Morning Joe - Trump to deliver State of the Union address tonight

Episode Date: February 24, 2026

Trump to deliver State of the Union address tonight 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.

The storm's so bad that Mayor Mamdani announced a snow day for students with no remote learning. Yeah. Old school. Yeah. That's old school. Though, to be fair, Zoom school also features no remote learning. There's nothing more important than your child's safety, which is why it's best that they stay home from school. But while you take care of them, make sure you also take care of yourself.

A message from your friends at Jack Daniels. All right. The late nights having some fun with the first snow day for New York City public schools in nearly seven years. But students will be back in class today on this Tuesday, February 24th. We have a lot to get to this morning, including President Trump's sinking poll numbers ahead of tonight's State of the Union address, where he will reportedly promote his economic agenda. And American exceptionalism will preview that speech. Plus, there is new reporting on dozens of federal judges who are expressing anger and frustration with the Trump administration for violating court orders in immigration cases.

Hold the lawyers in contempt and then start bar proceedings against them and take away their law licenses. This isn't tough. Also ahead, we'll go through the concerns a top general is raising about President Trump, about a military campaign against Iran. It ends up, Mika. Allies are needed after all. And the lack of allies is one of the main concerns right now about any action against Iran. Who saw that coming? Meanwhile, today marks four years, four years since Russia's invasion of Ukraine. A war, the president said repeatedly he could end in one day if he was elected to a second term. We'll look at the state of the conflict and if negotiators are any closer to a peace deal. Well, you know, and the real tragedy here is since Donald Trump has become elected again for the second time, the killings have increased in Ukraine. Vladimir Putin is killing civilians more, more regularly with less concern about the consequences. And so they keep dragging out negotiations.

So Putin keeps dragging out negotiations, and he keeps killing a lot more Ukrainians. So so much for being able to end the war on day one, all he. on is made it more deadly for Ukrainians. Willie, you're talking about snow days in New York City. This was a big one. I would tell you, in our neck of the woods, man, a couple of feet. Yeah, there we go. That's our front driveway.

And there is a statue. That's called the Prasinski statue. Exactly, special gardens. No, I think these are, here we go. There's our front driveway. No, I think we're looking at Central Park there. But I will just say in our neck of our woods, and I would guess in your neck of the woods, man, a couple of feet of snow. And it just got coming, didn't it? Yeah. First of all, lovely approach to your home, as we just saw there coming up with the big statue in the fountain there.

Gorgeous, gorgeous what you've done with the place. There's Stan. He's he's he's cleaning up our garden sidewalk. Oh my God. Yeah. Yeah, we're just outside the city, just north of the city and got two feet of snow. I mean, you, You learn to kind of take these storms and the predictions with a grain of salt. And you go, ah, it's not going to be as bad as they say. And then you open the window yesterday morning. My gosh, the snow was piled up, you know, to where you couldn't see out the window. So this was the real one.

This was digging out. This was, yeah, no school in New York City yesterday. And up in Providence, I think they got almost three feet of snow. It was up and down the coast. Just a crippling storm up and down. Well, and you're so right, you know, growing up in Florida, but also living in New York and in New England throughout my life. It is the same thing where they'll say, oh, it's going to be category five storm. You're ending up, you know, playing golf later in the afternoon with like five degree winds and a beautiful south by southwest wind.

But same thing with snowstorms. It grew up in upstate New York and live in, you know, parts of New England. I just kind of wander around, you know. You'll hear, oh, there's going to be two feet of snow, and then you end up getting snow flurry. So this storm, Mika, actually, it delivered what they said was going to deliver. It was a big one. And we'll get the forecast a little bit later coming up here. Along with Joe, Willie and me, we have the co-host of our 9 a.m. hour staff writer at the Atlantic,

Jonathan Lemire, and CEO and co-founder of Axis Jim Van de High. So let's get to our top story this morning. By the way, Van de Ha, he's not used to snow at all. I know. He grew up in the tropical climate. Of Wisconsin. Yeah. He's like, whatever.

All right. Tonight, President Trump will deliver the first official state of the union address of his second term, with affordability as a top issue for many voters. The Wall Street Journal reports Trump will use his remarks to sell the public on the economy and unveil new measures meant to help lower costs. His address comes as new polls show the president's approval rating. falling in particular among independence. According to a new NPR, PBS News, Marist poll, 60% of Americans say the country is worse off than it was a year ago,

including about two-thirds of independence. Trump's address tonight comes as his administration faces several challenges. The president's immigration crackdown is broadly unpopular. The Supreme Court just curtailed Trump's sweeping tariffs. There's uncertainty about where things stand with Iran. and, of course, the continued criticism about a lack of transparency over the Jeffrey Epstein. And there's so much more. But Jonathan Lemire, the numbers, and we've all talked about it, the numbers with Hispanics

have dropped, the numbers actually with non-college white voters. His real base have also dropped. But most alarmingly for Republicans, most precipitously has been the drop among independence. I've got to say I started following politics closely, you know, probably 40 years ago. But since my time in Congress forward, I've never seen a president whose is upside down with independence as this president is. And I've also seen a president less concerned about it. He'll complain sort of off, you know, off the cuff and press conferences about it.

But he really doesn't either doesn't have the ability to do anything about it. He doesn't have the ability to work with others to figure out how to bring those. numbers back up or he just doesn't care at this point. And here's why it matters not to Donald Trump. Here's why it really matters to the election. Because just about every pollster will tell you the most important number in predicting what party's going to do well in an off-year election is a president's approval rating. And this president's approval rating is disastrous right now for any Republicans in any swing states, any swing seats that, you know, that they want to win. And those numbers are extraordinarily low. We saw Joe Biden several years ago, use the state of the

union two years in a row to begin his recovery. And it helped him out. The question is, what do Republicans need from Donald Trump tonight and how bad has it gotten? Yeah. So time has no meaning in the age of Trump, but it was just shy of a year ago, the last time President Trump addressed a joint session of Congress, not technically a state of the union. And it is remarkable how things have changed.

He was riding high in the first 100 days, you know, executing the Project 2025 blueprint to expand executive power. He even, this tells you how much time has passed, he even shouted out Elon Musk sitting up in the rafters. He finds himself in a very different place

tonight as he heads back to the capital. I mean, you mentioned it. He is, his poll numbers have cratered among independence. He is hemorrhage, whatever gains he made in November 24 with black and Latino voters. He is two things that he thought were strengths that were strengths in 2024. His immigration policies, the belief that he would be a good steward of the economy, both of those things have completely cratered. You know, Americans unhappy with the mass deportation plan, particularly after what we saw in Minneapolis. He just had a huge defeat at the Supreme Court with his tariffs. And there's a sense among Republicans

that there is just, it's sort of chaos. And Americans are making clear they don't like what they see. Add to that some of the foreign policy. We'll dive into Iran later in the hour. But I was asking AIDS, should we, President Trump has still yet to really sort of announce why, explain why the United States would be having a potential conflict with Iran. He hasn't sold the public or Congress on that. I'm told, don't expect that tonight. And Joe and Mika, I mean, the biggest thing, it's not just Trump. Let's look at the two people behind him. It will be the vice president, of course, but also the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson.

Republicans, to a person, tell me that if things don't change dramatically and change soon, well, next year when President Trump delivers his state of the union, that's going to be Speaker Hakeem Jeffries behind him. And with a Democrat in charge of the House, with the power of subpoena investigations, going to make this president's life truly miserable. Yeah, Jim Van de Hyde, there's so much to watch. tonight. First of all, it will be long. We know that for sure. Donald Trump owns four of the seven longest state of the union addresses in American history. Bill Clinton, by the way,

has the other three. But this fascinating dynamic just on the heels of this ruling from the Supreme Court on tariffs, a major blow to Donald Trump and his economic policy. They will be sitting literally face to face. The Supreme Court justices will be on the front row and he may turn and address them as he talks about the tariffs and the tariff ruling. But John, John touched on all the major points. You've got approval rating the low 40s, high 30s for this president, but among independents, according to CNN, he's at 26 percent, and among Latino voters at 22%. Remember those incredible historic gains he made for Republicans just over a year ago, where he won 46, 48 percent of Latinos. That has completely collapsed. And then, of course, there is the biggest

issue, which is the economy, and that Americans do not feel, despite what Donald Trump may be telling them over the last year or so, like, their lives are getting better, like, things are affordable. So a tall task for Donald Trump to sell that the state of the union is strong tonight. Yeah, you guys have painted a pretty bleak picture for Republicans. I actually think it's worse than what you painted, because it's not just that he's losing independence. It's not just that he's underwater in terms of his popularity. It's that you see a massive gap in the enthusiasm among Democrats, which is high, and Republicans, which is low. So he's losing independence. He has an unmotivated Republican Party and a highly motivated Democratic Party. If you look at all of the local

and state races over the last couple of months, Democrats are routinely outperforming their performance two years ago. That is a bad, bad sign. I can't find a single Republican I talk to that doesn't think they're not going to get clobbered in November. That might be even the Senate, which looked like it wasn't in play, could be in play. And here's the thing. Trump does not seem to care. When I talk to his aides, when I talk to Republicans who are going in there, they're like, please, please, please, stop talking about tariffs. Stop talking about Venezuela. Stop talking about Greenland. Please talk about affordability. We've got to win the House. We've got to win the Senate. And nothing. He just does not care. I think he thinks he's killing it.

And I think you're going to see that in the state of the union where he's going to say, we're crushing it. This is like this is the era of exceptionalism. This is the golden era. And so he believes that, at least based on everybody that's talking to him. And therefore, they're not spending as much of that money that he's sitting on that Republicans wanted to sit on. He's not helping as much as people would like him to in some of these races. So Republicans are always going to say great things about him in public, but in private, they are really, really worried. Well, and you, and you know, Jim, you and I have been on the hill for over three decades, off and on watching these elections, watching how these things build up to elections. I remember 1994. We had a lot of things going for us when I was

running. But what really put us over the top was the check banking scandal, the stories that people had like cash in their drawers, all of this other stuff that it was unpopular policies and corruption on top of that. I remember 2006, we were struggling. Republicans were struggling with a lot of things coming out of George W. Bush's re-election. And then in 2006, there was a personal scandal on the Hill with a Republican congressman. And at that point, a lot of Republicans just threw their arms up in the air and said, you know, nothing's breaking our way. Now you look at the extraordinarily unpopular policies right now. You go down one poll after another pull after another poll. You look at the corruption surrounding the Epstein files, what looks like a cover-up

from the Department of Justice. You add on top of that Tony Gonzalez out of Texas, and this reminds me so much of 2006. Here you have this personal scandal, and what do you have? You have Mike Johnson running away from, you know, Can you. cameras saying, oh, you know, we should, you know, while you have women who, women who are members of the Republican caucus, saying, wait, what are you doing? He needs to quit. He needs to quit now. Tim Burch and others are saying the same thing. There's just, again, I've never seen, doesn't mean Republicans can't win six months is a long time, but I've never seen as toxic one, is toxic of a political situation for any party.

Number one. And number two, I've never seen a president of that party seem to care less about their fate. And not only caring about putting his pictures up on building, naming things after him. And, you know, while he's watching his family do crypto deals and every other type of deals that are making them billions of dollars, There seems to be this massive, massive disconnect, Jim. I don't know what Republicans do, to be honest with you. You hit on a brilliant point. I think people want instant gratification, instant reward when they think they're,

or punishment when somebody does something wrong in politics. Punishment in politics comes slowly, but surely. It takes time for people to put together the pieces and to start to get angry and then start to act on it. And little by little, if you see chaos, if you see corruption, maybe one story doesn't move you, but 10, 20, 30, 40, over a year, starts to move you. And that's what you're seeing here. And you're right. And I think part of what President Trump is if you look at how he governs, he governs much more by using kind of executive authority, executive orders, using his ability to negotiate or intimidate. And he doesn't really worry about legislating. So I think in his mind, he's thinking like, whatever,

I'm not, we're not signing a record number of bills into law. I can do a lot of things without Congress. And I don't think he cares if he gets impeached because he knows he would never get removed from office. And so he isn't driven by the same impulse that you would be driven if you're in Congress. If you're in Congress, you're in a hell of a vice. You want to be so loyal to the president. You don't want Maga to turn on you, but you're looking at the exact same polls we are.

And for people who are skeptical of polls, maybe one poll is wrong. But if every poll over every week says the exact same thing on every topic, it's probably what people think. Yeah, and you know, the internal polls, a lot of internal Republican polls are actually even worse than the public polls. So with all that in mind, we've got a lot now to get to this morning. Still ahead on morning, Joe, federal judge, Aileen Cannon permanently blocks the release of Special Counsel Jack Smith's report on Donald Trump's classified documents. case. It's permanent until she's once again overturned by the 11th Circuit for being a dupe for Donald Trump. We'll bring you what she's saying about that decision. Plus, we'll get to Jim Fandae's new piece about AI's biggest threats, including its impact on jobs and children. And as we go to

break, a look at the travelers' forecast this morning from Ackyweathers, Bernie, Raino. Bernie, how's it looking? Mika, we're digging out today across the Northeast, and it's a brisk and cold day. Your acque weather exclusive forecast, 32 degrees in Boston, some sun, 32, New York City, 41 in Washington, D.C. It's also chilly across the southeast, including Florida, 65 in Miami, sunshine in Tampa, warmer air in Texas will come east over the next couple of days, and we still have some travel problems here, especially in Boston in New York City, and that wind will keep the delays all day. To help you make the best decisions and be more in the know, download the Acuether app today.

24 past the hour, welcome back. Federal judges are growing angry over a pattern of continued defiance from Trump Justice Department lawyers, especially when it comes to immigration cases. That's according to reporting from the New York Times. The paper reveals a review of federal dockets found at least 35 instances since August,

where judges issued an order requiring the government to explain why. why it should not be punished for violating court orders. Those so-called show-cause orders came from judges across the country and all stemmed from cases where the government had detained undocumented immigrants who had been living in the U.S. for years. The Times note, quote, they represent the culmination of weeks of frustration from the bench.

Judges have castigated administration officials for testifying dishonestly, representing the law inaccurately and above all failing to comply promptly with their orders. Experts said that judges appeared to be grappling with a key question. Could the violations of court orders be explained merely by the stress on the legal system caused by the recent flood of immigration cases? Or is there a more systematic effort by the government to defy the courts? In a statement of the times, a Justice Department spoke to, person blamed, quote, rogue judges accusing them.

That's not going to help. Of not following the law or allowing high case loads and adding that the Trump administration was, quote, complying with court orders and fully enforcing federal immigration law. As well, let's bring it right now, MS now senior legal reporter and former litigator Lisa Rubin, Lisa, as you know, I am but a simple country lawyer. I don't understand the complexities of this federal legislation. But the one thing I do remember is when I was practicing in Northwest Florida, I remember the three federal judges in Pensacola, Florida,

and I'm not being funny here. If somebody came in and deliberately ignored an order or seemed to ignore an order, I can name their names right now. I won't. They would glare down at the lawyer. and say, you're in contempt of court. I'm going to give you one notice, but it seems that your agency continues to do this. I swear to God, they would say this. You need to go back and tell all your buddies you're working with. If it happens here again, I'm going to hold them in contempt

of court, and I'm going to suggest that professional proceedings start taking place to have them disbarred. This is a court of law. You have to have to. to start actually following the orders that we hand. I mean, that's just black and white. So I guess my question is, when I read all of these, these judges, federal judges being upset, I'm wondering why they just don't handle it the way most federal judges would handle this.

Well, Joe, in some cases they have, right? They have said to Department of Justice lawyers, if X doesn't happen by Y time, I will hold you in contempt. Or I am going to. hold you in contempt for every day that X doesn't happen. But I also want to suggest to you, there is a meaningful disconnect between what we'd call the career or line prosecutors who are dealing with these cases and the decisions that are being made at the Department of Justice. And on more than one occasion, you have also seen some of these lawyers sort of throw up their

hands and express their own frustration not only about the workload, but about the fact that They cannot see behind the decision making. They cannot access the wizard behind the instrument, right? They can't see the Wizard of Oz. They can't see that it's just a little man. But they know that somebody is making decisions that aren't being properly explained to them. In one case in Minnesota recently, you had a lawyer who was being loaned out to the Department of Justice because they have so few lawyers at that U.S. Attorney's Office essentially say, I am so tired.

If you hold me in contempt, that would be the best thing that ever happened to me because I could finally sleep. That's not normal federal prosecutorial behavior. And we should be cognizant of the fact that the people who might be at risk of being held in contempt aren't actually the folks making the decisions, much less do they have the information necessary to understand what those decisions are and how they're being made. But the DOJ calling them rogue judges, calling them crazy, dismissing them for partisan reasons, certainly is not going to help their standing in a lot of those courtrooms.

So let's talk about another federal judge. Aline Cannon Lee says permanently barred the release of Jack Smith's report on President Trump's handling of classified documents. Yesterday, the Trump-appointed judge granted the president's request to keep the final report sealed. The classified documents case is one part of a two-volume report produced by the former special counsel and his team. The first part, the report on their investigation into the president's alleged attempts to overturn the 2020 election was released last year. Judge Cannon criticized Jack Smith's report in her decision, saying the release of his findings would be a manifest injustice, in her words, to President Trump and his co-defendants. She writes, any release would, quote, cause irreparable damage to former defendants and would contravene basic notions of fairness and justice in the process. Cannon noted in her ruling that while special counsels have historically shared their findings publicly, they usually do so after dropping charges or winning conviction. Neither happened in this case. Judge Cannon dismissed the charges after ruling Jack Smith was

illegally appointed special counsel. So Lisa, it was Judge Cannon herself who ruled that Jack Smith was appointed illegally and therefore she says this file should not be made public because of that ruling she made. Is she on good ground here legally? Well, let's go back to her dismissal order of Willie, which she was making a decision there that no federal judge has made, basically, basically, the dismissal of the classified documents case on a dissent by Justice Thomas picking up that thread and then deciding that Jack Smith was unlawfully appointed under the Constitution's appointments and appropriations clauses. So at the very base of all of this is a decision that was aberrational. Then she goes on to say, as you just noted, that Jack Smith should never

have written volume two of his report because once she ruled that he was without authority to act in that case, it was unlawful for him to issue that report and continue. I should note, Jack Smith did appeal that finding. She says his problem was he didn't ask for a stay. But I want to go to something more fundamental here because in her order yesterday, she says it would be an injustice to air these allegations against not only President Trump, but the two co-defendants in this case, noting that special counsels typically issue their reports after the conclusion of those cases. that's simply not the case. When you look back to the Mueller report, for example,

there was an index to that report that was full of all sorts of cases that had been referred to other U.S. attorney's offices. Once Mueller had finished his work, it wasn't as if all of the fruits of their labor were concluded. Rather, there were a bunch of open investigations and open cases that were being prosecuted by Department of Justice lawyers all over the country.

And so, A, this is a situation of her own making, and B, while no one can appeal this decision, I want to make sure that you and our viewers know that there are a couple of good government groups that are trying to intervene in this case. They tried to do so. She rejected them several months ago. They have a pending appeal with the 11th Circuit.

And if the 11th Circuit is to decide that American Oversight and the Knight First Amendment Institute reasonably should be able to intervene in this because there's a public interest to be vindicated, well, then all bets are off about whether we'll ever see Volume two of this report, Willie? Well, I mean, the thing is, the 11th Circuit's overruled her so many times. She's been running a protection racket for Donald Trump from the moment John Elmere that this case went before.

And there's a reason why Donald Trump doesn't want any of this information to get out. Of all the cases that have been brought against him, he understands this document's case is the most damning case. He understands it is Republicans who are testifying against him. He understands its former employees. who are testifying against him. He understands it is a Moralago IT person who is saying that he was pressured to get rid of the camera footage. He understands there are reports that he approached the maintenance person to talk about flooding the room. All of these reports got out there, the pool flooding documents.

there are all of these reports that we have heard coming out in the media through the years about this case. And he understands this is the one case that could have gotten him in serious, serious trouble. And the huge mistake is that Jack Smith actually tried this case in Florida in front of a judge who I guess desperately wants to be on Trump Supreme Court instead of doing it in Washington, D.C., because if it were in Washington, D.C., because if it were in Washington, D.C., And if this case had actually gone to trial, I don't think there are many people who believe that history would not have been dramatically changed. So, yes, Eileen Cannon does not want the world to see the case that she killed, all right?

Donald Trump does not want that evidence out there. And so now we see whether the 11th Circuit, who's very conservative but also has turned over Eileen Cannon's decisions. in this case, overturn them time and time again, we'll see if they do it one more time, because the public has a right to know what Jack Smith learned. Yeah, there's many people in Jack Smith's orbit who really praised the way he's handled these prosecutions,

but pointed in real time, some suggested second-guessing the choice of venue. Like, this should have been in Washington, shouldn't have been in Florida because it left open the door to exactly this outcome. Random draw, to be sure. but Judge Cannon ended up putting a thumb on this scale significantly for Trump down the line. And you're right, Joe. We've talked about it on this show.

Trump has privately told people, you know, more or less that he was dead to rights on that one. That was the case, the classified documents case, that he feared the most. And I know there'll be second guessing for all time in terms of the sequencing of those cases. The one of Manhattan went first. Got a conviction. But it seemed too many to be the least serious. And we will never know if things had gone quicker or, you know, if the order was changed, what would have happened?

But you're right. Canon certainly at every opportunity seems to be deferential to Trump and Trump's wishes. We, of course, we'll see if there is an appeal. Lisa, while we have you, one more for you. British police say that the former UK ambassador to the United States, Peter Mandelson, has been released on bail after he was arrested in a misconduct probe stemming from his ties to the late Jeffrey Epstein. London's Metropolitan Police began an investigation into Manlinson earlier this month after a release of new material by the U.S. Department of Justice appeared to show that he gave potentially confidential and market-sensitive information to Epstein back in 2009. That's when he was a senior cabinet minister. He doesn't not be charged the crime and we should note does not face allegations of sexual misconduct.

But Lisa, tell us more about this case, but also, yeah, this comes on the heels of the former Prince Andrew also being charged. We are seeing repercussions, legal repercussions for powerful men on the other side of the Atlantic. You know, we have, there have been a handful of people with Epstein connections who've had to resign various posts here in the U.S., but there hasn't been legal charges and certainly no one in the president's orbit seem to be suffering any penalty. Well, and in that regard, Jonathan, you can contrast Lord Mandelson with Howard Lutnik, right? It's a tale of two ministers, both of whom had longstanding entanglements with Jeffrey Epstein,

both of whom seemed to have misrepresented either to the public or even to their political sponsors, what the truth was about that relationship. But Lord Mandelson, having been arrested yesterday on suspicion of misconduct in office, interviewed and released pending an ongoing investigation. So I want to make sure that our viewers understand both he and Prince Andrew were arrested, brought in for questioning, but then released pending a further investigation. And it's not clear that this will amount to charges for either of them. What I think is most damning, though, for Lord Mendelsohn, is that the emails, as you just referenced, show him forwarding an email

from an advisor to the prime minister discussing a potential sale of government assets on one hand, also have him showing Jeffrey Epstein proof that the EU was considering a bailout for Greece well before that deal was announced and even sharing it with him as he was leaving Downing Street. those are not the actions of someone who is first and foremost loyal to their government. And I think that's why Brits are really having a strong reaction to that. In the United States, we are seeing a lot of smoke. And yet in the files, there doesn't yet appear to be the fire that would lead to anybody's being criminally prosecuted. But I want to caution folks that that may still happen.

NPR reported this morning that based on an index that's included in the Epstein files, you can see which documents were turned over to Glenn Maxwell's defense lawyers that represent statements of potential witnesses, both those who testified at her trial and more than 500 who didn't. NPR has done sort of an initial analysis and said they can see that documents that should have been produced with the Epstein files. Again, those that constitute statements of potential witnesses are somehow missing from the files without explanation. In many cases, those involved the statements of crucial critical witnesses. in Epstein's inner circle, including those people who are understood to have been abused by him for years. What those statements would show if they were evident to us is unknown. But I think it's important that we start talking about the fact that for the first time,

we can document what many of us have been feeling in our guts, that there are documents here that should have been produced and yet are missing inexplicably. Well, missing inexplicably, and this goes back to what we set off the top of the show. This president finds himself and his party in an extraordinarily tenuous position, Mika, because the Epstein coverup continues. Pam Bondi continues covering this up. Very bad cover up. It's a bad, it's not even like a good, it's like a kid that's holding a cookie jar behind their back.

And like cookies are spilling out. You can see it. And PR saw it this morning. all these other people saw it too. It's like the cover up continues. We know there's a cover up. Everybody knows there's a cover up. The MAGA base understands there's a cover up.

And it will continue until they release everything. They just refuse to release everything. All right. Lisa, excellent. MS now senior legal reporter, Lisa Rubin, thank you so much for covering all those stories for us. And coming up on Morning Joe, today marks four years since Russia's invasion of Ukraine. As the death toll grows, could next month's talks finally bring peace to the region, plus the latest on where things stand with Iran, the new warning from officials within the

Pentagon should the U.S. carry out military action in the area. Morning Joe, we'll be right back. Today marks four years since Vladimir Putin launched his full-scale war on Ukraine, a report last month by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, estimated there has been nearly two million Russian and Ukrainian casualties in total since 2022. According to the think tank, about 1.2 million Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded, 1.2 million, while Ukraine has seen up to 140,000 military deaths and 500 to 600,000 soldier casualties, injuries. The UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission says just under 15,000 civilians in Ukraine have been killed by Russia, but notes the number is likely an underestimate. As the war drags on, negotiating teams from Moscow and Kiev met last week in Geneva.

Both sides say they are still far apart on key details, even as the Trump administration applies pressure to find an end to the war. Joining us now, President Emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, Richard Haas, and decorated combat veteran, former commander of U.S. Army Europe, retired Army Lieutenant General Mark Hurtling. Gentlemen, good morning to you both. Richard, I'll start with you on the big picture on this marker four years since Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine and those talks in Geneva, which to the surprise of almost no one didn't yield much.

And President Zelensky sounding a little more emboldened, even saying, we're not going to give up land for peace here. Vladimir Putin invaded us. We feel like we've got Europe behind us, if not the United States completely behind us, we're going to stay in this fight. So what is your snapshot of where we are right now? Well, we're four years into this phase of the war.

People have to remember this is the second phase of the war. The war began in 2014 when Russia took Crimea in some areas in the east. But so interesting about this phase of the war, Willie, is the territorial distribution between Ukraine and Russia essentially hasn't changed. Ukraine still controls roughly 80% of its territory, Russia roughly controls 20% of Ukraine's territory. The costs, as you've documented, have been enormous. What's changed over the last year is U.S. policy,

that we have gone from being an ardent supporter of Ukraine to essentially backed away, if anything, now we're tilting towards Russia, certainly diplomatically. The diplomatic track, though, is going nowhere. As generously as we are to Russia, it's still not enough for Russia, because Russia's goals are not just territorial. They essentially want to extinguish Ukraine as an independent, sovereign, western-tide state.

And U.S. proposals are way too much for Ukraine because it would require them to give up territory. It wouldn't be territory for peace. It would be territory for insecurity. So they have no interest in that. They don't want to be dependent on American so-called security guarantees. So as depressing as it's been, I think this could go on for a while longer. The real question is the capacity of the two sides.

to continue to fight this churning war, two million casualties. And I think for the first time, we're seeing some weakening in the Russian economy. And I take that as a good sign. And to me, the real question is whether the United States is going to do more to help Ukraine, if we could, if we would. I actually think we'd see more diplomatic results, but I'm sorry to say I don't see that. So I think this probably continues to drag on for the foreseeable future. And general hurtling, even as these negotiations, these attempts at diplomacy do drag on,

we see a pattern where Vladimir Putin and the Russians step up, actually, their attacks on civilian targets in Kiev and other places across Ukraine, hitting maternity wards and apartment buildings and things like that. But as Richard points out, 1.2 million Russian deaths in four years raises the question of just how many more men Vladimir Putin can throw into the meat grinder. So where do you see this going over the next year or so? Not only men, Willie, I'd add to that, just the industrial capability of Russia as well as the economy. What I'd say, just to summarize a little bit, this continues to be a war of endurance, something we've been saying for about a year now. Russia hasn't won. Ukraine hasn't lost. The U.S. is less involved. NATO and Europe are attempting to consolidate support after the withdrawal, much of the withdrawal of the United States from the action. the peace process seems one side, as Richard just said, and the outcome's going to be decided less by fighting over territory than by time, political will, and emerging industrial capacity.

Russia is betting it can outlast Ukraine. I don't think they can. You know, there's a Clause Witsin triangle that's called, how well is your military, how much is it supported by the citizens of the nation, and how good is the leadership of the political, political body. Russia doesn't have any one of the three of those. Ukraine continues to have the will, although they are bleeding as well. So Ukraine is betting more on time, technology, and continued European and hopefully U.S. backing to preserve its sovereignty. And what we're talking about now are small things. Do we take the kinds of things that have been sanctioned and equipment that's

been recovered by both Europe and the United States and trade that in for money to support Ukraine, that's certainly something that's appearing right now before our Congress, several congressmen, the Ukraine caucus in our Congress has put that forward, but whether or not it will get a vote remains to be seen. So, you know, as we all have seen over the last year, the outcome isn't going to be decided by a single offensive. It's going to be decided by who can sustain the fight longer. All right. And there's also new reporting on the Middle East.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Dan Kane and other Pentagon officials, have been warning of the consequences. Should the United States decide to carry out either strikes or an extended military campaign in Iran, officials told the journal, all options carry risks, but a prolonged campaign in particular, could incur significant costs to U.S. forces and munition stockpiles, complicating the protection of regional partners if Iran is able to retaliate. President Trump posted a lengthy message to social media denying that General Kane had raised any concerned, saying everything that has been written about a potential war with Iran has

been written incorrectly. He goes on to say he would, quote, rather have a deal than not. with Iran. General also reports that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs was concerned about our lack of allies in this fight, what a remarkable thing happens after you spend your time insulting allies for a year. When you need them, they're not at your side. And that seems to be the case right here. And you actually have, there are geopolitical consequences to that. There are strategic military consequences to that. It sounds like that's one thing. that General Kane is having to deal with right now? Yeah, I think it was Winston Churchill Bill that, I'm sorry, Joe, that said, you know,

there's only one thing worse than fighting with allies and it's fighting without them. You know, what's interesting is whatever the president puts on his screen, I would say that I'm all in line with what's been reported from General Kane. he has a good feel for the military potential. Iran is four times the size of Iraq. They have almost three times the population. It's a ruptured country. They have caught chaos within. Don't know where it's going to go if they were attacked with a ground assault, which the president implied yesterday. So you're talking about the potential for not only strikes over a country that's huge and has just a very diverse, geography and territory. But the potential for having an assault, as the president said, is going to put servicemen and women in harm's way to the nth degree. You know, what we're talking about too is not only just not having allies, but not having the capacity. You know, I have a little bit of deja vu on this because in 2003, I remember being part of the force that went

into Iraq, and Secretary Rumsfeld and others were in the administration were saying it was going to be a quick war. Let's talk about the dynamics of how much bigger and more difficult Iran would be in case of an assault in that country. And you could kind of determine what it might look. General, why don't you tell us that? Because I've often heard if you think Iraq was difficult, it'll be nothing compared to Iran? What or the specifics of a campaign against Iran and the Iranians that would be far more complex in what we saw from 2003 to 2010 in Iraq? Well, first of all, you have an older force. You have a lot of equipment that's been in combat for 20 years. You don't have the allies, as has been reported, to go in with you, which we had in Iraq in 2003 for the most part. You don't

have territorial support in terms of a supply chain potential, you have the potential as well for Iran to conduct asymmetric warfare on a very large scale throughout the Middle East and even potentially within allied countries and the U.S. with sleeper cells. So it's a much greater potential of trying to conduct regime change, which was the true objective in 2003, which a lot of military shook their head about, because that's not normally a military operation, and it causes chaos within a country. When you have the security forces, the government all being disrupted and being overthrown with a potential assault, it makes for some dynamics within a country where sides begin a civil war. It's one of the worst types of

combat you can have when there is that kind of humanitarian disaster along with the potential for a civil war. So, Joe, we could talk for days on this. particular problem. And truthfully, the U.S. military has war-gamed Iran, a potential assault inside of Iran. Even when I was back as a young major in the mid-1980s, we had war games at Leavenworth talking about how difficult it would be from a territorial requirement, but also from the context of how strong Iran is to go into that country. So it is a Russian invasion all over again with a lack of support from allies, we would become somewhat of a pariah. Our nation doesn't support this, and the government has not seemed to have supplied a plan

in terms of what the true objective is. Let's remember back in 2016, Donald Trump railed against the, quote, forever wars in the Middle East, Iraq and Afghanistan vowed he would not do the same. And he has yet to make any sort of convincing public case to Congress, to the American people, why this war with Iran would be in their interest. Richard, there's been some reporting. I've heard the same. The president's favorite option here might be some, you know, hoping that the sheer presence of the Armada will push the Iranians to make a deal. It doesn't seem like that's, we'll see if that happens. There are some talks still scheduled for later in the week.

Otherwise, it might be maybe a limited strike, a preemptive limited strike to would then push them to the table. Walk us through. Do you think there's any wisdom to that? How could that work? But also, how could that really backfire? Well, the problem with the limited strike, Jonathan, is twofold. One is limited. Stricts tend to get you limited results. Second of all, it takes two sides to keep a war limited. Iran gets a vote here. So we may want to keep it limited, but just say Iran decides to go after shipping or go after a Saudi oil refinery or attack U.S. forces in the Middle East or go after Israel.

So to say you want big results with small costs, sure, who doesn't? Sounds great. Problem is previous wars suggest that's not available. We've got a big problem here. We've amassed an enormous armada in the region, except we've got an armada in search of a strategy. What is this about? Are we trying to bring about regime change? Really demanding, as General Kane essentially has pointed out.

Is it to go after their ballistic missile inventory, which the Israelis want, to go after the nuclear capabilities? Well, I thought those were obliterated, and those seemed to be getting negotiated. To go after the proxies, they don't offer a good target. So we've got a real disconnect between our means and Iran's. Congress isn't holding hearings about it. The president's not explaining it. And here we are. This is a crisis of choice. We're on the cusp of a war of choice. History suggests to be really, really careful. That's what people ought to be thinking here. Well, and you look at the poll numbers. We've been talking on morning about how unpopular the president's policies are, how unpopular the Republicans are in Congress. A Quinapec poll from late January says only 18 percent of Americans support. military strikes against Iran. 70% oppose it. A February Ipsos poll shows from this month that only 21% of American support a military strike against Iran. It is an extraordinarily

unpopular thing right now. President Emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, Richard Haas, retired Army Lieutenant General Mark Hurdling. Thank you both very much for your analysis this morning.