Morning Joe - Remembering the life and legacy of Dolly Parton, Alex Pretti's family publicly calls for accountability

Episode Date: August 26, 2026

August 26, 2026 – 6am: Dolly Parton dies at age 80 Alex Pretti’s family publicly calls for accountability for his death Hegseth purge of top generals leaves Army rudderless: NYT The warnings that came before the war: WSJ Remembering the life and legacy of music icon Dolly Parton Britian to share long-range missile tech with Ukraine 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.

One of the most successful and influential singer-songwriters of all time, country music icon Dolly Parton, has died. Her family announced her death yesterday. A spokesman says Parton passed following a brief battle with cancer. She was 80 years old. Born in 1946, Parton grew up in poverty as one of 12 children in a small one-bedroom home nestled in Tennessee's Smoky Mountains. She began writing songs at age five, performing on local radio at age 10, and made her grand old Opry debut at 13. After moving to Nashville, she rose to fame through her

partnership with Porter Wagner before launching a hugely successful solo career, producing classic hits, including Jolene, coat of many colors. And as you just heard, I will always love you. And Joe, it is just a remarkable span of talent that this artist, singer, songwriter, creator, musician brought to us over so many decades. And she often made fun of herself. And yet her music is to be taken so seriously.

Her talent was just simply remarkable. I think the remarkable thing about Dali Parton is that during the 70s, when I was younger growing up, you know, every time she would, not every time, but a lot of times when she would go on late night shows or do other events, the first joke would always be about her hair and about her physique. And she leaned right into it. She laughed about it. And then that stopped. And people saw her perform. And time and time again, with new audiences of every generation, she just completely, Willie, blew them away with her talent.

Here's somebody who's a gifted performer, an extraordinary songwriter. One of the great songwriters of our time, I mean, legend has it. She wrote Jolene and I will always love you on the same night. She, of course, was not just a country music legend. She was a music legend that played with every band, every genre. And Willie, the thing about her yesterday after the news came, and we do what we do trying to figure out,

how do we best show what this person was, whoever it is, that passes. And I've got to say, I called Meek about an hour or two into the exercise, and I said, I'm so mad at Dolly Parton right now because every single clip I play, she is so extraordinary.

There is no way that you can distill her. down. And one clip, two clips, five clips, I said, we'd need 10 hours. You know, this scene where she just goes in as a visitor to a bar and they ask if she'll come up and sing a song. And she does coat of many colors and it was so legendary. When she's sitting with Johnny Carson and writes Johnny Carson a song that almost makes Carson, you know, cry, time and time again, the thing that just stands out, there she's a nine. to five is her extraordinary humanity. And I know that's something you got a chance to see up close when you got a chance to talk to her several times.

Yeah, I interviewed Dolly. I was trying to think yesterday, I don't know, seven or eight times over the years, had a great relationship with her, got to go to Dollywood, the theme park name for her. Oh, there's some of that footage now. I mean, that's, to walk the Dollywood with Dolly Parton to see the way she is adored and the way she reflects that adoration back to her fans. is really something to see. But when you sit with Dolly Parton at Dollywood, this hugely successful theme park for the last 40 years or so, and you think that just on the other side of the mountain

from where that park sits, she grew up in a cabin that was one or two rooms, had no running water, had no electricity. Her father couldn't read or write. She had 11 siblings, so there were 12 of them and her parents in this tiny cabin. That is where she saw. started. That is where she came from. And that's where she started singing in church like so many

great artists did. And the day she graduated high school moved to Nashville with this dream and this talent and this ambition and exceeded anything anyone could have ever imagined. She became this icon. But to see that through line of you live at a cabin with dirt floors and then you get to the point in your life where you can build a theme park, which by the way, the theme park she built, yes, Yes, it's the roller coasters are great and all that, but the idea behind it gets to her heart, which is to vitalize the place where she grew up in Severe County and the Smoky Mountains. And she created tens of thousands of jobs with Dollywood. Many of those were people she grew up with, people she knew in the community.

And that she kept giving back. I was reading and reminded yesterday that in 2016, when that area was hit by those devastating wildfires, she said, if your home was destroyed, I'm going to give you $1,000 a month until you get back on your feet. I mean, she just did that. You mentioned the imagination library. She started that because her father couldn't read or write. She wanted to make sure other kids didn't go through that. She gave out more than 200 million books to kids who otherwise wouldn't have had them.

She remember when the pandemic broke out in 2020, she gave a million dollars to Vanderbilt Hospital to research to start the vaccine that eventually led to the Moderna vaccine. She continued to give money, by the way. That's where she passed away at Vanderbilt Hospital yesterday. So, you know, the music speaks for itself. I mean, you could spend days, as Joe said, in weeks looking at clips of her performing these songs live. But really, it's the generosity, the heart, and the light

that she brought through her life that I think will miss, but that will continue to shine now after her death. And we have so much more to show you. We're going to try, even though we only have a three-hour show, to put into perspective, the incredible span of her career, her talent, her life, Dolly Parton, throughout the morning. We have a lot of other news to get to as well, along with Joe, Willie, and me. We have the co-host of our 8am hour, staff writer at The Atlantic, Jonathan Lemire, and the co-host of The Rest Is Politics Podcast. The BBC's Caddy Kay is with us as well. So our top story this morning, along with the passing of Dolly Parton, is words now from the family of Alex Prettie, speaking publicly for the first time, demanding answers and accountability.

Seven months after the 37-year-old was fatally shot by customs and border protection agents in Minneapolis during an immigration crackdown. Now, at the time, witnesses said the ICU nurse was recording agents with his cell phone. and helping a woman who had been pushed down when officers surrounded him. One agent appeared to wrestle away his legally permitted firearm before two agents fired multiple shots. Preti's mother, father, and sister reacted during an interview with ABC News. Here it is. I was not shocked that he helped somebody.

My shock is that he was murdered, and no one has given us the complete truth or anyone has been held accountable. And it's been seven months. There was more effort in vilifying him than pursuing justice. A kid who is out observing something that should not be happening

in this world today, in the United States. Why? What did he do to deserve to be murdered? To left cold on the ground dead. My child. What did he do? Former DHS secretary Christy Noem accused Prattie of committing an act of domestic terrorism. The Justice Department then opened a civil rights investigation shortly after the killing, working with the FBI and DHS. Attorney General Todd Blanche said Prett's actions did not meet the legal definition of domestic terrorism. The Hennepin County Medical Examiner ruled Prattie's death a homicide. Two officers were charged for use of force, but they have not been charged for the killing. And again, with the feds sweeping up the investigation, the state is doing

their best. We've been in touch with Hennepin County. Hopefully we'll hear more from then. But so many things wrong here, especially after the killing of Renee Good, that happened just weeks earlier. But I'm just focusing right now on the depravity of Joe leaving this family hanging. Yeah. Every day, leaving the family hanging, every day, a mother's child, as she said, gunned down in the streets of America. Gunned down execution style, as she said, quote, murdered. There are a lot of people in Minneapolis, a lot of people across America, a lot of people across the world who saw what happened on that videotape and believed he was murdered, believe he was shot for no reason, execution style. And Alex Prattie's mom asks, what did my son?

undo. What did he do? Well, Willie, what he was doing was doing what we would want our children to do. He was trying to help a woman up, pick a woman up who had been knocked down by these thugs, these untrained thugs, knocked down in the snow. And he went away from the police officers toward the woman to pick her up after she had been brutally knocked down in the snow. And for that, he's pulled back out and he is shot in what looks like execution style in America, in the streets of America, and still no justice for those. who shot him, who the mother said murdered him, who a lot of us look and say, looks like, got shot execution style for helping a woman out of the snow. Why are these men that shot

execution style not in prison today? Yeah, these masks men, they're masks for a reason so that they can't be identified. And in a case like this, they're not, they're being protected by the federal government. They're be protected by the Trump administration. The FBI finally did share information with Hennepin County. Keith Ellison, the Attorney General in Minnesota says that's a good development. At least we're beginning to get the evidence we need to pursue this case. But as Ms. Prety said, in those heartbreaking words, it's been seven months.

And they're not getting any comfort from the government when they're, son was shot in the head in the streets by a federal agent. They're not getting any information from the government after that happened. I'm glad you pointed out the full video. We've all seen it. Ice can't run from this. We saw what he did. He raced like we would hope our sons would do, Joe, to step into a woman who was being pushed down and said, whoa, whoa, whoa, you don't push somebody down like that. And for that, he was on his knees and shot in the head. And after that, he was called a domestic terrorist without evidence. The Attorney General now Todd Blanche has backed off that,

saying there's no evidence he was a domestic terrorist. But just think the first reflex to watching a man shot in the head by federal agents in a video the whole world saw us to say, it was his fault. He was a domestic terrorist, which he clearly was not. You know, Willie, this is what happened in Jim Crow South when a black man would be shot. like in another lifetime. Justice would not be served.

You know, we saw this happen to civil rights workers. We saw this happen to black men. We saw this happen time and again, where somebody would be shot, dead, and no justice would follow. Or a jury would acquit. That's now happening in 2026. That's now happening in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Because the Trump administration is trying to protect people that gunned down an American citizen in the streets of America. Willie, this is a perverse throwback to an uglier, horrible time in this country where certain people can be gunned down and shot, killed, and no justice follows.

Justice has to follow here, Willie, doesn't it? And the difference is back then they could do those things under the cover of darkness. Today we have video. We watched Renee Good get shot in the face. We watched Alex Pready get shot in the head. And Jonathan Lemire, there's got to be justice for Alex Pretty, as his family is now publicly asking. But as you've been reporting, there is an ongoing and maybe enhanced push for ICE to be more aggressive, to get the numbers up, to meet the quotas, to get people out of this country. hopefully not to the point where they're shooting peaceful protesters in the head. But this has maybe restrained ICE to some degree for a while, but it's clear that the mission

continues. Yeah, it's such a heartbreaking interview with Prattie's parents or yesterday. They said they learned of his death by the TV footage, by the news coverage. And certainly, though, the cameras that delivered that heartbreaking news to them, though, have played a role here in not allowing DHS to continue with these lies. as they did rightly, so you say about Renee Good as well. And that is the most Orwellian and frankly horrifying part of this in some ways is that the way that this administration tried to lie despite the evidence that we could all

see. But you are right. As I've been reporting for weeks now, these quotas still exist. These daily phone calls from Stephen Miller to DHS officials are still happening. Yes, there have been far, there have been fewer confrontations like this, but we've also had people shot in Texas and in Houston, in Maine, and Cady, this is something where this administration, first of all, they're almost never able to admit a mistake. We have seen that from the president on down. There's an imperiousness that they feel like they are right, despite what your

lying eyes may tell you. But we also see a stubbornness that they feel like this is their still their best political move, despite what the polls say. And in fact, Cady, we know that the new head of DHS, who succeeded, Kristina. Mark Wade-Mullen is under a lot of pressure right now from the right who think that he's gone too soft on deportations and needs to ramp those up ahead of the midterms. Yeah, and we saw him being overruled by the president on traffic stops, but you're right to mention Stephen Miller. This is Stephen Miller's policy. Yet the buck stops with President Trump, but this is Stephen Miller's policy. This is what he wants. He wants the deportation numbers stepped up every day. And it's his policy, which is the reason that you've had killings in Minneapolis,

killings in Houston, killings in Texas, killings in Maine as well. And it's because he has these deportation quotas, because he's so fixated on them. I had a dinner the other night here in London with a group of foreign journalists. And I was asking them, what's the most shocking thing that's happened in America in the last year and a half of the Trump administration? Some said Greenland, one said Iran, but about three or four of them said Minneapolis and the killing of Alex Prete and Renee Good. They knew the names. This story has traveled right around the world. It's part of the reason that people are looking here in Europe back at America and saying, is this the country recognized? Is this the country we can be an ally with? Because there seems to be this lawlessness and a breakdown of

the rule of law. And Alex Prattie's mom is right. What did he do to deserve this? Under American law, nothing. He did what every parent would want their son to do. He tried to help a woman. who'd been knocked down by agents into the snow for no reason and tried to help pull her up. And for that, he ended up dead in the streets of America. I will say the Trump administration knows better. They should know better if they are completely immoral on such matters. They know politically that this is a losing hand. They know that in Mika.

if you combine what's happened with tariffs, you look at the states right now that are going to be harmed by tariffs. There are states like Maine, states like Michigan, states like Alaska. I mean, you look at the states that are going to be most harmed by this. There's states where there are important Senate elections coming up. And then you add on top of that the horror being very, visited upon these states, Maine, gunning down in the street of a young father who was loved by all, the gunning down of a father and grandfather in Texas where another very competitive race

is being run. And Republicans have just completely lost Hispanic support that they had just two years ago. These policies are not only deeply immoral and un-American, they're just bad politics. And I know the White House political team understands it. And yet it continues. What Americans believe are murders. Murders in Minneapolis.

What Americans believe are murders in Texas. What Americans believe are murders in Maine. of American citizens and of Hispanic men. It is so immoral, it is so un-American, and it is so politically toxic that you would think even the most radical elements of this administration would understand, but they don't.

So hard for Alex Prettie's parents to speak out, and yet I have to believe that part of their taking the time, and the energy and the effort and the pain to go through that was a demand for answers because they're getting nothing for their son's life that was taken away. We will continue to cover this and bring you more as we go through the week here. We have so much more to cover this morning. Still ahead on morning, Joe, we'll take a look at yesterday's primary elections and the races that once again tested President Trump's endorsement power. And as we go to break, quick look at the travelers forecast this morning from acqueweathers Bernie Raynow.

Bernie, how's it looking? Mika, yesterday it was a terrific Tuesday. How about a wonderful Wednesday? Your acueather forecast in the northeast mid-atlantic looks great, sunshine, a few clouds. A couple of strong thunderstorms. Detroit toward Toledo, towards St. Louis, this afternoon. More numerous thunderstorms across the southeast, including Charlotte, Florida Peninsula. And in Texas, it's just hot, hot, hot, hot, hot.

Now, some travel delays, Miami and Orlando and Tampa this afternoon and Atlanta as well. To help you make the best decisions that will be more in the know, download the Accuather App today. Welcome back as the war with Iran approaches its seventh month. The New York Times has taken a closer look at Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's pattern of firing top generals, leaving the Army in the paper's words, quote, essentially rudderless. The Times points out the Army has not had a chief of staff since Hegsef fired General Randy George without explanation in April. Hegsath has also forced out at least three senior officers who had been viewed as potential successors to General George. Meanwhile, Army's secretary Daniel Driscoll.

The service's top civilian leader is also expected to leave the administration in the next few months. The paper goes on to note that as recently as January of 2025, there were 10 four-star generals on active duty. The service currently has five, the fewest in decades. In a statement of the times, the service downplayed the impact of the firings, with an army spokeswoman saying, leaders are, quote, actively driving the Army's mission forward, ensuring that our strategic objectives are met, our modernization efforts remain on track, and our global readiness is never compromised. Joe. He's a joke. And not only is he a joke, he's a dangerous joke. There are many jokes that have been appointed in this administration. And there's such jokes

that they're not causing damage to America's national security or to institutions. that Western democracy based upon. But Pete Higgseth is dangerous. He's a joke and he's incompetent, and he's destroying the culture inside the Pentagon. It's going to take a while to rebuild. Let's bring in right now the President of Meritist of the Council in Foreign Relations, Richard Haas.

Richard, I want to talk about this story, but I want to go circle back to a Wall Street Journal story from yesterday that talked about how this war began six months later. You had Benjamin and Yahoo and Lindsey Graham pushing Donald Trump to go to war. And then you had our Intel agencies that came up with a very pithy conclusion that Intel communities have been coming up now for over 40 years. And it was this. If you attack, first of all, if you kill the Supreme Leader of Iran, it will usher in a more

hardline revolutionary guard type leadership that will more aggressively pursue nuclear weapons. Well, the intel community was right on that count. The second thing they said was, again, not new, something that we've been hearing for 40 years now. If you attack Iran, they'll close the straight. They've done both of those. So you had Vance and Rubio a bit more skeptical, but you actually had Pete Hegzeth and General Kane pushing Donald Trump and telling him, don't worry about these complications, we'll be able to take care of any of this. And of course, once the war started and all these military successes were going forward, Donald Trump's turning around like looking at them yelling, why isn't Iran backing down?

Well, Ron wasn't backing down because the Intel community and everybody else that he could listen to, other than a handful of people, were saying, don't go into Iran. Talk about six months later, just how badly Pete Hegzeth got this wrong. He got it dead wrong. But Joe, I feel I ought to issue a public apology because one of the people who got it right and it's good you're sitting down was Tulsi Gabbard. Everything she said, according to the Wall Street Journal's story, was spot on. You mentioned the straight was going to be closed. You'd get a worse leadership. And she also said this would actually fuel Iranian interest in nuclear weapons.

Check, check, check. That's what the intelligence community is meant to do, speak truth to power. She did it. General Kane turns out to be something of a disappointment here, at least the way the story had it, because he was, I think, promising more than he could deliver. And yeah, Pete Higgseth comes off as a reckless cheerleader. And it's the combination of the war story and now today's story about how he's basically wrecking one of the institutions, the U.S. Army, which over the last couple of decades, when's most improved, the Army emerged from Vietnam broken. And what we've seen over the decades is the Army has been rebuilt and it's been improved.

And I used to work with Colin Powell, and he would talk about it with enormous pride. What we're seeing is essentially the purging. Let's use the word what it is. It's political purging of people who, for whatever reason, Pete Higsteth doesn't work. So this will be elected. And we need an intact army because right now there's a revolution going on in military affairs. Iran is way ahead of us as we're seeing in some ways. Ukraine is ahead of us.

We do not need a broken army at a time it needs to incense fix itself. So, Richard, we've arrived now six months in at a point where it's economic pressure that the Trump administration hopes will be decisive, couldn't bring Iran to heal as it thought it would quickly with military power, now running low on munitions, among other problems. Secretary Besson announced sort of the outlines of a package, which really amount to pressure on China, potentially pressure on Russia, North Korea, although President Trump's playing footsy with Kim Jong-un right now. What does that package look like to you when it's actually fleshed out? and does it sound like something that could be effective? Economic pressure tends to work slowly, all things being equal. Iran has shown itself is pretty good when it comes to absorbing economic pressure.

What we're talking about here is essentially secondary sanctions, whether the tool is a sanction or as a tariff. It's going after those who do business with Iran. Well, guess what? Almost all of them tend to be our friends. Or people we, you know, in a sense like Turkey, an ally, the UAE, probably one of our closest partners in that part of the world. Well, China, not a friend, but as we've seen, we've seen this movie before, Willie.

China has the ability to retaliate. What happens if the next day they cut off rare earth minerals, which the United States desperately needs for its economy and for our military to produce things? And also, why is Secretary Besson talking about this so much? Just do it, for God's sakes. Just do it, because all this does is, I think, it forces the Iranians in some ways to respond even stronger themselves. Just quietly. One last ironic point, if we had done a version of this quietly six months ago, I think we could have had, if not regime change, significant policy change by the previous leadership of Iran.

They were on their back foot economically. They were vulnerable. That was the moment to do this. Instead, we're doing it noisily now six months later. And I'm just, from my reporting, Mika, over the past 24 hours, I can tell you that, without going into too much detail, this low-key economic approach has gotten Iran interested in seriously talking now for the first time. And we've started to see that split as the politicians, the parliamentary leaders, the president, fighting the Revolutionary Guard internally saying, come on, we can't keep doing this economically. Why are they doing that? Because as we've been saying on this show now for months, if you let them know that you're not looking at an election, you're not looking at a false deadline like Jimmy Carter was forced to do in 1980, then you're more powerful negotiating. And that may finally bring her on to the table to negotiate a serious end of this war. We'll see. We're going to get back to our coverage of the life of legend Dolly Parton in just a moment. But first, a quick look at the morning papers.

Starting with the Miami Herald, recently bankrupt Spirit Airlines now selling massive troves of data to the highest bidder. The information includes millions of emails, chats, calendar items, and other files stored in the cloud. The tech companies want the data to train their artificial intelligence technologies, former employees worry that sensitive information could be made public. In the Washington Post, colleges across the country are slashing their programs focused on African American studies. The schools cite low enrollment and limited funding. But as the Post reports, the change has come as the federal government exerts intense pressure

to end racial diversity efforts. And in USA Today, it's been more than 10. two weeks since massive storms ripped through northwest Indiana, yet thousands of people were still without power as of yesterday. The city of Gary, Indiana was hit especially hard. Governor Mike Ron now urging an investigation into the region's power company for its handling of the outages. We'll follow that. And coming up on Morning Joe, we continue our coverage on the life and legacy of country music superstar Dolly Parton. Sirius XM radio host, Mark Goodman, will join us next to discuss her lasting impact.

Morning Joe will be right back. Wow, that was music icon Dolly Parton playing on The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson in 1977. Tributes are pouring in for the legend who passed away yesterday in Nashville. Parton was 80 years old, and a spokesman says she passed following a brief. battle with cancer. A seven-decade career earned her numerous honors, including 11 Grammy recognitions as Billboard's number one country artist of all time in 2024 and inductions into the country music Hall of Fame and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. And joining us now, Sirius XM radio host Mark Goodman and Mark, the awards don't feel like enough, honestly.

I wonder where you begin in trying to put into work. the legacy of Dolly Parton? It's a huge task. And the idea, I mean, the first place you go is her incredible songwriting. She wrote those songs. She's written nearly 3,000 songs. So that's certainly a legacy for her. But I think the bigger legacy may be her generosity.

The fact that she never forgot. who she was and where she came from and stood tall and helped those people in her community who needed the help. She never forgot. You know, Mark, talking about her legacy, there are, I'm sure you just like me, you know, we've grown up with rock and roll, we've grown up listening to music stars. And at this stage in our life, we start to ask, okay, well, what songs are lasting? what artists have staying power. And who's going to be remembered long after all of us are gone?

And the older I get, of course, the Beatles, some of the Beatles songs are going to be sung 300 years from now. I think in rock and roll, it may be Chuck Berry. Some Chuck Berry songs more than say Elvis. But in country music, Dolly's legend just grew year by year throughout her life. And I'm just wondering if she isn't, along with maybe Hank Sr., if she isn't the face of country music 100 years from now? I think you're probably spot on, Joe.

I think that because she as a woman got accepted in country music, which is notoriously not great to women, especially country radio, the fact that she was able to have success straight up country, then blending country and pop. Country soul, you know, there was elegant country. She had all of these nuances in the song, that she wrote. And I think you're right. I think that is going to make her legendary for years and years to come.

Yeah, Mark, her relevance right up until now is extraordinary. I mean, obviously, she's got her own catalog of hits. And then you, listening yesterday, and she's got collaborations with Beyonce, she did a song with, she did a song with Post Malone. She did a song with Sabrina Carpenter. I stumbled upon a duet of a cover of night moves, the Bob Seeger song, her and Chris Stapleton, which blew my mind. I was like, where, I mean, her catalog just goes on and on. So can, yeah, you speak a little more just to the how she was through the 60s and the 70s and the 80s and all the way through to today, always, always evolving and always relevant. Well, we were just seeing her with Kenny Rogers.

She made this incredible crossover from. country to pop with those the work that she did with Kenny and and again she was never just hemmed in by who she was perceived as she was always trying to grow as a songwriter and i think the fact that she as we say three thousand songs and she owned all of her publishing which was something that wasn't a didn't happen especially with women back in the day and that That's something that's going to keep her in our ears for quite a while. And some of the most amazing songs of all time, I Will Always Love You, is one of the best-selling singles of all time. And I know one of her disappointments was that she had wanted to duet with Whitney Houston on that one and sadly never got the chance.

But a massive, massive success, for sure. And Mark, let's speak about a little more about her legacy. Yes, it's the songwriting and the performing. It's the amusement park. It's the library. It's the humanitarian causes. I was talking with some people yesterday. She was sort of one of our last Americans with universal approval rating.

Like, everyone loved Dolly Parton. And even from the political spectrum, we had statements yesterday from both President Trump and the DSA, mourning her passing. And I'm hard pressed to think about many other people who would evoke that sort of response, that sort of love. I can't think of one other person on the planet who literally has no enemies. I can't think of one person who would have one bad word to say about Dolly Parton. We're certainly seeing that now online, the tributes coming from so many different artists from all walks of life. As you say, President Trump ordered flags to be flown. at half-mast today. Last night, the Empire State Building lit up in pink for Dolly. And it's tough to

nail down what her legacy finally will be, especially because of her generosity. The fact that she never forgot her roots and really backed that up, there were floods in Tennessee in her area and fires over years back. And she donated millions of dollars to help. those people who were impacted by that. She takes care of workers at Dollywood. She has a program where anyone who is going to do secondary education has their tuition and their books and their expenses paid because Dolly believed in education. We know the Imagine Library, a huge thing for her. That, of course, is going to keep her legacy going. She's been doing that for better than 30 years, giving out nearly 300 million books around the world.

Really something. Mark, she used to say that she wasn't a show horse. She was a workhorse. And even when you think about that, her universality of her appeal, she knew, she said, I have fans on both sides of the aisle. She worked hard, whether it's at her brand, at her singing, at her cross-party appeal. And talk a little bit about that.

This was not by chance. She was deliberate and smart and strategic about how she managed herself and her career. She was accepting. She accepted everyone. And I think that's why she is remembered the way that she is. And she was real. It didn't seem phony. And she, people who would go to a Dolly Parton concert.

If you've been, and I have, you'll see, you know, a guy in a trucker hat, maybe with a Confederate flag on it, standing next to two women holding hands. Everyone in that show, everyone in that room felt accepted. And I think long-term, that's something that we all remember. We have much more to get to on the legacy of Dalai Parton. Sirius XM radio host, Mark Goodman. Thank you very much for trying. to put it into words.

We appreciate your coming onto the show this morning. And still ahead on Morning Joe, we'll turn back to politics as well with a look at the record low polling for President Trump and what it could mean for Republicans in November. Morning Joe is coming right back.