Morning Joe - This morning: Congress briefing on Venezuela

Episode Date: January 7, 2026

This morning: Congress briefing on Venezuela 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.

You know, people are saying it goes down with one of the most incredible. It was so complex, 152 airplanes, many, many. Talk about boots in the ground. We had a lot of boots on the ground. But it was amazing. And think of it, nobody was killed. And on the other side, a lot of people were killed. Unfortunately, I say that, soldiers.

Cubans, mostly Cubans, but many, many killed. They've been after this guy for years and years and years. And, you know, he's a violent guy. he gets up there and he tries to imitate my dance a little bit. But he's a violent guy, and he's killed millions of people. President Trump, talking about the U.S. military mission that removed Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro. The president also announced that he will be meeting this week with U.S. oil executives

as he seeks to exploit that country's petroleum reserves will dig into all of that. Meanwhile, Secretary of State Marco Rubio seems to be trying to tamp down the rhetoric on taking over Greenland. We'll go through what he told lawmakers behind closed doors. And we'll attempt to sort through the latest troll from the Trump administration after it published a new website rewriting the history of the January 6th insurrection. I mean, a lot of stuff going on here, of course, and we'll talk about all of that. We will say the one thing that everybody agrees on is what the president said they're up top, that the military did an extraordinary job. You know, some people saying one of the more complicated missions they've seen the United States military accomplished in quite some time.

And so everybody agrees on that. The lingering questions out there remain what's next for Venezuela. Well, actually, what's next for the hemisphere? A lot of questions. Along with Joe, Willie, and me, we have the co-host of our 9 a.m. staff writer at the Atlantic, Jonathan Lemire. Writer at large for the New York Times, Elizabeth Bue Miller joins us, and CEO and co-founder of Axis, Jim Van der Leyen, is here.

It's good to have you all with us. So this morning on Capitol Hill, top administration officials will brief the full House and Senate on Venezuela. It comes as lawmakers from both parties are raising questions about what comes next. after the capture of Venezuela's former leader and President Trump's repeated vow to run the South American country. Ahead of today's briefing, the president took to social media to announce that Venezuela will start turning over some of its oil production

to the United States. According to the president, Venezuela will provide 30 to 50 million barrels of oil to the U.S. Trump says it will be sold at market price And the proceeds will be controlled by himself to, quote, benefit the people of both countries. The transaction could be worth up to nearly $3 billion at current market prices. Let me just say, though, as we continue, Willie, there's so many questions here. First of all, will the oil company stay, get involved in it?

That's number one. Number two, this is the president who's saying this. We haven't heard anything yet from Venezuelan people. so we're not sure if, in fact, this is the case, whether they've agreed to do it, how they've agreed to do it. And finally, just as far as the market goes, if you start pumping a lot of Venezuelan oil onto the open market, which really hasn't been out there or has been in the black market,

a lot of people with the oil industry are saying, oil is going to go down to $50 a barrel, which is the biggest losing proposition. I mean, anybody that watches Landman knows, once it goes below 60, baby, it's a crisis and Billy Bob's got to start selling shit. So the oil down at 50, I'm just trying, you know, I'm trying to dig deep here. But the fact is, it would be glutting the international oil market right now and would cause a series of problems for oil companies in America.

And expect the president to hear exactly that. Friday. He's invited the heads of Exxon, Conical Phillips, Chevron, all going to come to the White House to talk about this thing that's kind of been sprung upon them. You're going to get all this oil. You're going in. They may say, that's actually not great for the oil market. If you do that, number one, and number two, we're not going to send thousands of our employees, thousands of our workers into a country that is that unstable, that dangerous, perhaps that violent. We're not going to put people at risk. So we will see Donald Trump saying 30 to 50 million barrels coming and he said the revenue will be controlled by me is great when he posted so a lot

up in the air right now and i'll like to be looking for that clip where billy bob says when the wills at 120 i got vanskill singing from a birthday party and when he goes down to 60 we're selling things um but i want to ask you to follow up on it's landman i haven't started yeah i haven't either it's a jerry jones cameo i'm telling you though Jerry Jones better actor than football owner. It's not even clear. He is a great actor. In that scene, you can see Billy Bob and John Hamm both staring going,

wait, what's going on here? Is this Olivier? Is this Texas, West Texas is Olivier? So we've heard all of this talk about oil and the president telling me we're going to keep the oil. And then we saw this post last night, 30, you know, all the oil we're going to be getting from Venezuela. I'm curious, what did you learn yesterday from the White House about how they're going to do this,

how they're going to cooperate with Venezuela, who's in charge of Venezuela, how long they'll be in charge of Venezuela? Are we really, are we hearing anything from Maduro's henchmen right now who are running the country? Are they going to cooperate and turn over all of this oil? It's an open question. right now what happens next. First of all, there were reports out of Venezuela. There have been real crackdowns there. There's been some gang activity as well as some loyal to Maduro to try to crack down on dissent in the streets. There's been reports of arrest. The New York Times

has that this morning. In terms of the arrangement with the government, it remains to be seen. We have the opposition leader, Ms. Machado, the Nobel Peace Prize winner, basically giving the interview yesterday saying she would give up her peace prize to President Trump if it meant he would help her take charge of that country. There's no sense that that's going to happen just now. Marco Rubio will take sort of the lead on this. I know there have been some speculation that Stephen Miller's going to play an outsized role. The president said Stephen Miller. Stephen Miller laughed that off. He did. Can you give us some behind the scenes info about that? Well, there's a sense here that Ruby is going to in name be in charge. The question is how much day to day can he actually

do? This is a man with multiple jobs right now. He's become a meme that he gets another job every day while sitting on that couch. But he might be spread thin. Stephen Miller is one of the architects of the original operation, the drugboat strikes. So he will have, whether it's formalized or not,

he'll certainly have a say there as well. And at the moment, you know, the Venezuelan leader has shifted her tone and suggested she'll cooperate, but it's just words right now. It's too early to know how much actual buy-in

and action there will be, but it's clear the United States is trying to dictate terms and say, you, the leader of this country, we'll do what we say, or we might look to other options. We've heard for decades now. From Colin Powell, we heard originally from Cap Weinberger.

It was the Weinberger doctrine that got transferred into being the Powell doctrine about how we avoid the next Vietnam or how we void now the next Iraq. And everybody talks about before going in, no. like what is the exit plan before you go in, do you have the support of American people? Right now. Again, nobody is saying what the military did was not extraordinary. The question is, what is the exit plan? And we have absolutely no answers several days later. Well, let's get to Jim Bandaughey and Elizabeth Bue Miller on this, and we'll look at the questions that National Review contributing editor Andrew McCarthy is asking in his new piece. What's the plan in Venezuela? He writes in part, quote, we invaded a country that hadn't

threatened us, bombed its defense capabilities, captured its de facto leader, and whisked him away to face adversarial trial in our judicial system. These are acts of war. That's how we would regard them if another nation even attempted to do it to us. What is the president's plan? It's not obvious that he has one. I don't see how you restore deterrence by taking apparent ownership of, by leaving in place the anti-American Marxist regime that was the supposed rationale for removing Maduro while simultaneously encouraging China and Russia to believe they may be able to invade their neighbors with impunity. Elizabeth B. Miller, I'll let you try and wrap your head around that and come up with some answers. Any thoughts? I have no answers. I don't think

the Trump administration does either. I think what's incredible to me is those of us who remember Iraq, and I think everybody here does, you know, it's almost like the Trump administration is learned the opposite lessons from Iraq. You know, now deep acidification is considered a disaster, you know, because the U.S. basically got rid of the Iraqi Civil Service and the military, and started it fresh, and that was, that created years and years of chaos and bloodshed. And instead, the Trump administration has not done the opposite, which is to keep the corrupt regime in place. And just, okay, we're now going to control it from a ship off the coast.

We're going to control it from, from Marco Rubio's office. This is, this defies any kind of reality. I just don't, and it's, in a way, there was never a real plan for, Iraq, this is much, much more extreme. There's no plan at all. And I think, you know, Trump seems to be the one who's threatening with these tweets and threatening the leader. If you don't do this, it's going to be 10 times worse for you. It defy, it's nobody could ever imagine this would have happened even in the first term. And now it's here. So I have no answers for you how this is going to work. Jim, there's this rhythm that we fall into where the president says something outlandish or

post something outlandish, and then the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio comes in and sort tempers it for Congress, for the American public at that news conference a couple of days ago where they were describing the strike inside of Venezuela when asked, when you say, we're going to run Venezuela. Who is going to run Venezuela? President Trump said, these people behind me, pointing to Marco Rubio and others. Rubio later said, no, we actually mean we're going to run it through policy. We're not actually going to be the ones there governing. Same thing on Venezuela just yesterday. Marco Rubio. spoke to a group of senators said, guys, we're not going to invade Venezuela. The president wants to

buy Venezuela. Excuse me, Greenland is what I meant. So you have this dynamic that we've seen where Marco Rubio has to kind of smooth out what the president has said. So which do we believe, I guess, is the question. I think Stephen Miller is a much closer approximation to what Donald Trump thinks right now than Marco Rubio is. I agree that there's not any coherent plan for how they're going to govern Venezuela now that they've toppled the regime. I'm not surprised they're able to topple the regime as easily as they could. We have a military that's bigger than the next 10 combined. We have an awesome special forces, Delta, others who've done this type of work with great

precision in the past. But if you really want to understand Trump and you want to understand kind of how he's thinking about the world, listen to Stephen Miller. I think the president has been very clear over the last couple of years that he doesn't agree with the way most people look at the global map. He thinks that people are ruthless, people are selfish, and that power is what rules. I think he's comfortable with a world where there's different spheres of influence where China has its chunk, Russia has its chunk, and we have ours, which is this hemisphere.

I think underneath that, he thinks, okay, if we have oil, I don't think oil is as valuable as it was five years ago because there's just more efficient energy and a more diverse set of energy sources. He does seem to think that oil matters a ton, but if you look at what's in Venezuela, If you look at what's in Greenland, if you look at what's in Canada, if you go back to the way that he talked about Canada earlier about a year ago, it is a lot of the minerals and a lot of the components that you need to win an AI war, which will ultimately probably decide who rules the world 10 to 20 years from now. So that would be the global way that they're looking at this.

Nobody should be surprised at the powerful staffer in this administration, not close. So Willie mentioned Greenland. The White House says President Trump is discussing a range of options to obtain that island. In a statement yesterday, White House Press Secretary Carolyn Levitt wrote in part, President Trump has made it well known that acquiring Greenland is a national security priority of the United States. Utilizing the U.S. military is always an option at the commander-in-chief's disposal. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, meanwhile, told lawmakers, Monday that recent threats toward Greenland do not signal an imminent invasion. That's according

to newer reporting from the Wall Street Journal. Rubio's comments came during a closed-door briefing with the Secretary of State explaining that the Trump administration's goal is to buy the island from Denmark. The paper reports that Rubio's remarks were in response to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer asking if the administration was planning to use military force in other places. including Mexico and Greenland. Rubio played down the idea that the United States could seize Greenland by force,

according to people familiar with the briefing. The journal also notes that U.S. and European officials say they have seen no signs of the White House preparing a military invasion of Greenland. Meanwhile, European leaders yesterday showed support for Greenland, releasing a joint statement saying the island belongs to its people. And stressing that security in the Arctic must be achieved collectively with NATO allies, including the United States. It comes after Denmark's prime minister on Monday warned that an American takeover of Greenland would amount to the end of NATO.

The Wall Street Journal's editorial board is writing about this this morning in a piece titled, Invade Greenland. Why? The peace writes, the invasion talk is probably Trumpian bluster to proud a negotiation. to buy the island or end up with some other expanded U.S. presence. But even the suggestion of force is damaging America's interest across the Atlantic. Danish Prime Minister Fredrickson was candid that, quote, if the United States chooses to attack another NATO country militarily, then everything will come to an end, including NATO. The truth of that statement is what makes military action for Mr. Trump hard to take seriously.

But feuding with friends over Greenland is giving Vladimir Putin another wedge to divide America from Europe to his benefit. That means less U.S. leverage for driving a good and durable Ukraine settlement. Maybe the Greenland Affair is merely what now passes for online MAGA entertainment. But Mr. Trump would help his own cause in every hemisphere if he dropped the invade Greenland routine. That's the Wall Street Journal's editorial board. Joe, as many people have pointed out, if you want a bigger base, we already have one on Greenland. Denmark says, go for it.

You want another base on Greenland? That's right. Go for it, says Denmark. It's unnecessary to threaten them with military force rather than to talk to them, to negotiate with them, or even to attempt to buy the island. No, it's insanity. And the fact is that they are good NATO partners of ours. So you can't even claim that it's damaging to America's national security interest because, well, there are NATO, there are NATO ally. So it is in the White House yesterday, John, saying that, that invading Greenland has always been an option? No, it's not an option unless you are absolutely insane,

unless you want to turn your back on what the United States of America has been doing since 1945, which is created. Let me say this again for idiots out there that say, oh, well, America's been suckers. No, no, everything we've set up, the world order that we set up starting in 1947 led to the American century, led to American dominance. led to America's military by and far, being the strongest military in the history of mankind,

led us to be the most powerful country when it comes to soft power, led us to become the most powerful economic machine in history. In world history, these billionaires running around saying stupid shit like this, these are the same billionaires that are billionaires because of the world order that we, created in this country post 1945. That world order begins to crumble piece by peace by peace

when you start undermining the NATO alliance by talking about invading a NATO ally. Let me just say again because I understand that there are a lot of people that say things like this, that it's a military option,

that I don't know. Maybe they're playing with coloring books, before they say things like this, let me explain again. The United States' GDP is around $25, $26, $27 trillion. Europe's, the EU's GDP, it's around $23, $24, $25 trillion. Russia's is like $1.4 trillion. It's how powerful we are when we stand shoulder to shoulder next to our allies that help us defeat Nazism,

that help us defeat communism, that will help us together overcome the threat from China. And we're talking about Venezuela when China's eating our lunch across the globe. We're talking about Greenland, when China is eating our lunch across the globe. We're talking about all of these 19th century pursuits. When China is rushing headfirst into the 21st century race, militarily, economically, diplomatically, and most importantly, Jim Vandehy would certainly say technologically

on AI? This is insanity to talk about going into Greenland. Venezuela, I understand militarily. You can talk about that. You can justify that action, if done correctly. If done correctly. And right now, the military part, again, done correctly, but we don't know what's moving, what it's going to be like moving forward and

doesn't look great right now. But Greenland, that shatters the international order that has benefited the United States time and time again. It's madness. Analysts believe that Vladimir Putin had two goals with his invasion of Ukraine. One, of course, take the country. But secondly, to really strain and fracture the NATO alliance. And this here is happening. He had nothing to do with it. And if this is already putting pressure on the alliance, everything you just said is right.

And the United States, I've been told this is sort of a good cop, bad cop routine. That they're usually, they want to, they don't want to rule out military option. And I've been writing on this, the Greenland issue the last couple of days. They want to keep the military option out there as leverage. There's no current plan.

There's no concrete steps forward to launch some sort of invasion of Greenland. I think everyone sort of knows that. Yeah, but the words. I know. That's just it. The words are damaging. The New York Times, I mean, the Wall Street Journal editorial page correctly says the words

are damaging to America's foreign policy interest. Even saying those things strains the alliance. That was an extraordinary statement that Meek and I, it happened on our air yesterday. We're talking about it when the leaders of NATO put out, they say calling out the U.S. by name repeatedly. And by the way, this is happening. while Jared Kushner is over in Europe striking a deal with our NATO allies to have Britain and France lead a security guarantee in Ukraine, where they would have a military presence in Ukraine. The Europeans are coming together with the Americans. We're moving toward a security agreement that would guarantee the protection.

of Kyiv's government. And we're talking about Greenland at the same time? Well, these things are connected because the Europe, to this point, has been really reluctant to call out the Trump adventurism when it comes to Greenland because they're afraid of upsetting the president, endangering their role in Ukraine, endangering these security guarantee negotiations. And that's why they felt like the rhetoric the last four days was so extreme, they were willing to take the risk of upsetting.

President Trump by putting out the statement yesterday, saying Greenland sovereignty, Denmark slash grievance sovereignty, must be respected. And I think we will see, though, an effort from the United States, even if military option remains just a threat and not actually something concrete, they're going to put a lot of pressure on there

to cash bonuses, stage an election, referendum, whatever it might be to try to acquire Greenland. And even that, even if there's never boots on the ground, even if there's no military deployed, because Denmark's made clear, Greenland is not for sale. Greenland is not available.

So even trying these things, going to put an extraordinary amount of strain on this all-to-important alliance. You know, really, we would be so much better off if the map showed Greenland at its natural size. Yes. You show that map looks really big. See that?

Look, that just looks so inviting. Yeah. So who wouldn't want that? Right. It's not that big. The president sees that it's the size of the United States, bigger than the United States. We need to have that.

But when it's flat on the map. Exactly. It's actually. All right. We've just scratched the surface here. Still ahead on Morning Joe, a look at the new effort by the White House to rewrite the history of the January 6th Capitol attack. Plus, it seems President Trump just figured out that health care will be a major issue ahead of the midterms. We'll show you his new comments. Morning Joe.

We'll be right back. You want oil to live above 60 but below 90. And don't get me wrong. We're still printing money at 90, but gas gets up over $350 a gallon, it starts to pinch. It hits 100. Every product in America has to readjust its price. $78 a barrel. That's about perfect.

It brings enough profit to keep exploring, but it don't sting as much of the pump. All right. Good morning. Good morning, Joe. Great shot. What is the thing? What's going to do? Half a half the hour.

Wait, what's going to happen with the ving? Coach is staying. Yeah. Or? Is the coach staying now that Harbaugh is available? Well, the Giants are taking Harbaugh. Oh, he's already. No, no, no, no.

Yeah, he's already settled. And I have proof here on the tabloids. Oh, what I say, come join the fun. John Harbaugh fired yesterday. Right. After 18 seats. One of the best coaches? Best coach at the NFL.

If the kid makes the field goal at the end of the game, He still has his job. Yeah. And now he's a free agent. Apparently, we were talking about this earlier. Within an hour, he had a phone call from every team looking for a head coach. I was going to say, I don't get on the Twitter much. But yesterday, the second I, my son told me that Harbaugh had been fired, I go, John?

John, you mean the one that's not crazy got fired? And they said, yeah, yeah. And I said, okay. And I get on the Twitter. And I said, memo to Atlanta Falcons. Hire John Harbaugh. What's interesting is the report from Adam Schaefter was that within an hour of Harbaugh becoming available,

he heard from seven NFL teams. There are only six teams with coaching vacancies. So there's at least one team thinking of jettisoning. If you're running the Ravens, why in the world do you get rid of, really, a guy who's probably headed to the Hall of Fame, right? Just a great coach. There's been writing in the Baltimore paper that there's been some friction between Harvar and Lamar Jackson.

That might be part of it. All right. Well, we'd heard that Lamar was not, by the end of the year, wasn't all in. Yeah. And he sure didn't look like it this year. No, he was not all in this year. And again, they're this close to advancing to the playoffs if the guy doesn't miss it.

So do you guys play banana grams? Years ago, I did. Is navigable a word? Navigable is a word. It's not navigable is a word. It's navigable is a word. All right, just check. Is that in Bananagrams today?

Did your daughter beat you using Navigable? No, but I just want to make sure, because I'm about to use it, but she wins, and literally no one can beat her. The waters are navigable. In Bananagrams. Jim, in your... If you have John Harbaugh. Latest column for Axius. Exactly.

That's the... Boys. You say the era of post-disruption society has begun. Maybe the Packers are looking at Harbaugh. Oh, my Lord. Well, they're in the playoffs. Man, barely in the playoffs. How do you feel about the Packers right now, man?

They are kind of limping in there. Kind of? We've lost four games in a row, dude. I don't think there's any good teams in the NFL right now, so we're not good a shot as anybody else. But if we lose, we might have Harborough as our coach. Okay, there you go. Elizabeth looks so patient.

Okay. So, Jim, in your column, you say the era of post-disruption society has begun, but that, it is navigable for everyone if the phenomenon is understood. Explain what you mean by that. Yeah, we worked with FGS Global, which did a massive polling exercise of 20,000 people across Europe, Canada, Japan, in the U.S. And then also talked to 175, basically C-suite-level people person to person. What was striking is, in every single country, it's the exact same dynamic that we see here. We tend to think that we're special or everything's kind of weird because,

of Trump, in all of those countries, everyone is way more pessimistic than ever before. Everyone's more confused and more distrustful than ever before. The number one topic in every single country is affordability. It's not a topic in a different country. And what that is is we tend to think, like, well, everything's being disrupted now. In fact, everything's already been disrupted because of AI, because of populism, because of immigration and migration. you're now living with the consequences of that.

And so in each of those countries, you're dealing with a lot of, like a lot of new politics. You're dealing with a lot of fear about AI. You're dealing with a lot of distrust of media. That's not just a U.S. phenomenon. People don't trust the media in any of these countries. And I think to navigate this stuff, to make it navigable, you have to at least understand the reality of the world that we face.

It's not a world where people just read one newspaper or see one truth. It's one where a lot of different people have a lot of different truths. You have to understand that people are pessimistic, even if things are pretty good. You see this in the U.S. I'm not saying the economy's great, but by historical standards, for most people, it's actually pretty darn good. If you look at the employment rate, if you look at inflation, which is higher than you want it, but not historically, astronomically high. If you look at the amount of savings that people have, by most measures, people are okay. But what people don't understand about economics is it's not absolute. People measure themselves against other people. And so you see

this big divide of most people who feel like, I'm not making more money because of the stock market. If Navidia goes up, don't do a damn thing for me. I don't have any investment in that versus all these people at the top, which is getting bigger and bigger, who are making more money off these new technologies, who are making more money off of Donald Trump and off of his presidency. And I think to understand and navigate the next year, you just have to understand that the forces that are shaping your reality, your economy, your politics are just a lot different than a lot of people think. You see this play out on almost every topic. And Elizabeth, I know you're too young to remember what I remember growing up in the early 1970s and mid-1970s in upstate New York. But I could even remember then driving in the backseat of my parents' car, hearing them talking about how, you know, the United States is getting crushed by Japan, and the Detroit is collapsing, and GM is going under, and Dotson and Toyota are taking over, and Eastman Kodak is going by the way, all of these things that led to a post-industrial rot across the Rust Belt.

And so I just find it hard to believe that history is not going to see these two waves of technology. The technological wave that came in the 80s that led to the information and tech age that crushed American workers and workers in the West. And now were followed up by an AI wave. And nowhere has that been felt more than in journalism, newspapers, that, you know, the first way. came online in the early 2000s and just destroyed, you know, the Atlanta Journal Constitution that my parents grew up reading. Gone. I think the Cleveland Plain dealer may not be printing every day anymore. There's a number of major metropolitan newspapers that don't actually print anything anymore. They've just, they've just collapsed

Elizabeth. So it's a one-two punch over 40 years. And it's hard to figure out how these waters are navigable, especially for working Americans. Well, it seems that like this is now going to, the AI boom is going to affect sort of more white-collar workers, possibly, you know, people starting out at companies and at newspapers where the jobs they once had have been taken over by AI. So that's what's affecting people starting out in the workforce with college degrees, and that's, you know, that's frightening to people. And, you know, you mentioned all the, I was, yes, I'm quite old enough to remember the 70s. I'm also able to remember. I'm also able to remember Vietnam and the 60s in the protests when it seemed like the country was falling apart.

So, you know, those of us who despair sometimes have to remember that we've been through much worse before. Much worse. All right, writer at large for the New York Times. Elizabeth Bue Miller and CEO and co-founder of Axis Jim Vandahai. Thank you both very much. I thought it was very polite that Elizabeth tried to make me feel better about the age.

Okay. First movie Elizabeth probably remembers is like The Goonies? The Goonies, maybe, you know, dirty dancing. I mean, you know, come on. I mean... She doesn't remember that stuff. Okay.

Coming up, the House is expected to vote on extending Affordable Care Act tax credits tomorrow after some House Republicans pushed back against their own leadership. Steve Ratner is here with charts breaking down how those expired subsidies impact millions of Americans. And as we go to break, a quick look at the Travelers' forecast this morning. from Acqueweathers, Bernie, Ray now. Bernie, how's it looking? Make us some problems in the northeast here this morning. We have snow and ice in northern New England.

Your exclusive ACU of the forecast showing rain in Boston, but freezing rain west of I-95. Wait for it. The rain of fog-horn, dense fog from New York City toward Philadelphia this morning. Also, some fog in Atlanta and parts of the south. Other than that, though, it's just sunny and warm. Your exclusive ACUweather travel forecast up fogs and cause problems in New York City and Philadelphia this morning,

then gusty winds and delays this afternoon. To help you make the best decisions and be more in the know, download the ACUweather app today. It's a given thing. What a terrible thing to lose. But one thing I've learned, I've learned a lot about health care. I found health care sore, sort of like, not of tremendous interest, but it was very important. And I've made it of tremendous interest. That's President Trump talking to the House of Republicans yesterday is health care.

continues to emerge as a major flashpoint, not only within the party, but across the country. The House is expected to vote on extending the Affordable Care Act tax credits tomorrow after four-swing district Republicans bucked party leadership last month to join Democrats in signing a discharge petition. And I will say also, really well, I was watching. I think football this past weekend. I saw a Trump ad that talked about health care and going after private health care insurance companies looked like it was written, you know, for a Democratic presidential candidate. So somebody in Donald Trump's orbit certainly is understanding this. The president's talking about it. And we were even saying back during the government shutdown, that when he

engages, because he was traveling across the world, now he's, now we get some wars going on. But when he engages, he would most likely have the political instincts that a lot of House Republicans do not have right now. And that is, health care is going to be, if not the major issue of the 2026 elections, one of the top two or three. Yeah, it kind of got pushed off to the back burner over the holidays because of Venezuela, but this is coming right back because it does affect so many people. And despite the fact that Obamacare has become something of a dirty word from Republicans,

the benefits, excuse me, including these subsidies, are enjoyed by people of all parties. Well, it's all districts. It's popular. Green was the first to say in her very, very red district, they need these subsidies. They're very popular. Steve Ratner's got some charts on all this, the former Treasury official. Morning Joe, economic analyst is over as what we've determined, I believe, is the southeast wall. Ah, Ratner. And the Old New York Times Building. That's right. The place where he once ruled. Yeah, what floor did you rule here at Ratner? Because you told us you were the guy.

Yeah, you would walk down the halls and you would scream, do this. You have the power that you had in the old New York chomping a cigar. I was the lowliest of the low. I was a reporter trainee making $17,500 a year. So why did you have the power to get with your chomping on your cigar going, stop the presses? Stop the presses. I didn't have the power to do nothing.

I was down on the third floor in the newsroom. Very happy as a young reporter, but I was a young reporter. We were all young ones. You've got the power of the charts right now. Let's start with your first one, which gets into just how many people rely on these health care subsidies that we've been talking about. Sure, Willie. Look, health care is an unbelievably confusing subject. So it seemed to me we might start with a little bit of level setting just to help people understand what we're talking about.

Out of our 330 million or so Americans, almost exactly half of Americans get their health care from their employer, 161 million. Medicaid and Medicare represent about roughly another third of our health care. What we're talking about now is the so-called marketplace where individuals who don't have these things go to buy coverage. And this was established under Obamacare. And so there are 21 million people who are at risk at the moment because these health care subsidies actually expired on January 1st, lost, as you said, a bit amidst the Venezuela thing. And then you have the military. And we still have incredibly 27 million people in this country who don't have health insurance. We're just country in the world.

can't provide health care for all of our folks. So back in the Biden, early Biden administration, they passed an expansion of these subsidies that helped these 21 million people. And so, lo and behold, you had roughly 10, 11 million people getting this. You passed the subsidies, and now you have these 21 million people getting it. These are the percentage of the people who get the subsidies to buy this health care. Roughly everybody who buys health care in the marketplace gets a subsidy. These are essentially all lower income people near the poverty line. Poverty line for an individual $16,000 in this country. So you can imagine none of these people make a heck of a lot of money by American standards. And so the subsidies are a key element

of why they're able to do this. And this is what's at risk here now is the health care for the 21 million people. The House passed that piece of legislation, as you mentioned. Nobody thinks it's going anywhere in the Senate at the moment. The Senate's trying to cobble together a bill. But meanwhile, these things expire January 1st, and people are having to make their decisions about whether to buy health care or not. And so, Steve, as we move to your second chart, for those 21 million people, this lift in the cost is not marginal. This can be backbreaking for a lot of families. Yeah, it is not close to being marginal. It is absolutely backbreaking. So let's just take somebody who makes $35,000 a year.

He or she was paying about $1,000 for their health care. It is now going to go up by $1,600 to $2,600. If you make $35,000 a year, $1,600 a year is obviously a heck of a lot of money. And so all the way across the board, it is resulting in massive increases in premiums, roughly a doubling for people who buy their insurance in this marketplace. and as I'll talk more about in a second, a number of them therefore will have to drop out of this and not have health insurance at all. But in the meantime, let's talk about the geographical distributional effects of this

because it's not equal. So these dark-colored states, which are red states, for reasons I'll explain right now, are the biggest losers in this. Over 10% of their population is enrolled in these marketplaces and are going to be affected by this. why are they the red states? Because the red states did not opt in to the expansion of Medicaid that was passed under the Affordable Care Act. And so a lot of their folks, because they did not opt in to these Medicaid expansions, went into the marketplace. And so they have a disproportionately large number of people buying their insurance through the mechanism I just described. So they're

going to be amongst the biggest losers. Obviously, given the amount of effort, the Republicans are now trying to put into coming up with a health care bill, they do seem to recognize that this is not the outcome that they should want. But it's very complicated. You have people on all sides of the issue whether they'll get something done or not. Who knows? But these are the people who are going to be most affected. And the loss of these tax credits, Steve, as we look at your third chart, is compounded by the one big, beautiful bill and some changes made to Medicaid. Yeah. So the one big beautiful bill also actually had an even bigger set of changes to the health care system that will go to the negative, particularly they cut back on

the Medicaid eligibility. For example, they imposed work requirements. When you put the two things together, here's what is expected to happen based on CBO and KFF, which is an independent health care firm, have come up with. So back here, we had 45 million people uninsured. Obamacare took it all the way down, down, to this 25-ish number, roughly. where we are now. A lot of improvement, still not, obviously perfect by any stretch of the imagination. But you now have these two pieces of legislation. The changes in the big, beautiful bill, the Medicaid stuff that I mentioned, the work requirement, is estimated to cost 10 million people of their health care between now and 2035. This change is going to cost another 4.2 million people

their health care because they can't afford it. They're going to drop out between now and 2020. 25. The result is that by 2020-35, absent something else, we are going to be 70% of the way back to where we were before the Affordable Care Act was passed. And so without really talking much about the Affordable Care Act and name anymore, because the Affordable Act has actually become popular, the Republicans are essentially going to eliminate 70% of its benefit, kind of bit by bit piece by piece without ever like announcing that they are going to repeal Obamacare because they realized that was a political loser. So when you again put these two pieces together, what states are hit the hardest? Seven out of the ten of them are red states led by

Louisiana and Florida. And it's different effects in different places. Some of them are more the big beautiful bills. Some of them are more these enhanced tax credits. But you're looking at losses of health care, upwards of 7% of the population in these 10 states. All right. Morning, Joe, economic analyst, Steve Rettner. Thank you very much. Thank you, Steve. Very powerful, that Ratner. And when he walks out, he'll scream. Stop the press. He might. Just throw down his script. Who wrote a cloud of smoke? Who wrote this headline?

Like the rope on. Snapping as suspenders. All right, still ahead. What part did you guys go to, Steve, after you finished your reporting? Yeah, after your shift. Well, after you did your shift, what was the bar around here that... Sardis. Sardis on 44th Street. We could go out the back door.

And then there was a place called Gophs, which was across the street, which is kind of where the pressman went. And what we call a dive bar today was across the street. So that was fun, too. So, yeah, we had some bars. We had some bars. Give us your best story from the dive bar. Wow.

Your best journalistic story, Steve. is when like the pressman told us to get the hell out it wasn't our bar it was their bar all right that is right quick very quick i like