Morning Joe - Morning Joe 9/14/22

Episode Date: September 14, 2022

Russia in secret spent $300M to influence foreign elections, says U.S. official

Good morning. Live pictures of Washington, D.C. It is 6 a.m. on the East Coast. Welcome to Morning Joe. It's Wednesday, September 14th. A lot to cover this morning with Joe, Willie and me. U.S. stocks tumble as consumer prices continue to rise as President Biden celebrated the Inflation Reduction Act yesterday at the White House. We'll look at the next possible steps to help bring down costs for Americans. Plus, Russian forces in retreat as Ukraine keeps up the pressure. Is this a turning point in the war? President Biden says it's hard to tell.

And Queen Elizabeth returns to London, her coffin arriving at Buckingham Palace yesterday and will be carried by horse drawn carriage to Parliament later this morning, where she will lie in state before Monday's funeral at Westminster Abbey. Also following the latest on the Trump records case, new information unsealed by a federal judge concerned that some government records may still be unaccounted for and a warning from the DOJ about delaying its investigation. Plus, Lindsey Graham takes an already complicated issue for Republicans and makes it worse, proposing an abortion bill and dividing his party with the midterms just weeks away. We have a lot to talk about, Willie Geist, though. I got to say, you guys played the right team last night as you get ready for the playoffs. And Judge played against the right team as well with the Red Sox. Another two home runs, the guy getting closer to Ruth 60 and Maris' 61, which really are the only two numbers that count. Yeah, there's Darren Judge going opposite field in the sixth inning last night at Fenway. The Yankees won the game 7-6 in 10 innings. Then over the green monster

a couple innings later, out onto the street outside the stadium. So he is now, as you said, Joe, with those two home runs, at 57 home runs. The record is Roger Maris, and the American League record is 61. So Judge now has 20 games to hit, four home runs to tie, five to set the record. And as you say to most of us, that is the real record. The other single-season record is set by admitted steroid users. So that's just a statement of fact. And now the Yankees are up six games on the Blue Jays who beat the Rays, so the Rays slip into third place.

So Yankees righting the ship a little bit here when they need to with the focus on Judge, who Lamere and I were texting this morning. Team's still grooving it down the middle to Aaron Judge when not many other guys in that Yankee lineup are hitting right now. Now, it's really horrible. And Jonathan Lemire, my gosh, I don't want to say anything. Look, I don't want to say anything about any. We now know what any kids. And I say most of the ballplayers are actually younger than some of my kids. So I don't want to point anything out.

But I'll just say, though, why we would continue to put a relief pitcher in that consistently blows leads. I mean, seriously, I mean, I understand, you know, we're last place. That's what we are. That's what the Red Sox are. We're in last place. Great job, front office. But to continue to put the same guy in who blew a game against the Orioles last week, blew a game again last night, you know, okay, we're in last place.

Fine. That's what the front office decided they wanted us to be in because those are the moves they made at trade deadline. They said, let's make this great team finish in last place. That's one thing. But you keep putting in the same relief pitcher who keeps blowing games for you and you do it against the Yankees at Fenway. That's really not excusable. Yeah, Joe, I'm here by calling for the appointment of a special master to get to the bottom of the Red Sox bullpen woes.

I mean, this is it's terrible. I mean, familiar is who you're talking about here. You see him last night traipsing off the mound, having a having to back up a play at home plate again because he keeps giving rockets to the outfield. And the Yankees are running around the bases. He is his near ray of well over 10 since the Red Sox inexplicably picked him up a couple weeks ago. The only thing he has apparently is a, I mean, look, Yankees are literally falling down and they can still score because of how bad that ball has hit so far. Yeah, no, it's grim. The Red Sox are stumbling to the finish line and we have given our arch rival a gift here. Yankees were really teetering there a few weeks ago. They have stabilized. They're going to win the division. They're setting up for the postseason as all eyes are on Aaron Judge.

OK, enough now. We begin with the news on the new findings from the State Department showing Russia has secretly funneled more than 300 million dollars to foreign political parties since 2014 in an effort to influence elections in more than two dozen countries. A State Department summary of a recent U.S. intelligence review shows the money was often covertly sent to politicians and parties through think tanks, fake contracts, state-owned enterprises and shell companies. And according to The New York Times, Russia has probably given even more that has gone undetected. The document said the Times reports the State Department document was sent as a cable to American embassies around the world and amounts, quote, to expose the scope of Russian interference in global political processes and elections and rally other nations to help combat it. You'll recall that back in 2020, intelligence agencies determined that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election in favor of Donald Trump.

A nearly 1,000-page report from the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee on the Russia investigation detailed how Russia launched an aggressive effort to interfere in the election on Donald Trump's behalf. It detailed the close relationship between former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and Konstantin Kalimnik, who the committee describes as a Russian intelligence officer. Quote, taken as a whole, Manafort's high level access and willingness to share information with individuals closely affiliated with the Russian intelligence services, particularly Kalimnik, represented a grave counterintelligence threat, the report says. Manafort's lawyer at the time refuted the report's

findings. The panel's acting GOP chairman at the time was Senator Marco Rubio of Florida. Let's bring in former NATO Supreme Allied Commander James Trevides. He's MSNBC chief international analyst. So, you know, we always talk about the election hoax as we talk about the QAnon hoax, as we talk about the covid hoax, as we talk about all the lies that Trump and Trump has spread around the media ecosystem. I've got to say, for me, the one that really stings is Russian hoax. When people start talking about a Russian hoax because of the lies contained in the Steele dossier, they ignore Marco Rubio's Senate Intel Committee saying that the Trump 2016 contacts with Russia constituted a grave, grave counterintelligence threat are that all the Intel agencies were saying that Russia was getting involved to help Donald Trump win the 2016 election campaign. This morning, more evidence, $300 million spent worldwide by Vladimir Putin to try to influence campaigns, mainly in the United States,

but also in some other Western democracies. A $300 million hoax. That's some hoax, Admiral. Talk about the consequences of it and the risks. You bet. And let's all be not be naive here. We're getting the tip of the iceberg, no doubt. I mean, this is where a lot of Russian oil and gas revenue goes, is to shape the international system. And you're going to hear some people kind of quoting that great movie of global geopolitics, Casablanca, saying, oh, come on, this is business as usual around the world. You know, I can't believe

there's gambling in this house. No, this is wrong. It is huge. We're just seeing the beginning of this, I think. And we ought to remember here that this not only goes right at the heart of who we are as a nation, but also, as you mentioned, our allies, partners and friends. I would bet you everything I own that France is high on the list here attempting to manipulate along with other European countries. So bottom line here, U.S. intelligence is smart releasing this information. There's always that tendency, Joe, to kind of hold it back. This is a perfect example of where by proactively launching this intelligence, we hopefully inoculate a little bit here in our own country. We alert our friends, allies, partners around the world.

We encourage them to share what they are seeing. We can build that intelligence mosaic, understand this, reverse engineer it and kill it. And this all comes, Admiral, as Russia is struggling in the war in Ukraine. Ukrainian forces advancing in the country's northeast and now taking down signs of what they say is Russian propaganda. In a video released yesterday, Ukrainian soldiers seen ripping up Russian flags and celebrating after entering a city close to the Russian border in Kharkiv. That was on Sunday. The video also shows soldiers taking down a large billboard on a building that read, quote, We are one with Russia. Meanwhile, the

country's deputy defense minister said yesterday fighting still is raging in Kharkiv and Ukrainian troops are making good progress. So, Admiral, we've heard so much about this counteroffensive really stepped up in the last week or so, the lightning speed of it, the effectiveness of it. How much does it change the dynamic of the war right now? Well, let's hope it changes it quite a bit, Willie. And I think there is a feeling that this could be a pivot in the war, principally because what you're seeing is our Ukrainian allies, partners, friends, they are tactically succeeding in combined arms operations, putting together air, ground, drones, put the whole package together. Secondly, they're showing

they can act on two axes up in the north and east and south. And thirdly, they are strategically impacting the global view of them. Meeting coming up with Xi and Putin shortly. That's going to be an uncomfortable conversation between two autocrats. So bottom line, this is real. Break, break. We ought to recognize that there are still big Russian troop concentrations in the south in between Russia and Crimea. It's going to be a long slog to get all of the Russians out. But, yes, this is an important moment in a good week or two. And I bet it will continue for the Ukrainians.

And another important headline this morning involving the security of the world. A magistrate judge has unsealed previously redacted information relating to the FBI search of former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago home. The bulk of the material has to do with what has already been revealed in the ongoing battle over appointing a third party or a special master to review the information. The newly released sections of the affidavit show investigators were searching for a wide array of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, including several types of top secret documents. It also shows that when Trump's lawyers handed over 38 documents marked top secret, secret or confidential in June, they told investigators those documents had all been kept in a storage room at the resort. Some of the markings showed the documents

contained FISA information or information that came from a confidential human source. Justice Department officials said at the time of their June 3rd visit, about 50 boxes remained in the room. According to DOJ court filings, investigators said Trump's lawyers would not let them look inside the boxes during the visit. Let's bring in NBC News investigations correspondent Tom Winter. Tom, obviously disturbing. More information we learn, the more disturbing it is. The top secret information, the classified information that was contained in a beach club, a country club in Florida with no secure measures at all. What did we learn yesterday? Well, not only that,

but I think we're now starting to get a little bit of a clearer sense of the timeline here, Joe, as far as what was represented to the Justice Department and when by Trump's own representatives. And on top of that, we got some additional detail about the timing of the request for surveillance video from the Trump organization and obviously from Mar-a-Lago. And I think that's an interesting development. You know, a search warrant doesn't have to contain all the steps that the FBI took and the Justice Department took in the course of putting together their investigation. They just have to prove to the judge that there's probable cause or reason enough to execute that search warrant and get those materials because there's been a violation of law. And I think one of the interesting things, just get the search warrant in front of me, is that there's a period of time between when they

go to Mar-a-Lago in early June of this year and then in late June of this year, where the FBI agent says, the Justice Department has advised me that there are security cameras in the vicinity of the storage room in the basement of Mar-a-Lago, which we're looking at, and that they serve a subpoena on the Trump organization for copies of that and are provided a hard drive on July 6th. So the timing there is about a week or two between when they ask for these documents through a grand jury subpoena. And then, as you see on the screen, when the Trump organization gave the FBI a hard drive. The rest of what follows that is completely redacted, really only about nine paragraphs yesterday. We were able to see that were redacted in full or in part. But I think that that's an interesting bit of timeline.

And the key question for me, looking at this, trying to figure out, OK, what happened? Who was talking to who? Who saw what? Who talked to the Justice Department and told them that there was a camera or cameras there? Did they notice it when they first went to Mar-a-Lago? Did somebody tip them off that these cameras are there? And then what gave them reason to ask for those hard drives or for those items of video from the Trump property, I think is really interesting here. So that's just one of the things that I'm kind of keying in on off of yesterday's filing. And Tom, this filing sort of lays out again how long it took to get all this stuff. It comes in drips and drabs. You get some of it in January,

15 boxes with highly classified material. That's not all of it. They go back in June, they get 50 more boxes. They say 50 boxes are remaining. Does this get at it all? Does it show you that the Justice Department might be pursuing obstruction in some way, which is to say the National Archives asked for more than a year. And even when the FBI went in to get what they needed, they couldn't get it all because the Trump team wouldn't hand it over. I think that was one of the key revelations from yesterday's filings, the fact that they laid out all the steps that they took. We have some additional detail on that. I think the other thing that they put in, I think this is noteworthy, that they were provided a

certification letter, as they call it, from an unnamed individual too, who said, based on the information that has been provided to me, this is what this individual is saying in this letter, I'm authorized to certify that one, we've searched everything and this is all that we have. And that we searched it after a subpoena. We've made no additional documentation. And then there was also at one point a certification or statement that was made that, look, the only place that these documents could be is in the storage room. And as we now know from the image that we're looking at on screen, according to the FBI, that was very much not the case that these top secret documents that we're looking at

were actually found in Trump's office. So when you start to see those statements put in to this search warrant, it's very clear that, to me, that they're starting to look at this as a potential. Who is obstructing us? Who are making what assertions to us? And Judge, there's a reason why we need to go in. We don't think we're getting the full story here. You know, Jonathan O'Meara, a lot of questions about why. There's still very much that we don't know we're getting the full story here. You know, Jonathan O'Meara, a lot of questions about why we there. There's still very much that we don't know. But based on the fact pattern that's out there right now in the press, the fact pattern that really all sides have admitted to one one one charge. Potential charge really does seem more obvious than others even right now.

And that is just flat out obstruction of justice, lying, claiming that you'd given back all the top secret documents, all the documents that Trump had stolen from the White House, a government building and taken down to Moralago. They just lied about it and lied to the FBI about it. Any other again, let's just let's just keep it to the standard of, you know, no man is above the law. Anybody else would have been in jail for doing that. It's just that simple. Yeah. Yeah. Legal experts have zeroed in on the obstruction possibility. Joe, you're right about that. The lawyers said everything was returned. It wasn't. Lawyers said everything was in a secure

spot in the Mar-a-Lago. It wasn't. Stuff was found in Trump's desk in the 45 office. So there was all sorts of suggestions there that they simply were not truthful with investigators. And Admiral Cerritos, though, I want to get you on the other possible charge here, and that's the mishandling of this information. You spoke pretty powerfully when we had you on a couple of weeks ago talking about your own experiences with classified information. And we want to know if you what sort of precedent are you concerned about here where there is we you know, we as much as no man is above the law, we know that there is a sense even from some Democrats who worry about what it would look like if a president, a post president was charged with a crime for something like this? What would be the fallout? What would your concern, though, if that doesn't happen?

Yeah, I'm going to take the flip side of that concern and say, as Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, every day at 10 o'clock, I was handed the president's daily intelligence brief and I would dutifully go through it physically there and then hand it right back to the officer who had brought it to me. And if you let anyone skate through those procedures, you weaken all of us because the incentives to protect those documents so closely continue because of consequences that individuals see. And it does not matter who you are, where you are in that chain of command. Hey, last thought here. Tom's excellent reporting mentions sources. Boy, does that make my hair on the back of my neck, which is the only place I have hair anymore, stand up.

And the point is, think about how that is received in Paris, in Berlin, in Tokyo, in Canberra. Do you think those nations are going to want to share information with us anymore? Do you think they're going to want to tell us what is happening in their domestic political domain with the Russian intrusion? Probably not. If they think that intelligence is going to be scattered into the winds. Big mistake for the United States. The way we protect documents and secrets and security protects our reputation in a real way. Not just respect, people trusting the United States. Former NATO Supreme Allied Commander James Stavridis, thank you very much.

And NBC's Tom Winter, thank you as well for your reporting. The House Select Committee investigating the January 6th attack on the Capitol met behind closed doors for four hours yesterday morning. Chairman Benny Thompson later spoke to reporters about what's ahead for his committee. Take a look. Are you circling in on a date for that next hearing? Is September 28th an option you're spoke to reporters about what's ahead for his committee. Take a look. Are you circling in on a date for that next hearing? Is September 28th an option you're throwing around? Well, that's the goal at this point. That date, September 28th? That's correct. Can you talk about the committee's cooperation with the Justice Department? Is that evolving at all given the DOJ is more active around subpoenas, for example? Well, we will take that up on Friday. We have a meeting on Friday. I plan to bring it up. I think now that the Department of Justice

is being proactive in issuing subpoenas and other things, I think it's time for the committee to determine whether or not the information we gather can be beneficial to their investigation. Let's bring in congressional investigations reporter for The Washington Post, Jackie Alimany. She's an MSNBC contributor. So, Jackie, it sounds like the 28th, two weeks from today, is the tentative date for the next public hearing of the January 6th Select Committee. We talked to Adam Kinzinger yesterday on this show, who sits on that committee, about what they might be looking at and what they want to still present to the public. What are they digging through and what do you expect to hear in a couple of weeks? Yeah, Willie, so investigators on the committee spent all of August sort of

picking up some loose ends and chasing new investigative tracks that appeared throughout the course of the investigation over the past year. We know that they were looking at conversations that were taking place amongst Cabinet secretaries about invoking the 25th Amendment. There were questions about former President Trump's mental fitness and whether or not he could finish out the rest of his presidency until inauguration. Obviously, that never materialized, but investigators were very curious about what those conversations were and just how seriously Cabinet Secretaries, people like Mike Pompeo, Stephen Mnuchin, Elaine Chao, and Betsy DeVos, were taking this pretty dramatic step. We also know that the committee is still very focused on trying to sort out the issue of the Secret Service. There has been a feeling that the Secret Service has obfuscated and made

cooperating with the committee very difficult since the beginning. They're still getting new information from Secret Service. And even along the way, it has been a challenge for investigators to get that information from them. Tony Ornato, who was the former chief of Trump's operations, but also a Secret Service detailee, a very unusual position, I might note, has still yet to come forward to provide an additional interview with investigators, despite saying that he would be willing to do so. Now he has retired from the Secret Service agency and has a private lawyer. So we'll see if that actually materializes. There's also people

like Ginny Thomas, who had a medical condition that prevented her from appearing before the committee previously, despite a request. We're waiting to see if the committee is going to have to escalate their efforts to a subpoena to get her to come in. And then there's the things that we don't know, new lines of inquiry or new nuggets of news and evidence that the committee picked up along the way in August and are now sort of shaping and debating how they're going to present this information to the American public again. Okay, Jackie Alimany, thank you so much. Looks like we'll be seeing a lot of you as this picks up again. Thank you. And still ahead on Morning Joe, Senator Lindsey Graham gets pushback from both sides of the aisle after introducing a new 15-week abortion ban bill. We'll take a look at what some of his

Republican colleagues are saying. Plus, the Justice Department releases new details about the January 6th attack on former D.C. police officer Michael Fanone. A rioter involved could face one of the longest sentences yet. Also ahead, stock futures are looking up after Wall Street took a major tumble. Steve Ratner joins us with his analysis of yesterday's disappointing inflation report and what it means for the U.S. economy. And here is a live look outside Buckingham Palace right now. We'll go live to London as Queen Elizabeth's coffin is taken from the palace to Westminster Hall later this morning. You're watching Morning Joe. We'll be right back. A beautiful shot of the sun coming up over Washington, D.C. as we take a look at the

morning papers. It's 30 past the hours. According to the Herald, Pennsylvania's 911 centers are struggling to fill dispatcher vacancies and are facing growing funding deficits. A new report reveals the state's vacancy rate for dispatchers and related personnel is at 20 percent in one county. The vacancy rate is above 50 percent. By the way, this is such a problem. Universal. And you hear it across the country, especially in larger cities. People call 911. Nobody answers.

It's really the whole system is broken down. Let's head to the Poughkeepsie Journal, which is leading this morning with the spike in drug overdoses in upstate New York. State health officials last month reported five opioid related deaths and 14 drug overdoses in a 24 hour span. New Yorkers are being urged to carry the opioid reversal drug naloxone. Pharmacy statewide can provide that drug without a prescription. And in New Hampshire, the top story on the Concord Monitor covers last night's primary elections. Republican Governor Chris Sununu claimed victory within minutes of the polls closing. He will face Democratic State Senator Tom Sherman in November. Democratic Senator Maggie Hassan also won her primary, but the GOP Senate race to determine who will challenge her is still

too close to call. To the Columbus dispatch, which highlights Ohio's gubernatorial race. A new poll shows incumbent GOP Governor Mike DeWine leading Democrat Nan Whaley by more than 14 percent. It is the third poll in a row showing DeWine with a commanding lead. And Florida Today leads with an update on NASA's Artemis moon rocket. The space agency yesterday said it needs more time to continue working on the rocket's repairs. It pushed the next launch attempt to the end of the month. Willie? Stocks took a plunge yesterday after the release of August's inflation report,

the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropping more than 1,200 points. That's nearly 4%. The S&P 500 slid over 4% and the Nasdaq Composite fell more than 5%. Those drops are racing nearly all of the market's recent gains. President Biden released a statement following that inflation report, which reads this way, quote, it will take more time and resolve to bring inflation down, which is why we passed the Inflation Reduction Act to lower the cost of health care, prescription drugs and energy. And my economic plan is showing that as we bring prices down, we are creating good paying jobs and bring manufacturing back to America. Join us now, former Treasury official, Morning Joe economic analyst Steve Ratner. Steve, good morning. A tough day to have the big Inflation Reduction Act event, as they did at the White House, with this number that came out yesterday. Housing, food, all kinds of sectors seeing inflation. Gas prices are down, which was some good news over the last couple of months, but a

tough number yesterday. A tough number yesterday. It's interesting because they knew the number was coming yesterday, and yet they scheduled the event, perhaps because the last couple of months, but a tough number yesterday. A tough number yesterday. It's interesting because they knew the number was coming yesterday, and yet they scheduled the event, perhaps because the last couple of months, the inflation numbers have seemed to be going a little bit more in the right direction in terms of starting to decelerate a bit, particularly in what we call core inflation, which is everything except food and energy. Those are very volatile. So we often look, economists often look at just core to see whether inflation is really rising. And what you can see here, particularly in this report, and is this matches what we call headline inflation, the overall inflation number, that 8.3% number

against what we call core, which I just described as everything else. And you can see that this month in particular, in that blue oval in the upper right, you can see that headline inflation did come down a tick, but core inflation went up. And that's what freaked out the market, to use a technical term. Well, and obviously, this now puts the ball in the Fed's court. They have to raise rates. The question is by how much, I guess. The question is by how much. And the market reacted, as you saw, very, very quickly to this news even before it opened. And in addition to a movement on stock prices, there was a movement on interest rate expectations. And that's what the chart on the left shows. Before yesterday, the market was

expecting probably a three quarters of a percentage point increase in the federal funds rate, the interest rate the Fed controls, but maybe as little as 50. That was the probability. You see that jump there right at 830. And now the market's assuming absolutely three quarters of a percentage point minimum and actually a 25 percent chance of a full percentage point, which was something we have not done since the inflation days in the 1970s. And then on the right, you can see how quickly the stock market reacted. High interest rates are the enemy of the stock market. And as soon as the market saw this coming, it rolled over. And so how long with these rate hikes, Steve, will it take to see inflation come down using

this blunt instrument, this tool of raising rates to bring it down? Is that a short term goal or is that something that takes a lot of time? That's exactly the right question, Willie. And what yesterday's numbers did was it increased the probability of there being what we call we're calling a hard landing, that there's going to have to be a recession here to get inflation down anywhere near the Fed's 2 percent target. And so we're going to have to see what comes of it. But it's certainly not going to happen in the near term. There's only one more report before the midterm elections. And we're looking at a much longer process than that. And the question is going to be

how consumers react to these numbers, both economically and politically. And your last chart looks at gas prices as it relates to consumer inflation expectations. What's the what does that look like? So here's here's if I were in the Biden administration, here's my hope that consumers pay very close attention to gas prices in terms of how they feel about inflation expectations. And so you can see on the left gas prices obviously going up during the after the Ukrainian invasion in particular. And then they've been drifting down, as we've been talking about, a fairly substantial decline, actually. But you can see on the right that consumer expectations for interest rates,

for inflation, rather, excuse me, have moved very much in parallel, that they went up with gas prices and they've been coming down with gas price. What consumers expect inflation to be, which presumably infects how they're going to vote at the polls when they get there in November. It'll be interesting to see in the coming days whether the CPI numbers and some of the other bad inflation news is going to shift consumer expectations in a material way with the implications that that could have in November. Steve, you and I have been warning about reckless spending for about a decade now and how it could lead to inflation. And if people don't understand, didn't understand the consequences of that, I guess they do now. Yesterday, as the news was coming out, I just I jotted down a couple of notes about where the U.S.

economy stands right now based on headlines over the past few days. Record job growth, record job openings, 11 million, a generational dominance of the U.S. dollar over all other currencies across the world. We're stronger now than we've ever been, at least in a well over a generation. Child poverty now at record lows. It's plummeted over the past 30 years. Gas prices continue to go down. Supply chain problems are improving. I mean, take take all of that, put it aside. And you talk about mourning in America. That is that's pretty extraordinary. But then inflation and it's really impacting Americans lives, especially working class and middle class Americans who are, you know, not trying to buy a second house, not trying to buy a third car. They need to rent an apartment near near work. And the costs just

keep skyrocketing. Joe, I think you summed it up very well. We have an economy that on many levels is performing exceptionally well. We went through a pandemic. We came out of it. We've had this extraordinarily quick recovery, thanks in large part to government efforts, government stimulus and other things that we had to do, cutting interest rates to zero. But now, but we overshot the mark in effect. We kind of went too far in trying to mute the effects of the pandemic. Too much stimulus, as you suggested. Too much low interest rates for too long by the Fed. Too much buying of bonds by the Fed.

And now we're paying the price. And the problem is, historically, consumers have voted in elections very much on the basis of inflation, as much as they have on all the other very good aspects of this economy that you just recited. As you know, all the public opinion polls, inflation has been at or near the top in terms of people's concerns. And so obviously, the Biden administration is trying to present all all the good news that you just went through very clearly. But the question is going to be whether this inflation news overcomes that. Yeah. And the thing is, I mean, the wages, your wages can go up,

the more job openings than ever before. But if you're holding down a job and you get a raise and you're still falling behind every month, well, you're not sitting there singing happy days are here again. It's a real problem. So I'm afraid, unfortunately, Steve is right. We are hoping for that soft landing. It doesn't look like we're going to get it. Morning, Joe. Economic analyst Steve Ratner will be talking to you again about this very soon hey could i ask steve a real quick question on the side real quick question steve i'm nervous no don't be nervous i'm a little nervous no don't be nervous at all we talked to gene robinson who is a washington post uh london bureau uh correspondent uh about Queen. You spent a good bit of time there as well. I'm just curious, just this week, we haven't had you on to talk about the Queen, but just curious about

your thoughts. I know you had fascinating insights about Margaret Thatcher. And as you said, without Thatcher, Britain would be France. I think you're right. Talk about the queen and her and how you saw her working in that that constitutional monarchy. Yeah, well, look, she is she the queen, as you know, is nonpolitical. She stays out of any kind of policy decisions. And her job there is to really be supportive of whatever whatever the government happens to be, whoever happens to be the prime minister. And and that's certainly what I saw in my time there in the early 80s. Margaret Thatcher was imposing very, very tough medicine on Britain to try to pull it together, ultimately succeeded, as you just as you just said. I think it might have ended up as maybe less than France if she hadn't done what she did. But that's another

conversation for the day, perhaps. But the queen was was supportive, as, as is her job, and really stood behind Thatcher, not in a public way, but implicitly by her support, and really was everything you're hearing about her this past week, very much a rock of stability, a rock of tradition, a link to the past in a country that puts so much value on that. And of course, you do have and still have anti-monarchists. But on balance, the British people love the queen, even back in the 1980s when I was there. Morning, Joe. Economic analyst Steve Ratner, thank you. And of course, we'll be having our live cameras always watching London. The Queen's coffin arriving at Buckingham Palace yesterday,

and it will be carried by horse-drawn carriage to Parliament today, where she will lie in state before Monday's funeral. We'll be following all of that. Coming up, we'll play for you what President Biden had to say at yesterday's White House celebration of the Inflation Reduction Act as he continues to showcase legislative achievements ahead of the midterms. Also ahead, we're taking a look at this morning's must-read opinion pages. Morning Joe. It is 46 past the hour. Beautiful shot of New York City as we take a look at the must read opinion pages.

Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich writes in a Guardian piece entitled History Will Judge Republicans Who Stay Silent About the Big Lie. And he writes this, quote, Whether you're a politician supporting the big lie, a billionaire backer of it or a broadcaster who's pushing it. It is not too late for you to get off the road you're on. Yet if you continue to promote or enable this lie, you are undermining our democracy. The crisis you have helped create is worsening. The bare part of the responsibility for what comes next. When the history of this trying time is written, future generations of Americans will judge your actions and your silences harshly. Generations to come will sit in judgment about what you have wrought. And if the Democratic experiment called America continues to unravel because of what you did or fail to do, you will live in infamy.

You know, Jonathan O'Meara, we we look at the challenges to Western democracy, to to liberal democracy, to the very, very intellectual foundations that has made America America. And it is under attack. It's under attack not just by Vladimir Putin and Viktor Orban, who brags about being an illiberal Democrat, but also under attack by many people on the right who will now openly say they hate Western democracy. They hate Western freedoms. They hate liberal democracy. And, you know, it's one thing to be someone out saying that so aggressively following Donald Trump and sort of a more authoritarian slant. But but the silence, as Robert Rice said, the acquiescence among United States senators, especially who I know for the most part loathe Donald Trump and believe he's not only bad for the party, but he's bad for our constitutional republic. Their silence every day is damning. Right. This is not just a threat, a threat that's foreign from Putin and his ilk. And we've opened

the show talking about his efforts to undermine democracy in nations across the globe. But it's very much right here at home. And my book, it traces how the big lie began. But it certainly doesn't end just on the 2020 election. It doesn't end just on January 6th. We're living with it right now. And that's what this piece gets at, Joe. And it is so worrisome here, is that there are that right now, the big lie, the idea that you can challenge election results. You don't believe in the foundation of democracy, which includes the peaceful transfer of power or conceding to your opponent. The ripple, the ramifications here are so dangerous. We cannot agree on the same set of facts we heard from Republican candidates, including those in Arizona who already alleged voter fraud before ballots were even counted in a race that they won,

setting the table for making a similar claim this fall in the general election and how few Republicans are willing to stand up against it. One who did, Liz Cheney, her reward, a crushing defeat in her own primary. All right. The Washington Post editorial board has a new piece on the Pennsylvania Senate race entitled John Fetterman needs to debate more than once for the U.S. Senate. It's a pretty tough piece. The board writes in part this. Mr. Fetterman has seemingly been reluctant to commit to firm debate dates. And that troubling stance has raised questions about whether he, still recovering from a serious stroke, is fit to serve in the Senate. Since returning to the campaign trail, Mr. Fetterman has been halting in his performances. He stammers, appears confused, and keeps his remarks short.

He has held no news conferences. Mr. Fetterman acknowledges his difficulties with auditory processing, which makes it hard for him to respond quickly to what he's hearing. He receives speech therapy and we wish him a speedy recovery, full recovery. But the lingering unanswered questions about his health, underscored by his hesitation to debate, are unsettling. settling. Mr. Fetterman is asking voters for a six year contract without giving them enough information to make sound judgments about whether he's up for such demanding job. And Joe, obviously he's up against Dr. Oz. So the consequences, some might say, would be quite dire if he were to lose this race. Well, I mean, certainly Democrats believe that. I think a lot of independents believe that as well. But if you want to be a United States senator, if you want

to serve a six year term, you have to prove to the people of the state whose vote you're trying to get that you're going to be able to serve out that six year term, that you're going to be able to function on the floor of the Senate. And while Dr. Oz has and his political team have put out some some crude, clunky attacks on Fetterman, that doesn't distract from the fact that anybody seeking a six year term needs to prove to voters that they're going to be able to do their job. Yeah. And and there is no doubt. Talk to any doctor. They will tell you that that that Lieutenant Governor Fetterman had a very significant stroke, a very significant medical occurrence. And so it's going to be incumbent on him to prove to the people of Pennsylvania that he's going to be able to do his job. All right. Coming up on Morning Joe. Fact is, I feel more loose and relaxed than ever.

Those Joe Biden shoulder massages, they're like magic. Barack Obama joking about his relationship with Joe Biden at the White House Correspondents Dinner back in 2015. But is their relationship not as perfect as it might seem? A new book is digging into that. We'll speak with the author ahead on Morning Joe. But it wants to move the world. The counsel from investigation into former President Bill Clinton, Ken Starr, has died, a judicial appointee under President Ronald Reagan, who then served as solicitor general under President George H.W. Bush. Starr is known best for leading the Whitewater investigation, which led to a probe into whether or not President Clinton had carried on an affair

with Monica Lewinsky and then tried to cover it up. The investigation forced President Clinton to confess to lying under oath, which eventually led to his impeachment. Years later, Starr said he regretted the Lewinsky phase of the investigation, but insisted it had to be done. He went on to serve as the dean of Pepperdine University's law school, as well as the president of Baylor University. He resigned from Baylor after an investigation found university leadership had mishandled accusations of sexual assault against members of the school's football team. Starr returned to the political stage in 2020 when he served as a lawyer for President Trump during his first Senate trial following his impeachment. According to his family, Starr died in Houston following complications from surgery.

He was 76 years old.