Morning Joe - Trump delivers crass WHCD speech with 'endless' wars rage on

Episode Date: July 27, 2026

July 27, 2026 - 6am: The U.S. and Iran pause attacks as mediators work to bring both sides back to negotiating table MS NOW: Trump's team letting Republicans distance themselves from WH Poll: Most Americans think the Iran war will last months or years Seattle food festival shooting Poll: Most Americans think the Iran war will last months or years Trump orders content 'warning signs' at Smithsonian Museum 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.

Mr. Ambassador, a lot of people are very interested in the timeline of this because President Trump had initially said that this conflict would last for a matter of weeks, five to six weeks. He said, we are now at the five-month mark. Will this war be over by the new year? Well, first, this war has been going on for 47 years. This, these attacks on Americans, not in this. Of course, not necessarily this intensity. but at some level, Iran has been at war with the United States. Iran is diplomatically isolated, economically isolated, and militarily devastated. They've never been so weak, and we're negotiating from a position of strength. But very quickly, do you anticipate this conflict will be concluded by the new year? Oh, I'm not going to put some kind of timeline on it. UN Ambassador Mike Waltz, when asked about a timeline for the war,

We're going to have the latest out of the Middle East as a brief pause on strikes between the United States and Iran continues this morning. We'll dig into whether this is a sign that more negotiations are coming or if there is another reason for the de-escalation. Plus, we are now 99 days away from the midterm elections and we have new reporting on President Trump's team, allowing some Republican candidates to distance themselves from the president. Meanwhile, there's also new reporting on the turmoil inside the Democratic National Committee, which is millions of dollars in debt, sparking intense criticism of Chairman Ken Martin. Also ahead, we'll play for you comments from Borders'ar Tom Homan after he was pressed about the history of an ice agent who shot and killed a man in Maine. With us, we have co-host of our 8 a.m. hour staff writer at the Atlantic, Jonathan Lemire, MS now, National.

National Affairs analyst, John Heilman, he is partner and chief political columnist at Puck, co-host of The Rest Is Politics podcast, the BBC's Caddy K, MS now senior White House reporter Von Hilliard pulling some way too early duty for us this morning. Thank you. And presidential historian and Pulitzer Prize winning author, John Meacham is with us this morning. So, Meek, we have a lot of stories, but we start with three stories that have one thread. We've got a country that can't stop fighting, got a country that can't afford to eat, and we've got a president that can't stop talking about people's weight. Let's start with a war.

Actually, two wars. Russia's grinding fight in Ukraine continues to squeeze fertilizer and energy markets, and it's been doing that for years. That means higher prices for you. The president could help end the Ukraine war. In fact, he could have done it. his first day in office. But he won't.

Refuses to push Vladimir Putin, and you and your family pay for it in their pocketbooks. Try explaining that to our Democratic allies across Europe. Try explaining that to working Americans that can't even afford hamburger anymore. And the Iran War, it keeps grinding on and on and on, a war of choice. And as it grinds on,

American's approval of it collapses by the day. So Friday night, at an event that should have never been held, the president tells the room of reporters not to believe, quote, fake news about how that war is going. Well, that fake news actually comes from calls inside the house, from the administration, from people who know it was a mistake to go in, and there's no good way to get out. So you be the judge of that. but you don't have to judge. Higher costs. Affordability.

The president mocking affordability. Like with your grocery bill, food prices are now rising at their sharpest pace in 50 years. You can read that in the Associated Press. You can read that in a variety of news reports this weekend, but you don't have to. All you have to do is look at your bill. Food at home costs.

up 33% since 2019, against just 6.4% growth in the seven years before that. And ground beef is now $6.82 a pound, up 79%. Gas prices, they just keep spiraling up. The price of oil, spiraling up. And war, it drives up fuel and fertilizer prices. And the, those prices drive up food, and it is food that's eating more of your paycheck than at any time since Gerald Ford was president of the United States. So, against this backdrop, how did the president spend that same Friday night? Not reassuring Americans on the war, not reassuring Americans on the cost of beef or on the cost of gas. No, he spent an hour on the physical appearance of the press corps in fronting him,

even telling CNN's Caitlin Collins on camera that she's attractive but never smiles and seemed to compare her to a trans influencer. He also joked that guests would rather die than look 20 pounds heavier wearing a bulletproof vest. And then he staged a bit

attacking J.D. Pritzker as a fat pig. while later pretending to defend him. So I guess when the war is endless and Americans can't afford groceries, make this story about a reporter's smile instead. I guess that's easier than governing and actually admitting the cost of living in America is way too high.

Something he still hasn't done. John Meacham, this is, about is tone-deaf, not only of a speech, it was tone-deaf for the White House Correspondents Association to actually hold that speech. I hope that we consider that in the future while the president's going out subpoenaing members of the New York Times for doing their job. But the speech was so tone-deaf. And yet Republicans, you know, there will not be a Goldwater moment. They do not have the courage to send somebody over and talk to the president and say, enough is enough. Start governing. Start governing not only overseas, but right here at home

where Americans can't afford food, they can't afford groceries, they can't afford rent. Yeah, I mean, so many Republicans, as we've talked about, sold their soul to Trump and the check bounced, right? I mean, they've rode this particular vehicle to power. They live in absolute fear of being primaried. I used to resist using that as a verb, but now that it's so central to our political life, we should. One of the things that is the governing factor in American politics, always there, but rarely so prevalent, is the fear of a single person. And I think the president revels in that. Certainly that performance Friday night was that of a reveler, someone who enjoys inflicting pain,

I think is the best way to put it. And we'll see if there's an electoral check. I mean, because of the gerrymandering, because there are so far. few swing seats. I'm a skeptic on this blue wave that's coming just because there's so few places for the wave to form and crash to torture that metaphor a bit. But you mentioned Goldwater and the Goldwater moment in the summer of 74. I don't think there is going to be that because, you know, the party structure is just so different. In those days, there was a party structure that was separate from the president himself.

This is a cult of personality, and those who have decided to rise with it may have to fall with it. And that's the question, John Hammond, before we get to Iran, how do Republicans, as we are in 99 days to the midterms, sort of navigate this, is it fair to say, unpopular president

or at least issues that he's terribly unpopular on as they get ready to run. I think it's fair to say unpopular, and it's fair to say there are a lot of particular issues that are super problematic for Republicans. And we have some reporting on this today that I think we're going to get into,

which is that what would have been unthinkable in the past two years, the past year and a half since Trump 2.0 started, but would have been totally thinkable in any past administration would have come potentially even earlier, we're now seeing signs that the White House itself recognizes that the only

course for Republicans who are in in tough districts need to run away, need to run away from the president. And that's what is the heart of some of Vaughn Hilliard's reporting. We'll talk to Vaughn about that right now. But that's the answer, Mika, I think that the only thing left for a lot of Republicans to do is to try in the months remaining to start putting themselves getting some disqualification. between themselves and the president. And they're now, according to Vaughn's reporting, which we can talk about right now, Vaughn, they're now being given sanctioned to do that. As I said, you know, for the last 15-16 months, you would have never imagined that that was possible. But reality is

finally starting to dawn, even at the White House, about how much of an albatross the president is around Republican candidates next. Right. I appreciate that, John, along with her colleague over the White House, Jake Traylor, we just put up a new report here this morning that, frankly, after covering Trump for 10-plus years in the Republican Party that is saddled up to everything that Donald Trump says and desires from them, them going along with. This is a weird moment where Jake and I talk to an array of sources close to Trump world and the national GOP. As 99 days out, it figures out where it's going. And I want to be very clear. This is a moment for the first time that I've seen in the last 10 years, where those around Donald Trump are very implicitly

giving Senate and House candidates on the GOP side room to distance themselves from Donald Trump. And as one GOP strategist told me, that they feel like they can, for example, Tom Barrett, congressman in Michigan, whose district is literally being visited today by Donald Trump. He voted just last week on that war power's resolution to, rein in the president's ability to conduct this offensive campaign in Iran. But people aren't turning in these members to Donald Trump. The Donald Trump's tops associates, they're not sitting around the Oval Office and saying, hey, this is what this member, Republican member said. They're falling out a line. Go send out a true social lashing out at them. That's not what

is happening at this time. This is a moment where effectively Donald Trump is mostly isolated and the Senate and House candidates are able to separate themselves. And when it comes to the Iran war, we were told by multiple sources at the highest levels that Donald Trump, effectively, his messaging around the economy and the Iran war, it doesn't need to be echoed by down-ballot candidates because they understand that it's not a winning message and that instead that they should follow a playbook that has been laid out for them, focusing on things like the increase of child care tax credits, tax cuts, salt. And yet the president of the United States is, isn't even following the own playbook that the national folks around him have set up for them

in order to maintain control in the Senate. And it's quite damning to watch 99 days out, the president of the United States, the head of the party, essentially being separated from what the rest of his team and candidates on his side of the aisle are trying to do in order to actually pull off wins. Well, and you know, meek, we saw this just maybe a month or so ago, where you had the White House telling members of Congress, don't use the... term mass deportation because you look, even in the latest Fox poll, I think you have Democrats ahead of Republicans on immigration. It's just absolutely staggering. But that was the instruction. And then what happened? The administration continued policies that ended up killing two people

in the streets of America in Maine, in Texas. And the nightmare goes on for Republican candidates who have to deal with these extraordinarily unpopular policies, but have always been. been too cowardly to stand up to it now. They've been given, yeah, we'll see how long this last. I'm sure by this afternoon, he'll see one person diverting and then he'll change the policy back. But for now, they have the ability to do that. Yeah, and the head of ICE or border czar, Tom Homan is slightly conceding that the latest shooting in Maine may have actually been, you know, too aggressive and they're still looking into it. We'll be following that. We want to turn to Iran, the other point you mentioned here, the United States and Iran have paused attacks

as mediators work to bring both sides back to the negotiating table and revive the interim ceasefire deal. At this point, no U.S. strikes in Iran have been reported since Friday, and Tehran has simply halted any attacks against U.S. assets in the region. Iran's foreign ministry says this morning, the U.S. is stuck and struggling in the five-month war. The New York Times is reporting that plans to escalate the fighting in Iran were put off in part due to dwindling stockpiles of interceptors to shoot down Iranian missiles. That's according to U.S. officials who spoke to the paper on the condition of anonymity. Meanwhile, new polling shows a majority of Americans expect the fighting to go on for several more months or even years. According to the latest CBS news poll,

only 9% of Americans believe the war will wrap up within days or weeks compared to 37% who think the conflict will go on for months, another 21% say it will last for years. Jonathan Lemire, you know, we've spent trillions and trillions of dollars on the Pentagon over the past decade or so. The United States spends more money on national defense of the next 16 countries. combined. And yet we fight a five-month war and we're running

out of stuff to shoot at the enemy? I mean, for most Americans, this is just, it's, the incompetence is too hard to even fathom. And again, you're looking at the highest prices in 50 years

because they're fighting a war. And then you look at what's happening at the war, which is getting more unpopular by the day, and they're even running out of munitions to fight that war against Iran. It's enough to suggest that maybe this administration, maybe this Pentagon doesn't know what the hell they're doing. Yeah, I mean, this underscores the dilemma that President Trump is in. He has in this war, and he has no good way to get out of it. So, you know, I've talked to officials. There was a meeting on Friday. You know, we saw,

we had 10, 11, 12 plus days of the United States hitting Iran, Iran, hitting back in the region, escalating strikes. And the president, as he often does, was musing aloud that he was going to hit them even harder going forward. And there was a decision moment on Friday where there was, it was, the options were given in front of him, I'm told. And eventually, he was talked out of it by advisors who say, well, first of all, we are running out of these interceptors.

So if we strike again and then Iran retaliates, as we expect, and Iran has had far more of an ability to hit back in this last two-week stretch than the U.S. anticipated. They were able to sort of rebuild and recover more of their weapons from the first months of this conflict. Moreover, the president was told, well, even if we hit them again, we're not really sure what good it would do, that we're not really seeing a change in Iranian posture. We're not really seeing them be willing to let go of the Strait of Hormuz. So there was a sense here that that's not really going to go anywhere. And now the decision might be, Caddy, does he think about just cutting and running? Now, I think that there's geopolitical, geostrategically, that would be a disaster.

Many people have told him you cannot just leave this regime in place with the control of the Strait of Formu's. Our Gulf allies have been very clear. That's unacceptable, that it will take them years to build alternatives, to get energy through that region, to try to avoid any sort of Iran controls or tolls. But yet, you know, that may be some Republican strategists have said, well, maybe that's our best shot for the midterms. Maybe this war can fade from the headlines and we could like have a chance to salvage something in November. The president, you know, he pushed pause on the strikes, but it's not clear what comes next. It's an administration that is clearly flailing right now.

Yeah, I think one thing that we have learned, Jonathan, is that Iran and the U.S. are working on two different timelines. Iran's timeline is long. they are patient. They have studied us. They're prepared to take their time. When they have a pause in the fighting, they immediately go to rebuilding their stockpiles. That's clearly what happened during that couple of weeks' pause in the fighting recently. America's timeline is much shorter, and the midterms loom a lot longer. So when the president looks at the military options, which are striking Karg Island, well, there's a blockade already. So maybe they don't need to do that at the moment. Going after the nuclear material in Pickax Mountain, that would meet American troops on the ground and American casualties. We just had a dignified returns at Dover Base last week that had quite a chilling effect on people who saw it. And then trying to expand the attacks with some kind of ground invasion beyond Cargalyland. That just seems too risky to American forces. So none of the military options look good, which leaves those advisors who are saying to President Trump, just declare a win. Just do your kind of alternative reality thing and say, yes, this is.

was a win and we're getting out because in the end, maybe that was the best option. Maybe that is his only option. I'm not sure many people will buy it. I think people are skeptical enough that that actually is a win by now. But the military options, they just aren't any good military options at the moment. Well, and that's a problem that Donald Trump finds himself in. He's been able to bend reality to his will by beating up the press corps. His being able to bend reality to his will by beating up members of the House and the Senate, the Republicans who, you know, won't cross him, won't ever tell the truth in front of him. You can't do that with Iran. You can't do that with a Revolutionary Guard. You can't do that with a country that lost four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten of

their leaders and is not going to just sort of bow down to Donald Trump. So, He can't bend reality. So he can't declare victory and leave. He can't cut and run. He tried it. He tried to bribe Iran with half a trillion dollars. More money than Kaiser Wilhelm II had to give the Allies at Versailles in 1919, which destroyed their economy.

We tried bribing the Iranians. And they still blew up our ships. they still blocked the straight. So that's not an option. Cutting and running is not an option. A military victory is not an option unless the president puts boots on the ground and the president's not going to put boots on the ground. The only option moving forward is an economic option

where they have to choke off all sources of Iran's revenue. But we'll see. I think the president sees. the midterms in front of him like Jimmy Carter saw his election with Reagan in front of him. And that's what the Iranians know. And that's what the Iranians leverage. And that's why Iranians humiliate American presidents. We'll see if the president avoids that election trap.

And coming up, we'll talk to John Meacham about exactly what this moment in history means, as you just framed it. And still ahead on morning show, we'll get to the reported chaos within the Democratic National Committee and what it could mean for the party ahead of the mission. terms. Plus, Democrats in Maine have picked a candidate to replace Graham Blatner in the state's closely watched Senate race. What we're learning about Troy Jackson. And as we go to break, a quick look at the Travelers' Forecast this morning from Ackyweather's Bernie Rayno. Bernie, how's it looking? We're going to be battling thunderstorms on your Monday. In the Midwest,

they're going to be severe. Chicago, Detroit, Indianapolis, toward Louisville. Spotty thunderstorms. Buffalo, Pittsburgh, toward New York City, in Philadelphia, Boston, you should be rain-free. Watch out for the thunderstorm in Atlanta this morning, I should say, Miami this afternoon, and there's the heat across Texas. As far as travel delays, we're going to have them this afternoon, Miami, New York City, and Philadelphia.

To help you make the best decisions and be more in the know, download the Ackyweather app today. John meets them, of course. Look at all those cranes. Yeah, look at that. It's a lot of cranes. They're taking down the claw. I don't know.

I think they're actually building some other things. And stuff in the portico, they're overseeing it. I think they're bringing in an international pinnuckle championship in the back. Maybe it's, I don't know, not peanutkel. No, I think pinnuckle. But if you lose, you get beat up. Pickleball. Pummeled into submission.

I think it's a pickleball court. Are they doing the pickleball court? Yeah. Really really. Yeah. People like it. The president again, Scott Besson? Melania.

Yeah. Okay. Well, we'll see how that goes, John. So, botchy and backgammon. That would be good. Just pickleball. So anyway, John, sometimes history rhymes. Sometimes it just jumps up and down on itself and does repeat.

And it is also, it is bitterly ironic that the president who mocked Jimmy Carter the most and thought Jimmy Carter was the most incompetent president because of how Iran played him for a year. How ironic that that president finds himself in the same position. And this is how history usually works, isn't it? But as Dr. Brzezinski understood very well, and as Chris Matthews comes on and tells us repeatedly because he was in the White House while the Iranians, were playing Carter along, they used his upcoming election with Ronald Reagan to bait and switch, bait and switch. They knew he was so desperate for a deal because of an upcoming election that they could play him and humiliate him. And now here we are, 46 years later,

and you've got a president and really more his party desperate to get out of this. war at any cost because an upcoming election. And the Iranians are using that upcoming election that has false deadline to try to humiliate the president in every way possible. They're just going to sit back, get the terms they want, and make him look weak. So talk about the parallels between the 1980 election and how it drove a false deadline and empowered the Iranians, and now this 2026 election, how that's doing the same now. And so you have everybody telling the president to cut and run when not a single military strategist would suggest that. Right. You know, one of the problems we're at the, our current age, is that the conventional

laws of gravity have been repealed. Nobody really asked us about it, but they just did it. And so So to compare and contrast with President Carter and the hostage crisis, which unfolded, of course, at an unsettled moment in the life of the country that led President Carter, remember in the summer of 1979, to talk about a crisis of the American spirit. We look back on that now, and I think almost any of us would take that, right? If that was a crisis, boy, we've only President Carter could have seen this. What I do think is the thing to bear in mind, at least what I'm thinking about as we watch this, is I'm not entirely sure that the Iranian strategy of wear people down, you know, which is a little like, now I'm going to get some of the details of this story wrong, but a little like when Henry Kissinger was talking to the Chinese leaders in 1971 and 72, and the French Revolution came up. And Kissinger said, what do you think of the French Revolution?

And the Chinese said, it's too soon to tell, right? I mean, they have the, they have a different time horizon, as Katty was saying a little while ago. Here's the thing. If I'm not entirely sure President Trump particularly cares about the midterm. He's already said, right, he doesn't care about the cost of living. And that was a case where he just spoke truth. because he lives in his world, which tragically for so many of us is also our world. And so I don't think the conventional analogies work here.

And I think that there are certain realities that come into play. I don't see how this level of inflation and cost of living doesn't produce. a democratic midterm victory. But I say that as someone who pays attention to the way things have been. And for the last 10 years, 11 almost now, we have lived in the age of Trump. One of the questions going forward is, are we living in the age of Trumpism? And on those three letters may hang the next decade of American politics. Exactly. We'll find out a lot. in the next 99 days. One suspect has been arrested and police are still searching for another

after a mass shooting yesterday evening at a food festival in Seattle, Washington. Officials say two people died at the scene and a third died at a local hospital. Four others were injured, including a two-year-old boy. Investigators believe the two suspects were shooting at each other. That is, according to Seattle's assistant police chief, who says authorities don't yet have a description. of the suspect who's still being sought after. He went on to say there is no ongoing threat to the public.

Last night, Washington Governor Bob Ferguson said he was receiving briefings on the situation and shared his condolences. Any shooting like this is senseless. I think it's magnified for an event like this. And so all of us are hearts about to everybody who's impacted by this. I can't imagine being the parent of a two-year-old toddler, for example, who's injured in a shooting like this. But for everybody who's impacted, our heart.

All right. We're going to bring you more as this story develops all the details as they come in. And up next, we're going to explain the Trump administration's new disclaimer for the Smithsonian Museum. A disclaimer. We don't like American history. You're coming in to see American history. We don't like the part of American history where we Americans made mistakes, but actually figured out a way to fight through a and move toward being a more perfect union. Yeah, that plaque. A lot of words still makes no sense. A major courtroom filing is raising new questions about billions in canceled federal grants. We'll tell you what the Trump administration is now admitting.

We're back in a moment. All right, 20 minutes before the top of the hour, President Trump has ordered the installation of temporary warning signs outside the Smithsonian's National Museum of a movement. Of American history. I like it too. Oh, my God. Sing in the clouds. Don't bother.

It's actually not funny. So this marks a major escalation in his campaign to pressure the institution, to rewrite history, to better align with his administration's ideology. The order directs several cabin officials to take all available steps to ensure the institution corrects issues found in a report released earlier this month. accusing the museum of, quote, extreme political activism. Okay, this is so Orwellian, because they go and say that they can't be trusted to tell American story honestly. Actually, they tell the story honestly, but you actually have officials Kady K in the Trump administration that go back to the president and are enraged that they talk so much about slavery, enraged, that they talk about segregation, enraged. They talk about all of

these things that I look at as tragedies, but then look at the response to that from people like Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, and all the other people that worked hard throughout our history to take a bad situation and take a sad song and make it better and move us toward being a more perfect union. It rounds out our story and it inspires future generations that we're, that growth is possible. In fact, that's what we as Americans do. Yeah, I mean, I think when you can't look at facts and reality and accept that that is the way things were, it does suggest a slight lack of confidence. I mean, what's that phrase, snowflake? I mean, that's what a little bit this feels like on the administration's part. Oh, my God, there's something we don't like. Let's try and put up a

sign and say, we don't like it and it's not really true when it was true. So this is signage that comes after a week of congressional testimony by Smithsonian officials in hearings called by House Republicans in response to the White House report. The head of the National Museum of American History says the White House report, quote, does not fairly characterize the full body of work at the institution and that leaders are committed to accuracy a nonpartisan scholarship. I mean, John Meachnad dig through history for me and find the instance of black being called white and white being called black when it comes to looking at history. I'm sure there are lots of them and lots of them in Europe as well.

But I'm thinking of the poor tourists who are coming to Washington on their big week out to come and visit the nation's capital and they go into see a museum and actually beforehand they're being told actually everything that you see in this museum might not be quite what exactly happened. I mean, how does that make people feel good about it? what they're seeing in these exhibitions. Well, the point of history, as you suggest, is not to make people feel good. It's to make people educated.

It's to illuminate what has happened. And as Joe was saying, how we can avoid the worst of what happened and perhaps maximize the best of what's happened. I should say some years ago, I was a member of the advisory board of this museum. And so take this for what it's worth. Orwell wrote about this, arguably most recently in the 20th century, that when people in power have the capacity to alter reality, that is a means to power. And power as an end to itself is, in fact, part of the reason the American Republic was founded

was to try to avoid the tendency, the human tendency toward autocracy. So this is, there's a lot of, the irony here is as thick as the humidity at the moment. The American experiment began based on both the theological and a philosophical insight that we are all sinful, that we are all driven by appetite and ambition, that we really can't be trusted with power because most of what we would want to do is self-serving and wrong. Right. That was John Witherspoon at Princeton. That was James Madison. They had read Hobbs. They'd read Montesquieu. They understood Calvinism. They knew that their view was, we need checks and balances in the state because we need checks and balances in our souls. That's as American as anything. And what these absolutists on the administration, administration side want to do is remove the struggle. The struggle is the history. You know, it's John Lewis going across the Pettus Bridge. As Joe said, it's Frederick Douglas standing and somehow saying in 1852, a black man born into enslavement, somehow Frederick Douglass said, I do not despair of this republic. The fiat of the Almighty, let there be light,

has not yet spent its force. Why on earth did he not despair of this republic? He was right, but I don't think I would have said that. And so history is full of tragedy. It's full of, there are comic moments. There are moments of immense triumph. And there are moments of terrible tragedy. And if you can't engage both, then you're a fantasist and not a citizen. Well, you know, John, if you can't handle both, then if you're one of these fake Christian nationalists that don't ever read the Bible, just throw your Bible away because that's the story of the Bible. I mean, you look at Joseph thrown in a ditch to die by his brothers. He saves Egypt. He becomes a slave. He saves Egypt. He saves his brother. He saves his family. You look at David, a man after God's own heart, one of God's favorites. He kills a man. He commits adultery.

Still, he's keen David. And Jesus's lineage goes straight to the house of David. There is always forgiveness. There is always growth. New Testament, the single person most responsible for spreading the gospel. Paul, who was Saul, who spent his early days killing Christians, blinded by the light on the road to Damascus. And then you end with Jesus. The story, you know, crucified, thrown into a grave, rolls away the stone three days later. Those are the stories that define the Christian faith,

define the Old Testament as well. And You don't get the full story of the Gospels by erasing the bad sides of things. I didn't even bring up, Paul, Peter, denying Jesus three times. And then Jesus going, okay, you are Peter, the rock upon which I will build my church. It's inspiring. It's hopeful. And that's what these clowns in the administration don't understand that by taking away those low points. they're actually making our achievements seem even less extraordinary.

And, well, I would say one of the fascinating elements, particularly of the last 80 years or so, is the conservatives, so-called conservative, because there's almost nothing conservative about the Trump administration. Remember, conservatism was supposed to be about the government staying out of business, saying out of culture. But there is a persistent element in the conservative movement that they have to feel under siege. Every day has to be a war. Every day is a battle.

Richard Hofstetter wrote about this. Every day you're at the ramparts trying to save civilization from, in this case, the left, the establishment, the liberals. And the History Museum has become a front in that sense of perpetual war. And this is a hugely important element of our politics right now. We're not just talking about the past here. Every single day, one of the key elements of President Trump's appeal, I would argue, is that he has invested every single day with ultimate significance for those.

who are his followers. So there are cable chyrons calling you to the barricades. You have this dramatic struggle unfolding every hour of every day. And he said this almost nine years ago. He said, I want my presidency to be like the episode every day to be like an episode in a reality show where I vanquished my foes. And so this narrative he's telling is one. in which nothing can be accepted as settled. Nothing can be accepted as illuminating as opposed to scorching.

And history is a constant debate. There was a great Dutch historian who said it's an argument without end. But we have to argue from facts, not from fantasy. So, Vaughan, this move with the Smithsonian is indeed Orwellian. It is absurd. It is dangerous. And it's also in some ways not surprising for this president who trying to have his hands in everything right now. And there may be more to come at the Smithsonian. They've suggested perhaps almost taking over that institution. We have seen him try to remake Washington

in its physical space with the monuments and the buildings. We also see him now. This is part of his effort to rewrite the American story in the way he sees fit. Right. The president of the United States, Donald Trump, fails to see the different forms that patriotism comes in.

And I think Friday night in so many ways at the White House Correspondence Dinner and it's more than an hour in which he served up a platter of evidence to back that up, that he doesn't understand the role of journalists, that journalism in its form in the United States is a form of patriotism.

It's a group of people that are trying to hold power accountable and try to find out information what's happening behind the scenes of government. Then you're talking about resistance and dissent, whether it be from the opposition party or from members of your own party. That is a form of patriotism. It is challenging the authority that exists, the current levers of power, whether it be in

Washington or at the state or at a local level. But instead, the president tries to quash that form of patriotism. And we have seen here now in this moment, I think it's important to understand that the president has people that are effectively trying to do that bidding for him. in very aggressive ways. And when you look at our new reporting here and the ways in which there is a cognizance among some associates of his

that in order for Republicans to win these midterm elections, they need to separate themselves from Donald Trump, why is that? It's because all of them also realize that the presidents of the United States is unwieldy, he is unfocused, and he is going to say whatever he wants to say. And at some point along the way,

that they are the ones, that could find themselves in the middle of that path in that destruction unless they do his bidding. And that is a reality that patriotism is in a very tough place right now because the president of the United States is telling the masses and telling young people in America that dissent and that journalism is not a form of patriotism. MS now, senior White House reporter von Hilliard and historian John Meacham, thank you both very much for coming on this morning. And coming up, what LeBron James is saying about.

his so-called final decision in his NBA career. Pablo Tori joins us next on Morning Joe.