Morning Joe - Morning Joe 5/13/25
Episode Date: May 13, 2025Trump arrives in Riyadh hoping to make big deals ...
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I don't think any of us expected him to accept a luxury 747 jet from Qatar.
That's Qatari Air Force One.
You know their slogan.
Yes, yes, speak louder into the tray table.
Qatar is giving us a plane that Trump gets to keep.
He's like the reverse Oprah.
I get a jet and that's it.
I...
Yeah, the 89-passenger luxury plane has wood finishes,
custom carpets, and gold walls.
The only thing it doesn't have is a way
to safely land at Newark Airport.
That's the only thing it doesn't have.
Oh, we're gonna have much more on both those stories, actually.
No plane can land safely there, yeah.
Well, and now, apparently, the problem might not just be at Newark.
We'll get to that in a moment and more on this gift to President Trump, including criticism
coming from some Republican senators.
Meanwhile, the president is in Saudi Arabia this morning, kicking off a four-day trip
across the Middle East.
We'll go through what he's hoping to accomplish
while overseas.
Also ahead, we'll dig into the temporary tariff deal
with China and how the market is responding.
And we'll have the latest
on the air traffic controller staffing issues
at Newark Airport, which appear to be spreading
to other travel hubs across the country.
We'll explain that.
Good morning, and welcome to Morning Joe.
It is Tuesday, May 13.
Along with Joe, Willie, and me, we
have the co-host of our fourth hour contributing writer
at the Atlantic, Jonathan Lemire.
Columnist and associate editor for The Washington Post,
David Ignatius joins us, and co-founder and CEO of Axios,
Jim Van De Hei is here with us. And Joe, we have a lot to get to this morning,
including what happened last night. Yeah, I will tell you. Yeah.
Can I just say I'm surprised Willie Lemire is on his feet. It was like getting a one,
two blow from Ali, like in Zaire. You expect expected to go down on the floor. I mean you've got
first of all our Red Sox losing like 13 to one that was brutal
but you always think well the Sox loss the Celtics you know
best team in basketball they're going to win.
And I guess I'm shocked I really am I thought after the
third game and both this series and also the Cav series that you'd have the Cavs and the Celtics come back and play to form just the opposite.
Went wildly wrong and in the other direction for both of those favorites. Talk about last night at the Garden, what it means to the Knicks fans who haven't won a championship since 1973.
Well it was a great night for the Knicks they were down 14 in the third quarter they came all the
way back to win the game it had the feel of those first two games when they got in a hole the Celtics
were shooting the three ball incredibly well last night the Knicks come back to win the game. The garden is rocking but the story of the game really is the
injury to Jason Tatum right here. This was late in the game
he was playing brilliantly at 42 points one of those
legendary performances. Jordan like Reggie Miller like show he
was putting on a non-contact injury goes down to the floor
in just excruciating pain.
He's grabbing the back of his ankle.
He's got an MRI today.
We don't know what it is, but most people think it could be an Achilles injury.
We know how serious that is.
That's a year recovery for one of the years for one of the league's great stars,
John Lemire. So, yeah, as a Knicks fan, I'm thrilled that we're up three to one.
I'm thrilled that Brunson was so good and mckale bridges was
so good in the second half they played really well, but as you
can see the next clapping for Tatum as he left the floor just
a devastating injury and it was that image of him
back into going to the locker room in a wheelchair with his
face buried in his hands that was the heartbreaker.
Yeah, it was here they always say the 19th title is the
hardest. Now the Celtics devastating for many ways but
let's start with giving its credit.
Jalen Brunson was immense down the stretch the Knicks couldn't
miss a shot in the second half towns was good bridges was
good. The crowd was great. The Knicks are in this win to be
clear. The Celtics also did other than Derek
White no one else showed up to help Jason Tatum last night
they were diminished or injured they play poorly and the
Tatum thing is really hard to see as Willie just said we
don't know what this is just yet the team simply said last
night he's going for an MRI this morning. But there is a
belief that is a serious injury. Whether it's an ankle,
but most likely an
Achilles tendon.
And I think you saw him there, the way he was spiraling on the ground.
It was pain, but also I think fear.
He knows that if that's an Achilles tendon, that's not just this season, that's probably
next year too.
He's 27 years old.
He's one of the best players in the league, you know, and to suddenly have your prime
cut short by this.
And it's a long road back we've seen other players really
struggle to come back from this injury. It's one of the worst
injuries of basketball player can can suffer the Celtics
seems to look very different next year they're going to move
a lot of players I think move into the not a rebuild but
they're going to have to retool and it's just a tough day for
Celtics fans and it just goes to show you. You know how hard
is to win a title and I'm so grateful
this group really they did win one last year, but it's so
difficult to do it's a Celtics head coach said after the games
adjacent teams, not a guy who doesn't get up on his own if you
can at all he could not get up. Jalen Brunson led his post
game press conference talking about Jason Tatum setting his
best that injury looks devastating. But for Knicks fans, you're one game away now.
Wow.
With three shots to win one game
from the Eastern Conference Finals,
a place we haven't been in 25 years.
We shall see.
Okay, we'll get to our top news story this morning now.
A shortage of air traffic controllers
forced the Federal Aviation Administration
to delay flights for several hours
yesterday at Newark International Airport. Now according to the FAA as few
as three air traffic controllers were scheduled to work at the facility
guiding planes to and from the airport yesterday evening. That is far fewer than
the target of 14 controllers. The New York Post reports that just one air traffic controller
and a trainee operated every flight in and out of Newark
between 630 and 930 last night, when up to 180 planes
were scheduled to take off or land.
A New York-based air traffic controller
called the situation pure insanity.
The staffing shortage is the latest problem
to plague the busy airport.
Following recent communication outages,
the CEO of United Airlines sent an email
to customers yesterday saying flights to
and from Newark are, quote, absolutely safe.
Also this morning, it appears Newark isn't the
only airport suffering from significant issues. More than 100 flights were
delayed at the Hertz Field Jackson Atlanta International Airport yesterday.
That follows two ground stops on Sunday due to the runway equipment issues and
an air traffic control outage and And the airport in Austin, TX saw more than 100 delays on Sunday
due to a shortage of air traffic controllers.
And Joe, I don't think this is the last
we've heard of it. Something has to change.
You know, something does have to change,
and we've all experienced certainly post-COVID difficulties flying especially in the summer months
with pilots being pushed out for retirement and air traffic controllers also many going to
retirement the same thing with flight attendants and other people up and down sort of the food
chain for the airline industry.
We knew this was going to be a problem and talked about it post-COVID, but it has gotten
so bad now.
Willie, I really, they're going to have to take some extreme measures.
I know the Secretary of Transportation is meeting the head of the airlines on Wednesday.
I know they're going to be trying to keep as many flights up in the airlines on Wednesday. I know they're gonna be trying to keep
as many flights up in the air as possible.
I don't think they can do that.
I don't think they can do half measures right now.
We've had three outages at Newark, three outages.
The first outage was blamed on a rusted copper coil.
Yeah.
And now we've had a second and a third. They're not talking about rusted
copper coils anymore or whatever they were talking about because they've got a system
that is melting down right now. And when you only have the New York Post reporting one
air traffic controller and one trainee guiding in 160 to 180 planes from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m.
in one of the nation's busiest airports last night.
It's unacceptable.
They're going to have to make very dramatic decisions and they're going to have to be
a ton of planes grounded until they get their arms around this.
And it may be several months before that happens, but this is a tragedy that's waiting to happen. And
when you have the head of United saying flights to and from Newark are
completely safe, reminds me an awful lot about what the government said about
walking around 9-11 after after 9-11 for those first responders saying,
no, don't worry, the air is completely safe.
Well, it wasn't.
And the air is not completely safe now, not only over Newark,
but over a lot of other cities.
Yeah, I mean, I was one of the many, many people who received
that email yesterday from the CEO of United Airlines.
And he went on to explain not only is it safe to go into Newark,
but when there are staffing shortages at the FAA when they have their problems they require the
airlines to have fewer flights to manage that so therefore you get canceled flights you get
backups you get all the things that we're seeing at these airports I'm not sure an email from the
CEO though well intentioned is going to put people's mind to ease when they hear just how
antiquated the system is.
And I guess if you're looking for a silver lining in all this, Jim Bandahai, it's that
sometimes it takes a moment of crisis to actually get something changed.
We've had Steve Ratner, a pilot on this show many times over the last several weeks talking
about a plan that went in place in the year 2000, 25 years ago, to overhaul and modernize
our air traffic control system to make it safer, to overhaul and modernize our air traffic
control system to make it safer, to bring it into this century at least.
And he says only pieces of that have been put in.
We have not really overhauled the system in the way we should.
And that's all been thrown into public view here in the last few weeks.
Yeah, it's a real danger, I think, for Trump, for politicians.
I mean, this is the type of crap that the American public doesn't tolerate.
This is where the presidency, this is where the government is like being a mayor.
You operate the airline system.
You just do.
The FAA governs all of this, and it's an interconnected, complicated system.
And like the CEO can send you an email and say, hey, all is fine.
You couldn't pay me to go through Newark.
Even if you could convince me that it's safe, everyone knows you're going to probably have
a canceled flight or a delayed flight.
And the fact that it's now spreading to other places has to rise to the top of the government's
agenda.
We hear from the transportation secretary, but you're about to head into Memorial Day.
You're about to head into the summer.
I was just trying to fly out of Bangor, Maine.
Turns out that they've had to cancel a bunch of flights
because they haven't done a runway work
that should have been scheduled years ago
to be done on time.
And if this is happening at a bunch of different airports
and screws up travel, it has implications for people's lives,
has implications for the US economy.
And Jonathan O'Meire, we've again,
we've had summers where travel is difficult
over the past three, four years post COVID.
It certainly got a lot better over the last two years.
And everybody's known this system's antiquated.
Everybody's known that you've had floppy disks,
that they're still using floppy disk.
And I guarantee you, they're about half of our audience
that don't even know what a floppy disk is.
It's something that you stuck into an old computer
back in the 1980s.
And as Ratner said, they're not electronic.
They're handing notes often
from one air traffic controller to another.
But we had the greatest safety run from 2009 until January of this year.
And it's just like Congress was asleep at the switch,
successive presidents asleep at the switch, Treasury secretaries asleep.
They can't be anywhere.
They are on notice.
The White House is on notice.
The Secretary of Transportation is on notice.
Congress is on notice.
This system is broken.
And if there is an accident, it is on you as a lawmaker. It is on you as a leader for not doing what's necessary
right now in this moment of emergency to make things safer and build redundancy.
So we don't keep hearing about these horrific stories where air traffic control
where air traffic control trolle go dark for 90 seconds or two minutes
with hundreds of planes up in the sky around their airport.
Yeah, first to echo Jim Van De Hei's spot on analogy,
this is a moment where the president is like a big city
mayor.
Here's a problem.
You're tasked with fixing it.
And if you don't, you will be held responsible.
We saw some of the travel chaos during the Biden
administration early on, where he and the Transparency
Secretary at the time, Buttigieg,
got a lot of heat because of airport delays.
And they did.
They were aggressive.
They addressed it.
Now, obviously, big picture solutions weren't presented.
But things did get a little bit better the last couple of years.
And we're now at that moment for the Trump administration.
We've heard the president a couple of times in recent in recent days say indeed that the system is antiquated.
We need to fix this.
It's going to be a priority.
You know, he didn't offer any specifics but said they'd be looking to purchase new systems.
The question is, when does that happen?
How long does it take to put in place?
And what's going to happen in the interim?
Because as just noted, this is this meltdown is coming just as summer travel season is
starting to pick up.
And if we have weeks worth of images
from airports across the country beyond Newark,
of that red board saying flights postponed or delayed
and canceled, and lines of passengers at terminals,
that's going to be a real world problem for this president
and Congress.
Mika, they're saying right now they're going to act, they're saying they're going to find
the money to do this.
Well, until they actually do, they're going to be held responsible.
Well, they are going to be held responsible.
And Mika, listen, this is an emergency.
We keep hearing the White House calling things emergencies, that the courts don't think are
emergencies, that the numbers don't suggest are emergencies. This is an emergency.
And when you're in an emergency like this,
you've got to do some things
that are out of the box a bit.
And one of them is,
they have a retirement at 56 years of age,
which is too young.
I don't know if that's because of the union.
I don't know if that's to encourage younger people
to get in, so they have jobs for younger people and
they can keep moving people up. They have to. This is an emergency. They have to
get the best and most experienced air traffic controllers back. They have to
pay them a lot more than they've paid them in the past, and they need to move
that retirement age up to 60 or 62, and they have to do it immediately.
Again, when it's a New York Post is reporting,
you have one air traffic controller
handling 160 to 180 planes at Newark from 6 to 9 p.m. last night.
I'm sorry, this is something that can't go through committees.
This is an emergency, and they need to act like it's an emergency. And the first thing they need to do is get
more air traffic controllers and the tower get people that are not only
already trained but have decades of experience and put them up there now.
Well, hate to say it. I think it starts with limiting the number of flights
until they can do that. They have to do that. Yeah, they have to do that too.
A lot.
All right, let's get to other news.
President Trump is kicking off his four-day visit
to the Middle East.
This is a live look at the royal court in Riyadh,
where the president and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman
is meeting key members of each country's delegation.
The two leaders are set to hold more formal meetings in which they'll discuss a variety
of issues, including the war in Gaza, efforts to dismantle Iran's nuclear program, and ways
to keep oil prices down.
But the primary focus of the president's trip is to shore up business deals.
Later this morning, the president will attend an investment forum, which with Saudi officials,
it comes as the kingdom has committed to a $600 billion investment in the U.S. over the
next four years.
But the president is pushing for a full trillion dollars.
David Ignatius, if you could break this down for us.
So, Mika, it's fascinating to see Trump arriving in a kingdom where the wealth
and splendor dazzle him. This was his first stop when he became president in 2017.
It's not surprising that it's his second stop in this second term. It's a
place where he, I think, feels a kind of kinship with the Saudi royalty. Has
certainly come to the aid of Mohammed bin Salman when he was attacked after
playing a role in the killing of my colleague Jamal Khashoggi during Trump's
first term. This trip, we're all told, will be about business.
The idea that the Saudis, who are really struggling
with falling oil prices, will be able to get
to a trillion dollar level of investment,
as opposed to the 600 billion they promised
strikes me as unrealistic.
I would also note that Saudi Arabia, Qatar,
and the United Arab Emirates, the other destinations on this trip, have
become increasingly important strategically for the United States.
These are the places now where meetings take place that are intended to resolve conflicts.
In the Ukraine War, Russia and Ukraine sent their representatives to Jeddah in Saudi Arabia,
then to Riyadh
for key talks.
Qatar has hosted almost all the key negotiations to free the Israeli hostages in Gaza and have
a resolution of the war there.
The UAE was said to be helpful to the United States as it tried to de-escalate tensions
between Pakistan and India.
So these are not just economic friends, wealthy and able to invest in the US, they're strategic partners.
And that to me, that's a big difference from what we saw eight years ago during the last trip.
That time, Saudis dreamed of having influence today. They really do have it, thanks to their role as a mediator. Well, and you know, David, also you have, again, the Saudis in their role as a mediator
and the other countries in the middle also because they've been talking for some time,
certainly the Saudis and the UAE, about the rebuilding of Gaza, if that were to ever happen
and taking a more active role in that of course those plans seem to be
on the sidelines right now.
But it is remarkable how much as you've said
over the past eight, 10 years,
the center of power has shifted in the Middle East.
And again, you have a trip here,
as many people have noted where an American president
is going to the Middle East and not stopping
in Israel.
What do you read into that?
So I think we see in President Trump a growing frustration with Israel and with Prime Minister
Netanyahu, who's been slow, seemingly unable to end the war in Gaza.
Trump sent his emissary Steve Whitkoff finally to have negotiations separately that led to
the freeing of the American Israeli hostage, Edan Alexander.
I think Trump is similarly uneasy, unhappy about the pressure he's getting from Israel
to consider a military strike on Iran.
Trump would rather go for the big deal to cap Iran's nuclear
program, even though it doesn't look very different from what he scuttled in 2018 in the so-called
JCPOA. But it's, you know, when Trump says America first, he means it. And he means it even in the case of our historically closest ally in the
region Israel. Israel's interests while powerful do not in Trump's mind supersede
those of the United States. An extraordinary example published by the
New York Times last night, it's one of the best stories I've seen in weeks,
details Trump's frustration
with the campaign against the Iranian-backed Houthis, that his decision after 30 days,
he said, that's it, let's declare a victory.
He was given a plan for eight months of military campaign, decided this isn't going anywhere,
it's not worth the money, and did it without talking to the Israelis who were directly
threatened by the Houthis. That's a very different command and control environment than I've ever seen.
I've been covering the Middle East for 40 years.
This really surprised me.
John, let's talk a little bit about the pageantry we're watching on the other side of our screen,
this long receiving line of, frankly, rich guys coming to get their 30 seconds with President
Trump and with the Crown Prince.
Crown Prince greeted President Trump at the airport a short time ago, an honor he did
not offer President Biden in 2022 when he arrived.
The President's limousine, the Beast, was escorted to the royal court by Arabian horses.
The Saudis know how to put on a show.
They know how to welcome President Trump.
Remember in that visit in 2017 when they projected his face
onto the side of the Ritz-Carlton hotel there.
Yeah, the Saudis created a template that was his.
Trump's first trip was May 2017.
I was on that trip traveling with the presidential pool.
The images of the president and the king were draped on every building
as the motor kid went down the highway on his hotel. The Ritz Carlton,
they put up his face as you say with digital imagery. The same
hotel, by the way that Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince
usually later used to detain his political prisoners. That was
the trip of the orb where you know the president and the king
and the head of Egypt all stood with it. Yes, they created that
Saudis figured out early
the trick for President Trump is to flatter him,
to treat him like royalty, which is what he wanted.
And we saw that on that trip.
We are seeing it again now.
And yes, the White House has said,
look, this is about business.
We're trying to get deals, the trillion dollar mark,
although that seems unlikely.
But of course there are geopolitics
that are gonna creep in here.
The situation in Gaza, the Gulf States will push him to come up with some sort of plan
there for the Palestinians, the Iran deal as well.
They're going to want some sort of solution there.
But right now, as we're seeing the president a short time ago with the crown prince, he
is strengthening ties to the region, and it's really about economic and business development
rather than strategy, Mika. All right
We'll be continuing to follow this also still ahead on morning show the markets rallied yesterday after the US and China
agreed to slash
tariffs for 90 days
We'll talk about the economic impact and what things look like for Washington and Beijing moving forward. Plus, President Trump has named a new acting Librarian of Congress.
And his pick has Democrats calling for an investigation.
Morning Joe is back in 90 seconds.
Beautiful live picture sunrise over New York City at 626 in the morning.
The 90-day tariff rollback between the United States and China sparked a big rally on Wall
Street yesterday.
All three big averages posting their best days since April 9th with the Dow up more
than 1,100 points, the S&P 500 adding 3 percent, and the NASDAQ getting more than 4%. Meanwhile, economists for Goldman Sachs cut their estimated risk of a recession in the
United States to 35%.
That's down from 45% before that deal was announced.
Let's bring the anchor of CNBC's worldwide exchange, Frank Holland.
Frank, good morning.
So good news here in the short term that the tariffs are coming back from that 145 percent threshold, but it's a 90-day pause and there remains some uncertainty, does there not,
about what happens after that?
Yeah, certainly a lot of uncertainty out there, Willie.
Good morning to you.
So let's go focus on the markets first.
The markets just pulling back just a bit today after a big rally on that 90-day temporary
tariff reduction between the U.S. and China.
As you mentioned, it's the biggest market day since April 9th.
April 9th was the day that the president announced a pause in those so-called
reciprocal tariffs also for 90 days. And we also saw a re-acceleration of the big tech
trade, the magnificent seven stocks. We're talking names like Tesla, Nvidia, Microsoft,
Google, Amazon, those others gaining more than $837 billion in market cap yesterday.
Some huge gains. Also, I want to go back to something else you guys were
talking about, the president's visit to Saudi Arabia as part
of a broader trip to get Middle East investment.
We saw Elon Musk there with the president,
along with the Nvidia CEO, Jensen Wong,
along with some other tech leaders like the Palantir CEO,
Alex Karp, and some other very prominent Wall Street leaders,
including the CEOs of BlackRock and Blackstone, Larry Fink,
and Steven Schwartzman.
So a lot of business support for the president
as he makes that trip.
All right, I wanna come back to the U.S. economy.
Tariffs, they seem to be the driving force
for the market and for the U.S. economy.
As you mentioned, Goldman reducing its recession odds
from 45% down to 35%.
We also saw the VIX,
often called the Wall Street Fear Gauge,
move below 20.
That's just about normal.
We saw it spike above 50 during some of these trade
tensions. We've also seen gold prices pull back quite a bit
other possible sign of just less investor anxiety out there
people generally buy gold when they're nervous about the
economy. So I want to go back to that 90 day tariff reduction
as well with China is having impact on how traders are
seeing the Federal Reserve and possible rate cuts so just a
month ago. Traders saw a 57% chance of a 25 basis point cut in July. That's now dropped all the way
down to 37%. And it also appears to be having some influence on the bond market. Now, here's
why that's important. The bond market was a major factor in the president's decision
to do that pause when it came to reciprocal tariffs. We've seen the 10-year treasury kind
of inch up close to 4.5%. And again, it was a factor in the president's decision, at least according to the Treasury
secretary.
Later today, we have an inflation report with CPI.
A lot of eyes on that.
What it's going to say about the economy and inflation.
Remember, when it comes to the Fed, they have dual mandates.
Keep prices stable, inflation, and also keep the job market steady.
So a lot of eyes on that CPI report later today.
All right, CBC's Frank Holland. Thank you so much. Jim Van de Hei, if you look at the
lead editorial in the Wall Street Journal editorial page this morning, they're writing that
Donald Trump started a trade war with Adam Smith and he lost, suggesting that free markets still
are the best way to go. I think we're seeing an overreaction right now, not only from markets, from others who
are suggesting that Donald Trump has beat a speedy retreat from tariffs and he's never
going back there again.
He's believed in tariffs since 1987.
People close to Donald Trump say, yes, he's making deals with the UK.
He may make a deal with China.
But he's still a huge believer in tariffs.
These people that are reassessing everything and thinking this is the end of more tariffs,
I think they may be over reading what they've seen over the past four days.
I mean, let's be honest.
It's kind of a who the hell knows strategy for trade.
We just don't know.
I agree with you that his instincts have always been protectionism.
He wants equality in trade.
He wants the U.S. to use its leverage to get better deals, and he feels like people are
giving us.
But you go with that Goldman, like, chances of a recession thing.
It's all over the place.
It's all over the place, because the. It's all over the place. It's all over the place because the trade policy is all over the place.
And the thing I think people miss
is that so much of what's happening right now
in terms of US strategy is Trump says something
or does something, and then they try to put
kind of a logical framework around it.
Like, oh, we're trying to pressure China
and bring all these countries together.
And now, well, no, we always plan to not have decoupling with China.
It's very hard to follow.
And for those that like the Trump style, the danger is talk to any CEO right now, and they're
really they are slowing investment and they're certainly slowing hiring because two things
are happening simultaneously.
You have mass uncertainty in what the trade policy will be, so you don't know what your
cost of goods are going to be.
Then you're thinking about artificial intelligence getting better and better over the next year,
and you're trying to think, okay, will a robot be able to do that better than a human?
And the CEOs won't say that in public.
Every single CEO in the world is having that conversation right now.
And so when you have this level of uncertainty, it just makes running these businesses that
much harder.
And it's always been the most baffling part of the Trump policy, because he talked in
the beginning about, we're going to have the golden age.
You had the golden age.
It was coming.
He inherited a pretty decent economy.
He had all these countries that wanted to invest in the United States.
There was already movement towards investment flowing into the United States.
There was already kind of a consensus
that listen with chips and data
and all these high tech products,
we should bring them,
find incentives to bring them into the United States.
And if you just let them go
and didn't add this level of uncertainty,
you'd probably have a market
that's way higher than it is today.
You'd have businesses investing much more confidently and robustly than they are today
So that that's the cost of these things and you know listen
We won't know the consequences for a year or two for now
Like you talked about that jet about taking a private plane from a foreign government people like I should be held accountable today
No one gets held accountable in the moment. You get held accountable over time.
And if I'm Donald Trump on the jet issue, I'd be really worried that Republican senators
are speaking out about it.
I'd be really worried that MAGA podcasters are now speaking out about it because it doesn't
pass the 12 people at the bar test.
Does that seem fair?
Does that seem on the level?
Like your average person, drinking that Miller Lite, is like, well, hell no, that doesn't
make sense.
It seems like you're about to get a free plane
from a government that you're also trying
to do business with.
And the public to digest that,
and there to be consequences,
that takes a long time.
All right.
Well yeah, I think for Republicans,
and I think also people in the MAGA crowd,
what makes them nervous is of course,
Qatar has been a funder of Hamas,
they've been a funder of Hezbollah, they've
been a funder of terrorist states for a very long time.
So obviously, they're expressing concerns, Republicans are expressing concerns.
David Ignatius, I want to talk to you very quickly about, we were talking about the economics
of all of this.
And, you know, I have been saying from the beginning when people are talking about the
stock market going down to 20,000 and the U.S. economy melting down, that first of all, just during the Biden administration and
before that, the Trump and the Obama administration, people want to invest in the United States of
America, and they're going to look for excuses to invest in the United States of America.
They've also been saying that when Donald Trump
makes these deals, the stock market's gonna go back up
and we're up to 40, you know, we got down to 36,000,
it's up to 42,000, and he has,
he has countries that are desperate
to make deals with him right now.
And we've seen this in foreign policy as well.
The Iranians never wanted to do deals.
He killed Soleimani.
I know a lot of us were talking about,
talking about myself, talking about how dangerous this was
and how much it upped the ante.
And of course we found out that that actually put
the Iranians back on their heels
and now they're willing to deal with him.
I'm saying this is chaos.
It's hard for foreign leaders to follow.
It's hard for people in Wall Street to follow.
You just wonder if this isn't just, again,
his approach to economics and his approach to foreign policy
because he believes he can intimidate people
into making deals with him.
So Joe, we all said at the outset of Trump's second term
and the first that he was two things.
He was a disruptor.
He liked to break things.
He liked to overturn the traditional assumptions,
but he was also a dealmaker.
And so we've seen both in these first hundred-plus days.
There was talk some weeks ago about Trump destroying
the international system as it had evolved since 1945.
He's damaged it, but you can see that that system is bigger
and stronger than Donald Trump.
And in the end, the system, the realities
of international trade, have forced Trump to accommodate.
In the tariff issue with China, he walked up a very steep hill, but he's walked back down
most of the way in this meeting, series of meetings in Geneva that his Treasury Secretary
Scott Besson had.
So I think we're seeing Trump, a guy with big ambitious ideas, in some ways a wrecker,
encountering just how solid and difficult to wreck, thank goodness, this international
system is.
And the other point that you make, I think, really in. Trump has the ambition to resolve major conflicts in Ukraine, in Gaza.
This story I mentioned earlier about, you know, he was being pushed into a long war,
a 10-month war with the Houthis.
He said enough after one month, that's it.
It's not working, it's not worth the money.
So in many different ways, you can see Trump actually trying to deliver on this pledge
he made that there are too many wars in the world, they're too dangerous, I'm going to
try to stop as many of them as I can.
That's making some people nervous.
Israel in particular sees the negotiations with Iran as a potential threat.
So we'll all have to keep our eyes on that.
But it's a period where I think the durability of the international order and this surprising
desire of Trump to be the mediator are the big themes.
The Washington Post David Ignatius and Jim Van de Huy of Axios, thank you both very much
for being on this morning.
And ahead on Morning Joe, we'll speak with the United States Trade Representative Ambassador
Jameson Greer about the temporary agreement on tariffs the administration struck with China, plus Democratic Senator Ruben Gallego
of Arizona. We'll join the conversation with a look at his plan to improve border security.
Morning Joe, we'll be right back.
It's 42 past the hour. Time now for a look at some of the other stories making headlines this morning.
President Trump's former criminal defense lawyer will now be the acting librarian of
Congress.
Todd Blanch, who currently serves as the deputy attorney general, will take over the position
just days after the administration abruptly fired the former librarian, Dr. Carla Hayden.
A source familiar with the matter tells NBC News that yesterday morning, two men went
to the copyright office with a signed letter by the president establishing the new leadership
of the Library of Congress. Democrats are calling for an inspector general investigation
into the move, including the possible transfer
of congressional files.
A Democratic National Committee panel
has recommended a new election for the post held
by Vice Chair David Hogg.
The position is being challenged over a procedural complaint
related to voting. But the move comes after Hogg, the position is being challenged over a procedural complaint related
to voting.
But the move comes after Hogg vowed to spend $20 million to oust some Democratic House
members in safe blue districts.
In a statement last night, he wrote in part, it's impossible to ignore the broader context
of my work to reform the party, which loomed large over this vote."
He added, the DNC has pledged to remove me and this vote has provided an avenue to fast track that
effort. We'll follow that. And U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
posted photos of himself swimming in water known
to be contaminated with high levels of bacteria. He was joined by family members, including
his grandchildren. Swimming is prohibited in Rock Creek, which flows through parts of
Washington. The reason is because of widespread fecal contamination
and sewer runoff into Rock Creek where they swam.
Brought the grandkids in there too.
Yeah.
While swimming in jeans, no less.
Rock Creek did for 50 years, the city of Washington
has said you can't swim in these waters, it's not safe.
But took a little Mother's Day dip and.
Yeah.
The jeans provided protection against the bacteria perhaps
Okay, and that's we take our health. It's in national health advice from yeah, proud of canger. All right still add on morning
Joe our next guest calls
Character the essential identity of our nation and he believes we've let it erode
That's the focus of his new book retired four-starstar U.S. Army General Stanley McChrystal.
Joins us next on Morning Joe.
Welcome back to Morning Joe.
New book is examining the importance and the absence of character in American politics.
It's titled character choices that define a life and then that retired four star US army general
Stanley McChrystal writes about the constructive ways we can all live more principled and fulfilling
lives and general Stanley McChrystal joins us now, such an honor to have you with us again. Thank you for being here. Thanks so much for having me.
So we, I interviewed Graydon Carter about a month ago, and he said he always told his
children that character was built over the boneyard of failures.
And in your book, you talk about character.
You have a formula that I find to be very compelling, but what I
really find compelling is when you write about the fact that it took an
inflection point for you to stop and re-examine. You know, it's easy to
talk about character when the music's going, when everything's perfect, when
you're pursuing your life plan, but you talk about a time when for you,
everything stopped and it made you re-examine your life
and re-examine what character was.
Tell us about that.
Well, thanks, Joe.
Of course, I'd had a life where I'd been trained
in character and educated in it,
but I hadn't thought a lot about it, as you say.
And then in the summer of 2010,
when a magazine article
came out in Rolling Stone magazine, I offered my resignation to President Obama
and he accepted it. And I didn't like the article, didn't think it was accurate,
but it doesn't matter. I was responsible and I had no problem accepting that
responsibility. But it cut my legs out from under me because in that moment I was no longer a commander,
I was no longer a general, I was no longer even a soldier.
And I'd been born in an Army hospital, I'd gone to West Point at age 17, I'd been in
my career for 34 years after West Point, I'd been married to an Army brat who had been
with me for 33 years at that point. And suddenly we were in an entirely different place.
And I remember walking out of the Oval Office and I was in shock because I always thought
I could be killed in combat or I could be fired for incompetence, but I'd never be accused
of anything like disloyalty or that.
And as I went over to our quarters at Fort McNair,
I'd flown back all night from Afghanistan.
I left the Oval Office and went back into our quarters
and my wife Annie was waiting for me.
And I walked in and said, it's over.
He accepted my resignation.
And she goes, good.
We've always been happy and we will always be happy.
And in that moment, she said, of course, Ford, not back.
And I joke with people that Andy lives her life
like she drives with no use for the rear view mirror.
And so, but what it made me do, because for quite a long time,
I felt like I was an absolute failure. You know, I'd walk
through airports and I'd see people talking and kind of looking at me, not
pointing, and I knew they were talking about me because they recognized me and
I assumed they were talking bad things. Later people would talk to me and I that
was probably mostly in my head, but it was there. And so I went through a quite
a long period of reflecting who I am, what I am.
And then this book is really 15 years of exploration of what is my character.
I don't have answers in this book for anybody.
What I have is questions that I took on.
And I would invite other people to look at the questions and see if they might not be
worthy of them asking themselves.
We were talking a minute ago in the break general about the state of character today
in this country and why you and I and I think everyone at this table believe it is still so
important and we try to tell our kids that despite what they see in public view as rewards for people
who have low character, people who are not kind or generous or strong in the ways that you and I might view strength.
So have we lost some of character in our culture?
I think we de-emphasized it.
You know, there's, if you watch movies about special operators, and I had the chance to
work with our best for many years, you have this idea that they are very competent, but
they're just razor sharp.
And when you go through the selection and assessment
programs for the SEALs or Delta Force or the Rangers,
very few people flunk.
Almost nobody fails because they can't shoot
or they're not strong enough, they're not smart enough.
The people who fail quit.
What the selection and assessment
is looking for is character,
because they can train everything else.
And what that has turned out through years now
and decades of combat is that character
is the essential quality.
You need to know who you can count on when it's really bad.
As I've said about elected officials,
you can never predict what crisis
they're gonna have to deal with
because they're always emerging.
But you do know that crises will come and you do know that ultimately character will
be the most important fulcrum around which everything depends.
And so I think we don't talk about it enough.
I would argue we don't think about it enough.
And what I want to do is help start a national conversational character, maybe starting with
young people, whatever groups do it, and just put it back up and say, should character be
something we look at for everybody we consider, for a CEO job, for elected office, for anything?
So I'm curious, you were telling your story and how you took responsibility regardless of how much you
agreed with everything that had come out in Rolling Stone.
Character overall, isn't a key factor of that accountability?
Whether you stay in a leadership position in the military or not, isn't that what engenders
trust in the ranks?
And that could also be translated to voters.
Completely.
And sometimes it's very painful because if you have to accept responsibility, maybe you
don't think it's entirely fair or justified.
But it's important for the system, for people below you to watch you accept responsibility.
The Navy for years, captains of ships, has accepted
responsibility for what happens even though they might be asleep when the ship has an accident.
And on the one hand it seems tough, on the other hand I think it's produced some really good culture.
For sure. So General, let's talk about how I think books like these are so important because there's this
belief that character always moves in one direction, that it's either always going up or
it's always going down. Well, obviously we're deeply concerned about a lot of things, the way
things are breaking in this country. But if you look also, we had something yesterday
about how faith, especially among young men,
is going up not only in America, but across the West.
You look at teenage pregnancy, you look at overdoses.
A lot of things are happening that actually are breaking
in the right direction over the past few years.
And that reminds me of post 9-11, the belief that we had the greatest generation,
and then we had a bunch of misfits that followed and things kept getting worse.
Well, those young men, those young women are who you led into battle in Afghanistan,
who fought proudly and nobly in Iraq as well. Talk about that. Talk about how
character is not always just this depleted resource that we have, but it can be built
not only in a person, but in a nation. Well, I think you're exactly right. I think there's
this tremendous desire for it. What we used to see with people in the military, interestingly enough, often in people from the most difficult backgrounds,
someone who had a difficult upbringing, they enlist in the military, and we offer
them a set of values. I was in the Army, we had the Army values, and these young
people would literally embrace those Army values completely, and they would
become what they thought was part of a group that
they would feel good about and would make them feel good about themselves.
You know sometimes people come from better backgrounds they nuance it more
and they see it gray but it was always good to have some of these people who
said no wait a minute these are our values this is what we were told this is
what we should do and I think think an entire, well, I think
all of America, but particularly a young generation, wants to see that. And I think our generation
is not showing that enough. We're not talking about it enough. We talk about policies and politics,
and we get wrapped around the excellent personalities. What if we just step back and
say the most important thing is character? So a big part of character, and this certainly applies to the people think about it as terms
of the armed services, but I think perhaps it's lacking for a lot of people in everyday
life is that you write about it as discipline.
Talk about how you see discipline, what it actually means and why it's so important.
Yeah.
If people think of discipline as just military parade ground, that's not what I think of
it.
It's you have a set of convictions,
things you decide you believe in
and what you decide to be.
Do you have the discipline to live to that?
You know, we say we want to be empathetic or kind
or have willpower.
If we have the discipline to actually do those,
then we can be the person that we want to be.
And the sad part is when someone professes
a set of convictions
and then you see in reality they just don't have the personal discipline to live up to it.
General, I'm curious what you're hearing talking to troops, talking to leaders no longer in the
military. You're still so plugged in about sort of the state, the morale of the military right now.
It was trashed during the campaign as weak and woke, something that had to be overhauled and reformed and streamlined and changed. Obviously, there have been some
political moves to remove people at the top of the military. We've seen the Secretary
of Defense face really no consequences for putting attack plans in a signal group chat.
What is the downstream impact of all of that on the rank and file members of the military?
Yeah, I think it's upsetting.
But when I talk to people and I don't speak for the military, wouldn't claim to,
they will look you in the eye and say, hey, sir, the soldiers are still good.
They want to do the job just like we want them to do the job.
They think that the military is a meritocracy.
So we talk about opportunities for people of every background, every gender,
every sexual orientation. All you want is someone that can get the job done. And so
I think some of this is sort of background noise that doesn't really make the military
better. But what I hear from the leaders is to say, we are there, we are good. They believe
that all of this will settle down over time and that the bedrock values
of the military will come through.
And I think and I hope that they're right.
All right.
The new book on character choices that define a life is on sale now.
Author and retired four-star general Stanley McChrystal.
Thank you so much.
Congratulations on the book and thank you for coming on the show this morning.
You're kind to have me.
Thank you, Jen.
We appreciate it.
Thank you, Jen.