Morning Joe - Morning Joe 7/19/22

Episode Date: July 19, 2022

Two Trump White House officials expected to testify at prime-time Jan. 6 hearing Thursday

We are a nation of law. And if a person breaks the law or is accused of breaking the law, he's not one who can just do what he chooses because he's running for president. So Donald Trump is just like every other American citizen in this situation. That was the chairman of the January 6th Select Committee, Benny Thompson, weighing in on the report that former President Trump plans to run for president again to help him avoid criminal charges. Good morning and welcome to Morning Joe. We've got a lot to get to on this Tuesday, July 19th. In a moment, we're going to talk about

the two Trump White House officials who will testify in Thursday's primetime hearing by the January 6th committee as the panel shifts its focus to the three hours of inaction by former President Trump during the attack on the Capitol, plus a defendant without a defense, opening arguments in Steve Bannon's contempt trial get underway in a few hours, despite the judge dismissing almost all of Bannon's legal options. Meanwhile, Senator Lindsey Graham is fighting a subpoena in Georgia, but the court documents only refer to him as Mr. Graham. We'll explain why that's significant. Dozens of devastated and furious members of the Uvalde community lashed out at the school board,

demanding new leadership and the firing of the school district's police chief. The contentious meeting in Texas came after the release of a damning report and dramatic body cam video. We'll talk about that over in the Senate. Joe Manchin is now claiming he has not written off any key parts of President Biden's domestic agenda. Where did that come from? We'll have the latest on where the negotiations stand now. And we are dealing with extreme heat in parts of the U.S., but it's nothing like what's happening overseas. We're talking about temperatures never felt by humans in the U.K.

What does it all mean? What's being done about it? And how does climate change, of course, play into all of that? Along with Joe and me, we have the host of Way Too Early and White House bureau chief at Politico, Jonathan Lemire. Also with us, Pulitzer Prize winning columnist and associate editor of The Washington Post and MSNBC political analyst Eugene Robinson. We're going to start this morning with the latest on the January 6th investigation. NBC News has confirmed two of the witnesses expected to testify before the House Select Committee for Thursday's prime time hearing. Former National Security Council member Matthew Pottinger and former Deputy White House Press Secretary Sarah Matthews will sit before lawmakers for the final public hearing

on the schedule. Pottinger, whose resignation was announced one day after the Capitol attack, has already spoken to the committee for video recorded testimony. Among the things discussed there, according to The New York Times, was a visit he made to the Oval Office while the insurrection was underway. Although Donald Trump was in the White House, the dining room, actually, at the time, Pottinger reportedly spoke to former chief of staff Mark Meadows about efforts to deploy the National Guard to the Capitol, which would seem obvious. Matthews also resigned in the wake of the insurrection and has been vocal in her

criticism of Trump's actions since then. She has also voiced her support for her former colleague, Cassidy Hutchinson, who delivered that damning testimony before the panel last month. Thursday's hearing is expected to focus on what the committee members are calling Trump's dereliction of duty and give a minute-by-minute account of the former president's actions or inactions during the insurrection. Jonathan O'Meara, you obviously covered the White House during this time. Matthew Pottinger going to be fascinating, a former Wall Street Journal reporter. Pottinger usually got policy right.

He was a really steadying hand for the Trump administration. Also is one of the few very early on in before the beginning of the year in 2020 that saw COVID coming, but stayed on till the end, a loyalist. But January 6th was just too much. What can you tell us about him and what we should expect from the testimony? Yeah, Pottinger is a name, Joe, that many in the audience will know because of the role he played in the early days of the pandemic. He is, as you said, a former Wall Street Journal reporter, once based in China with an extensive network of contacts there. And it was those contacts, sources he knew in China in late 2019 that were sounding the alarms about this new virus and then early 2020. And Pottinger was one of the first voices in the Trump administration who told them, hey, this is something we need to be concerned about. Back when

China itself, the government in Beijing, was not being particularly forthcoming as to the state of this new virus. Pottinger, you know, spent his entire four, you know, spent four years in the Trump administration, you know, a key member of the National Security Council, a steady presence, a constant presence on a lot of the president's overseas travel, particularly to Asia. And he is someone who was in the building on January 6th. And that in itself is noteworthy because very few senior aides were because of how hollowed out the Trump West Wing was at that point. People had resigned. People had already left. It was two weeks before Inauguration Day. There had been a COVID outbreak not long before, so people were home. But Pottinger was there. And we know from reporting that he tried to go into the Oval

Office. He tried to see the president. He did see Chief of Staff Mark Meadows telling them how dire things looked at the Capitol, pleading for intervention. Obviously, those cries fell on deaf ears for hours. He will probably give damning testimony when we hear from him Thursday night in primetime. So the select committee is expected to issue a preliminary report later this year and may also hold more hearings. There is reporting that evidence is still coming in, so they may have more hearings. Committee Chair Benny Thompson told reporters last night the panel intends to release a scaled back interim report in September and then a final report sometime after that. Thompson said the committee will hold a public hearing on the scaled back

report and most likely another one after the full report is out. As for the hearings that have taken place so far, the recount has put together this one minute compilation of the most important things we have learned. The claims of fraud were my sentiment, probably prior as well. Ms. McEnany responded in part. Love that he was going to lose and see the election at a point in time. Yes, I did. We weren't finding anything. If I was Trump and I knew my rhetoric killed someone. I had too much to drink. Mayor Giuliani. They're not here to hurt me. Let my people in. Did Rudy Giuliani ever suggest that he was interested in receiving a presidential pardon related to January 6th? He did. Mr. Meadows did seek that pardon. Mr. Gohmert asked for one as well. Mr.

Gates did. He gave some people a pardon. Mr. Perry asked for a pardon too. Stone communicated with both the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers regularly. The president had thrown his lunch against the wall. Election defense fund dollars to the Trump Hotel collection. President Trump tried to call a witness in our investigation. President reached up towards the front of the vehicle to grab at the steering wheel. And you know, Jean, that was just just a little bit of it, obviously. I mean, those are the highlights, but you could probably do 10 minutes of highlights cut just like that. Pretty remarkable remarkable but what i love seeing and and that one minute compilation is i loved seeing all the people who were talking these were trump's most loyal foot soldiers they stayed with him through hydroxychloroquine they stayed with him

through bleach they stayed with him through hundreds of thousands dead after he lied one time after another they stayed with him through after another. They stayed with him through impeachment. They stayed with him through the lowest point, you know, Charlottesville, the lowest points of the campaign where he's telling his attorney general to arrest Joe Biden and Joe Biden's family. They stayed with him and were loyal. This is like when Steve Bannon's yesterday going outside the courthouse. We need to hear the other side. This is the other side. We aren't

hearing from liberals. We aren't hearing from Democrats. We're hearing not only from Republicans, we're hearing from the Trump is Trump Republicans that were left remaining in the White House. Exactly. We're hearing from the people who stuck it out to the bitter end. And that's what's made, I think, the committee's presentation so effective, is that it's not a lineup of left-leaning Democrats or rhinos or whatever anybody wants to call them. It's not a lineup of Trump opponents telling about his crimes, let's be honest, what they're talking about. But it is his most loyal people, the people who really stuck with him, at a time when I think most public

servants would have just said, you know, look, I can't take this anymore. You know, bleach would have done it for a lot of people, but it didn't do it for these folks. And so for them to be as strong and definitive in terms of describing their own horror and shock at what was happening on January 6th and their disgust with the president's inaction and, let's again call it what it is, encouragement of the insurrection, is remarkable. I mean, these hearings have been the most compelling limited television series of the summer by far. And I think that Thursday is going to be a sort of blockbuster season ender for now,

because I do predict there will be more hearings as the investigation continues, as they get more information. So opening as then there's the issue of Steve Bannon, where we have our opening arguments expected today in his contempt of Congress trial, because he would not testify. But first, both sides need to finish jury selection. NBC News Justice Correspondent Pete Williams has the details of the trial. From the moment the charges were filed, Steve Bannon vowed to turn the case into an attack on the January 6th committee, the Democrats and the Biden administration. I'm telling you right now, this is going to be the misdemeanor from hell for Merrick Garland, Nancy Pelosi, and Joe Biden. He's been maintaining that defiance on his podcast, but in court his legal defenses have withered away. He's charged with contempt

of Congress for refusing to obey a subpoena from the committee for documents and testimony. He insists he couldn't comply, saying a lawyer for former President Trump directed him not to, citing executive privilege. But the judge, Carl Nichols, a Trump appointee, tossed out that defense, saying it's not at all clear that Mr. Trump's lawyer ever told him not to cooperate at all with the committee. The judge has also ruled that Bannon cannot argue that he was following the advice of his lawyers, or that Justice Department policies against subpoenaing administration officials applied to him. And Bannon's been barred from calling members of Congress as witnesses.

The judge says that's irrelevant to whether he failed to honor the subpoena. Bannon is pretty well out of defenses at this point, and really all of the posturing that we're seeing, this is setting up an appeal down the road after he's convicted. It's not really about a trial defense. So if he has no defense and no witness, I'm confused, Joe, is it just to use this trial to do more showboating? Isn't he isn't there the potential of going to jail here? Yeah. I mean, he's he's running out of options. Last year, he said it was going to be the misdemeanor from hell. talked about going medieval uh on on everybody that we should pray for his enemies because they're going after him he's going to

be going after him hard that that he was going to turn this into a show trial and the trump appointed judge said no you're not and all the defenses he brought up the trump appointed judge said no those aren't really defenses you don't have that and so he's really, the Trump appointed judge said, no, those aren't really defenses. You don't have that. And so he's really at the end of the line. The only thing he seemed he could do yesterday was weakly thank the jurors and say that it looked like a fair selection of jury members. So that's where we are right now. I mean, it's it is cut and dry. All of this is cut and dry from contempt. Steve Bannon's contempt, to the treason of the president of the United States, the former president of the United States.

Of course, as the old book says, none dare call it treason. But this is straightforward. We saw it with our own eyes on January the 6th. We see it when these these people, these Trump sycophants decide they're not going to follow orders of a court. It never ends well. Let's bring in right now, former assistant U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, now on NBC News and MSNBC legal analyst Glenn Kirshner. He was in the courtroom courthouse for day one of Steve Bannon's trial yesterday, and it's going to be there throughout the proceedings. So, Glenn, tell me what you saw. Joe, a couple of overarching observations about yesterday's jury selection. One, there were lots and lots of prospective jurors who knew Steve Bannon. Not only did they know Steve Bannon, they had some pretty strong opinions about Steve Bannon,

and they were comfortable expressing them. I will say I sat in there almost the entire day. I may have missed one or two jurors, and everybody who expressed an opinion about Steve Bannon had a negative opinion. Many of them said some variation of the same thing. Look, I don't have any specialized legal knowledge, but even I know if I get a subpoena from Congress, I need to comply or I'm wrong. I'm in trouble. Several jurors actually came right out and said, I think Steve Bannon is guilty. Not surprisingly, those jurors, particularly the ones who said, I have such strong feelings that I don't think I can set them aside and be a fair and impartial

juror. Those jurors were excused by the judge. The other thing that I'll say, Joe, is there were just as many people who didn't seem to know anything about Steve Bannon. They didn't know the name. And I'm going to say, sadly, many of them said, I don't know anything about the January 6th Select Committee public hearings. I haven't watched any. And frankly, I didn't pay much attention to what happened on January 6th. That was kind of surprising that people could be so civically

sort of disengaged. The problem becomes those jurors easily qualified to sit on Steve Bannon's jury. Why? Because they brought no preconceived notions into the trial with them. So when the jury selection dust settles first thing this morning before opening statements, I suspect we're going to see a number of those jurors seated who told the court they really don't know anything about this case. Hey, Glenn, it's Jonathan Lemire. It's disheartening to hear how many people don't know about January 6th. I'm going to resist asking you how many shirts Steve Bannon was wearing at one time yesterday, and instead just ask you to give us a sense of the timeline of this trial. How long do we, once it gets rolling here, how long do we think it will take, and what sort of penalty,

if Bannon were to be convicted, does he face? So, Jonathan, the prosecutors at a previous hearing announced that they thought they could get all of their evidence presented to the jury in their case in chief in about one trial day. I suspect the entire trial will last about two to three trial days. Of course, you can never predict how long a jury will have to deliberate before resolving the case. The penalties he's facing, he's got two counts that he's charged with, two counts of contempt of Congress, one for refusing to testify, a second for refusing to produce documents. Each count carries a maximum of one year, but a minimum of 30 days in prison. So the judge, if he's convicted of both counts, could run the sentences consecutive to one another, on top of one another, and he could be facing two years in prison with a mandatory minimum of 60 days.

Glenn, Steve Bannon refused to testify and refused to produce the documents, so this would seem to an outside observer, not a lawyer, a pretty open-and-shut case. What is Bannonannon or could Bannon realistically hope for here? Is this anything he does in court now looking toward an appeal? Is he hoping for nullification for maybe one juror who would have, who knows nothing about January 6th and who would have doubts or who's somehow Trumpy. What is he hoping for here? Gene, I think you're precisely right. I think he's looking to maybe pick off one or two jurors, hang the jury and then force the government into having to make a decision if the jury hangs.

Do we proceed to a retrial? This old prosecutor would say, oh, heck, yes, you proceed to a retrial? This old prosecutor would say, oh, heck yes, you proceed to a retrial given the nature of Bannon's crimes against the United States. And I'm going to use a well-worn saying, you know, when you've got the facts on your side, pound on the facts. When you've got the law on your side, pound on the law. And when you've got neither on your side. Just pound on the table. Yesterday was a very quiet affair, but I suspect today we may see some table pounding by the defense attorneys because I think that's all they have. I'm also keeping my eye out for anything medieval. There was nothing medieval that unfolded in court yesterday. I didn't see any catapults or crossbows or any such thing. We'll see if

Steve Bannon pulls anything medieval out of one of his many shirt pockets today. OK, former assistant U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, Glenn Kirshner, thank you very much for being on this morning. We'll see you again soon. Russia has ordered its troop to target longrange missiles and weapons recently provided to Ukraine by Western countries. Moscow gave the order to a battalion currently fighting in the eastern Donbass region. According to the Russian Defense Ministry, targeting the Western-supplied missile systems will help shield Russian troops from being shelled.

This comes after the Pentagon approved an $820 million weapons package for Ukraine earlier this month. Meanwhile, Ukraine's first lady, Olena Zelenska, is in Washington, D.C. this morning and will meet with First Lady Jill Biden later today. Zelenska's visit is part of a series of high profile meetings with American officials this week. She met with Secretary of State Anthony Blinken yesterday, where the two discussed the growing human cost of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Officials say Blinken assured her of America's commitment to the war devastated country. Zelenska will address Congress on Capitol Hill tomorrow. White House chief medical advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci will likely retire by the end of President Biden's current term in office.

Fauci says he does not have a specific date in mind, but he told NBC News, quote, sometime between now and then, I very likely will step down and move on to the next phase in my professional career, whatever that may be. As for the virus, Dr. Fauci has spent much of the last two years fighting. The new, highly contagious COVID subvariant continues to spread across the country. But experts are not as worried as they were two years ago. Some health officials are avoiding issuing new restrictions, hopeful that vaccines, treatments and rising immunity will help fight the virus. But at least 40 states are seeing a rise in reinfections, especially in the Great Plains, West and South. The number of people being hospitalized with the virus and those dying from it are also up.

So we'll be watching that. A brutal heat wave is gripping much of the country this week, bringing misery to tens of millions of people who are suffering through oppressive triple digits, some numbers they've never felt before. It's turned deadly in Europe. NBC News national correspondent Miguel Almaguer has the details. Shattering records and threatening lives. This is the brutal broil baking tens of millions. It's sweltering and what's the worst is there's no air moving. The blistering heat wave turning much of the nation into an oven. 141 million people experiencing temperatures above 90 degrees.

51 million sweltering in triple digits. I make sure to bring water, take breaks. Setting records across much of the country. Heat alerts for at least 20 states from California to Mississippi. Salt Lake City tying their all-time high Sunday, 107 degrees. Memphis, Houston, and San Antonio having their hottest summers on record. Without a doubt, it is a life and death situation. Dallas hitting 106, where Michael Steed, suffering from chronic health problems and living on a fixed income could face a deadly summer I don't have since we are and it would have me at over a hundred degrees inside of the house in

Fresno California where it will be triple digits all week the fire department is responding to dozens of calls for heat exhaustion how quickly can this weather turn deadly? You know it could be, depending on your age, it could be within a half hour. In Scottsdale, a Ring camera captured a delivery driver collapsing in the heat. Record temperatures and historic drought also forcing cash-strapped cattle ranchers to sell their herds, which will inevitably drive up beef prices later this year. They're out of grass, out of water, nobody's making any hay. With drought also crippling Europe, the U.K. is poised to be hotter than 99 percent of the planet,

up to 30 degrees above average, forcing the closures of airport runways, crumbling in the summer weather. Our nation already feeling the heat with the hottest weeks still to come. All right, that was NBC's Miguel Almegar with that report. And Joe, we're going to look at some numbers in Europe. This is, for some areas, apocalyptic. People are dying from, they're dying from the heat. Yeah, yeah. No, it really is. I mean, record breaking heat in Texas, as we've heard, temperatures getting up well over 100. You actually had a meteorologist at KTRK. Travis Herzog was doing the three o'clock news and talking about the weather and said it was so hot that the power grid might not be able to handle it. And while he was talking, the studio went dark. Texas, the Texas power grid. And once again, not able to handle the crush here, can't handle the heat in Texas. And like you said, in Europe, people are dying. The temperatures keep going up. Records keep being broken.

And yet we we've seen one poll after another where people are unmoved and Congress is doing nothing, despite the fact we're in the middle of this dire crisis, which, you know, we're going to look back on 10, 20 years from now. Even that. And people are going to just ask, what the hell were we doing? Why did we do nothing? I mean, this is this is often with many issues frustrating. I mean, we saw this with things like covid or other. We took a long time for people to see it. But this is right in our face.

And if you look at I mean, if you look what's going on in Europe, get ready. Temperatures in Britain are expected to reach one hundred and four degrees today. That's a peak for Britain, according to The Washington Post. Not seen since modern record keeping began a century and a half ago. This comes the morning after the country's warmest ever night and record temperatures on Monday when flights at Luton Airport were stopped after the heat melted the runway. Hello. Much of the UK is under its first warning of extreme heat, meaning there is danger of death even for healthy people. Hot weather has gripped Southern Europe since last week, triggering wildfires in Spain, Portugal and France. Over 1100 heat related 1100 heat related deaths have been reported in Spain and Portugal as temperatures there have reached as high as 117 degrees. And this is called burning up.

Yeah, we're burning up. The planet is burning up. Gene Robinson, of course, idiots next week when temperatures go down, we'll go, we'll see. It's gone. It's passed. Average temperatures for this planet. We keep breaking records every year.

This is undeniable. And yet again, Americans are unmoved. Congress is doing nothing. It's it's it's really depressing. I will. All I will say is that you you hear you hear from me script this. It's so hot in Britain, cold, rainy Britain. Right. Where you where you worked, I'm sure in July there were many days that you were wearing an overcoat because it was raining and like 50 degrees. It was so hot in Britain yesterday that an airport runway melted and they had to stop flights. Yeah, this is just ridiculous.

The idea of triple digit temperatures in Britain is absurd. It just doesn't happen. It certainly didn't happen when I was over there. And as you say, you know, on July day, you could be putting on a sweater, certainly. And it was the forecast, weather forecasts were always the same, either sunshine with periods of rain or rain with periods of sunshine. That was the only two forecasts, but it was always cool. Nobody in Britain has air conditioning because you don't need it. But you need it now, and you're going to need it in the future. And the thing is, this is tragic because this is going to

get worse. We know it's going to get worse. We know this is not going away. It is getting worse and worse and worse, and we are doing nothing about it. It is — we will be condemned and cursed by future generations for our stupidity in not addressing climate change, trying to arrest it, and not even effectively adapting to climate change, which is happening now. We're going to have to deal with this. If we stopped emitting carbon tomorrow, we'd still have to deal with the accumulated carbon that we've already put in the atmosphere and the way it's warming the planet. And we're

doing basically none of that. It is it's it's it's just a tragedy. It really is. And it was only a couple of weeks ago that the G7 met in Europe, in Germany, a G7 that was supposed to be dedicated to fighting climate change, to have the seven wealthiest democracies band together with new climate change commitments. And none of that happened. It was overshadowed, of course, by Russia's invasion of Ukraine and, in fact, more need for more fossil fuels to make up for the oil that is being taken away from the market because Russia is not, no one's buying Russian oil right now, at least not these democracies.

And so that is putting in stark contrast here, even when an effort was made to try to combat climate change, derailed by other events. And that's why, to the frustration of the Biden White House as well, shifting domestically, they had hoped that in this new reconciliation package they could pass through Democrats, that there would be significant climate change provisions. That's no longer going to happen because of West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, who put the kibosh on that last week. Now, Manchin yesterday tried to have a little wiggle room and said, well, maybe we could revisit some climate change measures down the road. Let's see the inflation numbers first. Another short term issue getting in the way of long term climate change solutions. But certainly White House aides I talked to last night not holding their breath that that will

actually happen. Instead, the president looking to take executive orders on the measure joe and mika but of course those can't go nearly nearly as far as they would for from an act of congress well we're gonna you know you can we break new records every year i know last year was one of the hottest years ever observed 25 countries broke records for their hottest year ever. And the past seven years, this is not cyclical. The past seven years have been the hottest seven years ever recorded. And so, again, things just keep getting worse. And, you know, you look at what's happening in China.

You look at what's happening in India. You look at other countries that are industrializing at a rapid pace that are adding so much of the carbon footprint. You look at the fact that we have done better over the past 20 years or so, but we're still just four and a half percent of the population and probably contributing I think 20% to the carbon footprint there there we have to work collectively as as you know with our allies with the world because, every year gets worse. And by the way, this doesn't just impact you. If you're in blue states, this impacts you.

If you're in red states, this impacts you. If you're in California, this impacts you. If you're in Texas, it's like this impacts you. Yeah, wherever it is, it is like covid and where, of course, you look at the rates of of where people died at a higher rate. And it's it's not not hard to pick out those trends. We we need to act. And I just don't know what it's going to take for Congress to do something. And I'm not saying this because of Joe Biden, because of Joe Manchin and what he did the past couple of days. He needs to step it up because he said he was going to do something

about this. I'm saying this not just because of what happened yesterday, but what's happened over the past year, what's happened over the past decade. Absolutely. We have to move we're out of time we're not running out of time we're out of time welcome back to morning Joe as we as we look at New York City that it Spears repeating me to last year Europe had its hottest year on record that was last year Canada had its hottest year on record. 400 different weather stations had their hottest years ever. And eight of the last 10 years, Mika, have broken records for the hottest year ever recorded on this planet. And we look at this extraordinary world that we live in and and and the gift that we've been given.

And we we have we have to work harder to save it than we are. It's just, again, the fact that Congress is stumbling over themselves and can't get anything done. It's just unacceptable. It is. And while this is something that requires a world response and what frightens me so much is having watched how the world stumbled around over COVID, how this country stumbled around over COVID

and doesn't see science as a serious set of facts and instead debates science, puts off science and people die. And I just I'm not sure what it's going to take. When you have people literally dying, burning, like Europe burning to the point where there are more than a thousand people dead because of the heat. This is as in your face as it gets or as I'd like it to be. I don't need any more information. And it is something that needs to be taken seriously.

And it's a question we have to repeatedly ask. Yeah, I mean, if you need more information about whether we're in trouble or not, if you're still debating the science of this, and you hear the statistics that over 400 different weather locations, weather stations, recorded record-breaking heat last year, and we're going through it now.

Runways are melting in England. I mean... Texas power grid melting down. Again, can't handle the heat. I mean, enough's enough. We have got to move. Eight of the last 10 years have been the hottest years ever recorded. This is not hard. This is not a partisan issue. It should be easy. So let's turn to the economy. We've got a guest standing by. But first, I want to show you White House economic advisor Jared Bernstein briefing reporters yesterday touting a 34-day decline in gas prices across the country. Take a listen.

We're very happy to report the current drop in the price of gas, down 50 cents per gallon over the past 34 days is one of the fastest decline in retail gas prices in a decade according to an industry analyst around 20 000 gas stations across over 30 states are now charging less than four dollars per gallon now we know this is a volatile market that's one reason we're highlighting a trend here and not a blip. We think it's reasonable to expect more gas stations to lower their prices in response to lower input costs and thus, barring unforeseen market disruptions, to see average prices fall below $4 per gallon in more places in coming weeks. So obviously this is a good report that the prices are going down. And I'm sure if we played a lot more of what Jared have to say, he would also point out that we're still struggling.

I just worry about the White House touting any good news right now because of the inflationary struggles that Americans are feeling right now. Joe, what do you think? Well, I mean, I think the biggest problem is I mean, that's what you do. If you're at the White House and nobody's reporting on this. Everybody's reporting when it goes up. Nobody's really reporting about when it goes down. You have a press conference like that. We run the press conference. We talk about it. We debate it because I would guess most Americans, again, probably haven't focused on the fact that it's gone down on average 50 cents. They just know that it's still way too expensive. But the real question is, are they setting themselves up for problems in the fall? We're hearing that gas prices may go back up in the fall.

If they continue down between now and the end of the year, that is great news for the consumers. And I would guess that's great news for the politicians, too. But, yeah, always have to be careful. OK, joining us now, former Treasury official and Morning Joe economic analyst Steve Ratner, also with us, staff writer for The Atlantic, Derek Thompson, who is writing about the everything is weird economy. And actually, Derek, why don't we start with that everything is weird do you know why yeah everything's weird because we're coming out of a pandemic economy and I've likened it to sort of like a pinched hose effect right you're watering your garden in the backyard you turn on the water

you pinch the hose what happens when you unpinch the hose the hose starts flopping all over the place you don't know where it's going to go that's basically what we've had with the aftermath of the pandemic economy we shut off demand we shut down the world and as we opened up the demand recovery accelerated faster than the supply recovery we started asking for things faster than the world's ability to provide them and it's led to cascading failures and look flying around the country is really difficult right now. You had supply chain bottlenecks and microchips. We had a shortage of baby formula. Inflation is at 9.1 percent. There's a lot of berserk things that are happening right now. And I do think that when you look for sort of the original sin of all these weirdnesses, it is the pandemic and our response to it. OK, so rapid fire. If gas prices are plummeting, why is inflation rising, Derek?

The easiest answer is that gas prices have been falling since the end of June into early July. The inflation report that we just got in July is an inflation report for the month of June. So we should hopefully, fingers crossed, toes crossed, see official inflation, headline inflation fall in the next month's report and the report after that. But it's very possible that all these commodity prices that we saw falling, including oil, those are going to be registered in the July report. And we just got the last, hopefully, peak inflation report for the month of June. So, Steve, does that make sense to you? Yeah, look, we are in the strangest economy of my lifetime in terms of some of the factors that Derek is talking about.

We've never had a pandemic, a shutdown, a reopening like this. All the government stimulus that went on, everything the Fed did all at the same time. And so, yes, the economy is behaving, to use a technical term, weirdly. And all the things that Derek said are absolutely factors here. In terms of the outlook, it's look, it's hard to say. Oil prices, crude oil prices, which is obviously the most important ingredient in gasoline, seem to have stabilized, even gone up a little bit since they started dropped from their low point when they started dropping. And so, yes, we'll get some relief at the gas station, but it's not going back to three dollars or three and a half dollars

anytime soon. And you do have other prices that are continuing to rise, prices for housing, prices for certain kinds of food, prices for manufactured goods that people are still buying are rising. And so inflation is going, I think, to peak somewhere along here, but we're obviously over 9%. The question is, how far and how fast does it drop? And I don't see it dropping down to anything like 2 percent, which is the Fed's adamant goal anytime in the immediate or medium term future, for that matter. Yeah, we don't know what's going to be happening in the future. Steve, as you know, I'm usually

perhaps too jingoistic about the American economy. I will say, though, and I'm curious what your thoughts are. I think it's shown surprising resilience. You have unemployment at half the rate as it was when Ronald Reagan was running around talking about mourning in America in 1984 and won 49 states. And also just report this past week that the U.S. dollar is the strongest that it's been in well over a generation against other currencies. And our economy, relative to other economies, seems to be doing very well, doesn't it? No question about that. Our economy, you could say that it's the best house in a bad neighborhood, that you have terrible problems in Europe at the moment, some of them self-inflicted by bad energy policies,

by bad other kinds of policies, some of them the fact that they are so close to Ukraine and so dependent on Russia for their gas and for a lot of their oil, they've drawn the short straw, if you will, in the current fallout from Ukraine, no question about that. And Japan has been struggling a long time to try to get its economy moving again. And so, yes, our economy is the most flexible, the most resilient economy in the world. And it has shown that here. And we've also used very, very healthy measures, more than any other

country, of government stimulus in order to bring this economy back. And that has, of course, contributed not insignificantly to the inflation problem that we have. Derek, this is a weird economy. I definitely take your point. So what makes it unweird? How do we how do we get out of this this sort of weird cycle? So what you're seeing the Federal Reserve try to do right now is destroy demand. They're trying to bring down inflation by destroying demand. And that totally makes sense, right? Raising interest rates to reduce demand for housing, to reduce demand for car loans, things that are sensitive to rising interest rates. That is by the book.

That is the top playbook that you want to use when you have inflation. The problem is that inflation is not merely caused by the fact that Americans are spending a lot of money. It's also caused by global factors. It's caused by you just had Steve talk about supply of oil, supply of wheat, supply of corn. The Federal Reserve doesn't have a button in their office that can control the supply of wheat, corn and oil. So they're trying to bring down one side of the equation here. The worry is that they succeed in destroying demand, but the demand falls below zero percent. That's what we call a recession.

And so it's very likely. I mean, I don't know exactly what the likelihood is, but it's very possible. And then what we see is that the Federal Reserve, in an attempt to reduce inflation, stabilize prices, pulls down demand enough that we actually enter a recession. You know, Steve mentioned the fact that we're the best house in a bad neighborhood. It is very literally like that. And this neighborhood is terrible. Europe is going to enter a recession you know steve mentioned the fact that we're the best house in a bad neighborhood uh it is very literally like that and this neighborhood is terrible europe is going to enter a recession japan has all sorts of problems and what happens to a u.s economy that is at least slightly dependent on exports is that if everyone if all of our trading partners start falling apart

our exports go down the high dollar makes it harder for the people to buy our stuff and that means we could have a recession here that's not like 2008, but maybe like 2000, 2001. Wow. Staff writer for The Atlantic, Derek Thompson, thank you very much. We appreciate it. And Steve, actually, you have charts for us, but on another topic. And I feel like there's a theme this morning of things that we cannot, because of politics, collectively act on, whether it be climate change or COVID. And this morning you're looking at guns and mass shootings. And we had another one at a mall in Indiana yesterday. And yet the action that we've seen in Congress, we've had a first step. There's been a bill, but Democrats will say it is so far short of what is needed and

Republicans still holding to their position that seems to really feed into a gun culture in this country that surpasses every country in the world. So give us a sense of what your charts are looking at this morning. Yeah, because this is incredibly frustrating, I think, to all of us and especially when the data is so unbelievably clear. Facts are stubborn things, and it would not be that hard to make a meaningful difference in what's going on out there in terms of these mass shootings like the one yesterday in the mall in Greenwood, Indiana. And yet we do nothing. And so you can see what's going on out there. And the first thing that's going on out there is that mass shootings continue to rise. This shows you year by year for the last five years, almost

including part of 2022, what's been happening. And you can see each year has been higher than the year before. Much of the increase from 2019 to 2020 and then to 21 has been attributed to COVID and that you had people locked down, you had schools closed, you had public officials, public workers focusing on other things other than public safety, and you had economic distress, all of which people said contributed to that big rise in mass shootings over the last two years. But you can see this year is right on track to be just as bad as last year, even though all the COVID stuff has certainly eased dramatically. And so it just keeps going up and up. And nobody really seems to want to do anything about it. Last year, there were 692

mass shootings, which we define as four more people being shot, not necessarily all killed, but four people involved in gun violence. And that was 13 percent more than 2020. And we just keep going from there. Well, if you look at your next chart, talk about data that is depressing. Let's get that up. This is the number of gun related deaths per 100000 people. And And sadly, the United States off by itself, more guns, more death. And and it's there's just not a comparison with with so many other countries in the West and across the world. It's it's it's grotesque. It's just grotesque that we're out there and that we seem to have just accepted the fact that kids are going to be shot in schools, that people, parishioners are going to be shot in church, shot in synagogues, shot in country music concerts, shot in malls, shot in food courts. Like, what the hell is wrong with Republican members of Congress? What the hell is wrong with state legislators that won't move on universal background checks,

that won't move on weapons of war? When you look at this data, that is so clear. And again, I do want to say as Mika said there were some Republicans that step forward yeah an important first step and we want to commend them for that but we need universal background checks and we certainly need more aggressive safety legislation a public safety legislation on state levels as well well Joe and Joe, in a perfect world, you would just get rid of a bunch of guns. We have 4% of the world's population, and we have 46% of the guns owned by

civilians. 400 million guns in civilian hands in this country, well more than one per American. And so what this chart shows you is that if you look at the guns per 100 people, which is the axis across the bottom, you can see that 120 guns per 100 Americans, i.e. more guns than people. We are all the way on the right, as you said. And then if you look at the vertical axis, you can see that that leads, obviously, to far more deaths, something like 12. And you can see in the lower left-hand corner, maybe not as visible on the screen, but you have places like Singapore and the United Kingdom that essentially have no guns, no deaths. And so it just, you know, for those of us who believe in data, the data seems pretty overwhelming as to what you need to do. And Steve, that's the

struggle lately. I mean, that's the struggle of the past few years. It maybe has been a struggle for longer than that. But even with COVID and with climate change, people don't want to look at data. And yet here's data right here, your third chart showing gun control works. And this is an example from Australia, where back in 1996, they had a mass shooting in Tasmania. 35 people were killed and 18 others were injured. And they said, unlike us, they said, enough of this. Let's go deal with it. Let's pass some gun control. And so you can see the red lines, the red bars, are before they pass their gun control.

The blue bars are after they pass their gun control. And you can see that the number of gun deaths dropped by half. And by the way, the other thing that happened was that the number of fire of homicides with guns dropped by 40 percent and even the number of suicides with firearms dropped by 50 percent, all because of this. And so, again, you know, for those of us who live in the world of data, the data seems unbelievably compelling. And the mystery, of course, which I would leave to you guys, is why nobody in Washington is willing to accept these facts and deal with it. Yeah, it really is. It makes absolutely no sense. The bad news continues day in, day out on gun shootings. We have to do something on public safety.

And, Mika, the data, you just can't debate it. You look at countries, you look at states, more guns, more deaths. We're a failure in the world on this. It's obvious. And I will keep at it. We'll keep fighting. Steve Ratner, thank you very much for being on this morning and bringing us that data.