Morning Joe - Savannah Guthrie and family make tearful plea for mother’s return

Episode Date: February 5, 2026

Savannah Guthrie and family make tearful plea for mother’s return 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.

These people were brought to our country to vote, and they vote illegally. And the, you know, amazing that the Republicans aren't tougher on it. The Republicans should say, we want to take over. We should take over the voting in at least many, 15 places. The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting. We have states that are so crooked, and they're counting votes. We have states that I won that show I didn't win. Now, you're going to see something in Georgia,

they were able to get with the court order, the ballots. You're going to see some interesting things come out. But, you know, like the 2020 election. I won that election by so much. Everybody does it. Okay. Let's talk about the midterms. You've recently suggested nationalizing elections.

What do you mean by that? When, and I didn't say national, I said, there are some areas in our country that are extremely corrupt. They have very corrupt elections. Take a look at Detroit. Take a look at Philadelphia. Take a look at Atlanta. there are some areas that are unbelievably corrupt. I could give you plenty of more, too.

I say that we cannot have corrupt elections. All right. Why do we agree? Everybody here agree on that? Yeah. No corrupt elections? Yeah. All right. Good. President Trump claiming he didn't say what he did say about elections earlier this week. We're going to have much more from this wide-ranging interview with NBC News, including his comments on the removal of hundreds of federal officers from Minnesota and what to expect from immigration operations going forward. It comes as new polling shows more Americans disapprove of how the Trump administration is enforcing immigration laws. Plus, a fact check on President Trump's most repeated claims about the economy. Steve Ratner is here with his charts to break it all down for us.

it is interesting. We heard some backtracking from Republicans. We obviously the president saying, no, no, no, I don't want to nationalize elections. We just don't want corrupt elections. I think everybody would agree with that, no corrupt elections. But John Thune clearly said, clearly said, no, there's no nationalizing of elections. That's not going to happen. And Mike Johnson, after seeming to nod to it, told reporters later, no, no, no, national elections. When pressed, yeah. It's not, it's not a federal issue that needs to be the state. So, so like a lot of things, there's sort of the flexing and then the backing off. And I think also, you know, a lot of things are going to, when you look at what he said about

immigration, there are some polls that are not only showing his immigration numbers down, but one of them that was really shocking in the Quinnipiac. And I know the White House has to be looking at and saying, okay, now, this is going in a terrible direction is when a lot more Americans said that the president's immigration policies actually were making them feel less safe. Now, there's some conflating of the southern border and what they're seeing on television, but at the same time, just on the issue of immigration, if they're saying his immigration policies are making them feel less safe, then obviously that is a strong warning. sign to, and there we have it. I mean, 51% of Americans say his immigration approach is making

the country less safe. Only 35, say more safe. Those are stunning numbers. Yeah, and that's in keeping with polling we've been seeing for several weeks that the White House, despite its claims, really knows and understands and that they're sharing with Donald Trump and he gets that, which is probably why you saw the drawdown yesterday from Tom Holman of 700 ICE agents. Now, Let's be clear, that leaves about 2,300 ice agents in the city of Minneapolis, which is not a very big city. So we don't want to overstate the impact of that. But you're right. The polling on immigration is frankly just terrible for the president and for this administration, an issue that he won in large part on in this last election.

And he has done the job. As we've talked about, he has sealed the border. The numbers are there. And his supporters and Republicans are happy with that. But what they're not happy with is the scenes in the streets of places like Minneapolis. And that's showing up in the polling again, something like 22% of the American public. So that includes Republicans by the administration's story about what happened to Alex Pready, for example. So these things are having an impact, obviously on the people of Minneapolis, on immigrants to this country.

But Donald Trump, as we know, sees things through the lens of his own fortunes. And this is not good for him. And he's starting to realize that it appears. I mean, how bought in do you have to be on this to be part of that 22% that believe an execution-style shooting of an American citizen in the streets of America for being a good Samaritan and trying to pick up a woman who is pushed over is somehow justified it. No sane human being thinks that. And that in part is why I think the administration, more importantly than that drawdown, which still is insignificant compared to the number of people in Minneapolis. I think more important is what the president said, that in the future, they will only send ICE agents to places that invite them in. It's what I've been talking about as far as crime goes, as far as the National Guard goes.

You have to build partnerships. And there are a lot of cities that need help. There are a lot of states that need the help. But they need to tell the president and then build that partnership. And who knows, maybe together they can make. some of these cities safer. Minneapolis, maybe the eye of the storm, as you brought up, the two killings there that are extremely disturbing to most people who have seen the video.

But there's also business owners across the country who are losing workers, people who aren't showing up to work, people who aren't leaving their homes. So that sort of fear and also the economic losses, having an impact perhaps, impacting the president's poll numbers. We're going to talk more about this and other political stories of the day. But we want to get to today show co-host Savannah Guthrie and her siblings, who are now publicly pleading for the safe return of their missing mother. In a raw and heart-wrenching video posted on social media last night,

the family makes a direct appeal to any possible abductor of 84-year-old Nancy Guthrie, who was last seen at her home near Tucson on Saturday night in what police believe may have been a kidnapping. here is the family's plea in full. On behalf of our family, we want to thank all of you for the prayers for our beloved mom, Nancy. We feel them, and we continue to believe that she feels them too. Our mom is a kind, faithful, loyal, fiercely loving woman of goodness and light. She is funny and spunky and clever.

She has grandchildren that adore her and crowd around her and cover her with kisses. She loves fun and adventure. She is a devoted friend. She is full of kindness and knowledge. Talk to her and you'll see. The light is missing from our lives. Nancy is our mother. We are her children.

She is our beacon. She holds fast to joy in all of life's circumstances. She chooses joy day after day. Despite having already passed through great trials of pain and grief, we are always going to be merely human, just normal human people. who need our mom. Mama, mama, if you're listening, we need you to come home.

We miss you. Our mom is our heart and our home. She is 84 years old. Her health, her heart is fragile. She lives in constant pain. She is without any medicine. She needs it to survive. She needs it not to suffer.

We too have heard the reports about a ransom letter in the media. As a family, we are doing everything that we can. We are ready to talk. However, we live in a world where voices and images are easily manipulated. We need to know, without a doubt, that she is alive. and that you have her. We want to hear from you and we are ready to listen. Please reach out to us.

Mommy, if you are hearing this, you are a strong woman. You are God's precious daughter, Nancy. We believe and know that even in this valley, he's with you. Everyone is looking for you, Mommy, everywhere. We will not rest. Your children will not rest until we are together again. We speak to you every moment, and we pray without ceasing, and we rejoice in advance for the day that we hold you in our arms again.

We love you, Mom. We love you, Mom. from we love you we love you you know Willie obviously for anybody watching that that's so painful I we we love Savannah so much and have for a couple decades now since we've known her anybody that knows or can't help but love her that was I know for you especially and friends and the Today Show family that that that that that that had to be especially difficult to watch. It's just really hard to see your dear friend in that kind of pain,

that unspeakable pain, looking for her mother. That's Savannah in the middle there. That's Annie, her sister on the left, and her brother Cameron on the right, a retired F-16 pilot. Just a wonderful family, wonderful people looking for their beautiful mother who's still missing this morning. And in Arizona, investigators emphasize

they have not identified a suspect or a person of interest in the case, despite what's floating around in some corners of social media. There is no suspect. There's no person of interest. In a social media post yesterday, President Trump said he has spoken with Savannah and is directing all federal law enforcement to help the family and to help local police. He also made a phone call yesterday directly to Savannah. Let's bring in retired FBI Special Agent Rob DeMico.

He was a member of the FBI's hostage restaurant. team and is an MS now national security and intelligence analyst. Rob, thanks for being with us again this morning. This is the first time we've seen Savannah and Annie and Cameron speak publicly. What do you make of the video? What do you make of what you heard in the video? The big thing is they're obviously being led by the FBI's hostage negotiators because when you speak out like this, you have to personalize the person that is missing. You have to make the kidnappers look at her and not see an object of money or whatever they think they can get out of this, you have to make them see Nancy. You have to make them see their mom. They have to make them see

their grandmother. They said if, and they also gave her some strong strength. And speaking to her, if she gets a chance to see this, to stay strong. Everyone's looking for her because it is emotionally and physically obviously very probable. So, with a woman that age with the medication, so they want to give her strength. But they're really talking to the kidnappers. They want to, when they look at Nancy, they want to see the grandmother getting kisses from the grandchildren because that is human, and they want to put that human face on her. But they also talk into the kidnappers, reach out, we want to talk, which tells me that

the initial letters that were sent to the TMZ and the national ones, they may not think are valid. They also said the manipulation, which is really big now today with AI, because proof of life is getting more difficult. My kids, I had one summer where all three of four, three of four my kids were in Europe. We all had code words. If they said a certain word, they're under distress. And I had a proof of life that wasn't actually true because you don't want AI to be able to bring up your proof of life question. You want the only person to be able to answer that is the person that was kidnapped.

So there's some difficulties now coming in with technology, but they're asking to reach out. They want to talk because this is a negotiation. Obviously, if the first letter, if they thought was valid, if they had communication, they wouldn't be putting this out. It'd be a bit different from what you saw. Rob, we heard from the sheriff's office at that press conference two days ago now. There'll be another briefing later today as well, that they had processed Nancy Guthrie's home, that they had left the home.

And then yesterday or last night, they taped off Nancy's house again. And they were apparently where it's a team of FBI agents and the sheriff's office back on site. What do you read into that? I thought it was very quick to turn the crime scene back over to the family. And I think they probably saw the same thing. When the reporter went up and saw the blood outside, there was actually a comment made in that about the blood. They may have not a saw that. they may not a process, which is somewhat embarrassing.

But you also don't want the public having that much access to a crime scene like that. So I think they rethought that went back out. Obviously, probably this area doesn't deal with high visibility kidnappings often. So the investigators went out, thought they processed everything. And then I think some of the news footage that came out on it later and the access the public had to that, they rethought it and went back out and secured it. Rob, from everything that you've seen and also the actions of the local sheriff's office, does it seem like they are dealing with a specific entity or a person or still casting a wider net?

I think they're casting a wider net. I think them asking, we're ready to talk, I think is a big clue that, they don't feel they have that communication. I've done overseas kidnappings a lot, and it's always tough to figure out if you're actually dealing with the right group that has your person, or you're dealing with people that are trying to take advantage of it. So I think the, let's talk is a way to reach out and say, hey, we want to have negotiations. We want to talk to you, but they don't feel that they have it now. And also, it can bring a quicker, you know, rapid, end to this because once you start communicating, either you get to a solution or you get more

leads to be able follow up. Retired FBI Special Agent MS now, National Security and Intelligence analyst Rob DeMico, Rob, thanks for being with us again this morning. And again, Mika and Joe will say there's a press briefing later today. It was scheduled two days ago, so that doesn't mean they've got a lot of new information from us. We hope so. We hope that someone will be compelled to come forward by seeing Savannah and Annie and Cameron

in that video. Savannah, as articulate and faithful and beautiful talking about her mother, as she always is in that video. And we just hope that compels whoever, if someone is holding Nancy Guthrie, to see the humanity in her and step forward today. Let her go. We'll be following this story throughout the morning. And still ahead on morning, Joe, we have much more on the new polling showing a growing number of Americans disapprove of the administration's immigration crackdown. And as we go to break, a quick look at the travelers forecast this morning from Ackyweathers, Bernie Rayno.

Bernie, how's it looking? That's not looking too bad today, Mika. We begin in the northeast. Where? Well, it's sunny. It is cold, though. I mean, high temperatures are below historical averages. 33 degrees in New York City.

Accuethers says some flurries in Chicago this morning and then a little bit of snow in Detroit this afternoon. Storm is departing to Carolinas this morning. the frontal boundary will produce some showers in Florida, a little chilly behind the front in Atlanta, but boy, it's warming up in Texas. If you're doing any traveling, showers in Miami, a few minor delays in what? Chicago this morning. To help you make the best decisions and be more in the know, download the Ackyweather app today and enjoy the music. Welcome back in an interview with NBC News.

President Trump now says he believes his administration could use a, quote, softer touch in its immigration enforcement operations following weeks of protests and unrest in Minneapolis. He also specifically addressed the deadly shootings of American citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretty. Mr. President, speaking of Minneapolis, what did you learn? I learned that maybe we can use a little bit of a softer touch, but you still have to be tough. We're dealing with really hard criminals. But look, I've called the people.

I've called the governor. I've called the mayor, spoke to them, had great conversations with them, and then I see them ranting and raving out there, literally as though a call wasn't made. We've done a great job everywhere. It sounds like there is a shift in immigration enforcement here, that there's going to be a shift after Minneapolis. What should Americans expect going forward? Well, one thing I say to my people, you know, we do a good job.

don't get credit for it. I say they have to ask and they have to say please. When a city is going to ask and who has to say please. Or the governor, I don't want to go and force ourselves into a city, even if their numbers are terrible. Well, look, I'm not happy with the two incidents. It's not, you know, it's both of them. Not one or the other. He was not an angel and she was not an angel. You know, you look at some tapes from back, but still, I'm not happy with what happened there. Nobody could be happy, and ICE wasn't happy either. But I'm going to always be with our great people of law enforcement. ICE, police, we have to back them.

If we don't back them, we don't have a country. You mentioned Renee Good and Alex Paredes not being angels. Do you think any of that justified what happened to them, though? No, it should have not happened. It was a very sad, to me, it was a very sad incident, two incidents. And, you know, they mentioned the one now. They don't mention the other. Well, I think they were both said.

And, you know, who feels worse about it than anybody? The people of ICE. Okay. The president expanded on those deadly shootings in Minnesota, suggesting that while he, quote, hated what happened to the victims, there was not enough attention being paid to his policy victories. He then pivoted midthought to the Pentagon's attacks on alleged drug boats at sea. Two people.

It's bad. I hate it. I hate even talking about it. Two people out of tens of thousands, okay? And you get banned publicity. Nobody talks about all of the murderers that were taken out of our country. They don't talk about...

But it was two Americans. They don't talk about, we have the smallest trucks. As an example, we've been very tough on the waters and soon, you know, pretty much overall. But if you look at the waters, if you look at the waters where we knock out boats, each boat that we knock out, We saved 25,000 American lives. And DeWilly, on the killings of Renee Good and Alex Prettie, the other big remaining question is when and if the state will ever be able to pursue a proper investigation.

The government took evidence away from the scene and the head of men county is still trying to conduct an investigation. They say there is no statute of limitations on murder, but yet they are not being allowed to conduct a form. investigation as the feds have taken over. And I think that's a big remaining question here in terms of seeking justice for the families of Renee Good and Alex Prattie. It is a big question. It would be routine in any killing of two people in this case, Renee Good and Alex Prattie of sharing obviously evidence with local officials there.

The president there at the end of that sound by conflating the Venezuelan boats, I think, with what's happening in the streets of Minneapolis. So he says, yes, I don't like what I saw, but, and we should point out again that the data, the internal data from Customs Border Patrol does not support what he's saying that tens of thousands of hardened criminals are being pulled off the streets. Some are, but also vast numbers of people with no criminal records are being rounded up as well. As we mentioned earlier, the Trump administration is facing brutal new polling when it comes to the issue of immigration enforcement. The latest Quinnipiac University poll shows 62% of registered voters believe the deadly shooting of Alex Preddy was unjustified. Only 22% of Americans believe it was. 63% disapproved of the way ICE is enforcing immigration laws.

That's up six points from just last month. The poll also finds 60% of voters think ICE agents should withdraw from Minneapolis. And nearly six out of 10 voters believe Homeland Security Secretary Christy Noem should be removed from office. Also in that poll, a majority of voters, including 61% of independents, prefer giving a pathway to legal status versus just deporting undocumented immigrants. And majority of voters believe the Trump administration's approach to immigration is making the country less safe. Join us now, CEO of the Messina Group, Jim Messina. He served as White House Deputy Chief of Staff to President Obama and ran his 2012 re-election campaign. And also, senior writer at the dispatch, columnist of Bloomberg opinion, David Drucker,

and the co-host of our 9 a.m. hour staff writer at the Atlantic, Jonathan Lemire. Good morning to you all. Jim, I'll start with you here in the studio. We know that Donald Trump starts to move his position on things when he sees it hurting him personally or seeing his political fortunes. Clearly, and this is not the first poll that has shown this, this is not going over well, this immigration enforcement, the scenes we're seeing in the streets of Minneapolis with the American people, people, including many Republicans and lots of independence. So why do you suspect the administration is staying with this? To the extent it is. It's some cosmetic pullbacks and changes of leadership and that kind of thing, but the policy remains. Yeah, their overall theories don't show weakness and continue to go on here. I mean, they're not making these cosmetic changes because they woke up

and said, oh my gosh, this is a great idea. They woke up and saw a poll and saw these numbers. And, Willie, you and I have not seen numbers move like this. Having a majority. of Republicans now say this is wrong. Independence, 75% of independence say this is wrong. I mean, these are real numbers. It used to be the bedrock of the Republican Party. His coalition that he got to win the presidency was based on immigration. And now when even that's falling apart, they have real problems. And they can't get back to the issue that really is killing them, which is the economy and affordability. And so the more they continue to talk about this, the worse off they are. But Donald Trump cannot help it.

himself. He cannot do this. And so you saw that interview, he continued to steer right into it. And if you're a swing voter, what you're saying over and over and over is enough of all this. Just be a normal president, enforce our borders, and focus on the economy. And he's just not doing that. And that is why you're seeing some of these amazing election results like we saw in Texas. You know, Jim, you and I have been around politics long enough to see this up close. And I know I repeat a lot of things on this show over and over again, as I have since Donald Trump got elected. And I did it when Joe Biden was president. And before that, I always talk about, though, 2004.

Karl Rove says permanent Republican majority, 2006, Nancy Pelosi's elected speaker in House, 2008. Barack Obama's, you know, coalition of the ascendant Republicans are finished forever. 2010, it's the Tea Party. And the Tea Party comes in. We've changed D.C. forever. Two years later, Barack, I can keep going every two years. And so when I hear idiots talk about the Overton window after like three days that somebody's in office, oh, they've expanded the Overton window.

And what is it? I always get, no, no, no. It's not the Overton window. It's Newton's third law of motion. If you want to understand American politics, for every action, whether in nature or in politics, there is always an opposite and equal reaction. We see it in politics over and over again. You open up the border?

What happens? Suddenly, people become very restrictive in their views toward immigration. You start killing Americans in the streets in the name of immigration enforcement. Suddenly, we see polls like we're seeing now, where not only do they oppose the administration's immigration policies, but they start saying, you know what? we support a pathway to citizenship. We support legalization. And suddenly, they liberalize. And this isn't just now.

As you know all too well, Barack Obama wins in 2008. I swear, every Democrat saying, this is a dawning of the age of Aquarius. The next year, they lost Ted Kennedy's Senate seat. This happens all the time. And idiots come to Washington, D.C. in both parties, overreact and then they're shocked when they find out they don't own the future.

Joe, you're exactly right. There's this 10 square mile logic free zone called Washington, D.C. And people in their don't, they underestimate the normal voters. Normal voters are so much smarter than people in D.C. think. And they just want normal government. They want to enforce the borders. They want ICE to be kind to people and deal with it. They want people to focus on the economy.

Every election in the last 20 years, except for 2012, was a change election, meaning either the House or the Senate or the White House flipped control of parties. That's what we're going to have in November this year when the Democrats take the House. And it's exactly your point. The country goes back and forth between the two parties, begging them to just be normal and get normal things done and run a normal government. And this president took power, try to expand the authority of the executive branch. We have seen them be successful, run roughshod, a lot over a lot of the federal government. We've seen also Congress and Supreme Court largely abdicate their duties. But as I wrote this week for the Atlantic, Republicans are quietly, but still pushing for a bit of a course correction.

To Jim's point, talk about the economy, begging the White House to focus on that. Remember earlier this year, Susie Wiles, the White House Chief of Staff promised that President Trump would make a domestic trip each and every week this year to talk about the economy, to campaign. for Republicans because he did so little travel last year? Well, this week, no travel. They've already abandoned that promise. We'll see if it's revived. And instead, the president is. Maybe it's slightly softer rhetoric, but he's staying with his immigration push. He's staying with gunboat diplomacy, Iran being the latest example. And he's staying on vanity projects like the West, the East Wing, turning into a ballroom, the Kennedy Center, and the like. And David Drucker, you and I are sitting in the 10 square mile logic free zone that is Washington, D.C. this morning.

We'll do our best. And we're trying to fight through that. And, you know, what are you hearing here? Because those polls that we just ran through are brutal. They're brutal for the president. They're brutal for his party. And they're brutal on issues that are supposed to be his strength. As you talk to Republicans, I mean, they can read the numbers, too.

How worried are they? They're worried. Right. I mean, look, first of all, political professionals, and I've been emphasizing this, right, the people that are actually actively advising congressional candidates that work on campaigns, they get the joke, they know what's happening. And then Republican leaders whose job it is to try and preserve these thin majorities, and it's going to be more difficult to do so in the House than it will be in the Senate,

at least as things stand today. But the leadership understands the gravity of what they're facing. They understand the history, Joe just talked about. They've conducted their own polling, and they know how this goes. And a lot of them have been around long enough to see this pendulum swing. Of course, you always want to put a good face out to the public because the minute you acknowledge the trouble you're in, the headlines say even Republicans admit that they're in a lot of trouble. There's also a certain way you want to talk to the president because he doesn't like bad news and he lives in his own bubble. Look, one of the reasons why, and this has happened to Democrats, but here we're talking about Republicans because they're the ones in trouble, one of the reasons why it's hard for Republicans to get their arms around.

on this is because too few of them represent states and districts where they have a variety of voters who are going to tell them that their policies or their focus has gone astray. So when you represent a red district in the House and everybody in that district is watching conservative or populist or pro-Trump media, when you represent a red state and it's like that and you go home, you know what everybody tells you mostly? Keep fighting the fight. Trump's right. Don't Don't back down. And so the feedback loop is very dangerous. You know, whereas you're Brian Fitzpatrick in Pennsylvania 1, or you're a Republican in North Carolina, you're very well aware of how voters are reacting to the president's policies and your support for the president's policies.

Finally, you know, what I'd say is, and this is where sometimes politicians talk themselves into everything's A-OK, they look at issue polls. Well, you know, everybody believes illegal immigrant criminals should be deported. Well, yeah, they do. Like a majority of people. It's one of the reasons Trump won. But tactics matter. Politics isn't just, do you support an issue?

It's like health care reform. Find me a voter that's against health care reform. You know where the fight is? Obviously, how are we going to go about it? Where are the winners and losers? How's that going to affect me and my state versus you and your state? And it's simple. Politics is simple, but everybody complicates it

because in part, they don't want to deal with the problem they have, They don't know how to deal with it. You know, the way they could have dealt with it from the beginning as a way, we said they should have dealt with it from the beginning. Take a victory lap every week on the southern border. It's a great success. Americans will celebrate that and focus on the hardened criminals that you get deported. Unfortunately, only 7%, 7% of the people who are being accosted now,

and picked up by ICE. Only 7% are violent criminals. That means everybody else is not. That means there are so many people that have never committed a crime. A lot of U.S. citizens. That are being brutalized. And by the way, really quickly. Oh, a lot of U.S. citizens.

What is ICE for exactly? By the way, if people won't understand why the reality is what it is, what David said about people going home and being isolated, that's the danger of gerrymandering. The danger of gerrymandering for parties. They get stuck in a feedback loop. They hear the same thing over and over again. They all watch the same magin that works.

They all talk to each other. And what happens is you have, you only have like 30, 35 swing districts left in the house. And all those break sharply, in this case, most likely break sharply blue. in past cases, it would break sharply red. So, yeah, it's, and so good luck getting somebody in the districts that's 80% Republican and 20% Democratic, good luck getting them to step out and say what's best for the party

overall. They're not going to do it. Still ahead, President Trump touting economic recovery, as he once again blames Biden for inflation. Steve Ratner is here to check the president's numbers on that. That's coming up on Morning, Jeff. The polls are almost dishonest, almost as dishonest as some of the reporters themselves. Yeah.

But I'm getting very good polls. I'm getting very good polls on crime prevention, on law and order, and on the border. I have to. And I'm starting to get great polls on the economy, which I think is... The polls on the economy aren't... They're not great. They should be great. They should be.

So why aren't they? If you believe that? I don't know. I don't know. I mean, look, I've got... Americans tell us, we hear this. I mean, we're going to get into the economy later, but I mean, tell us, they don't feel it. Just see and see, I'm saying. I have $18 trillion being invested into the country. Biden had less than a trillion for four years, and the whole country was going to credit.

When does America feel it? Do you know that if they won that election and we won in a landslide? Do you know if they won that election, this country was, I think it was finished. President Trump yesterday, pressed by NBC's Tom Yamis, about his... sinking poll numbers, yes, on the economy. This comes as his former vice president, Mike Pence, is speaking out against President Trump's global tariffs at a social media post yesterday, which included a screenshot of a front page Wall Street Journal above the fold headline on the retreat of U.S. manufacturing. Pence wrote, American businesses and American consumers pay for

American tariffs, and American manufacturing is paying the price. Time to get back to free trade with free nations. That is from former Vice President Mike Pence. Let's bring in former Treasury official, Morning Joe Economic analyst, Steve Ratner with his charge. Steve, good morning. Always great to see you. So we're going to do some fact checks with some of the president's statements during his cabinet meeting last week. So let's start with how the president continues to claim inflation was at a record high when he took office. Here's what President Trump said at that cabinet meeting. We inherited very high prices. We inherited the highest inflation. in 48 years. I say the history of our country. I think it sounds almost the same. Actually,

I think 48 years sounds actually worse for some reason. So, Steve, we heard sort of that same sentiment echoed from the Treasury Secretary, Scott Besson at a hearing on Capitol Hill yesterday. What is the reality about what this administration inherited? So, you know, one of the things that's interesting about the president is that no matter how many times he gets corrected, he still goes back and says the same stuff over and over again. As he kind of implied in that clip. He used to say it was the worst inflation history. People kept correcting him, and so he now talks about 48 years. But in fact, look what happened. He didn't inherit the worst inflation history or any inflation above normal to speak of. We did have a significant amount of

inflation, of course, during COVID, up to 9%. We worked our way down. This is the Biden administration. It worked this way down, down, down, down, down, down. It got down to right around 3% when President and Trump took office, and now it's at about 2.7%. So he inherited a very stable rate of inflation, and it only got marginally better. But we're talking about tariffs, so let's just take a look at the facts on tariffs. We all know that the tariffs didn't have quite as bad of an economic effect or an inflationary effect as we thought they were. A lot of it got absorbed along the way, but that didn't mean it had no effect. So this tracts imported and domestic goods sold at five big retailers in the U.S. And you can see that going back to October of 24, the trend line of both

domestic and imported goods was down. In other words, they were in fact even going down in price because trade is a good thing. It brings in goods at lower prices for consumers, and then domestic producers have to match that. So that's where it was going. Then you hit Liberation Day and look what happens. It turns around. And the prices of both go up. And again, even though domestic goods, you'd say, well, why should they go up? It's because when imported goods go up in price, the domestic retailers and producers are able to raise their prices.

And so, in fact, the tariffs have been a contributor of probably one or two percentage points. And Powell said this himself, actually, in testimony very recently, have been going up in price. And so part of why inflation hasn't gotten down to 2% as the Fed

wants and as has been promised is because of the tariffs, as a matter of fact. Were you surprised Steve to hear Secretary Bess yesterday claim that tariffs are not inflationary, despite being presented with a letter in which he wrote tariffs will be inflationary? This is an administration in which you can only survive if you completely parrot and echo what the president says no matter what you think and give him all the credit for whatever it is we're trying to give him credit for. So I was surprised and I wasn't. Scott Besson, when he was on Wall Street, was certainly thought of as a fairly typical or

conventional Wall Street thinker, which is generally anti-tariff. And I wasn't totally surprised for the reason I said, because everybody parrots the president. So let's go back to the, as we go to your next chart, Steve, what Mike Pence said, and that's the promise that President Trump made to bring manufacturing jobs back to the United States. And he claimed that that is beginning to happen. Here's what he said. They're now building additional plants in the United States, as is everybody else. You have AI building, but the car companies, I love the car companies, and they're all coming back. Steve, what are the numbers actually show? So the numbers show, in fact, that it's manufacturing construction spending.

So this is money spent to build manufacturing facilities as opposed to making products, has actually been going down. It did go up, in fact, in 23, 24, and a lot of this was under Joe Biden, of course, and a lot of it had to do with the passage of the Chipson Sciences Act, which did spur a lot of new investment in Phoenix, Arizona, and places like that. But as of now, since Trump came in, it has just been going down. If you look at jobs, and if you look at jobs, you can see, in fact, we had COVID back here, so job creation was really bad.

Then it recovered, but it is not really recovered, never really recovered much past where it was before COVID. And again, manufacturing employment is declining. And if you talk about the car companies, theirs is also declining. One of the things that is ailing the car companies, in fact, is the way that the Trump administration is trying to kill electric vehicles. And so the car companies are cutting back on all their investment in electric vehicles, and that is one of the factors in this employment number.

As the Wall Street Journal had in its headline yesterday, and you have now, manufacturing is not booming. That's not a political statement. That's data. Finally, President Trump touts, since he's taken office, His administration has been able to secure trillions of dollars in investments in U.S. manufacturing, technology, and infrastructure. Here's what the president claimed last week. And most importantly, if you think about it, after four years in which Biden got much less than $1 trillion of investment into our country, in just actually it was taken over 11 months, even though we're 12 months.

in 11 months, we've taken in more than $18 trillion. So they did less than $1 trillion, Scott, in a period of four years. And we've done $18 trillion in less than one year. So there's never been anything like that. So president loves that $18 trillion figure, Steve. But as you point out, even the White House says it's half of that. Yeah, that's the incredible thing, Willie. obviously you've noticed how he talks about $18 trillion all the time over and over and over again.

But his own website, this is the most incredible thing, his own website only claims credit for $9.6 trillion. And so you'd think they would at least change the website or he would stop saying it, but no, they don't do either. But in fact, there's no real evidence of that either so far. You can see that this is a total private investment and all the kinds of things the president's talking about. it's been running consistently at about a trillion dollars a quarter, and you can see here that it hasn't really gone up much. So a couple other things about this. First of all, when he says Biden only got a trillion, Biden got a trillion a quarter, four trillion a year during his time in office. The likelihood of the president producing $18 trillion when our total investment is around a trillion

dollars is kind of laughable. And in fact, if you dig into some of the projects that are in in this website, you'll see some of them, like some things Apple is doing, like the semiconductor plants in Arizona that I mentioned, already happening or would happen anyway and have nothing to do with anything the president's done. So he loves his $18 trillion number, but you can't find it anywhere in the data. I suspect he'll continue to stay with it, Steve, if I were a betting man. Important fact checks on all those issues. Morning Joe economic analyst. Steve Ratner, Steve, thanks so much. So, Jim, we're talking about this idea of affordability as you look ahead. to the midterm elections. This is part of the work you do. It appears anyway that Democrats are

focused on that issue for all the reasons that Steve laid out and more, particularly inflation things just costing too much. You put that together with what the scenes we're seeing in the streets of Minneapolis and elsewhere and the general chaos, as you said earlier. What does that pretend for Democrats who appear to have something of a winning hand here? How do they keep it in November? The way they keep it is two things. one state laser focused on people's everyday lives. I love a Ratner chart. And he laid out bare where the economy is right now. And voters feel it. Again, there's so much smarter than people in D.C. give them credit for. They're out there suffering. The average swing voter has

2.8 jobs, right? They're saying to D.C. just help us. And you have a Democratic Party who's remade itself as the economic warrior party that it is when it wins elections. You saw that last week in Texas. A state Senate seat. where Donald Trump won by 17 points, the Democrats just won it by 14 points in a special election, where they were badly outspent. That kind of swing is when you look at the data. It's just about the economic numbers. Independence are now favoring the Democrats in the generic ballot by 28 points, Willie. And so Democrats have just got to stay focused on that and not follow Donald Trump, whatever he says every day. Don't go chase the free candy. It's very fun to get in a fight with Donald Trump every day.

Don't do it. Just focus on the economy. Stay laser focused on it. And the American public will reward you. To that point, it's interesting watching so many Democrats in the last month who have said, look, our focus is simply the economy. It's simply affordability. Some of them have now incorporated the deportation, these ice raids, into their message. They feel like they have to talk about that too. But of course, we don't know that issue will stay as front of mind come November. There is a long time between now and then. David Drucker, but certainly the economy is going to be, and the economy is the center of most elections. This one would surely be no exception. The presidents, you and I were talking at the break,

the president's bluster about the economy, the numbers are, a lot of them, pure nonsense. But he is a salesman. He's going to keep selling it and selling it, selling it. Are Republicans that you speak to, yeah, let's separate all the other noise, all the other distractions, simply the economy. Do they think they have a winning message on the economy?

Or are they hearing from constituents like, actually, we thought the president would do a better job than he has? Well, they believe that if the elements of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act can get out there. And if people start to experience the no tax on tips, the no tax on overtime and things like that, that will improve their standing. So they definitely believe in the policies that are in the bill. They think it will improve the economy. The question is time. The Mitch McConnell rule that I like to go by is you basically have until June of the midterm election year, to change people's minds or put yourself in a good position.

After that, you have a really hard time doing that. What Republicans will tell me is that it's an issue of focus. The polling that we've seen going back to last year, that's really problematic, is that it's not just that voters are unhappy with the president's stewardship of the economy. They don't believe he's sufficiently focused on it. He's not the kind of politician

that functions in a way where he appears to be focused. It works for him fine when he's running for president because people pick and choose the messages they want. It doesn't work for him when he is president. And that's, I think, the biggest challenge Republicans face. In addition to the fact that voters have never been sold on that bill, maybe that will change, but it hasn't so far. Yeah.

And every day he talks about Joe Biden, that gets older. I mean, it just, it's how long can he focus on Joe Biden? David Drucker, thank you very much. His latest piece for the dispatch is available to read online right now. Thank you.