Morning Joe - Tech leaders urge AI slowdown over safety concerns

Episode Date: September 14, 2026

September 14, 2026: 7am — Tech leaders urge AI slowdown over safety concerns 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.

downplay some of the concerns that you're going to be more good than bad but by a lot and i've said it i've said it for the beginning whoever wins a i and we're leading by a lot whoever wins a i wins have you ever used it yourself or have you been how do you use ai but uh i would say you know for the most you can use a i for a lot of things why i don't want to say all right welcome back to morning joe it is monday september 14 and President Trump is resisting calls for an AI slowdown as tech leaders are now expressing concern about the advancing technology. The president arguing the United States cannot lose its competitive edge to China. Those comments come days after a former anthropic worker warned that AI could eventually pose a threat to humanity. MS Now reporter Britt Miller has more.

fears of an AI catastrophe, fueling an urgent call from Anthropic CEO Dario Amadeh to slow down. I don't think I fully just appreciated what it would actually be like when the progress was as fast as it was. In an almost 4,000-word essay released over the weekend, he warns of the risks proposing a three-step plan, what he calls pacing the frontier. Whenever anyone builds an AI model, there's a third-party evaluator who can verify whether that company is following the safety practices that they're committed to. It's like a food inspector. He also suggests coordination with other Democratic nations and authoritarian governments. Anthropics top competitors uniting behind Amadeh. Open AI's Sam Altman, Elon Musk, and the CEOs of Microsoft and Google's Deep Mind writing, I agree,

is right, and Dario's essay points toward the right path forward. The call to action comes after anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon quit last week, posting the people creating AI believe it could kill us by the end of the decade. It could take down infrastructure via by hacking. It could even some people talk of even more advanced ways of causing mass destruction. Democratic Representative Ted Liu says Congress should listen. The cry for help is coming from inside the industry. And that's why it's so important for Congress to step up and to put sensible guardrails on AI. Which is why this summer he introduced the bipartisan kill switch bill with Republican representative Nathaniel Moran, legislation Amadei endorses. Our legislation is designed

for catastrophic risks, such as cybersecurity risks, biological risks, nuclear risks. So if an AI system goes rogue, the feds would have the authority to shut it down. Meanwhile, Democrats are urging House Speaker Mike Johnson to cancel the September recess to address AI regulation. But the speaker wants a meeting. I believe we need to summon the platform providers all to one big meeting and work this out together in the same room. They're also competitors with one another, right? We're not going to rush in and pass a piece of legislation that would do harm to the country and put China as an edge. Which begs the question. What happens if the U.S. puts in safeguards and China doesn't?

Putting sensible guardrails on the AI industry is not going to all of a sudden make China take the lead. That's just not how this works. We still have the smartest, most advanced folks in America working on the smartest and most advanced models, and that's going to continue. And one of President Trump's top AI advisors, David Sachs, had a pretty sharp response on X, agreeing the AI industry should paste the frontier. But dismiss the idea that Washington's permission is needed to do so. In fact, he writes, stop pretending the motivation to slow down is purely altruistic. You face massive product liability exposure if your products enable a truly damaging cyber attack. Back to you. MS now is Britt Miller with that report and joining the conversation. We have the co-founders

of Axis, Jim Van de High and Mike Allen. Also with us, Axiase, HQ, CE. Roy Schwartz. And all three of them are authors of the new book, Simplify, do 50% more with 50% less. It's described as a practical survival guide for navigating the AI era by eliminating workplace complexity and focusing strictly on what matters the most.

We'll get to that in a moment. First, we want to see if we survive it all. Joe, we heard from the senator talking about the cry for help coming from inside the interest. not necessarily the entire industry. Yeah. Now, Jim, new book, title, New Subhead, do 50% more with 50% less and then die.

It's been quite a week for the AI industry. Stop. Quite a week. And you've been following this closely. So help me sort through this and tell me where you are on this. We certainly have heard of an AI, Sam Altman. We've also heard Anthropic. say, hey, we are going into a very dangerous area.

This could end humanity. Elon Musk's been warning about this since 2014. He's still warning about it. On the other side, you have AI leaders in Silicon Valley. You see what David Sachs says going, wait a second. These guys are a duopoly. If they're concerned about destroying the world, then, you know, they can slow it down themselves.

That's number one. The second thing I heard throughout the weekend from Silicon Valley leaders was this is all about regulatory capture. They, like Ma Bell, they own the industry, they own these frontier systems, now they just want to block out future competitors. Of course, as I told one of those industry leaders, when they asked my opinion, I said, this is like asking me about credit default swaps in 2007. I read them, I studied them, I didn't understand them until September 15th, And isn't that where we all are right now? We're kind of looking through a glass darkly trying to figure this out.

I think the last week we'll go down in history as an extremely important week for this country. Because for the first time, people are finally paying attention to what we've been talking about on this show for a year. I would not underestimate what these people, what these whistleblowers are saying on the inside. It's not one or two people. We've talked about this. You're talking about literally dozens, if not scores of people, insolves. these companies, all saying the exact same thing at the exact same time. They're saying this technology is getting exponentially better, faster, in ways that they don't think that they can control.

So when they say that they need to slow down, we should listen. And I think when you talk about companies slowing down, you have to have some referee. And in a democracy, it tends to be the government. And if it's not going to be the government, it has to be some kind of agency, some kind of group with expertise, with teeth, that can monitor. are very complex machines that are growing and changing every single day so that they don't do something that could harm humanity. And maybe it's overblown and overwrought to say it's going to destroy humanity today. I tend to think that that is the case.

But long term, if these machines can teach themselves to think and think in ways that we can't control, it's not hard to envision scenarios where really bad things happen. And now more than ever, you need the smartest people across business, across government, across bioterre, across academia, labor, to get in the game and figure out a way to make sure that this ends well for us. And it is absolute nonsense that you cannot build this technology super fast, stay ahead of the Chinese without allowing the Chinese to catch up. And so I think there's a lot of disingenuous people out there saying a lot of disingenuous things. And what the viewer should remember is this matters. It matters more than any other political topic. Pay attention.

You know, Mike Allen, we had Hillary Clinton on last week, and I asked her about China, and she said, wait, you really think that she is going to allow something with more power than him to run out of, you know, run wildly out of control and be able to overtake his systems, his military, his government. And her point was that, you know, even in the tech rates, she was throwing, you know, Jack Ma and Jail are threatening him and his safety. So this idea that somehow the Chinese are just going to like sort of throw their hands up and say, let the machines take us over. She said, just isn't realistic. No, Joe, that's smart. And she goes to the top of this conversation. So some news from my reporting over the weekend on how the U.S. government is going to approach this. And AI safety, just as it has around this table, goes to the top of the agenda for the Xi Trump meeting at the end of this month.

My reporting shows that the U.S. is going to push the idea of some joint agreement between the two countries where we will see each other's models ahead of time. in order to test them for safety. Now, the U.S. government is going to push the idea, the administration is going to push the idea that it will take two to tango. Joe, two other things to watch for in the spirit of simplify three quick things. The second thing is,

if you think about President Trump's brain, and you and Mika know the president's Trump, the president's brain as well as anyone, he listens to a chorus. He listens to an orchestra. And so to the degree in which these moguls can come together, with some specifics, that is what Trump will move on. And David Sachs is going to need to be part

of that conversation. But if they come to him with something they can agree on, he will move. And the last one who was very related to that, Joe, is my conversations over the weekend show that people around the president, people he listens to, are going to push him for a more coherent policy to get away from this sort of whack-a-mole, light-touch approach that Jonathan has written. Well, we'll need to see what happens in the next few days because certainly yesterday, the president's remarks suggest he's not engaged on this just yet. He's really downplaying. In fact, he's very much on the side of AI data centers and the like, which I know some Republicans

are very anxious about as we had in November. But we are seeing some in Washington, Jim, talk about this. Senator Schatz from Hawaii last night tweeted, Congress should be on emergency footing this week, saying we have to move at the pace of the threat, not our own habits and rhythms. People are depending on us to take swift bipartisan action. And I think that is a growing sentiment. It is striking. This is the only conversation right now.

And people are really, really scared, and they're looking for Washington to do something, even if Trump's not there yet. Yeah, I mean, we talked about it last week. Like, shame on us if we don't do anything. We knew for a year and a half what was coming, and Washington did nothing. And even Democrats in Congress, they want to do something, but they don't tell you what that something is other than Bernie Sanders, which says, shut it down.

And I don't think most Democrats want to do it. But I think this is an all-hands-on-deck moment. I think they should call back Congress. I think there should be no topic being debated. in politics other than this. I can't stress enough that it's the first thing that seeps into every industry, every job, every phone, every life, almost instantaneously. It's already there.

And it's not too late. We wrote about this this weekend. There's a lot of sensible things that you can do. There's ways to govern this. There's ways to slow it. And by the way, there's ways to make it so it benefits everybody and not just a couple of really rich people. And you've got to remember when you're listening to these people like David Sacks talk about

it. Remember, they're so heavily invested in this technology. They're all in and saying that they don't like anthropic and like a couple of these companies. And therefore, they keep doubling down on just saying, oh, this is much ado about nothing. Much to do about nothing? Did you look at the hugging face episode? You could say people exaggerated, but you have machines displaying human behavior and trying to get outside of the confines at human set and then infiltrating a company.

I don't know. I want to sit down and pay attention to it, right? Joe. But, you know, the thing is, Jim, we don't know if they're exaggerating or not. We don't know if they're exaggerating that hugging face or not, because even the investigation of that episode, OpenAI is not allowed investigators to go in and see all of the material to go down all of the trails to see just how bad this is. So it's important for people to know that whatever you've read in the paper, it's likely four, far worse. and it's four, four, worse because Open AI won't open their books so we can see just how dangerous the situation is right now. Right, and, but that's why you need some kind of governing body or some kind of group.

You can't ask individual companies who are trying to raise nation-state types of money to self-regulate in the most responsible, transparent way that could put them at a competitive disadvantage. This is where we just have to be rational. People don't behave that way. So unless you're given a set of rules and those rules apply to everybody and there's ways to do it without it being heavy, without it being super heavy regulation, then they're not going to do it. And I'm telling you, if we don't do something quick, we're going to have a much worse incident than the hugging face incident. And then we're going to have people scrambling who don't even understand this topic because, Jonathan, you know from doing your reporting, a lot of these members of Congress are absolutely clueless when it comes to this topic. They waste it a year.

They didn't spend the time to understand the most important. thing facing this country, facing the world right now, and now they're scrambling to try to regulate something that's highly, highly complex. Yeah, they're certainly behind the curve here, but Mika, we should also note, President Trump, we know how much he cares about the stock market. The stock market is completely propped up by AI right now. So it's certainly not, in his own mind, he's not inclined to go after them, at least not yet. Right. Okay, so Roy, tell us about the book and how this much bigger conversation pairs down to daily life. Absolutely. Simplify. Please. At this moment, you've got AI dominating the conversation in every way.

People are overwhelmed. They're intimidated. And our belief is that every company that makes it, every person that makes it, has to simplify their life. There's just too much going on. And so this book allows you, gives you a guide, a blueprint on how to simplify things in your personal life and at your work. Okay. And so this is the benefits then, ultimately, in the world of living with AI? Well, there are some things that we do in this book that I think use AI in a really great way.

Uses it as a coach, a way to hold you accountable. So we've all read great books and we're like, okay, I'm going to go do that. Right now, I'll figure it out. And then a month later, you're back to normal. This actually has prompts in it where you can use AI for good and hold yourself accountable, like having your own chief of staff or chief simplicity officer to say, okay, let's look at your meetings. Let's look at your goals. Are you doing the things?

You're spending the time in the areas that you should. should be. And I think we're really helpful for people is that I think we're all anxious right now. We all feel overwhelmed and we assume there's nothing we can do about it. And what we found from writing the book and from living this at our company in our own lives is you literally can add 25 to 50% of your life back if you actually go through and methodically figure out where you're wasting time. And it is shocking the percentage of time that we waste doing things we don't want to do or shouldn't do. And I think the data is overwhelming in there. But what's fun about the book is it's literally a power tool. We're not going to win any literary award with this. It's literally a

power tool. And every chapter gives you a couple things that you can do. You apply them. If you like it and it made a big difference, read the next chapter. But I can guarantee you from putting it to work at Axios and seeing the effect and then putting it to work in our lives. It's a big, it's been a huge difference. Wow. Joe. So Mike Allen give us, how do we save the 50% of time that we're wasting? Give me some really concrete examples of what this book walks us through. on how we get rid of the clutter and how we focus on what's important. Yeah, Joe, we're all overwhelmed with decisions, with options, with distractions,

noise just before we were coming on the air. We were chatting with Mika. She saw the word complexity and it gave her a visceral response. And in Simplify, we show both in work and life. So a tiny example in life. So Joe, you've seen me on the campaign trail many times. and it wasn't long ago that I was a pack rat. And when I was on the campaign trail, remember my laptop case,

it had so many cords coming out of it that people called it the tumbleweed. And that complexity, that lack of clarity slowed me down. And I realized the traveling light through life that using the simplify formula of looking at what we really do, confronting how we spend our time and where our decision energy goes, deleting, cutting out. That's the fun part. What we don't need, what's holding us back from what really matters and what brings us joy. And being able to amplify that time that we have left that Jim was talking about. What are we uniquely good at? What brings us joy? Like, that's the magic of simplified because Joe, here's across ourselves.

and across our teams, across our companies. We want to be doing the right work, not more work. That's the magic and the gift of Simplify. Interesting. The new book Simplify, do 50% more with 50% less, is available tomorrow. Jim Van DeHy, Mike Allen, Roy Schwartz. Thank you all very much for coming on the show. Congratulations.

When in doubt, Simplify. I'm going to try. Still ahead on Morning Joe, Republican Senator Dan Sullivan needed to take a peek at his Democratic opponents answer in their debate. We'll show you that moment over the weekend. Plus, we'll play for you the heartfelt tribute from Alexander Zverev to his mom. After capping the Grand Slam season with his second straight title, you're watching more. He actually didn't know he won.

His team mess say, you won. He was very excited when he figured that out. Morning Joe will be right back. Then I want to thank actually one more person who's never actually watching my matches. but is the most important person in my tennis life and is in my life in general. Because when your four-year-old son gets diagnosed with diabetes and doctors in the office tell you that life and sports will be very, very limited for that child, it takes a very, very strong mother to walk out of those offices and to say,

my son will be whatever. he wants to be. If he wants to be a tennis player, he'll be a tennis player. If he wants to do something else, you do something else. But this illness will not define us. And I'm happy that we work through it. And we're doing things that we're doing right now. And my, my mother is, my mother is the most important and the strongest person I know because it takes an unbelievably strong woman to, to do what she did. Alexander Zverev with a heartfelt tribute to his mother following his victory at the U.S. Open in New York City. Zverev captured his second major yesterday, preventing the first grand slam title by an American man since 2003 was a four-set win over Ben Shelton.

Oh, Ben was just, he was good, but he wasn't good enough, just in the end. And this guy didn't know he had won, actually. now is the fourth man in the open era to earn his first two major titles in the same year after winning the French Open earlier this summer. And on Saturday, Elena Rabakana dethroned two-time reigning champ Arena Sibelanka to secure her first U.S. Open trophy. Robicana is now just needs a win at Roland Garros to complete the career grand slam. That was a good match too. But Ben Shelton, Joe, he'll be back. I am certain. That kid has an incredible future. Now, he'll be back. I mean, you looked at where he was. And, you know, it's, I always tell my kids, you know, when you're down, when your team is down by 20 points on the football field or five runs in the baseball field, that's when people are looking at you, to see what your character is, to see if your head's down,

or if you're still in the game and you're still doing it play-by-play, shot by shot. And I've got to say, I love Ben Shelton in the third set. He was down 2-0. He was still smiling. He's still hitting aces. He was still, you know, he was on his front foot. He was playing aggressively. And you just saw that even when a lot of people would have just melted down after a very long second set that he lost in tiebreaker,

he was still getting after it. And, you know, he just said, like, man, that guy is a champion. I've got to say also, Jonathan, Alexander went out of his way afterwards. And as did Ben, to be extraordinarily gracious, he went over. Of course, he hugged Ben at the net. He talked to him for a long time. Went over and talked, hugged Ben's father, went out of his way to tell him what a great son he had.

He shouted out his family, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, he. His girlfriend talked about, you know, just said a lot of great things about him. And Ben did the same thing back and forth. These two up on that stand, and it usually happens. But I thought yesterday was especially special. And it's in such direct contrast, a lot of what a lot of punk politicians do and are doing these days in the era of Trump. These guys were all class. And it was beautiful to watch that sort of sportsmanship.

at the end of, I got to say, at the end of a tournament, there was one of the greatest year as opens I've seen. I will tell you, the semi-final between Tiafo and Ben Shelton, I was one of the most highly anticipated tennis matches I have seen in a very long time, John. Oh, no question there. Yeah, social media had some fun with Severav's shout out to Trinity Rodman, Shelton's girlfriend and soccer star. But you're right. It was a classy gesture there at the end from from both men. And Pablo, I think Joe's right. The reason why that semifinal was so highly anticipated, two American men. And we've been waiting since 2003. We continue to win. 2003. The American women obviously have gotten more than their fair share of titles. They've been

fantastic and had another good run this year. This was a good U.S. Open, even if much of it was played after midnight. But I do think the future appears bright for American men, but they do still seem a notch below the sinner Al-Coraz-Zeverov group. Yeah, I was at this final. I was at this final. I was the guy annoyingly checking my phone for football scores while watching. How'd your fancy team do? I'm doing it. We're still alive. We're not over yet. We have one more game.

But Ben Shelton, let's remember. This is a kid from the SEC. He's 23 years old. It is rare to have not just a young American star like this, but one who comes out of the college system. And watching him knock on a door that was locked for three to four hours was frustrating because

Varev is disciplined and mature. And mature and is the older brother who knows exactly what he doesn't have to do that you are scrambling to do. And that, Mika, was, was, it was the gap that he has to make up that you can't make up when you're 23 out of Florida. So young. He did a great job. All right, we're going to turn back to politics and a fun moment to show you from the Alaska Senate race debate. incumbent Republican Senator Dan Sullivan of Alaska faced off against Democrat Mary Patola in their first head-to-head debate on Saturday, with Peltola's campaign seizing on this moment. Do the North Pacific Fishery Management Council and NOAA fisheries adequately consider impacts on subsistence users, salmon migration, habitat, and indigenous ways of life? Sentence off. Yes or no.

We have two nos. Thank you. Well, yeah, I guess we do. Senator Sullivan having to still look at Mary Peltola's answer after seeming to miss the question. Peltola posted that clip on her social media account writing, happy to help, Dan. Happy to help. Coming up, baseball hall of fame famer Dave Winfield is telling the story of the highs and lows from his storybook career. He'll join us next with his new memoir, touching all the. the bases, a story of power, purpose, and surviving the Bronx. Morning Joe will be right back.

That clutch hit from Dave Winfield back in 1992 helped propel the Toronto Blue Jays to their World Series victory. It's just one remarkable moment in a decades-long career from the Hall of Fame baseball player who was also the only athlete ever to be drafted by four professional sports teams, the MLB, NBA, ABA, and NFL. Now Winfield's telling you. the story of all his ups and downs, both on and off the field, and his brand new memoir, titled Touching All the Bases, A Story of Power, Purpose, and Surviving the Bronx. We'll get to that.

And then Dave joins us now. So good to meet you. Congratulations on the book. I'm just going to read a couple stats here. 283 lifetime average, 485 homers, 30100 hits. Hall of Famer, 12-time All-Stars, a bunch of silver sluggers and gold gloves. And that World Series winning hit at the age of 40, which we should know. Oh, my gosh.

witnessed the defining moment of my career. Accomplished a lot. 22 years, six teams, both leagues, both coasts, both countries. I accomplished a lot individually. But as a team, you know, that's what you always remember. All those guys in the Foxhole, all of the first championship outside of the United States. Yep. Toronto.

You know, I don't need a passport to go up there anymore. Come on, man. You know. We should send Dave to figure out relations with you. Yeah. We could weigh in on the trade. Married for 35 years? 38.

And know each other 40 plus. Uh-huh. That's my backbone. My wife, Tanya. There you go. She is. So let's talk a little bit about, I mean, people do know the stat there, four teams, four sports being drafted.

That's just an extraordinary. Hall of Fame career, lots of ups and downs, but people do certainly the Bronx and your time there with Mr. Steinbrenner and Pablo here is a Yankee fan. I decidedly am not. So talk to us about those moments here, you know, the biggest stage in baseball, but also a very tumultuous time. Yeah, it's playing for the Yankees is a big part of my career. It's a place that I wanted to play as a free agent because I had the opportunity to win.

I played seven years before that, and we were over 500 one time. And I didn't want to have a career just languishing and never experiencing, you know, doing it all. So I came here and the highest paid guy in all the sports, and within a month, things were turned on their head. The owner just for whatever reasons, and we've never gotten to the bottom of it, why he turned and said, I'm just not going to give you your money. And if you don't like it, sue me. And a battle ensued that lasted for nine plus years until I left here. And then I had six more years after I left the Yankees. and you combine all that and it adds up to a Hall of Fame career.

But I wouldn't trade playing here for anything. I wanted to be here, but the things I experienced were horrific. They were really. You wouldn't know it by my performance because I was able to separate, segregate what was happening to me away from the game. When the lights came on, boom, I'm playing great, but when I went home, I had to think about how do I protect myself? How do I move forward? How do I experience them?

Fulfill my destiny. Joe's got it. Wow, Joe. Yeah. You know, Dave, it's great to have you on the show, by the way. A lot of people that come to New York just get swallowed up by it all. It's a different thing than Boston. Boston's such a small town you can't go anywhere where everybody's not on you, not stuff about being the Red Sox. but New York's just a different thing completely. I'm curious, you've seen players that have thrived in that environment,

players that have melted in the environment. What was your secret? How could you sort of, once you stepped onto the diamond, how did you shut everything out, including the jerk up in the owner's box that wouldn't pay you your money? Yeah. Well, Joe, I don't know. I grew up in Minnesota and nice people.

great you know I had a great upbringing St. Paul, Minnesota, but I knew how to win or I was part of a winning situation at every level. Pee-wees, midges, juniors, American Legion, high school, college, baseball and basketball. So I knew how to win. I was comfortable with my skill set. And I knew I could play for anybody, really. And so that's pretty much what it was. And I just, I wasn't I wasn't uncomfortable in any of these situations. And baseball is a challenge every day. I never took it lightly. You never think that you have it beat,

that you're going to be successful all the time. But I was very comfortable coming here. And I enjoyed the people, the challenges every day. I didn't enjoy the administrative part of this. Yeah. Talk about baseball just in general. I think a lot of people that don't follow. the game closely don't understand

that it is such a mental game. And we've seen it this year with the Red Sox where through June the 24th, everybody said they were the worst team in baseball. From June 25th through a couple weeks ago, people said, oh, they're the greatest team in baseball. We've never seen anything like this before.

I've seen a lot of teams go on long streaks and then collapse in the playoffs. What is it about baseball where the Yankees aren't hitting? Dave Winfield goes up there. He starts hitting everything he sees. And then another player starts doing it and another player starts doing it.

What is it? It really is a team sport, even if it's nine individual players out there. Talk psychologically about how everybody on that field is connected and how when one person does well, it sometimes brings an entire squad along. Well, baseball is the longest season, the most protracted season. and it's a game of ups and downs and momentum and shifts. And it's like today, nowadays, they want people to go up there, swing all or nothing,

home run or take the bat back to the dugout. They're not focused on getting on base, get him on, get him over, get him in, keep the defense on their heels. That's almost absent from the way they teach the game now. But baseball is such a team sport. You're interconnected to the guy in front of you. You know what he's going to do. And you just thrive off of his skill set and momentum, the action that he creates.

And that's what I enjoyed about the game. Always did. But it's such a team thing. And mentally, what did Yogi Berra say? Baseball is 90% physical and the other half is mental. Yeah. I am confronting our Yogi Berra decision. There's a fork in the road and do I just take it?

Because I want to talk about being a fan of yours growing up. I also just flipped randomly to a page in your book. And I'm like, oh, right. Roy Cohn. Oh, yeah. This is Steinbrenner's attorney who you had to. So this is a political figure, a forefather of a lot of the politics that we deal with on this show all of the time. You had to deal with them.

When people read the book, they'll say, my God, I didn't know. I have no idea. But when we were battling over money or all the other issues behind the scenes, Roy Cohen. And I read there's a book out now. What is it, American? Yeah, there's a brand new Cohn book out. Yeah, we don't have to name it. One of Trump's attorneys as well is the subtext here.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. We had to have a meeting. Go by his home. and sit there and while he wanted to try to interrogate me and my lawyer. And everybody, it's funny, people come to me all the time and say, Dave, I remember when you and Don Maddenly were going for a batting title and so forth and so on, Donnie was going to work, and I'm dealing with these depositions every day and threats.

It was horrible. The new book, Touching All the Bases, A Story of Power, Purpose, and Surviving the Bronx, goes on sale tomorrow. Author, Baseball Hall of Famer, Dave Winfield. It's great to have you on the show. Thank you for coming in. Thank you, Megan. And congratulations on the book.

Coming up, President Trump continues to push his $5,000 dividend if Republicans keep control of Congress. But House Speaker, Mike Johnson, says the president was just brainstorming when he came up with that idea. We'll show you those new remarks. Straight ahead on Morning Joe. Welcome back.

President Trump continues to promise that he'll send $5,000 to every American adult if Republicans keep control of Congress in November. Here's what Trump said yesterday to reporters in Ireland. Mr. President, do you expect Congress would need to approve the $5,000? I don't know if the Republicans win, as they said. It's $5,000 of all adults in the country, and we can easily handle that because we're taking there so much money. We've never done better. The Democrats can't make that pledge because it'll all go to hell right away.

If the Democrats get in, you'll go into a depression. When we get in, we will continue this incredible situation. But on Meet the Press yesterday, House Speaker Mike Johnson would not guarantee that Americans would, in fact, receive that $5,000 payment. President Trump made a promise that he would send $5,000 to every American in the United. If Republicans hold on to the House and the Senate. Is that a plan you support, Mr. Speaker? Well, look, what the President was doing is reminding the American people of our extraordinary record of success and the fact that they have more money in their pockets under Republican control of Congress in the White House.

What the President is brainstorming about is ways to further incentivize and grow the economy and make sure that Americans keep more of their hard-earned dollars. So that's an idea, a new one, an idea that we'll process through Congress. Pablo, three quick notes on this. First, it's not going to happen. Second, it's not going to happen. And third, it shows Republican desperation here that Trump, Mike Johnson's just, he's just spitball on ideas

because they don't actually have anything to run on. That conversation is the time I told my little niece and nephew, we're all going out for ice cream. Then they went to my wife because we were babysitting them and they asked, so we're getting ice cream. And she was like, we were brainstorming. That was not a promise. Your uncle liked to say a lot of things.

it's a familiar dynamic that reeks of not only the desperation and lack of ideas, but also the unciriousness. We're just going to say things and then not have a legal avenue or the ability to even admit that we said them. Yeah. Sounds like a bribe. A bribe would add $1.7 trillion to the national debt. Still ahead here on Morning Joe, the price of diesel fuel is at an all-time high.

But President Trump is blaming another country for the rising cost. instead of his war with Iran. We're going to go through that just ahead here on Morning Joe.