Morning Joe - President Trump Calls Iran Strikes a ‘Love Tap’

Episode Date: May 8, 2026

President Trump Calls Iran Strikes a ‘Love Tap’ 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.

It's Mother's Day. Get this. I saw that Americans are expected to spend a record $38 billion. $38 billion. And if you combine that with what's spent on Father's Day, that's $38 billion. All right. Jimmy Fallon helping us all remember that Mother's Day is this Sunday, and we have a lot to get to on this Friday morning.

President Trump claims the ceasefire is still holding, despite U.S. and Iranian forces exchanging fire yesterday. Meanwhile, the Washington Post has new reporting that Iran is in much better shape than the Trump administration is publicly saying with intelligence assessments that the country could sustain the conflict for months. Also ahead, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche is saying that he doesn't see the problem if ICE agents patrolled polling places this fall. We'll play for you those comments. and we'll show you how Republicans were talking about gas prices during the Biden administration when the price at the pump was a dollar less than what Americans are paying right now. With us, we have the co-host of our 9 a.m. hour, staff writer at the Atlantic,

Jonathan Lemire, MSNAN, National Affairs analyst John Heilman. He's partner in chief political columnist at Puck. editor at the insider Michael Weiss and defense editor at the economist Shashank Joshi. Good to have you all on board with us on this Friday morning. Joe, where do we begin? Well, I'm very proud. I wanted to show Lemire what I've done. Do you have your iPad with you?

Me? The bunny? Where you have the bunnies on the back? Yeah. Yeah. It's so cute. And so she threw that. So she holds it up.

and I was so inspired by that John Lemire that I decided to do my own sketch on the back of my own iPad, and I want to show it to you right now. I think it's a pretty good likeness, actually. Yeah, right. There it is. There it is. I was wondering what was going on here. One of our most sacred photographs, an iconic image that inspires us all.

Well, it inspires us all, and we, of course, Mika will tell you that we actually have it up. in our family room. We have the picture, and then there are two candles. And, yeah, sort of an altar of sorts for Red Sox's Glory Pass, you know? Well, sadly not to bring up the COVID pandemic, but when we were all doing the show from home, viewers will remember this. That was the one image I had up behind me for the whole, for years, was just that picture. I was joking to you last night, Joe, that's part of the Lemire family crest. Jason Veritech, Punching out Tareas in the face.

You know, one of those sort of, you know, generations from now, centuries from now, when we look back upon sort of the pinnacle of American, maybe even Western civilization, that will be one of the first images we all see. Well, I do think, and Mietam is already writing a story, writing a book, sure to be a Pulitzer Prize winning book that talks about the American century, the decline in fall of the American century. And that was the peak of it. That was the apex of the American century. Speaking of Pulitzer's, I saw our own Pablo Tori yesterday and a clip of him talking to the New York Times newsroom, basically thanking them. And he said he started it. I was thinking, okay, no, is Pablo going to be nervous? He said, ladies and gentlemen of the Galactic Empire Senate, I come to you as a lowly.

He did his best Georgia art beings. But, man, just an incredible, incredible award for Pablo and his entire team, Mika. Okay, great. We're going to have Pablo a little bit later. Kind of blew that off. You should say, yeah, that was great. Pablo want to pull a surprise. I mean.

That's wonderful. You know, he's wonderful. Okay. You don't. Okay. So that's very nice. I love Pablo. Sorry for bringing it up.

Very good news for Pablo. Joe, do you know what a love tap is? Oh. No, I don't. No, I don't. That's right. It's very, very cold around. I was that, it took a horrible turn.

Well, I will tell you this, sweetheart. I love taps, many things, and you, you often give me love taps, but I have never, ever heard of missiles, of missiles being fired at boats as a, quote, love tap. I will say, though, if you were. To say that when U.S. ships got attacked and you struck back, that was a love tap, that would suggest somebody is desperate and looking very weak, just praying to God that the Revolutionary Guard will make peace with him. That's my take on the love tap. Our top story this morning, new take on the love tap. President Trump is insisting the ceasefire between the United States and Iran is still intact. even as the two sides are firing at each other.

U.S. Central Command announced yesterday that Iranian forces launched multiple missiles, drones, and small boats at U.S. warships transiting the Strait of Hormuz, adding that no ships were struck. Sengom says the U.S. military responded by eliminating inbound threats and targeting Iranian military sites responsible for the attacks. Sent Khan called the Iranian fire unprovoked, while Iran says it was in retaliation for U.S. violations of the tenuous truce and claimed significant damage to U.S. ships. When asked by ABC News about the U.S. strikes, President Trump said, quote, it's just a love tap. He delivered a similar message to reporters in Washington last night. After these strikes, is the ceasefire with Iran still on?

Yeah, it is. They trifled with us today. We blew them away. They trifled. I call that a trifle. I'll let you know when there's no ceasefire. You won't have to know. If there's no ceasefire, you're not going to have to know.

You're just going to have to look at one big glow coming out of Iran. And they better sign their agreement fast. The talks are going very well, but they have to understand. If it doesn't get signed, they're going to have a lot of pain. have a lot of pain. I mean, how many times, I mean, how many times has he threatened them with a lot of pain, a lot of pain? And then, I must say, John Lemire, he just keeps backing down. They can do whatever they want to do.

And he just keeps backing down, and he's done it again. And, you know, let me just read this. And it's, it once again shows the disconnect between our allies, no. not in Europe, but in the Gulf region, and the White House. The United Arab Emirates Defense Ministry said on Friday morning, today is Friday morning, that its air defense systems were intercepting missiles and drone attacks from Iran. And, of course, those attacks have continued over the past three days. They are attacking the UAE.

the UAE. They're attacking our other allies in the region and also the news that the Saudis were so angry at, you know, the president moving forward with a plan to move ships through the strait and move away from the blockade that they actually said you can't use Saudi airspace anymore to launch your attacks. I mean, we've got a president who is so desperate to end this war on whatever terms the Iranians want to end it on, it bears repeating he's going to leave a nuclear Iran. We found out yesterday, which we're going to get to in a second, that up to 75 percent of Iran's missile technology continues. That's with the UAE, the Saudis, everybody else in the Qatar, everybody else in the region said, do not in this war without taking away their ability to launch

missiles at us because they're more radicalized and angry than ever before. All of the terror proxies are still just as strong around the region. And again, Netanyahu continues his endless war at Hamas and Hezbollah continues to prove they can survive his endless. I can go on and on. But my gosh, I know the president desperately wants to get out of there because Republicans are telling him he has to look weak and look desperate to get out of there. But man, this is going to be a colossal loss if he cuts and runs now and keeps excusing Iranians from firing on the United States vessels and on our allies. It is come into such sharp focus in recent weeks, just how desperate President Trump is to be done with this, to just move on, to be, this is something that did not go

as planned, thought it was going to be a few days, thought it might be a couple weeks at most. We're bogged down in Iran. We're seeing prices. rise, particularly gas prices spike. We have seen Republicans increasingly panicked about their prospects this November. And you're completely right. So the president keeps setting deadlines and keeps pushing off them. And we see Iran calling his bluff. What we saw yesterday is the greatest example yet of how desperate he is to keep this going. To insist that we're in a ceasefire when we had active hostilities between the two sides, you know, just trying to push this off. And I'll note a lot of this, I think, is because he wants things to be calm before that summit in Beijing next week.

So let's get into that reporting that Joe just mentioned from the Washington Post about Iran's remaining capabilities, both economically and militarily. Four people familiar with a confidential intelligence community assessment, which was delivered to the White House, tell the paper that the analysis concludes Iran can survive the U.S. naval blockade for at least three to four months before facing severe economic hardship. The analysis also found, according to the Post, that Tehran retains significant ballistic missile capabilities despite weeks of intense U.S. and Israeli bombardment. That stands in sharp contrast to what the president said just this week.

Their missiles are mostly decimated. They have some. They have probably 18, 19 percent, but not a lot by comparison to what they had. And their leaders are all dead. So I think we won. So, Joe, let's just tick through real quick, the goals that were supposed to be accomplished at the beginning of this war. One of them was destroying the Iranian Navy. Okay.

Okay. Okay. Get your pan of Navy. Okay. They did that. Navy, check. We did that. Okay. So we've won the war, right?

Okay, give me the other four, because I'm sure, I'm sure that we got it. I'm sure we got the other four, too. What else we got? Yeah. So one of them was supposed to be destroying their ballistic missile arsenal, which we just learned they have not done. They've weakened it, but they have not destroyed it. So that's one for two. Third time up would be the nuke program, which they haven't touched, has not been addressed.

You know, that that still exists. The future of that remains uncertain. We had some talk of regime change. That hasn't happened. Sure, the Supreme Leader. How's that work? You know, the first Supreme Leader is dead, but his son is in charge, an even hardliner group now running things in Tehran, the RIGC. We could also have the straight.

So that's actually worse. So that would be like taking Chapman out so you could put Weissman in and relief duty for the Red Sox. It's actually that much worse, isn't it? Yeah, Greg Weissert is a name. We don't want to spend much time on this morning. And then also let's talk about we haven't even got to yet, the Strait of Formuz, which Iran now ends this war with more control. The knowledge, not only can they menace ships through it, which they're doing,

but the knowledge they can shut it at any time, even down the road. after the war comes to an end. This is an impossible for President Trump, try as he will, this would be impossible for him to declare a victory at its current state. Michael, unspinnable, the missiles stronger than ever, and that's again what our allies said. You've got to get rid of those missiles because we will get struck because it's an even more radicalized, if that's even possible, a more radicalized government. There used to be a split between the Mullahs, the Revolutionary Guard, and the Parliament. it's the most hardened element of the Revolutionary Guard that's running it, and they have all the

reason of the world now to strike out against our ally. So their missile program is stronger than much stronger than people expected. Their nuclear program still intact. In fact, they have much more ability now than they did in 2018 when Donald Trump got out of the nuclear deal. The regime changed. This regime is even more hardened and more radical and more embittered for a lot of reasons. And then the straight, Iran has more power over the straight than ever before. And yet every day Donald Trump goes out, even when they're attacking our naval shubs, Donald Trump goes out and says, oh, the ceasefires on, the ceasefires on. Talk about the weakness this projects across a region, across the globe, and to the Iranians. How are they going to respond to this?

Yeah. So, I mean, the Washington Post story was kind of extraordinary. I mean, 75% of their missile program still intact. What they've been doing is taking stuff out of storage, basically, pulling old launchers that we thought maybe had been destroyed or disabled. They still have about 70% of their missiles. I spoke to a Western diplomat in Israel yesterday about this story, and he said most of these missiles are probably short-range missiles, which means that the Israelis will consider this a partial victory, right? They don't have as many medium-range missiles to rain terror down on Tel Aviv. But guess who's not going to take this as, you know, great comfort.

The GCC countries, right? The Gulf Arab states, including the Emirates, who just got pounded yesterday during a supposed ceasefire. You know, I mean, this is sort of like that movie Wag the Dog. It's like, war is over when you say it is. You know, it's just like a high production value kind of war.

Yesterday it was a mini-war. I think they called it an excursion the other day. Like, we're running out of euphemisms or Orwellian language to describe what's taking place here, right? And Jonathan's point is correct. The IRGC feels emboldened. They have now essentially taken over the country.

You know, the rulership of the clerics is almost at an end, I would argue. The son of Khmer and I, the new Supreme Leader, is a creature of the IRGC, probably not a guy who would have been appointed to this position if there had been a proper succession. And they love to do nothing but test and tweak Donald Trump and to show him to be a busted flush or a paper tiger, if you like, right? And he's in this bond. He can't say, you know, I'm going to let them, you know, eat my lunch for me. He can't say that I'm going to let them fire on American vessels without responding.

So instead, it's this love tap nonsense. But we're at war. We're at war he's desperate to get out of, which he probably shouldn't have started in the first place. I suspect he's got buyer's remorse for this thing, right? But he doesn't want to appear weak. He has to project this image of strength. But I think increasingly, even his own base is saying, man, what are you doing here? Right.

You know, I mean, this is not what we signed up for. Well, I mean, it's what Lindsay Graham signed up for. and it's what the Secretary of Defense signed up for. Pete Hagsith, it's what Netanyahu signed up for. They all were pushing saying this was going to be easy that he needed to go in and do it. And Mika, he's paying for it. And you've got J.D. Vance going out talking about a war

that has completely disrupted the economy, a war that is causing Americans to pay $4.50 at filling stations, gas stations, a war that, in itself, day killed over 100 children in Iran that's killed over 6, 7,000 Iranians right now. That's leveled. Netanyahu's used this again as another excuse to level another country. And he's leveled half of Lebanon right now, completely wiping out and destroying entire towns, entire villages. And J.D. Vance is calling that a blip. Nobody believes it. Yeah. And there's another chilling angle to This, Shashank, the economist, is exclusively reporting on a document that details an alleged

offer from Russia to assist Iran in the war with the U.S., quote, a confidential document obtained by the economist from a trusted source suggests that Russia has offered to provide Iran with unjamable drones and training on how to use them against American troops in the Gulf and perhaps elsewhere. Until now, Vladimir Putin's government is thought to have provided intelligence that enabled Iran to target American forces in the Middle East. This is the first evidence that it may also have offered supply initiative, innovative weapons to supply innovative weapons in large enough numbers to inflict many casualties on American and allied forces. The economist can exclusively report. The secret plan involves Russia providing Iran with 5,000 short-range fiber-optic drones of the sort

used in the war in Ukraine, an unknown number of longer-range satellite-guided drones and training to use both sorts. It is contained in a 10-page proposal prepared by the GRU, the intelligence arm of Russia's armed forces for presentation to Iran. Shashank, what more can you tell us about this, about this story, which certainly complicates the situation for President Trump? Yeah, these are remarkable documents in some ways. There's 10 pages of them that we've seen. And we think they originate from an earlier period of the war in which Russia was genuinely worried,

as I think Iran was, that Donald Trump might conduct a ground in. invasion, whether that's of Haag Island, this substantial oil terminal, or indeed of the Persian Gulf coastline in an effort to rest open the Strait of Hormuz. I think the risk of that has gone down, but at the time Russia was worried. And this document is quite detailed. As you say, it's written apparently by the GRU, Russia's military intelligence agency, and that has a long history of cooperation with Iran's revolutionary guards. And it's focused on a scenario of a potential amphibious landing. There's a diagram in these documents that shows how Russian-trained Iranian drone operators could target a landing flotilla by launching swarms of five or six drones, hidden positions

maybe 15 or 30 kilometers away. But the critical part of this is that these are fiber-optic drones. These are drones that are controlled by long tethers, not by radio signals. And as we have seen in Ukraine, that makes them extremely potent and very difficult to counteract as the Israelis discovering in Lebanon in the last 10 days or so. Okay. We're going to get to the political angle on all of this with John Heilman. Also ahead, the U.S. national debt has hit a grim new milestone. So what, if anything, is Washington going to do about it?

We'll talk about that. Plus, we'll show you what acting Attorney General Todd Blanche is saying about the possibility of ICE agents at polling places across the country this November. And as we go to break, a quick look at the time. the travelers forecast this morning from acuethers, Bernie Raino. Bernie, how's it looking? It is looking cool today, Mika, your exclusive acuether forecast for the Northeast. Couple of spotty showers, five, ten minutes, that's it.

62, Boston, 63, New York City, 72 Washington, D.C., Chicago, warmer, clouds, and sun, 67. How about the heat in South Florida today? 93 in Miami, beautiful weather, Charlotte and Atlanta. Don't be a thunderstorm or two around Dallas and Oklahoma City. not projecting any delays weather-wise up and down the East Coast. To help you make the best decisions that'll be more in the note, download the ACUweather app today. Enjoy your fry.

Yay! Hey, welcome back to morning, Joe. A view of Capitol Hill at 625 on the East Coast. The MS Now Capitol Hill team actually put together a look at Republican members of Congress and what they said about guest prices under Joe Biden. Remember the whole, thanks Biden, people go around and put their little stickers. on gas pumps. Thanks Biden. So yeah, comparing what they said then when Joe Biden was president to what those lawmakers and how saying about high prices at the pump under Donald Trump.

Take a look. What should Congress do about gas prices at 411 national average? Well, there's nothing we can do. I mean, I don't like to brag about all the expensive expensive places I've been. But earlier today, I went to the gas station. Gasoline. and diesel fuel and oil is a product of a conflict in Iran. How do you square that patience with impatience with gas prices under Biden when at times is 330, 340? I don't have to square anything with you. Okay.

Politicians should not get a free pass on the ridiculously high energy prices under the Biden administration. Do you think that the war should stop because of this? How patient can you be? I'm talking about energy prices. Just because gas prices have come down a little bit, they're still really high. 430 gas prices. Do you think the war in Iran has gone on long enough? Americans are not joyful when they go to the gas station and fill up their car. Gas prices at 430 national average. Do you think the Iran war has gone on long enough?

Oh, it's not about how long it goes on. It's about how it ends. Americans are so displeased with gas prices. They're slapping these Biden. I did that stickers on the pumps. We ought to drag those oil companies in. and chew them out. I think they're gouging. In my state, average price of a gallon of gas

has gone from just over $2 to now, well over $3. And it is the policies of this administration that's causing it. How do you explain the patience for prices around $4 a gallon now? Because the difference is solving the problem, not creating a higher price environment like the Biden administration was doing with the Green New Deal.

We're pumping more oil and gas than we ever have before. Well, then why aren't prices coming down at the pump? Gasoline is a commodity that has a worldwide price structure. So I have patience for now. Buttigieg is just talking about, you know, Tesla's and battery-powered cars while the American people can't afford gas. We'll get gas prices down. We're going through the important resetting the stage on Iran.

If you've got a job, you have to travel to you job. That means that it's going to cost you more to travel. It's a small price to pay whenever he considered that he's saving millions of lives in the future. Record gas prices. I know they're down a little bit, but nationally 60% higher than they were when Biden took office. What do you hear from your constituents about gas prices? Do they also see this as just a short-term thing? I hope so.

I mean, that's one of the reasons I'm communicating this. We have to do this. It's just really remarkable. It's Biden's fault, too. Well, you understand that gas prices are a global commodity, and the prices are a global commodity. and the prices fluctuate. And you've got other people that are saying, I don't have to explain anything due to a reporter

and condescendingly patting him on the arm as he walks away. You've got others running away from him. That's fine. They can do that, but Republicans aren't going to be able to do that this fall. They wanted this war. They got this war. And they can see it through to the end. If they want to see it through to the end,

nobody wants a president look as weak as he's looking right now, desperately trying to run away. But really the hypocrisy, like putting stickers on gas pumps when it was $3 a gallon, blaming Biden, and now it's well over $4 a gallon. Yeah, good luck with that in the fall. You may think voters are stupid. Voters actually think you're stupid. Voters think you're the ones who are idiots that have taken America down a disaster. path over the past 18 months. And, you know, domestically, you've got the gas price problem,

but you look internationally. And John Heilman, you have Donald Trump's friend, Vladimir Putin. Now we find out from the economist openly planning, trying to kill Americans. Let me say that again, Vladimir Putin, who Donald Trump continues to side with, is scheming with Iranians to kill Americans. So he's got that problem. Also, Iranians keep attacking U.S. ships with American soldiers, with American sailors, with American Marines on them. And Donald Trump is saying, oh, it's nothing, don't worry about it. Yeah, the Iranian. I mean, can you imagine if Jimmy Carter, or what if Joe Biden said it?

They freaked out over a balloon. Republicans freaked out, melted down over a balloon you would have thought it was Sputnik. and now you have Iranians continuing to attack America and America's allies and the president's calling it a love tap. How would have that have worked for Joe Biden or Barack Obama or Jimmy Carter? We know how that would have worked because it looked so weak and factless. And finally, what I heard from the beginning, John, and this is, I think for Donald Trump, probably what he considers the biggest problem, so much of what he thinks his legacy is going to be depends on negotiations. with the Chinese when he meets with Xi later.

And I heard from the very beginning of this war, from sources really close to the president, that the invasion of Venezuela, the war in Iran, that was all to position ourselves and put ourselves in a position of strength when the president met with Xi. And now, with this stalemate continuing, with Donald Trump stuck in Iran,

with him trying to declare victory while the Iranians, while the Revolutionary Guard continues to mock him on social media, and they continue to attack U.S. vessels, U.S. ships. Now, how's that summit going to go? It's actually, we're looking, we've looked a lot stronger in front of Xi if we had never gone into Iran in the first place. So talk about that part of the story and why that's driving so much of what Donald Trump is doing right now. Well, right, Joe. I mean, yeah, we forget because so much has happened in the course of the two months, two plus months that the war has been going on, is that when we started what Donald Trump has called, you know, our little excursion or our engagement with the love taps or the skirmish, whatever this is supposed to be in his mind, there was the summit with Xi was supposed to happen that week when we started the war. And so the White House asked for,

a delay of the Trump Xi summit, and he got it. It's now set for next week. This time next week, we will be talking about the second day of the summit in China. And you know that given Trump's frame of reference, the way he thinks about the world, this matters to him a huge amount. He understands how important China is, and he loves the pageantry of these summits. He wants to go to China and stand there opposite Xi and come back with a bunch of what he would call big deals, biggest deals ever, right? And instead, as we head towards this summit, you were talking about the way the Russians are kind of openly challenging the United States, mocking us in some ways the way that the social media posts are coming from Iran. You now have these stories coming out this morning in the New York Times, something you don't see very often and that is clearly orchestrated. and designed to taunt Trump,

you have officials from the Chinese government and former Chinese military leaders making this point explicitly on the record, saying, you know, Donald Trump thought he was going to get a quick victory in Iran and be able to come to China with that victory, brandishing it. And instead, America is tied down. There was deadlocked.

There's a stalemate. Their munitions stockpiles are, are falling. We see these reports that say how much the munition stockpiles have been depleted by this war, which raises a significant national security issue. The Chinese hawks are now pointing to the notion that maybe the United States couldn't actually defend Taiwan. So that's a substantive issue. But the image issue, which is I'm sure what matters more to Trump, is that the Chinese are openly belittling him and us in the days leading up to a summit that obviously matters a lot to him. And if you or you started off the show talking,

talking about his desperation to end the war. I think there are a lot of factors there. And certainly domestic politics is one of them. But this is another one for sure. This is a big deal for Trump. And I think he would desperately love in the next six days, five days, to be able to really be able to say that he has a deal in Iran and be able to ride into Beijing saying, hey, okay, that's in the past now. And I'll tell you, I'm sure the Iranians know that. And they're not going to give him that victory or give him that opportunity if they are playing this game as strategic as they played every other game so far in this war. Shishang Joshi, what's the possibility of that happening? How do you see this playing out?

Possibility of peace talks happening and actually bringing peace, especially now as the definition of ceasefire seems to be a bit confusing. Yes, of course. A ceasefire is what the president makes of it. I think there's only two ways out of this conundrum, to put it very simply, One of them is that the United States realizes the limits of its leverage over Iran and seeks a deal, particularly over Iran's nuclear program, that is far short of what this administration originally sought. And the result will be something that resembles the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the deal that was done by the Obama administration, abrogated by President Trump in 2018, and led

to this crisis. And if that happens, there will be many people mocking the administration for returning to a deal that they derided, I think they would deserve some praise for knowing when to stop. The other alternative, of course, is that they seek to ramp up their leverage, having repeatedly sought to put pressure on Iran and failed, and attempted back into heavy strikes, heavy bombardment of Iran. But look, if after all of this, America has struck only 25% of Iran's missile launches, that's extraordinary. That shows the resilience of Iran's strategic capabilities, And I think it would be a mistake to go back and seek additional leverage through military means.

That would be a recipe for, frankly, what looks to us here in Europe are catastrophic consequences for the world economy. Not just for US gas prices. Of course, that's the priority for you. As we look at it here, we have serious economic problems in Europe and in Asia amongst American allies arising as a consequence of the prolonged nature of this open-ended campaign. All right, Shashonk. Josie, thank you so much. We greatly appreciate you being with us. Anytime you can come on, please come on. And thank you so much for your reporting. It's extraordinarily important. Thank you. You know, John Lemire, I've been repeating since the beginning of this war, something that I heard from,

I think probably the best Iran analyst from the agency who spent decades studying Iran. and I asked early on, what do you make of us destroying 60, 70, 80% of their launch capabilities, of their missiles, of this, of that, or the other? And he said, and this is why you want experts? This is why you actually, I know Donald Trump hates experts and a lot of really stupid people out there say, oh, well, experts are bad, experts got us into this. You know, the reason you want experts is because, They know what they're taught.

They've studied things for 30 years. They can see around corners. They can see things that other people who say, hey, I'm just going to shoot from the hip. You know? Like when they hear Lindsey Graham talk, they're like, oh, no, it's not going to be that easy. Well, this expert said to me in the early stages of the war, and I've talked about it a lot, he said, you know, when I hear the general and I hear the Secretary of Defense talking about the percentages of military capabilities that they've destroyed, I just go straight back to Vietnam.

And those body counts that we would see every night on the evening news where we killed this many Viet Cong today and this many Americans died today. And oh, well, the numbers look better on our side. So we're going to win this war. And he said, those numbers are meaningless. They don't know how much they're. Now, he told. He told us. me, how long have you heard me saying this? What, a month? I mean, I've been saying this for, been repeating him for a month, that those numbers are meaningless. We don't know. They have had since 1779 to hide their missiles, to hide their weapons, to hide their nukes, and their nuclear programs. And so now it comes out all these weeks later that, yes, he was right.

Iranian analysts that have been sidelined were right. Donald Trump didn't talk to them. He talked to Lindsay and he talked to Netanyahu and he talked to Pete. Let me say that again. Actions have consequences. When you talk to Lindsey Graham about going to war, when you're sucked into a war by Benjamin Netanyahu, when you have a weekend cable news host giving you advice on going to to a war with Iran. When seven other presidents were repeatedly bullied to go into war by either people on the for right or Benjamin Netanyahu, and you listen to them instead of your experts, this is what you get. And it's not pretty right now. Because if you talk to the CIA analysts that knew what they were talking about, they've been doing this for decades ago, no, Mr. President,

Not going to work. But he listened to Lindsay instead, Netanyahu instead, Pete Heggzeth instead. And here we are. All of that is right. And another example of the value of experts, we were just saying here, any war game scenario for decades with Iran, the first step is, well, they're going to try to close the straight of war moves. And yet, somehow that took us by surprise this time around. Two other notes. One would be, yeah, I'm glad we're emphasizing the importance of this China summit next.

week. It can't be stressed enough. How about that's playing into Trump's thinking? And then, of course, there is the role we're learning this morning more and more about how Russia is trying to help Iran get at the same time, Michael Weiss. They're really struggling in their battle their war with Ukraine. In fact, Zelensky, to the point we're like suggesting warning, don't go visit Russia. We may get you there. You know, we have seen him really emboldened, it feels like, in recent, in recent weeks. So with that as the backdrop, though, you've got some new reporting, and I'll just quote the headline because it's so good. The GRU's Hogwarts. So basically a sort of spy school that they have assembled here. Tell us about it. Yeah. So this is a consortium partnership with a bunch of

international news outlets like The Guardian and Lamonde and Der Spiegel. We obtained 2,000 documents from Bauman University in Moscow. This is kind of like the MIT of Russia, very technical school. They have something in that school called Department 4. It's a secret program, staffed by GRU officers, Russian military intelligence officers, that essentially teaches undergraduates how to become hackers, saboteurs, assassins, you name it, right? So it is very much the Hogwarts of the GRU. And the interesting thing about this is they're singing from the hymn sheet of, we have to prosecute our special military operation in Ukraine,

we have to conduct psychological operations against the West. You know, this is all rally around the flag, patriotic stuff, privately, or not so privately, because we found some of the instructors from the GRU who are teaching these cadets, take to social media and slag off Putin, Shaiygu, Gerasimov, the chief of the general staff, in language, frankly, I can't even say on air. So it's really remarkable. And it reminds us, we did a story at the insider right after Yevgeny Progogian's

mutiny a few years ago. Remember that, the Wagner operative. And we canvassed the opinion of FSB, GRU, SVR, Interior Ministry, expecting to hear, oh, this treasonous act, you know, we must kill and we must put this down. In fact, we found two different responses. Number one, indifference. We don't care. This guy or the other guy, whatever. Things are terrible here in Russia. This war is going horribly. Or enthusiasm. We'd much rather progosion than Putin. So Putin has a real crisis on his hands, because I'm not saying there's going to be a coup tomorrow, but what he has in the ranks, including of his security apparatus,

the Siliviki, disaffection and demoralization. And any intelligence officer can tell you, when that's starting to hit, you become a leaky ship and you become very susceptible to foreign recruitment and to, frankly, penetration, which is how the Ukrainians are going in there and blowing up Russian generals all the time, which is making Putin very paranoid about a possible coup. All right. Editor at the insider, Michael Weiss, thank you so much for coming on the show this morning and still ahead on Morning Joe. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is in Italy this morning for a meeting with Italian Prime Minister Georgia Maloney. We'll have the latest from today's talks. Plus why Cash Patel reportedly ordered polygraphs of more than two dozen members

of his own team. We'll be right back. Our next guest is an author of one of our favorite books here in the morning. Joe titled Range by Generalists' Triumph in this specialized world. Perhaps it spoke to me because I am a master of being a generalist. David Epstein is now with this with a new book. This one titled Inside the Box in which he says boundaries can actually create breakthroughs. And David joins us now. He's also with his Pulitzer Prize winning host of Pablo Tori finds out who recently spoke at the Galactic Senate, MS now contributor, Pablo Tori. So, David, thank you for coming on. I have tortured people for years, quoting your book. There he is, speaking to the Senate.

David and I, Joe, David and I worked at Sports Illustrated together. We shared a wall when we were fact checkers. So David, David and I have so much blackmail on each other that it is, in fact, kind of terrified. Yeah. Exactly. I got more. You know, so, so David, I want to, first of all, I want to get more general, because I'm a generalist, and talk about the curse of all the course of all. and talk about the curse of all the options so many young people have right now and the lack of constraints and how it stops them creatively.

But I want to go to something very specific in an area that I do know a lot about, and that's the Beatles. Sergeant Pepper changed popular music. It changed American and Western culture. And it was recorded on a four-track machine. And you talk to the Beatles now, the former Beatles, and you get the interviews of George Martin, and they will say, they had to record three instruments on three separate tracks, dump them all down to one track. Then they had to record two more, dump them down. And then they kept this process, and they, like any other artists you talk to, will tell you that, you know, necessity is the mother of invention. and it's actually the limitations that make you sit there and stare and say, how am I going to do this with these guardrails up?

And that's basically, that's the thesis of your book. Tell us about it. Yeah, there's actually a name for this in psychology. It's called the Green Eggs and Ham Effect. And it's named for the fact that Dr. Seuss wrote Green Eggs and Ham on a bet with a publisher that he couldn't write a book using only 50 words. And so using those 50 words. because he had that restriction, it forced him to experiment with rhythm because he couldn't be

expansive with vocabulary. And that's what we see again and again in the history of artistic innovation. That when people are restricted, it forces them to explore in new ways. And that's basically because of how our brains are wired, right? So as cognitive scientist, Daniel Willingham, says, you may think that your brain's made for thinking, but it's actually made for preventing you from having to think whenever possible because thinking is energetically costly. So if you're just given a blank slate, you'll go down what neuroscientists call the path of least resistance. You'll do the most convenient, easiest, most familiar thing, and it becomes impossible to be creative. You have to block the easy thing.

Well, and that is staring at your phone all day, having the phone, which, of course, tech monopolies work around the clock, keeping you on that phone as long as possible. And speaking of, again, going back to music. I know when I was growing up, you would sit and wait and hope that you would hear your song on a radio station. And it created this magic to the music. It created magic with the artists. You would get the album and you would stare at an album cover. And I remember staring at the lyrics inside of Born to Run for a month, just listening to it.

And again, it made your mind work. You, you, you, is for, and you became so much more creative now. You want to hear a song? You go to Spotify. You go to Apple Music. You hear whatever you want to hear. And that again, it's not just music, it's movies, it's YouTube clips, whatever you want to see. There are no limitations.

And again, it is stifling creativity among most Americans, most people in the world. You know, and interestingly, it actually makes people more. bored having all of those entertainment choices. So since the introduction of infinite scrolling, these surveys by psychologists show that people, and especially young people, have been getting steadily more bored. And in follow-up research on that work, they would do experiments where, say, you would give people 20 videos that they could scroll through looking for what they wanted, or you just give them one video from that same set of 20. And the people who had the full set of 20 were more bored than the people who are just given one and told to focus on it.

And it turns out this has to do with basically how our brains work, where we're these comparison engines, where if you have this big set, you're thinking about what's the other thing I could be doing or listening to or watching? And that ruins the experience of the moment itself. And as you can imagine now with social media and the internet, we can be doing that for everything, for our lives, for our clothes, for our food all the time, thinking about, but what's that other thing I could be moving to, and it really spoils the experience of the moment itself. So we have to put boundaries on our own consumption if we want to be satisfied people. Dave, one of my favorite conversations me could have with Dave is about parenting. He is a son Andre. I have Violet.

Dave, just the thing you're learning about what we should be doing with our kids when it comes to AI and this era when it comes to the phone, what sort of policy prescriptions do you have? have for how schools can benefit from the research that you're synthesizing. Oh, yeah. I mean, a few things for parents, first of all, separate from that. So the longest study ever of human development called the Harvard Study of Adult Development that tracked people from cradle to grave, basically, one of the main recommendations was to give kids chores starting in kindergarten because actually having obligations and a sense

that their participation matters to the group increases their feelings of self-competence years later on. So giving some of those real world obligations that are not virtual, but something to be done around the house. And when it comes to school, I mean, I would be putting huge restrictions on technology in general. I'm not just talking about AI, but

even maybe, you know, all sorts of technology. So, but let's say AI specifically, because we're now seeing the first generation, let's say, of how interacting with AI all the time affects human cognition. And basically,

what happens is that it's kind of like GPS, where if you turn to it, you don't learn how to get around. And maybe that's okay for GPS, if you're always going to have it. You don't need to learn how to get around. But when it comes to learning and developing your brain and how to think and how to problem solve, you don't want to not develop and be relying on the technology all the time. But that's how it looks when people turn, say,

students that have to write essays, if they're allowed to use chat GPT and they turn to it first, they basically don't learn, as if they were driving with GPS and don't learn how to get around. So the fundamental rule should be brain first, tool second. Yeah, you know, me here yesterday we talked about. And by the way, that's something I can tell my kids all the time. Yeah, we're going into a world of AI, read books, become generalists, understand subjects,

because then you can give the right prompts. If the people that are going to control the next generation and AI will understand what prompts to actually give, whatever AI platform they're working on. But Mika, you know, we've heard people talking about smartphones being the problem, and they are a problem for younger people. And then it went on to social media. Now they're talking about AI. I will tell you, we talked about yesterday an article in the New York Times about how

Los Angeles School Board, because parents got so upset, are now putting restrictions on schools in Los Angeles. And this goes to something actually that Hugh Grant has been fighting for years, and that is tablets in the classroom. There's study after study after study that shows, just like David was saying, you give students tablets instead of books in the schoolroom, they learn less. And I'll just give you a really quick story. When I was in law school, we didn't have AI where you could just type something in. If I wanted to learn about case law, I had to go into the library, and I would go to one case, read through it, put it down.

Oh, it would, oh, I better go. Then I'd go find it. case in Nebraska. Then I would go find a case in the third district, third circuit. And by the time you got the answer, you learned a thousand other things. Yeah. And that's how you learn, whether you're, whether it's microbiology or whether it's law, whatever you're, it's by the arduous process of research instead of just typing in, you know, looking for a certain holding on your phone. I mean, it's part of the process of learning that. writing with a pen, the researching, the finding, and the other things that you find along the way that are now missing because tablets, iPads, and everything is done online.

I mean, there are some schools that kids don't write. I mean, everything, you can't get away from a screen. So my question, David, is about that in terms of I'm transfixed by what you said about scrolling and versus looking at one story. And I think it seems to me that ultimately what you're advocating and might be one of the only solutions, given that we are surrounded by technology, is that there has to be some self-policing involved. But how do we teach that to children when they are drawn to it? Yeah. I mean, what you were both describing there is this, what psychologists call desirable difficulties.

So all of these things that make learning more difficult, like the need to dive into your own research and link ideas together. And they're called difficulties because they're hard, but they're desirable because they're what make you learn, how you build your mental models of the world. And what so much of this technology does is it makes things easier or more convenient. And it turns out that when it comes to learning and developing, a lot of the things that are easy and convenient are not good for us.

And when you mention self-policing, I mean, I think when we're thinking about schools, we probably need something more structural because there's so many forces on the other side, whether it's algorithms or whatever it is, that are structuring students and everyone's attention. And as individuals, I think there are things we can do about that, like what's called batching our work. So I write a lot about the work of a psychologist named Gloria Mark who studies people at work, and she found that people check email on average 77 different times a day in an office. It's not 77 email, 77 different checks.

And every time you toggle between things, it builds up, you know, your brain's like a whiteboard. When you toggle, you erase, but it leaves a residue that interferes with the next thing. So there are things we can do at work, like batching our work where you're only doing email for that half hour, and then the next half hour, you're only doing something else and not toggling. But when it comes to schools, I think we need more structural change where we say, look, we've seen the research now. There's huge promise of technology. I'm not a Luddite. But we know that these desirable difficulties are incredibly important.

Writing longhand, people comprehend more, when they're forced to guess things and then think about it before they see an answer, you know, which is different than a lot of the computer programs that kids use. So I think we want to start restricting some of this at earlier ages because we know that you need these. desirable difficulties for people's brains to develop. The new book, Inside the Box, how constraints make us better. It's available now, and author David Epstein, thank you so much for coming on the show. Congratulations on the new book.