Morning Joe - Morning Joe 5/8/25

Episode Date: May 8, 2025

The Morning Joe panel discusses the latest in U.S. and world news, politics, sports and culture.

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Got your early Christmas gift ideas. Tera Tilly. Very exciting. Welcome to Morning Joe. It's Thursday, May 8th. We have a lot of economic news to get to, including President Trump teasing a major trade deal today. It comes as the Federal Reserve is holding steady on

interest rates, citing the uncertainty tied to the president's tariffs. Also talking about some strong resilience from the economy, the New York Times again saying what we've been saying for about three years now when it came to moving interest rates up. This US economy is just, it's been extraordinarily resilient. We'll see if that can continue. And right now, the Fed's suggesting there's some strong signs. We'll have Steve Ratner here to tell you all about it. Yes. And we'll also show you what the Fed chair actually had to say about that and the

overall state of the economy. Also ahead, we'll have an update on the major travel issues at Newark Airport and the FAA's plans to address them. We'll also bring you the very latest From the Vatican as a plume of black smoke just moments ago signified no pope was elected this morning. And that means the only thing Willie we're going to have to go to the third ballot and who knows what's going to emerge from there or what means you're going to be putting out we're going to be as of course we're going to be talking about this throughout the day, but yeah, let's let us begin that that smoke similar to the smoke coming off of Jonathan Mears had last night. Extraordinary

okay, I think we're going in extraordinary NBA game and you know when you watch PTI, they always have the debate. Is this more about this or more about that? And the debate here could be, as it was in the first game, is this more about the Knicks doing great things or about the Celtics just being terrible? In this case, it really is both.

I mean, the Knicks just keep coming back. Bronson had a bad game, had an incredible ending. Man, that guy, what a star in the clutch, right? Yeah, he's NBA's clutch player of the year, yeah. Yeah, but the Celtics, after a horrible first game performance, the Celtics, the third worst offensive rating over the past two years.

Just another terrible offensive game for them. Yeah they shot 25% from 3 again they were 10 for 40 after going 15 for 60 I think it was the game before. 3 point shot is their whole game that's their offense is their whole game.

That's their offense is based around it. Won them a title last year so you can't knock it. But if you're not making the threes, you're not winning the games. Now with that said, they were up by twenty points again last night just as they were in game one. And this was late in the third quarter. They were up by twenty points.

But they could not deliver. In the fourth quarter they went eight minutes without making a shot and the Knicks you have to say are incredibly tough defensively and relentless they could have walked away and said all right we stole one in Boston in game one let's pack it up get back to the garden but they kept coming they kept coming Celtics kept missing the shots and the Knicks win the game Brunson hitting two clutch free throws with 12 seconds left in the game and then another great defensive play by Michael bridges just

as he did to end game one stopping Jason Tatum this is the back page of the New York Daily News too good to be true it happened again John Lemire the Celtics blowing a 20 point lead and now they go back to the come to the garden down 2-0. Yeah I'm gonna go slightly different than what Joe said. I think game one was as much about the Knicks. Knicks didn't play that well last night either. At least not offensively. The defense was very tough. Last night in particular was about the Celtics. They just collapsed. Second game in a row they

choked. They were too reliant on the three. They didn't go to the basket and when they did they miss me see shots. They just went ice cold there in the 4th quarter. Look they this is the defending champs the banner full fly forever from last year, but this is a pretty terrible showing. So far and look they're the best they're the best road team NBA all year. So I guess they still have a fighting chance when they come back to New York starting with 2 games there on

Saturday, but they're going to New York starting with 2 games there on Saturday, but they're going to have to play a lot better than this for zing is out. The Tatum and Brown have gone ice cold and Joe they just this is a it's a historic collapse for a team that won 60 plus really is for a team that's won 60 plus games with one of the most efficient offenses in the league in several years. Just to just be unable to deliver at home two days in a row. Pretty shocking and frankly embarrassing.

Well you know, Mike Barnicle, the question is not whether they can have two great games at MSG. The question is not whether they can finish strong with four games. I mean, this is a Celtics team. If they would just be meaty Oaker, they would win by ten. That's not a knock on the Knicks That's this is telling you how good the Celtics are as a team, but they have just been Historically bad the first two games of this series and again God bless the Knicks they the door has been opened and man they have walked through it But again, it's not like the Celtics have to reach deep God bless the Knicks. The door has been opened and man, they have walked through it. But again, it's not like the Celtics have to reach deep.

I mean, they just have to play their game and not be just historically bad. Well, you know, Joe, I have no explanation nor have I read or heard any explanation to outline the historic offensive collapse of the Boston Celtics in these two games. The only question now for the Celtics is they're going into the beast that is Madison Square Garden to play the New York Knicks. And that's going to be an incredible chore. That's an uphill task. But can they replicate the 2004 Boston Red Sox?

Oh, please. Who went to New York? They were the underdog though. They were, oh, for they were the underdog. But who went to New York, down, everybody counted them out and came back to win. Now the Celtics don't have to, you know, do what the Red Sox did, but they've got to get their game together. There's no explanation for how pathetic they've been.

Yeah, I don't even know that you can draw it to that. The Red Sox won last night, Joe. I know, thank God. Thank God they didn't give up four runs in the last inning, which would have been right on par with what they've been. Yeah, they won, but seriously, can you ever relax with the Red Sox? Willie, and by the way, this wouldn't be 2004 with the Celtics, because this Celtics team is like a 1950s New York Yankees team, right? So it's not like the little engine that could.

I mean, they should be winning. I just, you know, Willie, I'm not from New York, but I've obviously worked there for a very long time. New Yorkers love the Yankees. New Yorkers obviously love the Mets. They love, I mean, they love the Rangers. But just talk about for people that haven't spent much time in New York, what it means to New Yorkers, what it means to the fans, to the city, when the Knicks start winning at the right time. I can't even imagine how crazy Madison Square Garden is going to be next game. Yeah, you know, I went to one of the Detroit and the previous series playoff games, the first one,

and that was just the first round of the playoffs. Knicks fans, remember now, we have not won a title since 1973. It's been fifty two years. We got close when Michael Jordan took a break in the in the 90s for a little while lost to the Rockets with Patrick Ewing had some really good teams through there.

But it's not that often actually when you look through history and especially the last 30 years that the Knicks get down this far. So now with a vision of being up to coming back to our place the Garden on Saturday

3.30 in the afternoon going to be rocking as Charles Barkley said last night. They got to move that game tonight. You need a Saturday night game in New York City. But it's going to be crazy at the Garden and it's Boston and all the history of sports that our two cities have with each other. It's going to be wild in there and with the idea that you could be now two wins away maybe on your home court, from getting the Eastern Conference finals,

a place we haven't been in some time, and perhaps, I'm not saying the Knicks are going to win the title this year, but the thought does enter your mind. 1973, could we put that to bed finally? We'll see. I mean, that would be something, I will tell you what, it's Mika,

and we were just showing the Eastern Conference. Mika, when she was getting off her phone with the bookie last night at 1230, she turns to me, wakes me up, and she said, who would have believed at this point that the Cavs would be down 2-0 and the Celtics would be down 2-0? I think she's right. It's what I said. Nobody would have imagined that. I mean, you get the truth.

In this day and age where Mika could just use DraftKings, use the app, I love that she still has the bookie on the landline, you know? Personalize touch. We have the landline. It's rotary. I mean, that's the thing. It's rotary, too.

Nothing wrong with it. I love rotary. She's got a martini. She's smoking an unfiltered cigarette. She's making her call to Vegas. Love the rotary phone. Little neighborhood kids running slips of paper back and forth to the row house. It's amazing.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's exciting. Okay, also with us this morning, former Treasury official and Morning Joe economic analyst Steve Ratner and NBC News national affairs analyst and a partner in chief political columnist at PUC. John Hellman is here with us this morning. Good to have you both. a lot to talk about. Let's get back to the Pope.

Cardinals have not yet selected a new Pope. The second vote of the day just wrapped up, just before the show started, with black smoke rising from the top of the Sistine Chapel. The ballots are only burned after two rounds of voting, unless a selection is made. Yesterday, we also saw black smoke rise above the Sistine Chapel. If we see white, if we see white smoke, it signifies there is a new leader of the Catholic

Church. A two-thirds majority needs to be reached in order for that to happen. Two more votes will be held today. Out of the more 250 Cardinals in Vatican City, only 133 are eligible to vote under those the age of 80 can cast a ballot. Hey Mike Barnicle, obviously you're following this pretty closely. Right now, what is going on? Obviously, you're following this pretty closely. Right now, what is going on?

I know there are a lot of different segments of the Catholic Church that are pushing and pulling. What's the word that you've heard? Well, there were two votes this morning. They break for lunch, and there'll be two votes later this afternoon. And we'll look for the black or the white smoke. I think what's going on is largely ideological and the direction of the Church going forward. They continue with Pope Francis' opening up of the Church, his liberalization in the

views of many, or do they return to a more conservative papacy? We're going to find that out. We're going to find out the impact of the global south on the Catholic Church. I mean, the growth of the Catholic Church is much higher in the global south than it is in Europe or the United States of America. And that, I think, is going to have an impact on the vote

and on the next papacy. Let's go to the Vatican. That's where we find Bishop Robert Barron of the Diocese of Winona Rochester. States of America and that I think is going to have an impact on the vote and on the next papacy. Let's go to the Vatican. That's where we find Bishop Robert Barron of the Diocese of Winona Rochester in Minnesota. Bishop, thanks for being with us today. So black smoke, we still wait for the white smoke. Reminding our viewers, the last two popes were elected on the second day and we are now in day two.

So we'll see what happens after this lunch break. What is your sense though? Obviously you're now in day two. So we'll see what happens after this lunch break. What is your sense though? Obviously you're not in the room. We don't know how these votes are going exactly, but what is your sense of how you believe the church may go after Pope Francis in terms of its choice of a new pontiff? Well, right, that's the big question. In terms of the electoral process,

things are kind of going as you'd expect. We'd be very surprised if there was white smoke either last night or today. Now, possibly the end of today. Paul Francis was elected on that fifth ballot. My guess is tomorrow. I think it might be a little more divided conclave. We heard during the general congregations, those discussions before the conclave, that there were disagreements about the direction of the Church. Some wanted to go very much with the Francis momentum, others felt this was problematic. One of the difficulties in talking about the Church is we tend to look at it through our Western lens, and so we have certain preoccupations, usually around questions of sexual morality.

But go to Africa, for instance, where the Church is burgeoning, but also under great persecution. Go to the church in Asia, and you see the inter-religious dialogue is of huge importance. So they're considering all these different dimensions of the church's life, and there's something happening inside the walls of that Sistine Chapel right now,

and we'll see. My sense is it might be a little more divided than it was last time. Also, I'd say, to speak politically, last time the more liberal faction was better organized. This time I know the conservatives were better organized going into the conclave. That could lead to a little more of a deadlock, but we'll see. So Bishop, talk to us, if you will, about the nature of the cardinals who were there in the Sistine Chapel in this conclave.

As you say, certainly different different factions but also so many of them this is the first time they've been through this Pope Francis appointed so many new cardinals who are now you're potentially wanting to carry forth his legacy so talk to us about about these new cardinals but also as you say that so many of them are coming from parts of the world which have been underrepresented in previous conclaves. That I think is the central dynamic of this conclave. So it is the most international for sure, but also people that have very little experience of Rome, many of them.

That's why they extended the congregations for a couple of days. And that was at the behest, they say, of some of these more developing cardinals, because they wanted to know each other better. And they don't know the Romans scene as well. Now, depending on your perspective, that's good or bad. Could they be manipulated by those who do know the system better? Do they represent sort of a breath of fresh air into a somewhat musty system? So depending on your take, but I think it will certainly influence the movement of this

conclave. We're moving away from a very Eurocentric or Western-oriented conclave to a much more global one. And I think with a lot of them, we don't really know what their views are. Francis seemed to prioritize getting people from diverse places on the map. But do they all share his perspective on everything? Some do. I'm not sure about others.

So we'll see how that shakes out. Bishop, I'm so glad, and I want to underline this for those of us that are viewing. So many people in the West, so many people in America, so many people that follow this in the news, they focus on one small set of issues. And you were talking about sexual morality, sexual issues, whether it's abortion, whether it's same sex marriage. But for most of the world, especially in this,

we keep talking about the South, they talk about that, but you're right. The focus is on religious persecution. It's on those Matthew 25 issues where Jesus talks about feeding the poor, clothing the naked, bringing hope to the hopeless. Underline that fact for us and explain to Americans that are watching right now, this isn't just about what somebody's position on abortion is going to be or on same-sex marriage?

Right. And that's the beautiful part of the Francis Papacy. I think they all want to carry forward. He wanted a church that turned with a merciful face toward the world, that was the friend of the marginalized, the friend of the poor, and the forgotten. And I think that's the great legacy of Pope Francis. As far as I'm concerned, they all want that to continue. It's in regard to some other issues that I think they will find greater division. But, you know, conclaves often involve, you know, taking

what they consider the best of the previous papacy and then maybe trying to correct difficulties in the previous papacy. And it's a playing out of those issues. There's also the question of the personalities involved. So one thing is the position the cardinal holds. The other one is the cardinal himself. What kind of person is he? Even his age, even his health, even your personal interactions with him. Often at the general congregations, the cardinal will say, that guy gave a speech, or I just sensed something in him that I thought was worthy of a pope.

So all those factors are at play, as in any political reality. And this one on a very small scale, you got 133 electors, and they're weighing all these different elements. It's amazing. Bishop Robert Barron, thank you so much for helping walk us through this all. It's fascinating. God bless you. All right. Up right, up next we're gonna see Ratner's, thank you, analysis on the new developments in Trump's trade war. Plus the latest on the travel troubles at Newark International Airport as the Federal Aviation

Administration pledges to address the air traffic control problems there. Also ahead, what Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts is saying about the importance of judicial independence as the Trump administration criticizes courts that have blocked the president's policies. We're back in 90 seconds. Welcome back to Morning Joe. It's 20 past the hour. Later this morning, President Trump is expected to announce the details of a trade deal with the United Kingdom.

The president posted about it just moments ago, writing on Truth Social, quote, the agreement with the United Kingdom is a full and comprehensive one that will cement the relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom for many years to come because of our long time history and allegiance together. This is the first trade agreement since the president imposed higher tariffs on America's trading partners. Yep. So what do you think it means?

Well, I mean, it is- What does it portend? I think it's good news. This is what the president of the White House has been saying is gonna be coming for some time. There have obviously been real concerns, but here you have the president that's moving forward on a trade negotiation that began his first term in office. A similar thing could happen with Canada.

There was a trade deal there. Maybe they can move forward and figure out Canada. There was a trade deal there. Maybe they can move forward and figure out a way to get a trade deal done that way. Of course, all eyes on the market are on China because obviously it's such a key player there. But there is no doubt, Steve Ratner, this is good news. And politics is very personal with Donald Trump. He has let everybody around him know he likes Keir Starmer. He is an Anglophile, obviously excited about the state visit to Great Britain.

And so, again, the White House will tell us this is the first of many trade deals moving forward, you know, maybe Japan, South Korea coming up next. Obviously, though, very complicated, these trade deals. Yeah, Joe, that's exactly right. It's good for Trump that he got a trade deal, and he got a trade deal with a country that people recognize as a major country. And I don't want to completely rain on his parade, but I think there's a couple of other points to be made.

First, the United Kingdom is one of the few countries, few major countries anyway, with which we have a trade surplus, where we actually sell them more than we buy from them. So it's not like China, where we obviously have a big trade deficit. Secondly, they are, I think, eighth largest trading partner ranking behind Switzerland and a bunch of other places in our economic internationally economic activities So it look we all know the president was desperate for trade deal the markets Every time it perceived there would be no trade deal went down every time they perceived there was one it would go up

It's going to open up this morning And so it's a step along the way and I don't to... I'm not trying to completely rain on the parade. It's an accomplishment. But as you pointed out, you've got Canada, you've got Mexico, you've got China are the big three. And those are the ones that we have to crack if we really want to make progress on this. And you know, it's going to be interesting, Jonathan O'Meara, I mean, when you're just looking at relationships that the president has with foreign leaders, again, he said he

likes Keir Starmer. It didn't start that way, and I know there was what judges would call dicta in that meeting with Carney, but he likes Prime Minister Carney personally, respects him. Maybe maybe there's a deal in Canada to happen. The same thing with President Scheinbaum in Mexico. I think you look for what's most likely most likely those trade deals are going to come from leaders that he's more comfortable with.

And he certainly again says he's very comfortable with Keir Stammer. Yeah, no question there. For President Trump, diplomacy is very personal. I mean, there's the degree of that for most presidents. But this one in particular, it's really whether or not he likes you. We know there have been foreign leaders he very much did not like. He did not care for Prime Minister Trudeau of Canada.

He did not care for Chancellor Merkel of Germany. He certainly doesn't much care for President Zelensky of Canada. He did not care for Chancellor Merkel of Germany. He certainly doesn't much care for President Zelensky of Ukraine. But Keir Starmer is one, despite people in Trump's orbit actively campaigning against him before those before the British elections. Starmer has put a lot of time and energy into this relationship. He has really understood this will be a key one for him at home as well. And though they certainly differ on some issues, Ukraine in particular, Starmer and Macron have actually been able to try to bridge that gap,

to try to bring Trump at least a little bit more towards Kiev's perspective. But this is going to be a political win for the White House, Mika. We've already, President Trump up very early this morning, posting around 5.30 in the morning. We've heard from him a couple times already today about this. They're gonna have an event at 10 o'clock. He's gonna hold a news conference along with it. This is gonna be something that they recognize.

White House aides have told me for a while, it's been turbulent since so-called Liberation Day. They've seen the markets bounce back some, but there's a lot of economic worries. They needed to start delivering deals. This is the first. Yeah. And we're going to get to more on the economy in just a moment. But on that issue of President Trump liking Keir Starmer or liking Carney, he does, but

he also respects them. They have their leaders and perhaps, I don't know if this is transferable to Republicans and others, but if you are a strong leader and you push back and you get along with Trump, that can work. That is showing, the proof is in the pudding here, multiple times now that he likes and respects leaders that kind of step up to him and meet him there. Yeah and it is interesting, John Hyland, we talked about this in the few days ago, actually compared the first term and the second term, and you actually have Donald Trump in the

first term who had little use for Theresa May, he'd fight a good bit with Macron, other leaders across, and of course Angela Merkel. Here again, you have, he and Macron have seemed to figure out how to get along, same with Stormer, and of course, good meeting, private meeting, I'm told, with Carney and Scheinbaum. They continue to have good relationships. This is something that the White House wants, something that the markets need, and the question is, is this going to be the first of many tariff deals that will, let's

just say, possibly ease the markets? Well, right. That's the question, Joe. And to go back to what Steve said a second ago, this is, in addition to the personal relationship where Trump seems to respect and be able to work with Keir Starmer, this is a relatively low-hanging fruit. If you can't get a trade deal with the longest-standing and loyalist United States ally anywhere in the world over generations, you're going to be in trouble when you're dealing with some of the more obstreperous countries around the world,

the ones that are more willing to resist your entreaties. And those, to Steve's point, those big three are still out there. There's no sign of a trade deal coming out of that meeting with Mark Carney the other day. And you had Scott Besson testifying on Capitol Hill this week, acknowledging something that pretty much everybody knew already, which is that although Trump has been saying repeatedly that there are ongoing negotiations with China, that those negotiations have not taken place, have not started up at all, best of course, recognizing that you can't lie to Congress.

It's illegal to do that. So when he was asked directly about it, he had to contradict the president and say, you know, we're just headed off. We haven't done any of those negotiations yet. We have to start having a first, we have to have a meeting with China just to try to cool the temperature down before we can even get to negotiations. And those are going to be the big issues on the economic front. Wall Street believes that Trump is going to cave on all of this and knock all these deals

out at some point, maybe not 90 in 90 days. Trump's discussion about dolls and pencils and all the stuff that he's been talking about suggests that he might not be in any hurry to cave, we'll see. But there's a lot riding on it for sure. And definitely most people around these negotiations announced by the president this morning say this is the framework to begin a conversation that you won't get an actual agreement announced today. We'll see in just a few hours.

We're going to get back to the Fed with Steve in just a moment, but I also want to get to this story. The Federal Aviation Administration is now promising to help to alleviate some of the problems that have plagued Newark International Airport, where hundreds of flights have been delayed or canceled just this week. But the agency is warning a total fix could take years. NBC News Senior correspondent Tom Costello has the latest from Newark Airport. At Newark Airport, far fewer delays and cancellations as the FAA reduces

traffic into and out of Newark airspace. With its big hub at Newark, United Airlines says nearly 11,000 passengers suffered through 64,000 hours of delays due largely to air traffic control, staffing issues, runway construction and equipment failures, including the simultaneous loss of radars and radios last week. Three of the four radar screens went black. A current controller tells NBC News they've lost radars and radios multiple times since August.

Last November, controllers say a FedEx plane drifted into LaGuardia airspace after newer controllers lost comms. Citing stress, several controllers have now taken medical leave. The FAA announced it's taking action, deploying a temporary backup radar system at the TRACON in Philadelphia, leaning heavily on controller trainees who are certified in certain positions, and adding more telecom lines to improve unsteady transmission lines feeding radar data. But the upgrades could take till the end of the year. That relay system through the New York TRACON is what is contributing to or causing the allergies.

You have your passport, real ID, and your boarding pass. Meanwhile, minimal delays at TSA checkpoints nationwide as they began requiring real IDs or passports to travel. Passengers who have neither may be sent for secondary screening. If I show up, I don't have a real ID and oh boy, I forgot my passport, can I still get on my flight? That is, you can, absolutely. And we're going to work with you to make sure that we go through certain procedures.

Tom Costello reporting there. Steve, you're a longtime pilot. Couple questions for you on this. First of all, what does it mean to lose communication and radar with a commercial aircraft? What's going on in the cockpit when that happens? What's going on is that the ground control can't talk to the pilot and they don't necessarily know where the plane is if they've lost radar contact. Look, can we back up for a half a second here because there's a lot of history here. If you go back to the last century, the year 2000, there was a similar problem in the summer, huge delays, outages, all this stuff.

And Congress said we've got to have a next generation air traffic control system. We are now here 25 years later. We have pieces of one, but we don't have... Why, Steve? Why in this country of innovation? Why? Oh, you know, the technical part is easy to do. The bureaucracy, the contracting, the slowness of movement. In 2012, they issued a contract for a new communication system so that they could not have these communications outages. in 2018, they canceled the contract and they've never re-awarded it. Let me explain, like, just let's talk about radio communications. When you want to talk to Joe or Mika or Alex, you might often just text them.

You send them a quick text, they send you an answer that way. Not like the way it used to be where you picked up a phone and you called them and you had to find In in a cockpit the communications are almost always voice If the pilot wants to do something he's got to reach get the controller and by the way It's like an old-fashioned party line. Everybody's trying to talk at the same time and That's the way it is. It's so antiquated Look, it doesn't really compromise safety in my opinion. We did have a crash We've only had two fatal crashes in this country in 15 years. I think the record is pretty strong.

But it causes all this commotion, all these delays, all these outages, because the equipment problem feeds into the personnel problem because they are way understaffed, because they did move what's called TRACON, Terminal Radar Control, from Philadelphia, from Iceland, Iceland, Long Island to Philadelphia, to try to make more of the controllers they had and make it more productive. Controllers didn't like it. Some of them left. They can't hire them. I'll give you another small example.

They have a retirement age of 56 for it to be an air traffic controller. You can be a pilot at 65 and you're up in the air. I'm not sure why if you're on the ground you have to retire at 56. And so it's really government amok. But one last point. We are wasting billions of dollars, hundreds of millions of gallons of jet fuel polluting the atmosphere, delaying people, because the system is so antiquated that the routes the planes fly go back to the days of propeller planes when the controllers didn't really know exactly where people were, so they had to keep them far apart.

They had to space them out. They had to do this. We can today, we have much better equipment once we get it working properly. We can know where planes are exactly and allow them safely to be closer to each other. And therefore, we can dramatically or significantly increase the capacity of even airports like Newark, fewer delays, less carbon emissions going into the airport and to the air,

shorter trips, because you save time on the, and it's a win-win-win, but the government can't get it done. I mean, it's incredible. Ezra Klein's gonna be on in a little bit. He wrote a book about how, in the US, we just can't build things, make things, it's incredible. Ezra Klein's going to be on in a little bit. He wrote a book about how in the US we just can't build things, make things, fix things anymore. I certainly can't do it efficiently.

You hear about these bullet trains that take forever to get done, and you still wonder like the one out in California is ever going to get done. In this case though, Steve, I've been hearing you say for a long time that we have an antiquated system. And again, this should be top priority. Why can't we get it fixed if they were saying in 2000, we're going to upgrade the system? That's something that should take one or two years, tops. That's the first question. The second question has to do with retirement at 56 years old. I would much rather have me as an air traffic controller at 62 than at 56. I mean, tell me why in the world, why is 56 a cutoff date and is that a union decision so they can keep younger people coming in? Why 56?

That's ridiculously low. It is ridiculously low, Joe, and I can't say exactly I know where that came from. I suspect the union is a part of it, but it may just be one of those things that's been around forever and nobody has changed. I don't know. Look, we have the advantage now that people are focused on this, and that may lead to at least some improvements. But again, you know, to go back to the way this thing works, you literally have controllers.

As the plane flies along, it goes from the supervision of one controller to another controller. We literally have situations still that go back to the 1950s where one controller gives the other controller a little strip of paper and it says, well, here's where the plane is and here's where it's going, as opposed to simply, again, some kind of an electronic form of communications. It's really quite incredible. And I'd like to say that out of, you know, never let a crisis go to waste, out of all this will come a new system, but that's what happened in 2000 and 25 years later we have pieces of a new system but all

that's going on out there is because we don't really have a new system. It's just ridiculous. Steve Ratner I'm gonna ask you that question since it is the Steve Ratner hour. It is a Steve Ratner variety hour. It is. So Steve's gonna be singing by the way with a little tap dance. Yeah, a little tap dance. I love tap. All right. So Steve will head over to the Southwest Wall to fact check some of the recent claims President

Trump has made about oil prices and the trade deficit. Wake up the kids. He's got the charts. I'm going to ask him if it's safe to fly into Newark. That's straight ahead on Morning Joe. Look at that shot of New York City at 635 on a beautiful May morning. Thanks Chopper 4. I love spring in New York. Hey, welcome back.

Good morning, Joe. We've been obviously talking about the problems in Newark also with the FAA. I want to go to you, John Heilman, because we've been talking off set about something that James Fallows wrote about, about sort of all the friction there. And you can talk about that, before you talk about that, if you want to just needle a little bit as a longtime Laker fan, you can do that too. Go ahead. Let's skip that.

They're already out. Well, you know, I don't think Willie really did enough to speak to the Schadenfreude that some of us on the show feel over what's happening in that Nick Celtics series. I gotta say, you know, for Lakers fans everywhere, couldn't happen to a nicer guy to see John Lemire's Celtics struggling where they are against the Knicks. Also, let's give credit to the Knicks. The Celtics are playing really bad, but the Knicks are playing really well.

Here, here, here. Player in the back. Okay. Now to the FAA. To the FAA, John. Is it safe to fly in the arc? John, in the same place the Celtics will be playing relatively shortly. We'll see.

Yeah, Joe, to your place. Win with class, John. We'll see. Yeah, Joe, to your point. When was class done? When was class? Jim Fallows, who likes Steve Ratner, who likes Steve Ratner as a longtime, not just a longtime private aircraft pilot, but also a longtime chronicler of aviation policy and politics, pointed out in this piece, wrote a long piece, really good piece yesterday on Substack about what's going on with airline safety. And sort of said there are three important factors that have slowed things down in terms

of modernization of the air traffic system for the past 40 years, since really, I guess it's now almost 40 years since Reagan and the air traffic controllers back in the early 80s. One of those things is that technology keeps changing really fast and it's always a struggle to try to keep up with it. So any new system feels like for people who are advocating for changing the system, any new system, the worry is it will be overtaken by new technology really quickly. The second is that in the aviation world, the world I don't know that much about, Steve

knows more about it than I do, there's a kind of a core belief that you should always go slow in terms of changing any system because the stakes are so high. And then the third thing that kind of factors in here is that every administration, whether you're Republican or Democrat, Republicans tend to be more draconian about this than Democrats, but all administrations always look at all of the safety bureaucracies that deal, the safety administrations that deal with those issues in airline traffic, they look at those as places to get easy money in periods when they're trying to cut budgets.

So even before DOGE, which took a chainsaw to a lot of those regulatory agencies, even before that, there's kind of a longstanding tendency to try to undermine those agencies and suck money out of their budgets. All right, John Howman, thank you very much. Remember now, win with class. Win with class, John. Thanks very much.

Let's go back to Steve Ratner. He's made his way from the set over to the Southwest wall with a fact check of some of recent claims President Trump made in that interview on Sunday with Kristen Welker on Meet the Press. So let's start here with your first chart. President Trump insisted during the interview, Steve, he already had gotten costs down in his first couple of months. Here's what he said.

Well, I was able to get down the cost. Oil is down. Gasoline is down. Groceries are down. Eggs. But you don't talk about the fact that gasoline is down at numbers that nobody believes possible. You know why they're down, by the way? Drill baby drill.

We're drilling like crazy right now. What do the numbers show? Well, as usual, there's a lot to unpack here. Donald Trump has a loose relationship to the facts. So let's talk about prices, first of all. Prices are still going up. If you look at headline, meaning all items together in the consumer price index, you'll see that they rose by 6 tenths of a percent in the first three months of the Trump administration

compared to 9 tenths of a percent under the Biden administration. A little bit slower, but still significant price increases. Groceries went up faster under Trump than under Biden by 1% in that quarter, which is close to a 4% annual rate, 8 tenth than under Biden by 1% in that quarter, which is close to a 4% annual rate, 8 10ths under Biden. I'm going to come back to gas in one second. But what's also happening that is very worrisome and notwithstanding Trump's exhortation, shall we say, the public isn't really buying it, inflationary expectations on the part

of consumers have gone up enormously. They were 2.8% back in December, and now they're 6.5%. And sometimes perception becomes reality. And so this is a dangerous thing as well. Now back to oil. Why are gasoline prices down? They're down for two reasons. One, because OPEC is pumping more oil, which brings prices down.

And secondly, because when the oil market perceives that the economy, the biggest economy, ours is weakening, then prices start, they expect demand to fall and prices start to fall. And the next thing that happens is people drill less oil, because if they don't think they're going to get the same price for their oil, they're going to drill less oil. So this notion that drill baby drill has created a whole upsurge in drilling activity is absolutely counter to the facts. Then there's the point, of course, made during the campaign by the Biden campaign that no

one in the history of human civilization had drilled more and taken more out of the ground in the last year than the Biden administration. So President Trump also made a claim during that interview on Meet the Press about how much money America lost every day on trade deficits under President Biden. Here's what he said. We lost five to six billion dollars a day with Biden, five to six billion. And I've got that down to a great number right now in a record time.

We're talking about 100 days. But just think of what that is. Five billion dollars a day we're losing on trade. What about the car business? They're going to make a fortune because of the tariffs. Steve, the charts show the trade deficit is actually increasing right now. Yeah, I'm not going to do a whole thing on how trade deficits work, but I'm going to do one simple thing because you keep saying we lost $5 billion a day.

If I go downstairs in 30 Rock here and I buy a Morning Joe t-shirt for $20, I give them $20, I get a t-shirt. Have I lost money? No, I've gotten something back for my money. And that's in effect what we're doing. We're buying stuff from overseas. There are issues there, but it's not like we're just handing the Chinese $5 billion a day.

And that's the wrong number, of course. In 2024, the trade deficit equaled $2.5 billion a day. And that's the wrong number, of course. In 2024, the trade deficit equaled $2.5 billion a day. So less than half of what Trump claimed Biden had done. Here's the Biden period here. Look what's happened under Trump. The trade deficit has soared, soared, soared. And I'm not saying that it's because of Trump, but what's been happening is people are importing a lot more to get ahead of the tariffs. And the result is now the trade deficit is about five billion dollars a day, but he

got the president wrong. That was under President Trump, not under President Biden. Now as for the cars, he also said, as you just heard, that this is going to be the greatest thing ever for the car companies. They're going to make a fortune and so on and so forth. It's not how the car companies feel and it's not how the car companies feel, and it's not how the market feels. So let's look at how the market feels. These are the stocks of the Detroit three companies that used to be Chrysler, Ford,

GM, and now Stellantis. And you can see that after the election, the stock prices kind of hung in there up and down a little bit, but pretty stable. Since the election and since Liberation Day, which was right here, you can see what happened to the prices of all these shares. And why did that happen to their shares? Because the company started putting out announcements. Ford said that tariffs would reduce their earnings this year by a billion and a half

dollars. General Motors said it's going to cost them two to three billion dollars. And so it's a little bit hard to see how the car companies, why the car companies think this is a great thing, as Donald Trump claims. And Ford announced this morning it's going to raise prices on three of its most popular cars because of these tariffs. Finally, Steve, President Trump dismissed the idea that economic uncertainty is on the rise and then doubled down on his plan to pass another tax cut.

Here's what he said. Are these tariffs permanent? I think there's only uncertainty in the fake news. We're trying to get approved right now, the biggest tax cut in the history of our country. And if it doesn't get approved, it's a 68% tax increase. And that's what the Democrats want. They want a 68% tax increase. It's rather incredible. Steve, what's he talking about there?

God only knows, Willie. I couldn't figure out what he was talking about there because I can't replicate those numbers at all. What he's talking about is what would happen if his tax cut from 2017, which has to be extended, were allowed to expire, which would mean taxes would go up. But here's what taxes would go up. But here's what they would go up by. Depending upon your income, they would go up by $74 and $36,000. But for the people at the top, that's only a 6% tax increase. For the people at the bottom, it's an 18% tax rate.

But there's no 68% numbers in here anywhere. It is made up. But I also have to say that Biden's last, President Biden's last tax proposal was to extend these tax cuts for everybody except the very, very rich. And so why Trump is claiming that the Democrats would have taxes go up is a mystery. And lastly, I think to sum up a lot of what we've been talking about, he also said, as you heard, that uncertainty is sort of a made-up fake news idea. Well, there are indices of uncertainty actually compiled from legislative progress on the Hill, what's going on here,

news reports, things like that. And what you can see here, this index goes back to 1985 when it was first created, economic and uncertainty index. This is COVID. It obviously spiked up enormously. This is Trump 2.0, holding second place now for creating economic uncertainty over the last 40 years. And in addition to that, more anecdotally, and you've seen a lot of this, you have company after company saying that they have to withdraw their earnings guidance this year.

They can't predict what their earnings are going to be because life is so uncertain for them. Mattel, Skechers, Snap, Harley-Davidson, Alaska Airlines, UPS, and so forth, company after company doing this because it is so uncertain. So to say we're not living in an uncertain time, I think, is a gross misrepresentation of the truth. So, Steve, I want to talk about tax cuts really quickly, and then we want to get to what the Fed said yesterday.

But on tax cuts, any tax cuts, any new tax cuts, the extension of tax cuts, I would just say, are going to be absolutely devastating when it comes to our fiscal health. We're already over, what, $36, $37 trillion of possibility, the CBO has said, of the federal debt going up another $10 to $20 trillion over the next decade. That is unsustainable. It's something that I've been talking about now for 30 years. It's something you and I have been talking about on the show for 15 years. When spending continues to skyrocket, when the Pentagon budget continues to skyrocket,

when the cost of entitlement programs continue to explode, when you're talking about giving tax cuts to billionaires and millionaires, these numbers don't add up. And we're talking about everything else except possibly the one thing that will take this country's economy to the cliff.

Talk about that for a minute. Joe, we are headed, no one of course knows exactly what Congress is going to do, but when you look at all the various proposals and things that are out there, we are headed for the worst damage that we have probably ever done to our fiscal situation. The Republicans are determined to pass a humongous tax bill, $4 trillion at least, maybe more. Remember, Trump made a lot of promises during the campaign about not taxing overtime, not taxing tips, all this stuff. So they're going to have to deal with that. But they're going to pass a massive tax bill.

And on present course of speed, any kind of spending reductions or spending constraints are going to be really minimal. The Republicans' margins in both the House and the Senate are so tight that when you have someone like Josh Hawley say, I don't want to cut Medicaid, it makes it really hard to get the votes to cut Medicaid. And that's the way this process is working. And so you right now have a huge tax cut sitting up there and virtually nothing to be done on the spending side except increased spending for things like defense that we all agree

we probably need to do that. So meanwhile, as expected, the Federal Reserve is holding interest rates steady at the level they've been at since December. Fed Chair Jerome Powell said several times yesterday the central bank is in a wait and see mode. If the large increases in tariffs that have been announced are sustained, they're likely to generate a rise in inflation, a slowdown in economic growth, and an increase in unemployment. Look at the state of the economy.

The labor market is solid, inflation is low. We can afford to be patient as things unfold. There's no real cost to our waiting at this point. So Steve Ratner, this seems like a repeat of what we've been saying over the past four years where the Fed continued to raise interest rates. They kept waiting for the economy to slow down. We expected a hard landing. We expected it, not just you and me.

I mean, all of Wall Street, the banks expected a hard landing. We expected it, not just you and me. I mean, all of Wall Street, the banks, expected a recession. Then we heard about the possibility of a soft landing. Then after the tariffs and the disruption, everybody started predicting a hard landing again. If you listened to Jerome Powell yesterday, he's saying, you know, there are a lot of indicators that things are going in a bad direction, but this economy still is resilient. We're gonna have to wait and see. Talk about that. Yeah, that's exactly right, Joe. We did much better these last few years than any of us would have thought.

This still is an amazing economy that can just keep growing through a lot of uncertainty and a lot of factors that would bring down many other economies. But now Jerome Powell is in a tough spot because he's promised 2% inflation. Inflation today is running at roughly 3% and perhaps going up based on the tariffs and so on and so forth. The tariffs, as we've talked many times, will slow down. And Powell said it yesterday, will not only add to inflation, they will slow down growth, they will lead to fewer jobs.

That's what he said. Not me, Jerome Powell, but I happen to agree with that. And that's going to put the Fed in a really difficult position. Trump is beating the bejesus out of them to cut interest rates, but Powell has committed to get to 2% inflation, and he can't really cut interest rates until inflation comes down, but inflation may well be going up. So the Fed is really in a tough spot as to how to handle this. And there's another word for that scenario, which I just outlined and which frankly Powell kind of outlined, which is called stagflation.

And that may be where we're headed. Not like the 1980s, but a situation where we have higher inflation, less growth, and interest rates don't go down as fast as people would like. President Trump really continuing to pound the bejesus out of the Fed, taking to Truth Social to write, too late, this is the nickname for Jerome Powell, too late, Jerome Powell is a fool who doesn't have a clue. Other than that, I like him very much. And he goes on to say some things that are not true about prices going down and no inflation

tariff money pouring in. But he ends by saying what's happening here is the exact opposite of too late and urges again the Federal Reserve to cut rates. There's real pressure from the White House. Quoting again, Chairman Powell, yesterday said, if the large increase in tariffs that have been announced are sustained, they're likely to generate a rise in inflation a slowdown in economic growth and an increase in unemployment that's from the Fed chair Jerome Powell morning Joe economic analyst Steve

Radner a very very busy morning we appreciate you but especially today Steve thanks so much thank you