Morning Joe - Morning Joe 9/27/22

Episode Date: September 27, 2022

87 percent say Trump should be treated equally under law: poll 

Good morning and welcome to Morning Joe. It is Tuesday, September 27th. New footage released of Trump aide Roger Stone calling for violence and talking about plans to steal the election. The clips are set to be featured at tomorrow's January 6th hearing, but we'll get an early look this morning. We are also tracking Hurricane Ian, which is rapidly intensifying as it barrels toward the state of Florida. The storm could hit the state as a category four hurricane in a state of emergency has already been declared. We'll have the very latest and we'll be tracking it throughout the show. And NASA goes Armageddon on an asteroid to see if it's possible to save humanity from disaster. Just that.

But we've been. I just said, Willie, I just want you to know, of course, Mika has no idea what she just said. No, I do. Actually, Armageddon Armageddon on the asteroid. I was telling Alex before when we were talking about this, when I kept hearing this incredible story yesterday about smashing into the asteroid. Come on. What was I thinking?

I was thinking Aerosmith. I don't want to miss a thing. Bruce Willis. He's right. I don't get it. Liv Tyler. I mean, it is just every time I hear it, I just hear, you know, hear the news story yesterday. I just hear in my mind, I don't want to close my eyes.

It's incredible. It was an incredible, sappy summer movie, wasn't it? But they actually, they like tried to do this last night. I don't know if Bruce was on there. You got Bruce. You throw Affleck in there, too. Mika, just in case you don't know what we're talking about, this is a huge movie about 25 years ago

with the plausible plot that they trained a few oil drillers in a matter of days to become NASA astronauts and to effectively do what we saw yesterday NASA do in real life. They knocked with a rocket, a ship the size of a refrigerator. They knocked an asteroid off its course yesterday. NASA did this in real life. No Willis, no Affleck, no Liv Tyler, no Steven Tyler. And they pulled it off.

So now they know if there's something barreling toward Earth, they have a decent shot of knocking it away. Amazing moment yesterday for NASA. It is a pretty amazing moment scientifically. The movie, I don't think it was that big a movie. It was one of the great

summer movies of the late 1990s. It was sappy. I understand it was formulaic, but still, come on. It was amazing. Steven Tyler singing with Aerosmith lived. Yeah. If only we could go back to those simple days. Right. Because things right now we've been talking about the meltdown in in Trump world and the threats that that poses to American democracy for quite some time. It's really something that you have Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, who sort of been connected in the news over the past five, six years.

Both of them are now facing their own crises. now, Vladimir Putin, facing a crisis, a real meltdown in Russia with dire consequences, not just for the Russian people and the Ukrainians, but possibly the entire world. This is a country that has more nuclear weapons than any other country in the world. And I know, speaking of 25 years ago, we were all very concerned on the Armed Services Committee about nuclear proliferation, where the former Soviet Union's nuclear weapons would find their way into what terrorist hands. You know, we we I don't let's hope we don't approach that moment. But this, unfortunately, is not as simple as Putin loses. We win. No, it is not. It's a chaotic situation where we need people like your father to walk through just all of the contingencies.

Because, again, there's nothing simple about this. There's nothing simple about Ukraine winning this war. There's nothing simple about the chaos, the anarchy that's being unleashed in Russia right now. And again, what makes Putin different? Yeah. Nuclear weapons. Well, it's hard not to think of what my dad would be thinking right now, as we got a rare admission yesterday from the Kremlin acknowledging its new military draft to reinforce Russian forces in Ukraine has been rife with problems. The Kremlin spokesman yesterday said there had been irregularities in the call up due to cases of, quote, noncompliance.

But The New York Times reports he tried to shift the blame to local authorities carrying out the mobilization among resistant civilians across the country. This, as the governors of several Russian regions also acknowledged, that men who did not meet the defense ministry's criteria are being called up. The authorities admission came as a gunman who was allegedly distraught over the military mobilization opened fire yesterday at a draft office in Siberia, seriously injuring a recruitment officer. Meanwhile, the president of Kazakhstan, a close ally of Russia, reportedly said yesterday, quote, In recent days, many people from Russia have been coming to us. Most of them are forced to leave because of the current hopeless situation. We must take care of them and ensure their safety. This is a political and humanitarian issue. Let's bring in right now the staff writer for The Atlantic, Ann Applebaum, and former chairman of the Republican National Committee, Michael Still. Ann, obviously, this is an area, this is a region you've spent your entire adult

life studying, folks. And I know you're well aware of the time that I was talking about before when, you know, after the Soviet Union's fall, there was political and military and economic and cultural chaos in the former Soviet Union. Are we seeing something that may be the beginning of a similar meltdown for Putin's regime? You're certainly seeing the first break in what was essentially Putin's deal with the Russians. So essentially, he offered them a kind of swap. You know, you let me steal. You let me have absolute power. You let my friends and cousins and and relatives make a lot of money. And in exchange, I'll leave you alone and you can go on living your own life and not be bothered by politics. And that was even the deal with this war. So we'll

conduct the war. We're not going to even call it a war. We're going to call it a special military operation. It won't affect you. You'll see it a bit on TV as a form of entertainment, kind of gladiator battle. But you won't have to do anything yourselves. And with this mobilization, suddenly the war and the kind of chaos that Putin has brought to Ukraine begins to come home. And people ask themselves, do I really want to fight the Ukrainians? Do I do I hate the Ukrainians? Maybe I don't.

I have no military experience. Do I want to be sent to the front line? They're sending people apparently with no training, with poor weapons, with no equipment. And you're seeing the first kind of it's not it's not organized resistance. Putin has eliminated all the organized resistance in the country. But you are seeing, as you've just heard, people fleeing the country. You're seeing some military recruitment offices being shot up and firebombed. And so it is a kind of beginning of an unraveling of the arrangement of the last decade. Yeah. And as you say, it is an act of courage to

express any dissent publicly in the streets of Russia. And Vladimir Putin is quick to crack down on that. But is he actually feeling pressure? Is he capable of feeling pressure, whether it's internally in Russia at home or from someone like President Xi or Prime Minister Modi abroad? Does he feel pressure? Does he acknowledge that this is going badly for him? So, no, he doesn't say, gosh, I made a mistake and I'm really sorry. But he does. He clearly feels pressure. So he feels pressure both because of Ukrainian military advances that took place over the last few weeks. We saw him at a really extraordinary summit a few days ago, where he was snubbed by some Central Asian leaders, where both the Chinese and the Indian leaders said—made, you know,

kind of oblique comments about how the war is not going badly, this is not a time for war. Erdogan, the Turkish leader, in an interview said, you know, of course the war must end and Putin must give back territory that he's conquered. So he's seeing the dictators and strongmen in his region begin to push back at him. And that has to be unsettling. And you just saw the note from from the Kazakhs saying, you know, we understand this turmoil in Russia and we'll take care of effectively Russian dissidents. And this is a country that's been thought to be dependent on Russia. You also see there's clearly pressure on him from the militaristic, nationalistic part of the political spectrum. It's very hard to judge

how strong that is or how large it is. But there are these military bloggers and writers inside Russia who've been criticizing him for a long time, saying he's not fighting the war very well. There should be a mass mobilization. There aren't enough people. There are not enough weapons. And this mobilization effort seems to be, in part, a reaction to them. And that means he's feeling some kind of pressure from inside the system, maybe from within the military and security services as well. You know, Michael, still the economy, Putin's economy, which, as we talked about on this

show, has a GDP smaller than the state of Texas. And that was before the war. That was before all of the economic consequences that grew out of this war. And that was before oil prices dipped the way they have over the past couple of months. The situation was dire enough. So you're going to turn to your partners to help you through those times. But as Anne said, China delivers a tough statement after his meeting with Xi. Erdogan says you're going to give Ukraine their territories back.

We got from Modi just a slap in the face diplomatically during their meeting. And now Kazakhstan basically offering shade to. This is a guy who's isolated in the world and he doesn't have an economy that allows him to go it alone. So the question is, what's next? And what should the United States be worried about right now? What should we what should be our focus? I think on a number of fronts, you know, as you point out that the allies, the supposed allies are not really all in. And so, they're letting Putin know that, you know, okay, you just can't throw bodies at this. This has not been the, you know, the one-week operation you thought it would be. So, the consequences that are starting to flow out of that are the kind of pressures that Putin is thinking about going into the winter.

You know, yeah, I can't throw bodies at this, but I can make winter tough. I can hold out at least through winter. What does that mean for gas prices and for those in Europe and across the globe who rely on the oil that may flow out of Russia? How can they leverage that? And from the U.S. perspective, from an economic position, is what impact will that have financially on the markets going forward? Can the allies hold together in a unified front when winter comes? Because winter is coming. And so I think that's going to be an important feature for the Biden administration to make sure that the economic toll that can come from Putin messing around with the oil and gas markets, bringing pressure to bear there.

Yeah, there's saber rattling with nuclear threats, but I don't know if people really believe that it's reached that point, you know, elevating, you knowating DEFCON 2, if you will, in that regard. I think the winter is his play. And the question is, how do the allies put together sort of a block and tackle on the winter front to make it through the winter? If that happens, if they're able to do that successfully, I think the spring for Putin is going to be a hell of a lot rougher than he can imagine. Well, with all this as a backdrop globally, Americans are dealing with big questions in the lead up to the midterms and new polling shows most Americans don't think former President Donald Trump should be given special treatment under the law despite being a former president.

In the latest survey from CBS News and YouGov, 87 percent of registered voters say the legal system should treat Trump the same as every American. That includes 80 percent of Republicans. In a different question, nearly half of all likely voters, 47 percent, say Trump won't play a role in who they vote for this November. Thirty two percent. Meanwhile, 32 percent say their vote will be in opposition of Trump, while 20 percent say their vote will be in support of the former president. I find that fascinating. Yeah, I do, too. You know, Willie, we've seen a series of polls over the past week that show in most of the polls, over half of Americans believe Donald Trump presented a direct threat to American democracy after the election and also believe that he committed crimes. And now we're seeing 85% of Americans say that no man should be above the law.

Including Republicans. Including 80% of Republicans. It sounds like even despite the craziness and the madness that we see from Trump quarters from time to time, it does appear that more Americans are lining up to the reality that Donald Trump likely is going to be facing some criminal criminal penalties for January 6th, for trying to steal the election, for what he did in Georgia, calling the secretary of state, demanding that he find 11000 votes to rig that election for what he did with the documents, a series of legal, legal, serious legal problems that he's going to be facing.

And I think there's a growing understanding from Americans that he's going to be held accountable. Yeah. And it's heartening, is it not, to see that 80 percent of Republicans still believe in the rule of law, whether it's Donald Trump or someone else, that if you commit a crime, there are consequences to that. Even if you're the former president of the United States, eight in 10 Republicans, as Mika just told us, believe he should be held to that standard, which just anecdotally is not what you hear on the street that, oh, come on, the document thing, what we're hearing from from Senate Republicans, by the way, as well, not just people on the street. The document thing was a housekeeping issue. It was a storage issue trying to wave that away. Well, what the American people, almost nine out of 10, are saying, Michael Steele, is no,

that stuff is serious. And if he did it, he ought to be held accountable. By the way, we're going to hear much more Michael Steele beginning tomorrow at a new hearing from the January 6th Select Committee. So all of these questions around the 2020 election will be top of mind again as we get closer and closer here to the midterms. Willie, this is such a significant movement in this narrative that Donald Trump, for, as we've seen going back to Mueller investigations, was able to manage, was able to divert attention from the main arguments that were being made against him. Now that's come home in a very serious way. And I think largely because of the effectiveness of the January 6th committee, the combination of Letitia James and Georgia

prosecutors sort of creating a pencil move narratively with facts and with a higher degree of evidence that while a lot of people thought that the American people were sort of, you know, it's summer, we're at the beach, who cares? You know, no, they were actually paying attention. They were actually taking a lot of this in. And I think that's reflective in this polling, you know, and so Republicans now have another narrative problem. You know, while they want to be dismissive as this was just a storage issue with Mar-a-Lago, the American people don't see it that way.

And so how do you narratively translate that so that you don't get on the wrong side of their attitude when it comes to the ballot box in four or five weeks? So there are a number of things that are playing out here with the committee coming, the January 6th committee coming back in front of our television screens tomorrow. This narrative picks up. A little bit of hiccup with Denver Riggleman and his revelations about phone call records at the White House, but I think they're going to seize that narrative back. And this is going to proceed and really, I think, make for an interesting fall narrative relative to the campaign is if people continue to digest this in the way that they have

so far, it will be interesting to see whether or not this weighs on their vote just a little bit more than you would think that they're saying right now. So, Anne, after January the 6th, I thought you wrote a really important article for The Atlantic talking about attempting to bring some of these Trump supporters, some of the more extreme Trump supporters back into the mainstream of American politics, back into involvement in democracy. We've been looking at polls over the past six months, over the past year, that show around the edges, some Americans becoming more skeptical of Donald Trump. I'm wondering what you're seeing, former supporters, I'm wondering what you're seeing now in these numbers that we've been discussing and also just general attitudes of Republicans about

whether we're moving in that direction or not, whether there may be enough Americans skeptical of what Donald Trump has done since the election. We have a majority now saying that he committed a crime, that perhaps what you wanted to happen is slowly beginning to happen around the margins. So there's clearly a kind of hardcore that doesn't watch the January the 6th hearings, that dismisses them as illegitimate, that's very resistant to any kind of persuasion. But what the January 6 hearings did really well was use the language of Republicans, and especially of Republicans who had worked for Trump, to tell the story. And this seems to have been a deliberate idea. They made Liz Cheney the center of the panel.

She was one of the primary speakers. But also the interviewees, the clips they used, Trump's children, Trump's employees, other Republicans from Congress. They were telling the story. And because they are trusted messengers or more trusted messengers or could be trusted messengers anyway, for Republicans, it does seem that some of them were listening. This is a hard problem, how to reach people who are in a different information bubble or who reject—you know, who are rejecting what's being told to them by even media like this one, or maybe even particularly media like this one. And so, finding ways to reach them

is something that a lot of politicians should be spending more time doing. And I was really glad to see the January 6th committee took that into account. They were trying to write the story. They were trying to tell it in a way people could understand. And as I said, especially using the language of people who'd worked for Trump himself. And that was a that was an attempt to reach people who would normally not listen. Well, and, you know, Willie, what I always tell my friends who will generally talk about the mainstream media, I say it's a read The Wall Street Journal. It's owned by Rupert Murdoch. Read the editorial pages of the New York Post. They will, you know, I won't agree with what they say all the time. But again, look at some of these Murdoch things. Look at if you're talking about how the election was rigged, even go on the website of Fox News and see how they reported the election. It's not like you have to go to, if you don't want to

come to this network or you don't want to go to CNN, you certainly can get media outlets that, again, are controlled by people who have a very conservative worldview. And even, especially the Wall Street Journal, the news gathering even especially the Wall Street Journal, the news gathering side of the Wall Street Journal is as good as any media outlet in the world. And so there are those options. But some people are just lazy. Some people just want their prejudices and their preexisting beliefs reinforced. And so, you know, they'll look at Facebook pages that are sent to them by conspiracy theorists or they'll go on to crazy websites that are run by third parties who have absolutely no credibility at all. Well, you just put your finger on it. The people who want

to have their views confirmed will find that confirmation somewhere. But there's no excuse for not having the facts. There are all those places you just described. January 6th committee meets again tomorrow. We'll carry that live on MSNBC, of course, coming out for the first time with a hearing in two months. Some other news this morning. Hurricane Ian has strengthened to a Category 3 hurricane now as it approaches Cuba with powerful winds and threats of dangerous storm surges, it is expected to hit the western part of the island nation when it makes landfall with wind speeds of about 125 miles an hour. Authorities have evacuated nearly 50,000 people from the capital city. Ian then is expected to become a category four hurricane before making landfall in Florida with wind speeds forecast over 130 miles per hour.

Tampa and St. Petersburg currently projected to take a direct hit, as Ian is expected to be the first major hurricane to hit the two cities since 1921. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has declared a statewide emergency, warning Ian could knock out power and interrupt fuel supplies. We'll have a live report from Florida just ahead. The Senate is back in session today, working on a tight timeline to pass a funding bill and avoid a government shutdown. Funding is set to expire at the end of the day this Friday.

Overnight, Senate Democrats released the text of their short-term funding that would push the deadline to mid-December. The bill includes several items not related to funding, including a measure from Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia to reform energy permitting. It also includes billions of dollars in new aid for Ukraine. The first test of the spending bill comes later today when the Senate will vote on a procedural motion to move forward. It will need at least 60 votes to pass, Mika. The U.S. dollar continues to hold strong. Recent interest rate hikes aimed at tackling inflation have also pumped value into the dollar and other economies are struggling to keep up. The British pound hit a record low against the dollar yesterday and was able to rebound just this morning. The New York Times

explains it like this. The United States is a superpower with the world's largest economy and hefty reserves of oil and natural gas. When it comes to global finance and trade, its influence is outsized. Rising interest rates make the dollar all the more alluring to investors by ensuring a better return. That, in turn, means they are investing less in emerging markets, which puts further strains on those economies. Despite the pain a strong dollar is causing, most economists say the global outcome would be worse if the Fed failed to halt inflation in the United States. So that's the balance. It is a balance. And you read that article in The New York Times. And what do you see? You see that despite years of whining, despite years of fear and loathing about the decline of

America, I remember my teacher in seventh grade talking, telling our class in seventh grade that America was going the way of the Roman Empire. Fact is, America is strong and resilient. The dollar is at a generational high and the United States right now is more powerful relative to the rest of the world economically and militarily and culturally than it has been in any time since, I would say, 1945. This continuous chatter of America's decline, it's nonsensical. Actually, our greatest challenge is electing politicians who are worthy of the country they represent. Politicians who will stop tearing America down every time their party loses. You know, that's happened my entire adult life and it's happened with increasing intensity. Now there's a group that wants to destroy Madisonian democracy because their side lost the last election. If you look at where America is right now, if you look at how strong it is economically

and militarily and culturally, both hard power and soft power, we're in an extraordinary position. And we have been for a very long time. Just please, please take off your political blinders. I'm not saying this because Joe Biden's in office. I said this about our economy when Donald Trump was in office. I said it when Barack Obama was in office. I said it when George W. Bush was in office, we have problems. But most of our problems right now, if you look across the board, come straight out of Washington, D.C. We have a political system that is corrosive right now. And one of the reasons it's corrosive is because a party that's out of power spends all of their time talking about how bad America is just because they're out of power.

And it keeps getting worse. And of course, it's at its low point now because you have Donald Trump who starts playing QAnon music and then spends the end of his speeches talking about how bad America is, just like he did before he was president, talking about how bad America was, how bad crime was in America, because he wasn't president when, in fact, crime was at a 50 year low before he became president of the United States, talking about how horrible the southern border was. And guess what? Before Donald Trump was president, illegal crossings at the southern border hit a 50-year low. The fact is, America's in a strong position now. We have been in a strong position.

We just need politicians who are worthy of representing this great country. And we don't have it right now. Instead, what we have right now is pure madness. We need to appreciate what we have, embrace it and build upon it. And still ahead on Morning Joe, new reporting about missing Secret Service text messages relating to January 6th. We've learned two dozen phones were handed over to investigators. NBC's Julia Ainsley joins us with more on that. Plus, the House Select Committee investigating January 6th wants to hear from Wisconsin's Republican House Speaker. We'll look at how that testimony could play into the committee's probe. Also ahead, a look at this morning's front page headlines,

including new reporting about a record number of nursing home complaints in one state. And as we mentioned at the top of the hour, a NASA spacecraft deliberately crashed into an asteroid yesterday. What scientists are saying about the first of its kind test to prevent asteroids from hitting Earth. And we can use this song. Yeah, that's it. Oh, yeah. Morning show will be right back. Oh, sweet, because I miss you, baby, and I don't want to miss a thing.

Because even when I dream again, the sweetest dream will never do. I still miss you, baby, and I don't want to miss a thing. Wow, look at that view. A beautiful picture this morning from the International Space Station. As we mentioned, NASA yesterday successfully completed its first real-world test of the ability to nudge an asteroid off of its course. NBC News correspondent Tom Costello has more. Oh, my goodness. Traveling at 14,000 miles per hour, NASA's DART spacecraft in time-lapse its final seconds before slamming into a harmless asteroid named Dimorphos, orbiting a bigger asteroid 7 million miles away.

In typical NASA precision, bullseye. Fantastic. NASA's goal, to slam DART into Dimorphos and nudge it slightly off course. For the first time, humanity has demonstrated the ability to autonomously target and alter the orbit of a celestial object. It'll take a week or more before NASA can analyze data from telescopes on Earth and in space to tell if DART successfully gave Dimorphos a tiny push, a critical test if NASA hopes to use the same technique to one day divert a mega asteroid from hitting Earth. There is a huge comet headed towards Earth. A nightmare scenario that's played out in Hollywood mega hits. It's what we call a global killer. But potentially a real life threat to the global population. NASA Chief Bill Nelson.

It may be the clue of what we could do in the future to try to save life here on Earth. NASA says it does not see any asteroid posing an imminent threat to Earth. But in 2013, a massive meteor escaped detection and exploded over a remote Russian village injuring 1,500 people. Impacts from asteroids have had a profound effect on the history of life on Earth. You know, you can ask the dinosaurs about that. NBC's Tom Costello reporting for the Mika. The references to Armageddon aside, it's just extraordinary that NASA can send basically a refrigerator into outer space, nail a moving comet and knock it off its course.

So cool. Pretty amazing. And talk about being prepared. I mean, we're not prepared for anything and yet we're preparing for that. So impressive on NASA's part. It is time now to take a look at the morning papers. The Connecticut Post leads with the latest on the state's gubernatorial race. According to a new CT Insider poll, Governor Ned Lamont has a 15-point lead over his Republican opponent, Bob Stefanovsky. The results mirror findings from other recent surveys, which have shown Lamont and other Democrats with commanding leads. In Ohio, the Toledo Blade reports that Senate candidates Tim Ryan and J.D. Vance have agreed to participate in at least two debates ahead of the November election. The agreement puts an end

to the long back and forth fight between the two candidates regarding scheduling. The debates are expected to take place on October 10th and 17th. In Wisconsin, the Green Bay Press-Gazette is covering a surge in nursing home complaints. New data shows the state has received more than 1,500 complaints against nursing homes so far this year, an all-time high. That works out to nearly 200 complaints each month. It comes as the state struggles to find enough nurses and nursing home inspectors. Again, staffing issues. And in New York, the Buffalo News reports that Canada will lift most of its COVID-19 border restrictions beginning on Saturday.

Travelers will no longer need to submit public health information, including proof of vaccination and COVID-19 test results. In addition, travelers will no longer be required to wear masks on planes and trains. And coming up on Morning Joe, the January 6th Select Committee will hold its first hearing of the fall tomorrow with the House panel expected to feature video of Trump aide Roger Stone recorded in the weeks before the Capitol attack in which Stone appears to call for violence. We'll take a look at the newly released footage and we'll be joined by the filmmakers themselves. Plus, a live report from the Fulton County Courthouse in Georgia,

where former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows is scheduled to testify today before the special grand jury investigating potential attempts to influence the state's 2020 election. Also ahead, Senator Amy Klobuchar joins us ahead of a key step in the Senate's attempt to pass a fix to the law that Donald Trump tried to subvert to overturn the election. Morning Joe, we will be right back. Live look at the White House in Washington, D.C., as the sun comes up over Washington. It is 42 past the hour. We're going to take a look at the must read opinion pages. Now, the Washington Post editorial board says danger lurks after Italy's shocking election. And it writes in part this. The rise of Georgia Maloney, the firebrand to ethno-nationalists seemingly victorious in Sunday's elections,

has sent shockwaves through Europe and triggered fears that Italy might be the Achilles heel in Western resolve to resist Russia's bloody campaign in Ukraine. She is the latest in a string of extremists who have performed well in European elections this year, including nationalists in France, Hungary and Sweden. Her apparent victory is more evidence that far right leaders are ascendant in a continent buffeted by immigration, economic headwinds and on its eastern flank, the most destructive war in three quarters of a century. Willie, it is huge news out of Italy. Absolutely. And some alarm bells going up as Jonathan Lemire has been reporting. Let's bring him in. He's the host, of course, of way too early White House bureau chief at Politico and author of the bestselling book, The Big Lie. So, Jonathan,

the White House publicly putting on a face and saying, yes, our relationship remains strong with Italy. We believe that they will continue to support the war in Ukraine at our side. But privately, some concerns, it sounds like. Yeah, behind the scenes, some concerns, growing ones after this victory by a far right candidate, Maloney. Yesterday, from the podium, White House Press Secretary Corinne Jean-Pierre simply stressed that Italy is a member of the G7, a part of NATO, and they fully expected them to continue meeting its obligations to Europe at large, but also to the war effort with Ukraine. But behind the scenes, there is some worry, particularly as we head into this winter. As we've been discussing for a while now, there's a sense it's going to be a tough season for Europe.

A lot of because of the continent not getting the energy supplies from Russia that it has in the past, it's going to potentially be a cold and dark winter for much of Europe. Inflation, of course, already very high there, even higher there in the United States. Real fears that the continent is teetering on the edge of a recession. And if all those things happen, there's a sense that Maloney, who previously has been somewhat sympathetic towards Putin, may decide that's a moment to reduce Italy's contribution to the war effort, saying we should focus on matters at home. And certainly there is a part of the right wing government in Italy that has always been sympathetic to Moscow. And there's a sense here that she may head down

that path once again. Now, to this point, she has said that her stance has not changed, that she may head down that path once again. Now, to this point, she has said that her stance has not changed, that she wants Italy to stay involved. But there's a sense here that's not an ironclad commitment. And if Italy were to wobble and start pushing for immediate negotiations to end the war, as opposed to continue to fortify and arm Ukraine, Italy's a major G7 power. If Italy goes, the fear among Western capitals, including Washington, is it might be a domino effect and that could really weaken the coalition. So that's what the White House is worried about right now.

So, Anne Applebaum, are those fears, those concerns from the White House warranted with this new president, who is the first woman ever to be prime minister, I should say, of Italy, a historic moment there. But tell our audience more about who she is and the party she comes from. So I would say there's bad news and good news. The bad news is that the party that she comes from is directly descended from Mussolini's party. It's had different names over the years, but it's the same political institution. And some of the language that she uses is a kind of whitewashed, or as one analyst put it, gender-washed version of recognizable language from the distant past. You know, she talks vaguely about enemies, about financial speculators who are holding back Italy. That's the kind of language that Mussolini once used, meaning Jews. So she and

she creates this idea that there are enemies seeking to undermine our country. And she's used that she's used that sort of language, even though she presents a much more moderate face to the public than than the male leaders of the past. In a way, the good news is that she's still—her victory wasn't overwhelming. She won about a quarter of the votes. She's not—she's not really in a position to change the Constitution or to alter Italian democracy, at least not yet. And that part of her attempt to portray herself as a centrist meant, as you just said, that she's adopted mainstream

language about supporting NATO and staying within the European Union and so on. She's also very, very constrained, as are all Italian prime ministers, by Italy's particular financial situation. There's—you know, she'll—she has a very limited room for maneuver. So there is some hope that she, like many other former Italian leaders that people were very worried about, turns out to be more mainstream than possible. But we really don't know. I mean, it's another example of a country choosing someone who's really completely unknown, has no experience in government, but has won election by by casting doubt on on everything, really on the nature of the political system, on the nature of the modern world and offering a very vague alternative.

And that does seem to appeal to people right now. The Atlantic's Anne Applebaum, what an important day to have you on. Thank you very much for joining us this morning. Now to another must read. The editorial board for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch writes about the new agenda House Republicans unveiled on Friday. The piece is titled The GOP's Commitment to America is a List of Platitudes, Not Plans. And it reads in part, the party's list of platitudes revealed more about its intentions than it intended to.

The manifesto provides the latest evidence that the party stands for consolidation of its own power and pretty much nothing else. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy's game here is obvious, with Republicans no longer looking at a cakewalk to the majority in the midterms, thanks to widespread fury over the party's threat to abortion rights and its continued fealty to an increasingly unhinged ex-president. He's looking for a way to rally the base while pretending to have a specific agenda to present to the rest of the country. And Michael Steele, I would take it a step further, I think, where the party is at a place where the coolest thing they have to offer is cruelty.

Like they think it's funny and it's cool and they can own the libs and hurt people at the same time. I mean, let alone that they don't stand with most Americans on abortion. They don't stand with most Americans on guns. The migrant issue, a lot of Republicans thought it was the coolest thing ever to be so cruel. It appears to be backfiring. I just don Michigan, making fun of the fact that she was kidnapped. Like, it's cool to be cruel if you're a Republican, but definitely don't have an agenda. Well, yeah, you actually speak about two things that they have in play at the same time. One, the cruelty piece goes to the base, and that is the, you know, the owning the libs.

At any level, in any way, we're going to do that over and over and over again. They're not concerned about Mika and Michael being offended by it. They're just concerned that it turns into cash and it turns into an agitated base. On the second track is the agenda piece. So what you see, and Joe can appreciate this moment, even though it falls way short of 1994, but this is the, you know, our contract with America redux. This is our chance to sort of come back and say, we have an agenda for how we're going to, you know, solve our nation's problems. The difference is the contract laid out specifics. It said exactly what it would do legislatively and then acted on that because it had that baseline.

This is, as the St. Louis Post dispatch points out, is platitudes. It's just like, ah, just feel good stuff. Because McConnell's already said the truth. That is, give us the power, then we'll tell you what we're going to do. We'll frame it around how you feel right now in this moment. And we'll tell you we're going to fight to reduce inflation. Well, exactly how are you going to do that? Because the Fed, which it's their charge to do, can't seem to do it. So what is Congress who can't even give us a budget? We're just we open the show talking about a continuing resolution on the budget. You don't even have a budget. So so the realities are right now one of electoral positioning to take advantage or to grab back advantage,

I should say, Mika, that the Republicans had going into the fall, which they lost because of not just Roe, not just the fall of Roe, but also, as we said earlier, the January 6th committee, the travails of Donald Trump and a party that looks more beholding and resistant to where America wants to go more broadly. Yeah, a party that is holding on tightly to a man who's facing legal proceedings on four different massive levels. I mean, as it all closes in on him, they still hold on to him. And I think perhaps they might want to loosen their grip. Still ahead, Pulitzer Prize winning columnist at The Washington Post, Eugene Robinson, joins us to talk about what he calls the Republican Party's agenda of revenge. Plus,

we'll get an update on the investigation into the Secret Service and the communications between agents on January 6th.