Morning Joe - Trump’s net approval rating is negative in 47 out of 50 states

Episode Date: August 24, 2026

August 24, 2026 – 6am: The Economist/YouGov: Trump’s net approval rating is negative in 47 out of 50 states The Art of the Self-Deal: WSJ Opinion by Peggy Noonan U.S. – Canada trade talks collapse  The Dumbest trade war revisited: WSJ Editorial Board Who Counts in Trump’s America?: Financial Times by Gillian Tett Treasury Secretary Bessent to announce new economic sanctions against Iran ‘The Time Tax’: New book by Annie Lowrey 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.

Why does it feel like today Mark Carney is going to war? Trade war. The tone. Because we're attacked. Like you're at war when you get attacked. We got attacked. The U.S. put 50%. We waited until the United States decided to actually implement the so-called 338 tariffs.

That's fine. We've got the reserves. We've got the resilience. We've got the plan. We've got the focus. We respond. We're going to focus on what we can control. We're going to build.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney taking a defiant tone over the weekend after pulling negotiators from trade talks in Washington. That is one of two areas where some Republicans are breaking with the president. The other? His plan to import tons of ground beef amid record high prices, a move that is also being criticized by American ranchers and beef producers. Meanwhile, Treasury Secretary Scott Besson is set to announce sanctions on Iran that he's calling Economic D-Day for the country. It comes as some of Iran's top politicians are pushing back against Tehran's hardliners, calling for an end to the war. Good morning.

And welcome to morning, Joe. It is Monday, August 24th. With us, we have the co-host of our 8 a.m. hour, staff writer at the Atlantic Jonathan Lemire. Co-host of the Rest is Politics podcast, the BBC's Caddy K. MS now, National Affairs analyst John Heilman, he is partner and chief political columnist at Puck, opinion columnist for the New York Times, David French, and columnist and member of the editorial board at the Financial Times, Jillian Tett. So amid record low polling, and we're talking record low, a new projection shows press, President Trump's net approval rating is negative in 47 out of 50 states.

That is, according to the economist and U-Gov, Trump's net approval is minus 26. Going state by state, the data shows widespread dissatisfaction with Trump, even in places that voted for him in 2024. Ahead of the midterms, Trump has a negative net approval rating in all of the states where there are competitive Senate. races this year. In Georgia, Trump's net approval is negative 31. In North Carolina, it's negative 25. In Maine, Trump's net approval is negative 31. In Texas, it is negative 22. And in Michigan, Trump's net approval is negative 27. So Jonathan Lemire, I'm curious. It almost feels like Trump and his administration is going in one direction and the will of the American people, the needs of the American people, the needs of our alliances around the world, they're headed in a completely

different directions. It seems like he doesn't care about these numbers. Am I wrong? Well, Mika, my expert analysis on that polling is it's real bad. None of this is working for the president right now. That's why we have Republicans, you know, really worried about this November. Many privately concede the House. all but gone. The Senate feels like a true toss-up when a year ago at this time we would have said Republicans were heavily favored to keep at least the upper chamber, despite, of course, history telling us that the president, you know, his party tends to do poorly in midterms. But you're right, in ticking through some of the issues here, the tariffs have been unpopular and now we're

to trade war, renewed trade war with Canada. The Iran war, deeply unpopular, never sold by the president to the American people. All it has done is send crisis soaring, particularly at the gas pump. And they've settled into a plan of economic pressure. Maybe that will work. And we are seeing some disagreement in Tehran as to how they want to approach the conflict. But even if this does work, it's probably going to be a long time too late to save Republicans, perhaps, for this midterms. And we're seeing, of course, as we'll get into it a little bit later, even the president's efforts to try to lower beef prices. A lot of Republicans pushing back saying, you know, none of this is working right now. And just the,

John Heilman, it seems like, to make his point, the president largely detached from a lot of this. To Heilman, you know, this is someone who has, you know, seems to be focused solely on legacy, whether that's presiding over a number of America 250 events, including the Formula One race over the weekend, John Halman. And, of course, we seem to have lost John Hyman. We'll get him back in a moment. So we'll go to David French here instead. David French, if we have you, you know, we have, The president is focused on America 250 events. He's focused on things where he's trying to reshape physically Washington, D.C. And we saw the celebrations out of the White House because of the Supreme Court ruling at the end of last week that they could keep building the ballroom.

And I even thought to myself like, okay, that's the first quote, good news headline that President Trump has received in a while. And yet even that good news headline for him is not good for the American people. We see polling that this just reinforces the idea that the public is like, well, wait, he's out of touch. He only cares about what he cares about, not what actually impacts our lives. Yeah, the ballroom is not a political victory for Donald Trump. Every day the ballroom is in the news. This is a bad day for Trump. This is not something the American people really want at all.

You know, when you're running through that, the thing that just strikes me, when you're running through all of the events that have occurred that are dragging down as approval rating, It strikes me how just intentionally self-inflicted all of this damage is. He comes into office. He inherits a border that was the American people ready for him to close. He inherits an improving economy, and he inherits a declining inflation rate. He inherits declining crime rates. He was set for really smooth sailing for the next year, the next two years. And then he has provoked trade wars.

He is initiated in actual war in the Middle East. You're beginning to get a sense that the world itself is spiraling out of control. You have expanding conflicts in Europe. The conflicts in Europe and Iran are starting to merge in some ways. And then this trade, every new headline, it's a new self-inflicted wound. This trade war with Canada due to remarkable overreach in trade negotiations. It is sinking into the American people that this is self-inflicted. None of this is necessary. None of this is for them.

Yeah. And you know, the thing is, look at the last two weeks of columns from Peggy Noon. And last week, she talked about how he was bored. That boredom is not a good trait for a president to have that trouble comes. Trouble finds you when you're president of the United States. Here Donald Trump goes out looking for trouble because he's bored. This week's column, she talks about, well, another thing that is going to, again, dragging these numbers down, the level of corruption is unprecedented. You heard Democrats being attacked nonstop. It really is such a joke. It's such a joke. What Trump Republicans have been saying over the past decade about Hunter Biden, what they've been saying about corruption, what they've been saying about Nancy Pelosi.

Donald Trump executed more trades for more money in his first year back. Then Nancy Pelosi's husband, not Nancy Pelosi herself. Nancy Pelosi's husband, who's in the business, traded throughout her entire congressional career. And so that corruption, as Peggy Noonan says, corruption is another thing that is dragging down the approval ratings of a president who, last week, she said, was bored. So let's read from Peggy Nunes' latest column in the Wall Street Journal, entitled The Art of the Self-Deal. She writes in part this.

I'm thinking about the deeper effects of governmental corruption in the Trump era, and why it leaves many not only indignant, but uneasy. I suspect it's doing something to us as a people. The thoughts were prompted by a poll this week from Reuters-Zipsovs, which Reuters headlined, Most Americans believe Trump has inappropriately profited since returning to power. It reported that 69% of respondents see his personal business interests as influencing presidential decisions. Two-thirds of independence, half of Republicans, and nine and ten Democrats shared that view.

I love this line. Republicans, God bless them. They were split on whether graft under Mr. Trump has gotten worse, or better. states and really, really? You're split on that? Yeah, you're confused. Are you that confused? Peggy goes on to say, which makes that polling question a case study and how bright people are capable of just not seeing what they don't want to see. That is an important line there as well. An odd thing about all of this is the absence of furor. There is no broad public outcry. Why? Because corruption is a constant and the other side is dirty too because the scandal threshold has skyrocketed,

President Trump walked into history dragging a long tale of litigation, accusation, and lawsuits behind him. He never sold himself as a man of moral rectitude and most supporters didn't think that's what they were buying. Jimmy Carter's shaking down the system to see what coins fall out would have been news. Donald Trump's doing the same is Tuesday. And there's the sheer scale. The extraordinary becomes ordinary through repetition. Scandals add up and become a blur, not a call to action. But the country pays a cost for all of this. Institutionally, everything happening today sets a precedent. Every abuse we accept widens when the range of possible misbehavior for the next administration.

That's what I've been saying for years to Republicans. What you accept today is going to be visited upon you from Democrats or an independent tech billionaire who becomes president of the United States. And they're going to point at your silence, your acquiescence to this corruption and do all the other chaos going on and saying, well, you're okay when Donald Trump did it. Right. So the president's been set, Gillian. But Peggy, as Peggy writes, if Jimmy Carter had done 1,000th of this,

it would be a national scandal and Jimmy Carter would have been driven from office. For Donald Trump, well, voters expected him to be corrupt and he's not letting them down. Well, there's a fantastic phrase to describe this, which is the normalization of deviance. And that came from a sociologist, Diane Vaughn, when she was studying. the Challenger shuttle disaster. And she pointed out that actually, when you get really bad stuff happening by a government or an institution, it's not usually a case that people go from naught to 60, from white to black overnight.

What happens is the institution starts to see little slippages and standards over and over and over again until slowly the boundary of what is normal begins to change. And that's in a sense what happened with the Challenger shuttle crisis. disaster when basically engineers ignored little slippages in some of their safety standards. And it's what's happening in Washington today because bit by bit by bit, as Peggy writes, people are getting used to this. And what's striking is not just the fact they're getting used to it in terms of inside America, I'm American and British, but also on the world stage now, there's this kind of collective eye roll and shrug amongst other governments. And they're just starting to assume

that Washington is a bit corrupt. And that's a real tragedy in every sense. It really is. And, Caddy, I want to get you to weigh in, as well as Gillian, on those numbers, Donald Trump's low numbers. As Peggy wrote last week, being president of the United States is tough enough as it is.

Being leader of any Western country right now economically is tough enough. You look at the UK, you look at France, you look at some historically low approval ratings, and it's been that way for the past five, six, seven years across Europe and across the United States. But then you had all of the other chaos, all of the other corruption, all of the other cruelty, all these other things that drives those numbers down. But talk about the low approval ratings that Donald Trump's experiencing across America and apply that to Europe and talk about how European politicians are facing the same. economic challenges. Yeah, you're right, Joe.

It's pretty much a worldwide phenomenon. It's very hard for democratically elected leaders at the moment to have high approval ratings, whether that's social media, whether it's tribalism, whatever it is. The one place, by the way, that's an exception, Canada. Mark Carney at the moment has an approval rating of 66%, which is kind of approval rating that most politicians in America or in Europe would die for at the moment. I think, you know, Gillian, when you look at that U.Gov economist polling, though, and showing just how bad it is for him, particularly in those swing states, Texas, Michigan, Maine, he's

underwater in all of those. And given the experience of politicians in Europe who have been facing those kind of bad approval ratings, it's hard, isn't it, to see how this goes well for Republicans in the midterm elections? Absolutely. And the question I think many people are asking now is, Firstly, given the extremely negative approval ratings, will the Republicans around Trump become increasingly desperate and try and either manipulate or block or pervert the elections? Because, you know, people inside Trump's entourage understand very clearly, and I've spoken to some of them, the legal risk for them, if they lose. So one of the questions people are asking is perversely, the worst ratings get for President Trump, the higher the risks that or the greater the concern that we may not actually have normal election. And of course, the other issue is that if indeed the Democrats do have a clean sweep or a dramatic victory in the midterms, are you going to just get more gridlock? And is that going to essentially

leave the voters even more negative about Democrats for the 28 elections because they'll actually seen that even when Democrats win, nothing changes? And that will lead to a real sense of even deeper disenchantment among voters with the establishment and institutions in general. I desperately hope that doesn't happen. Katty mentioned what's going on with Canada. The United States and Canada have fallen deeper into a trade war after failed negotiations last week. Now, the U.S. is implementing 50% tariffs on $20 billion worth of Canadian goods. The original deadline for a deal was last Wednesday.

But that was extended three days after President Trump said negotiations were going well. but on Saturday, both sides blamed one another for a collapse in discussions. Trump's tariffs will now impact about 5% of everything. Canada ships to the U.S. each year, while Canada has promised to start retaliatory penalties on September 8th. In a 22-minute speech on Saturday morning, Prime Minister Mark Carney said the U.S. asked for too much and offered too little. It's a power play. It's a power play. And, you know, it becomes a question of sovereignty.

There's a host of other things where absolutely we want to work together. But when it moves into restrictions and using Canada effectively as more leverage for America, I mean, clearly, Canadians wouldn't accept that. We're proud independent country. We've got the right values. We'll make our decisions about who we want to trade with and how, and including on how we work with the United States and other partners. You know, I mean, you want to know why he has high approval ratings.

That's why he has high approval ratings. Donald Trump is giving him high approval ratings while Donald Trump's own approval ratings and support among his, well, defenders, like the Wall Street Journal editorial page, going down. Put that back up again. John Heilman, the Wall Street Journal editorial page this morning has a blistering editorial, saying, hey, you remember when we called his last trade war with Mexico and Canada, the dumbest trade war in American history? No, no, no.

We were wrong. We were wrong. This is the dumbest trade war in American history. And if you look not just at how stupid this trade war is right now and how much more powerful it makes Mark Carney and has the Canadians like rallying around the flag. But you look at America's political setup going into the fall. We all know that in Maine, Susan Collins is.

a survivor. She won last time by nine points the same day that Joe Biden beat Donald Trump by nine points in Maine. She's a survivor. But what does she had to deal with? Trump has sent ice up to Maine. There's been a young man who was gunned down and killed in the streets of Maine for no legitimate reason. No body cameras on the thug that shot that young father and husband. And now you have Susan Collins begging Donald Trump. Please do not start another trade war. Because if you start another trade war with Canada, it's going to cause inflation to spike even more in Maine. And yet, here we go with what? with the Wall Street Journal calls the dumbest trade war ever.

Right. Well, as you guys know, there's been a lot of competition for the dumbest trade war ever. There's been a lot of competition for the dumbest trade war ever just in the last 18 months. And I'm with the Wall Street Journal. This is the dumbest one. And Susan Collins certainly got to agree. If you happen to live in a state, and there are a few in this election cycle that have a border with Canada, where there's no good done for Susan Collins in being in a war with Nova Scotia or New Brunswick. It's just like this is a bad situation for her. And Joe, I think that the Carney thing is important

beyond even this election cycle. I think what you've seen is Mark Carney since that speech in Davos now more than a year ago, he's become in a lot of ways the voice of the of the civilized western world in kind of standing up to Donald Trump in an articulating a kind of dignified but tough response to Trump. And I think there are going to be a fair number of 28 Democratic challengers to Donald Trump who are going to be studying the Mark Carney example because this has not, this has been

obviously a huge political boon to him in his own country. a boon to him around the world, and he's found a way to be resolute, but also kind of, as I say, dignified, civilized, and to push back without seeming hyperbolic. And I think there's a lot, again, I think there's going to be a lot of lessons to be learned from how Carney has handled this, and the way in which it has massively increased his standing politically in his own country and around the world. Like I say, there's something there for a lot of Democrats to learn from. A lot of Democrats. Here's a businessman that came back to Canada after working across the world and came back, and you're right. He is defending Western values.

He's defending Canadian values. He's doing a lot of the very same things that we in America have forgotten to do. And it's making a big difference. Now, we've got a lot of head, including actually maybe some good news on Iran, Mika, where you actually have the politicians in Iran saying to the Revolutionary Guard, enough. Let's figure out how to move towards ending this war because a lot, and we're going to see Scott Bessent later today, hammering more on a lot of the economic pressure that they've

been putting on Iran. It's going to be interesting what happens over the next week or two there. Also still ahead on morning, Joe. We'll get to Gillian Tett's new reporting on President Trump's push to reform the census and who should count in America today. Plus, what we're learning about that private meeting between House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and President Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

And as we go to break a quick look at the Travelers' Forecast this morning from Ackyweather's Bernie Rayno. Bernie, how's it looking? Meek, it's a beautiful Monday. Your acuweather forecast shows sunshine, Boston, New York City, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C. Spotty afternoon.

thunderstorm with a shower anytime in Buffalo, Syracuse, Burlington. Beautiful day, Green Bay, Chicago, St. Louis. Now, it's hot in Atlanta, but the humidity is not all that high. Watch for thunderstorms I-10, Florida Peninsula, but boy, it's hot and dry in Texas. No big travel delays, perhaps Miami, this afternoon. To help you make the best decisions and be more in the know, download the ACUther app today. Just about half past the hour. Welcome back to Morning Joe, Gillian Tett, your latest piece for the

Financial Times is titled, Who Counts in Trump's America? And you write in part this. On the afternoon of August 2nd, the Trump team delivered a bombshell that is highly political ahead of this year's midterm elections and amid wider fights about gerrymandering and Trump's insistence that the 2020 election was rigged. They explained that when America holds its next census in 2030, technical reforms will make it hard to publish the data about race and gender. These statisticians were shocked since they, not politicians, usually handle technical reforms. Worrying about the state of America's statistics might not seem that urgent, given all the other explosive political rows swirling in Washington. But voters should pay attention. For at the heart of this story, there are three key questions.

can anyone paint an accurate portrait of what America is today? If so, how should this shape voting processes? And can this data be trusted in an era of manipulation, cyber hacks, and artificial intelligence? So, Jillian, tell us how the Trump administration right now is making it harder in 2030 to figure out exactly who is an American, what the racial makeup of America is, and tell us how this may impact future elections? Well, thank you. I mean, the census is a classic example of something linked to infrastructure,

which seems incredibly boring. Everyone ignores most of the time because it's basically geeky and a bit nerdy. But in reality, it's crucial because it doesn't just shape how we measure the economy, which businesses and investors rely on. it also has a huge impact on the political system because it shapes how house seats are essentially allocated.

And what's fascinating is that although 99.9% of voters just ignore it, Republicans have noticed that it's potentially got a lot of importance and they are essentially mounting a very quiet campaign to reshape how the census is done in two ways. firstly to add a question about citizenship to the 2030 census, which many people would argue is unconstitutional because the constitution says you have to count everybody irrespect of status. And secondly, they're trying to change some of the technical ways that privacy protections are put into the census

that effectively mean it's going to be almost impossible to publish detailed data on race or gender, or even much detailed data on minorities in small communities at all. Now, they're saying they're doing that to protect people's privacy, but many of the community activist groups are really upset because they argue essentially what's happening is you're blurring a picture of what America is. And that's got all kinds of implications for how we imagine politics going forward,

most notably that it'll be harder to measure impacts of policies around things like race and gender. No doubt about it. It's an obvious real impact the congressional redistricting over the next decade. Columnist at the Financial Times, Jillian Ted is always. Thank you so much. You know, David French, years ago, Steve Bannon said he was a Leninist. And he and Trump were going to go in and they were going to tear down the state.

Take it to the ground. You look at what Gillian said they're doing. with the census. One of the most basic should be non-controversial things ever. They're trying to rig that, it seems. What they're doing with the post office, using the post office to do unconstitutional things with the midterm elections, taking it from the state's power and giving it to the executive branch, which is not in the constitution. It's unconstitutional. You see what's happened at the DOD. You see what's happened at the Justice Department. You see what's happened at the National Institutes of all of these, all of these institutions that had been built up to protect Americans and to extend

American power and safety across the globe. Being torn down brick by brick piece by piece by this Trump administration. And the question people have is, are we going to survive? Are we going to be able to rebuild this two years from now? You know, I wouldn't call it tearing down the state so much as personalizing the state. All elements of the state are being put in the service of the person Donald Trump, being pulled from their primary purposes, being pulled from their primary areas of competence, being remade from the inside out to serve Donald Trump. And this is core to his authoritarian project.

I mean, look, we have to understand that he looks at his Xi Jinping. out there. He looks at a Vladimir Putin out there. And he sees peers with whom he envies in some ways. He envies their autonomy. He envies their authority. And as we've seen with the Canadian trade wars, he envies their spheres of influence. And so he is directing everything in on himself. And this is inherently corrupt. People can see that it's inherently corrupt. And when they're struggling economically or they're dissatisfied economically or they see all of these self-inflicted wounds that are focused in on Trump and not for their benefit, they get angry. And you're beginning to see rumblings here in this country that remind me a bit of the popular revulsion, ultimately

at Victor Orban in Hungary. Authoritarianism does not sell especially, especially when people feel insecure financially. Opinion calmness. For the New York Times, David French, thank you very much. It's time now for a look at the morning papers. Nearly 90,000 people are being urged to evacuate outside Reno, Nevada, after a dangerous fire broke out

over the weekend. As of yesterday morning, the blaze was zero percent contained, and at least six people, including three first responders, had been injured. The flames have already burned, more than 15,000 acres. The Arizona Republic notes the state has one of the lowest levels of kindergarten vaccination coverage in the entire country. Arizona ranks 44th among the 48 states submitting the data. Just 87.4% of Arizona kindergartners are up to date on their MMR vaccine.

And from the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Georgia's public universities can now offer a college degree in just three years for certain majors instead of the traditional four. Supporters of the change say three-year bachelor's programs would be more cost effective for students and allow them to enter the workforce faster. Question is, what does that workforce look like and how's hiring going? A lot of questions there. Coming up, our next guest argues the government is wasting more than just your money, but also your time. Staff writer at the Atlantic, Annie Lowry, will join us to preview her new book, The Time Tax. And we'll be talking about Iran. Pressure finally being felt by Iranian politicians. We'll talk about that and the war inside the country for the future of war and peace.

Morning, Joe, we'll be right back. All right, welcome back to morning, Joe. It's 41 past the hour. Lovely view of the White House with a crane sticking out of it. That's beautiful. Treasury Secretary Scott Besson. The sun really just glistons off of the crane and the claw. Big orange crane.

Anything else. It's really. Holes and the people's house. Things being leveled. Yeah. Anywho. Treasury Secretary Scott Besson is scheduled to announce new economic sanctions against Iran later today at a press conference, Besant will reveal what he calls VitaFas sanctions

in history. The Trump administration plans to focus on isolating Iran, warning other countries to stop doing business with Tehran. Besant previewed the plan in an opinion piece for the Financial Times yesterday, where he called the sanctions economic D-Day for Iran. Iran is dismissing the threat, saying it can counter. and will maintain economic ties with other nations. But that contradicts a push from some of Iran's top politicians who are calling for an end to the war in hopes of stabilizing an economy in free fall.

So this is one of the issues here as we work toward trying to figure out how to bring this war of choice to an end. Right. And you've been suggesting certain things all along. Yes, yeah. I've been talking about the fact that military pressure wasn't going to work unless we did what was unimaginable. That is put boots on the ground. That the only way forward was going to be economic pressure and we would have to be patient. And unlike Jimmy Carter, we couldn't look at an upcoming election as a false deadline if we're interested in actually getting out of this war without empowering Iran. And economic pressure was the only way forward. And, Caddy, I will say this administration has been far more patient, even though it has zigged and zagged and desperately tried to get out at times. But it has, over the last couple of weeks, put its head down. And I think we may, we may just be seeing the result of that with at least the politicians in Iran, the parliamentarians, the presidents, the people that, again, on the political side of things.

And I think some Mullah's starting to say to the Revolutionary Guard, listen, we got to end this war. We've got to have peace with dignity. Our economy is just too bad right now. The economic situation is in a full-blown meltdown. Yeah, this is what Karim Sajapur, who is probably the best person I know on Iranian politics, likes to call the distinction between the practicalists and the purists in Iran. And it's always a tussle between those two groups. with one group wanting to say, okay, our economy can't withstand the kind of pressure that we're under. We have to have some kind of negotiation because people are going to be suffering too much.

Inflation is going to be too high. And the purists saying, we don't care about that. Actually, we have the power to suppress the people. And I think we've been seeing that Joe play out since February, constantly with some people going to negotiations, but then being undermined when they got back to Iran by the purists. And I think we don't know yet which way that group will go. interesting to see what Scott Besson's new proposals actually mean because a lot of this is America is basically maxed out on sanctions on Iran. There's not much more weakened sanction.

So this is going to depend on other countries like India and China and Russia being prepared to follow through on sanctions themselves. Yeah, and that's the great question here is will this be the moment where the Trump administration finally does act tough with Russia, with China, others, you know, because they're still doing business with Iran. I wrote two weeks ago how this was the plan. suddenly to try to be patient. And then that doesn't come that easily to President Trump, but he has for the last two weeks.

He's backed off the military threats. There hasn't been much in the way of real negotiations. They are, as you said, Joe and Mika, some reports out of Tehran that there's some fissures growing there in terms of what's the right way to have the approach. The counter is, I mean, no less of the authority on the region than Robin Kagan writes to the Atlantic yesterday, suggesting that because this war has gone the way it does,

Iran is so empowered that they are on the precipice of becoming the dominant power in the Middle East because they've learned the leverage they have from the Strait of Hormuz far outstrips any power they would have from actually developing a nuclear weapon. And we know that their pain threshold really high because they don't really care about their citizens. So this is a gamble by the White House, but they have a bad hand, this seems to be the best option they have to play. Well, yeah, Robert Kagan's brilliant. And, you know, he was probably getting his 12th degree when I was playing wiffleball in the front yard of, you know, my parents' house against my brother in upstate New York.

But that said, we don't know. We don't know if Iran is going to emerge the most powerful country in the region if we continue to put economic pressure on them. If we give them the MOU or that we had prepared. proposed over six months ago, then yes, they would have been the most powerful country in the region. If we took sanctions off of oil, which we foolishly did for several weeks, then yes, we would help them become the most powerful country in the region. But if we continue to grind them down economically, not militarily, economically, then we don't know, what I've been saying from the very beginning, if tomorrow we wake up and it looks like the Soviet Union's empire in 1989.

Listen, their economy was on the precipice before this war began. There were riots in the streets. They were having to kill 20,000 people in the streets because the economy was so bad in Iran before this war. In December, January, February. Now, from February, from February, from February, 28th to today, imagine how much worse that economy has gotten. If we can figure out, if Scott Besson can figure out how to sanction China or how to cut off China from buying their oil, from cutting off their supply that way, then yes, Iran can be isolated and Iran can be brought to the table and we can have a deal to end this war in a way that doesn't make them more powerful than they were when the war started. But we're only going to get there economically. We will not get there

militarily. That's what they want. They want us. They keep firing missiles at them because that just strengthens them. It really does. And they're standing with the people. But economically, it's a good lever for us to use. We'll see what Scott Besson has to say this afternoon. And if he actually, because as Cady said, we've already maxed out in a lot of sanctions with Iran. We'll see the Bessent can figure out how to turn the heat up even more on Iran economically. And if so, maybe some more politicians will come out and say, hey, it's time for us to sue for peace. All right. We'll continue to follow that.

Now to the time tax. Americans spend 12 billion hours a year filling out government forms. All of that time amounts to an estimated cost of roughly $430 billion. dollars. A new book calls it the time tax. The hours upon hours spent filing taxes, applying for financial aid, filing for unemployment, and voting. Just to give a few examples. The book details how the time tax falls hardest on those who can least afford it, but also makes the case that the current dysfunction is not inevitable. But there are actual solutions. The author of of the time tax joins us now,

staff writer at The Atlantic, Annie, Lowry. Annie, let's talk more about exactly how deep this problem goes and is AI part of the solution. Yeah, I mean, it very much could be. The problem is truly terrible, and I think one of these actually under-recognized things in American life, I think that in some ways Doge shined a light on this,

that things aren't working as well as they should be. But I don't think that it really provided solutions for citizens. And the way that I think about this is, you know, we give all levels of government like $8 trillion a year. So they kind of have like a champagne budget. And in terms of the services that we're receiving, not just the quality of the services or the amount of the services that we're receiving, but the work that we have to do to access those services, right? It's like we're getting like the warm, natty ice handed back to us. And governments with much smaller budgets do much better than we do. So like,

For instance, Estonia, which spends less than $20 billion a year, there's a single portal where you can go. You can pay your taxes. You can vote. You can see your property records and your medical records. We don't have anything like that. Everything is too hard. And I think that there's actually incentives for members of both parties to fix this if they actually took the time to do it. Yeah, if there was a politician from either party who was able to run on the eliminate the time tax, they would probably win resoundingly.

We should note no disrespect to the good folks at Natty Ice. We should talk, though. It should be cold at least. At least we'll give you that. So let's talk, though, about more about the problem. Yes. And the burden, as you argue, falls the most on the people who can least afford it. Absolutely.

So this is especially acute in the safety net. Washington alone sponsors more than 100 anti-poverty programs, 100 major anti-poverty programs. Those are often actually administered by states and cities, which on top of that have their own programs. So there's tons of programs. The data doesn't talk to each other. You can't apply to one and get all of the relevant benefits. And the actual application processes can be really difficult.

This is about to get a lot harder for a lot of people because of HR1. So this is applying work requirements in the Medicaid program at the national level for the first time. And it's expanding work requirements in SNAP in food assistance. But I really see this as a problem that's affecting everybody, high-income families, low-income families. It's just that the people who end up managing it often tend to have the least time, the most pressures, the fewest resources. So, Annie, what could the U.S. do to become more like Estonia? And I'm listening to what you're talking about in terms of time tax when it comes to government funds. But you also have to remember Americans are doing a ton of this as well around things like health care, for example.

I mean, the amount of time we all spend trying to get reimbursed by health care companies is ridiculous compared to where I am in the UK or many European countries. So is there something America could realistically do to cut down on this? Oh, absolutely. This is one of the few policy areas that I know of where there's a lot of low-hanging fruit. There's really simple stuff and it's not great for a bumper sticker. And while I agree with my colleague here that, yes, politicians could do really well to solve this, a lot of it is just kind of these like little. little fussy problems that you have to deal with. So making the income standards across programs equivalent so that they don't all have different measures of income. Even really simple things like

having the government finally say what counts as a household and applying that across programs would really, really help. Beyond that, there's a lot of agencies that would love to do more administrative work on behalf of citizens and they're not allowed to. So the IRS is a great example of this. Nine out of ten American families use the standard deduction. They have very simple taxes. The IRS could do your taxes for you. It's just not allowed to. And I think a lot of the civil servants at the organization would really like to do that. That's an option that many of our PR countries have. And again, you would always still, if you wanted to do your taxes by hand, that would be fine. They would just be saying, hey, we can do a lot of the work for you. We can fill

you out the forms pre-filled. And if you don't want to do it, you don't have to. And you don't have to go pay somebody else to do it either. All right. The new book is The Time Tax, How the Government Wastes Our Time and How to Fix It. It's available tomorrow. Author and Staff Writer at The Atlantic, Annie Lowry, thank you so much for coming on the show this morning. We appreciate it. Thank you. And still ahead on Morning, Joe, White House correspondent for The New York Times, Maggie Haberman. We'll join us with her new reporting on a private meeting between the president's son-in-law, Jared Kushner and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. Morning Joe. We'll be right back.