Morning Joe - U.S. government shuts down as Trump and Congress fail to reach a funding deal

Episode Date: October 1, 2025

U.S. government shuts down as Trump and Congress fail to reach a funding deal Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

We were not respected with Biden. They looked at him falling downstairs every day. Every day, the guy's falling downstairs. I'm very careful, you know, when I walk downstairs, like I'm on stairs, like these stairs, I'm very, I walk very slowly. You don't have to set any record. Be cool. Be cool when you walk down, but don't, don't pop down the stairs.

So one thing with Obama, I had zero respect for him as a president, but he would bop down those stairs. I've never said, da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-pa-pa-pa-pa. What the hell are you talking about? Obama, can we see footage of Obama going down the stairs? Okay, I stand corrected. I was wrong. I'm sorry. Stephen Colbert on one of the perhaps lighter moments from President Trump's address to top military generals yesterday. We're going to go through some of the more concerning parts of the speech, including his comments about using American cities as training grounds for troops.

Plus, we're now six hours into the government shutdown after Congress and the White House failed to reach an agreement on how to extend federal funding. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer will join us live from Capitol Hill to discuss the next steps for Democrats. So good morning and welcome to morning, Joe. It is Wednesday, October 1st, and Joe, we have a lot to get to. We're in a

shutdown. And that speech, I'm thinking with Pete Hegsteth, the defense secretary and the president. Some ways you kind of felt like until you got to the part about the cities, could have been a Zoom, you know? Did you have to bring everybody in from all over the police?

geez well and and the the the address by pete haggseth you know the generals and the admirals and they were all having to be seething with contempt going wait a second i left my troops right i left the forward positions that i had been put in to defend america and defend american interest across the globe to come have this guy lecture me about warrior ethos and some bizarre pep rally. And then Donald Trump came up. And as we said yesterday, you know, all of his, his, his, his talk was, I mean, he talked about everything but when mills. It was very strange, kind of meandering, strange because, again, it was like a campaign speech that you might have seen late in the campaign. That was Willie up until the very end,

when, as the Wall Street Journal says, Donald Trump told our military leaders that he may want to use the military against Americans, saying the enemy within, talking about using the United States military to train. To train. Think about this. To train on attacking Americans. That is, I don't care what party you're in. I don't care how much. You are. I don't care how long you've been supporting Donald Trump. You know that's a serious breach. That's a breach not only of military tradition. That's a breach of the law. It's a breach in every way. There is no way that even Donald Trump's biggest supporters didn't hear that yesterday. And a part of them said, wait a second. That's just not what we as Americans do. We don't use. the United States military to go after and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and use American citizens as quote practice. Yeah. Talking about American cities as training grounds for the

United States military. Um, you know who wasn't laughing as some people said, oh, it was tongue in cheek. He was, it was a throwaway line from the president. People not laughing were those generals and those admirals and those senior officers sitting there stone-faced. I think in many ways, both Secretary Hagseth and President Trump were surprised. They expected kind of a rah-rah pep rally, and they didn't get that from the people, as you say, who'd flown in men and women for all corners of the world left their post to listen to Pete Higgsath lectured them about warrior ethos and wokeness in the military

and everything else. They didn't get the response they expected. In fact, there were a couple of moments where Pete Hegseth sort of pause for a laugh or applause, did everything but the Jeb Bush, please clap. And these generals and senior leaders just sat there and watched wondering what on earth they were doing there. And that was before President Trump, Mika, went into that meandering speech where he talked about President Obama coming down the stairs, why the quality of paper has gone down in the Oval Office and on and on and on. It had the feel of one of those meandering late stage campaign rallies, except the crowd was not cheering back at this one.

Yeah, probably a few other folks who are not laughing at those throwaway lines, Joe, would be some of the nation's governors and mayors who are already dealing with the potential or the reality of the National Guard coming in and what that could portend for the safety of their cities and their midterm elections. Right. Well, you know, I'm actually still optimistic enough that even those that support Donald Trump had to understand that when you have a president talking about using the military to fight Americans and to use United States cities as training grounds, I mean, nothing, there's

nothing reassuring about that regardless of who you are. And I know right now watching there are Republicans. In the Senate, there are Republicans in the House who understand what an extraordinary breach that is, what he said was, and now is the time because they held their right hand up, and they took an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States and the laws of this land. This would be a pretty good time for them to actually execute that oath and say, no, no, no, we don't, we don't use the United States military to attack Americans. We don't use the United States military to fight, quote, the enemy within, especially when Donald Trump is now defining enemies as public interest groups

that oppose his politics. So, anyway, a lot to talk about there, Meek. Again, it was a very long rambling speech. Pete Hage's speech did absolutely nothing to help him with a military brass. We have a lot to talk about there, and we're going to have general hurtling here in a few minutes, and he will take us through the entire speech and what his concerns are. Also joining us later on, John Barry McCaffrey. So we will get reaction from them. And again, I think that moment in those speeches yesterday, president's speech, especially with signal, not noise, and we'll follow it. Along with Joe, Willie and me, we have the co-host of our fourth hour, staff writer at the Atlantic,

Jonathan Lemire, former Treasury official and morning Joe economic analyst. Steve Ratner joins us. Staff writer for the Atlantic, Frank Four, and co-founder of Punch Bowl News, John Brezhnehan. So, Joe, we have a lot to get to this morning. Yeah, we really do. Frank Four, before we get to the government shut down. I would like your take. I understand, well, I won't ask leading questions. I would just like your take on what that means, what the president said yesterday, that we've gotten to a point where the president of the United States feels free telling military generals from all over the world that he would like to use Americans as practice and use American cities as training grounds. You know, his rambling speech makes the whole thing, sometimes

seem as if it's improvisational, but the aesthetics of this, the choreographing of this, the way that they spent all of this resources to import all of these generals and admirals to sit them down and to lecture them as the president goes back and talks not just about using them to practice in cities as a training ground, but talks about the enemy within, that he, which is a phrase that we know that he's used specifically to talk about members of the media, to talk about federal workers, to talk about universities. And the aesthetics of this all reek of something profoundly autocratic, endangerous, and un-American, something we've never seen before. And the message was only more so. And I couldn't help but think this scene where you have

uncomfortable generals who are the one obstacle, perhaps, to him fulfilling some of his darkest dreams, are sitting there. They're clearly deeply uncomfortable. But the message that Hexeth gave them, and that even the president gave them, was you're going to have to get with the program. And it was done in a bullying sort of way, where he mocked them for their beards for being fat and for potentially getting fired. And I think that the message there was that you're going to need to be pliant. And the Pete Hegseth message at the end of the day is that as you go after whoever you're going after or wherever you're going after them, you're going to be unleashed. That the shackles are going to be off. That if you were a toxic human being,

it's okay. We want to encourage your toxicity. If you're going to be cruel, that cruelty is totally legitimate because it's what we expect in demand of you as warriors. All right. We'll have much more about this coming up later. We want to get to the news that's happening right now. The U.S. government officially shut down at midnight after Congress and the White House failed to reach an agreement on how to extend federal funding. It is the first shutdown since 2018 during President Trump's first term, which was the longest ever at 34 days. Hours before last night's deadline, both Republican and Democratic funding proposals were rejected by the Senate, this despite three Democrats voting in favor of the GOP bill. As of this moment, there is still

no clear path to a resolution. Republicans say there is nothing left to negotiate and expect Democrats to crack under pressure. I think there are a lot of them over there who know that their leadership is walking them off the cliff and really want to do something other than follow the leader, but they are under so much pressure from the political left in this country. I think they're stuck, and they don't have an identity right now, and this is just an example that they really don't know what they're doing. We're going to have another vote tomorrow, and they'll probably try and block it again. But I think people are going to start cracking because they're going to realize this is a losing hand. There literally is nothing to negotiate.

They're bringing in extraneous issues that don't have anything to do at all with keeping the government open. And we've said, you do your first job, keep the government open, and then we'll talk about the rest of it. There's nothing to negotiate. There's nothing I can do it. He has to do the right then. Because real people are going to be heard. So we see now Republicans are plunging America into a shutdown, rejecting bipartisan talks, pushing a partisan bill, and risking America. America's health care, worst of all.

A few moments ago, Republicans once again rejected Democrat's proposals to avoid a shutdown, fix health care premiums, and spare Americans the calamity of skyrocketing through the roof health care costs. Republicans blocked it again, once again. So now two times Republicans have failed to get enough votes to avoid a shutdown. They've got to sit down and negotiate with Democrats to come to a bill that both parties can support. Brad, it seems like most people have been resigned to this shutdown hitting at midnight overnight. It did.

We've been seeing this coming for weeks and months. I know you have two. So just to boil this down, what is this fight over? And if you have the Speaker of the United States of the House saying there's nothing to negotiate here, where does it go? Yeah, you have the Speaker so confident in his. position. He didn't even bring the House in this week. Think about it. The House of Representatives not here when the government is shut down. It's crazy to me. This issue is about Obamacare, extended Obamacare premiums that were put in place during the pandemic. When Obamacare were

set up, there was premium support that was expanded during the pandemic. These premiums are going to expire. And in November, November 1, you're going to see a bunch of people, millions of Americans are going to get hit with much higher premiums. They may lose their insurance. CBO estimates over the next 10 years, 10 million Americans will lose their insurance. That's where Democrats are fighting about. They're saying this is part of the whole thing where Trump was elected to help bring down cost and he's doing the exact opposite.

And they're trying to seize on that. And Republicans, as you can see by Johnson and Thune, their body language is like, we have the upper hand here. We just want to keep the government open. We can negotiate the Obamacare issue on the side. We're not giving you any guarantees, and they feel like they have the much stronger position here. So it's a change for Republicans. They're always the ones who shut down the government in the past.

There was a short shutdown in 2018 that Schumer pushed on DACA on Dreamers. But this in the past, since I've been in the Hill full-time 94, this is Republicans. You go back to Newt Gingrich. They were the ones who shut down the government. In this case, Democrats are shutting down the government. So it's a completely different dynamic, and the messaging is harder when you shut down the government. Republicans are like, open the government and we'll talk. Democrats are like, we've got a lot of stuff to talk about.

So it's a tough place for them. Yeah, Bres is right that Republicans really projecting confidence last night. We're going to talk to Chuck Schumer on this show a short time from now, by the way, and ask him where we go from here. But the president of the United States also sounding confident throughout and also pushing a false message that Democrats are looking to give, quote, Cadillac medical care plans to illegal immigrants here in this country. We'll walk through why that's not true in just a minute. But why do Republicans, why do the president feel so good at this moment? Well, in part, they feel like the Democrats have

been pretty leaderless and rudderless this entire year. We saw the sort of rebellion that happened in the Senate when Leader Schumer had agreed to keep the government open back in the spring. and he faced a lot of anger in his, in his own party, and now there's a sense that he needs to be seen fighting to sort of placate them to start. And Republicans feel like, I will dive into the fact check in a moment, but they can hit a lot of the same issues that worked for them in 2024, including on immigration, to do it now. The president, look, there were shutdowns in his first term, and he, as Brez noted, largely paid the price. He was, you know, he was held responsible as poll numbers slipped. They do feel like this time could be different. And they also

wield this threat of OMB director Russ Vote, who has been a project 2025 guy, who has been a long and evangelist of trying to slash federal government. He's the one who famously said he wanted bureaucrats to, I'm paraphrasing here, be intimidated when they come to work. He believes in really cutting the government. And there's a sense, as I reported for the Atlantic, that they might use this shutdown as an opportunity to finish what Doge started. Those huge cuts earlier in the year, they feel like normally it's 750,000 federal employees will be furloughed daily for when the shutdown last, but normally, and then essential workers have to work, you know, and they'll get back pay. Normally, government opens, funding returns. They get rehired. What Joe, what the White House is threatening right now is that they won't be rehired, that they'll use this shutdown as a moment to permanently fire them. Now, the president hasn't given his okay on that just yet, but he has been warming to it, including in some rhetoric we heard from him yesterday. So they're using that as another. threat to Democrats saying, look, get a deal done or these people are going to lose their jobs. Well, I mean, and of course, if the Republicans decide they're going to completely

gut the government and gut services for working Americans, which this is, the impact's going to fall predominantly on working Americans, on middle class Americans. Then, of course, Republicans at the end of the day will just be hurting themselves. But Mika, you know, we've been talking the past couple of days, just about unambiguous lies that the White House has been putting it. I mean, unambiguous. This is not like, it's not debatable. We don't usually go around saying, oh, so-and-so, something about, but there have been over the past week a couple of examples in extreme cases, just unambiguous lies. We've talked about the vice president of the United States saying that most political violence is coming from the left. That's an unambiguous

lie of every statistic shows that the overwhelming amount of political violence comes from the extreme right. Not that we're blaming anybody, which is exactly what Republicans and their talking heads on other news networks and podcasts do. But that was just a lie. He felt very comfortable lying. He knew he was lying. And everybody that repeats that not lie knows the vice president's lying about that. And, and now it's happening again, this time the lie in the Speaker of the House, Mr. I rule by the Bible, spreading an unambiguous lie, an unambiguous lie going into this government shutdown. They're lying to their own supporters. They're lying to their own constituents. They're lying to their own followers saying Democrats want

to shut down the government because they want to give great health care benefits to illegal immigrants. It's a total lie. So I'm wondering where in the Bible does Mike Johnson read Jesus saying, you know what? Tell the truth except, well, when it might serve you well politically. And then just lie. And why don't you, while you're lying, why don't you spread lies about those who are on the outskirts of society, those who are suffering right now the most. Why don't you lie about the weakest among us, Mikey? I mean, but that's what he's doing. He's spreading the lie, the president's spreading the lie.

All the Republicans are lying through their teeth. And any podcaster today that spreads this lie, anybody on other news networks that spreads this lie, knows exactly what they're doing, there is no Democratic plan to give health care, Cadillac benefits to illegal immigrants. It's not even legal. Well, as you and John Bresdenhan just pointed out, the GOP is repeating what the New York Times calls a new and misleading talking point that Democrats are shutting down the government to fund free health care for unauthorized immigrants. The false assertion, false, has been repeated by Vice President J.D. Vance and speaker Mike Johnson, along with the president himself. Here's what is important to note.

Undocumented immigrants have long been prohibited from taxpayer-funded Medicaid coverage, except for treatment in emergency medical situations. They also do not qualify for Medicaid and Medicare. The fight on Capitol Hill is over reimbursements that allow hospitals to recoup the loss, the costs of emergency care in certain cases. The president's massive spending bill had limited those federal dollars, which is what Republicans are looking to keep in place. As CNBC reports, Democrats say they are only trying to restore health care coverage options that were available to some immigrants before those options were eliminated by President Trump's so-called one big, beautiful tax bill this year.

Steve Ratner, can you add to that and talk about the economic impact of this shutdown? Yeah, Mika, this is completely misleading on the part of the Republicans. And interestingly, this provision has been around for four years, and I don't recall anybody talking about how there was waste, fraud, and abuse. That's the Republican favorite talking point, of course, when they want to attack a pro, they say it's always fraud and abuse. This is just subsidies for normal health care, for normal Americans who are further down in the economic ladder to make health care affordable when they buy it on the ACA exchanges. That is the core of the fight. The Democrats have asked for some other

stuff, but obviously there's a negotiation and probably most of that won't happen. This is at the core of it. Essentially, let me just step back and put this also in perspective. In the first term, Trump talked all the time about overturning Obamacare, repealing Obamacare, and then famously John McCain voted against its state in place. You have not heard the Republicans talk about repealing Obamacare for a long time, but that is what they are doing. In the one big, beautiful bill, there are a bunch of changes in Medicaid, and then you have this provision that... Go ahead. Keep going. There was this provision that did not get expired, and when you add it all up, all the stuff they've done, and about one big, beautiful bill, plus...

this, would reduce the number of Americans who got health care under Obamacare by 70%. It would effectively unwind 70% of Obamacare in this very stealth way, without ever saying that's what they're doing. And is this also the cuts that some of them come after the midterms? Yes. The Medicaid cuts. So people don't feel them until after the midterms. The Medicaid cuts come after the midterms.

But for something like 20 million Americans who are buying their insurance through the exchanges, which is what this fight is about when you're going to buy in exchanges, you're going to feel it right away. The health insurance companies have already filed their premiums for next year, and the average premium increase will be 18% because of this expiration of this provision. So even the ones who still don't get subsidies, still buying the exchanges are going to see much higher premiums right away, not after the midterms. And we should underline again, Bres, there is a federal law that says people here without legal status cannot get taxpayer money.

for health care. Under Medicaid, Medicare, or the ACA, it's against federal law. And Democrats say they have no plans to change that. They don't know where this made-up talking point is coming from. But let's talk about Leader Schumer and the bind he kind of finds himself in. A lot of pressure from his left over the last several years that he gives in too easily to Republicans. What is his position this morning? I mean, he has, there were, as Thune and Schumer talked about, there were a couple of votes yesterday in the Senate. He lost three Democrats, Senate Democrats. They voted, including John Federman, was one of them, and he lost Angus King,

and he lost Catherine Cortez-Mortez-Matt-Taz from Nevada. So he lost that. The thought is if the Republicans just keep pressuring the moderate Democrats, they'll eventually get them to yield. Schumer, now he's not a. up till 2028. He's been leader for eight years now. He's, you know, there's a lot of, there was a, as you noted, there was a lot of people upset with him for March. The Hakeem Jeffries and the House Democrats, and even Patty Murray is top Senate appropriator, Democratic appropriator, wanted to vote against the funding bill in March, have this fight in March. Schumer

postponed it till later in the year. Part of the thing that doesn't get talked about is how Democrats coming in the year thinking there were some pressure points they could get on. Government funding was one of them. The debt limit was another. But surprisingly, Trump leaned on all the Republicans and even the House Freedom Caucus, even the conservatives voted

to increase the debt limit. These guys had never voted for it. So they lost that pressure point. This is one of the pressure points that he has, is government funding and he has to keep them together. It's a difficult spot he's in. You know, Democrats traditionally don't like shutdowns and Republicans, I mean,

using that against them and and now they're having to vote in a way that causes a shutdown so this is a tough spot for sure as you guys noted the left the progressives really want this fight right now this is a huge issue and they want this fight right now well they they may want the fight right now they better have a plan B because I can tell you is somebody that's been through these fights before when I was a Republican, taken down to AC5 in the bowels of the Capitol. There's always a lot of screaming and yelling and shouting going on during government shutdowns. Everybody has their strategy. But one moment sticks out for me, and that is Newt Gingrich always seemed to get out negotiated by Bill Clinton.

And he even joked about it in front of our caucus during one government shutdown. and Bill Thomas stood up and it was a friend of Newt's, Frank Four, and he said, you know, Newt, you're very great at the plan A. And your plan A is brilliant. And it sounds absolutely wonderful. And the base loves it. We love it. Everybody loves it.

But you create this plan, not assuming the other side is going to come with their plan A. And then you have no plan B. You have no next step. and we end up getting lost. I think that may be where we are with Chuck Schumer right now, and we're going to have Chuck Schumer on the show. But what is the plan? Because this is a sort of thing.

If you're in for a penny, you better be in for a pound. And if you're not in for a pound right now, Chuck Schumer, then you better get out while you're not behind because the thing is, Frank, I mean, we can all see this coming, right? Right? Yes. Trump. The Republicans, Russ Vaught, they're all going, love. We're going to do A, B, C. Well, Democrats and Chuck Schumer and everybody that's saying, oh, we want to shut this government down, they better sit down right now and say, he's going to lay off these people. He's going to fire these people. There's going to be these things cut. There's going to be those things cut. We're not going to be able to do anything. And then after all that happens, we're going to to have to come crawling back to them and beg them to reopen the government. That's, that's right now. That, Frank, that's what they need to figure out this morning. And I don't think they haven't figured out. And who among us has faith in their ability to figure it out

based on their performance over the last couple months? I mean, first of all, this fight over health care, which is an important fight and one that I think could resonate also feels a little bit beside the point, given everything we talked about at the beginning of the hour, about the presence of the trutes and the, in the dissolution of our democracy and the broader assault on our federal government. Clearly, they're trying to show, they're trying to make a point about their combativeness that they actually have some spine. But he enters this, knowing that the party, that the other party is the one that usually gets blamed. He's starting, What's his leverage?

He has no leverage. Three out of the eight Democrats that the Republicans need have already folded. And he's got no, as you say, he's got no exit strategy. He's entering a war with no exit strategy. And, you know, we have so many recent examples to show that that is just not a smart thing to do. Staff writer at the Atlantic, Frank Ford, co-founder of Punchpole News, John Brezhnehan and Morning Joe, economic analyst. Eve Ratner. Thank you all very much for being with us this morning. And as we mentioned, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer will join us from Capitol Hill this morning. We'll also get

the Republican side when we speak to the chair of the House Republican conference, Congresswoman Lisa McLean. And up next, retired Army Lieutenant General Mark Hurdling joins us with his reaction to President Trump's address yesterday at a gathering of the nation's top military leaders. You're watching Joe. We'll be right back. It does run most of the cities that are in bad shape. We have many cities in great shape, too, by the way. I'd like you to know that. But it seems that the ones that are run by the radical left Democrats,

what they've done to San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, they're very unsafe places. And we're going to straighten them out one by one. And this is going to be a major part for some of the people in this room. That's a war, too. It's a war from within controlling the physical territory of our border is essential to national security. But I want to salute every service member who has helped us carry out this critical mission. It's really a very important mission.

And I told Pete, we should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military, national guard, but military, because we're going into Chicago version. That's a big city with an incompetent governor. Stupid governor, stupid. Using American cities as training grounds for the United States military. That was part of President Trump's partisan address yesterday to hundreds of America's top military leaders at a Marine Corps base in Quantico, Virginia. Joining us now, MSNBC contributor, Mike Barnacle, retired U.S. Army lieutenant general,

Mark Hurgling. Good morning to you, both. General. I'll start with you and just your reaction. I'm sure you've talked to some of your old colleagues, maybe who are in the room or some who just watched at home, what was the reaction to that spectacle yesterday? Yeah, Willie, I did talk to a few, many people in that room I've served with. I didn't retire that long ago, so some of those senior members were junior members when I was

still in the service. What was interesting is it came about in two parts, first of all, Secretary Hegssess address. You know, I took notes as he spoke as I was watching it, and just some of the things that I made bullet points about were liberal. Day, kill things and break people, or kill people and break things, excuse me, war crimes, Geneva Convention elimination, rules of engagements are unnecessary, suggesting women can't meet the standards, returning to the days of drill sergeants smoking recruits during basic training,

suggesting the elimination of IG actions, especially as he's being investigated for the use of signal apps by those IGs, hawking his own book at the end, the war on warriors, read, and it's a compilation of thoughts from a disgruntled soldier who has very little understanding of strategic implications with various actions. Then when it turned to the president, you've already addressed this, a meandering, just all sorts of issues, much like the UN speech he gave. So many things to talk about from that speech, but the war from within, as you just mentioned, and putting soldiers on American streets to train how to react to different enemies from within were two of the highlights that I wrote down.

And it was just a combination of two things that I believe were leading to what we might see next. And the other thing I'd say is President Trump thrives on applause and cheering and interactions with an audience. and when he didn't get that and instead got quiet professionalism from the soldier, sailors, airmen, and Marines in the audience, that likely rattled them from the very beginning. And that silent wasn't disrespect. It was restraint and discipline and adherence to the oath of office.

Yesterday was, to me, a collective reminder of our professional culture that we have in the military that transcends politics. It was on full display, and it was interesting to watch. from both sides of the audience. It was, the oath to the Constitution, not to the man standing in front of them. So can you speak general, just for people watching this morning who have so much coming at them 24 hours a day, why this you view is so unusual and so dangerous to be talking about using American cities as, quote, training grounds for the American military and having

the United States military go in and effectively do domestic policing of gangs and whatever else Donald Trump wants them to do. Well, primarily, Willie, is because it's illegal, and it violates our oath of office to defend the Constitution, which says the military is not to be used specifically that was put in the Constitution against securing American streets other than when there is an insurrection within the Republic, which President Lincoln saw. But the indications are people are asking us to prepare to do that. So that means there's measures afoot to try and make that happen.

Because I don't see it, and you can bet that all the 400 or 800 people in that audience, the generals and the senior enlisted advisors, don't see it either. And many of them have seen conflict. They have been involved in war. They know what it's like. And they also know you don't take your up arms against. innocent civilians, especially ones in the United States who are executing their First Amendment rights of free speech and protesting against the government.

General, I don't know whether you've seen the front page of the Wall Street Journal today. I'm now holding it up on camera. There's a photo shot of the front rows of many of the former members, your former friends in the military sitting there watching and listening to the spectacle yesterday. And I, too, spoke to several of your colleagues, former colleagues yesterday, and the word I kept hearing from them was embarrassment, because if you look at that picture and you listen or have viewed what happened yesterday in Quantico, you saw a myriad numbers of Silver Star Awards. You saw a myriad Purple Hearts, Bronze Stars, Combat Infantry Badges. and they were being lectured on how to do push-ups and lose weight and shave. And it was truly mortifying. But the larger question is, going forward, what happens to the military in this country

when there's so much disarray within the building, the Pentagon, where the Defense Department is housed, and various components of the military around the globe with this, internal dissension that you can seemingly feel when you, when you witness an event like yesterday. Yeah, it struck me too, Mike, that when you look at those faces, it's what I predicted when I was on the show the other day and that you're going to get poker faces and a stoicism that was reflective of professionalism. But truthfully, those individuals will leave that room or left that room yesterday, and they'll start discussing and analyzing how they can implement some of the lawful

orders that they got. You know, okay, great, we can buck up the standards. We can take a look at the kinds of things to get some soldiers, not all, certainly, not even the majority, back in better shape, take a look at what our ranks look like. But there were also soldiers and, well, all ranks of services in that audience that said, a minute when they were writing down the same kind of checklist that I was writing down saying, wait a minute, we can't do that, or we shouldn't do that, or this is a true violation of what we are as professionals, or, hey, I've got women in my ranks who are performing

admirably, why should I kind of lump them all together like the secretary did? Or I'm certainly now going to debate with myself, what am I going to say if I'm asked to go on the street and conduct illegal actions. And I guarantee you that the people in that audience will not execute illegal orders. We've been saying that for a long time. But at the same time, all of them, not only were they personally embarrassed, but they were embarrassed for their services that had to sit in that audience and listen to this kind of stuff.

That's the worst part of all this. You know, there's a saying in the military that's a great leadership dictum. You praise in public and you discipline in private. This was a disciplinary approach in public with cameras so the whole nation could see. And it was an attempt at separating the military institution from the people that they defend. And I don't think it worked very well. But I'm sure there's a lot of people questioning what the military will do next. I'm sure of what they will do next.

They will make sure they don't follow illegal orders. and maintain their job yesterday they'll do they'll do their job you know you know general uh there was such an extraordinary misreading of the room by uh pete hexeth and the president of the united states who have absolutely no idea who they were talking to i i understand pete hegs had served and i'm grateful for his service in uniform to this country uh but i do wonder uh how how they could have so badly misread the room. I kept thinking watching them yesterday just how Bush League it was and how those generals and those admirals afterwards were just shaking their heads going, my God, what a clown show.

And that's what they were thinking. That's what so many people in the military, even if members of the military support the president. And there are a good number that do support the president, this sort of speech and doing this with generals and admirals, Bush. I want to talk about the culture really quickly before we let you go, just to explain to viewers, something that I was blessed to be able to see when I was a member of the Armed Services Committee for four terms. I got a chance to see generals and admirals up close to figure out what drove them. and it was, of course, a love of country. But as I was saying to some people in 2020, when they're saying, oh, no, the military, Donald Trump's going to get the military, they're going to rise up, and they're going to keep Donald Trump in power.

I said, no, no, no, you don't understand the military. They will not do that. And I said for several reasons, but as I've always said, and like you to explain this, there's a peer pressure in all the right way. because every general and every admiral has a mentor who's a retired general and a retired admiral. And I always saw when one stepped out of line, this band of brothers would come together. And they were always looking. I even, I had chief of staffs of the Air Force. I had them looking to their retired generals or in the Navy retired admirals for guidance. And that was their audience, too.

They did not, they understood they were duty bound by the Constitution, but also by those whose shoulders they were standing on in their position. Can you please talk about that just for a minute to explain that this is so much more than just a room of 800 military leaders. There's a collective room, really, the spirit, you know, teaching them duty, honor, and country of tens of thousands of people still with us and no longer with us that are guiding those generals and admirals. Yeah, Joe, I'd love to talk about that for a second. First of all, I'll shout out to my mentors. I've got about five of them. The biggest one is General Fred Franks, who was a four-star general when I was a young major working for him. He took me under his wing.

He's still living a great example, lost a leg in Vietnam, and understands and rose to the rank of four-star when he was commanding Desert Storm. John Abizade, who many people know from his service, Rick Shimseki, you know, I could go on and on again, the guys who mentored me throughout, and I mentor a few others. and the few that I mentor were contacting me last night. Barry McCaffrey, who you're going to have on in a little while, was also one of my mentors. You know, that's a core of the professional force. What is also important to know to address the points that you made is the military is a profession.

It is not a business. They don't get paid very much, but they do it for something bigger themselves that no one else in the society could do. element of a profession. Another element of a profession is they have a professional code of ethics and values, which are embedded in each individual. A third element of a profession is that fellow professionals discipline and even dismiss others within the profession if they violate the norms of the profession, which gets to what you're talking about. So those are three of the five elements of a profession, which hold us together tightly and cause the military to do things And the last one is the caring for soldiers. You know, the big part about what we're seeing today

is not loyalty just to the oath of office, but it's also loyalty to those we lead and a shared trust between the leaders and the lead. And those men and women in the room yesterday cannot let their soldiers or Marines or airmen or sailors down in terms of standing up for them and what right looks like. So you've hit a very good point. That's what makes us very different. So, Mika, we should be heartened by the silence and the stone faces of those generals. In contrast to the cheers that President Trump got when he spoke to young members of the military at Fort Bragg earlier this year, the top members, officers didn't want to do that. But I will say, I spoke to someone in the room afterwards who said, beyond the training ground line that we were rightly focused on today.

The other thing that really did not land well with many in the room was, again, President Trump in this rally-like speech, talking about how the 2020 election was stolen and somehow suggested, that plus the idea of military officers in the streets military member streets really that twinning those ideas really bothers some people so retired u.s. army lieutenant general mark hurling thank you very much for your insights this morning we'll talk to you soon thank you sir somehow we've made it this far into the show um can't even believe it almost 50 minutes without talking about the red sox and the yankees i'm proud of you boys thank you but we'll do that next on morning joe we're back in 90 seconds. That's time.

Yeah. Nah, let's not. Red Sox ace. Garrett Crochet turned in a masterpiece at Yankee Stadium last night, striking out 11 batters, surrendering only four hits in over seven innings of work. He was great. Through a career high, 117 pitches, that's the most by a major league starter in a playoff game in six years. He carried Boston to its win in game one over the Yankees. Yanks did take an early lead on Anthony Volpe's Apo solo shot in the second inning was 1-0 there. But after that, Croixie's O'Shea retired the next 17 batters in a row. Red Sox pincher, Masataka Yoshita, lined a two-run, go-ahead, single-off reliever, Luke Weaver in the seventh. More on that in the moment.

And then Boston Closer, former Yankee, Roldest Chapman, escaped a bases-loaded jam with no outs. He loaded him up, no outs, and then got three outs in a row. Red Sox beat the Yankees 3-1 in game one of the AL Wild Card Series. Game two is tonight in the Bronx. all you got to do in this first round is win two games. So the Yankees could be eliminated tonight at home. Let's

hope that doesn't happen. We got Carlos Rodan going. He's been great this year. So Joe, we're just talking here at the table that Max Fried was really, really good last night for most of the game. But man, as a guy who does not watch the Red Sox every night to watch crochet work, he was incredible.

Yeah, he really was. Max Fried was incredible. He was unhittable. Rodon twice this year. Last two times he's faced the Red Sox. He's been unhittable. He's gone out in like the fifth, sixth inning, and I think we touched up their bullpen. I guess, Willie, the question is the Yankee bullpen. I mean, it seems like this series is going to rise or fall on whether they can, because we're, you know, if the passes prolog, Rodon's going to have another four, five, six great innings against the Red Sox, the question is

what happens those last three innings? Will the bullpen be able to rise to the occasion then? And they did not last night, and that's why so many people are calling into question. Aaron Boone, the Yankee manager, his decision to go out and take the ball from Max Fried there in the seventh inning. Because, as you say, he got into trouble a couple of innings, but got out of it, was pitching so well. Not just that he was pitching well, but that the Yankees bullpen has been unreliable all season. Mike, so Boone's taking some heat in New York, as you would expect. I think we're old-fashioned guys. If a guy's going well, let him stay out there and keep pitching.

Sometimes managers get into their heads, and they're looking through the buying. and the iPad and everything else and the data and saying, well, this is the time to take him out of there. In hindsight, I bet Boone wish he left him out. Oh, I bet he did too. There's an extraordinary emphasis on matchups now in Major League Baseball. So Freed left-hander, right-handers coming up. Freed, I think, was about 101 pitches when they took about 99 pitches. Maybe losing a little gas. That happens. In retrospect, he should have left him in there to see what would happen. But the larger frame of reference for me is that's the best game I've seen the Red Sox play under those conditions, playoff conditions, since 2018 during the World Series run.

It was a spectacular baseball game, and I don't know whether we want to get into this or not, but there's something wrong, and it's not just in Yankee Stadium, with the coarseness of the culture, and people coming up close to the field, yelling, screaming, uttering expletives at players. It's just, it's disheartening to hear. I don't like that. Yeah, it really is. I mean, it happens, of course.

We've seen it happening at Beth Page Black. It happened last night, Mike, at Yankee Stadium. It's a shame. Talking about the game, though, John, one of the things that's so fascinating about these playoffs is Willie says, it's, you know, two games are out. And for those of us who've been following the Red Sox for 162 games and watching most of those games or the Yankees or whomever you follow, you know, in the playoffs, it's amazing who rises to the surface. Sogarde, who's this journeyman. Sogarde had one of the most important hits in September, kept us going when it looked like we were about to fall off a cliff.

He did it again last night. And not only that, he went and extended a single to a double. this is more about the nature of baseball, a small thing like that, where a guy gets, hits a single, extends it into a double, then allows another guy that Mike Barnacle has never given any respect to, who I will name all of my future pets after, Mossa, hits a two-run RBI. I don't care whether he can elevate the ball off the ground or not. He's a good hitter. This is Mossa's hit. And again, Here's a guy that the Boston fan base has been after for years now. But last night he came through, and that's really the magic of these playoffs.

I mean, you've got the crochets, right? But then again, you have Sogarde. There's a journeyman. And then Masa, who's been attacked by the Boston fan base. They won incredibly big game for the Red Sox last night. Joe Scarborough never lost the faith on Yoshita. But he's about the only one, even though with his negative launch angle for a swing. every ball into the ground. But it worked last night. Everyone. And I do think that Americans,

to Willie's point, who are just now watching this Red Sox team for the first time, like they're like, who are these guys? Half of their lineup really don't look like major leaguers, particularly when they stack against the lefty. They have a bunch of journeymen in there. But Alex Korr pushed all the right buttons. And that Sogar double, Mike and I were just talking about, in part because the scouting, because Aaron Judge, he's got a bad arm, can't throw. He's in right field. You know you have a shot to take the extra base. And indeed, to let Crochet go out there for 117 pitches, that's such stark contrast to the quick hook from Boone for Freed, that's how that's, that's going to be the legacy of this game, I think, as well as Robles Chapman last night, making things interesting in the ninth before dialing in and closing out his old team. And by the way, Chapman, Chapman is what was lights out for most of the season. He has had a very rough month. I didn't think he had it last night. I was actually hoping in the ninth inning.

they would take out, bring out Wittlock, didn't do it, but I will give Cora credit with bases loaded. He stayed with Chapman when a lot of people won. Willie, there was one more moment where for some reason, Willier-A-U and Wrightfield decides to run into center field, leap in the air, almost one and two, baseball's best center fielder. Look at this with the game on the line. Hello. I mean, what was he thinking? The guy he took it from, Saddam Raphael,

the best center fielder in baseball. Look at his face afterwards. Look at his face. I'm getting the gold glove in about a week, and you did what? And no communication. Nobody called anybody off. I mean, center fielder's camped out under that for an easy catch, why? Why? I thought

for a second there that the baseball gods were smiling on us, but he did come up with that catch. That was a wild play. It was Abrayo's really second time back and right field. He'd been out injured for most of the month of August, and he's clearly so excited to be back in the game that he almost crushes

in a loud crowd. Maybe he didn't hear to call it. Right. One other cool thing is we moved to the next game. I was reading afterward that Crochet talked to Cora on Monday. It said, I'm going to get you to Chapman. Yeah. I'm going to go deep enough in the game. Bring Chapman in when I'm done. And that's what happened last night. He's at east.

All right. Let's go to Cleveland. Detroit 8s. Wow. Tarek Scouble. Lifted the Tigers to a 1-0 lead in their A.L. Wildcard series against the Cleveland Indians, tying a 53-year-old franchise playoff record with 14 strikeouts, pitching into the eighth inning of a 2-1 victory for the Tigers. Remember, they were floundering at the end of the season. Now they're on the brink of moving on to the next round. Game two of that best of three series this afternoon in Cleveland.

In the National League, the reigning World Series champion Dodgers moved one step closer to a repeat title. Shohei Otani, Teoscar Hernandez, each homered twice for the Dodgers. L.A. beats the Reds 10 to 5. They host Sinci again tonight in game two. And at Rigley Field, back-to-back home runs in the fifth inning, uplift the Cubs to a 3-1 victory over the San Diego Padres. Game two of their NL Wild Card Series this afternoon in Chicago. teams that win game one in this format are 18 and two in the wild card round. But we Yankee fans still believe we got Rodan going tonight.

Then you get an anything goes game three, Mika. All right. Good job, guys. Sticking to time. We're at the top of the second hour of morning, Joe.