Morning Joe - Rubio: ‘Operation Epic Fury’ in Iran Is Over

Episode Date: May 6, 2026

Rubio: ‘Operation Epic Fury’ in Iran Is Over 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.

As President Trump has said, and the facts clearly bear out, the United States of America holds all the cards. There is no scenario here in which if they decide to join a ladder of escalation, they wind up getting the last say. But our preference is for these straits to be opened to the way they're supposed to be open, back to the way it was. Anyone can use it. No mines in the water. Nobody paying tolls. That's what we have to get back to, and that's the goal here. All right. So what does success look like in this war? state Marco Rubio yesterday at the White House telling reporters the administration's goal with the straight of Hormuz is to get it back to the way it was before the war started. President Trump,

meanwhile, has paused Project Freedom, his plan to escort ships through the waterway. We're going to bring you the latest on conflict as it moves closer to the 10-week part. Very confusing. Wait, no, this is so confusing. And Willie, I'm a simple man with simple tastes, but and simple understandings of basic things, but you had the Secretary of Defense yesterday saying they're going to escort ships through the straight. Then you had Marco coming on, the Secretary of State, saying they're going to do the same thing. And then the president last night on social media changed his mind. And now everybody's saying the war is over when, of course, we haven't accomplished what we said we were going to account. Well, the president originally said, I don't know if he met it, but he originally said to the Iranian people, the hour of your freedom is at hand.

So he was going to liberate the Iranian people. He later tonight saying that, but he said it. And said he was going to sink the Navy. He sunk the Navy. So, Jack, that's one out of five. But the nuclear program was going to be taken care of. But see, this is where it gets confusing to me. because he said that the nuclear program was already destroyed a year ago. And remember when people in the press were asking questions like, hey, we hear from Intel, American Intel, that we haven't destroyed the entire program. And he got very angry and other people got angry. And they shouted reporters, said, fake news.

You're from ABC. You're fake news. You're from CNN. You're fake news. It ends up they actually weren't fake news. news, White House was lying, Willie, that in fact, the nuclear program wasn't destroyed. And then they told us, hey, if we don't go to war, they're going to have a nuclear program in two weeks. Now everybody's saying, hey, let's just go home and Iran can have that

nuclear program we were talking about. President also talked about destroying ballistic missiles. We're going to have to wipe them all out. And of course, all of their terror networks across of Middle East also had to be wiped out. Right now, we've got some ship sunk and a partridge in a pear tree, and that's about it, Willie, and they're ready to clear victory and come home. And this is not the funniest part. I guess the most tragic part. We've spent $250 billion, maybe $300 billion on this war. And all Marco Rubio wants, all. All Lindsey Graham wants is, guys, let's just get things back to the way they were before the war started. Let's just have the straight.

You know, Lindsay goes, it's all about the straight. Everything's about the strait. We're doing this. It's all about the straight. It's all about the straight. Well, okay. Well, all about getting it back to how it was before we launched a war that killed a lot of Iranians and separated us from our allies and. cost over 250 billion of taxpayers' dollars when they're struggling to put gas in their, I mean,

Willie, I don't know. I'm a simple country lawyer. That doesn't seem like too much of a success to me. No, it doesn't to go back to the way we were two months ago and also just even in the space of, I don't know, eight hours yesterday to have not offhanded, but inside the White House briefing room, the Secretary of State saying military operations are over. Operation Epic Fury has ended, mission accomplished, objectives achieve, now it's all about the strait. To have just a couple of hours later, President Trump go on social media and post and say, we're pausing that thing where we're helping ships get through the strait while we negotiate. So undermining what his Secretary of State had said just a couple of hours earlier.

They're all over the place. It's clear President Trump is over this war. He wants to move on. He somehow didn't know, didn't foresee or was not told that the Strait of Hormuz could be closed by Iran and that gas prices now would approach $4. and 50 cents a gallon, making this war unpopular on the merits for many people, but certainly for most people, because of its domestic implications. Joe, you touched on some of this. David Sanger's ticking through it this morning in the New York Times saying that Trump administration's efforts to

wrap up the war regardless of the conditions on the ground include this. Despite Mr. Rubio's declaration that the objectives of the war have been accomplished, they clearly have not. Mr. Trump himself described his objectives in the early hours of fed. February 28th, when he told the country in a video he had recorded earlier, he had five major goals. The first, of course, was to ensure that Iran can never have a nuclear weapon. But he went on to add that the United States had to destroy Iran's ballistic missiles and their launchers, sink its navy, and its support of terrorist groups like Hezbollah and Hamas, and finally create the conditions for the Iranian people to topple their government. regime change. Well,

the Iranian Navy clearly is gone, as Mr. Trump often notes, but that is the only one checked off of that list. Again, that's David Sanger writing in some detail this morning. In the New York Times, you cannot declare mission accomplished if you set out those five goals and have only checked off one, but it's clear President Trump wants to move on from this war. Well, and how many times, as he said, as Lindsay Graham said, has Benjamin Netanyahu said, have all the people, Pete Higgseth, Pete Higgs just said it a couple of days ago, how many times have they said there can never be a nuclear Iran? at the end of the day

that's what you're going if they come home now if they if they cut and run after starting a war that nobody wanted them to start certainly not our allies in the Middle East other than

Netanyahu then you're going to still have a nuclear Iran you're still going to have an Iran with ballistic missiles you're going to still have an Iran with terror networks you're going to still have Iran and except the only difference is instead of regime change, you have a regime that's even more hardened. And instead of being

run by clerics and the parliament and the Revolutionary Guard, you have the Revolutionary Guard in charge, the most hardened, angry elements of the Revolutionary Guard. And Mika, our allies in the region didn't want this war. They weren't notified of this war. Didn't know it was coming. didn't know it was coming. I have been on the front lines of this war because it's not been, you know, they've been on the front lines of this war. And all they asked was, okay, we didn't want you to do this war. But since you started it, you need to finish this war.

And I'm wondering how the UAE's feeling right now, after sustaining attacks two days in a row and having the Secretary of State and the President of the United States saying, oh, there's no war left? Well, yeah, there is for the UAE, and there will continue to be for the UAE, for the Saudis, for other allies in the region who didn't want to go to war in the first place,

but said, now that you're there, you better finish it, or we're all in bigger trouble. Yeah, I think the consequences of the breach of that partnership, of those partnerships, have yet to really fully bear out because this is still happening to them,

something they didn't. know was coming. With us, we have the co-host of our 9-am hour, staff writer at the Atlantic, Jonathan Lemire, co-host of the rest of politics, podcast, BBC's Caddy Kay and Opinion Commonest for the New York Times, David French. So, Katie Kay, let's continue there, because right now there's missiles still coming over the UAE, and the Gulf states are still in a state of complete, I would say, I don't want to say a state of fear, but I think they're fairly shocked about what is transpiring and how this impacts their relationships around the world and whether or not President Trump is going to commit to actually ending what he said he started

or if he's going to move the goalpost. We're seeing really interesting kind of tectonic shifts in the Middle East that haven't happened for decades, happen in the space of a couple of weeks at the moment. Mika, with rifts widening between the Saudis and the UAE, the UAE leaving OPEC, the Iran still clearly thinking that it has UAE in its sights, both by geography and perhaps by nature of the UAE's modern economy that perhaps Iran doesn't like, the UAE working with the Israelis on defense technology. And meanwhile, I've had a long conversation with a UAE official recently who said to me,

Look, we can't afford for there to be any daylight at the moment between the UAE and the United States because the main thing we need, we didn't want this war, we didn't want Donald Trump to start this war, don't spike the Hornets nest. But now that they have started this war, they really don't want them to finish before it's done because they know that leaves them in a vulnerable position. It leaves them in the position where the strait can be shut at any time. The Iranians attacking their alternative oil export facilities. and it's just not a, it's not the position that they wanted to be in for a country,

a group of countries that has survived with a security premium. Well, that security premium's gone. It's just gone and it's very hard for them to rebuild it. Yeah, and so Jonathan, Lemire, maybe you can take us inside the White House and take us inside the president's social media feed. How do we have yesterday morning Pete Higgsath coming on and saying very deliberately, this is what we're going to be doing. We're going to be escorting ships through the strait. This is our plan. Marco Rubio coming on, having that press conference and saying the same thing.

We are moving forward, Operation Fury over, but we're moving forward. Our new focus is going to be escorting those ships through the straight. And then last night, Donald Trump changes that. And then everybody's saying the war is over, the war is over, while the missiles are still flying. Yeah, the overarching theme here, according to the senior advisors and Trump, outside Trump advisors I've spoken to, is the president is just desperate for this war to be over. And there is some concern that this Operation Freedom, what they've dubbed, the mission to sort of have a convoy, or at least some degree of convoy, to get these ships through the straight. There are two things about it. One, it simply wasn't very effective yet. Only a couple ships had

gone through, so barely making a dent in the backup there at the Strait of Hormuz, so really, really not changing much at all. But what we did see, even in that limited traffic, we saw that outburst of violence the other day, where Iran launched a strike, the U.S. warships had to take out a couple of fastboats, and there's a sense, I'm told, that they're thinking that this operation might actually endanger the ceasefire. That is, as we saw, it almost inherently will lead to more hostilities, potentially forcing more of an American response. And the U.S. President Trump simply doesn't want that. Now, the president has also said in his social post last night that some progress has been

made. And just this morning, Axios is reporting more or less the same that Pakistani mediators believe that there is a one-page memo that could be agreed upon by U.S. and Iranian sides to order to have, again, sort of further the ceasefire, perhaps agreed to reopen the strait and punt the nuke deal down the road. So we'll have to see, because President Trump a few days ago made clear he didn't want that. The Axios reporting notes that, you know, the Pakistani officials have been overly optimistic before. There are some in the White House who don't think this is going to come together just yet. But, Willie, there does seem to be a little bit of momentum here, perhaps to have

some sort of even temporary agreement straightened out that would, that would reduce the chances of hostilities. But more than anything, this is a sign that President Trump wants this war over, and he wants it over now. He wants to be able to say, I have some sort of agreement to bring Costilees to an end before next week. Why is next week important? Because next week he's traveling to Beijing. And next week he's traveling, he's meeting President Xi of China. China has made it very clear. They don't like how the situation is going. Trump doesn't want the war overshadowing that summit. He doesn't want it getting in the way of any kind of trade deal he could make with Xi. Meanwhile, the Iranians meeting with the Chinese today ahead of the Trump's meeting. Vice President J.D. Vand's campaign for a Republican congressional candidate in Iowa yesterday. This is what he said there about the war in Iran.

We also know that a lot of our farmers are struggling with high fertilizer prices. I'm aware of that. As the President of the United States has said, we got a little blip in the Middle East. We're going to take care of some business on the foreign policy side. So David French, we had two days ago the President of the United States calling this a mini war. yesterday you had Vice President Vance calling this a blip. I think everyone who's lost a family member in this war or who's now paying $4.50 a gallon on national average or much more in many states would consider it much more than a blip. They're trying to sort of minimize and diminish the war and in many ways wish it away. But how do they get out of this buying they've put themselves in?

You know, it's very clear at this point that it looks like Trump was essentially sold a bill of goods, that he thought, and he keeps using the Venezuela comparison, we've heard it, that he thought what he was getting was going to be a short and glorious and victorious military operation, and he hadn't thought this through. And so he has very few paths. If he's not willing to force the straight open, which is something that is a tremendous military challenge that could require a large amount of escalation, a further disruption to the world economy while that escalation occurs.

and honestly an uncertain outcome without big-time major deployments of ground troops. He can do that. He obviously doesn't want to do that. I think he worries about Congress in the event that he would try something like that. And if that's off the table, which it appears to be off the table, then he's got to negotiate with a regime that, quite frankly, seems to feel like it's got the upper hand. It is the one that seems to be the least reluctant to engage in conflict right now.

So he walked into something. He thought he was going to win this short and glorious victory. And now he just doesn't have any good options. And by the way, we're also, as we've said, damaging our relationships with allies, not just in some theoretical sense. Our actions have impacted the global economy. We're hurting people around the globe and we don't have a clear path out of it. Yeah, you know, David, he was worn at time and again.

And not by people on the inside because you had Lindsay Graham pushing him to war, Netanyahu pushing him to war, Pete Hagsith pushing him to war. David Ignatius, everybody on this show was saying, this is not Venezuela. Others saying this is not, and he didn't listen. He just, he listened to, well, he listened, but he listened to Lindsey Graham. But just, just think about, think about this, that you have Jady Vance saying 150, people in a school being slaughtered on the first day of the war is a blip. Over 100 schoolchildren being killed, the first day of the war is a blip. Up to maybe 10,000, 15,000 Iranians being killed.

J.D. Vance is calling a blip. You have J.D. Vance calling a blip entire communities in Lebanon, being wiped off the face of the earth. I mean, how would J.D. Vanceville, if his community that he grew up in didn't have a building left standing, that's what's happening in Lebanon all across of Lebanon because of this, quote, blip. That's what's happening in Iran because of this blip. And as you say, people across the world are paying for this day in and day out with an economy that's getting worse. And of course, I guess only people like me. worry about spending money and the national debt, but this war has already cost us $250 billion, at minimum. This is far from—we've run out of munitions. We're running out of munitions. If this is what J.D. Vance calls a, quote, blip, well, then J.D. Vance is not a serious

person. He's not a compassionate person. He's certainly the lack of humanity calling this. something that caused this much suffering, a blip, speaks volumes, David. Yeah, you know, and here's this thing that I think that people, some people might be missing right now is what we're seeing is this administration hasn't just stumbled into a war that it doesn't have a good plan to end. It's also doing something that's sort of very normal politics and scaging in all this euphemism and word games and talking points and spin that makes them look exactly like. the old kind of establishment that they were despising before for getting into foreign wars, for spinning America about foreign wars. They're doing exactly, exactly what they promised

Americans they would not do. And I think that you're beginning to see this chipping away of support at a level and at least at the very least sort of a change in permission structure in the larger Republican world where it is okay to criticize Donald Trump, at least in this sort of political class in a way that hasn't been before. So he's acting like this kind of normal spinning politician while he's violating all of his campaign promises. Is it is it any wonder that approval rating is plummeting? Yeah. All right. Still ahead on Morning Joe, the potential price tag for President Trump's ballroom keeps going up. Senate Republicans are now seeking one billion for the project. But how will that look to voters concerned about affordability? And Steve Ratner

is standing by with charts. He's taking a look at the rising health care costs that many Americans are facing. And as we go to break, a quick look at the Travelers' Forecast this morning from Acuethers Bernie Raino. Bernie, how's it looking? Mika, you're going to need the umbrella in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic today, your exclusive ACUweather forecast showing the rain in Boston, New York, City this afternoon. Rain this morning, Washington, D.C., Harrisburg, Pittsburgh. Here comes the cooler air. Only 57 degrees in Chicago today.

Hot in Florida, 91 in Tampa, some nasty thunderstorms. Late today, Jackson, New Orleans, some wet weather in Litter Rock this morning. We also have a couple of showers in Dallas. Travel delays, we're going to see in Boston, New York City, in Philadelphia. Also Denver, due to snow. They help you make the best decisions and be more in the know. the Accuether app today. Hey, welcome to morning, Joe.

We were just talking about how the president decided to go to war with Iran without talking to our allies and the massive costs that it's had to taxpayers over $250 billion. Gas prices at $4.50. I could go down the list, but we just talked about it. Now Senate Republicans are proposing $1 billion more dollars to fund President Trump's Marie Antoinette Ballroom Project, which remember, you said, would only be paid for through private donations. These Senate Republicans want this provision included in a $70 billion package to fund ICE and Border Patrol through the end of the term, but it also includes a measure

setting aside money for security work related to the Marie Antoinette Ballroom. It specifically directs the $1 billion to go towards security adjustments and upgrades, including within the perimeter fence of the White House compound. The measure doesn't allow any of the funding to be spent on non-security elements. So you watch, with a president sitting in a ballroom, they're going to say that is a security element. You know, just David French, it's hard to imagine this Republican Party being any more disconnected from voters than they are. But again, we talked about the war, which, of course, the president promised time and time again, and J.D. Vance promised time and time again,

and every Republican, and every Republican MAGA podcast promised time and time again. Kamala Harris will take us to war in Iran. Donald Trump will not. Well, he did, and look at the costs to working Americans. Now, you have the president regarding this ballroom, he said, I'm not going to touch the East Wing. and then he unilaterally decides, as he did with the war, I'm going to tear down the entire East Wing.

And he says, we're not going to use any taxpayer dollars for this Marie Antoinette Ballroom Project. Now Republicans, and I think this is important. They can't just say, oh, this is about Donald Trump. Now the Republicans have gotten involved. And it is the entire party that now is telling taxpayers, he tore it down. Now you're going to have to pay because one day, maybe he was pissed off.

I don't know. maybe one day he had visions of grandeur, but one day he just decided to tear down the White House. And all of that talking about how it wasn't going to cost you anything? Well, the war cost you $250 billion. This is going to cost you another billion dollars because he just decided one day to tear down half of the White House. And so you have Americans who can't pay for a doctor's visit, can't pay for a take a gas, can't pay for a bag of groceries, and now Lindsey Graham and Republican senators are saying, yeah, we know you can't pay for that, and we know you couldn't pay for the $250 billion war. We know that, but you're going to have to pay a billion dollars in tax dollars

for this Marie-Antoinette Ballroom that Donald Trump just decided one day he was going to do. I mean, again, they keep getting more and more out of touch. And now that the Republican Senate has involved themselves in this, it's the entire party that's for the Marie Antoinette Ballroom when people can't afford for their health care, their gas, or their groceries. Well, you know, here's the bind that the Republicans are in right now, Joe. So Republican politicians are very attuned to one certain set of voters, and that's Republican primary voters. They're very attuned to what they want because we saw what. Once again, last night, they were in the state of Indiana. Trump had targeted a bunch of Indiana state senators, Republicans, for primaries, and most of them lost.

In other words, he still has this hold on the GOP. So the Republican primary voter, the one that is essentially in charge of whether their career continues in these gerrymandered districts, is still with Trump. But the problem you have is that Trump is sailing away from the rest of the American public. And that means the Republican Party is sailing away from the rest of the American public. And so the general election voter is looming out there this November, and they are increasingly angry at Republicans. So if you're a Republican politician, if you depart from Trump, you're probably going to lose your primary. If you cling to Trump, if you're in anything like a swing district, you win your primary, but the general election voter is coming for you. So they're in a position right now.

Trump has put them in a terrible, terrible position politically. And unless something dramatic changes, that's going to come home to them in November. Jonathan, that for a president who's had good political instincts, of nothing else over the last decade or so, even for him, this is shocking, that he and Republicans, given the economy right now, given the fact that this morning gas is $453 a gallon, $4.53 a gallon, up well over a dollar year over year, given the fact that, as Joe said, health care is a struggle, groceries are a struggle, all the things we talk about every day, that they would go out in public and say, we want you, the taxpayers now to pay for a bigger, fancier ballroom where we can have parties you're not invited to

because we tried the White House correspondence dinner. And when that incident happened a couple of weeks ago, we're, thank goodness, no one was seriously injured. You had almost immediately supporters of the president tweeting out posting the same thing that said, we need the ballroom now. And then you had the president that night saying, we need the ballroom now. It was almost like, you know, using that event to get this. ballroom. But as a just a purely political question in these times to build the Marie Antoinette ballroom for a billion dollars of taxpayer money when you promise it would be funded by your rich

friends, it baffles. It does. So many political analysts publicly and even some Republicans privately have complained about Trump this time around that he seems out of touch. That he, you know, he hasn't traveled the country. He exists in a bubble even more so than most presidents, surrounded by rich donors. He only cares about his legacy, that he has lost side of what actually got him elected, trying to help Americans particularly drive down costs. No issue underscores that criticism like the ballroom. Like this is the example of people, even Republicans being like, this is too much. They don't, they dare not say it publicly, but privately for months now, they've been saying it too much. But even Trump until recently

had the good sense, if you will, and I put that in quotes, to say, we'll fund this privately. That, you know, yes, I'm going to knock down the East Wing without getting permission. I'm going to just forge forward with this. I'm going to ignore the criticisms. I'm going to ignore the complaints, ignore the lawsuits. I'm just going to knock it down. But hey, even as the cost kept rising, we'll pay for it privately. Now suddenly, it will be taxpayer money. It'll be public money. The costs have ballooned. A judge has said some of the security stuff can go forward. Like, that's less of an issue. No one suggests there can't be some security apparatus there. But the idea that a ballroom needs to be a hardened place where he can do all of his events,

never venture out potentially and make the taxpayers pay for it, a building they'll never set foot in. It boggles the mind. It's obviously a gift to Democrats, an absolute gift heading into November. And Senate Democrats are voting to carve this out and make this a singular vote. Vote on the ballroom, not just some big security pact, vote on the ballroom. We want to see if you actually want to make taxpayers pay for this ballroom. We're going to talk more about the rising costs of health care with Steve Ratner and his charts in just a moment. Morning Joe's coming right back.

We will pass the great health care plan. We call it the great health care plan to stop all payments to big insurance companies and give the money. What we want to do is this. We want the insurance companies to be cut out. We want our government not to pay trillions of dollars to insurance companies to pay that same amount of money directly to the people directly. And you go out and buy your own health care.

And everybody likes it. President Trump last month talking about his administration's health care plan unveiled in January. But there remained no concrete bill containing President Trump's proposals for Congress to even attempt to pass. There's a plan, more like a concept of a plan, to quote the president. Millions, meanwhile, reportedly have dropped their health care coverage after Congress failed to extend the COVID-era subsidies of the Affordable Care Act. Former Treasury official, Morning Joe, economic analyst. Steve Ratner joins us now with charts on how all of that is going. Steve, good morning.

Always great to see you. Let's start with the premiums, what people are paying now as a result of the action of the administration. Yeah, Willie. So as you said, just to recall, last fall, the Democrats shut down the government for the longest period in history to try to preserve these tax credits. They ultimately failed. And now we're going to see the consequences of all that. So premium numbers have come in.

And the average premium for someone, these are for people who buy their insurance in the marketplaces that Obamacare set up of 58% for the average premium. That's not even shared equally. Different age groups, different income levels, have different impacts. But let's just look at a typical family. $65,000 is the average income of an American worker today. If you're 60 years old, your premium is going to go up by $920 a month. That's $11,040 a year. If you're making $65,000,000,000, thousand dollars paying 11,040 a year for health insurance is simply not realistic. So Steve, just to remind people, this was kind of the basis of that government shut down at the end of last year, a fight that Senate Democrats ultimately lost, but it was to expand these

tax credits that would have covered a lot of this. So as you move to your second chart, you've got information kind of about this middle class cliff that a lot of people predicted would come if those tax credits were not extended? Yeah, exactly. These were tax credits passed during the Biden administration in a COVID environment, and they were set to expire. But they were designed to solve a specific problem. When Obamacare was created inadvertently or not,

there was this cliff where you paid a reasonable percentage of your income in health care costs, but then suddenly it went away, and you were paying as much as 20, 25 percent of your income. income in costs. This was this, uh, Biden era provision was designed to eliminate that and essentially provide a smooth transition here from the subsidies so that nobody paid more than eight and a half percent of their income in health care premiums. So we went from this to up here. So what's the consequence? Well, obviously, as I showed you with the numbers before, health care becomes unaffordable for a lot of people and they start dropping their coverage. And so the estimates at the

moment that have recently come in is that this year, somewhere between 17 and 26% of the people who bought their health care in the Obama exchanges will drop it. But the people who drop it are also the healthier people, right? I mean, that's logical. And so what happens is that the remaining people in the insurance pools become sicker, have a higher morbidity rate. And that's what this number here is. And when you have a sicker pool of people, that drives the insurance premiums of even more because the insurers are trying to recover the cost. of ensuring a smaller group of Americans who are not quite as healthy. And those who drop the coverage still get sick, so they end up in emergency rooms,

which are also paid for by the taxpayers as well, which gets to your final chart. Number three, millions more people are now uninsured. What are the numbers here specifically around Medicaid? Right. So Medicaid is separate from what I was talking about, but back in the one big, beautiful bill, the Republicans carved back all kinds of Medicaid, L.O. eligibility definitions. And so the consequence, when you put the two things together, this is the impact of these tax credits that I was just talking about. But when you add the one big,

beautiful bill impact on it, you can see that the number of people who are insured, which peeked back up here at about almost 50 million people in the exchanges, thanks to Obamacare, went down, down, down, down, down, all the way down here because of those exchanges that Obamacare set up. Now it's going to jump back up here. up to 37 million uninsured Americans, that means that we have essentially, or we will essentially eliminate half of the people who got insurance through Obamacare will be giving it up. So half of Obamacare, the Republicans have very quietly eviscerated by that ever saying the words, Obamacare, because that didn't go so well for them in the past.

Now, we have some actual data. These are projections, but we have a test case. Georgia has actually already reported its numbers. you can see here again, the effect of those tax credits was to increase the number of people, increase the number of people who got insurance through the marketplaces all the way up to a million 500,000. Now it is down to 950,000. So you've, you've, something like 560,000 Georgians have dropped their insurance. And let's, let me just make one other point about Georgia. Georgia's a really important state for the Democrats because John Ossoff, the young Democratic senator, is the only

Democratic incumbent running in a state that Trump carried. So Georgia, which in the past was a red state, got a little bit purplish, now hopefully this will help John Ossoff in a tough race in Georgia. All right. Morning Joe, economic analyst. Steve Ratner, thank you so much. Hopefully this information will help anybody in any party fight for health care for Americans and to turn this back the way it was before the one huge, massive, terrible bill. Steve Ratner, thank you so much. So, Mika, we're talking right now about Obamacare. You've got that on one side of the question,

but on the other, private health care. Private health care has gotten so outrageously expensive, and we've talked about it time and time again. People pay higher premiums than ever before. They're just getting absolutely crushed. And then the very things, the procedures that tests that the doctors order, that they prescribe, the health insurance companies deny that. Then they get home. There are more hidden costs. You go down the list. Health care is unaffordable. Again, it's not just about Obamacare. It's about the private health care industry. And then it sounds like what we conservatives used to say about health care in Britain or Canada. You want to get a procedure? Great. Well, you have to wait six months or nine months. And when you say, oh, the American system is so superior to that, that's now what's happening with so many private health care company.

Oh, you want to use your doctor? Okay, well, we've got to figure it out. Okay, we'll approve that for six months from now. And then four months after that, they, of course, deny it. And then just keep you running around in circles. So health care insurance is. a serious crisis and it's been made so much more serious for working Americans by what the Republicans have done and what they continue to do. And that's the question, because it's not just health care and the cost of it and the outrageous nature of the cost of it, but also access to it. There are health care deserts around the country. There are rural hospitals that have been shut down. There are hospitals that have shut down their maternity wards. So it's paying for it

and getting to it that people are struggling with across the country. And Katty K, it all goes down to that word, affordability, which the president was mocking just a few days ago, again, as if it's not happening. And the American people can tell you it's happening on every level, whether it's the grocery store, whether it's health care, whether it's gas prices because of the war in Iran, which again, the president seems to not be, or at least moving the target on what the truth is with that. And I wonder, it's obvious voters are feeling this.

It's obvious voters are feeling this. But Republicans, when are Republicans going to see that they're on the wrong side of this story? And that it is a real story, affordability. And health care costs are a huge part of that, which is why you're seeing candidates in Michigan, in the Democratic primary, like Abdullah Syed, who's running almost in. entirely on a universal healthcare platform.

You're seeing candidates like Graham Platner talking about affordability. When Joe talks about the three C's costs confusion and corruption or cost chaos and corruption, the costs are the big part of that. Republicans will realize this, I think, when it comes to elections, when people go to the polls. I mean, it's so interesting, Steve's numbers from the state of Georgia, Georgia kind of a swing state. We know that at the moment. It is up for grabs, Georgia, particularly, in the Senate race. When you've had that many people losing their health care coverage,

that is the kind of thing that drives people to the polls. That is why you've got Marjorie Taylor Green from Georgia talking about her own kids' health care premiums. I see it with my kids. One of them doesn't have coverage at the moment. And the costs of even trying to get tiny amounts of treatment is impossible. Another is trying to get an MRI. He can't get the insurance company to fund it. The doctor says the MRI needs to do it. The MRI say, no, the doctor needs to clear it. In the end, after about three months, we ended up paying for his MRI. That's ridiculous. We could afford to pay for the MRI and he needed it for hip operation. But Americans shouldn't be in that position when this is a country that says it has the greatest health care system in the world. It's a great

health care system when it works, but far too often at the moment, it's not working for ordinary people. And I do believe we're going to see health care show up in the polls this November. President Trump showed last night he continues to wield power over his party after a group of Republican state senators in Indiana lost their primaries to opponents who were endorsed by Donald Trump. In all, at least five of the seven GOP primary challengers endorsed by Trump won last night. Just one incumbent managed to pull off a victory while one additional race remains too close to call. Yesterday's contest came just months after state lawmakers rejected Trump's calls to redistrict Indiana's maps to boost the GOP's chances this November to keep control of the House. the president's allies spent more than $8 million on the typically low-profile races,

turning them into an unusually intense intra-party fight. So David French, how much should we or should we not read into these races in Indiana last night? I mean, I think we should read the most obvious thing into them, which is Trump still has a vice grip on the Republican Party. I mean, people ask me all the time, when are we going to see Republicans start to defy Trump? Well, you'll see more of it when they defy Trump and their, are able to keep their political careers. I mean, this is one instance where Indiana Republicans defied Trump. They, they want, Trump wanted redistricting. Indiana Republicans didn't want it.

And then they, most of them lost their jobs as a result. So this is, this is, as I said earlier, the bind of the GOP is in. The Republican base is still every bit is tied to Trump or almost every bit is tied to Trump as it has been. But the rest of the party, I mean, the rest of the country, I'm sorry, is leaving as moving away from Trump. And so this puts Republicans in this very difficult position. Depart from an unpopular president and they might lose their job in the primary, cling to this unpopular president, and they might lose their job in the general election. All right, David French, thank you very much.

So it's been three months since Gallup announced it was ending, some of its most notable polling, saying it will no longer provide monthly updates on key data points such as presidential approval ratings. In that vacuum, Forbes has taken the reins, partnering with business intelligence platform Harris X on a new monthly data release called the Monthly American Confidence Tracker. The findings will include approval ratings and other issues such as inflation and the economy. Let's bring in Chief Content Officer for Forbes, Randall Lane and the founder and CEO of Harris X, Triton Neschow. MS now contributor, Mike Barnacle, joins the conversation as well. So Randall, let's get started. First of all, tell us why you decided

to step into this space and partner with Harris X, and then we'll go over some of the issues you covered. Well, this is, you know, again, this is a time, this is a show that reveres American history. I was an American history major. We lost something in February when Gall decided after 88, years are not going to track presidential approval and asking the same questions with an evolving but consistent methodology. It allowed us to compare presidents to presidents, you know, term over term about issues. And so again, we thought this has nothing to do with President Trump, it has nothing to do with any one president has to do with having a body of work that's almost 100 years old. And how can we take, keep that going, keep that methodology going as best as possible

so that we can make comparisons, term to term. And that's what we're going. we've done so we partner with Harris X and we're doing that. So Driton, just give us a sense of the Gallup 88 years historic and the confidence, I think, and those who read the results. Can Americans expect the same efficacy and process in terms of getting these results that we're about to share with our viewers this morning? That's right, Mika. So we've replicated the key questions that Gallup asked to track presidential performance in all the different ways. And we've also created a mixed method panel. So we do a lot of phone interviews, as Gallup did. But we've also added some online polling to the survey in order to ensure representativeness

and making sure that we have reached, especially with younger audiences, which frankly, you know, they scan out or filter out their phone calls and don't really pick up if. they don't know who's calling them. So you're able to compare and contrast tit for tat with Gallup, and it goes beyond. And we've also added to U.S. adults, registered voters, you can look at business leaders. So it has a wide array of segments and audiences that you can track through our poll. So Druton, let's tick through some of these numbers in this new monthly tracker. They're reflective of a lot of what we've seen in other polls as well. And we'll show some of them here as we have our conversation. President's job approvals at 41 percent. Inflation, only at 32 percent approval.

The economy in general, 37 percent. Tariffs and Trade, 37 percent. What was your big takeaway putting all of these numbers together? What stories tell about how America's feeling about President Trump? Well, all of the horse race metrics, I'd like to call these the horse race metrics, are trending negative for President Trump and the Republicans ahead of the midterms. I think the Big takeaway in the polling is really in the other questions, the atmospheric or the environmental questions. And what it's showing is that Democrats are winning, but still absent. They haven't claimed the mantle of leadership on many of these key issues. They are not driving their messages.

And in this type of an environment, the polling can change very, very quickly. And that's a big takeaway from this data. But absolutely, the trend for Trump has been a negative trend since the beginning of the year. When you pull the tabs internally on these polls, you get any sense of the feeling of confidence that young Americans with young children, starting up families, that they have less confidence in the future than other people? Well, despite all of the challenges of today, and Americans are very frustrated on the economy, as you can see in the polling, two-thirds still believe in the American dream. Two-thirds still believe that through hard work, that can gain a better life. and also in the polling two-thirds still say that the American dream is attainable to them, either that they're currently leaving it or that they believe they will reach it.

But still, leaving a third behind is a lot. And that explains a lot of the frustration that we're seeing in the country right now. So, Randall, let's talk about some of the foreign policy here, and in particular the war on Iran. What are the findings? Again, if you look at the findings, there's not a lot. It's across the board. It's not like, oh, they're disappointing the economy.

but they like his foreign policy. There's not, it, it is striking how he's underwater and pretty much everything. But as Riton said, again, it's, it's, it's, it's not like people are saying we like the Democrat policies. It's, it's, they don't like anything right now. I mean, obviously that's a lot of headwinds for the Republicans going to a midterm. I think when we go into 2028, of course, you can't beat something with nothing. There's going to have to be an affirmative message. I think the question right now is maybe it's enough just to not be Trump right now because there's nothing in foreign policy to like. There's nothing inflation to like. There's nothing in the economy

to like in the survey for the administration. All right. Randall Lane and Driton Nesho, thank you both very much for picking up the mantle. We appreciate it.