Morning Joe - Trump fires labor statistics boss hours after the release of weak jobs report

Episode Date: August 4, 2025

President Donald Trump on Friday ordered the firing of the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, hours after a stunning government report showed that hiring had slowed down significantly over the past three months.

Look, this is a kind of a something I've been talking about since 2018. When he gets news he doesn't like, he needs someone to blame because he won't take the responsibility himself. And this is the action of a petulant child. You give me bad news, I fire the messenger. Anybody who knows how, and look, as governors, we were very focused on this data as well as it applied to our individual state because those numbers mattered for how people perceived how you were doing on the economy so we know how important they are so we used to look at it very carefully it seems to me

from everything I learned over my years as governor that it would be almost impossible for anyone to try to rig these numbers because so many people are involved in putting them together. And in the end, when it comes to the director of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the woman who was fired, when that happens, all she's doing is being a conduit of the information. She can't go back in through and start lining it, lining it around. So it's irresponsible from a position of facts, but it also shows you the way he manages. Chris Christie criticizing President Trump for the firing of the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics on Friday, hours after a weak jobs report.

We'll have the latest fallout from that move. Also ahead, dozens of Texas House Democrats have left the state to block redistricting efforts. We'll show you the response from Republican Governor Greg Abbott. Plus, we'll go through the escalating rhetoric between President Trump and a top Russian official that led to U.S. nuclear submarines being deployed to the region. We'll also explain the Trump administration's investigation into former special counsel Jack Smith. And we'll bring you an update on a story we told you about on Friday, the Smithsonian

removing Donald Trump's impeachments from its presidential exhibit. Good morning and welcome to Morning Joe. It is Monday, August 4th. With us we have the cohost of our fourth hour, contributing writer at the Atlantic, Jonathan Lemire. U.S. special correspondent for BBC News and the host of the Rest is Politics podcast, Cady Kay. Senior writer for The Dispatch and a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion, David

Drucker is with us, and writer at large for The New York Times, Elizabeth Buhmiller joins us this morning. A lot to get to this morning, Joe. It's been busy. Yeah. A lot to get to. I'm going to ask Alex to have the seven-second delay ready for Jonathan Amir's microphone if he goes on too long about the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox. But

Mika, I think we should first of all start with the big news that everybody I'm sure is curious about or would be if they knew it, about about the saga of Grayson this weekend around our house. I'm not prepared for this. This is big news, so let me set this story up. And so Grayson the cat, who is a very quiet homebody, somehow disappeared. I'll have to do a post. Yes, he did.

Somehow disappeared and gone for three, four nights, which of course in cat time, that's like almost three quarters Jimmy Hoffa right there. Like you're not coming back from that. There you go. But we had a friend who said, well the thing is, he's such a timid little cat, he would never leave. So first of all, he don't know how he got out but secondly a friend comes and goes well you know I I'm on this cat rescue team and we set out cat traps and I was like yeah you know whatever whatever friend and I went off to see the rest of the Red Sox game but big news me cat big news tell us I got tell us. I got my cat back. I lost my cat out into the wild.

I thought he was gone forever and he was trapped. He's back. Grayson is safe. He was a rescue and he is rescued again. I'm not sure why you decided to start the show with this, but I am really happy about it. This is big news. And Jonathan Lemire really happy about it. This is big news. Jonathan Lemire, you would agree.

This is big news. Of course, Tulsi Gabbard will be holding a press conference at noon explaining how Barack Obama came to our house in the middle of the night and let the cat out. That's true. Yeah. There is an investigation going on. We are having an investigation, but this is big news and I guess my question you Jonathan is how do you turn this? Missing yeah cat story with a happy ending

Into an excuse to talk about the surging Boston Red Sox Well, what I was gonna say is Joe first of all, we're glad Grayson is home safe and sound Roll the Red Sox in the video. Here it goes. Go ahead. My segue was going to be this. There we go. This is going to be a show where we question the validity of statistics, where people want to assert numbers of their liking. But here's one that's irrefutable. The Red Sox were once 10 games behind the Yankees. They're now a game and a half up on the numbers.

Don't lie. But we will say Joe here you go. We saw some highlights there. The Red Sox finished a sweep of the Astros after a disappointing trade deadline where they didn't do much. And you and I have been in

terrible constant contact about that. They showed some heart this weekend. They won some heart this weekend. They won the Yankees are slumping. Look, there's a long way to go. You and I Joe both know the number that really matters here is five games, which is the number of games that will take the World Series five.

Yankees will win the World Series but this in early August. It's nice to have a delusion of happiness. I know now they do this to us all the time Yankees going to end up beating the Dodgers five games. We know that's where this ends. And we also know one of the reasons you all tune in to Morning Joe is because my ability to pay out the stories that the world cares about the most.

Of course, we could have gone to Elizabeth Buhmiller and talked about her trip to Jerusalem and her reporting there, but Grace and the cat would not wait. We will get to Jerusalem very soon. But first, let's go to the numbers, Mika, or the numbers that weren't. Yes, the numbers that weren't, I guess. White House economic advisors now are defending President Trump's firing of the head of the

Bureau of Labor Statistics. Trump's move came on Friday, hours after a stunning government report showed hiring had slowed down significantly over the past three months, with the U.S. adding just 73,000 new jobs in July. Deep revisions to the previous two months now indicate that the job market is considerably worse than previously thought, with the U.S. only adding 19,000 jobs in May, compared to an initial report of 144,000, and only 14,000 in June, after an initial report of 147,000. Trump attacked Erika McIntarfer on social media following the report, claiming the numbers

are being produced by a Biden administration appointee, and ordered his administration to fire her. A career civil servant, McIntarfer was confirmed on a bipartisan basis in 2024 and had been widely respected across party lines for her non-partisan approach. She responded to her abrupt dismissal on social media saying it was the honor of her life to serve as BLS commissioner. Speaking to reporters yesterday, Trump continued to air his grievances and said he would announce a new statistician soon.

We'll be announcing a new statistician sometime over the next three, four days. We had no confidence. I mean, the numbers were ridiculous, what she announced, but that was just one negative number. All of the numbers seem to be great. And so we'll see how that comes out. And if you remember, just before the election, this woman came out with these phenomenal numbers on Biden's economy,

phenomenal numbers. And then right after the election, they announced that those numbers were wrong. And that's what they did the other day. So it's a scam, in my opinion. You know, actually, Mika, less is more on this issue because the more he talks about it, the more he just proves how wrong it was to fire this woman. First of all, he just said all the numbers leading up to this report were positive. He always praised her numbers if he's going to blame this on her instead of actually data. It wasn't her. But so you know the Wall Street Journal got quotes of all the positive things he had said about the job numbers reports from her before and

also he keeps going back to this this line about oh they put out a blockbuster report right before the election. No, they didn't. That's just not true. I mean, from the reports I saw, it was actually tepid and weak right before the election. So again, I know facts don't matter in this case, but again, it seems as far as fluctuations go and just that's that that always happens that has always happened It always will happen As far as the numbers being revised the next month or two and as the Wall Street Journal wrote last night the numbers are revised not because of any political bias and not because any political bias over the

past two decades, but because of employers not participating as much and taking another month to get more details and pulling it out of the employers, and then they revise it a month later. So again, on all of these points, they just don't hold any water. And we're gonna get to why this is so concerning for Americans and their economy in the long run. So, director of the National Economic Council and top Trump economic advisor, Kevin Hassett, defended the president's decision yesterday

on Meet the Press, as well as his claim the jobs reports were rigged but failed to produce any evidence to support that claim. But just to be very clear, I mean, there are 40 people put these numbers together. Is the president planning to fire all 40 people involved in putting these numbers together? We're going to try to get the numbers so that they're transparent and reliable. President Trump himself was happy to accept the jobs numbers issued under McIntarfer's leadership when the numbers were good.

Take a listen to what he said in the past. The numbers were much better, as you know, than projected by the media. In three months, we have created 350,000 jobs. Think of that. A lot of jobs have been created. That's what happened this morning. So is the president prepared to fire anyone who reports data that he disagrees with? No, absolutely not. The president wants his own people there so that when we see the numbers, they're more transparent and more reliable and if there are

big changes and big revisions we expect more big revisions for the jobs data in September for example that we want to know why we want people to explain it to us. Were the numbers wrong do you have any hard evidence that you can present to the American public that these numbers these revisions that were reported and there were plenty of revisions under former President Biden, including right before the election, do you have any hard evidence that these numbers were wrong? Yeah, there is very hard evidence that we're looking at the biggest revisions since 1968.

Are you going to present that evidence? No, if you look at the number itself, it is the evidence. But you're saying it's an outlier, it's not evidence, Mr. Hassett. It's a historically important outlier. It's something that's unprecedented. It's still not evidence, Mr. Hassett. It's a historically important outlier. It's something that's unprecedented. It's still not evidence, though. It's so unprecedented that I've been looking at it for 40 years and I'm like, it must be

a typo. So as Joe mentioned, the Wall Street Journal editorial board has a new piece out entitled the Bureau of Labor Denial. And it describes the burden of Trump's advisers who have had to support the president's claim. The numbers were rigged and it reads in part quote, start with the labor secretary who told Bloomberg TV early on Friday, yeah, that even though the jobs data was revised downward for May and June, we've seen positive job growth. Okay, sometimes in politics you have to look at a rotten apple and call it merely over-ripe. But then Mr. Trump fired the BLS director, who reports to the Labor secretary.

She snapped to attention, I agree wholeheartedly, with at POTUS that our jobs numbers must be fair, accurate, and never manipulated for political purposes," she tweeted. So were the jobs data that were positive in the morning rigged by the afternoon? As Wall Street Journal editorial board member Alys Finley writes nearby, the BLS job revisions are best explained by a decline in business response rates, not political bias. The reality of slowing job growth is clear to anyone paying attention, no matter the official statistics. Mr. Trump's data denial is one more reason fewer Americans will trust the government.

So Joe, it doesn't seem like the Wall Street Journal is falling for this, if it is so much as the president has fired this person in retribution. Anybody that's followed the news or followed economics for more than 15 minutes isn't buying any of this. By the way, I'm sorry for talking. I thought my mic was cut. I was talking to Alex about where we were gonna move the questions next.

That's the bad news. The good news is obviously since you heard me, TJ's back. TJ, it's great to have you back in the director's chair. Yeah, sure is. Thank you. Good old TJ. Why you mean?

No, that was my fault. That was all my fault. I apologize. So Jonathan, let me hear this. This one of these moments, I will say the second term, people ask, what's different from the second term and the first term inside the White House? Second term, as you know, and other people that work day in and day out with people that are working in the Trump White House this time, you know, you can get off the record. You can sit. You can talk to him. You can talk.

Well, this doesn't make sense. He's stretching this here. You should. The DOD secretary, you know, Secretary of Defense really does. And you can, you know, you get straight answers often back and forth and have a really good, meaningful discussion and trying to figure out, you know, what in the world's going on?

For me, and I'm curious about you, this was an exception to that rule. Everybody put on their Baghdad Bob hat this weekend because there just was no justification for it. I was surprised that I didn't even get the sort of quiet eye rolling from inside the White House. They all, I guess they understood, they were going to follow the Baghdad Bob line and they all did it this weekend. What did your reporting find? Yeah, similar experiences here. Those in the White House, those close to the president, in lockstep, asserting without evidence that there was bias in these job numbers

and that President Trump simply was justified in doing what he did. None of that is true. This is a bad one. This is a bad one. And that completely historical. This is a bad one. Governments and economies can only,

and businesses can only make decisions based on hard data, on statistics. This is calls into question so much of what Washington produces now. If you're a career bureaucrat, if you're a government official, how can you now go about doing your job in an honest way without fear of being fired? Do you now comport yourself in a way to curry favor with the president by giving numbers that he wants. You know, there are a lot of historical parallels and we'll get to them this morning here.

This is echoes of Soviet Soviet Union. This echoes of Argentina, you know, before economies collapsed. You're not as our friend, Peter Baker, who we'll talk to later in the show, wrote in a really good piece this weekend, you know, in Washington, you're entitled to your own opinions. You're not entitled to your own facts. And right now President Trump is insisting he's entitled to his own facts.

And this is one that I think we're gonna have a hard pressed to have anyone mount a credible defense for what was a very dangerous move and also sets up worrisome precedents. And again, will the numbers be revised? Yeah, they're always revised, one way or the other. And they've been revised between during Barack Obama's term, Joe Biden's term, Donald Trump's first term. It happens all the time.

I will say Cate K. though, again, their front page in New York Times, there's a talking in the second term, talk about playing with the facts and the rise of authoritarianism. And we can have that debate. And a lot of people certainly deeply concerned about that. Let's just talk about the practical impact of this.

And we have a New York Times writer who wrote on this wonderfully. We're going to have him next block. But you don't have to go to the Soviet Union to just look at the practical impacts of when leaders start to fudge the numbers, when governments start to fudge the numbers. You can look to Greece, you can look to China in the earlier part of the century, you can look to Argentina. I mean, Argentina is a perfect example, as our guests will point out, where they started fudging the numbers on inflation. And pretty soon, the rest of the world, world

markets that can't be intimidated by a president or a prime minister, world markets started to revolt and things went sideways really quickly in Argentina, a lot of people, a lot of economists I talked to this weekend, that's their great fear here. Yeah, just before the election, I had a conversation with Bob Rubin, who said to me that he didn't think America was going in the direction of Hungary. It was going more in the direction of Latin America. And he was talking about the kind of feudal oligarchical system, the patronage system.

But he was also talking about the fact that you could get out of a country where people didn't believe in the rule of law or didn't believe in the statistics. I mean, that's been the real divider between the United States and some of the other countries that you've just mentioned, Jo, in terms of foreign investment opportunities, is that you look at the U.S. and you can rely on two things. You can rely on an independent civil service that comes up with the right data that is true and that you can make your business decisions on, and you rely on the rule of law,

which means that once you've made your contract with that country, that contract will be honored. So with both of those things looking under pressure, this makes it very hard for outside businesses, outside investors to look at the United States in the way that they have done for the last 40 years is what Elizabeth, obviously, countries from the Soviet Union spent years specifically building up

independent civil service so they would have the right kind of data doing what America has done so successfully. Talk a little bit, you were nodding your head during some of the clips that were being paid, talk a little bit about Kevin Hassett's performance on Meet the Press, because he was asked repeatedly, I thought Kirsten did a great job saying, where's the evidence, where's the evidence? And actually he came up, what did he say?

He said, yes, there is very hard evidence that we're looking at the biggest revisions since 1968. That's the best that he could do. It was extraordinary. You expect that, you don't expect that from someone who was, who knows what he's talking about, you know, an economist. The other thing I find interesting about this is that, you know, the problem that Joe Biden had in 2024 was that they were saying the economy was in decent shape

and people just weren't feeling it, right? Well, if the president Trump starts saying, things are great, don't trust the numbers, but if you're having a hard time finding a job and it's inflation, it's still up, you're not feeling it yourself at all. And that's what's going on here. There was a very slow job market

and prices were still really high. So I don't know what this gets the president Trump to just proclaim that the economy is in great shape and the problem is in the numbers. I mean, David, even some Republicans who've been loyal to Trump are concerned about this particular move. What are you hearing from within the party about? Well, listen, they're going to be quietly concerned and they're not going to push back against Trump over this when there are so many other things that you might think they would have pushed back

against that they didn't. But let's remind ourselves here that when the president talks about rigged numbers and says that it was rigged in favor of the Democrats right before the last election, it's just flatly untrue. The last jobs report before the November election was October because the election in November was too close for the October report. So this is the September report in October. Does anybody remember what the jobs numbers were? They were plus 12,000. It was a horrendous report.

It was worse than this report that caused the president to fire the data chief. So first of all, that's just flatly untrue. And it just shows you that the American government has been generally producing very good statistics, except for errors and resisions that are a part of the process for a long time. And now what is the debate? The political debate is, can you trust the numbers or not? The president says they were rigged. Other people say they weren't rigged. And now it's a conversation about how, well, you couldn't rig them anyway, even if you tried. It's the exact conversation the president wants.

And going forward, a lot of people now, if he gets a really good report and it's completely deserved, which I'm going to assume because there are so many people working in the Department of Labor, a lot of people are going to say, oh, of course, of course, he got a good report. Now he's got his people and now everybody's scared. So he's doing himself a disservice, but he's doing the country a disservice. Yeah, it really is doing a country disservice and making the long term. Again, if you're just talking about confidence in the United States economy, caddy hit it. I mean, we have we have a strong civil service that that's supposed to play it down the middle when you come up with these sort of numbers. That's number one. Also an independent

Fed, whether people in the White House like it or not. And the second thing is a strong rule of law. That's what separates the United States from most other countries, most other economies. And so a lot of concerns. I want to say, though, as far as the press goes, people have spoken out on this. One thing that I have noticed, though, through the weekend is, the president's been allowed to say, she did the same thing before the election, and da-da-da-da. It's just not true. So many people on networks allow him to say something patently false. Oh, she rigged these numbers. And for my evidence, she rigged the numbers right before the...

No, she didn't. As David said, and as I also said, the numbers right before the election, they were one of the worst job reports in a long time. The one right before the election, was worse than this jobs report number. And so how members of the media allow him to come on and say that and don't say, well, actually, Mr. President, with all due respect, that's completely, completely false. Again, it really says something about those people interviewing him who just sit silently

as he passes by. Just a certifiable, deliberate spewing of disinformation. Yeah. Misleading people. We're going to talk to the New York Times chief economics reporter, who you mentioned earlier, Joe, in just a moment. But first, time now for a look at some of the other stories making headlines this morning the manhunt continues for a military veteran suspected of fatally

shooting four people at a bar in rural Montana police are asking for residents to stay inside as they search for Michael Paul Brown who fled the scene in a truck wearing only a pair of black shorts, Brown's family says he has suffered with mental illness for years. A third child has died following last week's fatal sailboat crash in Miami. The family of a 10-year-old girl said she succumbed to her injuries over the weekend. The accident happened off of Miami's Biscayne Bay. Six people from a summer sailing camp were thrown off the boat after colliding with a barge. Authorities say the barge was operating legally but are now investigating the sailboat's safety measures. And health officials are warning

New Yorkers about air quality today as smoke from wildfires in Canada is expected to reach the state this week. Wisconsin, Michigan and Iowa saw those hazy conditions over the weekend. The smoke could pose problems to those over the age of 65, outdoor workers and people with medical conditions like heart or lung disease. And check out the size of the crowds in Rome yesterday, where Pope Leo wrapped up the week-long Jubilee of Youth. Look at this. More than 1 million young Catholics from 150 countries gathered for the Sunday homily, the American Pontiff said the massive meeting is proof positive that a different world is possible. And still ahead on Morning Joe, our next guest argues that when political leaders meddle in

government data, it rarely ends well. We'll have a closer look at the precedents behind President Trump's decision to fire the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Plus, Texas Governor Greg Abbott is threatening to remove state Democrats from office. If they don't return to Austin to pass Republicans' proposed new congressional maps, we'll dig into the redistricting showdown in Texas. And a reminder, the Morning Joe podcast is available each weekday featuring our full conversations and analysis. You can listen wherever you get your podcasts.

You're watching Morning Joe. We're back in 90 seconds. I was trading and decided I'm going to change my strategy. I mean, I want markets to correct. I want them to go up and down. We're used to volatility. We had a bad print on jobs. I did not agree on whacking the commissioner. I don't like that.

Whacking statisticians makes no sense whatsoever. They don't shoot the messenger. They used to do that in ancient Rome. Bad news, they kill the guy off the horse. You don't need to do that now. It doesn't matter. This is a job where you just print data. So I didn't like that story.

Investor Kevin O'Leary, who is generally a supporter of Donald Trump, reacting to his move to fire the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. A new piece in the New York Times looks at examples of when political leaders meddle in government data, proving it rarely ends well. The article reads in part, quote, There is the case of Greece, where the government faked deficit numbers for years, contributing to a debilitating debt crisis that required multiple rounds of bailouts. The country then criminally prosecuted the head of the statistical agency

when he insisted on reporting the true figures, further eroding the country's international standing. There is the case of China, where earlier this century, the local authorities manipulated data to hit growth targets mandated by Beijing, forcing analysts and policymakers to turn to alternative measures

to gauge the state of the country's economy. Perhaps most famously, there is the case of Argentina, which in the 2000s and 2010s systematically understated inflation figures to such a degree that the international community eventually stopped relying on the government's data. That loss of faith drove up the country's borrowing costs, worsening a debt crisis that ultimately led to it defaulting on its international obligations. Joining us now the author of that piece, chief economics correspondent for the New York Times, Ben Kasselman. Ben, thanks for coming on. Great

piece and not great examples for Trump to be following. Yeah, I mean, look, there are historical parallels, not many of them in the U.S., but around the world, and none of those are examples that you would want to emulate, right? You mentioned Argentina, where we ended up, where they fired the people responsible for producing inflation data when the inflation was looking bad. That sounds pretty familiar right now. That didn't stop inflation. If anything, it allowed inflation to spiral further out of control without the evidence to set policy. And it really undermined the country's credibility internationally, drove up its

borrowing costs, added to a debt crisis. The Greek example, I think, is really striking because they didn't just fire the head of their statistical agency. They criminally prosecuted him for years. And this is somebody who insisted on reporting accurate data on the country's deficits to its citizens and to its lenders worldwide. And they prosecuted him. And I spoke to him over the weekend.

And he made the point that, you know, we talk about how data is important for decision-making, for the Fed, for policy. But really it's important to democracy, right? Fundamentally, the reason we need this data is so that we, the citizens, can hold our leaders accountable. You know, Elizabeth, my colleague mentioned earlier, right, that the inflation was a key part of why Joe Biden lost or Kamala Harris lost the last election. And if we don't have accurate data, then we don't have the ability to hold our leaders

responsible for Congress, for the courts, but for the citizens. So, well, good morning, Ben. And a great story. And I was alarmed to see that Janet Yellen, the former Treasury Secretary, Fed Chair, said this was lightening the United States to a banana republic, which is... And she's not somebody prone to hyperbole, I don't think. But let me ask you a question that was about your excellent piece. How far away are we from the example of Argentina, which you gave, which was so alarming that eventually Argentina defaulted on its loans because people had lost such confidence internationally? I mean, what has to happen here before we go get that far? I mean, I think we're at a critical juncture here, right?

The person who has taken over from Dr. McIntarfer at the BLS on an acting basis is a longtime civil servant himself. He's somebody who was widely respected. If he's able to keep these processes in place, you know, continue to produce reliable data, if he's empowered to do that, then look, I don't, Dr. McIntarfer wasn't the person

producing these numbers. She's the top of an agency that has hundreds of professionals who do this work. So, if that work is allowed to continue, then fine. But I think that the risk is that somebody gets put in who is just going to try to give numbers that the president wants. And that undermines confidence. Frankly, even if the numbers remain good, there are going to be to give numbers that the president wants and that undermines confidence. Frankly, even if the numbers remain good, there's going to be a lot of questions around them. I asked Janet Yellen over the weekend if we get a good, a better than expected jobs report, a better than expected inflation report next month, is she going to question those numbers? And she said she has to at least have that in the back of her mind. Ben, so put this in the context of the uncertain environment that investors are facing at the

moment. Say you're wanting to invest in a new business or you're wanting to build a factory in Missouri and you're thinking about it and you're relying on government data and you're relying on some certainty in economic policy. how does this play into the general environment of uncertainty for companies that are struggling with making those kind of capex decisions at the moment? Yeah, I mean, we're just in this incredibly uncertain environment, right? We were already in this case, in this situation

where you don't know what tariff policy is going to be from one day to the next. You don't know what immigration policy is going to be from one day to the next, right don't know what immigration policy is going to be from one day to the next. The president comes out and says, we're not going to go after workers in restaurants and farms, and then reverses that the next day. But I think until now, we've at least been in the case that we know what the numbers are. We trust the numbers. And so even if you can't always rely on what the president is saying about policy, you can at least rely on the numbers coming out of the administration.

If this undermines that, that's a real step and a real blow, I think, to the confidence that the businesses, that investors, domestically and internationally, are going to have in the credibility of this country, frankly. Chief Economics correspondent from The New York Times, Ben Kasselman, thank you very much for coming on this morning. His new piece is available to read right now. And coming up, we're going to go through the new reporting on U.S. and Israeli officials giving Hamas an ultimatum as ceasefire negotiations have hit a wall. Morning Joe is back in a moment.

Happy August, New York City. It is 640 in the morning. I'm sure it's going to be a scorching day today. That's your weather report for Morning Joe. So David Drucker, in New York City obviously there is a Bears race. A lot of people obviously concerned about Mom Dommy. People like me, conservatives, not like the conservatives in Washington, but real conservatives like me, very concerned about the socialist part of his agenda, very

concerned about his refusal to talk about or condemn the using of the word globalizing the infantata. And yet, if you get closer and you say, if you look at that race, there's one word actually that has propelled his rise that you think is going to be the one word we're all going to be focusing on in next year's midterm elections. What is it? It's affordability, Joe. And actually, if you look at the New York Mayor's race with Mamdani and what propelled him into an upset victory and the Democratic nomination, if you look at Abigail Spanberger, the Democratic nominee for governor of Virginia, you look at Mikey Sherrill, the Democratic nominee for governor in New Jersey, you look at a Republican opponent, Chittorelli,

you look at some of the emerging 2026 candidates, Scott Brown in New Hampshire is You look at a Republican opponent, Chittarelli, you look at some of the emerging 2026 candidates, Scott Brown in New Hampshire is one, they're all using the word affordability, not inflation, not high gas prices, and they say that, but they say, and if you look at their messaging and you look at their focus, it's that it's just become very unaffordable to live, that things are just too high. And housing is a huge driver of it. When I was covering the 2024 presidential election and traveling the country from swing state to swing state, inflation was largely the focus

and the word inflation was key. In Nevada, it was a lot about housing costs and life becoming broadly unaffordable in addition to inflation. But now we've seen this concern about affordability, broadly speaking, again, driven by housing costs, but just this idea that, hey, I have a good job, it's secure, and yet I still feel like things are not affordable enough. It's this basket now in this word. And I think that's driving campaigns for this November's off-year elections

and next year's midterms. And I think it's gonna continue to do so. And unless the economy really makes strides in this regard, and there's so much that has to do with policy that's questionable about whether we can get there, I think that is going to be the decisive issue 18 months from now for sure. Alright, and just to update Joe's forecast, New York City is going to see a high of 88

today with low humidity. Alright, now getting to our other top stories. I got it half right. Well, actually, no, I was completely wrong. Go ahead. Why do we have not? I think you rigged the numbers. All right.

President Trump's Middle East envoy, Steve Whitkoff, and the U.S. ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, made an extremely rare visit to Gaza on Friday. It comes as Israel's restrictions on aid are creating a humanitarian crisis in the enclave. Huckabee defended Israel's actions in an interview Saturday on Fox News. I'll tell you this, if Israel is committing genocide, Mark, they're really bad at it. They're terrible at doing genocide, just like they're terrible at doing apartheid.

This is the only real democracy in this part of the world where people vote, elect their own officials. They have free speech, they have freedom of movement. The Israelis do a doggone good job of trying to protect innocent human life. They do an amazing job of trying to prevent collateral damage, and I wish that they would get credit for some of the things their military does to protect Gazans, the civilians. No other country, including the United States, takes the steps they take

to try to minimize civilian casualties. Meanwhile, The New York Times has new reporting on US and Israeli officials now floating the idea of an all-or-nothing Gaza deal. According to the paper, it's an ultimatum for Hamas, calling for the release of the remaining hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners and for Hamas to agree to terms to end the war that include the group's disarmament. Otherwise, the Israeli military would continue its campaign in Gaza.

Joining us now, President Meritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, Richard Haass. He's the author of the weekly newsletter, Home and Away, available on Substack. And co-host of the weekend, primetime, Elise Jordan. Richard, Joe, I'll head off to you here. I'm curious about this all-or-nothing deal. Well, I'll be asking Richard about that. But first, Richard, I want to ask you about what Ambassador Huckabee had to say about Israel, saying that how wonderful the Gazans are being treated, so to speak, and how much

they're going out of their way to help Palestinians in Gaza. You have the International Red Cross reporting, and you have Doctors Without Borders. You have one relief agency after another that we have trusted, Republicans and Democrats alike, over the past half century, saying the conditions in Gaza are absolutely deplorable, that people are getting shot up and blown up as they go to get bare, just the bare necessities to keep their families alive. And they're dying. And the starvation continues over and over again.

The media, the New York Times, that say may get one story wrong and everybody will jump up and down and say, see, see the liberal press is going after poor Israel again. Richard, talk about how absolutely horrific the conditions are in Gaza and your response to what Ambassador Huckabee said there. So let me be somewhat harsh. Ambassador Huckabee is meant to be the ambassador to Israel, not from Israel. When he said that Israel is using force in a very careful way, well, that doesn't explain

why what 30 to 40,000 Gazans who are not members of Hamas are now dead. People lining up for food have recently been getting killed. Obviously insufficient food and other humanitarian supplies are getting in. No, I'm not saying 100% of it is Israel's fault. Obviously there are issues with Hamas. Obviously there are issues with the UN distribution system. But to let Israel off the hook here and to basically say what it's doing is exemplary is simply, yeah, that's consistent with your other story, Joe.

It's at odds with reality. It's at odds with reality. And Caddy, just as cooking the books or firing people that are giving accurate information on jobs numbers, ends up hurting the very people and will hurt the administration for that firing. Here, Israel, if you look at any polling, look at numbers from Pew, look at the numbers from any other reputable polling organization, they will show you that unlike people like myself in America who grew up just prone to always support Israel and always think that Israel is right and everybody else is wrong, that belief is fading, and it's fading rapidly, especially for younger Americans and even

people under 40, not just among Democrats, but among Republicans. Those numbers are breaking hard against Israel. And no, it's not about anti-Semitism. For a large chunk of these numbers that are now moving. So much of it has to do what they've been seeing on their TV screens over the past year. And let me say again, Donald Trump believes the same thing that most observers of this Gaza war believe, and that is that the military purposes for war in Gaza ended a year ago. Israeli generals, Israeli intel leaders all believed a year ago that there were no more

military objectives to meet. And yet the fighting continues, the starvation continues, the killing of people trying to get relief aid to stop their children from starving continues. Yeah, we've heard from some of the amazing doctors who've been working in Gaza on the program in the last couple of weeks, Joe, and their stories are really chilling. Those numbers, by the way, were moving in the direction against Israel even before the attacks of October the 7th, but they are moving faster. Now, Elizabeth, you've just come back from a trip to Jerusalem

talking about Mike Huckabee because you were reporting on Mike Huckabee. I thought one of the extraordinary things he said on that television clip we just heard was where he almost praised Israel over the United States. Not even the US does as much as Israel. I mean, he could not be a more staunch defender of Israel and of Prime Minister Netanyahu

in particular. Didn't he turn up at his trial and say, this whole thing is unfair, that he shouldn't be on trial? I interviewed him last week, and he's a bigger defender of Israel than certainly than Donald Trump. He broke—you know, Donald Trump broke with Netanyahu and said, there is real starvation in Gaza. When I talked to Huckabee a few days later, he wouldn't even go that far.

He goes, well, there's hunger there. But you know, it's not like Rwanda. So he is a gift to the Netanyahu government, and he's very much in line with the Netanyahu government. And he's very close to Netanyahu. He turned up at his trial and said this is not fair. He's the prime minister and is in this crisis. And the judges overseeing the trial are biased and very familiar, very similar to Donald

Trump. And I should say in Israel right now, this war has become a crisis because it's deeply unpopular among Israelis who are seeing over the weekend. They saw these horrific pictures, videos of hostages, two hostages who were just skeletons and it was shocking and horrible and in addition to that, they want the hostages home. In addition to that, they want the IDF home. The IDF has been in Gaza now for almost two years. The members of the military are dying every day. There's there are suicides and it's become deeply, deeply unpopular in Israel itself.

And they're aware of what is happening, of course, to their reputation internationally. So, Richard, I reported last week with the sentiment that Joe just voiced that even President Trump recognizes there's no more military objectives to be had in Gaza beyond freeing hostages, of course. But there seems to be a limit to what he's going to do. Yes, he broke with Prime Minister Netanyahu on the idea that there is a famine. He sent Wyckoff and Huckabee. There is a push there to try to get more aid into Gaza, but he's not pressuring Israel

to do anything differently. What do you see as to this new proposal, as all or nothing, as it's been shorthanded here, to try to get something done between Israel and Hamas to stop the fighting. Or do you think this is going to be another idea that just goes by the wayside and then the hostility is going to continue? Yeah, it's a famous biblical notion, Jonathan, called moving the goalposts. This is not going to happen.

Yeah, interesting. The New York declaration the other day at that UN conference, you had Arab governments signing up to the long-term goal, the goal of disarming Hamas, getting a stabilization force into Gaza, all good things. But to make it a prerequisite for an agreement seems to me, the all or nothing choice is more likely to be nothing. I don't quite understand why the United States has now rejected Half a Loaf. Many times, we could have gotten half the living hostages out, some of the bodies returned in exchange for prisoner swaps,

60 days of a ceasefire. It's not perfect, but it's better than what we've got. Traditionally, in negotiations, if you make it all or nothing, you ought to be really, really confident that you will get the all, because I fear what we're going to end up here is to nothing and what's going to... We're going to be talking about this on the show for months to come. The Israeli election is not for another, what, 14 months? And my concern is this could just continue to grind if the requirements for cessation of hostilities continue to increase. All right.

President Trump says two U.S. nuclear submarines are close to Russia. After he ordered their deployment on Friday, President Trump made the move in response to what he called highly provocative statements from former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev. Well, a former president of Russia, who's now in charge of one of the most important councils, Medvedev said some things that were very bad, talking about nuclear. And when you mention the word nuclear, I say, you know, my eyes light up and I say, we better be careful, because it's the ultimate threat. He shouldn't have said it. He's got a fresh mouth.

He's said things in the past too. And so we always want to be ready. And so I have sent to the region two nuclear submarines. I just want to make sure that his words are only words and nothing more than that. And they're closer to Russia, I assume. They're closer to Russia. Yeah, they're closer to Russia. That assume. They're closer to Russia, yeah, they're closer to Russia. That's a terrible situation going on over there.

Last week, Medvedev made a post online that referenced Russia's dead-hand nuclear system, a Cold War-era retaliation mechanism, after the president criticized him on social media. President Trump yesterday said his special envoy, Steve Witkoff, may go to Russia this week, ahead of Trump's Friday deadline for Russia to reach a peace deal with Ukraine or face sanctions. Jonathan Lemire, what are you hearing from your White House contacts on this? Well, first of all, most of them mock Medvedev, who has no actual power in Moscow whatsoever.

It's not quite... We know for President Trump, foreign policy, he also... He often views through a very personal lens. He's clearly been insulted here by Medvedev and is lashing out. But at least it's a risky maneuver, to be sure. So weighing on that, it's- I'm really glad that our nuclear subs are being deployed based on the whim of Donald Trump's feelings. Right. I mean, it's a provocative move, no doubt. But it also comes just a couple of days before this deadline, which seems like President Trump, perhaps finally, is going to be tough with Russia in terms of the war with Ukraine. He did move up the deadline to say, look, you've got to have show me something here. You're going to negotiate to end this war, or we're going to slap a bunch of sanctions on, though he has since acknowledged that Russia's

economy is sort of sanction proof. So just put it all together here in terms of this. It just seems to be a pretty precarious moment. Well, this is really just the culmination of kind of the worst case scenario of Donald Trump's impulses of where Twitter trolling, he's so reactive to it that that is dictating national security posture. He is clearly frustrated with Russia. And he did when last night when he had it, you know, in Pennsylvania, when he was stopping, he did some, he did a brief presser with the pool and he said, you know, in Pennsylvania when he was stopping, he did a brief presser with the pool and he said, you know, this Russia thing, it's really tough, this war,

it's really bad. And he keeps talking about how difficult it is to have any kind of resolution. So yes, he's frustrated, but it seems like Richard, he just doesn't even know where to go with Putin, that he really thought that he had these powers of persuasion and that that was going to be enough. And his friendship with Vladimir was going to end the war in Ukraine and clearly that's not reality. No, he clearly misread Putin. And again, if he wants to get tough on Putin,

it's not by sanctioning India, it's by giving Ukraine a large amount of arms open-endedly. Let me say one thing about this nuclear thing. The whole goal of foreign policy, one of the principal goals, is to reduce the salience of nuclear weapons. We got through the Cold War, and it stayed cold. So the idea that on the basis of what this guy who has zero power says, that we would raise the specter of nuclear weapons, plus what does Russia Russia have we've seen how awful their conventional forces are the one thing Russia has our

Nuclear weapons as many as we do so why we would want nuclear weapons to be front and center and international relations quite honestly Make zero sense. It's not to our advantage. It's dangerous. It's destabilizing. We ought to just take this off the table Yeah, we probably should. You know, David Gates and bread, they're saying if a face can launch a thousand ships as an opening line. Here, David Drucker, here we have a Telegram chat launching nuclear submarines. Things have changed over the past 40 years, haven't they? How dangerous is this and how will Donald Trump's own base respond to this saber rattling? Yeah, I guess I guess you don't need the red phone anymore. I guess not. Yeah, you know, I mean, the pop, look, the

populist right is dovish. And I imagine that there could be some concern there, although they tend to give Donald Trump a lot of leeway politically. I will say another way to look at this is that Donald Trump spent the last, what, three, four years criticizing US support for the war in Ukraine, for Ukraine to repel the Russian invasion, out of concern that things could escalate into a nuclear confrontation. And then if the U.S. would just stand down, whatever happened in Ukraine wasn't our concern, and it would help preserve the peace.

And here you have, in a sense, after years of being deferential of Vladimir Putin, you have the president beginning to show some backbone here and at least understand that there's only one thing Vladimir Putin and his mouthpiece, which is what Medvedev is, understands, and that is strength and the fact that the US is not going to make every decision based on fear of escalation, which of course gives Russia free reign. And so Trump has always been concerned himself about getting the US into conflict. But I think in this case, Republicans will be quite happy, Republicans on Capitol Hill at the very least, because they still view Russia from the standpoint of the Cold War and the years that have followed.

They have been in favor of strong U.S. foreign policy to combat Russia. And so I think this is one of those things where they're not going to have to worry and push back because they're going to agree with him and with the message he's sending with positioning of this nuclear subs. There does though, Mika, seem to be a happy medium here where before Donald Trump would not defend Ukraine because he thought it might be provocative and move towards a nuclear showdown. That's where he was. Now, he sees a telegram chat from a guy that most people, even in Moscow, consider a clown.

And he sends nuclear stuff. You know, if we could kind of just turn that light to the middle and maybe just support Ukraine and not be provoked by social media or telegram chats. That might be a safer, better, stronger place for America to be. So the dispatches, David Drucker, Elizabeth B. Miller of The New York Times, and President Emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, Richard Haass. Thank you all very much for being on this morning.

Hey, Richard. Go Yankees. All right, Mika, that's all we're going to go over. Oh, Joe, that was unkind, Joe. We're in free fall. We're feeling pain, Joe. OK, bye, Richard. All right, HBO's Bill Maher ended his new rules on how it's important to ration your

outrage when the Trump administration floods the zone. Take a look at this. Here is my one-eighth of the term scorecard for what actually matters. Turning the Environmental Protection Agency into the Pollution Protection Agency, yes, that's going to matter. All the people who will lose health care and all the debt that will be run up from the big beautiful bill, yes, that matters. Turning the Justice Department into the National Revenge Agency.

Firing all the Inspector Generals. Maybe firing the head of the Federal Reserve. Letting Doge destroy lives here and abroad in a way that didn't have to go down like that in order to slim the government down, which it didn't do anyway. Creating a domestic army of masked troops, rounding people up and sending them off to detention centers and foreign prisons? Yeah, the big beautiful bill has 150 billion in it for additional spending for snatching people up who've lived here peacefully and productively for decades, mostly with no criminal records.

I know they say when you're trying to clear your mind, but thoughts rush in. Don't fight them. Just let them pass like a cloud. Well, maybe that's what we should do with some of Trump's stupid stuff. He took a 747 as a gift? That's not cool. Oh well. The top military guy is a big drunk? Well, so is Ulysses S. Grant. Maybe it'll work out like that. He's naming the Kennedy Center after... Wait, what? He's naming the Kennedy Center after his wife?

That's kind of sweet. Wasn't it a law that he had to sell Tik Tok? Yes, it was. It was. Wasn't it a law that he had to sell TikTok? Yes, it was, it was. It was absolutely a law that he had to sell TikTok. But you know what, with this administration, you have to triage your outrage. So please, when I'm out there, no more Bill. Did you see what he did today?

If you don't even have to say who he is, you already lost because... Because he is already living two rent free in your head.