Morning Joe - Paxton Defeats Sen. Cornyn in Texas GOP Primary Runoff

Episode Date: May 27, 2026

Paxton Defeats Sen. Cornyn in Texas GOP Primary Runoff To listen to this show and other MS podcasts without ads, sign up for MS NOW Premium on Apple Podcasts. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

He's a threat to our prosperity in Texas economy. He said you can't be a Christian if you support the oil and gas industries. He wants to raise your taxes, and he won't do a single thing to lower costs for you and your family. And finally, he's a threat to our very way of life and our values. I mean, he's a vegan who thinks God is non-binary and that there's actually six biological sexes. It's hard to imagine someone more radical than that. Ken Paxton embodies the broken political system that we're running against. He is the most corrupt politician in America.

Three years ago, tomorrow, he was impeached by his own party for using his public office, his position of public trust to enrich himself and his donors at our expense. And that is exactly the problem in our politics. It's puppet politicians who serve themselves and their billionaire mega donors instead of serving us. It's why we can't afford anything. It's why we can't get ahead no matter how hard we work. The system is rigged by corrupt politicians like Ken Paxson. And that is your matchup for the Texas Senate seat.

After Texas Attorney General, Ken Paxton's dominant win over four-term incumbent Senator John Cornyn in the front of the runoff election. Every Democrat in America, Willie, says thank you. Because what they have just... done by this guy right here, by overwhelmingly doing it, which is, again, all people say, oh, there needs to be a strong Republican. Really? This is what the Republican primary gives you? No, I don't think there needs to be a strong Republican Party, especially if this is what the Republican Party produces, but think it's hard to estimate. Did Texas Republicans just

cost the Republican Party 20 million? Definitely costs the Republican Party 20 million? Definitely costs them money. 30 million, 40, 50 million, 100 million dollars that they could have spent in Maine, that they could have spent in Iowa, that they could have spent in Ohio, that they could have spent in Alaska. They have cost Republicans maybe $100 million that could go to other competitive races. Meanwhile, really Donald Trump has enraged Republican senators who are now saying, okay, first of all, you get this Yahoo that you endorse. And now we're going to have to work with rightfully, very angry John Cornyn, Tom Tillis,

just go. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So, yeah, this is a huge win for Democrats. Yeah, I'm hearing the $100 million number that you just cited that they're not going to have to pour into Texas. I think you and I both share that longtime skepticism of Texas turning blue. Right. They haven't had a statewide elected representative in Texas, a Democrat since 94. They also haven't had a guy like this.

I was going to say, but this is a different kind of Republican candidate. Donald Trump, people remember, swooped in last week at the 11th hour and endorsed Ken Paxton. John Cornyn wanted that endorsement. Paxton won last night by almost 30 points, 28 points is the margin. It was not close. And now you saw a little glint in the eye of James Tala Rico. And Democrats is saying, for the first time in a long time, we at least. think we have a real shot here. When it comes to sheer awfulness for a political candidate,

Paxton's sort of a unicorn. He has all of these different traits. No, all of these different traits. Can I give you one quote, Joe? First, you could ask his wife about his character. That's one place. She made that public a lot last year. But this is a quote from Senator Tom Tillis, Republican of North Carolina. Quote, to call Paxton ethically challenged is to call Jeffrey Dahmer suffering from an eating disorder. There you go. That's from Republican Tom Tillis. True. Okay. It was a disorder. Here. Exactly, yeah.

We'll go right. I don't... Are you now like the Pope attacking AI? What is this? Just stop it. Are you like the Pope? Exactly. Yes, you will. In some ways. In some ways. In other ways,

not, sir. In other ways, completely not. sir, you remind me of the vote in many ways. John Lemieux are $100 million. Democrats just got, you know, first of all, let's just talk about how bad of a dean seat chair, Ken Martin is. And let's just talk about how crazy the Democratic Party is that in times that should be, like they should be striking up the old FDR Happy Days are here again,

but they've got a 20% approval rating, and they're getting completely blown away in fundraising, completely blown away. Why Ken Martin is there instead of, well, first of all, Ben Winkler at the beginning, or anybody else? Force Rahm Emanuel to go back in because Rom wins, and I know a lot of Democrats hate that. I know they hate doing the smart thing.

But my God, he is so horrible at his job. I'm sure he's a wonderful person, a wonderful, wonderful community. I don't know if he's married, but I'm sure he's a great husband. Great. if he has kids, a great father. A wonderful tee ball coach. But running the dean, a great at carpools, he's one of those guards that goes out and school, you know. But as a DNC chair, he is just horrible.

They are getting crushed by the Republicans. I say all that to say. Maybe it's just an impossible job, Joe. Right. No, no. Now, now, now, ask Rahm Emanuel, who said, we're going to do a 50-state strategy back in 2006. Did it? They won.

But that said, once again, there's a divine providence to kind of quote Bismarck that protects fools, drunkards, and the Democratic Party. And in this case, Ken Martin, the DNC just got a hundred million dollar windfall thanks to Texas voters. Yeah, well, Rob Manuel, too busy running for president to run the DNC right now. We'll see if Ken Martin hangs on here. How does he hang on? It would be unlikely. The handling of the autopsy last week was universal. Oh, my God.

What's wrong with him? I mean, you shouldn't have come out initially or shouldn't have come out at all, and then they sort of... Why doesn't he just say early on, hey, I'd love to release this, but really sucks. Right. I mean, it makes no mention of either Joe Biden's age or Gaza. I mean, it's a deeply flawed document. But also didn't even have a conclusion. Didn't have a conclusion. It's annotated repeatedly the DNC had to write, we disagree with this, we disagree with this, we disagree with this. And it also just reopened old wounds for a party that, to your point, Joe, is trying to turn the page. Just say, hey, we have the wind at our back right now. And that, that is, and that, includes in Texas. Now, for Trump's endorsement... Just going on with D&C and Ken Martin,

Republicans have over $100 million cash on hand, R&C. Democrats are $4 million in debt, because nobody trusts Ken Martin or the DNC to give him any money. Yeah, it's a combination of no trust for Martin and the DNC, and still residual bitterness as to how 2024 was handled. And the Biden-Harris handoff, there's a lot of anger and suspicion among some dem donors. We would think that certainly come presidential, that will change. But right now, there has been a reluctance to give that money. But they've got a shot here now to put the Senate in

play. It is still an uphill climb in Texas. And I think that the Trump endorsement came mostly because, not because he wanted to, he put his thumb on the scale for a win. He saw the win coming. And he wanted to be, he wanted to jump on board Paxton and claim the victory. But this is now, to your point earlier,

Tillis, Pax, Corny, Cassidy. Three Republican senators out because of what Trump wanted, who are not going to be super inclined to help him going for it. On top of Murkowski, on top of Susan Collins, who's going to desperately try to win a state that was, you know, plus five, six for Harris. I mean, it's going to be tough. John Meacham's with us, John. I'm going to give you sort of a popery of things to do. You can, you can talk about the Knicks. You can talk about the fact that we have the Pope. A lot of what people

called the Potomac Pope with us. Are you going to talk about Ken Paxson in the last night? I know there are some historical parallels there. You and I talked about this yesterday, perhaps a bit of the John Birch Society. What's your take on the Republicans in Texas desperately trying to seize defeat from the jaws of victory? Well, Texas is always fascinating. It's not least because if you think about the last 60 or 70 years,

when John Tower won LBJ's seat in 1961, it was a signal of what was about to happen over the next couple of decades in Southern Republican politics, first Republicans since reconstruction with John Tower, which encouraged people like a young George H.W. Bush to challenge Ralph Yarborough in 1964, begin to make the state a little more competitive. And you wonder, even in this deeply polarized world, whether a nomination like Paxon begins to put the country, begins to put Texas and parts of the country back in a, in a post-Trump place. It doesn't look healthy, but go ahead, John. Yeah. But the central, central question is, of the last 11 years, will we know in 2028 whether this has been the age of Trump, which indisputably is historically, or is it the age of Trumpism? And that test begins this fall. Okay. So let's take a look at a nominee here in Texas during his time in office.

Ken Paxton has repeatedly been accused of bribery, fraud, and self-dealing. That's by Republicans, by the way. But has never been convicted of a crime. Months after he took office in 2015, he was indicted on two counts of securities fraud. In 2020, a group of AIDS reported him to the FBI accusing him of bribery and abuse of office to help a friend and political donor. In 2023, he was sued by the State Bar of Texas for his efforts to overreactual. return, the 2020 presidential election. In 2024, after nine years and several legal delays in the securities fraud case, Paxton finally settled, agreeing to a $271,000 fine and community service.

In 2025, an investigation by the Associated Press found that Paxton claimed three homes, as his primary residence allowing him to save tens of thousand dollars. Wasn't Donald Trump trying to get people arrested for doing that. Loan payments, yep. But he has never faced legal action for this. The long list of scandals is something Democratic nominee James Telerico seized on when asked to respond to Republicans falsely claiming that he's a vegan. A vegan? Oh, my God.

I'm an eighth generation Texan. I've been eating barbecue since before Ken Paxton's first indictment. And if all they have on me is lying about me being a vegan. vegan. I feel pretty good about our chances this November. And you're absolutely right. You know, so many of my family members, my friends, my neighbors who voted for Donald Trump in 2024, they voted for him because they thought he was going to lower costs. They thought he was going to end the forever wars. They thought he was going to release the Epstein files and drain the swamp. But just one year later, they've seen how he's done the exact opposite. And of course,

his favorite rib joint, Galvison's two genders. Two genders. barbecue. Two gender here. Yeah, it's just these these amazing Texas parties where you just have two genders in a room with some ribs. With some ribs. With some ribs. With some ribs. Those are the best. You don't want three genders and you don't want two kinds of barbecue. So, you know, it has struck me and you and everybody else through the time that just how the worst people are Donald Trump attracts the worst people. He's drawn to the worst

people. We talked about experts yesterday and how he has the worst people around him. But, you know, MAGA, some of the hardcores, always mock and ridicule experts. The same experts, like Dr. Prasinski, who said in 2012, and, you know, don't go into Iran. If you go into Iran, they're going to immediately shut up the Strait of Hormuz and you're playing with fire for the entire world economy. But you just go up and down the line. You know, Stephen Miller, I saw Stephen Miller saying, oh, the debt, if you could get rid of waste, fraud, and abuse, you'd get rid of the entire debt. It's just a lie. We used to, we used to joke about that on the floor. Those of us who balance a budget four years in a row. And, you know, it's the same thing about immigrants.

Oh, immigrants are costing us so much money. Cato, do we have that Cato study? Cato study talking about immigrants, waste, fraud, and abuse. Cato did a study, and what they found out is, well, we've got this. Do you have the Cato info? I'll just, I'll say it. Okay. Back in March, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller claimed in the Oval Office, quote, the extraction of wealth from American taxpayers to people who don't belong here is the primary cause of the national debt. But research from the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, disputes that. It found that the fiscal surplus from all immigrants from 1994 to 2023 was $14.5 trillion compared with a deficit of $48 trillion without immigrants.

That means that immigrants cut deficits by nearly a third in real terms over the last three decades, even low-skilled immigrants, those without bachelor's degrees, reduced the debt by 2.8 trillion, and illegal immigrants likely reduce the deficit by at least 1.7 trillion. Not only that, but every year... This is the key, Stephen. But you know this to be the truth. I'm not sure why you lied, but you know this to be the truth. Every year since 1994, when data collection began, immigrants have paid more in Texas than they received in benefits from the federal state and local governments. immigrants also pay more in taxes than the average person.

The Cato Institute explains that's because they work at much higher rates. They end up with a higher per capita incomes and pay more in taxes than their share of the population predicts. There's a reason why Ronald Reagan used his final speech to the American people to say, immigrants make us better, they make us richer, they make us younger, they make us more dynamic. You can go to France and you'll never be a Frenchman. You can go to Turkey. You'll never be Turkish. You come to America.

You are an American. And yet these lies continue. I said, you know, last year, I think it was RFK Jr. Who's always saying wacky things saying circumcision increases the rate of autism and children by two times. The amount. It's just a lie. I mean, Israel has lower autism rates in the United States. says. He goes back and he grabs this observational study that the Danish did years ago. And they just go and they just lie at will. And now you have Paxson out there and you just sit there and go, at what point are people going to start voting for serious candidates, for serious politicians, for wanting serious cabinet members? And at what point are people willing to look past?

all of the lies that come from this White House and that come from this party and actually get people that can face the real challenges ahead of us. I was going to make a joke about the obvious link between circumcision and veganism. Yeah. But in two months, I'm sure somebody's going to seriously bring that out. Going to try that. No, no, no, I mean, the Texas race is going to be a throw everything against the wall kind of thing. I mean, all that being said, you know, Tilarico has a lot to answer for in terms of quotes that are out of the

mainstream Texas norm. But he is, I know, I've read him. His tweets from like six years ago? I'm talking about the things that they're circulating around gender, around other issues. But I also have read him, and he is a reality-based data-driven analyst, especially when compared to Paxton. To answer your larger question, I don't know. I mean, our mutual friend and colleague Tom Nichols writes about this all the time,

the derogation, the putting down of expertise. I don't understand, and I continue to be flummoxed by the idea that feelings about reality are trumping, not to use the term, but there we are, are trumping. Actual data that is supportable, provable, transparent. I don't understand it, and I don't, and I'm still trying to understand the break between Reaganism and Trumpism. Right. What was that moment when people decided that this no longer matter?

Right. You know, that a set of empirical facts no longer matter. F, the fact, don't matter. The irony that is, of course, the big flag that you would see back in 2020 was F your feelings, vote Trump. And then, of course, John M. H. It's all feelings. It's all feelings. I mean, again, even that flag is projection or confession.

I mean, the old saying that everything Trump says is projected. Even that flag is confession. That is all feelings. We lost in 2020. That's all right. We didn't lose in 2020. We won. Forget the data.

Forget the facts. We won in 2020. Everything RFK Jr. seems to say. Stephen Miller, lying about the deficit being driven by illegal immigrants, when, again, the Koch brothers Cato Institute says that's a complete lie. It's just the opposite. it. And you can go on and on this Iran war that we are in. We're in it because it was about feelings. It wasn't about facts. He listened to Benjamin Netanyahu and Lindsey Graham. And he didn't.

And, you know, his child secretary of defense to go into a war that any expert would have told him it's going to end this way. So here we are, John. I mean, when, When do we get back to a point where facts matter, where reality matters, that you just can't say it's fake news if it doesn't align with your prejudices or your hurt little feelings? Yeah. I had a conversation not long after January 6th with a Fox News devotee from the Deep South who said that part of, he understood part of the energy behind January 6th. because Democrats made him feel bad. Yeah. And I remember... I don't remember James Madison being worried about, you know, how you felt about the rule of law.

And to me, this is a moral crisis. I love, by the way, my friend from the Atlantic, I just want to note that the editor of the Atlantic has said, as pine for Ronald Reagan as a fact-based politician. Yeah, exactly. Your predecessors, their heads would have exploded, right? Noted. That's interesting now. Dully noted.

It's remarkable, right? But it's, but what Jeffrey's saying is right. I mean, there is a break between Reaganism and where we are. I think it comes somewhere around 1992 with Pat Buchanan and, Some of Ross Perot, although I think it's a little unfair to drag Perot into anything beyond the economic populism. But what we have to figure out here is who can tell the compelling story that the country is about the ability both to win graciously and to lose graciously. And if you can't do both, then we're not going to get to 255 and 260 and to, 265. And that's not hyperbolic. I mean, we have, we have an American president who is

skipped over, shredded Article 1 of the Constitution. It'll be fascinating to see whether Senator Cornyn, who, with whom, whether you agree with him or disagree with him, is a good public servant, whether Cornyn joins the Cassidy Tillis-McConnell wing of the party, which is being liberated from a primary electorate and a general election electorate, become rather more candid about what they're seeing. One wishes that senators did that before they were contemplating their political mortality. But as President Kennedy said, you know, there's a reason profiles and courage was short in one volume. You know, it's not in abundance.

And this fits into a larger conversation we've had about political media culture. and you and I both know we will hear from people we know that Stephen Miller quote. Well, if we just stopped paying illegal immigrants here, we'd erase the deficit. Now, he was off by $1.2 trillion in his estimate. Like, it's not even close as you laid out. That's not where the deficit lives. But because certain shows and podcasts with large audiences will amplify and repeat that, that gets into the political bloodstream will be stated as fact.

And this administration knows that, that they can just put stuff out, there, and we will challenge it on our show, but audiences that support President Trump or others making up their minds will go along with it. And it has to be said that despite the fact Texas voters, Republicans know all that Mika just laid out about Ken Paxson on a graphic where the print had to be made small to fit it all, all the scandals, and we didn't even get into his personal scandals as well, that they voted for him by a margin of almost 30 points yesterday. We'll see what happens in the general election, but Republican voters last night said, I want that.

Well, and you're so right. And Miller off by $1.2 trillion. And, of course, when I was in Congress, when I was a conservative, we were, you know, we were called warriors. We were against communists. We didn't bow and scrape and kow to, you know, leaders of the Communist Chinese Party, which Donald Trump does. We didn't allow Russia to continue to terrorize.

its neighbors, and we balance the budget. Four years in a row, Donald Trump claimed he was going to balance the budget and pay down the debt in his first term. Get this, almost one third of all debt accumulated by America since 1789, almost one out of three dollars was piled on a crippling federal debt by Donald Trump and the Republican Party. Donald Trump and the Republican Party. And Stephen Miller's giving us lectures about illegal immigrants and waste, fraud, and abuse. It's just a farce. It's a joke. And they continue to get away with it because they think the people that support them are too stupid to know the facts. It's like a three-minute fact check, by the way. Google machine, AI machine. The Pope will forgive you for it. Use it. Get facts. Don't be dumb.

live long and prosper. John Meacham, thank you very much. Still ahead on Morning Joe, President Trump is facing redistricting setbacks in South Carolina and Alabama. We're going to run through what happened in those states yesterday and what it could mean for the midterms, plus a new analysis of the Trump families

reported self-dealing during the president's White House tenure. And Willie, here, what did we hear about Hunter Biden's NFTs? Oh, my gosh. And his art where he got like $50,000 or something. They're up to like $4 billion in self-dealing. They have got these mining deals. So rich off the presidency.

Don Jr. go, I mean, it's just exploding. The government contracts and funds that he's associated with are getting, it's crazy. Speaking of waste, fraud and abuse, where's doged when you need them? When you've got all the self-dealing and all the corrupt activity that's been going on. All right. As we go to break, a quick look at the travelers' forecast this morning from Ackywe. There's Bernie Rayno. Bernie, how's it looking? It's going to be a warm Wednesday in Boston, New York City temperatures in the 80s.

Your exclusive vacuum with the forecast, though, calling for some gusty thunderstorms from Charleston toward Washington, D.C. There'll be some travel delays. Chicago dry and warm today, steaming from Texas toward the southeast with thunderstorms generally this afternoon, although most of the rain is going to be this morning in Houston. Look for travel delays around Atlanta this afternoon, Miami, and the rain. Washington, D.C. To help you make the best decisions to be more in the know,

download the Accuether App today. The people who drew that map don't live in South Carolina. The people who drew that map, some of them may not have ever set foot in South Carolina. This White House says

to hell with the process. To hell with the Constitution. Shame, shame. Just do what we want done. And that's what has us here today. That is, of course, Democratic Congressman Jim Clyburn speaking yesterday. Before South Carolina's Senate rejected a new congressional map, Republicans had hoped, would eliminate the state's only Democratic seat held by Clyburn for more than three decades.

A procedural vote to end debate on the map failed after 12 Republicans joined Democrats to vote against it. The state Senate then moved to adjourn until June 10th, the day after South Carolina's primary. making it highly unlikely any redistricting effort will take place in time for the midterms. Congressman Clyburn issued a statement yesterday after that vote commending state senators, writing in part, members of the South Carolina State Senate stood up for the constitutional principles they say they believe in. Join us now, the host of politics now on MS now, Reverend Al Sharpton, he's president, of course, of the National Action Network.

Rev, good morning. It's hard, first of all, to imagine South Carolina politics without James Clyburn. but it's even more difficult to imagine a state like South Carolina not having a majority black district. But now it looks like thanks to a handful of Republicans jumping over the fence to vote with Democrats, that'll be at least pushed down the road for a while. Given the population in South Carolina and the percentage of black residents, it would have been unthinkable to wipe out the only black district and the only Democratic district. Aside from the fact Jim Clyburn has earned.

iconic status there, civil rights lead into Congress for all these years. But I really think the real news was that some Republicans stood up and said, I just can't do this. Reverend Nelson Rivers, who his National Action Network for us in South Carolina, was there every day. And he kept telling me, no, some of these Republicans are going the other way. And I said, really? And it ended up being that way. And I think this might be a story that a lot of us are not looking at. that a lot of people, even in the deep south, are saying, wait a minute, there's, but so far I'm going to go. I may announce different reasons, but in their heart they know what's wrong. Well, I mean, and let's look, there were people in Indiana that voted the way they voted,

Republicans against redistricting, and, you know, five, six of them lost. So this actually was a profiling courage, making sure they didn't kick out a civil rights icon, a civil rights hero, just an extraordinary man, extraordinary leader, James Clyburn. That was, that was, again, we need to stop when that happens like we did in 2020, when there were Republican election officials up in Michigan and in Georgia that actually stopped. So, wait a time, we're not going to follow you down this trail to destruction. And when people do stand up and do the right thing on the Republican side, we need to

stand up and loudly say they did the right thing. And I, you know, the history of the civil rights movement was always reconciliation. And we had a small example of that yesterday. Some of them may have done it because they feel that their districts would have been impacted. But whatever the reason they came to a conclusion that we benefit from. And we should, we should be just as open and vocal about saying that's the right thing as we are wrong. Because the stories could have been, oh, here's another reinforcement of the old South. again. And yesterday, the opposite happened in South Carolina. Well, and let's move to Alabama, where a federal court has blocked Alabama from using its

newly drawn congressional map in this year's midterms. A three-judge panel, which included two judges appointed by President Trump, determined the redrawn districts intentionally discriminate against black voters. Alabama's attorney general immediately appealed the ruling, setting the stage for the Supreme Court to determine whether the maps can be used in November. Jeffrey, this has kind of been the rhythm of these things. The redistricting happens. The map gets changed and that it's challenged in quarter in the case of South Carolina goes to the assembly at the statehouse. And by and large, there's been big pushback, legal pushback, not surprising. We'll see what the Supreme Court says. But again, it may be longer than,

Democrats may be okay for terms of getting redistricted in many of these places, for the midterms, I think the Republicans, certain Republicans, were hoping for, you know, magic bullet solutions from legislatures, from the Supreme Court. I think it's going to be ambiguous, more ambiguous, which obviously is to the benefit of democracy in November. But the long-term trends are continued agitation to redistrict in a way that is so ostentatiously geared against Democrats,

majority black districts, for instance, that the trend lines are negative. but it's become much more of an ambiguous process, especially in the short term. And the Supreme Court's last ruling, it's been a race rep across the South to redistrict. They're trying to wipe out these black districts. I wonder if Clyburn, that seat survives because he's such a singular figure that some in South Carolina, I feel like, you know, he's a legend. We can't touch him, but maybe down the road, that could change, too.

And to Jeffrey's point, there is this larger trend. I mean, redistricting wars, yes, both sides, but this is a Republican-led initiative. It was President Trump telling Texas that set the domino effect. And I don't know that you can put that toothpaste back in the tube for cycles going forward. Maybe Democrats can overcome it this year because the polls look so good, maybe a wave's coming. It doesn't mean they will improve in subsequent cycles. But that is the concern among civil rights leadership and others that we may get past 26, but what happens going forward.

And my counsel is that we have to do what we did to get the voting rights act and other things in the first place. It's not like someone woke up one morning and said, let's do the voting rights. We're going to have to organize, be on the ground, and do what needs to be done, and have allies. I'll never forget, I was lectured when I was a kid growing up in a movement, that if it wasn't for Everett Dirkson and others, we wouldn't have got the civil rights bill. So sometimes you've got to work with unlikely people to get to some results that's good for everybody.

And you've got to be willing to do that while you don't compromise your stand. I mean, that's how Washington used to work. Let's talk, Jeffrey, if we could, before you leave about Iran. There's so much to talk about. I think one of the most important stories that's been in the Atlantic in a very long time, obviously every story written by John Lemire. But below. They're all above average.

Below those. So thank you very much. You can actually put that. Performance review right here. Put that on Jonathan Lemire.com. Johnathan Lamere, regularly above average. All above average. Exactly.

We would take that in Boston right now with our history. bitters. But Bob Kagan has said rightfully that this war could be one of the great losses in recent U.S. history. And he said that Donald Trump is surrendering. His plan to get out is absolute surrender. Talk about the importance when somebody like Bob Kagan, who is not a dove, is calling out an attack against I would think a country that he probably thinks is one of the worst on earth. Look, Bob Kagan might have certain feelings about Iran and its negative effect on world politics, negative effect on American national security.

But that's the reason he's so angry and upset about this. You don't want to lose. the very worst thing you could do is have a war of choice, right? And this was the timing of this and the action. Those are choices. And you have this choice and you don't have a plan, you don't have a vision, you don't have an end goal. You go at it for a week.

You think you're going to win. No set goal. And by the way, you're warned on the ramp up to the war, time and time and time again, don't do it. Look, look, we're all around this table know that, Iran undoes presidencies. That's what Iran does. That's her hobby. Lamar like Iran goes. Iran's specialty. It's like Austria Alpine skiing. Rand undoing American presidents. Everybody has their specialty. So you go back to the Iran hostage

crisis. You go to Iran-Contra. You work your way through. You even look at the presidents who had ambiguous relationships with Iran. It still ate up an enormous amount of Obama's time, for instance, right? But at least he didn't go in and attack. I mean, you know, I remember very, very clearly talking to President Obama extensively about this, and he would get in trouble a lot of time for saying, don't do stupid stuff, is my motto. And that was not the, obviously, the theme of a great nation. But you know what? It beats doing stupid stuff.

Right. And so what we have now is not only have we, on a practical level, spent down our munitions that ordinarily would be used to stockpile to protect Taiwan, South Korea, the Baltic states, et cetera, et cetera. We have shown, the United States has shown, that it cannot defeat a third-rate power. And the United States has shown that it is so uninterested in the geopolitics of the Middle East that it did not realize, the President of the United States did not realize, that the first move and only move of Iran is to shut the street of remotes. It's like this one thing. Dr. Brinzinski is really smart, but it doesn't take, that was not.

That's a take, Dr. Prisinski. That was like this for 30 years. Yeah. And so what Bob Keegan was saying in the Atlantic, this is all predictable. And what Bob Keegan also said was they're going to have more control of the straight now than they did before. They're not going to get rid of their nuclear weapons. And that's very clear in the conversations. And that is an abject surrender. And what does that do? Makes Iran stronger. That makes Russia stronger. And that makes China stronger. The thing that's a little bit maddening about this is that if Donald Trump had come out and said, my goal is simply to, prevent Iran from ever going nuclear. I did not think Obama had a strong enough plan.

Right. Therefore, I am going to destroy physically their nuclear infrastructure. He did it once to fairly good effect. He said it was a complete job, and then he had to do it again. So obviously there was some subterfuge there. But all he had to do was say, look, every time you poke your head up on the nuclear issue, I'm just going to knock the buildings down. And so stop doing this. We wouldn't be in this mess. And we wouldn't be signaling to Russia. and China that we're weak, not resolute, that we cannot defeat. Iran is a third tier power. Russia is a second tier power. China is a near-peer adversary. Iran is not a big deal. And that's the shocking thing about this. We are the largest and most potent military in the history of the

planet. And we got outplayed. And like Vietnam? Repeatedly. Like Iraq? Like Afghanistan? Sam? We don't know what the goals are. We won militarily. We lost politically. And you're right. And the only goal that the president has said repeatedly was they can't have nukes. And yet, it looks like he's going to give them nukes. All right. Jeffrey Goldberg, thank you very much. Reverend Dahl Sharpton, thank you as well. To be continued, you need to come back. Coming up, the U.S. men's national team has named its World Cup roster set to chase the first ever title on soccer's biggest stage. And look who's in studio. Roger Bennett joins us on set.

Roger, we've got the Pope of 43rd Street over here. Next on Morning Joe. The U.S. men's national team has unveiled its FIFA World Cup roster, finalizing the squad. Did you say that was pretty? Very. Okay, yeah. Good, good-looking shot on here. Looking south.

Also, good-looking shot of the men's roster. There it is. That squad that you'll see, Hansen, we'll try to win the countries. Donald Trump would say, beautiful. Look at their legs. bunch of good looking guys. Tackle that one later. Yeah.

Should we do a Jackson Dark cycle? He said, like a harder to comments. He kind of been leaning into it. He fucking leans in a hard on it. You know what I mean? So these guys are trying to win the United States' first World Cup title. We'll see.

The 2026 group holds some of the country's biggest stars. We'll see. He does a lot. Including Ford Christian Puliswick and midfielders, Tyler Adams, and Weston McKenney. Team USA kicks off its World Cup campaign in Group D against Paragu on June 12th, out in Los Angeles at SoFi Stadium, Joe.

Nice. Very exciting. Nice. He's right now the founder of Men and Blazers Media Network. Roger. Oh, my God. He's the author of the new book. We are the World Cup. A personal history of the world's greatest sporting event.

MS now contributor, Mike Barnacle, is also... Just walked in. Just walked in off the street. Put out his cigar. Breck his tacos downstairs. But hey. Roger. Oh, Joe.

It's good to see you in the flesh. How are you? Roger. By the way, when you say they're going to try and win their first World Cup, our women have won so many of them. Well, exactly. Of course. But I look at that photo and I like to pretend.

This is the beautiful moment. The squad's been announced we can pretend. They're going to win the World Cup. Roger, when we went to see the United States down downtown, what bar was that? Downtown at a pub. Yes, I remember. Miki kicked over a table. 2010.

Going back to that. Linden Donovan. 2010, right? Yeah. Melandovvon scored the goal. scored the goal. Beers went flying. And Mika kicked over the table.

And we believed. We believed and we said this team is getting better. We did. We told ourselves. Here we are 16 years later. Yes. Are we any better than we were in 2010? You're catching me at a wonderful time.

The squad's just been announced. We're overwhelmed by so. So you have no idea. None of us have any idea for a variety of reasons. Number one, the players are better than they ever have been individually. We don't know how they come together as a unit. Right. But the reality is, this team,

because we are hosting the World Cup, they haven't had to play a serious game in years. Essentially played a steady diet of NFL preseason games. It's kind of like us. It's not doing a serious show in years. The similarity is very, very eerie. Very comfortable. But they could be great, they could be terrible.

They're playing on home ground. The pressure is immense. But South Korea, a team that are middling in a footnotes in football history, 2002 went all the way to the semifinal. Yeah. As the manager keeps saying, channeling the miracle on ice, why not us?

Why not? I can think of a hundred reasons right now even if they're asking. It's not the hope that kills you. It's the knowledge. It's knowing that it's something that kills you. Lemire, you're like, you follow this closely. Yeah.

I make it up when I'm talking to Roger, but you actually follow this closely. How do you feel about this? I mean, of course, you're the home team, to Roger's point. There's always an advantage there. I think there is a sense, though, among the soccer community that we hope they were further along. at this moment as we finally get to have the World Cup back here at home.

94, Roger, what you've written about the last time the U.S. hosted was like this novelty. It was like, oh, it's a coming out party for soccer in the U.S., and it did. People were really into it. No doubt. The United States is far more of a soccer country now than we were then. Oh, my gosh. Not even close. Because of Roger Bennett.

Mostly because of Roger Bennett. I'm the last thing holding it back from going over the top, Jen. People have their Premier League teams. They have their LLLEG teams, whatever it might be. The MLS is doing better than certainly than it had been. But there's a sense that we're not still in that really serious level of contenders. I think that's utterly fair. The players are better than ever look.

The game, the economist, just came out with a study that said that football is the third biggest sport in America behind the NFL and the NBA. It's just taken over from Major League Baseball thanks to passionate fans like Mika. And so the sport has taken hold with the 20 to 30-year-old audience massively. Furthermore, the game is about to enter its American century. You know, Americans have brought up the biggest Premier League teams, the biggest German teams, the biggest Italian-Spanish teams, you know, the Dodgers own Chelsea. Stan Cronky has just won the Premier League with Arsenal. Your Red So, they own Liverpool Football Club, as you know.

So American capital. Yeah, it appears to be distracting them from their main duty. Alex Corr to Liverpool. But the reality is this is the last thing holding us back to have a men's team that can surge that we can feel proud of. It is crazy to me as a great American lover of the game. Our men's team are women win everything. They kick ass, they take names. Our men have won one knockout game in the entire World Cup history.

Going back to George Washington, won. And it's a shame that we can put right this summer. So, Raj, you're going on this bus tour, fitting of the rock star that you are, to the different sites. He is the global ambassador. He's a beautiful game in America. John Madden. John Madd. So let's talk about who some of the favorites are.

if not the United States, and we hold out hope that they'll make a run. But who are you looking at as a group of potential World Cup champions? No, the big names are always very hard to win a World Cup. There's eight nations that have ever won it. So the big teams, France, enormous. Spain play like little Ewoks tossing around the Frisbee on a college campus. They play delicious football. Germany are...

I don't know how to tell you. They're Germans. They're relentless. They're organized. They're very, very focused. Gotta keep an eye on them. And then. At all times.

There you go. You've read the plot against America. You know how that goes. Yes. But England, fascinating. Obviously, I'm an American now, so I don't root for them. But for them to come over with the best team they've had in a long, long time. And to try and win a World Cup on American turf in the 250th anniversary of our nation,

maybe too much for the American soul to witness. Well, we already witnessed Venezuela winning the World War. baseball classic. So it would round it out perfectly if England won the World Cup in America. Imagine what that would feel like plus thousands of English fans firing rockets out of orifices. You didn't know rockets could be

fired out of in celebration. That's what you've got. I love the Brits. It's why football's going to go over the top in the United United States. Well, that is quite a description for young Johnny who just spit out his Cheerios as he was getting ready to. We just put up our group, Group, Group D.

United States Group. Yeah, how tough is that group? other words, do we get out of group play? There you go. We're playing Paraguay. We're playing Australia. We're also playing Turkey, who are a very good football team. The amazing thing about that draw, when it happened back in December, we cheered when we got each of those nations.

Paraguay, we cheered, Australia, we laughed. Ultimately, we got Turkey through the playoffs as well. We thought that was the greatest drawer ever. I can tell you, every single one of their nations cheered when they got the United States. So there's a lot of parity. please God we will emerge and please God will win a knockout game. At the level of skill we're talking about here, World Cup is obviously high level. Does analytics play a role in soccer as much as it does in other sports now?

So the status is the greatest is baseball. MBA is said to be 10 years behind baseball and soccer is 10 years behind where the NBA is. So the sports is awash with numbers. We still just do not know how to use them. A lot of the greatest analytical minds who've made baseball where it is right now. You know, you're red socks analytics. God bless. There you go.

Keep working on Liverpool. Keep lifting Liverpool up. But all the analytics baseball minds are turning to soccer and trying to work out. That's a shame. Really quickly. Brazil, up or down. I mean, sometimes, you know, they look unbeatable. Other times they lose to Germany like 7 to 1.

Yeah, where they did you. By your arm off to be in the semi-final. They are delirious. They will be absolutely ecstatic. They will be follow. I mean, this is the joy of the World Cup. There's going to be 60,000 Dutch fans bouncing down the Kansas City Highway, clad in orange before the games. There's going to be 100,000 Germans want to be for a saxophonish.

The Brazilians will be a defiant spectacle. They will raise their nation's hopes. They will shatter their nation's hearts. And that's the joy of football. It's the greater, Eduardo Galliano, the Uruguayan poet once said, soccer, football is a pleasure that hurts. Ultimately, it ends in pain for all of us. And we at least Roger mentioned England. Maybe the USA can't win it, but we could take delight in this. If England advances to the round of 16, they will play on July 4th, 250 years in Philadelphia.

God bless him. So that is pretty spectacular. That's good schedule. What about the Dutch? Brilliant Orange. How are they? We got to go. I know, but I'm just curious. They are absolutely phenomenal. Okay. Founder. I love. The Men and Blazers Media Network, Roger Bennett. Thank you very much. It's good to have you in here. It's great to be here. Health, happiness, joy. Go, Go, Go, Go, USA.