Morning Joe - Morning Joe 4/7/25

Episode Date: April 7, 2025

Stock futures fall as Trump continues to defend tariffs

I know what the numbers mean, okay? They mean we're going to make America wealthy again. Mawah! Mawah, Moran. You know, you're going to check your stock portfolio in a couple days and think, I'm almost too wealthy. We're doing Mawah. But before that, we're going to do Magda.

Magda, make America Great Depression again. You know what, it'll be better than great. It'll be a fantastic, unbelievable depression, the likes of which you've never seen before. We like to say the likes of which we've never seen before. You know, this depression is gonna be so great. We'll be the ones eating the cats and the dogs. That's gonna be fun. is going to be so great. We'll be the ones eating the cats and the dogs. That's going to be fun. Glow them slow. You got to braise them. You know, yes, the stock market has crashed temporarily, but that is all part of the plan. It's simple economics, OK? If the stock market goes down and down and down and down and down, that means there's nowhere to go but up or perhaps

further down. That means there's nowhere to go but up or perhaps further down. That was Saturday Night Live's cold open take on President Trump's tariff policies. He remains committed to the tariff rollout, calling them a beautiful thing to behold. But they continue to sink stock markets worldwide this morning as the U.S. futures board is down big for the third consecutive trading day. Meanwhile, there seems to be some daylight between the president's top cabinet leaders. We're going to go through the comments from the Treasury and Commerce Secretaries.

Also ahead, we'll get insight on an alarming move by the Trump administration to fire the head of the National Security Agency. Plus we'll have the latest on a Maryland man to the DOJ admits was mistakenly deported to a prison in El Salvador as well as the Trump administration's response to a judge's order to return the man to the US. Good morning everyone. Welcome to Morning Joe. It is Monday, April 7th. With us, we have the cohost of our fourth hour, Jonathan LaMere.

He's a contributing writer at The Atlantic, covering the White House and national politics. U.S. special correspondent for BBC News, and the host of The Rest Is Politics podcast, Cady K. is with us. President Emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, Richard Haas is here. He's the author of the weekly newsletter, Home and Away, available on Substack, and Roger's chair in the American presidency at Vanderbilt University, historian John Meacham.

He's an MSNBC political analyst. Let's look briefly at the headlines today, what the papers are saying, the Wall Street Journal, of course, talking about the tariffs, erasing the economy's solid outlook. Now talk of recession, over 50%. Yukon wins, Mika. And that's nice. I will say, a story we're gonna be be getting to and one that is deeply disturbing is Trump

eroding cyber defenses. As perils increase, we're going to be talking about that in a bit. Of course, the reports of Laura Luhm are going in, a conspiracy theorist going into the White House and demanding the firing of top NSA officials. They were, in fact, fired. The most disturbing on the Hill, but again, we'll see if Republicans actually do anything about it, say anything about it.

The most disturbing, of course, being the man who's been in charge of America's cyber defense and has done a pretty damn good job. And this firing coming at a time when in fact China and Russia and other countries are more aggressively trying to break into America's cyber defenses and China of course having opportunities. This was on the front page of Sunday Opinion of the New York Times. And this pretty much sums it up. The world wakes up to a new global reality. The economy is deflating. I just want to say, as we go through the next four hours, I think it's important. You see here that banks and, of course, Wall Street, big losers down below low.

You see one of the reasons maybe that Ted Cruz was talking about bloodletting is because oil right now is just collapsing. It's being driven down towards 60. it's being driven down towards 60. So we're having recessions on every front. But I just want you to, as we go through this and we talk about it, we're going to be talking a lot about Wall Street, we're going to be talking about global markets. I just want you to realize that this weekend, and today, this weekend what you saw and what you're going to see today is you're going to see billionaires that work in the administration talking on networks that are pretending like there's nothing to see here. They're going to be talking to hosts who are millionaires, who are going to be telling

middle-class and and working class Americans, small business owners, entrepreneurs, people that have spent their entire lives building up their family restaurants, or their family businesses, or their family, I don't know, import export businesses. They're gonna tell them, don't worry, nothing to worry about. This had to be done. And it's just important that you remember, as you're looking at everybody on Wall Street, looking at screens like this, small business people, right, family business owners, working-class

Americans are the ones who are not going to be protected in the end. We learned this in 2008. Right? How many bankers went to jail? How many traders went to jail? I think one, maybe. So so as we talk about this and we're at 30,000 feet talking about the stock market and talking about banks and talking about oil and talking

about all the people that are going to be hurt. Those trickle-down effects are going to be felt by working Americans who can afford it the least. They're being told by billionaires that there's nothing to see here. They're being told by millionaire talking heads on other networks, there's nothing to see here. It's a war that we had to enter. No, no, let's be very clear here. Regardless of how you feel about tariffs, this is a self-induced war that we started.

All right? All right, this is voluntary. I spent three months after the election warning Republicans they needed to be careful. Three months. We've got about 10 minutes of clips we could play you. We've already done it before. I could play it again. 10 minutes of clips saying be very careful. We have the strongest economy in the world, but we have bubbles in the market, stock market, we have bubbles in crypto, we have a fiscal bubble. Be very careful, manage it wisely, and we will continue to see working

Americans taken care of. That's not happening right now. So it's gonna be fascinating to see what happens this week. What's gonna happen this week with Republicans? Are they really Republicans? By the way, Republicans in Congress have the power, have the power. Didn't stop it to moderate it, depict certain countries that they think it's going to go too far. You know, there are some Republicans speaking out. Chuck Grassley has spoken out about it.

Ben Shapiro says it's unconstitutional. Bill Ackman, huh? He saw the light. How could Bill Ackman ever have seen this coming? How? How? How could... Oh, wait a second. This is exactly what Donald Trump promised for years.

In fact, he's been talking about this since 1987, all right? So he believes in this. So people on the Wall Street are going, oh my God, I'm so shocked. How could this ever happen? I supported him, but I really didn't think he was... What do you mean? He's been saying tariffs are beautiful, beautiful things while the rest of the world has been saying, no, they're not. They're dangerous. This is what made the Great Depression extraordinarily bad and extended it. Right? So you knew. You knew, Bill Ackman. I'm sorry somebody at a college said something that offended you. I'm sorry, like, oh, we've got to fight against the woke warrior.

Well, I agree with that, too. But you don't have to do it by blowing up the world economy. So we'll see what happens. But here's the thing. Always remember, if you hear anybody today, tomorrow, next week say, oh, this had to be done, now that's not true. That's double-speak. And if you hear Republicans saying, we can't do anything about it, that's just a lie.

That's just a lie. They have the constitutional power to decide. Our 49 percent tariff tariffs too much in Vietnam. Maybe it should be 20%. Let's round off the edges. Let's make it a little less tough on American businesses. EU are those two tough. Let's talk to the president.

Maybe we can come together and come up with something that's not quite as extreme. You're not going to see that this week. You may not even see it next week. I just want you to know, though, when they're telling you this has to be done, that's not true. And when they're telling you these Republicans on the hill, we can't do anything about it, well, that's just a lie. It's double-speak. With that in mind, President Trump's tariffs have stock futures plummeting again this morning the dow is down more than eleven hundred points while the s&p 500 and the nasdaq have both dropped by three percent this follows a market freefall to end the trading week capped off by the dow losing 2200 points on friday it was the first time that the index had ever lost more than 1500 points in back to back

days. The massive losses were also fueled by China announcing on Friday it would impose a 34 percent tariff on all goods imported from the United States beginning this Thursday. Meanwhile, President Trump continues to downplay the tanking markets, writing on social media last night that his tariffs are a beautiful thing to behold. Minutes after that post, he spoke to reporters on Air Force One. There's been some speculation, partly because of the video that was posted on Truth Social, that there was some sort of deliberate effort on your part to have the market sell off.

Can you talk about that? No, that's not so. But I do want to solve the deficit problem that we have with China, with the European Union and other nations. And they're going to have to do that. And if they want to talk about that, I'm open to talking. But otherwise, why would I want to talk? Is there any way that you can talk about the deficit problem that you have with China, with

the European Union and other nations? And if they want to talk about that, I'm open to talking. But otherwise, why would I want to talk? Is there pain in the market? At some point, you're unwilling to tolerate this idea of a Trump vote? Is there a threshold? I think your question is so stupid. I mean, I think it's a, I don't want anything to go down. But sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something. So, Mika, of course, you had the administration, and you had the administration, and you had the administration to do the work. And I think that's a very important point.

I think that's a very important point. I think that's a very important point. I think that's a very important point. I think that's a very important point. I think that's a very important point. I think that's a very important point. I think that's a very important point. I think that's a very important point.

I think that's a very important point. I think that's a very important point. I think that's a very important point. I think that's a very important point. I think that's a very important point. I think that's a very important point. I think that's a very important point. I think that's a very important point. I think that's anything to go down. But sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something. So, Mika, of course, you had the administration officials, mainly billionaires. It's quite a look, isn't it?

While working-class Americans and middle-class Americans are getting lined up for a new recession where they're suffering, billionaires are sent out to talk. But this is from The Washington Post. Some quotes here. Elon Musk, of course, said that he hoped that the United States would eliminate tariffs, got into a fight with other members of the administration. You actually have Charles Koch leading a lawsuit against the tariffs, while Republicans in both chambers are organizing

a legislative effort to roll them back. Not enough yet for it to matter. And this Bill Ackman said, the risk of not doing so will drive the economy into a recession, possibly a severe one. And he talked about an economic nuclear winter. Well, but then again, you know, somebody said something on a college campus that upset Bill once.

Ben Shapiro, the right-wing pundit and co-founder of the Daily Wire, called Tariff's quote, probably unconstitutional. What, as far as whether it's constitutional or not, the president has declared emergency powers right now and and is using using actually vehicles that have never been used before for terror. So there is a constitutional question and I I don't know how the Supreme Court's going to again conclude this but any power the president has

here has been given by Congress. Congress can take it back if they choose. Again, they probably won't choose to because I don't, it's again. You have one way out of this. I wonder I wonder what legislators in Texas and Oklahoma and other oil states are seeing as we go towards 60. And then it goes oil goes below 60. And I mean, it seems like they're going to just sit back and let the economy implode if we keep moving in this direction. I hope we don't. I'm really hoping that that again sort of there will be a moderating influence on these these extreme tariff numbers. But

right now, doesn't look like any Republicans willing to do that. Well, and President Trump's cabinet officials hit the Sunday talk shows to defend his tariffs. And we heard some conflicting messages. Here are Treasury Secretary Scott Besson and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. The president on Saturday urging people, quote, to hang tough, saying it won't be easy. And I guess the big question on people's minds, Mr. Secretary, how difficult is it going to be, and how long are Americans going to have to hang tough?

Well, again, I reject that assumption. There doesn't have to be a recession. Who knows how the market is going to react in a day in a week. What we are looking at is building the long term economic fundamentals for prosperity. Can you help provide some clarity for folks? How long will this period of uncertainty be? Are we talking about weeks? Are we talking about months?

Are we talking about years? Again, this is an adjustment process. Let me just ask you, is President Trump willing to negotiate or are these tariffs permanent? Well, I think that's going to be a decision for President Trump, but I can tell you that as only he can do at this moment, he's created maximum leverage for himself. And more than 50 countries have approached the administration about lowering their non-tariff trade barriers, lowering their tariffs, stopping currency manipulation.

They've been bad actors for a long time and it's not the kind of thing you can negotiate away in days or weeks. There's no postponing. They are definitely going to stay in place for days and weeks. That is sort of obvious. The president needs to reset global trade. Everybody has a trade surplus, and we have a trade deficit. We are paying away our future and our lives.

Yeah, OK. Anyway, I'm just curious, Richard Haas, if you've been seeing the Treasury Secretary over the past week, he looks about as comfortable as a New York Giants head coach predicting a Super Bowl championship next year. He is not, Scott Bessett, not comfortable with what's going on. You can see he's not comfortable with what's going on because he doesn't know a single person around him that he's worked with for the past 30 years in the markets, comfortable with

what's going on. That's exactly right. Look, Joe, let's just call this what it is. And you got at it. One is this is an economic war of choice. This is not something that had to happen. This is what football players would call an own goal. Second of all, the president, I have the quote here, he says that sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something. The problem was the patient wasn't sick.

This is economic malpractice. Let's call it for what it is. It's created problems rather than fixed them. So when Scott Besson goes out and he talks to his friends, of course he can't find anybody who's going to support what is going on. And then the mixed signals make a bad situation worse. So let's just call it for what it is.

It's totally self-created. And the real question is, one, how do we get ourselves out of it? But we shouldn't kid ourselves on another thing. Even if there is a degree of economic recovery, someday there will be in the markets, a lot of the damage here will be lasting. The United States will not, again, ever have the same reputation. The dollar won't have the same strength. The rest of the world's willingness to tolerate American debt will be much diminished. This will have lasting consequences even if at some point

what's become our 301s becomes a 351, even if it doesn't recover fully to a 401k, even if there's a degree of financial recovery, the reputational cost of this will be deep and lasting. It's pretty extraordinary right now. I want to underline though and I think this is very important as you hear Bill Ackman being shocked by what's going on and you hear Elon Musk actually striking back at other members in the administration. Jonathan LaMere, it bears repeating for those on Wall Street who are acting shocked, for those in middle America shocked by what's going on right now, it bears repeating President Trump, when he was candidate Trump, on the campaign trail, constantly promised this is exactly what he was going to do. This is not a surprise. Now, the severity of it took back even some of Trump's supporters,

but he told us he was going to do this. He was at rallies night after night all over this country and was cheered when he said he would levy these tariffs against China and the rest now what we've seen here is business leaders had convinced themselves this was a bluff. This was a negotiating tactic they recall his first term where yes he did put some tariffs in place but they were not as big as expected they had some minimal impact that you know all the took them off put them back on took them off they

thought this was a negotiating ploy even in the early weeks of this term he was really inconsistent with the application of tariffs willing to hold off on things willing to reduce things but now they're here liberation day arrived and the tariffs were very real and they were significant in business leaders just now and some of his billionaire friends are catching up with what that really means and it's not just them of course this is impacting every day Americans a

significant part of Americans. This is not something that just matters to billionaires a significant part of Americans do have money in the markets they have retirement accounts there they've watched them evaporate over the last 2 days in preparing for more losses. Today and also in the weeks days and weeks ahead we're gonna see the impact with prices as well as the goods that are coming overseas with these new tariffs will suddenly cost a lot more and these are voters many of them Trump voters who are going to pay as much of a price here as anyone else it is he told

us he was going to do it, and at least for now, he's sticking with it, pain be damned. We wanna get right to CNBC, the anchor of worldwide exchange. Frank Hollmond is with us. Frank, tell us what things are looking like. Well, Megan, Joe, good morning to you. Great to see you as always.

So I think most of us are familiar with the idea of the rule of threes, but when it comes to a potentially historic three-day sell-off, looking at futures, all three major indices down 2.5% or more, sparked by the tariff and Trump policy of the Trump administration. Investors, they just continue to try to figure out what are the rules and what's coming up next. So here's what we know for sure right now.

More than $5 trillion in U.S. stock market value wiped away on Thursday and Friday. Another $2 trillion in market value around the world if you exclude the U.S. stock market value, wiped away on Thursday and Friday another $2 trillion in market value around the world if you exclude the U.S. and the reciprocal tariffs scheduled for April the 9th. They are still on the table. So today, Morgan Stanley out, saying to expect another 7% to 8% decline in the S&P 500 as tariffs weigh on the economy and investor sentiment. We seem to get some clarity about those April 9 tariffs from the president yesterday, where he said he'd be open to deal with China. That follows a lot of conflicting reports for days about if the tariffs are in fact negotiable.

But unlike other times, when the administration or reports indicated a deal or possibly a more measured approach was on the table, the markets, they did not respond positively today. So on my show, Worldwide Exchange, we had a highly respected market voice, Stephanie Link of Hightower. She says she's buying some stocks, in particular, Metta and Chipotle, seeing some opportunity in those declines. However, our Jim Cramer, taking the complete other side of the argument, he advised against any quote unquote buying the dip today.

He also said he would hold cash until we see a potential response from the EU on these tariffs. And this morning we're getting a lot of international response today. The German economic minister talking pretty tough about standing up to the U.S. Also the Prime Minister Japan scheduled to talk to the president this morning. And China today also accusing the U.S. of quote unquote economic bullying when it comes to tariffs. Even calling on representatives of American companies including Tesla to take concrete actions to resolve these tariffs. And with all this we have several big banks raising their odds of a recession.

Our exclusive CNBC CEO survey today, released today, has nearly 60% of CEOs seeing a recession this year. And then, of course, we got something coming up. One month from today, we have a Fed decision. A lot of questions about how our central bank will respond to all this uncertainty. All right, Frank Holland, CNBC. Thank you, Frank. Thank you so much. Good to see you.

Hold on tight, baby. It's going to be a crazy day. Crazy day. You know, Cady, we've had people buying the dip on Thursday and Friday and getting crushed. Seems to me anybody, Frank was just talking about people going on his show, talking about buying the dip. It seems like deciding to go swim when the red flags are out in Pensacola Beach and there's

a massive undertow. We really, again, because this isn't driven by market forces. This is driven by what the President of the United States decides he's going to do next. It seems, unless you can read Donald Trump's mind, and I've yet to find anybody who can, unless you can read Donald Trump's mind, this seems to be very perilous.

In fact, perilous for foreign governments who don't know what's coming next. Okay, full disclaimer, when Morning Joe is coming to me for the idea of stock market tips and whether we should be buying the dip, you really know the right world has gone crazy, right? Exactly. So, I mean, I think there are sort of short-term and long-term calculations, and every foreign

leader in Europe, as with every trader that Frank was talking to, has been watching what the members of the administration were saying over the weekend and what the president said last night for some kind of hints about how long this is all going to last. Is this the new regime that is going to be in place in America for the next six months, year, three years, in which case investors into the country will have to start thinking actually maybe I do have to start thinking about building that factory but nobody really seems to believe that's the case. You've got the president touting the fact and the president's aides touting the fact

that you've got foreign leaders calling to make backroom deals, if they can, around these tariffs. And that adds to the confusion. When I was in Germany recently and I was speaking to people who do infrastructure projects, they told me, look, if I'm thinking of building a factory in the US or some kind of infrastructure project, that's a five-year or 10-year proposition. In that period of time, you're gonna have a midterm,

you're gonna have a general election, you're gonna have another midterm, you're gonna have another general election. How on earth do I rely on the fact that this is going to be the status quo for the United States in its trading relationships with other countries? I can't possibly. So for the moment, people are just thinking, right, I'm going to sit tight,

not make any investment decisions. And that, economists are telling me, is one of the worst things for the U.S. economy. And that's why everyone's talking about not just this stock market collapse, but the prospect of a recession in America rising considerably. Well, and the possibility also coming of stagflation increasing again. It seems to me most of the big banks upping their predictions on recession hitting the United States later this year. Again, when we come back, we're going to be talking to John Meacham about the world waking up to a new global reality and following up on what Richard's talking about, what it means for

the United States and its role in the world. Also still ahead on Morning Joe, President Trump fires the head of the National Security Agency. We're going to talk about the implications of that move and how it's part of a broader pattern of Trump taking vengeance on his perceived enemies. Plus, a federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to return a Maryland manned who is mistakenly deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador. We'll have the latest on that legal fight. If Trump's plans were ever implemented, the country would sink into prolonged recession.

A few examples. His proposed 35 percent tariff-like penalties would instigate a trade war, and that would raise prices for consumers, kill our export jobs, and lead entrepreneurs and businesses of all stripes to flee America. But you say, wait, wait, wait, isn't he a huge business success? Doesn't he know what he's talking about? No, he isn't. And no, he doesn't. His... Successfully bringing jobs home requires serious policy and reforms that make America the place

businesses want to come, want to plant and want to grow. You can't punish business into doing what you want. That was former Republican Utah Senator Mitt Romney back in 2016 making the case Donald Trump arguing that if Trump were to win the presidency his policies would lead to a recession. So John Meacham interesting interesting hearing Mitt Romney from nine years ago I guess my gosh nine years ago, offering that warning. And it's a warning that we've heard time and time and time again, and yet here we are. What is the impact, do you think, short-term and long-term on the United States and its standing in the world?

Well, the grand answer, the universal answer,, as you said, and you've written about, the order that really began with World War II, victory in World War II, and the institutions that President Truman and President Eisenhower and presidents of both parties, administrations of congresses of both parties, basically supported and strengthened, which was that we were in fact at the center of what we hoped would be the march, however perhaps stutter-stepped at times, of liberal democracy. As the Wall Street Journal said, free trade, free men, the free exchange of ideas, we would actually tear down walls, not build them. And in that sense, the old saw was democracies trade with each other, they don't go to war

with each other. And so that's the big view, right? The slightly more elemental one, which I think is still as large, is, as Lincoln said, all of us act on incentive. And basically, the question is going to be, will President Trump succeed in sufficient ways with what's unfolding, that it continues to feed and meet whatever incentive he set for himself. And it's pretty straightforward.

Seems to me, as we've been talking about, suddenly he might actually start hearing from some Republican senators who are hearing from the international businesses that are in their states. But until, if and until, the president shifts his incentive structure in his mind to judge how he's successful and how he's not, then I think we continue to head off this cliff. If he changes that, if he decides that his success is somehow going to be strengthened by doing something different, then he'll do it. But the fact that we're all talking about, and everything I've said is wrapped up in,

the will and whims of one man is what we weren't supposed to have to deal with in this country. But here we are. Hey, John, let me just push you a little bit. Just say the president one day hears enough criticism and declares victory and walks back at least some of the tariffs. To what extent, though, does the rest of the world, even if they breathe something of a sigh of relief, to what extent, though, is there still no going back? That if we look at this 80-year run, the fact that this president got reelected, he's done this radical stuff on tariffs, he's done what he's done on Ukraine and Russia

and so forth. To what extent, essentially, is the damage essentially done? And this order, this economic and strategic order that's run eight decades has pretty much now run its course. I fear you're right. It's the kind of question that I would think, you know, I need an answer to that. I should find Richard Haass. So I think, you know, I remember President Biden's story about Emmanuel Macron and the

president, President Biden walks into an early meeting and says America is back. And Macron, I believe it was Macron, says, yes, but for how long? Well, it turned out it was 48 months. And so I think this is long term. As you know, Richard, part of the thinking of the key figures and the architects of this era, including Franklin Roosevelt, was there was a significant amount of personal trust that had to be part of the lives of nations. FDR said in his last inaugural, we've learned that the only way to have a friend is to be one. And you don't bully friends into doing what you want. You build relationships, you show that there's reciprocity, and you show that you can be there even when it's not particularly convenient for you. What we've now done, and I say we, because 49.9 percent, a dispositive number of Americans

voted for it, is we've decided to walk away from something, as you have said, and I agree with, in this kind of economic war of choice. Final point, if you're Donald Trump, what in the—since Mitt Romney gave that speech, in the last eight years, what in your life experience suggests that there's any price to pay for anything at all? Just sit with that for a second, right? This is a very element. This is a man who is pretty much transparent, right? I mean, we can sort of see, you know, if you didn't listen about the tariffs, you should have, you know.

So what is it about the experience he's had that would enable him to moderate? I worry that there's not a lot. All right. On that note, we've got to get to the other big story making headlines this morning. So after the break, we're going to talk about President Trump's firing of the head of the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command, its rattled lawmakers, and may have weakened America's cyber defenses at a time when risks, especially around our elections, are on the rise.

We'll have that in just a moment. All right. Twenty minutes before the top of the hour, a live look at the White House as the sun has yet to come up over Washington. Our other big story this morning, the New York Times noting that President Trump's firing of the head of the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command has rattled lawmakers and may have weakened America's cyber defenses at a time when risks are on the rise. Air Force General Timothy D. Ha was dismissed on Thursday after far-right conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer met

with a president and reportedly advised Trump to fire him, claiming Ha was disloyal. According to the paper, Ha's removal is the latest in a series of moves that have stripped down America's cyber defenses. Reading from the Times, quote, his dismissal came after weeks in which the Trump administration swept away nearly all of the government's election-related cyber defenses beyond the secure NSA command centers at Fort Meade, Maryland. At the same time, the administration has shrunk much of the nation's complex early warning

system for cyber attacks, a web through which tech firms work with the FBI and intelligence agencies to protect the power grid, also pipelines and telecommunication networks. Jonathan Lemire, let's talk about this. Was this key firing because of the advice of a conspiracy theorist? In part, yes. We know that Donald Trump, throughout the campaign, promised retribution. He believed that in his first term, the deep state worked against him and that there were guardrails in his administration.

This time around, we have no guardrails. There's no H.R. McMaster in the room this time. There's no John Kelly. It is people like Stephen Miller who are totally empowered. And we have seen him systematically purge the ranks of people believed to be disloyal to him. Laura Loomer came into the White House people believed to be disloyal to him. Laura Loomer came into the White House,

a conspiracy theorist, you'll recall. She spent a lot of time with him on the road over the summer. Eventually, it raised so many eyebrows that members of the Trump team pushed her off Air Force One. So she's been less a round of late. That changed last week. And she came into the meeting. National Security Advisor Walz was there as well,

trying to defend members of his team and she pointed out by name those that she deemed disloyal some of whom worked for General Mark Milley the former Joint Chief Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff who is of course Trump is perceived as an enemy so that is at least in part what is going around on right now is that it's a purge conspiracy theorist has had her voice listened and the timing suggests this played a real role and now there are no guardrails to check that this time around. So let's bring in NBC News national security editor David Rode for more. David, I mean we have gone on many times on this show about how dangerous a character

Laura Loomer is, a bigot. We can just say it. But let's talk about the impact of these moves right now. Because it comes at a moment where cyberattacks, of course, are on the rise. And the people that I talked to over the weekend about this say, these dismissals leave in the US extremely vulnerable at a time of real global tension. And we'd be particularly susceptible

to attack at the next election. And that's the real fear here. So General Haw who was fired, he has worked for 30 years in the Air Force. He worked for Republican and Democratic administrations. His deputy Wendy Noble joined the NSA as a civilian in 1987 during the Reagan administration and worked her way up. You have Laura Loomer who is 31 years old, has run twice for Congress and lost, and she is a podcaster who's getting these two people with tremendous expertise fired. And there's no clear evidence that they are disloyal.

It was simply what she herself posted on X was simply that they worked under the Biden administration and they were therefore disloyal. It was simply what she herself posted on X was simply that they worked under the Biden administration and they were therefore disloyal. And there's an unprecedented threat, I think economically. Ransomware for Americans themselves, for American companies is bigger than ever, and most of all China. Salt typhoon, the massive and unprecedented penetration of the whole US telecommunication system by Chinese government hackers is extraordinary.

And now we are, I think, less able to defend ourselves from that threat. So Richard, let's get you in on this. We know this is part of how nations go to war or at least prod other rivals vulnerabilities is by cyber attacks. This would seem to be exactly the wrong time to weaken our defenses. This is unilateral surrender. Cyber is an ongoing war. What's so interesting about it, normally we think when you cross borders with armies,

okay, that's obviously war. Well, we cross borders with cyber attacks. Since this show has begun, thousands have happened. This is an ongoing conflict in the world. So this kind of taking down our defenses makes no sense. Also listening to David, it seems to me there's a difference going on here. President got rid of people like CQ Brown, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and others because they were quote unquote, you know, interested in diversity or they work for Joe Biden. I get that. This though seems to me more than

the purge of generals. This seems to me almost a kind of grievance. I want to...it's always dangerous to talk about motives, but the president has had a running battle with cyber authorities for years over particularly Russian attacks on America and whether that affected the previous elections. Is this, in some ways, do you think linked to that, that this is about his longstanding grievance over cyber authorities who have publicly said Russia has, in fact, attacked the United States for the purpose of manipulating our politics. It is.

And this is the core problem of our age, like what is fact and what isn't. And that's, you know, going back to Laura Loomer's role, she has said that the 9-11 attacks were an inside job. She said that the wife of Governor DeSantis, Casey DeSantis, lied about having cancer. And those claims are not true. So it's alarming and it does play into this sense of grievance though, that there wasn't Russian influence in the 2020 election or the 2016 election. Again, Marco Rubio as the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee or vice

chair agreed to this report that came out in 2017 or after that, but about that there was Russian interference. So basic facts are being changed and it does create a vulnerability in terms of foreign influence in future elections. David, what's your reasoning behind this? Because we know the history of the impact of foreign interference, particularly through cyber, on US elections. And we know that that hasn't stopped. As Richard was saying, we have trade wars. We have cyber wars.

Thank god at the moment we don't have a shooting war. But let's see what happens with that one. Why would it be that there's a movement inside the White House that says we shouldn't be protecting ourselves from cyber attacks from Russia potentially? What's the ideological thinking that underpins that? There's a belief that it's simply made up by Democrats to censor Republicans to undermine President Trump.

And there was actually one of the findings of the Biden administration cyber officials was that Iran ran fake propaganda against Donald Trump in 2024, it was an explicit campaign. Iran did not want Trump to be reelected. Arguably he's been tougher on Iran than Biden was, but even that wasn't enough. It's just a continuing sense that of censorship and

that any effort to regulate speech or any effort to hold social media platforms accountable for speech is some liberal effort. It's a very troubling pattern because again foreign countries will take advantage of that. It's not about like frankly one candidate or the other. It's about sowing confusion and division in the or the other it's about sowing confusion and division in the united states it's about making americans doubt the results of elections who actually won who won how many votes and that deeply divides our society and is incredibly dangerous so david let's talk about speaking of incredibly dangerous let's talk about

how americans could be impacted in their daily lives. Because cyber wars, Richard says, the threats are becoming greater. You brought up our telecom systems being hacked into by the Chinese. When we let our cyber defenses down, I know we've all been talking about elections here, but let's talk about what impacts Americans every day. Power grids being hacked into, water supplies being hacked into, entire systems being shut down, phone systems being shut down, banking systems being shut down. These are the threats that the general who was fired and so many people work on every day.

Because if you're sitting out there and you think that anybody's catastrophizing when we say that the Chinese, the Russians, the Iranians, you name it, all of the people who consider the United States an enemy, if you think they are not trying to shut down our power grids, shut down our water supply, shut down our banking systems, shut down the world, our air airline defenses, air traffic control. They're trying to do it every single day, David. How does

that impact this? And how do, for God's sake, how do Republicans on the Hill counter this threat? How do they step in? What needs to be done to make sure that these systems that the Chinese have already began hacking in on, that these systems are protected? You need to work more with the private sector because there's many innovative tech companies that can help with this. That has decreased under this administration and you're absolutely right it's hybrid warfare if there's some sort of you know

confrontation over Taiwan with China the Chinese will and there's actually military engagement there's no question they will shut down power grids there's been reporting by my colleagues about water systems near US military bases having a Chinese you know cyber weapons inside of the systems to shut them down. They'll shut down the financial system, the communication system to paralyze the US. So it's an extraordinarily dangerous

and sort of backward movement when we're facing a new form of national security threat. One of the officials, quote on the Times, said this was the equivalent, and it was a former Biden official saying, this is the equivalent of letting down the draw bridge and opening up the United States to even more cyber attacks. All right. NBC News National Security Editor David Rhoade will be following this with you.

Thank you very much for coming on this morning. And coming up, a federal judge has ordered the U.S. government to return the Maryland man who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador's notorious mega prison, saying federal officials had acted without legal basis and his detention appears wholly lawless. We'll dig into that new development ahead on morning Joe. All right. Few minutes before the top of the hour. Time now to take a look at some of the other stories making headlines this morning. Parts of the South and Midwest will finally get a break this week. After days of unrelenting storms,

there are at least 18 deaths connected with the severe weather from Kentucky to Arkansas. Severe flooding has prompted water rescues, road closures and evacuation orders in Texas. A second child has died from measles amid a fast growing outbreak in that state, according to Children's Hospital in Lubbock, the eight year old girl was receiving treatment for complications from measles while hospitalized. HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has faced criticism for his handling of the outbreak, attended the child's funeral yesterday. According to the New York Times, he met with the family but did not speak at the ceremony.

Since January, there have nearly been 500 cases of measles in Texas alone. And of course, Jonathan O'Meara, we just have to say here again, measles eradicated around 2000. It has been a deliberate effort to undermine vaccines, to undermine the efficacy of measles vaccines and talk about basically hocus pocus, witchcraft, you know, saying, oh, if you do this or if you do that, when we have a safe and effective vaccine that eradicated measles, this is a choice, and this is a choice that people like the HHS secretary had been like pushing on parents across America to not do What he did with his children and give them a vaccine. Yeah, these are the consequences measles

eradicated but over the last couple of decades we've had a systematic effort to undermine the confidence in vaccines. We've now seen measles on the rise. A second child has lost their life and the at the forefront of these conspiracy theories attacking vaccines, the health secretary of the United States. Yeah, I mean, if he wants to stop going to Children's funerals, if he wants to stop having having to having to be at these tragic events, he can just tell the truth. He can just tell the truth about the measles vaccine and get on the forefront of aggressively

promoting it. So these children in Texas, their parents, their family members, children across America don't have to suffer what, my God, nobody was having to endure at the turn of the century, because we had eradicated measles.