Morning Joe - Sen. Gary Peters backs Haley Stevens in Michigan Senate race

Episode Date: July 14, 2026

July 14, 2026: 7am — Sen. Gary Peters backs Haley Stevens in Michigan Senate race 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.

Joining us now by phone is one of his best friends, President Donald Trump. I know you lost one of your closest friends and an ally in the Senate. How are you feeling? Well, I don't feel great. He was a great guy, and he was a friend. He would call me all the time. He would just, I'd say, stop calling me, Lindsay. Love playing golf.

Love being outside. It wasn't that he was a great striker of the ball. It wasn't exactly a perfect. He wasn't Jack Nicholas. He was not Tiger. He was totally against me. He said, I'll get you in South Carolina. I'm going to get you in South Carolina. That didn't work out too well. It was a nasty campaign. He was tough and nasty. I wanted to see the war with Ukraine end very quickly. I think he was more into, you know, keeping it going, frankly. He was a total workaholic politician. Some people don't call that work. Some people who call that a lot of talking. I think the president has zoomed through the first five stages of grief and gone straight to number six, fuck that guy.

Oh my God. You go after a man's golf game, not a good striker of the ball, just hours after his time. Not a good striker of the ball. Exactly, exactly. I think, and then he, I think he tried to pass that save act where they were. Oh. Yeah. Last thing Lindsay said to me, let's pass an act that doesn't allow people. in 45 states to use their driver's license

and doesn't let women who get married and change their names, vote. You think that's what Lindsay said to him? And let's make mail-in voting really hard, too. Just let's make it as hard as it's ever been to vote in America. That's what he told me right before he died. His dying wish. Yeah, right before he reached out and touched the Asa,

we'll just say everybody mourns in different ways. Sure. And this is... Not a great striker at the ball. Not a great striker of the ball. Let them say that about me now. Mike Barnacle is with this, and so he's more a gay. Let's bring to the conversation, the host of On Brand with Donny Deutsch.

Donny Doidge. You know, Willie, every few years, Donny has a different sort of tact to make Summers in the Hamptons more successful for him. Now he's sort of angry grammar. Instagrammer. He does on Instagram and he gives him hell. Sticking up for the Jews. Well, if you don't, do gold in my hair. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Not angry, just delivering the news. You're just delivering the way? And wherever it strikes him, back of a cab, walking down the street, wherever. He hits you with it right in the Instagram. You're, you're, you're, you've become huge, man. Yeah, well, you know, there's a lot. The social media thing, I think it's here to say. See, you're really.

Brand up. And you are, you're going after these, these GSA kids. They're just out for a good time. They're just out Friday night. They got the car. They're just out for a good time. I'm a little concerned. The parties just speaking of the car.

A little concern. I know Mara is going to have something to say about this, but we just drive in a little a little too far to the left. A little too far to the left. I think we're going to have this debate in just a moment because Mara has a great new piece that touches on this. I can't wait for that. Just a second.

Stay tuned for that. That's why we're here. But a big story out of Maine this morning here at the top of the hour. Protesters, residents there demanding justice this morning after an ICE agent fatally shot a man in Maine yesterday, marking the second deadly ice involved shooting in the United States in less than a week. Immigrant rights groups identifying the victim as 26-year-old Juan Sebastian Guerrero from Columbia. The organization say he had been issued a Social Security number and was authorized to work in the United States legally.

Initially, federal officials said Guerrero was the subject an arrest warrant, but later, Maine Senator Angus King confirmed Homeland Security Secretary Mark Wayne Mullen told him that victim was not the person ICE agents were looking for and that the agents were not wearing body cameras. Let's go live now to Biddeford, Maine, an MS now reporter Will McDuffie.

Will, what more have you learned this morning about what happened? Well, guys, we're still getting a lot of details, as you can imagine. And also, it seems like the body cameras were not worn by the ICE officers. So we may not, you know, have that information either. We do know that there was a pawn shop right on the corner of where this happened that would have had sort of a direct view of the incident. They told me that they gave their footage to Maine State Police. But what we do know is that just after 7 a.m. in this sleepy town, about 20, miles south of Portland. Neighbors around that intersection just up the hill for me were startled

because they heard what one resident told me sounded like fireworks, and they went out, they looked at what happened, and they saw a car, this white car with the victim in it kind of circling around slowly, and the ice officers trying to stop the car and eventually pulled the man out. Again, this would be after the gunshots happened, and the man was bleeding profusely from his head, one of the witnesses told me. And this witness told me that he heard the man say very clearly, I tried to stop. I tried to stop.

And also that the ICE officer, who appeared to have conducted the shooting, said, you know, he tried to ram me. He tried to ram me. So all these details are still being worked out. I will say that another neighbor right there

who came out after he heard the shots fired said that he knew the victim, that he was a nice man, a family man, His wife, he had a wife and a young daughter who apparently were right there on the scene and who had to see all of this. That witness told me that the victim was a delivery driver. He apparently was going to work. But regardless, we've seen this community pretty immediately come out in support of this and in protest against ICE. We know that ICE has been in this community for months now.

In January, they stepped up their enforcement in Maine. I think that's part of what the frustration has been. And we saw Senate candidates coming here to try to be in solidarity. We saw protesters march up the hill behind me to a local Susan Collins office to protest. So there's been a lot of frustration here, guys. All right. MSNLRourke, and Middelford, Maine. Thank you so much greatly.

Appreciate it. Donnie. We were talking about it last hour. It's outrageous. These ICE officers keep shooting into cars. They keep gunning down people in the streets of America. they killed two Americans in the streets of America that didn't have to be shot, didn't have to be killed. They lied through their teeth in both cases, tried to call them domestic terrorists, never apologized when it was clear.

Neither one of them were domestic terrorists. It continues to happen. It happened in Houston. You know, it's happening now in Maine. I mean, in the streets of America, they are shooting into cars with people that, again, we'll get all of the information. But all eyewitness accounts that we've heard so far. are that the man was not posing any threat to them whatsoever. Now, why don't we know exactly what's happened immediately?

Because once again, ICE officers that gunned down people were not wearing body cams. Why is that? You know, morally, it's reprehensible. Politically, it's inexplicable. I mean, this is not what America wants. They're taking an issue that they've owned, has been their issue of immigration and just like fumbling the ball over the one-yard line. What you don't understand is how Trump has not pulled the leash back. on us. They've got their quarters. It's unbelievable. They've got that 3,000 days. This is,

innocent Americans getting killed on the streets is just not what anybody was. That's, I think, a 95-5 issue. Is that fair to say? And just, it's inexplicable. It's horrific. It's just, it, and I've said many times before, chaos, corruption, and costs, maybe the three Cs. This is part of the big chaos story. There's no, no doubt about it. They are turning hometowns in America into kill zones. They're turning neighborhood streets in the kill zones. They were supposed to make us safer? These are the people that were supposed...

Susan Collins funded all of these people to make Mainers safer? It's just obscene. Let's ring a Democratic Senator Gary Peters of Michigan. He's a ranking member of the Homeland Security Committee. Thank you so much for being with us, Senator. This just keeps happening.

I have absolutely no idea. Maybe you can help us. Why aren't... Why is there nobody cam footage? Why do these shootings keep happening? Why are these people not trained to do what every other major police force is trained not to do? Don't shoot into cars? Why does this keep happening?

It absolutely should not be happening. We've been pressing, as you know, for months to rain in ice and to hold them accountable to the same rules that our local police force in our cities abide by each and every day. Why are they not held to those same rules, Senator? don't understand. Well, we tried, the Republicans refused to do that. As you recall, we shut down the government for a period of time trying to get the Republicans to put in these kinds of rules. They simply have not done that. It is unacceptable. And we have to continue to speak out against it. Why won't Republicans do that? Republicans, I mean, the senators you work with can't want Americans to continue being shot in cold blood in the streets of America. These these

these killings and hometowns, why would Republican senators be against basic safeguards that they would demand of their own police officers in their own communities? I can't explain it because it makes no sense to me. I'm equally as outraged as you are right now, and I think most Americans are. But you have Donald Trump, who doesn't care at all, and unfortunately, my colleagues, for the most part, are just basically rubber stamps. Whatever President Trump says, the only question. question they ask is how high do you want us to jump? They refuse to stand up and provide the kind of

check and balance that Congress has to do. They are unwilling to do it. And we're seeing what happens on the streets when you have an ice that is out of control, doesn't have proper training, doesn't have the proper rules of engagement, and aren't wearing body cams so we can actually see what happened. What are they afraid of? Clearly they're afraid of what Americans will see. And then Homeland Security Secretary at the time, Christy Knoem, after everything that happened in Minnesota when Renee Good and Alex Pretty were killed said, okay, we're going to do body cams now. We're getting $20 billion in funding. We're going to do body cams. The pattern here, the last two weeks, shooting into a car again, shooting into a car, at the wrong person. They misidentified the person. They

murdered an innocent person, or they perhaps they killed an innocent person. Then a little bit of victim blaming. They didn't call him a domestic terrorist this time, but they said he attempted to flee the scene, that they feared for public safety, so they had to shoot into the car. They're shooting in the side window again, just like Renee Good. And then nobody can. So there's no way to see it other than eyewitness accounts, or we'll see if some of those cameras come in from businesses around the area. Senator Peters, I do want to ask you about another important matter.

You've now made an endorsement in the race to succeed you in the Senate there in Michigan. You are backing Congresswoman Haley Stevens over progressive candidate Abdul Al-Said. The primary will be held on August 4th. Congresswoman Stevens also joins us now. So I'll start with you, Senator. You just over a month ago, late May, you said, I'm going to stay neutral in this race. So why the change of heart? Well, the change of heart is we just know that we have to hold Michigan.

If we have a real opportunity to take the majority in the United States Senate and make sure we can be that check on ice. We talked about how Republican senators are just unwilling to step up the way they should. The majority in the Senate is absolutely a sense. Central. I believe that we have a real shot to do that. But we can't win the majority in the Senate if we don't win Michigan. We're going to be ground zero when it comes to this campaign in the fall. And I wanted to endorse a candidate who I thought would be the best candidate for Michigan to run for the United States Senate, and that's Haley Stevens. Someone who I've known for years. I worked with her back when I first got elected to Congress during the auto

rescue when she worked closely with President Obama to make sure that we could save jobs and save the auto industry in Michigan. She is a workhorse. She gets things done. She will make an outstanding senator that can hit the ground running on day one. We can't have any on-the-job training when it comes to being in the U.S. Senate right now. Given the issues we're seeing at ICE and all of the other issues that we're facing, Haley Stevens is prepared to do that job right on day one. She's an outstanding candidate, and I certainly hope that folks get behind her around the country and understand that she's the right person to be the next senator from the state of Michigan. Congresswoman, one of the reasons why some of the Democratic Socialist

candidates are doing so well is because younger Americans see the American dream slipping away, the American dream that their parents enjoyed slipping away. They can't afford their first home sometimes until they're into their 40s if even then. It's hard for them to afford groceries. It's hard for them. It's impossible for them to pay off student loans. How do you get costs now? your first day in Congress, how do you start fighting to get costs down? So a 26, 27-year-old worker is able to actually support themselves before even thinking about being able to support their family. Yeah, and we've got 60% of Americans now living paycheck to paycheck. And how we tackle this on day one is through my bills, one called no tariffs on groceries, two,

standing up to utility companies who are getting federal funds and still raising rates, which is wholly unacceptable, also dealing with something that is hitting us hard in Michigan, which is prolonged power outages. And then we also need to lessen Michigan's dependence on China in our manufacturing sector. We have got to create more jobs and lower costs. We did that with chips, something I was deeply involved with in a bipartisan way, a win for Michigan's manufacturing sector. We can do that through critical minerals, loan guarantees, tax credits, grow our supply chain, lower cost. It works. That is proven industrial policy, not what we're getting from Trump, which is constant abuses of power, constant chaos with tariffs and mismanagement of

federal taxpayer money at the Michiganders expense. My sleeves are rolled up to lead for us in this moment. Congresswoman, I'm curious. If you were elected, how far are you willing to go personally to try and take steps to hold Donald Trump accountable? Would you support, for example, impeachment hearings if you were elected against the president? And also, are you interested at all in what is your position on reforms, for example, adding members to the Supreme Court, potentially? adding to the number of members serving in the House of Representatives. Yeah, well, you must be aware of the legislation that I authored to look at expanding the size of

the House. All of what you are talking about and asking me about is because we are outside the bounds of our Constitution because of rogue, abusive actors led by Donald Trump. The very democracy that we care so much about in America's 250th year is under, attack. And it does take courageous, effective leaders. I'm sitting here with one of them. My senator, my friend, Gary Peters, who has led for Michigan in tough times. And that's what I did during the auto rescue period and during COVID, frankly, which was wreaking havoc on our lives and Donald Trump didn't care a whit. So look, this is about creative solutions and approaches, new approaches to accountability and reclaiming a democracy that is also coming for our voting rights.

You know, we've got right now the DOJ saying that they're going to come into Michigan on August 4th, which is my primary day. You know, I'm standing by black leaders in Detroit and Grand Rapids and Flint and securing that vote coming into the Senate on day one to serve alongside leaders like Cory Booker and Raphael Warnock to get that John Lewis voting rights at Dunn, to push back again on these abuses of power. It's all hands on deck right now, certainly. All right. Senator Gary Peters and candidate he's endorsed in the race to replace him in the Senate. Congresswoman Haley Stevens, thank you both very much. Greatly appreciate it. Willie? Well, a flashpoint in this race also, good place to have your conversation, perhaps,

is Israel in support for Israel. And the Congresswoman Stevens is an unapologetic. Donny's supporter of Israel continues to support the sale of weapons to Israel. A lot of Democrats, even in Michigan, don't. And her opponent is highly critical of Israel's prosecution of the war in Gaza. Yeah, Israel seems to be kind of like a check. I don't know how we got here. Wherever you stand on Israel.

Do you really not know how we got here? No, I really don't. Have you not been seeing images out of Gaza for the past year? Do you really not know how we've got here? don't know how we've got it. Have you not looked at the images out of Lebanon? Do you know that the, they're flattening half of Lebanon? And you know none of this is working. The hundreds of thousands of people, innocent people in Yemen, in Syria, in Sudan, somehow, Israel, and by the way, Israel war is ugly. And crappy stuff happens. We're, we're paying for those bombs. We're not paying for the bombs in

in Sudan. We have a say, or at least you would think we would have a say, but this administration and past administrations have told Israel they can do whatever they want to do. And Rahm Emanuel, a guy whose dad was there at the creation of Israel who fought for Israel. Ram Emanuel is saying the biggest mistake we have made is giving a guy like Benjamin Netanyahu a blank check. And what has happened? Is Israel stronger today or weaker today? I am not. I am not. I am not. I'm talking about what I don't understand is that when a guy gets elected in New York civil. when Daria Lisa gets elected. Wait, no, no, no, no.

No, no, you've got to answer the question. I'm asking the question. I do not believe. Is Israel stronger today? Israel is more isolated. Because of Benjamin Netanyahu's because of Benjamin Netanyahu's absolutist policies. I do, I am not a Netanyahu guy.

I feel that Israel once again, this started when Israel got attacked. We forget that. And by the way, every- Who attacked them? Who attacked Israel? Yeah, who attacked? Somebody called Hamas? Amas.

And who funded? Hamas? Cutter? Why did Cutter? Thank you so much. You're just walking right down. And why did Cutter fund Hamas? Because Benjamin Netanyahu

three weeks earlier had told them to continue funding Hamas because Benjamin Netanyahu was the chief funder of Hamas so he is. So Netanyahu wanted this to happen. By the way, I'm not, I'm not

we got to move on from Netanyahu. giving you, I'm just giving you the facts. So Netanyahu is the guy that said, Qatar, come in and give money to Hamas and kill, you believe that. Well, it's not that I believe that. But with the intention of that happening, by the way, was he the first guy to give money

to Qatar? Was he the first guy? Every president has done that. You mean to Hamas? Yes. Was he the first guy to cutter? Was he the first guy to give money to the car? No, it was Benjamin Netanyahu that was having Hamas funding.

by Qatar. I don't know why. I've been asking this question since the horrors of October 7th. They refuse to answer. Why do they refuse to answer? I don't know why. I don't know. But Benjamin Netanyahu, since, I mean, Benjamin Netanyahu funded Hamas. So yes, Hamas are terrorists. Can we agree on one thing that Netanyahu is not the right guy and I am not a Netanyahu guy, but that Israel has become this insanely outsized issue ahead of course, ahead of universal health care. with the Democrats. It's insane. It's absolutely insane. You can say what you want about Israel, but the fact that Israel has become the number one issue that when they elected candidate in New York, they're not chanting free health care. They're chanting from the river of the sea. It's outsized. It's

based on a moral, oppressed oppressor thing. And I just think... You're talking about a small part of the Democratic Party. Well, it seems to be getting a lot of noise. Well, it may be getting a lot of noise in parts of New York City and Brooklyn and Park Slope. What's what happens in Michigan? It is not in South Carolina. It is certainly not an upstate New York. Ask Mike Lull, or he's running against a Democrat who's a war hero that surf for 18 years.

I just, again, my response to you was your question, how did we get here? This is not Israel of 1967. This is not Israel of 1973. This is not Israel of 1993. This is not Israel of 2003. This is Israel, and I had been warning for three years now that Benjamin Netanyahu's absolutist policies were a historical. They ignored the fact that there was always blowback in the Middle East and that it was going to crush his support in the United States of America. You know what?

Absoluteists should have seen this coming. I think you should talk to absolutists on Israel and say you should have seen this coming because Joe's dumb. he went to a southern state school and even he figured this out. Look at this. Look at this. Mamdani has a 33% higher approval rating among Jews in America than Netanyahu. Can we separate Netanyahu, Israel, and Jews? And that my question, Netanyahu aside, is that why, right after October 7th, before Israel started retaliating, did anti-Semitism spike?

Why, when Israel was attacked from day one, was on the defensive? So Netanyahu was not the right guy. He's got to go. But I just have this big problem. Well, I think if you went back and looked at polls after October 7th, you'd see a lot of people, including myself, nonstop, supporting Israel, talking nonstop. Had Jonathan Greenblatt on here like every third day talking about anti-Semitism in America, anti-Semitism in New York City, anti-Semitism in Europe, anti-Semitism in Europe, anti-Semitism on college media. Why did it spike? I have been spinning.

spending the last 20 years. And I have lauded you many times on that. Yes. Talking about anti-Semitism. Yes, you know. And I'm smirking because it would be, I would fit it somehow in between takes on the daily show and a dog floating down the river on a board the Mississippi River. More on that one, more on that one, he got canceled when he was on Scarborough Country one time. And in the middle of that, I would talk about anti-Semitism.

So I'm just telling you, you asked why to this. happened. You know what? Some people need to put a mirror up against themselves and say sometimes taking an absolutist view. I'm not an absoluteist. And turning a blind eye to the suffering that's going on out there? Not turning a blind eye. I mean, it's okay for you, it's for you to look at Gaza and say that's horrifying. By the way, I look at the girls. I look at the girls who were killed on the first day of the war. And I'm still horrified as American. And I am horrified that innocent Gaza is getting killed. What I'm saying is that Israel, who's prosecuting a war, is under a different level of volume of attention and criticism and volume that we've never seen

with any other country or religion. That's it. I'm not defending that. Let me just say. You rest assured that the day, the week, the month after the polls are closed this fall, the top three issues will be costs, costs, and costs. It will not be Israel. It will not be Palestine.

It will not be foreign countries. It will be costs, costs, and costs. That's all. Good discussion. I love you. I love you, too. We tell everybody now we love each other because they're like, Oh, what are you going?

We do it. We have these. If people knew how much we talk about this offline, I mean, you'll sometimes say something on the air and you'll call me. What do you think of that? And I'll say, so this is the discussions we need to have. I mean, this is good stuff. Yeah.

And we have those conversations, Warren, sometimes Donnie, will call me up, say, I was wearing some high-heeled boots today. What do you think of them? Do they make me look taller? And I'd say, by the way, I complimented you on your, don't we like Jonah Vest? Yeah. You like the golf fest? The golf fest, yeah.

You know what I like about that? You can go through the airport. You just put stuff in pockets. Sounds like you need to go on his Instagram. Yeah. I do. We can have, oh, that is great. I did want to say I was at the election night party for one of the D.S.

candidates in New York, Claire Beldez. And the first chant that that crowd had when they won was actually tax the rich. And so, you know what? I hear you. I just want to go to Joe's point that this is about cost, I think. I hope it is. But one of the things that I see when I talk to voters that's happening is everyday voters are connecting the fact that their tax dollars are going to spend.

They're spending millions of tax dollars, billions of dollars, on bombing civilians in a foreign country. And that's what makes Israel different for so many voters. It's what Joe said at the beginning of this conversation, that it's their tax dollars. So they feel that this is personal for them. That doesn't mean that anti-Semitism isn't also a factor. Let me ask you, if the bombing stopped and all of a sudden everything stopped, do you think this anti-Semitism would stop? No, because anti-Semitism is the oldest hate that we have and is a scourge. And it is, sadly, always going to be there until we can find a way to be better humans.

And I think it's a constant issue. That doesn't mean that Americans don't have a right to be enraged, that their tax dollars are going to fund what many people, including myself, view as genocide. It's not a genocide. A genocide. A genocide. A genocide. Let's get this straight. There is many gods and alive today is when this war started.

is not a genocide. It's just not. We can disagree on it. We'll agree to disagree on it. We're going to agree to disagree on it. But I can tell you that the uprising in the Democratic Party is about an anger that the democratic establishment is weak and has failed to stop Trump and has failed to make the everyday lives of Americans better. And if you look at the actual policies that are supported by many of the folks that people here would consider far left, and also just progressives in general, you know, and I'm not talking about the most extreme policies like prison abolition, which is not universal on the left or anything, but talking about the heart of that agenda is actually increasingly popular with the American public. It's income inequality. Income

inequality. Medicare for all. It's disentangling politics from corporate interests, by the way, which is a huge factor for a lot of people in both parties, not just Democrats. And it's spending more money for Americans here and stopping campaigns abroad, not only in Israel, but people are also very angry over Iran. So it's not only Israel. I have not heard the poor people of Iran, the people who've gotten decimated and killed. I don't hear the same level of fury and passion. I also have to say that one one interesting race to consider in New York was the race between Bradlander and Dan Goldman, two Jewish men, Democrats, both, I know, person. personally, both really good public servants.

Yeah, Dan Goldman wouldn't call it a genocide. It didn't hurt it. Like, that was the entry ticket. You have to call it a genocide. Otherwise, we can't elect you. Bradlander just... There are... That district, where I live, has a significant number of Jewish voters. And many of those voters voted for Bradlander. Others voted for Dan Goldman. And so I just, you know, this is not only about anti-Semitism.

This goes beyond anti-Semitism. This is about how... American tax dollars are being spent. Yeah. Alex is telling me we're 30 minutes over. So we got to go so you do Branda, Brando. Pram. Her palate cleanser. Yeah, exactly. All right, Mara, thank you so much.

Thank you for having us. Thanks for going to talk about socialists. Yeah, exactly. And Donnie, thank you for being with us. Could you pet Donnie on the hand and is condescendingly away? There, that's good. I like that. Very good. That wasn't condescending. I love that. Yeah, I wasn't trying to be. I was. I was not.

brand up, brand down? We're going to go brand up brand down, but coming up next, our next guest is pulling by the curtain on the idea of the self-made billionaire. He says luck can play a key role in finding success. So how do we improve our luck? We're going to get right to that with John Morgan

when we return. He's got a great Scarborough country story about a dog floating down the river. Did you remember to defrost the chicken? Oh, I didn't. I'm so sorry. Oh, that's right. I got cereal for dinner? Serial it is. Hey, how was practice today? Great, I scored two goals.

Wow, that's super. Real broccoli, pumpkin. You wouldn't mount a ceiling fan on the floor, just like you wouldn't have anyone would Morgan and Morgan handle your injury case. There you go, a familiar ad for those who've seen countless creative TV commercials for the personal injury law for Morgan and Morgan through the years.

Now, the man at the center of that business, John Morgan is out with new books, sharing lessons from his rise as a paper boy. And he says it's always paper boys. as you have to watch out for our in Kentucky to the founder of a mega firm. The key to the success, according to Morgan, is not just hard work,

but a lot of luck. And John joins us now. His new book is called Life is Luck, Lessons from a Paperboy, and how to improve your luck. Good to see you. It's good to see you. So we've known each other for a while. I told everybody you were going to tell about your

debut on Scarborough Country. It was a great one. It was very exciting for me, I had never been on national television. And all of a sudden, Joe invites me to come on national television. I was like, my God, this is my moment to get my own show. And it was 10 o'clock at night, Scarborough Country. I took a shower at my home. I drove maybe an hour to Universal Studio. I went into a room, just me and somebody else. And I waited and I waited and I waited. And then the clock kept going. It was almost 11 o'clock. Scarborough Cone.

So I finally, it's my moment. I come on. Your family's all waiting. Everybody's at home. Everybody's at home. I actually put cologne on before I went. And my family's all waiting to see me the hero. And I go on and he's going to ask me a question about nursing home.

He says, well, tell me the greatest crisis with nursing home. I said, well, Joe, 40% of nursing home workers have a criminal record. That's the last thing I got to say. Immediately after that, Joe said, John, we're going to have to break away. There's a dog floating down a river on a log. That sounds right. Skoburg on a log.

On a log. And we want to have you back someday to talk about nursing home abuse. But now we're going to. And then the next thing I look up, there's this dog on a, on a, on a branch floating down. I don't know what river. And that was it. Breaking news. So now I'm driving home in the dark.

With the cologne on. With the cologne. Brute. And I'm like, what just happened? As I'm driving down I-4, which where presidential elections are decided in America, I'm embarrassed because now I've got to go home and my family's there. And when I walked in the door, my family looked at me like, loser. are you poor SOB.

The hero is home, and I got maybe... So this is my return to Scarborough Country. 22 years later, I'm back on the big time. Very special edition of Scarborough Country this morning. And John, listen, we're so sorry. We're going to have to end it there. There is out of Fort Worth, Texas, a squirrel, is mounted, a water skate. And so, so John, you know, it's so fascinating.

everybody, you know, captains of the universe love to go out and talk about being self-made men or self-made women. And you certainly have just reached a level that is extraordinary, largest personal injury firm in America, probably the world. But you say, hey, it's not me being a self-made man. So much of it is luck. And this is an important concept. I see Donnie agreeing with you. Talk about luck and the role it plays and how you. sort of harness that lock at the right time. Well, when I got listed on the Forbes list,

it was jarring because you don't expect that. All of a sudden, you just wake up one day and there it is. And then I started thinking about how it all happened. You go all the way back. And when I went all the way back, I went back to my paper route in Lexington, Kentucky. The one thing, I don't know if any of you, I know you were a paper boy because we talked about it, but the paper boy is born with a genetic seed. There's something inside that paper boy, paper girl. Oprah was a paper girl. Walt Disney was a paper boy. Walt Martin Luther King. And it happens early. And that's luck. That's luck to have that entrepreneurial seed. And so I kind of took that paper route all the way through life. And my final answer was there was a thousand left turns, a thousand right turns,

a thousand U-turns, and then I ended up here today. One different turn. I met my wife because I decided to go to a daily mass that I didn't go to daily mass, and that's where I met my wife. If I don't go to the mass that day on a Wednesday in the University of Florida, I don't have my wife, I don't have my four kids, I don't have my grandkids. One turn. And so I started thinking about all that, and I decided to write the book to talk about luck,

because luck doesn't just happen. Luck happens when you're looking for opportunity. And so the book is about enhancing luck, finding luck, turning bad luck into good luck, making failure your friend. But not necessarily pat myself on the back. Everybody who's successful wants to say, it's me, it's me, it's me, it's me, and it's not, it's not, it's not. The really successful guy is recognized luck.

Any guy I've ever met, women, who've really made it big, whatever that definition, They go, and I was lucky. You need those breaks. You create your breaks, obviously, but I'm so happy you did an entire book about it because it's there. Well, Patrick Kennedy wrote me yesterday, Ted's son, and said that that's what his grandfather used to say all the time, that it was luck that gave him a lot of what he had.

What about dealing with failure and getting up off the mat when you fail at something? When you fail at something, I once opened up an attraction in D.C. that failed called the National Museum of Crime and Punishment. I loved it, but it didn't work in D.C. for a lot of reasons. I moved it to Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, where my other attractions are. I made a prison, and I called it Alcatraz East. That failure in D.C. prints money hand over fist in Pigeon Forged Tennessee. And it was hard to do because I knew it was

good. I knew everybody loved it, but I wasn't making money. I was breaking even. So that failure, and by the way, if you don't let failure be your friend, you're missing the greatest asset in your life because those failures are the markers through the woods that when you go through it again, you go left, you go right, you go straight. You've already made those mistakes. And so if you don't make that failure, your friend, you miss out on Alcatraz East and you're Tennessee. Where I also, you'll love this. I have four cars there.

I have Ted Bundy's VW. I got John Dillinger's sedan. I got the body and Clyde death car and the peace and resistance. OJ's Bronco. So if any of you all, so if any of you all. You love OJ's Bronco? Yes.

Wow. I was going to go to Daliwood. I'm coming out. There we can do both. Go to Fitch and Forge. A lot of people tuning in this morning will say, oh, I know him. I know him from all those ads.

So I'm curious how this. fits into the business you built, which was a personal injury firm, which is now so successful. You're in everybody's homes with this advertising campaign. What's been the key to that, to building that kind of an empire, really? Well, if I would tell somebody about, and I didn't really have a plan when I started, but when I wrote the book, here's the key. First of all, the worst luck that could ever happen to a family happened to us. My brother was paralyzed at 18. That changed everything. That changed my life the way he was treated. And then I started off on the journey. But what I think I did right that I didn't know I was doing right, this is how you

scale, is I kept pouring my profits into new cities instead of pouring it into new boats, new cars. And so I, so the first year I ever made a million dollars, I was 41 years old. That's shocking. No, because I was pouring all my money back into going to Tampa, going to Jacksonville, going to Atlanta, you know, and now the whole country. country. And, you know, my first year advertising, I spent $100,000, had to borrow money from the bank, had to pay COD before they run my ad. What do you spend now? I'll spend $600 million this year. On advertising. Wow. All advertising. Wow. Social. Yeah, 600 million. And you, you expect that to possibly double so, right? It's going to double because we have another,

We have another domain called Injury.com that I bought for a lot of money. And so we're going to run to do that as well. Okay. Well, John Morgan, life is luck. Thank you so much for being with us. This went much better than the first time. I wish that you could find the clip in the archives at Scarborough. Hey, T.J.

If you could find me being thrown off. Yeah, yeah. They're looking. So I got T. That T.J. in there, who's the director, and it was there from, from day one in Scarborough Country. So we're going to find the clip, and we will play it for you. Thank you for having me.

All right. Good to meet you, John. It's great to have you. Appreciate it. The new book, you got to read it. I absolutely love it. Life is luck. Lessons from a paper boy and how to improve your luck.

Author and attorney, John Morgan, thank you so much. And coming up next, Donnie has another edition of Brand Up, Brand Down, with a surprising designation for Twinkies. But not be Branddown, man. This is, it hurts. No, no. Really? Winkies.

Yeah. Oh, that's terrible. We'll be right back. Yeah. Thank you, John. All right, everything up to now has been prelude because it is time for brand up, brand down with our man, Donnie Joyce. All right.

Here we go. That's the debate about it. That's right. Here's the main event. The headliner. So we talked a couple weeks ago. You had Dolly Parton on the list. We said could be a perpetual brand up.

You got another one here with Michael J. Fox. Always. Michael J. Fox, who's a dear friend of mine. And I know you're on his board also. just what a hero, what an amazing guy. He's getting a first Emmy nomination since he kind of unofficially retired in 2020 for shrinking as a guest starred in a comedy. He has had, I think, five Emmys. He's spectacular in this.

And if you know him how the challenge he has to do this and to perform and to be on like this, they wrote his, Bill Lawrence, the guy who created the show who created Spin City, wrote this for him. I couldn't be happier for him. It's their great together. Harrison Ford and Michael and Michael's raves about Harrison Ford, about how he's just kind of like cared for him, basically, and make sure it's a good experience for him. It's great things to say.

It's so uplifting. And now, the real tragedy, Twinkies. Oh, man. This hurts. Don't tell me. I spoke to my people. Your people. You bet.

There's about the white lab jackets. In the mainframe. We had to give Twinkies a brand down. Unfortunately, smuckers bought post this, which also makes ding-dons, another crowd favorite. And it's really hurt their business there. They've had their stocks down 40%. The problem is Twinkies can stay on the shelf for only 35 or 65 days.

Smuckers' jams stay on the shelf for a year. The distribution doesn't sync up. It's not been a winning formula. So I'd begrudgingly and sad to give Twinkies a brand down. It must have been in a bad mood to do that. No, it hurt. But, you know, the people want honesty. You've got to tell the truth.

Sometimes the truth. Brand down for this NHL owner, what's going on here? Yeah. Chicago Hurricane. I mean, the Carolina Hurricanes. won the Stanley Cup. You can engrave a Stanley Cup. You can put 55 names on. What he did, he put a lot of people something to put their

family on. He put his family, including his young kids first before everybody else on the team, on the engraving. A lot of people up in arms about it. Probably not the best form. Before the players. One of the best liked athletes I've ever encountered visually, Brunson, his jersey. Jalen Brunz, a million dollars

for his game won jersey in the finals. I've said this. He is the most likable athlete of all time. The fact that it is Jersey. Nick's member bill you're going forward. Can you imagine what the OG jersey, the game he will put the tip in, is going to be worth millions and millions. But Jalen Brunson, this guy is just spectacular in every way, shape, of form. Sylvester Stallone. Sly. Slye. Sall up Slay. Turning 80. No way. You brought up Harrison Ford. Him and Harrison Ford, the only actors have

number one box office hit in six decades, starting in the 70s with Rocky, ending in the 2020, there's Suicide Squad. He's still doing, is Tulsa Kingston? Did they bring that? Yeah. I've met him a few times, one of the nicest guys around, and he's an icon. I mean, think about he did Rambo, he did Rocky. How many guys have two iconic figures that last through time, and he's keep going 80? Just massive. In a way, I think he's totally underrated because of all the action stuff, or like he sat in a dark room and wrote Rocky, fought for himself to be in Rocky,

which made everything else possible. And a great actor, Copland. You know, enough people don't say don't talk about that part of Hollywood history. They don't understand. I mean, and he had to write himself into the park because nobody else would hire him. And it's hard for people that weren't around in 1976 to remember just how big Rocky was. And he lifted it all on his own shoulders and made it happen. Wrote it.

It's incredible. And it was kind of almost like an independent movie. And then it blew up and to become this Oscar winning phenomenon. All right. Last one, Brand down. Young adults living with parents. Finally, if anything will be a signal where the economy is, you've got 49% of people under 30 living with their parents. Think about that.

Did you just say 49? 49% of people under 30 living with their parents. That's because they're getting squeezed on both levels. Wages, entry-level jobs are down and the cost of rent and the cost of buying a home. That tells the story right there. It's a sad story, but it's where we are. We've talked about it. This is going to be a big political issue of the fact that there are a lot of young, smart, brilliant people that are coming out of schools across.

America, some of the best schools in America can't get a job, can't get an entry job. You know, you talk to anybody that has a business. And now, why are they going to get somebody for an entry job where they can go on perplexity or go and chat, GBT, ask a question about, you know, that would usually take five hours of work and get the answer in like five minutes? I mean, that is a huge, massive challenge for this generation and for this country. And even if they do have a job buying a house, as you said, is almost impoverished. Hossile.

$40,000, the average price of that's average. Donnie, really showing your range today. Let's just say it. Yeah. What an hour. What an hour for Donnie Doyle. Very impressive. The Doge's hour.

All right. The hour of power. Still ahead. I got it. They got it. They got it. Wonder Twins activate. Still ahead.

Senator Angus King of Maine will be our guest after yesterday's deadly ice shooting in his state. He's got some new information on what may have happened about 24 hours ago. Morning Joe's coming right back.