quiet about what it will cost. The public could have used Amazon's price transparency.

Tariffs are taxes, and it's helpful to know how policy choices affect final prices. Some shoppers might say the additional cost is worth it to support Mr. Trump's policy, but there is no denying that they're paying and everyone is better off knowing how much. Like taxes, tariffs often add a precise dollar figure to a sticker price. Voters who pay little attention to the macro economy will notice a direct markup on items they buy. Consumers are already feeling the tariff pain, whether or not retailers quantify it on their websites.

White House denials won't change that, but repealing the tariffs would. That is the Wall Street Journal this morning, Richard Haass. Also, not really a plausible argument from the White House briefing room yesterday, calling Amazon a bunch of left-wing commies. One of the most successful enterprises in the history of capitalism is Amazon. Yes, it is capitalism, which I usually associate with the West. This was, as one Wall Street firm calls it, radical transparency. And the White House probably could have pushed back and said, well, they're listing the immediate

cost. They're not talking about the long-term benefits. But I thought it was really interesting what the Wall Street Journal did. Just as a larger point, the Wall Street Journal editorial page has been a true, consistent, conservative voice. And it's interesting because it highlights the difference between conservatism and this administration, which is many things, but not conservative. It's not institutional, it doesn't look at precedent, it doesn't follow the rule of law

carefully. So all the things the conservatives believe in, and the Wall Street Journal highlights them, and the contrast, I thought, again, in today's paper, good for them. We should note, though, that Amazon was going to list this tariff on just one part of its site, the Amazon Hall part of it, which is the low-cost.

Amazon Hall is pretty prominently featured on anyone's Amazon page. So this would have been something consumers would have seen, and perhaps he would have gone from there. But David French, I think the point here is, we've gotten the explanation from Amazon, but there's certainly a perception that this is another moment of a powerful institution, a powerful person obeying what President Trump wants. We know that Bezos has really cozied up to him in the last

handful of months, was there for the inauguration, and the like, and has, even after the first term, drew Trump's ire quite often because of his stewardship of the Washington Post. That is no longer the case. So talk to us about that phenomenon, but also just the fact that the White House got so upset about this gives up the

game here. They know that these tariffs are going to hurt American consumers and be really unpopular, and they don't want that in-your-face reminder of that. Yeah, they absolutely don't want that reminder. They want some sort of deniability with their base that price increases have anything to do with the tariffs, and they want the base to think that price increases are going to be due to corporate greed. But what we see here is a further example of what we already knew, which was, Trump views himself in this Putin-esque authoritarian role.

And what does Putin have? Putin has a bunch of oligarchs who orbit around him, who are subservient to him. And this is the relationship he wants to create with wealthy American individuals and powerful American institutions. He wants to create this dynamic, whereas he's the authoritarian center, and all of these oligarchs and all of these wealthy institutions orbit around him. That's not surprising. We know this. But the thing that's discouraging is how many of these wealthy American institutions and how many of these wealthy American individuals seem to be entirely willing to play that role,

to play that subservient role around Donald Trump. That is the thing that has been most surprising to me, is these people with immense wealth and immense power and immense pride consistently are bending that knee to Donald Trump and that that's the thing that's particularly alarming. So we'll talk more about President Trump's first 100 days after the break. There's a lot more to get to. Still ahead on Morning Joe, we'll get to Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer's appearance with Trump yesterday in Michigan and what she had to say when she was called up to the podium.

Also ahead, actor Ed Helms is out with a brand new book he calls a loving tribute to humanity's finest face plants. He joins us live in studio ahead on Morning Joe. We're back in 90 seconds. Twenty-two past the hour. Welcome back. Defense Secretary Pete Hexheth has ended the Women, Peace and Security program inside the Department of Defense. He posted on social media that he was proud to do so, calling it a Biden initiative that overburdens our commanders and troops. But the program was actually signed into law by President Trump and went into effect during his first term in 2017. The legislation was designed to promote women's participation in defense and strategic affairs.

Multiple members of Trump's cabinet were key players in its conception. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem sponsored the bill in the House. Secretary of State Marco Rubio sponsored the bill in the Senate. And National Security Advisor Mike Walz was a founding member of the women peace and security congressional caucus Good seems awkward, but you know Pete he doesn't believe women should serve in the military or was you know had said that at one point and had to but he doesn't want that program and

That's just awkward. I'm sorry, there's no way around it. Yeah, and it's extraordinary again, this is just one of many cases where people now serving in the Trump administration have completely changed their views or at least publicly have pretended to change their views to please Donald Trump. And talking about in his statement yesterday, Secretary Haggis is about killing this woke initiative

and his mandate is to kill woke and DEI in the military except it came from the president first term. Just 30 seconds, a serious thing, part of that. Did he not have some process or staff member who said, hey boss, you should just know this was the origin of this. I mean, there's a pattern here. You announce policies and afterwards you do the homework as opposed to the other way around. Maybe they're letting him hang.

Maybe they knew exactly what he was doing. season afterwards you do the homework as opposed to or the other way around you know maybe they're letting him hang maybe they knew exactly what he was doing. There's also a number of occasions where they've scrapped something we saw this a lot with the on musk and doge we're going so quickly where they would just like have keyword searches, yeah, and they would you know diversity or black or woman or whatever it is and there is got something without that actually reading the whole thing and say

actually wait this is something entirely Robin's job is going to say that Jackie Robinson page is the best example of this. But there are others and this is a case where if perhaps it was deliberate or perhaps it was just really sloppy process and work. So meanwhile, President Trump spoke about Secretary Hegseth in that interview with ABC News last night. Hegseth, of course, has faced criticism over his use of the unsecured messaging app Signal, in one case sharing military information in a chat that included his own family members. President Trump was asked if he has 100 percent confidence in Secretary Hegseth. I had a talk with him and whatever I said I probably wouldn't be inclined to tell you, but we had a good talk.

He's a talented guy. He's young, he's smart, highly educated, and I think he's going to be a very good defense secretary. Hopefully a great defense secretary, but he'll be a very good defense secretary. You have 100% confidence in P.J. I don't have 100% confidence in anything. Okay? Anything.

Do I have 100%? It's a stupid question. Look, it's a pretty important position. No, no, no. You don't have 100%. Only a liar would say, I have 100% confidence. I don't have 100% confidence that we're gonna finish this interview.

So, David, we can parse the percentages here. I guess that's fair. We don't have 100% confidence in anything in life. But the question about confidence, President Trump signaling publicly that he has confidence, but we do know behind the scenes having his concerns about Secretary Hegseth. Well, look, I mean, I think we're all waiting on Pete Hegseth to show some evidence of competence, just some. I mean, we have this pattern that we have seen from the beginning,

which is he faceplants publicly in some dramatic way, and then he runs out and does push-ups with the troops to sort of show that he's a man of the people. Then he comes back out and faceplants again, and got to go run and go do burpees with the troops this time to sort of show he's a man of the people. And just this this cycle, I think it is growing exhausting for some people within the Trump inner circle. But at the same time, Hegseth responds to each scandal also by doing the thing that Trump loves so much that we've seen in all of these clips by very aggressively attacking the media. So Hegseth knows how to show himself in public in a way that that really is Trumpian at its core, at its essence. But he's yet to show that he can run the Department of Defense, and he's yet to show that he won't be anything but a continual distraction for the administration.

So, I think that Trump's torn here, and there are members of Trump's team who are not torn about Pete Hegseth. You see a little hint of that coming through in that interview. So, Richard Haass, in your weekly newsletter, Home and Away, available on Substack, you're writing about the first 100 days of President Trump's second term. And you write in part, quote, Trump's second term is not merely an extension of his first. Trump 2.0 is starkly different, marked by a Trump more confident now than even during his first term.

He has come to the office armed with a far more sweeping agenda and a better idea for how to implement it, as those staffing the administration spent the past four years preparing for this moment. Surrounding him are amplifiers more than restrainers, enablers more than guardrails. With limited exceptions such as the secretary of the treasury and a few others, the cabinet consists mainly of unqualified loyalists, the political equivalent of the bar scene in Star Wars. I'll take your word for that. The result is more court than administration. Policy tends to flow from the top down rather than bottom up with consequences already evident here and abroad. So which stand out to you the

most, Richard? And I would say you mentioned the Treasury secretary, extremely competent, but yet he's not allowed to do his job. I mean, he's in the news conference yesterday. He had no answers, kind of just trying so hard to implement these tariffs that I doubt he believes in. Don't know. The tariffs are the defining policy initiative of this administration. They've even overshadowed what would have been the defining initiative which was tightening up the

border. The tariffs now given the economic consequences given also the political consequences around the world. Tariffs more than anything else have signaled American unilateralism that being an ally counts for nothing and you know that our interest in maintaining a global economic order counts for nothing. Now the Secretary of Treasury has to walk a fine line. He knows, he has to know these are terrible economics but it's a court and if you want to have access to the King, if you want to have access to President Trump, you've got to be really careful. If you totally speak your mind, the danger is you lose access, you lose influence, conceivably, your job. And that's the fine line he has to walk.

He had a rally the president did in Michigan last night that we're going to play some of a little while from now and talked almost entirely about the tariffs. He knows that he's done something that is impacting the people in that room and across the country. And he's trying to manifest this will be good for's trying to manifest, this will be good for you. Trust me, this will be good for you. We're going to crush China and bring all the manufacturing jobs back to America. Look, what's hopefully going to happen is we'll probably keep

the 10% baseline tariff across the board. Most of the other tariffs, I think, will come down. The president will declare an enormous victory that the tariffs have transformed the economy and so forth. You know, it's interesting, Willie. You're right. He had nicks in the short term. They're painful.

He uses the medicine analogy. Let me give you another medicine analogy. It's like you're healthy. You're going in for your annual checkup. The doctor gives you some drug that's experimental, and you get a heart attack. This was a healthy economy that Donald Trump inherited. I'm shocked. If he had simply gone golfing more, seriously, if he'd kind of left well enough alone, he'd have a thriving

economy, the Dow would be 10,000 points higher, his opinion polls would be, he'd be in the 60s rather than the 40s, if he'd simply done a few things that needed fixing, like the border, push back against some of the over-regulation, against some of the extreme wokeness, some of the anti-Semitism. If he had mainly done that, if he had pushed for a real peace in Ukraine and pushed Russia and not just Ukraine, he launched what's an interesting initiative with Iran and so forth. If he had simply changed a few things around the edges, he could have been, he actually, a funny sort of way, could have justified his talking points yesterday.

He could have been off to a great start. Let me ask you about foreign policy. You talk about the guardrails not being there here at home. What's gonna, what will be the guardrail against this president completely turning his back on Ukraine? Only his concern that this would become his Afghanistan, that it would look terrible and so forth. But Vladimir Putin is stiffing us and stalling every inch of the way. this would become his Afghanistan, that it would look terrible and so forth.

But Vladimir Putin is stiffing us and stalling every inch of the way. It's not that complicated. If the president wants peace, and by the way, the president came in, I think, right. I want peace with Ukraine. I want to bring this war to an end. It's gone on too long. It's been way too expensive. The Biden administration was wrong in one thing, I thought, importantly, and

the president and Keith Kellogg, his envoy for this, understood it, which is you just can't say to Ukraine, you have a blank check for as much as you want, for as long as you want, to militarily liberate this land. That was an unrealistic definition of success. So to basically say, we will get a ceasefire in place, we're going to end this war, all these big issues, though, we're going to leave to negotiations down the road. If he had simply done that, I think again he could have peace. And what he needs to do, Mika, is influence Putin. The only way I know to influence Vladimir Putin here is to say we're going to keep the spigot

open. We are going to help Ukraine with what it needs to defend itself, militarily and intelligence, both to get a ceasefire, but also to keep a ceasefire. I don't want to just, I don't want a ceasefire to become a pause. I want a ceasefire to be permanent, like the one on the Korean Peninsula, like the one in Cyprus. The president could do it.

He needs to change the basic policy. He needs to stand by Ukraine. It's that simple. So, David, a few moments ago, I asked you about Jeff Bezos, the latest example of a powerful person or institution who is obeying Donald Trump. But you just recently wrote about Harvard, which has done the opposite. Harvard is standing up to the current administration. So talk to us about that, and also just as we sit here at the 100-day mark, your thoughts

on Trump's initial return to office. Harvard is one of the few institutions that's standing up. And look, to applaud Harvard for standing up to Trump is not the same thing as saying that Harvard doesn't need a lot of reforms, that Harvard doesn't have problems. I mean, this goes to the point Richard just made. There's actually a path forward where Trump could have been a constructive force in reforming universities. I think there's a lot of public demand for reforming universities. But he could have done it through a legal process rather than through unconstitutional attacks.

His policy pattern in this first 100 days, I think you can sum it up like this. Do the most extreme policy possible in the most incompetent way possible. He's taken more public goodwill that he had going into this term than he had going into his first term, higher approval going into this term than going into his first term, and has been very busy squandering that with remarkable speed. As Richard said, there was actually a path here for him to do some things that would have been constructive and popular at the same time. Get the border under control lawfully. Deal with deportations lawfully.

Send a clear message to Russia. Cease fire or we continue to support Ukraine. And you keep hitting your head against a brick wall in eastern Ukraine. These things could have been popular. They were possible. They were attainable. But he wants to remake America. And that's what he's been trying to do in these first 100 days.

Another accomplishment of the first 100, electing this guy, helping this guy get elected. He definitely put himself in an interesting position with Carney. This one will be fun to watch. Opinion columnist for The New York Times, David French, thank you very much for coming on this morning and coming up. Today marks 50 years since the fall of Saigon.

One of the last combat soldiers to leave Vietnam will join us with a look back at the war and the lasting impact on the country. That's next on Morning Joe. on the country. That's next on Morning Joe. The Saigon was renamed today. The victorious communists who forced the city's surrender said the capital of South Vietnam henceforth will be known as Ho Chi Minh City. After the leader of North Vietnam, now dead, who fought the Japanese

and the French and the Americans and the South Vietnamese in fighting which began in the early 1940s. North Vietnamese and Viet Cong troops rolled into the city to the cheers of some Saigonese, but not to all. One South Vietnamese Army colonel committed suicide with his pistol in a downtown square. The Viet Cong headquarters was set up in the former presidential palace. That was an NBC Nightline News report from April 30th, 1975, 50 years ago today,

on the fall of Saigon and the end of the Vietnam War. Leading up to the capture of South Vietnam's capital city, U.S. forces conducted Operation Frequent Wind, evacuating thousands of American and Vietnamese nationals via helicopter, ending one of the deadliest and most polarizing conflicts in American history. Joining us now, MSNBC contributor Mike Barnicle, NBC News and MSNBC military analyst

and Medal of Honor recipient, retired Army Colonel Jack Jacobs, who served in Vietnam and was among one of the last combat soldiers to leave Vietnam, and president of the National Action Network, host of MSNBC's Politics Nation, Reverend Al Sharpton. So as we look back, Mike Barnicle, I'll give you the first question for Jack. General Jacobs, you arrived in country in 1967.

And I want to ask you about the composition of troops you served alongside with, because 1967, a lot of the people, young men in Vietnam, come from families whose fathers served in World War II. And there was an ethos in the country, a belief in the country. Cynicism had not yet ruled and dominated the culture the way it has going forward because of large things that happened in Vietnam,

the government actually lying to us. What's your view of the average soldier who arrived with you in 1967 compared to the belief that many people have today that the government is lying to us about everything? Well everything's changed, you know. We grew up in the shadow of the Second World War. Everybody had served. We had something like 19 or 20 million people in uniform. Everybody's father had served.

I had friends whose fathers were missing arms and legs. And I had friends who had no fathers at all, because they were killed in action during the war. And don't forget that that war ended only about 20 years, about 20 years before we got involved heavily in Vietnam. And so, yeah, we were still operating under the notion that if you were lucky enough to live in a free country, you owed it something in the form of service.

But President Johnson decided that, came to the conclusion, we couldn't have the war and have the kind of great society he wanted to build at the same time even though he told the public we can have guns and butter and the result of that was instead of having a draft like we had had before where everybody served we had a selective service and people went into the military, in some cases kicking and screaming because they had a low draft number and others didn't. And so there wasn't this overarching notion that you're supposed to serve, you had to serve, you were going to serve.

There was this notion that if you were lucky enough to be in college, for example, or you were married, you didn't have to serve. There was this notion that if you were lucky enough to be in college for example, or you were married you didn't have to serve. And so it was very very selective and that I think that's one of the things one of the things that divided the country. So Colonel Jack as you look back now it's hard to believe I'm saying this 50 years since the fall on 50 years old. I'm trying to do the math. As you look back with 50 years of hindsight, obviously you served incredibly bravely.

Go read the Commendation if you have not, alongside thousands of other, mostly young men who also served bravely. But how do you view not just your time there, but the war in general, the Vietnam War? Well, it was everybody in retrospect everybody said it was a big mistake, you know, it's really kind of interesting. We during the Second World War, we supported and advised Ho Chi Minh in his effort to keep the Japanese, kick the Japanese out. And when the war was over, Ho Chi Minh asked us if we wouldn't help him get

rid of the French. And we said no. And one of the reasons we said no is because France was in theory part of NATO, despite the fact that De Gaulle had taken French troops out of NATO. Nevertheless, we were concerned about the takeover of the world by communists, despite the fact that Ho Chi Minh was really just a nationalist in any cases. The communism, all that communism, not with the nonsense, not withstanding. And we decided not to. The worst thing that we did, of course, was to incrementalize our participation in the war.

And because we really wanted to do everything all at the same time, we sent a few troops in, then we sent a few more troops in, and when that didn't work, we sent a few more troops in. You know, when Mike talked about my getting there in 67, by the time I got there in 67, we already had half a million Americans in Vietnam conducting exactly the same kind of operations we had conducted since we first started there at none of which...I mean, individually, the operations we conducted were successful. They were tactically successful, but strategically, there was no strategic direction at the top of the food chain in Washington. And the result was that all of that sacrifice by all those brave troops on the ground, all that tactical success that we had had on the ground, none of that amounted to anything

because there was absolutely no strategic vision whatsoever. We didn't start at the end and work backwards. How is this war going to end? We never did that and that's what we should have done. So the Joe, the divisions that Jack's talking about, that the polarization that resulted from who was chosen to serve, who was required to serve, there was also a debate about the war itself and Rev Al and I were talking yesterday about MLK about the war itself and Ravel and I were talking yesterday about MLK standing with Muhammad Ali and standing up against LBJ on this war and even in this you know incredible moment where civil rights are being fought for that

that happened and a lot of people forget about that division. Yeah, there was there was great political division and obviously MLK came under withering, withering criticism as did Muhammad Ali for speaking out against a doomed war. And we're gonna talk to Rev about that in a minute. I do wanna go back to Colonel Jacobs though, because Colonel, we've been talking the past few days about how American politics is still defined by the divisions that were created by Vietnam War.

I'm curious, militarily, how did the failures of Vietnam, how did the tragedy of Vietnam, how did that shape military culture, military ethos moving forward? Well, it's kind of interesting. At the bottom of the food chain, when people are ardently trying to kill you, there is no concern or interest whatsoever in national politics at home, protests or any of that other stuff.

What you're trying to do is kill the bad guys, save the good guys and get everybody home. So at that level of analysis, there's no interest in politics. But like you suggest, there was an enormous impact on the psyche, not just in the military, about how to fight wars, but at the national command authority level, at the level of people who are making strategic decisions about how to fight wars. And the decision was made, I think, either implicitly or explicitly 50 years ago,

that we were not going to do that again. We were not going to incrementalize our participation in conflicts, that we were going to start at the end and work backwards, decide what it was we were going to try to accomplish and accomplish it. And, you know, what happened is that we never did follow our own guidance, and we did it again and again.

Just about every conflict in which we'd had a participation since then, we didn't learn any of the lessons we learned in Vietnam and instead always try to do it on the cheap. Ravel, now to MLK. What I think a lot of people don't understand is the politics of the time. Lyndon Johnson was a hero, particularly in the black community. My mother was from the South.

I was born and raised in Brooklyn. And I was in junior high school, and the war was happening. And my mother said, stay away from them hippies. Stay away from them anti-LBJ people, including some blacks that were considered in militant. And all of that changed when Martin Luther King came out and said he was opposed to the war. He was a Nobel Prize winner saying, I think this is wrong.

And he's going against a president who signed the Voting Rights Act, who signed the Civil Rights Act of 64. The head of the NAACP at the time, the head of the Urban League at the time, said, Dr. King, you're hurting our movement. And they attacked Dr. King and stood with Lyndon Johnson. And Jesse Jackson, who became a mentor to me, told me how on the morning of April 4, 1967, they were at the Americana Hotel, Jesse was on his staff, and Muhammad Ali knocked on the door and they

talked. And that day, Dr. King went to Riverside Church and made his sermon against the war in Vietnam. And it really mainstreamed the anti-war movement for many blacks and others in America who just started with some crazy radicals and hippies. Here was Martin Luther King standing up there, which changed a lot of the anti-war movement with Dr. Spock and Martin Luther King. Richard Haas, we went to Vietnam really

in the early 1960s in the war, obviously everybody and we're talking about it today, just mushroomed in terms of the composition of the troops, the numbers of troops there, and the objectives there. But it was the first time that we were really in someone else's country fighting not for them, but for us to get out of there. But years later, we've done it again and again. We've done it in Iraq.

We've done it again and again. We've done it in Iraq, we've done it in Afghanistan. What impact do you think the failure, the defeat of the United States in Vietnam had to do with the diplomacy going forward in terms of other countries that we invaded or went to? Well, in some ways, Mike, and it's a big question, there was a warning that we've often ignored. When you look back at Vietnam, I would put it's a big question, there was a warning that we've often ignored. When you look back at Vietnam, I would put it in the category of wars that I would call wars of choice.

It wasn't a war that the United States had to fight. It was a war that we elected to fight. And I would say the same thing applies, say, in Iraq in 2003, some of what we did in Afghanistan, or even earlier, when we went north of the 38th parallel in Korea. And it's a real lesson that wars of choice can really come back on you, because again, they're not necessity. You're asking people to pay the ultimate sacrifice

for something that arguably is not central to the national interest. And there's a danger in repeating wars of choice. There's dangers also, I think, in becoming isolationist. And indeed, one of the things we're seeing right now in American politics is the blowback from things like Vietnam, but also Iraq and Afghanistan. And it's just hard to get right.

One other thing though, Mike, I don't know about if you feel the same way. Here it is, 50 years to the day, April 30th, and all the predictions about what would follow. You know, and remember, the big idea of Vietnam was the domino theory, that if Vietnam fell, the rest of Southeast Asia and beyond would go communist, and guess what didn't happen? And we look at it, Asia and the Pacific has actually been the most successful region in the world, where American relationships have been as strong as anywhere else. So what's so interesting to me, looking back on it all, is how the predictions of

what would follow turned out to be wrong. And so, so much, arguably, of what was invested might not have been necessary. Right now, we've got a good relationship with Vietnam. The biggest threat to the region is either North Korea or or China so the the repercussions of leaving Vietnam which were predicted to be so dire which kept us in for many many more years during the Nixon and Ford administrations turned out to didn't pan out Jack I'm curious years later, just on a personal level, tell us about who you think of when you look back on occasions like this, among your band of brothers, those that you

fought with, those who you saw give their all for this country, and the valor that you saw every day you were there. You know, it's interesting that you mentioned everyday valor, but there was valor every day. Somebody once often asked about my award and the action that led to it. You know, there were a lot of brave people that day, and every Medal of Honor recipient will tell you exactly the same thing, that there were lots of brave people.

Somebody once asked Bob Carey, former governor of Nebraska, and a Medal of Honor recipient as a seal in Vietnam lost his leg. What does it take to receive the Medal of Honor? And he said, well, you've got to do something. People have to see it. They have to be able to write, and they can't hate you.

Those are the four requirements. So you think about all the people who served valorously in combat and nobody ever saw it. Or people did see it, and all the witnesses were killed. Or what happened from time to time, they wrote it up and the paperwork was either accidentally or in many cases on purpose destroyed. And you realize that everybody who's won a valorous award, earned a valorous award knows that he's worrying it

for somebody else, for those who didn't come back or performed valiantly and nobody saw it or the witnesses were killed. There was valor every day in combat when people are ardently trying to kill you and you're trying to take care of each other. There's a valorous act that takes place every second. And all of us who've been decorated for any reason know that we

just hold the medal that we were it's not ours we just hold it in trust for all those who didn't come back. NBC News and MSNBC military analyst and Medal of Honor recipient retired Colonel Jack Jacobs thank you for your service thank you for being here. Thanks Jackie.