Morning Joe - Morning Joe 8/16/24

Episode Date: August 16, 2024

Another Trump speech goes off the rails

Virtually 100 percent of the net job creation in the last year has gone to migrants. You know that most of the job creation has gone to migrants. In fact, I've heard that substantially more than beyond actually beyond the number of 100 percent. It's a much higher number than that. Some, among other things, suspicious math there for the former president yesterday calling what he calls a news conference. But it featured much of what he typically says at his rallies. We have more from that event in just a moment. Good morning and welcome to Morning Joe. It is Friday, August 16th, along with Joe, Willie and me. We have

MSNBC contributor Mike Barnicle, Pulitzer Prize winning columnist and associate editor of The Washington Post, Eugene Robinson and managing editor at the Bulwark. Sam Stein is with us. Sam, thank you for doing way too early this morning. So Donald Trump held a second so-called news conference in as many weeks, this one at his club in Bedminster, New Jersey. Beforehand, Trump was seen meeting with MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, who continues to deny the results of the 2020 election. As for the event, Trump spoke for just under an hour before taking several questions from reporters at the end. Initially, he held back from making personal attacks against Vice President Kamala Harris

and read from scripted remarks, which included many falsehoods, lies. But as things went on, it turned into what we typically hear at the rallies. Take a look. I won Pennsylvania and I did much better the second time. I won it in 2016, did much better the second time. I tend to poll low, in some cases really low. You know, in 2016, I was polling low because people didn't want to say who they're voting for. I don't know if that's supposed to be a good thing or a bad thing, but it is what it is. And we did very well in 2016, and we did much better in 2020, much better, but bad things happened.

I think I'm entitled to personal attacks. I don't have a lot of respect for her. I don't have a lot of respect for her intelligence, and I think she'll be a terrible president. And I think it's very important that we win. And whether the personal attacks are good, bad, I mean, she certainly attacks me personally. She actually called me weird. He's weird. It was just a soundbite. And she called J.D. and I weird. He's not weird. He was a great student at Yale. He went to Ohio State. I don't think people know who she is yet. When people, because really people didn't know. You can ask the man on the street. I saw it on one of the shows today.

They asked the man on the street, what's the last name of Kamala? Nobody knew. It's Harris. Nobody knew the last name. She's a very strong communist lean. You're all going to be thrown into a communist system. It's a communist system. You're going to be thrown into a system where everybody gets health care.

You're going to be thrown into a communist. You're going to be thrown into a communist system. By the way, Willie, let's see here. Let me just check the Dow over 40,000 yesterday, 40,500. Our economy. Inflation cooling. Actually stronger relative to the rest of the world than any time over the past half century. Our economy, unbridled capitalism, whether you like it or not, unbridled capitalism ruling the day in America, more billionaires than ever before, more millionaires than ever before, more wealth created than ever before. You look at real wages for working Americans. It's been going up, as you pointed out yesterday, Willie, consistently for quite some time. So what he just said is wrong. And it's more of a sort of a denigrating of the United States of America. We are a great country. We are a strong country.

We are economically powerful. Again, this so-called communist country has a bigger economy than Russia. California, a bigger economy than India. We are strong and powerful. We are wealthy. Our economy better than any in the world. And nobody across the world thinks, oh, those Americans, they're communists. No, they're like those Americans. American capitalism keeps rolling on, keeps getting stronger, keeps getting more powerful. Yeah, the timing, among many other things, yesterday was way off. Even on Fox, if you watched it there, he was talking about how the economy was cratering, the markets are tanking. As a little box in the corner of the screen showed the markets soaring.

And this came one day after that inflation report that heartened so many economists, liberal and conservative, showing that inflation had really cooled, that grocery prices are up just one percent year over year. And the entire sort of idea of this press conference he was standing, we'll play another very bizarre clip of him standing in front of boxes of Cheerios and talking about how he wanted to take the Cheerios back to his cottage and have a lot of fun with them. We can get into that later. But the prices of groceries are still too high, as we stipulate, still too high. But in the 24 hours before he had that press conference, this report came out showing that prices are cooling. So he's flailing. I guess, Mike, he thinks in some way because he's doing them so often to within the space of a week, one at Mar-a-Lago, one at Bedminster yesterday at his members only clubs, that these help him somehow, that he's maybe baiting Vice President Harris into doing a

press conference of his own. But the more he talks, the less sense he makes to a lot of people, not to his hardcore supporters, but to a lot of people. And as we keep saying, the Harris campaign is thrilled to have this kind of material out there once a week. Well, don't you think that he does these press conferences or whatever you want to call them just because he wants to see himself on TV. He wants to be on TV. That's who he is. Yesterday was tough. I mean, there were a couple of day baseball games. I was watching those in the afternoon, but I decided to watch the former president at his press conference surrounded by groceries.

And it was a tough watch. You have to have a lot of time on your hands to listen to him. And to Joe's point, he continually, no matter how he begins, whatever soliloquy he's talking about, whether it's about Cheerios, whether it's about the economy, he ends up running this country into the ground. No matter what topic it is. In one element, he was talking about the dangers to Jewish people in this country. And he said it's so severe that here's the quote. Sam played it earlier. Maybe we have it today. We'll play it further. Honestly, you don't have a chance. So that's you don't have a chance if you're living in America under who he calls Camelot. What does he call her? Camelot? He knows how to say it. Of course he way. In private moments, he says it correctly. But the running down of this country is a consistent underlying theme in everything he says.

And in terms of elections, elections are about the future. People want to feel optimistic about the future for their children. And he's the exact opposite. So here is that Cheerios moment I was talking about. This is the former president of the United States speaking about inflation at his Bedminster Golf Club. They did a nice job. Wow. I haven't gotten to see that's good. I don't like I don't like the the tags very much. Look at that. Up 46 percent eggs. Wow. Up 65 percent. Wow. School lunches up 65 percent%. How can a family afford that? But look at this over here.

What a nice job. I think I'm going to take some of them back to my cottage and have a lot of fun. Like the Cheerios. I haven't seen Cheerios in a long time. I'm going to take them back with me. Bacon is through the roof. They're all through the roof. The milk.

You know, made for tiny hands. You know, stupid country. He calls America a stupid country, said we're a loser country. He said the American dream is dead. And again, there's there's just such a disconnect with where I think almost all Americans are. I think most Americans are really proud of this country and know that we're the greatest country in the world. We have fed more and freed more people than any other country ever. Our economy is stronger than ever. Our military is stronger relative to the rest of America and the greatness of America, because you have one party that keeps tearing down America. And I will tell you, yesterday, we can talk about Cheerios and all that other stuff. But yesterday, along these lines, Donald Trump actually did something

that once again undermines the greatness of America. He insulted recipients of the Medal of Honor. The comment was one of the first things he said when he was talking at another event yesterday at his golf club in New Jersey. And that was about anti-Semitism, all praising Miriam Adelson, who he awarded the Medal of Freedom in 2018. And then he went on and he argued that it's better to get a civilian award than to get an award given to American heroes who are given those awards because of sacrifice to their country in war. You're not going to believe. Well, actually, if you listen to what General Kelly said and what Jeff Goldblum has written, you will believe it. But this is what he said yesterday. I have to say, Miriam, I watched Sheldon sitting so proud in the White House when

we gave Miriam the Presidential Medal of Freedom. That's the highest award you can get as a civilian. It's the equivalent of the Congressional Medal of Honor, but civilian version. It's actually much better because everyone gets the Congressional Medal of Honor. That's soldiers. They're either in very bad shape because they've been hit so many times by bullets or they're dead. She gets it and she's a healthy, beautiful woman. I mean, first of all, Jeff Goldblum did say it, I think, in the outtakes of The Fly.

But it's Jeffrey Goldberg. It's Friday morning. It's Jeffrey Goldberg and General Kelly, who said that Donald Trump, Willie, just didn't understand the sacrifice that our men and women have made and call them suckers and losers, quizzically asking General Kelly, why? Why would somebody sacrifice themselves? What's in it for them? And then, of course, yesterday, saying a civilian award was much better because you didn't have to get shot up with bullets or die to get those awards. And he has a long history, really, of disparaging American veterans and service members. He does. I mean, you said it right. This is shocking, but not surprising because of the pattern. This is not a one off. This is the way he thinks about people who serve the country in uniform. In 2015, Trump mocked, of course, late Senator John McCain for having been a prisoner of war.

Remember, he said, quote, I like people who weren't captured. According to The Atlantic, Trump repeatedly questioned the intelligence of service members and requested wounded veterans be excluded from military parades. He canceled a trip to pay respects to America's war dead in Europe, reportedly asking staff members, quote, Why should I go to that cemetery? It's filled with losers talking about Americans who died in war. In a separate conversation, Trump referred to the more than eighteen hundred Marines who lost their lives at Bella Woods as suckers for getting killed suckers. And killed. Suckers. And when a U.S. Navy SEAL was killed in a covert mission in Yemen,

Trump, who was the commander in chief, passed the blame to his generals saying, quote, they lost Ryan. Eugene Robinson, though, boy, that clip really captures Donald Trump, doesn't it? I mean, it's infuriating to those of us who have such deep respect for military veterans and for those who are in the Congressional Medal of Honor. But it shows who he is, which is he doesn't understand the sacrifice of the people who earned that award. But boy, if you're famous and you're rich and he perceives you as beautiful and you meet the casting call, you're the real winner. Yeah, there's something really warped inside of him.

There really is. There's just something, you know, I guess the word weird is overused, but all of that that we just played is weird. And it is just appalling that he would speak of America's heroes that way. You know, the heroes, many of whom made the ultimate sacrifice for their country. And he simply does not get it. He doesn't understand. There's a connection there that's not being made. And, you know, you saw it the four years he was president. And boy, if he ever became president again, I would really worry about this country because of that emptiness, that lack inside of him, that lack of empathy,

that lack of patriotism. It's just not there. It's not there. Sam, you've covered the former president. You've written about the former president. We see the former president every day on TV. One part of us, I don't know about you but part of me is not surprised by these comments because donald trump is a singular act he does not understand he cannot comprehend what it's like to be part of a unit whether it's a company of soldiers a platoon or a group of people in an office he does not understand the idea of group effort. What was your view when you heard that tape we played earlier this morning, that you played on an earlier, way too early,

when he's talking about the dangers to Jewish people? Okay, Alex is going to play it. Rack it up, Alex. Hold on. Toxic poison of anti-Semitism now courses through the veins of radical Democrat party. I mean, this is a radical, radical group of people. I never thought I'd see that either. They have gone crazy. And instead of expunging this hatred, Kamala Harris is pandering to it.

You'll be OK if you have the right president. You have the wrong president like her. Honestly, you don't have a chance. Sam. Yeah. So I had not seen both that and the comments about the congressional medal recipients until this morning. I had seen the hour and a half long news conference, if you want to talk about it. And, you know, look, like you, Mike, I watched the whole thing. At times it's painful. But it also gets at this weird dichotomy around Trump, which is on the one hand, we all sort of gawk at it, right? He's a carnival barker. He's talking about Cheerios. He's making comments about the price of goods from in front of his country club. I mean, the discord there, the disconnect there is profound, right?

Like he's at his country club. And then just minutes later, he's talking and denigrating people who were injured in a line of service. And that to me really just sort of symbolizes him, right? On the one hand, we've kind of grown numb to it a little bit. And on the other hand, you still get shocked and you still can get shocked by what he says. And I'll just say, you know, as a matter of politics, and I know this is not about politics because that's secondary, but as a matter of politics, let's talk about this. One is, two points. One is he started the press conference. Literally the first word out of his mouth was Kamala Harris has destroyed the world. Destroyed the world. OK. Once you start there at that level, it's tough to really up the ante. If you've destroyed the world, you know, you can't really go much further than that. OK. So I'm not really sure that serves him well to start at that level. And two is, look, I mean, the Republican campaign right now, the Trump campaign,

is going really aggressively at Tim Walz on grounds that he exaggerated his service, but more importantly, on grounds that he ducked out of serving in Iraq right before his unit was deployed because he wanted to pursue a political career. As I read Trump's remarks yesterday, Tim Walz should be celebrated, right? Because who would want to do that? Who would want to risk service? So I don't really see how they can, on the one hand, accuse Tim Walz of doing what he did.

And on the other hand, Trump get up there and say, only suckers really go and serve. You know, the real medal recipients are those who get the presidential medal of freedom, not the congressional one. Yeah, and you know, the real medal recipients are those who get the presidential medal of freedom, not the congressional one. Yeah. And, you know, Sam, he's also in his time. He's told he's called groups in Charlottesville that chanted Jews will not replace us holding torches, called them good people. So there were good people on both sides.

He had said that any Jew that doesn't vote for him is not a good Jew. And when he talks to Americans who happen to be Jewish, he calls Benjamin Netanyahu your prime minister. He calls the Israeli ambassador to America your ambassador, calls the country your country, suggesting that if you were a Jew, you were not fully American. Yeah, he's talked about I mean, the dual loyalty trope. I think people need to understand this. The dual loyalty trope is inherently anti-Semitic. And the reason it is, is because it suggests that people like me, Jews who were born in America, actually aren't loyal to America. We're loyal to Jews and only Jews in a Jewish state. And he's pushed this stuff since he started running for president.

And then he gets up there and he says, well, you know, the real threats to anti-Semitism are on the other side. And Doug Emhoff, the first Jewish spouse to serve in the big four, that being the president, vice president, is not really, you know, sufficiently Jewish. And I don't think people quite appreciate just how insulting that can be, but also how deflating it can be, because Jewish Americans are Americans. We don't identify with Israel because it's our faith. In fact, a lot of Jewish Americans find the Israeli government in its current incarnation abhorrent. We have the capacity for independent thought. We have the capacity for loyalty to America. And he removes that from us when he says things like the things that you just read.

Still ahead on Morning Joe, President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris hold their first joint event since the Democratic ticket change. We'll show you the warm reception that the president got and his victory lap on lowering prescription drug costs. But first, our next guest says the Harris and Trump campaigns aren't focusing on policy. Instead, they're being driven by emotions and vibes. That conversation is ahead on Morning Joe. We're back in 90 seconds. Time now for a look at some of the other stories making headlines this morning. The Biden-Harris administration announced a new agreement with drug makers to lower prices on 10 of the costliest medicines

under Medicare. The new prices will take effect in 2026 and will save Medicare billions of dollars. The drugs include medicines to treat diabetes, autoimmune conditions, blood cancers and more. The fourth U.S. resident released by Russia in a prisoner swap earlier this month has arrived back on American soil. Vladimir Karamurza was diverted to Germany after leaving Russia to be medically treated yesterday. He and his family met with President Joe Biden at the White House. And the Secret Service has approved a new plan to better protect former President Trump at outdoor rallies. Well, that bar is awfully low. What are they going to do? Are they going to actually surround the actually secure the perimeter and stop the president from doing jumping jacks after he's been shot?

And there could be another active shooter out there. I still again, I think there are so many stories coming at us so quickly. This is a story that we need to stay on for a very long time to figure out what in the heck happened with the Secret Service. How could they have so badly secured the perimeter and so badly operated while gunfire was going off? And why did it take them so long to get him off the stage? And why did they keep him exposed for 10 seconds? And why did they stop when he said, hold on, hold on. I want to get my shoes. No, you hear gunfire. And at least every other time the Secret Service grabs the person and pulls them off the stage and covers them up.

I still there's nothing that makes sense about the Secret Service and how they operated. And I'm not sure how anybody in a managing position keeps their jobs. Well, two sources familiar with the plans tell NBC News the Secret Service will now use bulletproof glass to protect Trump at outdoor events. The protective measure is already provided to President Biden and Vice President Harris, but was not approved for Trump due to transportation issues for the glass, which is typically transported by military aircraft. Back to politics now, Donald Trump's running mate, Senator J.D. Vance, said in a 2021 speech that companies that back abortion rights just want a pool of cheap labor with workers unaffected by those caring for children. Vance was referring to

a statement from Stacey Abrams, who said that a Georgia abortion ban would be bad for business. She was right. This is something those of us on the right have to accept, is that when the big corporations come against you for passing abortion restrictions, when corporations are so desperate for cheap labor that they don't want people to parent children, she's right to say that abortion restrictions are bad for business. NBC News asked fans about those comments during a campaign event in Pennsylvania, and he doubled down, saying he believes much of corporate America views children as curses rather than blessings. That very often corporate America is not especially friendly to parents with young children, especially young moms with young children. And I think that we have

to promote a culture of pro-family thinking and pro-family policy in this country where we see children as blessings and as resources and not as curses, which is how I think way too many companies and frankly way too many of our leaders in Washington think about our young children. So I would very much like for our young moms and our young dads to be able to have whatever family they want to have and for them to not feel like it's going to ruin their career

or ruin their future. We should be encouraging young moms and dads to bring life into the world. And I think there are a whole host of ways in which we prevent them from doing it. And that's got to change. Gene, yes, we should encourage young families to make choices. IVF may be one of those choices, perhaps because the mother's health or concerns, they may not feel like the state should force or compel them to to have a forced state compelled birth. Perhaps a family may want to step in when their 10-year-old daughter has been raped by an illegal immigrant in the state of Ohio. And perhaps they want to get together with their preacher and they want to get together with their doctor and their mental health provider.

And they want to be able to make that decision as a family instead of making the raped 10-year-old girl flee J.D. Vance's estate. I mean, again, that's the lunacy of all of this. He's sitting up there saying what he's saying and just ignoring everything that's happening because of Donald Trump's ban. Yeah. And incidentally, if you want to be pro-family, why maybe it would be pro-family not to have to worry that children would be would be shot in their schools because of the easy availability of assault weapons. But that aside, what is he talking about?

What corporate America is he talking about that is anti-child? He's just inventing this sort of straw man to attack with this sort of from this oblique angle that doesn't really relate to anything in the real world or to anybody in the real world. And he does it without any policies behind it. Right. OK, fine, let's have a generous national family leave policy so that mothers and fathers get a chance to spend a good time with their newborns. Let's have, you know, all sorts of policies that encourage and make it easier for parents. I heard no such agenda. I just heard this weird and, frankly, untrue slur on corporate America. And I'm not usually a defender of corporate America writ large, but I just don't see what he's talking about.

All right. Coming up, we're going to dig into new polling that shows Kamala Harris is winning over the voters who weren't ready to cast a ballot for Donald Trump or Joe Biden. Morning, Joe. We'll be right back. I could speak all afternoon about the person that I am standing on this stage with. There's a lot of love in this room for our president. And I think it's for many, many reasons, including few leaders in our nation have done more on so many issues, including to expand access to affordable health care like Ben-Jol Biden. And today we take the next step, thank you, Joe, forward in our fight. Thank you, Joe! Thank you, Joe! Thank you, Joe! Thank you, Joe!

But for years, Big Pharma blocked Medicare from negotiating lower drug prices. As a consequence, they're able to maintain the exorbitant price increases that their profits are uncalled for. Look, but this time, we finally beat Big Pharma. And I might add, with no help from Republicans, not a single Republican voted for this bill, period. Not one in the entire Congress. And get this, you may have heard about the MAGA Republican Project 2025 plan. They want to repeal Medicare's power to negotiate drug prices, let Big Pharma back to charge them whatever they want.

Let me tell you what our Project 2025 is. Beat the hell out of them. President Biden and Vice President Harris at an event in Maryland yesterday touting the administration's new agreement to cut certain drug prices. And I'm going to say the front front page of The New York Times today talks about the billions of dollars, the billions of dollars this program is going to save. And it is really telling that not a single Republican, you know, they claim to be fiscally conservative. They claim to want free markets. None of that. None of that. They didn't want to make these big pharma companies negotiate with Medicare. Joe Biden got it done. And there's going to be billions and billions of dollars worth of savings for the taxpayers in the years to come.

So with Democratic enthusiasm on the rise, new polling shows the number of so-called double haters, voters who dislike both the Democratic and the Republican presidential candidates, has been cut in half after Kamala Harris joined the race. According to the latest Monmouth University poll, just 8 percent of voters do not have a favorable view of Harris or Trump. When Biden was leading the ticket, that number was more than double. 17 percent didn't have a favorable view of either candidate. So joining us now, national politics reporter for the Boston Globe, James Pindle. His new piece is entitled Harris and Trump aren't focusing on

policy. Instead, their campaigns are driven by emotions and vibes. Well, James, this is all very shocking. I mean, this has never happened before. Camelot, hope and change, morning in America. I mean, these campaigns, for the most part, are about vibes, aren't they? I mean, you look and so often it is, you know, a turn of a phrase, you know, Ronald Reagan's there you go again. Or or again, Barack Obama, hope and change that wins the day. Yeah, there's an overall theme. But even, Joe, when you ran for Congress in 1994, you know, you ran with a contract with America. In the next presidential election, George W. Bush put out an entire book on policy. And late night jokes were all about the Al Gore lockbox. You can go through

every single election where we had specific policy ideas for a specific problem facing the country. But underneath it, on this particular campaign right now, voters aren't demanding the specifics. Journalists are not. This seems to be an election that's about something much bigger. I'm not saying it's good or bad, but it's an observation that so far this campaign has not been one that has been based on how exactly we fix problems with the economy or the border or so on and so on. James, good morning. Can you speak to how extraordinarily those vibes that you write about this morning have shifted in the last month? It was doom and gloom all summer for Democrats, particularly after the debate. And they thought there was in some quarters a sense of resignation. OK, Donald Trump's

going to win. How do we deal with that? How do we lock down the Senate and the House so he can't run roughshod through Washington? And just how quickly in the last three and a half weeks or so things have changed in terms of those vibes? You know, even if you want to go back to 2020, people were Democrats were saying, look, Joe Biden is not my favorite person, but he's the only Democrat who can beat Donald Trump. And they turned out to be true. Such a tight election is probably true. And this time, obviously, it was Joe Biden's not my favorite Democrat, but maybe he's the only one we got. He is the president. But now there obviously is a different vibe shift.

Democrats now think, wow, maybe we actually can win this election. You talked about the double haters in the beginning of this segment. Very real. And the enthusiasm gap is obvious. Where this, how long this lasts, this is still feels like a honeymoon. Obviously it lasts through the convention. Next week, we'll see what happens with the first major challenge for the Harris campaign, if it ever happens.

Yeah, James, I was going to ask you, how do they bottle this up, right? We have 83 days or something like that. She's got the convention, then the debates. She has a war chest, unlike anything we've seen for advertisements. But at some point, do things get choppy? So how do you foresee that happening? Well, look, as one source put it to me the other day, this presidential campaign is not exactly a roller coaster. It feels like it, but it's really a kiddie roller coaster.

The margins of gaining up or going down are still with one, two or three points. There's no doubt about that. And obviously, we expect this to be a longer campaign. The September will be a very critical point, particularly when it comes to that presidential debate or anything else that could happen in the world. But look, what Kamala Harris is doing right now is changing the electoral map. We're no longer just talking about the blue wall states, which we were in those final days of the Joe Biden campaign. Can you just win Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin to block Trump? There's now the Southern Belt strategy. And the mere fact that Donald Trump is on the air in North Carolina, that he went to Asheville earlier this week,

shows how the map is changing the moment Kamala Harris is on the ticket. All right. National political reporter at The Boston Globe, James Pendle, thank you so much for coming on the show this morning. We appreciate it. And still ahead right here on Morning Joe, the New Yorker's Susan Glasser will join us to discuss for a new piece entitled Kamala Harris. Best campaign surrogate is Donald Trump. Plus, ahead of Harris's economic speech today, Democratic Senator Bob Casey of Pennsylvania will join the conversation to explain what he's hearing about the race from voters around his battleground state. Morning, Joe. We'll be right back. There are stars in the southern sky Southward as you go There is moonlight and moss in the trees Down the seven bridges road

Come on, Mike Barnacle. Come on, Mike Barnacle. What a group. You hang out with those guys, don't you? I mean, how great are the Eagles? So good. Don Henley might be one of the greatest musicians of all time, Joe. And the Eagles, of course, for years, they had the number one best-selling album of all time,

Eagles' greatest hits. I don't know whether it's still number one or not. But, yeah. And, of course, there's also the dude in the backseat of the cab saying, I hate the Eagles. Which was a

one-liner for the ages out of movies. Yeah, I could listen to the Eagles all day long, and let's do it as a matter of fact. And let's do it. And Willie, of course, the documentary on them is extraordinary to see what Glenn Fry and Don Henley started and all the great musicians that followed along with them. Yeah, just an incredible story. What a beautiful song. I'm so glad you let that breathe. I was sitting

there. I forgot we were on TV. I was watching that shot and listening to that song. Great pull by Q in the control room. Yeah, beautiful. And, you know, Willie, it is a great song. And that documentary is a great documentary. Not as great as the documentary on you and me and our escape from Turkey. We're going to talk about that later. We're not competing. But, you know, did pretty well at the box office. Not quite as well, though, as Deadpool and Wolverine, which has now crossed the billion

dollar mark. And let me tell you something. Little Jack. Wow. He's got his Swiss Miss chocolate cocoa out. He's putting on his little his little German shorts and suspenders, and he's going to run downstairs and he's going to hear uncle willie talk to one of the stars of this extraordinarily successful movie jack goes what about 6 3 2 15 still wearing the later hose yeah he'll grow out of it 2 35 yeah yeah it's 6 3 2 35 basically an sec tight end at this point but still wearing the knee socks and the leader hose and on sundays and we we appreciate that well this is actually an interview that you're going to see later on this show this morning, special just for morning Joe, which is my interview with Ryan Reynolds. You said

it Deadpool and Wolverine crossed a billion dollars at the box office last weekend. By this time tomorrow, probably or Sunday, it will have become the highest grossing R-rated movie of all time. It passed Oppenheimer last week and it's about to pass Joker, which had been the highest grossing movie. So Ryan Reynolds and I got together to talk about that. And also something we've shared for the last decade or so, which is his late father and my dad both have Parkinson's disease. So we kind of got to know each other around the Michael J. Fox Foundation. And he's doing some new work around Parkinson's and looking at early warning signs and treatments. So we had a great kind of heart to heart conversation about that. And Deadpool coming up in our fourth hour on Morning Joe.

I look forward to that. Well, that's fantastic. I can't wait to watch that. I'll tell you what I can't wait to watch. What's that? The Red Sox lose against Sam Stein. What's going on, man? What's going on?

We're just like, you know, stuck in kind of that mediocrity. We're just going to be like, you know, ups and downs. Barnacle knows this. We have stretches where things seem so optimistic. And then we play poorly. I was going to use a different word. But no, this is what I expected. I guess we're, you know, aiming for the third wild card spot at this juncture. We still have a chance, but there it is,

63 and 57. We are stuck in mediocrity. Yeah. Well, I mean, I think that's a lot better than many of us expected at the beginning of the year. We don't know what's exactly going to happen. I will say, Mike, though, you look at the second half of the season and we've had a reversal. The first half of the season, our ERA was great among the best in baseball. Now it's one of the season. And we've had a reversal. The first half of the season, our ERA was great among the best in baseball. Now it's one of the worst. Our hitting was sort of a little below average first half of the season. Second half of the season, we're doing very well. But there is no doubt we keep blowing the leads.

And you look at the big series, like coming out of the all-star break against the Dodgers, we really, a good bullpen would have won two of those three games. Instead, we got swept. You look at our opportunities with Houston. You can look at our opportunities with the Rangers. I mean, we keep blowing games. I'll tell you, the Rangers game the other night looked more like 2022.

That team just completely lost it. It was one of the most painful losses of the year. Yeah. Well, Joe, I mean, you know what the story is. We have a group of young pitchers. Some have more promise than others. It was one of the most painful losses of the year. Yeah. Well, Joe, I mean, you know what the story is. We have a group of young pitchers. Some have more promise than others. But not any of them had ever exceeded the number of innings that they have had to pitch this summer.

And they're gassed. They're gassed. Plus, there's the old, ancient Red Sox curse. No matter whether the sun is out or not, no matter whether you're sitting at a ball game, watching a day game or a night game, you know there's a storm cloud above your head. You know suddenly, you know, it's going to rain, it's going to darken, and you're going to get the bad news in terms of reality of baseball. Willie, joy in Mudville. Joy in Mudville. I know we won the World Series in 04 and 07 and 13 and 18. But Barnacle, he remembers 67, 75, 78, and 86. I'm telling you, it's like people in the Balkans.

They remember what happened in the 14th century instead of good things that are going. I'm serious. I'm serious. I was talking. I was talking to Espen Uberg after we had won our fourth World Series. And I was trying to say, this is so fantastic. All the years of losing. She goes, let me tell you where I was in 1978 when Buckingham hit his home run. I was down the left field line. I was behind a priest. And I'd much rather tell that story. Oh, yeah. Like Bosnians would much rather talk about what happened in the 14th century than talk.

It's a great parallel. No, I don't like that. Then talk about the good things that have happened to this team i had the same thought as mike was lamenting the experience of watching the red sox which this is pre-2004 thinking guys it's been 20 years you guys have been great for 20 years and i had a friend to your point joe after begrudgingly after 2004 when the red sox won a red sox fan congratulating him and he said, well, this just starts the next curse. It's not waiting for a rebirth of the

curse, but basically being a Red Sox fan, a lifelong baseball fan, you know that no matter how great things are, someone in sixth, seventh inning, someone in early July, someone in early September is going to come along and remove your fingernails while you're watching the game. That's how painful it's going to be. Can I say this? Can I just say this, Gene Robinson? If you were a Boston fan, you would love this team.

We've got a lot of great young players. We've got a couple of young players that have actually been out this year. We've got a couple of great young players in AAA that are going to be coming up next year. This is a team to cheer for, a team that has a future. Yeah, forgive me for not weeping for the Red Sox, okay? I mean, the poor little under-financed team that can never afford it. Give me a break, Mike. You got to run like four championships, you know, four World Series, Washington Nationals.

Well, we didn't have a team. And then now we have a team. They won once. They won in 19. And, you know, with a great team, because all of our stars are now playing for other teams, including our greatest star, who's playing for Willie's Yankees, Juan Soto. And let's talk about those Yankees for a second. Boy, I'll tell you, they are looking pretty good this year. I thought the Orioles had them for most of the season, but the Yankees are coming on.

They might actually live up to their reputation this year. I'm thinking, Willie, they're going to win 110, 112 games, win the World Series in four games. I don't see how this team has stopped. I just hope my sweet young boy was only three months old the last time the Yankees won a World Series in 2009. I just hope he gets to see with his teenage eyes or his adult eyes someday the Yankees win a World Series. It's been so long. Children think of the children. All right. Speaking like a Cleveland fan.

Thank you all for this wonderful waste of time. Sam, thank you. We appreciate it. But still ahead on. She's voting Sam off the island. Yeah, he's gone.