Morning Joe - Morning Joe 9/14/23

Episode Date: September 14, 2023

Biden addresses House impeachment inquiry

Mike Pence, if anyone is Christian, fashion, bulls**t, or leave and get the f**k out of our country, get the f**k out of Iowa. I'm going to put him down as a maybe. That's one way to do it. Mike Pence doing a pretty good job of brushing off a protester in Iowa. If you would call him a protester. We've got a lot to get to this morning, including House Speaker Kevin McCarthy's defense of the impeachment inquiry into President Biden. We'll have his comments on that and who he blames for his flip flop on whether to launch the impeachment inquiry without a full vote. Meanwhile, on Capitol Hill, far right Republicans got the inquiry that many of them pushed for. But now they're saying it won't deter their demands on a spending bill. And we have a

packed guest list this morning that includes Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, who's just announced her reelection campaign, and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, just to name a few. Good morning and welcome to Morning Joe. It is Thursday, September 14th. Along with Joe, Willie and me, we have White House editor for Politico, Sam Stein, doing way too early duties this morning. Thank you, Sam. Editor at the nonpartisan group Project Democracy. Amanda Carpenter is with us this morning and congressional investigations reporter for The Washington Post. Jackie Alimany joins us this morning as well. Good to have you all on board. Will I let's start with impeachment. That's some guest list, by the way.

I'm glad I wore clean clothes, Joe and I both today. So we're ready. Let's begin this hour with new details now surrounding the House Republicans impeachment inquiry into President Biden. On Tuesday, Speaker Kevin McCarthy announced he directed three committees to conduct the inquiry amid claims Joe Biden used his position as vice president to further his son Hunter's foreign business dealings. McCarthy made the move without holding a floor vote. Yesterday, the president addressed the inquiry for the first time at a Democratic fundraiser in Virginia. He brushed off the Republican move, saying, quote, I get up every day, not a joke, not focused on impeachment. I've got a job to do. I've got to deal with the issues that affect the American people every single solitary day. End quote. The president also claimed the House wants to impeach him because it wants to shut down the government. Congress faces a September 30th deadline to pass a government funding bill.

The House has been unable to reach a compromise as far right Republicans are pushing for deep spending cuts. Some believe McCarthy launched the impeachment inquiry in an effort to appease those lawmakers so they will support his stopgap funding bill. But McCarthy's move seems to have done little at all to curry that favor. In conversations with reporters yesterday, a number of House Freedom Caucus members said while they support the inquiry, it does not soften their demands for spending cuts. So, Sam Stein, this is what we've been talking about for several days now, which is Republicans, Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Greene, believe they have complete leverage over Speaker McCarthy because they gave him his job on that 15th vote back in January. And they're going to extract from him everything they want. In impeachment inquiry, it appears not enough. They want more. Right. I mean, and you have to understand, Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Greene, their reason,

political reason for being is to be a thorn in the side of their party, right? If Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene were to say, oh, yeah, the impeachment inquiry has been launched. We will therefore vote for fund the government. They would be not only damaging their own brand, but inviting a challenge to their own position. And so if McCarthy thought at any point in time that simply authorizing an impeachment decree would get their votes in a government funding bill, that was obviously mistaken. And this goes to show you sort of the difficult position McCarthy really is in, right? Very slim majority, needed to make a ton of decisions and agreements, frankly, with the

far right in order to get the speakership. And now they have him over the barrel. They can call at any point in time a vote on his speakership. I don't think it would prevail, but it would be an embarrassment to him. And he has to bend over backwards to get basic things done, like funding the government. And frankly, if you talk to anyone on the Hill, there is almost zero expectation that the government will stay open past September 30th or maybe a small stopgap, but then we'll close after that. We used to think of government shutdowns as big deals. This is now going to become sort of a routine process. Jackie Alimany, what are you hearing on the Hill? Some members of Kevin McCarthy's far right group, caucus, whatever, were so, so disrespectful toward him on the airwaves. I mean, it just it seems like a very unhealthy alliance that he has.

Yeah. And it's not one that is proving to work to his benefit even after he's gone ahead and unilaterally announced that the House is going to initiate an impeachment inquiry, because last night the House couldn't even move forward on funding a defense portion of the appropriations bill. And that's because this group of hardline, staunch conservatives have said that it's not enough that McCarthy announced an impeachment inquiry, that they still haven't seen what the speaker promised them months ago when they decided to vote for him as speaker, which is these 12 top line numbers, the numbers for the 12 top line appropriations bills that they've asked for to be dramatically reduced. This has been what they've been calling for all along, these big budgetary cuts.

And this is something that they have actually tried to explicitly separate from the impeachment inquiry, that the two things aren't connected, even as McCarthy has tried to say that they are. That if, you know, the House decides not to fund the government, they can't go ahead with an impeachment inquiry. This doesn't seem to resonate with these hardliners who are simultaneously calling for McCarthy to ramp up pressure on both of these fronts. Yeah. And, you know, the thing is they're only playing for social media. They don't give a damn. They don't give a damn about balanced budgets. They don't care about the things that we fought for when we were there as Republicans. They don't give a damn about any of it. How do I know that? Because when Donald Trump was president of the United States, I actually was begging them to focus on smaller

budgets, on balancing the budget, on bringing down the national debt. I actually went and talked to the head of the Freedom Caucus for lunch saying, stop your nonsense. Stop playing around. We actually have the debt that keeps exploding and it's exploding worse under Donald Trump than any president ever. Do something about it. And what do you think they did? They did nothing. Mark Meadows did absolutely nothing. And so now suddenly they're going to shut down Washington, D.C. because of the deficit when they just didn't give a damn a few years ago. As long as it was Donald Trump breaking records, spending us into debt, destroying our economy, the long term health of it. They didn't care because it was all about Donald Trump. It

wasn't about deficits. It wasn't about the debt. It wasn't about the United States Constitution, which very few of them seem to care about. And if you don't believe me, let's talk to a guy who actually serves with them. You know, Willie, we've got some news on Mitt Romney right now, and we're going to read it. But before that, this morning early I got up and I started reading some excerpts from McKay Poppins' extraordinary book. Listen to some of these things that Mitt Romney rightfully said. First, a very large portion of my party really doesn't believe in the Constitution. And then he says of Mike Pence, no one has been more

loyal, more willing to smile when he saw absurdities, more willing to ascribe God's will to things that were ungodly than Mike Pence. Let me say it again. More few people were more willing to ascribe God's will to things that were ungodly than Mike Pence. Pauline Cruz, he said, were two of the smartest people he ever met in politics. But he said there they were on January the 6th making a calculation that put politics above the interest

of American democracy and the U.S. Constitution. And then this. When Romney took the stage at a Utah Republican meeting in 2021 after the January 6th riots, he quickly realized he'd underestimated the vitriol awaiting him. The heckling and booing got so loud and sustained he could barely get a word out. He labored to push through his prepared remarks. He became fixated on a red-faced woman in the front row who was furiously screaming at him while her child stood quietly by her side.

He paused in the speech and couldn't help himself. He looked down at her and he said, aren't you embarrassed? Aren't you embarrassed? And neither that woman, nor Mike Pence, nor Josh Hawley, nor Ted Cruz, nor my old Republican Party or Mitt Romney's old Republican Party. Embarrassed. You know, one thing I've been very, very complimentary of what Mitch McConnell did on January the 6th. What I found out from this reporting is that on January the 2nd, Angus King called Mitt Romney and said, we have a problem. Intel is suggesting that the far right extremists are coming to Washington, D.C.

They're bringing weapons. There's going to be violence. Mitt Romney immediately picks up his phone. He texts. He texts Mitch McConnell and says, we're in trouble. We need to plan for this. This is what's going down. Mitch McConnell didn't return his text. Radio silence when a sitting member of the United States Senate told the Senate majority leader, we are going to be facing violence on January the 6th. And so Mitt Romney thought back about that

as the senators were being chased all around the Capitol and they were trying to find a safe room. And one of the security guards said, well, the senators know where they're going. And Romney's aide snapped and said, no, they don't. They don't know where they're going. What, there's no plan for this? You have no plan to get these Republican senators and Democratic senators to a safe space?

And at that point, Mitt Romney realized that not only had Mitch McConnell ignored his warnings, he'd ignored the warnings of everybody else. And there they were, lost among a mob, desperately trying to find a room where they could save United States senators' lives. A very large portion of my party, Mitt Romney said, really doesn't believe in the Constitution. And it's confirmed when Donald Trump says he wants to terminate the Constitution. And four or six of eight Republicans say, yeah, we're on that guy's side.

People ask, why is Mitt Romney retiring from the Senate? I ask, how in the hell did he stay there in that Republican Party for so long, Willie? Yeah, that scene you're describing in McKay Coppins, these are just excerpts from a book that's coming out in a couple of weeks. But that scene you're describing of Angus King urgently reaching out to Mitt Romney, I need to talk to you, calls him, talks to him. Angus King informs him of the briefing he's received about the online chatter and the threats of violence on January 6th.

And then that text message you're talking about where Mitt Romney reaches out to Mitch McConnell and says there's talk that they want to burn down your house, Mitch, that there's going to be violence in a couple of days. Are we ready for this? What's the plan? We know what's coming. We're getting all this intelligence. We're seeing it online and did not get a response from Mitch McConnell, which tells you so much. You also, Amanda Carpenter, reading through some of these excerpts, get the sense that, yes, he's retiring Mitt Romney because he says of his age, he's 76 years old and he wants to turn over the party to a younger generation. But that the party that he grew up in through his father first and then he came up through and was a governor and a senator is gone. And that he talks about in the book, the Josh Hawley's, the J.D. Vance's. And he said it was effectively, as McKay reports, it's clear these were not outliers, but this is where the party is going.

And these are not people he believed came to Washington with the right intention so that they were cynical operators undermining democracy and that he couldn't work with them. Yeah, listen, it is a setback that Mitt Romney is retiring from the Senate. He is one of the few seven Senate Republicans that voted for impeachment. But you really have to dig deep and think about what does it mean that Mitt Romney didn't feel safe in the United States Senate because of the threat posed by his colleagues? Former Republican presidential nominee, you know, very wealthy man to be one of the safest and scariest people in the world. And he is a smart person, has made the calculation that I cannot function here in a positive way in the Senate any longer. And,

you know, I wish him a very restful retirement, but I don't want to lose him. And here's why. I firmly believe that Republicans like Mitt Romney will not make a difference in the future of our country. It will make the difference. The quote that he has in that Atlantic profile where he talks about how authoritarianism is like a gargoyle perched over the cathedral, ready to pounce at any time. Stop me in my tracks because I believe it is 100% true. And if Mitt Romney can realize that and he can talk to other Republicans and say, listen, I may not support Joe Biden, but I clearly see the difference between authoritarianism

and democracy. He's putting it that way. And authoritarianism is a really scary word. It's not one that we want to apply to the circumstances of our country. But if we looked at what, if Donald Trump was in a different country doing this, we would have no problem saying that. And so I think a lot about my job at Protect Democracy. What can we do to make sure Republicans like Mitt Romney don't disappear into the ether? Because there have been a lot of Republicans who have disappeared, who were once in prominent positions. I mean, we can name the people that have been retired, who have been primaried, and all the, you know, hundreds of other people that make up a Republican party who

no longer feel welcome. They need somewhere to go. They're not going to become Democrats necessarily. But if they can understand the choice as Mitt Romney does, and he can be a voice in that, that would be very helpful, even though I'm sad, very sad to see him leave the Senate. You know, and he was surrounded. I mean, he had no it seemed like at times no safe harbor, even people closest to him, people that he, you know, it's kind of like, you know, people that I worked with that were friends for decades. You know, it's like Donald Trump came to town and the people I knew for decades completely disappeared. Well, his running mate was Paul Ryan, a guy I've known since Paul was a very young guy. I remember calling Paul,

urging him, come on, you've got to fight back. This is not normal. Don't pretend it's normal. Don't put your head down and just say you're going to worry about legislation, which is what he was doing. Well, here you had Mitt Romney, who was struggling with impeachment, and he knew he was moving towards voting for impeachment. And he just sat there and he kept hearing the same cynical arguments from Mitch McConnell, from other Republican members of the Senate, from the staff, from the lawyers. Couldn't believe it. And he was really anguished about what he was going to have to do. And he gets a phone call. And it's from Paul Ryan. And Paul Ryan is not talking to him as a swarmer running mate or as a friend.

Paul Ryan starts, Mitt Romney says, giving him the same talking points that the Trump White House was giving him, that Mitch McConnell was giving him, that the lawyers were giving him. No words. This is a loss on so many levels, given the current state of our democracy, honestly, losing a good man here and he's not running again. Senator Romney made the announcement that he won't run for another term next year in a video posted across social media. The 76-year-old former presidential candidate acknowledged his age was a factor in the decision. I've spent my last 25 years in public service of one kind or another. At the end of another term, I'd be in my mid-80s. Frankly, it's time for a new generation of leaders. They're the ones that need to make the decisions that will shape the world they will be living in. Now we face critical

challenges, mounting national debt, climate change, and the ambitious authoritarians of Russia and China. Neither President Biden nor former President Trump are leading their party to confront those issues. Political motivations too often impede the solutions that these challenges demand. The next generation of leaders must take America to the next stage of global leadership. Oh, I think it would be a great thing if both President Biden and former President Trump were to stand aside and let their respective party pick someone in the next generation. President Trump, excuse me, President Biden,

when he was running, said he was a transitional figure to the next generation. Well, time to transition. Sam Stein, curious your thoughts about, again, not only the retirement, but also some of the case extraordinary quotes that he got from Mitt Romney. No, I actually thought the most extraordinary quote, and it is just completely filled with extraordinary quotes, was one recorded from Mitch McConnell, actually. And I'm going to paraphrase it because I don't have the piece in front of it. But I believe it was after that first impeachment or in the midst of it, McConnell calls up Romney.

And he says, you know, I'm jealous, more or less. I can't say what you get to say about Trump. And it was that word can't. I thought that was kind of extraordinary here because, of course, he could, right? Like, McConnell could say it. He just wouldn't. And I think that's sort of the fundamental distinction between Romney and everyone else in his caucus. What he conveys to McKay-Coppins is that, you know, his sentiment exhibited publicly about Trump and Trumpism is more or less shared with 99 percent of his colleagues. But he may be among the one or two percent who says it publicly. And the rest of them just refused to do it, even though they felt it. And, you know, I think that gives you a sense of where

the Republican Party is about the compromises that it has made, about the choices it's made to get to the point where it is. And it also gives us a really clear understanding of how we got to this point. Right. Now, maybe nothing else would have changed if McConnell and others had stepped up and said the things that they wanted to say. But I fundamentally believe we probably would be in a different political system or landscape, I should say, had they followed that path or that instinct. Oh, there's no doubt about it, Amanda. You know, one thing that came out here that we've all known for a very long time is just how much every Republican senator hates Donald Trump. There's

story after story throughout this of how Republican senators were trashing Donald Trump in the cloak room. We talked about one time where after the Mueller report and after Mueller's testimony and Trump came to the Hill, he was in a great mood. He spoke to the Senate and he said, all this is behind me and now we can be the party of health care. And as he was walking out, everybody was applauding. He goes out the door. The second he's out the door, there's silence for a second. And then the entire room erupts in contemptuous laughter, laughter, mocking laughter of Donald Trump. All of them. And this is the Republican Party. This is how they feel behind the scenes. But you put a camera on him, as Mitt Romney say, and they'll just start babbling and trying to kiss up to Donald Trump.

Yeah. In the case of Mitch McConnell, I mean, when he New York Times piece a while ago during impeachment, in which it was McConnell's view that the Democrats would take care of this problem for us. I mean, that's sort of the fatal flaw here, is always thinking this is a partisan issue. It's not a national issue. It's not an issue of upholding the Constitution, as Mitt Romney has pointed out. It's always a partisan fight. Well, we'll let the Democrats take care of it. And I will never have to self-police or do anything that might blow back on me when it comes to policing my own party. And it's not just Mitch

McConnell, as you pointed out. They will freely admit this behind closed doors. But as soon as they go in front of the cameras, that partisan gag goes right on and they tie it themselves. You know, as you look at now the composition of the Senate, Jackie Alomany, that people like Mitt Romney or Pat Toomey or Richard Burr, you can go down the line, these sort of old line establishment Republicans, they're all gone. They're leaving and making way for candidates like Herschel Walker and Dr. Oz and the ones that Donald Trump likes better. And Joe's right. If you read through these excerpts from the book, it reveals something to the public that we say on this show a lot,

and you don't have to take our word for it, which is that the Republicans who you see on TV defending, sometimes weeping on Fox News saying, donate, donate to Donald Trump's defense fund. They're coming for him. They're coming for all of us. They have beyond contempt for him. They mock him behind closed doors, which makes what they do out in the public every day all the worse, that they know better, that they know better.

They know that Donald Trump is not a good man. No, he wasn't a good president. But they fear him and they fear his voters. And so they go along for the ride every day. Yeah, Willie, and I think, you know, one of the biggest takeaways I had from McKay's extraordinary piece, really, I'm very excited to dig into this book, is this idea that I think a lot of people have debated and grappled with over the past, you know, eight years now, really, which is that Trumpism is not an aberration. It's something that Mitt Romney had believed when he actually decided to make the run and go into the Senate. Something, you know, he showed up in Washington, D.C., thinking he would be the moderating force in Washington that would be successful at that and came to quickly realize that this actually was the future of the party. Now, you know, we're at 2024, seven years after he got here, and he's realized that there's been a complete metamorphosis. I mean, I haven't talked to one former member of Congress who hasn't remarked to me how

much the institution as a whole has completely degraded. And Mitt Romney gets at that as well, which is that he was told that the number one priority in terms of his decision-making process by one of his colleagues is, you know, will this help or hurt my reelection? And that seems to be the, you know, the driving motivation for a lot of the lawmakers we see now. Of course, you know, in the Senate, there's a little bit more room for some moderation for some more traditional conservatives,

as you just named, although a lot of them are now leaving. They are a dying breed. And in the House, obviously, because of the way that these districts have have been created. You know, lawmakers can get away with being far more controversial, hard right. And, you know, these these players that we've seen rise up in this MAGA universe. But but as Romney also says, at the end of the day, what are people like Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, J.D. Vance getting? They're becoming famous senators. What what does that mean in the broad context of the world? And I think that that also gets at this final point, which is, you know, is is government now the most effective vehicle for change. And that seems to be something that Romney, you know, doesn't necessarily believe in anymore, other than the fact that, you know, his colleagues

don't believe in the Constitution. All right. The Washington Post, Jackie Alimany, thank you so much for your reporting. Editor at the nonpartisan group Protect Democracy, get the name right, Amanda Carpenter, thank you very much for being on this morning. Come back, both of you, very soon. Thank you. And still ahead on Morning Joe, the manhunt for an escaped prisoner on the run for two weeks is over. We'll go live to Pennsylvania for details on how police captured the convicted killer. Also ahead, much more on the impeachment inquiry against President Biden launched by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. We'll be joined by Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, who was criticized by McCarthy for launching a similar investigation into then President Trump when she held the gavel. Plus, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer will weigh in and former Secretary

of State Hillary Clinton will be our guest this morning as well. You're watching Morning Joe. We'll be right back. This L.O. Cavalcante is back in prison this morning. Authorities captured the fugitive yesterday morning, ending a nearly two week manhunt in Chester County, Pennsylvania. He was tracked down using thermal imaging technology. And officials say he was taken by surprise. A Border Patrol dog pinned him down as he tried to crawl away through underbrush. The dog bit Cavalcante.

Authorities say he suffered a minor injury. Police say no officers were hurt while apprehending the fugitive. Cavalcante was transported to a police barracks where he was arraigned on escape charges. The convicted murderer now being held in a maximum security prison. Cavalcante broke out of the Chester County Prison on August 31st, just nine days after he was sentenced to life for the murder of his girlfriend. The 34-year-old also wanted for murder in Brazil. Join us now from the site where authorities captured him in Chester County,

NBC News correspondent George Solis. So, George, we had you on the phone yesterday morning while this was all unfolding. What more have we learned in the 24 hours since? Yeah, good morning, Willie. There was a lot of developments here as far as how Cavalcante managed to survive in these woods behind me. U.S. Marshal Rob Clark telling us that Cavalcante admitted post that arrest interview that he survived out here by eating watermelon from a nearby farm. He drank from the streams,

which a lot of us assumed. He found a razor in a bag that he stole, and that's how he changed his appearance. He hit his waist out here. He found a razor in a bag that he stole, and that's how he changed his appearance. He hit his waist out here. He was very tactical about what he did. And then he planned to use that stolen.22 rifle that he had stolen from a home on Monday night to try and carjack someone, to try and break that new police perimeter that police had set up here and try and get to Canada or just anywhere that he could flee this Chester County area and obviously try and leave the state. So these are just some of the new details that we are learning about Cabal Conte and where his mind was as the day sort of went on during this manhunt. Of course,

the community, as you can imagine, breathing a major sigh of relief. It's a bit of a cliche saying, but when you really think about it, we had businesses, schools, ways of life just completely interrupted because we didn't know where this fugitive might appear next. He was obviously going to homes of former co-workers, seeing if he could get some kind of help. At this point, authorities are still saying that they are looking into who may have assisted Cavalcante, if anyone at all. And, you know, during these briefings with Lieutenant Colonel George Bivens, we pressed him, pressed him hard about how this could go on for so long. And if any mistakes were made, the Colonel adamant saying, no, this is exactly sort of the way they thought it would work out. I mean, no perimeter is 100 percent secure. He said, you know, we're going to keep pressing him and pushing him and eventually he will make a mistake. And it turns out it sounds like he did. He was moving around in that area.

He tripped a burglar alarm overnight, that plane with thermal imaging capturing him. There was a storm that moved in, but those tactical teams stayed on the ground, just sort of keeping him there. And then they used that canine to really seal the deal, so to speak. And now Cavalcante is back in police custody. So, George, listening to the description from authorities, it sounded like he was surprised that they captured him from above, from an aircraft with that heat imaging, that thermal imaging equipment, about 1 o'clock in the morning. So they had a pretty good idea of where he was.

Is it your sense that he was completely caught by surprise when the dog moved in and when he turned around and saw all those law enforcement officers? Yeah, absolutely caught by surprise. I think he was pretty confident that he was able to elude authorities since he managed to do it for so long. But I think authorities knew that they had him in this area, this proverbial needle in the haystack,

and they just made sure that he was not going to go anywhere. And again, using that canine to really make sure he was taken down. And of course, we saw that photo of the officers, the tactical teams taking that trophy shot, if you will. Lieutenant Colonel saying he had no issue with the teams out there doing that, considering the manpower that was out here and how long they had to brave these conditions out here, the bad weather, the heat trying to track this guy who evaded them for two

weeks, Willie. So all in all, as we mentioned, Danilo Cavalcante now waking up in a maximum security prison in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, where he will ultimately end up to finish carrying out that life sentence, though, remains to be determined. And you better believe he will not be out of their sight this time. NBC News correspondent George Solis has been doing a great job covering this story for the last two weeks. George, thanks so much. We appreciate it. Coming up, the United Auto Workers are preparing to strike if they can't reach contract agreements by tonight. Steve Ratner joins us with charts on what it says about organized labor in the United States. Morning Joe's coming right back.

41 past the hour, a live look at the White House as the sun comes up over Washington. The judge presiding over the Mar-a-Lago documents case has taken swift new action, seen largely as a win for special counsel Jack Smith's team. In an order yesterday, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon limited former President Trump's access to evidence in the case and barred him from publicly discussing sensitive material. Despite Trump's claims that he had already declassified all the documents that FBI agents found when they searched his Florida resort with a warrant last year, the order refers to materials in question as still being classified.

Judge Cannon wrote that Trump and his defense team can discuss or reviewed the classified information only inside a court approved sensitive compartmented information facility or SCIF or another authorized area. The judge did not mention the SCIF that Trump's attorneys requested she reestablished at Mar-a-Lago, which housed one during the Trump presidency. The 16-page order by the Trump-appointed judge is largely in line with a proposal submitted in July by special counsel Jack Smith's team for how Trump and his attorney should handle national security information related to the case. Judge Cannon's ruling did not completely shut the door on Trump's declassification arguments. She wrote that her order is,

quote, entered without any prejudice to any potential challenges, including to arguments raised under the Presidential Records Act. We'll be following this, of course, and still ahead on Morning Joe. Two prominent Democratic women will join us, Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. We have much more ahead on Morning Joe. We'll be right back. That's a beautiful view looking south from the top of our building here in Manhattan at Rockefeller Center. Six forty seven in the morning. The clock is ticking for all three major U.S. automakers to reach a new labor contract and to avoid a strike that could cost the U.S. economy billions of dollars. Ford,

GM and Stellantis have until midnight to reach an agreement or face walkouts by thousands in the United Auto Workers Union. Employees of those companies are demanding a pay raise and better benefits. Let's bring in former Treasury official and Morning Joe economic analyst Steve Ratner. He is at the Southwest Wall with his charts. Before we dive in, Steve, what's your sense, as the former car czar in the Obama administration, of how this thing ends? Is this going to go on for a while? Yeah, Willie, this looks like one of the toughest ones we've seen in a very long time. The UAW has new leadership, very, very aggressive, saying very, very aggressive things.

The demands are incredibly substantial, much more than the car companies can do. And I think at 11.59 tonight, you'll see some strikes. He's come up with a fairly clever strategy of striking only a few plants to start with, which would have the effect of still disrupting car production, the goal, of course, but also not have most of the workers out on strike where they have to receive strike benefits from the union. They would continue to get paid by the companies. So it could be a kind of an unusual strike, but nonetheless, potentially crippling to the auto industry. Yeah, just hours left to go here before a potential strike. So let's dig into your charts with all that in the background. Steve,

your first chart is about labor scoring some recent wins in these strikes. Yeah, Willie, I wanted to give you a sense of what's going on in the labor world in general. And so these are days lost to work stoppages. Each day a worker's on strike counts as one. And you can see that we had a period of considerable strike activism back before the 2000s. And if I took this chart back further, you would see even more extraordinary days lost to strikes. We lost 24 million days of work to strikes on average from 1947 to 1959. And then you can see labor became very, very quiescent for a whole variety of reasons, fewer union members, more aggressive actions on the part of companies, and not that much

inflation. But now lately, we've started to have strikes pop back up. You did have a strike against General Motors in 2019. And of course, now everybody knows we have the screenwriters and the directors out on strike. And so you can layer the UAW on top of that, assuming it happens. And the strikes that have happened have been somewhat successful. It's hard to know exactly, of course, because inflation has also pushed up wages. But you can see that first year pay increases in union ratified contracts were down as low as one or two percent in the early 2000s we also did not have that much inflation but now partly as a combination of both factors you can see that these contracts are settling out at between five and six percent

the problem here is that the union's demands are really pretty much extraordinary way beyond what the car companies can meet and still have viable companies. And so the gulf between the two sides is very, very unusually large. And as we move to your next chart, Steve, we can see why auto workers are striking, which is effectively, as you say, their wages have remained basically stagnant for almost 30 years, not keeping in line with wage growth in the economy more broadly. Yeah, the auto sector is an unusual sector, not unique, but manufacturing itself is different from a lot of the service kinds of jobs that have also got on strike, like the riders and the L.A. hotel workers and so forth. But let's start with a couple of basic principles. The sort of deal between American business and American workers

is if you produce more per person, we'll pay you more. And this close set of lines right here shows that happening. As productivity went up, going all the way back to 1960, wages went up in tandem. Workers were getting their share, in effect, of the pie. Starting in 2000, that began to diverge. Productivity continued to rise, but wages did not rise commensurately, and we had very, very high corporate profits. And there are a bunch of reasons for this, decline in union membership, things like that. But the consequence of it was this, and the consequences were somewhat different for different parts of the labor force. If you were an auto worker, your wages after adjusting

for inflation stayed roughly flat throughout this entire period from 1990. So you had no real increase in your standard of living. All workers, which is this black line, had fairly noticeable, not huge, but about a 10% increase in real wages over that period of time. And then you have manufacturing workers who are somewhere in between. They got some increases, but not as much as service workers, but a bit better than the auto workers. So it's been a tough time for workers, particularly manufacturing, to stay up with inflation. And also, Mike Barnicle, the old world of auto workers being in unions has changed. If you move to the South and South Carolina and Georgia and places like that, you have a lot of non-union auto jobs there. And of course,

those out of the country as well. So that's what auto workers in Detroit are up against. There is all of that, Willie, in addition to a very feisty new head of the UAW, Sean Fain, a very aggressive union leader. And Steve, the point that you raised earlier, that there is a potential strike that will begin tonight at midnight, maybe just one car company, we don't know yet. But what happens to the consumer who has ordered a 2024 model due out maybe in November or December? What happens to the cost of that car? Well, certainly wage increases are inflationary, and so you want to try to find some balance between the two. I'm not as worried about the inflationary consequences because labor is not actually that huge of a percentage of what it costs to make a car. It will be noticeable.

I'm more worried about how this falls out in terms of the future of the industry, because there are a bunch of disturbing trends that are unique to companies that export a lot, that live in a global market and manufacturing companies, as opposed to service companies, a hotel worker or something like that. Because let's take a look at what's been happening to the share of both car companies and to the workers who work at the union workers who work at them. So the so-called big three, as we call them, the Detroit three, Chrysler, which is now called Stellantis, Ford, and General Motors, was up at around 90% if you go back into the 1960s. And these would have been virtually a highly, highly percentage of union workers. And then that share has dropped, dropped, dropped, dropped, dropped, and it's now down here

at 40%. And that's a combination of imports from other countries as well as companies making cars here, like Toyota, Honda, and so forth, and selling them into our market. The union membership has dropped apace. So union membership was as high as 60% over here back in about 1980, and it's now dropped to about 10% under about 18%

sorry about over here and so the unions have lost a fair amount of their clout a lot of these plants have moved to the south where we don't where they're typically not unionized and they pay a lot less and they produce a lot of the same cars but outside of the unions and And so another place they move, we need to be cognizant of, is Mexico. So if you look at manufacturing, auto manufacturing employment in Mexico, you can see that this red line right here has been going up and up and up. Obviously, COVID changed everything for a while anyway, and now it continues to go up to here. And whereas U.S. car manufacturing employment has bounced around a little bit here, COVID, and now for the first

time right around here, more auto workers are working in Mexico making cars for our market principally than are working in the U.S. making cars. The people in Mexico can get paid as little as $8 an hour. There's one unionized GM plant that gets paid between $9 and $33 a day. I'm sorry, it's a day, the $9. And so you're competing, the union workers here are competing against much more lowly paid workers down in Mexico. And that's a further drag on auto employment up here. Great perspective on a strike that could be coming at eleven fifty nine tonight. We'll keep our eyes open. Steve Ratner, thanks so much as always for walking us through all of it. And Sam Stein on Labor Day, President Biden said he doesn't believe there were going to be a strike.

He's described himself as the most pro-union president ever. But where is he right now on this? Is the administration involved in this negotiation in some way? Yeah, they're involved. One of the top aides to Biden, Gene Sperling, has been working with the automakers and the union to try to figure out a middle ground here. We got word yesterday from The Wall Street Journal, I believe, that Biden himself had called the heads of the big auto companies to try to

figure out if there was some more give there that they could give up for these negotiations. But Steve's absolutely right. I mean, all signs indicate that come midnight tonight, we're going to get a targeted strike. We'll see how long that lasts. And we'll see if Biden is compelled to get more further involved. I mean, keep in mind, there's been a couple of strikes or near strikes in his administration already. The rail strike, the MLB strike. He has shown a proclivity to get involved at last minute. Could happen today.