Morning Joe - Trump to Headline U.S. 250th Anniversary Concert

Episode Date: June 1, 2026

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People are spending more on gas, but they're also spending more on everything else, not just groceries, but restaurants and so on. And I think that that's a sign that you would see when people are optimistic about the future. White House Economic Advisor Kevin Hassett with some serious spin there about the state of the economy, claiming that Americans are more optimistic about the future because they're paying more for things. While costs are rising, President Trump spent most of his weekend doing what else, posting on. on social media about almost everything except affordability issues. We're going to go through his increasingly erratic online habits. Also ahead, Trump's running mate from his first term is speaking out against the so-called anti-weaponization fund, a massive amount of money that could go

to members of the January 6th crowd who threatened Mike Pence's life. Plus, we'll bring you the latest on the negotiations to end the Iran war, as President Trump is requesting edits on the items his envoys had already agreed to with their Iranian counterparts. Good morning, and welcome to Morning Joe. It is Monday, June 1st. I'm Jonathan Lemire. Got the helm today. Joe McAwilley have the day off. With us, we have a great group to get us started. Co-host of the Restis Politics Podcast, the BBC's Caddy Kay, the host of Politics Nation on MS Now, the Reverend Al Sharpton. He is, of course, also president of the National Action Network, and CEO and co-founder of Axios, Jim Vandaai, with us as well. My thanks to all of you for

joining us. Let us dive right in. We have a lot to get to on this busy Monday morning. We'll start with New Jersey Governor, Mikey Sherrill, saying that family visitations will resume at an immigration detention center in Newark where protests have been taking place for more than a week amid reports of unsafe and unsanitary conditions inside that ice facility. Tensions were particularly high Saturday night as protesters threw projectiles, set fires, and clashed with officers who were trying to secure the area. Police deployed tear gas and flashbang grenades to break up the crowd. Just after midnight, the mayor of Newark issued a curfew covering a half-mile area around the detention center until further notice.

Democratic Senator Andy Kim, who has met with detainees inside the facility, weighed in yesterday on those protests. A lot of people are angry. A lot of people are frustrated, feeling like they're seeing and hearing about things happening on our soil with our taxpayer dollars that is not in line with our valleys as a nation. I feel it too. A congressional delegation was finally granted access to the facility yet. after days of being turned away. Minority leader Hakeem Jeffries released a statement afterwards that reads in part this. The conditions of confinement we witnessed firsthand and discussed with approximately two dozen detainees at the Delaney Hall detention center shocked the conscience. We learned of unsanitary living conditions, lack of adequate medical care and unhealthy food.

This is not America. The Department of Homeland Security responded to Jeffries on social media, writing in part, this is a detention center. We do not provide luxury accommodations. What we do provide are basic necessities like beds, clean water, comprehensive health care, and three meals a day until they go home. Joining us now from outside Delaney Hall in New York, New Jersey is MS Now, Senior Transportation Reporter, Josh Einer.

Josh, good morning. this center in particular in recent weeks has become such a flashpoint on this issue of migrants and these detention centers with reports of terrible conditions. We had Senator Booker join us on Friday describing the same, the horror stories from some inmates who were in there. Give us the latest as to how things look this Monday morning. Well, Jonathan, after a really messy weekend of protest, the video there that you saw the city of Newark, the mayor, Rosbaraka, imposed this curfew in the specific vicinity of where the facility is. Let me just show you. I mean, you see this barricade behind me. We're in this very industrial

stretch of Newark, not far from the airport, which is a couple blocks away from where Delaney Hall is located, and this whole block is access controlled now, and they're trying to clamp down and crack down on who's able to be there so they can try to keep some manage, some semblance of order when it comes to these protests. But of course, what they're going to be. they're protesting is the lack of transparency and the conditions inside and the reports that there's a hunger strike going on inside and the fact that people have been unable to see their loved ones. You can see what's going on here. There's lots of trucks here out here in this neighborhood, so hopefully you can hear me okay.

But a lot of arrests last night when they expanded this zone at 9 o'clock when that curfew went into effect. So our team on the ground here last night saw what appeared to be a couple dozen people led away into a bus to be processed. We haven't heard exactly how many people were officially arrested. Earlier in the weekend, Governor Mikey Sherrill spoke about the need to bring the state police in so that it wasn't ICE engaging with these protesters. That, of course, had inflamed the matter dramatically earlier in the week, and then it was up to the New Jersey State Police to try to take over and try to maintain order. But of course, that led to even more conflict.

Here's what Governor Cheryl had to say over the weekend about that. As the situation intensified, additional support was needed. Because of their good, fast work, arrests were limited to three people. Let me be clear. Violent chaotic clashes hurt everyone. They put the lives of both protesters and law enforcement in danger. They take the focus away from. people inside Delaney Hall and their families. And they raise the temperature with ice. I will ensure

public safety and I refuse to give ice an excuse to surge into our communities. That would make the situation more dangerous and put more New Jerseyans at risk. It's time to bring the temperature down. Yeah, this really speaks, Jonathan, to the concerns of local officials all across the country during this immigration crackdown over the past year. Obviously, what we saw in Minneapolis, when ICE was just in the streets and the Minneapolis police were kind of on the periphery and in the background and had really no control over what was going on there. Obviously, local officials trying to change that paradigm here so they could maintain some semblance of order. She said there are three arrests.

That was a statement she made yesterday during the day. We do know that there were many, many more people taken away last night. We're still waiting to hear on the actual numbers. But the good news, of course, Jonathan, is that members of that congressional delegate, were able to go in and observe at least for the first time in a while. And so hopefully, at least now, things might be a little bit more calm as we get into the week here in Newark. Jonathan? Yeah, a real point of outrage that those congressional delegations had been blocked from entering until yesterday.

MS Now reporter, Josh Eindler, live from outside the immigrant detention center in Newark, New Jersey. Josh, thank you so much. Reverend Al Sharpton, and you also at Governor Cheryl, you spoke to her this weekend on your show, Politics Nation, here on MS Now. What did she tell you? She was concerned about what was the treatment of those inside of Delaney. And she wanted to see that they would treat the failure. She was at one point bled from going in. But to not have congressional people go in, which is something that is just ordinary and lawful,

was something extreme. But at the same time, she was concerned that these that were coming, she said in the evening hours, causing some kind of violent interchange is why she wanted state police then to handle this, not ICE. She mentioned how we've seen what happened with ICE in Minneapolis with two people killed. She wanted to therefore have the state police interact with the protesters. She brought out how during the daytime all her protesters were peaceful, but it seemed. that there was some outside out of New Jersey people that would come in. Don't know if they were provocateurs from the other side that really wanted to cause trouble, that were pro-eyes or not.

And community leaders led by Mayor Ros Baraka, who was also on my show last night, and Reverend Steffi Bartley had come in and said, wait a minute, we want to see this place closed down. We want to see humane treatment. But we do not want violence, and we do not want anything that would endanger the families. that are standing here trying to get in to see their loved one, which now they're being allowed to do so. And Caddy Kay, we have spoken a lot on the show about how when President Trump is in a tough

political moment, almost reflexively, he returns to the issue of immigration, which he credits for his original victory back in 2016. We have heard from Tom Holman. We've heard from the new Homeland Security Secretary Mark Wayne Mullen that the deportations are going to ramp up again, even as. there is some sense that some of these ice facilities might have that they're building or buying, they might actually have to sell a couple of them. But it's clear that this, though temperatures had cooled since Minneapolis, it's ramping up again with what we're seeing in New Jersey being a

real flashpoint. Yeah. It's going to be interesting to see what the politics of that are, because whilst there is quite a lot of opposition to these detention centers, particularly amongst Democrats, those kinds of screens, scenes that we just saw in New Jersey on television, Jim Vandahai, over the weekend, they don't necessarily help the cause of those who are trying to raise questions about what's happening inside these detention centers. The focus then gets put on the protesters and the violent clashes that we've just seen outside Delaney Hall. I think Mikey Sherrill was right. This doesn't help the cause. No, and I think we kind of understand the politics now, right? That most Americans want the borders locked up. Most people want people who

are here committing crimes removed, but they also want people treated humanely. I think that has kind of been the resounding message over the last year. When you get into these situations where you start to have this real chaos on the streets, and there's real energy around this topic, right? If you think about it from the perspective of being an activist or being a protester, you saw that you were pretty successful in Minneapolis. You're able to essentially shut down a lot of momentum inside the White House to do that in other cities because there was a massive public backlash. It's just a fine line. If you end up becoming too violent and you end up becoming the story, you end up taking away

all of that momentum that you had towards changing the public perception on that topic. So we'll have more on the situation in Newark and these immigration developments as the show goes on. Right now we want to turn to President Trump, who spent most of his Saturday posting on his truth social platform. Again, the president's first post at 11.15 a.m. was a more than 700-word rant. about a federal judge who on Friday ruled that the Kennedy Center must remove Trump's name from the building. Over the next 14 hours, Trump posted more than 60 times, finally ending at just after 1 a.m. Sunday morning. His social media spree included political memes attacking his perceived political rivals,

memes about crime under his administration compared to former President Biden, multiple AI generated pictures, including two separate posts of Trump on Mount Rushmore, and at least three posts with George Washington, one of which was the two men on horses near a Trump-branded NASCAR vehicle with the Washington Monument and the White House in the background, and for good measure, a space shuttle flying over them. You know, Caddy, you know, this is not going to help the accusations that President Trump he is focused solely on himself and his own priorities. We'll have more to say about that Kennedy Center decision later in the show.

But that clearly triggered a lot of anger from Trump. You'll twin that with what we heard from Kevin Hassett at the top of the show. You know, his sound suggesting that there's really not a lot of recognition from this administration, that, A, the number one priority for most Americans is the economy. is the economy and the cost of things. And B, they have not focusing at all on how to address it. Instead, they're simply concerned about other things, mostly things, to enhance Trump's legacy in Washington.

Look, I mean, you know, it's pretty clear where the president's head is at at the moment. He's had this long-running war with Iran, long by his standards, not long, of course, by international standards, that is not going well. He's deeply frustrated by that. when he hits a roadblock in the pet things that he is really focused on and that he feels a part of his legacy, like the Kennedy Center, and like the reflecting pool, then he gets peeved. And when he gets peeved, he reaches for his phone.

And no matter how many people around him say it would be better to take the president's phone away from him during the course of particularly weekend nights, he doesn't want to do that. I mean, Jim, when you saw that over the weekend, I saw it. I had a, actually had a long conversation on Saturday. I was chatting to an international economist who was saying to me, look, we are about to hit a moment where the straits, form was could get much, much worse for Americans. They don't understand what could be coming in two or three weeks' time.

But then you see how firmly the president is not wanting to really engage with prices, even with Iran. He's done. I mean, he clearly wants to get out of there, even if he can't find a way out of there. And he wants to focus on things like that. Maybe he feels this serves him well. is he, it clearly doesn't serve Republicans well. They're clearly frustrated. People around him wanting to get back on message. What's his thinking about what this does for him?

Yeah, I mean, first, I think we need to stay. Not that I'm asking you on Monday morning to play, armchair psychologist of Donald Trump. You need to appreciate that, like, whether you laugh, you cringe, or you cheer, these are the unfiltered words of the president of the United States in real time. Everything we know is he's either typing them himself or doing it through an aid. We've never had this in human history where you've had a leader who's telling you in real time what's on his mind. So you should read those things because he's telling you exactly what's on his mind. And I think to a lot of us who think about politics, think about governance, think about this moment. We're like, wow, this is some weird stuff to be fixating on at one o'clock in the morning.

But it is what he's fixating on. The reason he's fixating it on is he feels trapped right now. He feels like, you know what, I'm crushing it in these elections. Anybody I want elected gets elected. Almost every single member of Congress who has an R next to their name is my person. They'll do whatever I want. Yes, maybe five or six people break, but I have never been more powerful inside my party. However, outside of that, the walls seem to be closing in.

He can't get what he wants in Iran. He can't get what he wants in Ukraine. He can't get what he wants in Gaza. He can't tell the courts how the courts are going to rule on things like the Kennedy Center. So reality's closing in. Even these artists that they, you know, kind of like throwback artists, if you want to be charitable, that are going to be at the 250th anniversary. They're just canceling. They're like, I don't want to be a part of this.

He can't control that. So these things that he can't control are closing in. When that happens, this is what he does. And there's nobody inside the White House. Not a single person who can say, Mr. President, with all due respect, we should probably be talking about prices or talking about some other topic. They just let Trump be Trump because they feel like and they have some evidence to support that, that what he's done over time has helped him get elected and stay very powerful with his specific base. But this is where we're at and people should take the time to read these because those are the unfiltered words of the president of the United States in real time,

the things that he cares mostly about and then make your own determination. As for that 250th concert, so many artists, and it was already a pretty B-list lineup, But so many artists were canceling that Trump now has just pulled down the whole thing. Said, well, we're going to get rid of the concert. I'm just going to give a rally, you know, making the 250 anniversary of this country even more about himself. You know, certainly Reverend Sharpton, you know, this latest spree, I mean, you know, Javanagh is right. It tells us where he is, what his mindset is. And yeah, he's remarkably powerful in the Republican Party.

He's also polling in the mid-30s. And we should just note, this is not the first time he's happened. one of these sprees. In fact, far from the first time. He said a bunch lately. And it's also adding to increased speculation about his sort of mental well-being and fitness for the job. I wrote a story a couple weeks ago, noting the signs of age. He turns 80 in just two weeks' time. He had a physical last week. The White House has provided very few details of what we learned there. Other media outlets have also started to write about his age. It's not received the scrutiny that President Biden's age did, not yet in any way. But I think there are some, it is a

to ask questions about the mindset of this president right now and his ability to govern this nation for all the people. When you see how he just incessantly mocked President Biden, and he's acting more erratic than President Biden ever did on his worst day, it shows to even his closest supporters that there is something that is inconsistent here. He's up in the middle of the night, then very early in the morning, and then napping in the middle of the day in public events. It gives concern. And then the things that he is doing, which is clearly all self-engaging, self-indulgent, but not helping the very people that put him in power.

The affordability issue is a real issue. It's not a partisan issue. His people are paying gas prices $4,050. $4.50 to $6 a gallon. And he seems oblivious to that. He's not on social media about that. He's on social media about his pet peeves and about giving threats. And it's irrational politically and concerning personally. Yeah. And not only are they not at AIDS in the White House who can tell him to put the phone down, they don't even try. There's no one in there who thinks that's their job. All right, more on that ahead. Still ahead. Next, our morning, Joe. President Trump now says

that the United States has actually left Iran's military alone, despite previously saying on numerous occasions that it's been completely destroyed. We'll show you those puzzling new comments and try to offer an explanation. Plus, President Trump, as I just mentioned, suggests a new headliner for the White House event marking the country's 250th anniversary after several artists and performers dropped out. You'll never guess who he picked. And as we go to break, a quick look at the travelers' forecast this morning from Accuethers, Bernie Rayno. Bernie, how's looking out there? Still cool in New England, Jonathan. Today, a couple of spotty showers around Boston, New York City. You can have a shower. Much of the time will be rain-free. Beautiful day. Harrisburg, Washington,

D.C., Pittsburgh, Shower 2 this morning in Chicago. In the southeast, still steamy, spotty thunderstorms, hot in Texas. By the way, look. lowering humidity all the way down toward Atlanta tomorrow. If you're doing any traveling forecast, your ACUweather travel forecast, by your delays in Atlanta and Miami. To help you make the best decisions and be more in the know. Download the ACUweather app today. The United States is decimating the radical Iranian regime's military.

In a way, the world has never seen before. Never before has a modern, capable military, which Iran used to have been so quickly destroyed and made combat ineffective, devastated. We've taken a country that was going to have a nuclear weapon, and we've virtually destroyed its military. They have no Navy. They have no Air Force. They've been virtually destroyed militarily.

That's a lot. That's a big, we could leave right now. It would take them 25 years to rebuild. Their military, we've sort of left it alone because we think that their military is somewhat moderate. They have other people that aren't moderate. We've taken them out. We've taken different forms of leadership out. We've actually left their military alone. People would be surprised to hear that because mistakes have been made in wars where you wipe out everybody and then you have a

country that's, you know, for 40 years can never rebuild. President Trump, with that comment about Iran's military in an interview with Fox News over the weekend is compared with previous assertions that he, Defense Secretary of Pete Hex, have made over the course of the war. Meanwhile, the U.S. and Iran exchange renewed fire over the weekend as negotiations to end the war continue and seem stalled. U.S. Central Command announced and conducted what it once again deemed self-defense strikes on Iranian radar and command and control sites for drones.

Sentcom says the strikes were in response to aggressive Iranian actions that included the shootdown of a U.S. MQ1 drone that was operating over. international waters. The U.S. military then responded by eliminating Iranian air defenses, a ground control station, and two one-way attack drones that it says pose clear threats to ships transiting regional waters, all of that according to CENTCOM. Iran's Revolutionary Guard, meanwhile, claims it launched a retaliatory strike, while Kuwait said it was intercepting incoming drone and missile fire. This all comes as Axios cites U.S. officials who say, President and Trump asked for several amendments to the deal.

His envoys seemed to reach with their Iranian counterparts during a few days ago, these amendments being asked for during a situation room meeting on Friday. The officials add that Trump does want a deal, but also wants to strengthen several points, particularly around Iran's nuclear material. Iran's foreign ministry says any deal with the U.S. must include guarantees for a ceasefire in Lebanon,

where in recent days, Israel has actually essence. escalated its attacks. So let's bring in MS now, senior national care reporter, David Rode, for the latest here. David, it seems like negotiations pretty stalled reporting also last week from New York Times that President Trump trying to toughen some of the asks, unclear where that's getting them. And it does seem like we've settled into, during this sort of impasse, a moment of sort of low-grade conflict here, where the both parties say the ceasefire are still intact, but yet, you know, there are, to at least some degree, hostilities have resumed. Yes, I mean, it's, it is like this low-level conflict now that's just continuing,

despite what the president says. And despite, you know, Secretary Higg says saying the Iranian military has been decimated. So Iran shot down this MQ9 Reaper, as you mentioned, that's a very expensive American drone. They're able to carry that out in terms of their air defenses. And then one new detail emerged over the weekend. Last week, the Iranians fired a ballistic missile at Kuwait, and it was shot down. And again, the American, military secretary said didn't make this public, but ABC News reported and we confirmed

several American soldiers and contractors were injured as the debris from that missile fell down. It would appear on an American base, so it was close to target there. And the Pentagon didn't make that public. So a low-level armed conflict continues. As you mentioned, Israeli forces are advancing farther and farther into Lebanon. There isn't a final agreement, even in Gaza at this point. and the president, as you talked about in the last segment, is just sort of creating, you know, wishcasting for where he wants this to go with his social media posts. So this war is not, you know, ending it looks like anytime soon. And Prime Minister Netanyahu just a few days ago said that Israel now wants to control up to 70% of Gaza. David, let's zero in on the uranium.

That seems to be, you know, at the forefront of this ongoing negotiations, Trump's demands shifting a little bit. Walk us through, if you will, where things stand and how difficult it would be to come to an agreement for the future of that material. So, again, the reporting is that the, from Access in the New York Times that the president was, this specific thing was that he wanted the memorandum some kind of agreement that this, the enriched uranium would be removed to the United States. The earlier language that they would just talk about how to dispose of that uranium and what the Iranians have talked about is downblending it. That's where you bring the enrichment level down, so it can't be used to make nuclear bomb. That specific offer to downblend that uranium was on the table the day before the U.S. began these strikes. The Umani foreign minister said that publicly.

He said it to me and to Margaret Brennan, the CBS News. And so it's sort of here we go again about this same issue. And I don't think the Iranians are going to agree that the U.S. can come in and remove that enriched uranium. Maybe that's unreasonable on their part. Maybe they should agree to that. but they won't. They feel they're winning. They will keep waiting. They would rather push off all the nuclear parts of these negotiations into this 60-day time frame. The president, I think, senses how politically damaging it would be if Iran were to keep its enriched uranium as part of this interim

deal. David, the other issue that seems to be on the table is money and whether there should be a sum of this deal to open the straits, either unfrozen assets or some kind of reparations in some form or some kind of fee that the Iranians would get or sanctions relief that the Iranians would get. I know that Donald Trump is very keen not to repeat what President Obama did. He hates this idea of being compared to him in any way, that there are kind of pallets of cash being transferred to the Iranians. If we're now getting back to the basically the status quo ante, and it looks like the Iranians are in a stronger position because they know they control the Straits of Hormuz and that they can shut it down again, doesn't it seem likely that they are going to

get some kind of money to sweeten this deal as well. Basically, Donald Trump is going to have to pay them some significant sum to get any kind of deal at this stage. You're absolutely right to highlight this. And this is, again, the Obama comparison. So Iran might keep the enriched uranium. That would be a better deal than Obama got in terms of it's still highly enriched at this point. And then what the Iranians are asking for is anywhere from 12 to 24 billion in frozen assets. A lot of it's in the region to be given back to them. That would be hugely embarrassing to President Trump because he mercilessly mocked President Obama for returning other Iranian assets that have been frozen. They've been held for decades. That was just $1.7 billion. I want to repeat, what the Iranians

are asking for is between $12 and $24 billion. And in total, the broad estimate is that there's $100 billion in Iranian assets frozen around the world. Iran is going to demand all that back. So Obama, $1.7 billion mocked by President Trump. Right now, the Iranians are pushing for $12 to $24, and there's a possible pool of $100 billion that Iran is going to demand go back to it in the long term if there's a serious and permanent peace agreement. And the Strait of Hormuz remains largely closed. And as Katty had mentioned earlier,

a lot of economists think that the economic pain from that will only grow, could really skyrocket in the coming weeks. MS now senior national security reporter, David wrote. David, thank you, as always. I'm sure we're speaking to you guys. very soon. I think that the weaponization fund is a bad idea from the start. And I would encourage the administration just to drop it.

Let's get rid of this fund. I mean, it's deeply offensive to me that you could have a fund that could even possibly compensate people who assaulted police officers or vandalized the Capitol on January 6th. And I think that's broadly held by most Republicans and most Americans. that of course former vice president Mike Pence, who was personally targeted by January 6 insurrectionists offering that criticism of the Trump administration's $1.776 billion anti-weaponization fund. Pence's words come as a federal judge has blocked the fund from going into effect, at least temporarily. That ruling came Friday after a prosecutor on January

six cases and other plaintiffs sued to stop it. They argued that the money is essentially an unauthorized political rewards program designed to benefit Trump's allies with little public oversight. The next hearing in that case is set for June 12th, and the judge who ruled on this fund initially also offered, said that she wants to reexamine it from starting over, basically saying, suggesting that she had been deceived during the process. We shall see. As Trump allies await a possible government windfall for their perceived grievances against the government with that fund, if it happens. American citizens who say they were unjustly detained by ICE agents are asking what recourse they might have. MS now investigative reporter Mark Santilla

has been digging into this question, and he joins us now. Mark, great to see you. What can these citizens do if they believe their rights were violated? Jonathan, this was working on this documentary. It was really, it was an education for me. For years, I've covered local police officers and state employees who faced civil suits and criminal charges. But these are federal agents, federal officers. And we all saw those clashes between federal employees and American citizens and the ice surges across the country under Christenome. And we wondered, as an American, what can you do if you feel your constitutional rights

have been trampled if you were detained, if you were assaulted, if your property was damaged? What can you do to be made whole? So myself, along with our producer, Emily Burke, we really dove into this. And we found this issue. It's not about Democrats or Republicans. It's about Americans, and it's not about an anti-weaponization fund that's focusing on a certain group of people. We were asking about all Americans, and we want to make clear this issue didn't start with this administration, but it's taking center stage with this administration.

And over the decades, so many restrictions have been put in that when it comes to real recourse, there isn't much. We are in a moment where it has never been more difficult in American history to hold a federal agent accountable for violating your constitutional rights. Searching for answers on just how and why it is so difficult to successfully sue the federal government led us to Burlington, Vermont. Harrison Stark is an expert in constitutional law and director of special projects at the state democracy research initiative. And the main question that we're hearing is, I am an American citizen. If I feel a federal agent or a federal agency has trampled on my constitutional rights, what's my recourse? Over the past several decades and into today, the answer is unfortunately not much. This is a problem that goes back long before this administration.

Rights are only as strong as their remedies. And a right without a remedy is really just a guideline. It's a suggestion. If those things are real, if they're essentially just guidelines or suggestions and not enforceable rules, we have a very, very different relationship with our government than I think many people think we do. As Harrison Stark was saying, there are some avenues you could file a federal tort claims act, but there are restrictions. You wouldn't have a jury. You would have just a judge here your case. There would be no punitive damages. So again, when it comes to recourse, a lot of restrictions are in place.

But those restrictions in many ways are at the expense of the civil rights or liberties of who could be victimized by that. How do we go forward and try to establish the guardrails of trying to bring this in that you protect people's rights and at the same time secure the country? That's a great question. And several states right now are trying to move forward by passing laws specifically on the concept of Converse 1983 that would allow states to take action against federal agencies and federal employees. Will this work?

It's not going to be retroactive. We're going to have to see this will all play out in court. But some states are moving forward and really. really trying to focus on just that. Being able and allowing American citizens to take action against federal agencies to put in some guardrails, to give it some real teeth, and put some sort of guardrails in place that we don't see repeats in the future. You can watch Mark's special report on YouTube right now by scanning the QR code that's on the lower right portion of the screen. Please do. It's an important watch. MS. Now investigative reporter Mark Santee. And Mark,

thank you for being with us this morning. Still ahead here. We're going to dive in a gym. Van de Hyes' new piece for Axios, explaining why we're living through the most disorienting societal moment since World War II. Morning, Joe. We'll be right back with that. Jim, your latest piece for Axios is titled The Rattled Generation, a unified theory of this American moment. And in it you write in part, quote, we're living through the most disorienting societal moments

since World War II. Almost nobody in a position of powers explaining why or what to do about it. This is so much bigger than politics, it touches our jobs, our companies, our communities, and our realities. By most objective measures, it's an extraordinary time to be alive. Americans are wealthier, safer, and longer lived than at any earlier point in history. U.S. total wealth has soared, violent crime, sank to a 20-year low and is still falling. You continue, and yet, University of Michigan, consumer sentiment, just hit its lowest reading in a half century. Gallup finds most people think things will only get worse. The gap between reality and feeling is the story of our era.

The three-part shock helps tell it. First, social media's rise. Second, the chaos of COVID. And third, the rise of AI, political extremism, and information bubbles in the aftermath of both. This produced a perpetually rattled generation, one, too unsteady and uncertain to believe things are truly good or getting better. There's a new phenomenon for a typically optimistic can-do society. So interesting, Jim, you and I have just been speaking about this in the break.

Is some of the distinction that you're seeing between the reality and the feeling that people have that when people respond to the Michigan Consumer Sentiment Survey or a Gallup poll, they're thinking short-term. Things are bad now. They're not seeing the bigger picture. And a lot of the things that you're describing that are AI-generated are longer-term. improvements in America or producing longer term improvements. Yeah, but I don't think anyone in government, I don't think people in business, I don't think

people in leadership are reckoning with what's happened before us. You can't fix what's broken until you understand that we've gone through 20 years of real chaos, of insane chaos. You think about social media, what algorithms did to your brain did to your kids' brains. You think about COVID, this idea that we were isolated. Businesses didn't just close. Suddenly, like, we were alone and it changed our, behaviors. And then you think about AI and you think about political extremism. Just think about the tone and tenor of politics today versus ten years ago, the things that are said, how much it's in your face. These things are real. And those things create real anxiety. And I think that

anxiety sits at the heart of why, yes, empirically, things are really good, but emotionally, people feel like crap. The fact that people are pessimistic in this country, like one of the great things I love about this country is it's a can-do place. Like, we always think, like, we're going to get better. Our kids are going to be richer. We're going to be leaders in the world. And suddenly, that's changed. And the point I was trying to make in the column, and Mike and I were trying to make, is this isn't just a political issue. People want to say blame Trump or blame Biden. It's bigger than that. We basically have a society that's lost trust in almost every institution, other than their specific employer. That's sad when you don't have a country that believes in

anybody that you can turn to to guide you through troubled times, you end up with what we have right now. And the good news is, like, we have advantages here that others don't have. Like, I know people will argue that, but we just do. There's so many magical things about the country, but the clock is ticking. And, like, if we don't have leaders in government, business, media, academia, step in and start helping walk people through, start restoring faith in institutions, start elevating competence over people who are just loud and obnoxious. These small steps would make a big difference in us being able to take advantage of those inherent edges. I've spoken to people in the AI world who are worried that there could be such societal and political backlash

against this new technology in a way that we didn't see at other moments of technological advance in America's past, that the whole project could get kind of aborted before it has a chance to really fully develop. because people will just say, I find this too difficult, too scary, I'm worried about the security of the country, I'm worried about, all the things we know they're worried about, I don't like the data centers, and that that could actually sort of truncate America's progress. Do you think that's possible? It might be the crappiest rollout by an industry in the history and the history of industry, right? Because there are great things that the technology does. You're seeing it over the last couple of weeks. We're seeing cures or potential cures for diseases that would never have been found without artificial intelligence. We're seeing that there's ways to increase productivity that could lead to economic expansion.

There's some really good attributes of AI. And as somebody who uses it a ton who's implemented in our company, I believe, like, if you do the right things, like if government thinks smartly about this, if these businesses behave responsibly, if colleges teach the right things to our kids, there's no reason we couldn't go through a real boom cycle. But not if everyone feels like this is going to eat their job or it's going to rip apart their soul. And if you look at polling, that's what people think right now. And so again, I don't think it's just going to be a political leader saying, let's do this policy on AI. I think it's everybody thinking about how do we take advantage of the fact that we've got this intelligence,

and we're way ahead of China and other countries, the fact that we're the largest producer of energy in the world right now, four years running, and that we do have this entrepreneurial zest that does create more new companies than any other country in the world. How do you turn that into a net positive? But I don't see or hear anybody saying that. I go to colleges and I walk away pretty sad.

They're booing AI in all of their commencement speeches. But they're doing it the cheat as opposed to figuring out. But they're using it, yeah. Or they're booing people because of this. technology as opposed to like, no, no, no, no, no. How do I use this technology as a force multiplier so I can do good and society can do better? But we're not hearing that. Yeah, it's certainly interesting how AI has become such a, frankly, toxic issue heading into this year's midterms.

This new piece is available to read online now. Jim Van der Lehi, thank you as always. Today complaining on the internet. Listen to this. Six hours, 52 posts. The president attacked the Pope. He posted his own face on Mount Rushmore and a made-up Trump Peace Prize. He announced three times America's back and he assured an increasingly concerned public.

He's in excellent health. And when not posting, he's been trying to rob us. Have you seen it? He's trying to put his face on the money. Did you see that? He's building a monument to himself. But see, Atlanta, he's doing these things now because no one will honor him when he's gone. because he's a failed president and a national disgrace.

That last sound bite in particular really was going viral over the weekend. That was Democratic Senator John Ossoff speaking at a campaign rally in downtown Atlanta. A lot of buzz around Senator Ossoff at this moment. Welcome back to morning, Joe. It is Monday, June 1st. Yes, June. We're there just after 7 a.m. here on the East Coast. The BBC's Caddy Kay and the Reverend Al Sharpton still with us.

And join the conversation. We have opinion. columnist for the New York Times, David French, and Professor of History at Tulane University, the historian Walter Isaacson. A great group are thanks to all of you. Let's dive right into the news. Plenty to get to. A federal judge has blocked President Trump from adding his name to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, as well as temporarily halting the administration's plans to close the venue for a two-year renovation. In a ruling that came out Friday afternoon, the judge appeared deeply critical of Trump's effort to rebrand the building after himself, writing in part, Congress gave the Kennedy

Center its name, and only Congress can change it. The move drew intense scrutiny and criticism from Trump, who took to social media, saying he'd work with Congress to give back the responsibilities of overseeing the center, writing, unless I am free to do what I do better than anyone else, bring this institution back physically, financially, and artistically, I have very. I have very much. no interest in continuing what could only be a hopeless journey into Never, Neverland. He took it well. Trump also attacked the judge personally on social media while tying the ruling to other recent legal losses, including the Supreme Court's rejection of his tariffs in February. Look, we can never overestimate the Republican Congress's ability to be compliant. Maybe they'd

work with Trump on the Kennedy Center, but in subsequent posts over the weekend, it does seem like Trump might be giving up in his quest to run that D.C. institution, we shall see. Meanwhile, Trump is also now planning to personally headline the White House-backed concert on the National Mall, marking the nation's 250th birthday after most musical performers backed out of the June 24th event due to political concerns. Over the weekend, Trump took to social media mocking the artists who've canceled, calling them overpriced and boring. He suggested replacing them with a giant Trump rally instead, with himself as the headliner.

The president stated that he is the number one attraction anywhere in the world and that he gets, quote, much larger audiences than Elvis in his prime. At least two of the planned artists have not pulled out of the event. They include vanilla ice and flowrida. So it's a bunch of A-lister's there.

Walter Isaacson, we also should never overestimate President Trump's ability to make things about himself. And as a side note, the last time he held a rally near the White House, January 6th, 2021, didn't go so well. That's likely not going to be an encore there. But you're a historian, you've thought a lot,

you've written a lot about the 250th anniversary of this country. Your new book is in part about it. What would you have liked to have seen? You know, when we had a period like this 50 years ago where he'd gone through Watergate and Vietnam and the assassinations of Kennedys and King and the resignation of a president and riots and takeovers of universities.

They rang the Liberty Bell. We had a bicentennial. There was a bit of healing. People came together. You had a great group called America 250 that was going to do it this time. It was bipartisan. It is bipartisan.

It still exists. It's Shelley Moore Caputo, one of the great senators, a Republican, but at Lisa Murkowski, others. But then President Trump created a rival committee, Freedom 250, and it's doing all these things. And oddly, we're using our birthday to divide us instead of trying to heal us during this period. It would have been so easy to say, let's put the divisions aside. Just like, you know, down in Louisiana we do with birthday parties, with relatives we don't fully agree with.

You put the divisions inside and say, we have certain values, we share them. We share the values of the Declaration of Independence. Let's read the Declaration instead of doing what they're doing here. Walter, on that point, I remember the bicentennial celebration. You and I old enough? Right. We both old enough. And on that point, there's always been as we celebrate these kinds of occasions where

Americans approached them differently because we were at different places. So blacks were enslaved, women couldn't vote. but we found that we could find common ground in celebrating the progress of America. Here, you're having a president that is bent more on, in many ways, cementing the divisions, us against them, making it all about him. Talk to us about how the spirit that comes out of the president in these middle of the night kind of truth, socials and others, is counter to really trying to celebrate what we could celebrate, even though we were at different vantage points 250 years ago when the declaration was

signed? I think it's on us to do that. You know, in some ways, as you say, President Trump keeps trying to make it about himself, whether he's the headliner of the rally or his name is on the Kennedy Center, whatever it may be. We've got to get him out of our head. We've got to celebrate our 250th and not make it about him. So even as you ask the question, you know, how much is it about Trump? we should just say no.

It's probably going to happen. I've been all over the country because I've done this book, The Greatest Center's ever written. It's a small book about the Declaration. And whether I'm in Austin or Chattanooga or Cleveland or Columbus or New Orleans or Atlanta, people want to celebrate in their communities, the values we share.

So I think we probably have to just filter out some of what's coming out of Washington. Katty, I know this anniversary, a source subject for you. but I think it's so unsurprising that President Trump would make this about himself. He is, I'd argue, of all of our presidents, the one who has seemed least interested in leading all the people. He runs, he supports, he's the president of his voters, of his base, of his party. And sadly, in what should be, to Walter's point, a moment of unity.

Instead, he is using it to make it about himself and, frankly, first of the first of, there are divisions. Yeah, I mean, John, like the Rev and Walter, I am old enough as well to remember the bicentennial. I was a child living in Saudi Arabia. And I remember being invited to the American embassy, which I loved because you had hamburgers and air conditioning, which we did not, and Coca-Cola. But it was a celebration of America. I mean, that was a time the 1970s in the Middle East where America could do no wrong. I mean, you were the guys with the money, you were the guys with the power. And now I think about America's reputation in the Middle East, middle of this ill-advised adventure into Iran, and so much has been squandered in terms of America's

reputation around the world from 200 to 250. This looks like a very different country from other country's point of view. But David, you've been writing something similar to this. Your latest piece for the New York Times is titled, The Fire of Stupidity cannot be contained. And you write in part this. It is no coincidence that authoritarianism is once again appealing to people at a time when two things are happening at once. Liberal democracies are struggling to meet the needs of a substantial portion of their citizens and entire generations have come of age with no living memory of the totalitarian horrors of the 20th century. In other words, millions upon millions of people are enduring democracy as the worst form of government without the necessary

balanced understanding that citizens in the mid-20th century had gained through firsthand observation of except all those other forms that have been tried. In their frustration, all too many people are attracted to the theoretical benefits of authoritarianism, and they don't have the experience or the education to understand its actual and inevitable defects. It's a super interesting way of framing it, David, and I wonder how you put the defeat of Victor Orban in this context. I hear what you're saying, but I also look at the way that that, authoritarian regime failed to deliver for people and was basically given 10 years. And after 10 years, if you can't deliver for people, if you're too corrupt and there's no economic growth, they threw

or ban out of office. And could that be the kind of silver lining in this project that authoritarian regimes don't deliver for their people? And so their people take, if they can, the chance to get rid of them. Yeah. Well, you know, the people of Hungary went further down that road of authoritarianism than even we've gone yet. And when they got further down that road, they started to experience all those negative effects from history. They started to experience the corruption that we see, for example, in the Trump administration. They started to feel the isolation. They began to see how authoritarianism sort of has utopian promises. It always over promises and it underdelivers. So they went through kind of some hard-earned experience that we're having right now. And I do think,

And you are beginning to see these opinion polls where just that steady decline of Trump indicates that the people are rejecting it. The problem we keep having, though, is we just keep having to walk right into these experiences rather than learning the lessons of history. If we knew the lessons of history, that Trumpian authoritarianism wouldn't have been so appealing to such a large percentage of Americans. But we've forgotten those lessons. We've forgotten them again and again.

And we're just, it's like we're walking through, as I said in the column, a museum of wretched ideas where you've got all of these bad ideas at once from the 20th century just coming back down upon us, from tariffs to gilded age corruption, to young people flirting with communism and fascism, to anti-Semitism hovering over it all while Europe is in a land war, the Middle East is in turmoil. And you just ask how many of these really bad ideas are we going to be trying again over the next few years until we finally. snap to our senses. David, it's Walter Isaacson. Let me ask you about what may be the underlying causes of some of this embrace of authoritarianism and rejection of democracy. And I would posit that over the past 40, 50 years, we did an era of liberal democracy that involved global trade, free movements of people, free movements of capital, offshoring of jobs. And we said it would create great wealth. And we were right. It created great wealth. But it totally gutted a working class from Hungary to England to the

United States. And it didn't, it didn't deliver. It just led to disparities of wealth. To what extent is it on us with liberal democracy believing in globalization that we got it fundamentally wrong for what that would do to a middle and working class? Yeah, I mean, I think two things can be true at once here. Number one, it's absolutely clear that millions upon millions of people, not just in the U.S., this is globally, look at liberal democracy and say it isn't delivering on its promises to me. That is something that is absolutely true. It is also true, though, that liberal democracy is always going to be messy.

It's always going to involve compromises. It's always going to involve democratic outcomes where one side doesn't forever and ever vanquished its opponents. You always have to accommodate your opponent. in a liberal democracy. So it ends up being very messy. So we have trouble holding these two things in our minds at once. We can do better and it will never be perfect.

The problem you have with a lot of the authoritarians is they are promising something that they cannot deliver. They are promising to correct all the problems of liberal democracy. They are promising that they could do something better and they cannot. And what we're trying to do is correct our democracy without some. sliding into the failed ideas of the past. And that is, I think, one of the fundamental challenges of our time. David French, let's turn to events in Washington this week. The Congress returns to D.C. And it comes in a moment where there has been, and I don't want to overstate this,

there's not a Republican revolt against Donald Trump. But there has been some noticeable pushback, particularly in the Senate in recent days. I wrote about it at the end of last week, though Trump has increased his hold in the party in many ways, including backing, you know, his primary candidates that he backs win. He has ousted a lot of the dissenters in the party with John Cornyn being the latest. But he's also really, frankly, angered many Republicans in the upper chamber who, the reason why they were on recess last week is they went home early because they refused after the Cornyn matter. They refused to take up the weaponization fund.

They've put some roadblocks in front of the ballroom fund. What are you seeing here? Is this just a blip, and, you know, like so many have been before and largely the party will come back to him? Or do you think there'll be even a small degree of independence from the Senate who might, for the first time, be starting to look beyond President Trump's reign? I think you're going to see the latter. And I'm glad you said small degree of independence. Again, you know, the people have been looking for this dramatic break for a long time and you're going to keep looking. But small degree of independence, yeah, I think you're going to begin to see it.

And the reason why is that there's a very important distinction that a lot of these senators are very aware of that has been sort of underplayed in the public. And that is Trump turned on senators who had in many ways been doing everything that they could to signal their loyalty to Trump. I mean, Senator Cornyn in the days before the Paxton endorsement had been working time and time again to demonstrate his loyalty to Trump. Now, the thing that was very clear is that it's 100% loyalty or nothing for Trump because he took on senators who had broken with him in some important ways in the past. So, for example, Senator Cornyn voting to certify the election. But again and again,

you were not talking about senators who had defied Trump all over the place or senators who were define Trump all the time, just very rarely, very selectively. And so they're now learning that to be with Trump, it's 100 percent or you're going to have a target on your back. It is holding a standard that is dangerous for them or there's a political target on their back. And so this is infuriating. It's frustrating. It's demonstrating that often loyalty is a moving target. And I do think that that frustration is going to spill over in some important ways. That loyalty also being a one-way street. But by Trump's, you know, by Trump's, you know, purges here,

he has potentially hurt his ability to get things done if the Republicans revolt, but also hurt the GOP's ability, potentially, to hold on to the Senate this November, adding to his increasingly lame duck status. David French, thank you so much. David's latest opinion piece for New York Times, available now.