around. but there is a drawback here because after the pandemic, we saw women leaving the workforce. you're not you know, you're seeing those kinds of programs begin to be rolled back. so even if the pendulum swings back, how much gain is being lost here by what the white house is doing? >> i don't know. and i think that's the biggest question. and we're going to have to watch it carefully. it's there's no circumstances under which it's acceptable for qualified women and people of color to lose opportunities because somebody perceives it as unfair. if they're qualified, they should be getting those jobs. >> absolutely. lauren leader, thank you, as always for joining. and that was way too early for this wednesday morning. morning joe starts right now. >> i knew that my vote could make the difference and i would. however hard it was, i wasn't going to let their denial of my ability to vote by proxy get in the way. so sam and i took a trip across the country. >> had a knee surgery and.

>> a. >> blood clot. >> and infection in my. >> knee. >> two clean out surgeries. >> i've been in the. >> hospital for the last. >> ten days. this is a. >> centerpiece of. >> the trump agenda. >> and i wanted to. >> get my vote on the record. >> all right. >> democrats doing. >> everything they. >> can to. >> challenge the republican led house budget proposal. >> that was. >> congresswoman brittany peterson of. >> colorado, who brought her. >> four week. >> old son. >> and congressman kevin mullin of california, who traveled to d.c. after being released from the hospital on monday. we'll go through what comes next for that bill. plus, we'll have the latest on. >> all things doge. >> as the. white house finally reveals who is legally. >> in. charge of the. >> task force and the new. reporting from the new york. times on doj's. >> inaccurate savings claims. >> meanwhile, some. >> republican lawmakers. are backing away. from town halls. >> after contentious. meetings with constituents.

>> we'll tell you why. >> and we'll have. >> an update for you. >> on the near-miss. >> at. >> chicago's midway. >> airport after a. southwest airlines. >> jet ditched. >> its landing. >> just in the. >> nick of time. >> good morning. >> and welcome. >> to morning joe. >> it is. >> wednesday, everybody. >> just so you. >> know. >> informing you. wednesday, february. >> 26th. >> along with. >> joe. >> willie and me, we have. >> msnbc contributor. >> mike barnicle. >> the host of. way too early, ali vitali, chief white house correspondent for the new york. >> times. >> peter baker. >> and co-founder. >> of axios. >> mike allen. >> is with. >> us this morning. joe, we have so much to get to today as we do every day. >> we really do. >> and i mean. >> you look. >> at the near miss in chicago. you look at all the other problems that we're having right now. this is the last time. this is this is. >> the last. >> thing you'd. want to do. >> right. >> now is cut. >> faa workers. so last thing.

>> you would want to do. >> is. >> is do anything that could inhibit air safety. you can go out, you can talk about die all. >> you. >> want to. this is something that has nothing. >> to do with die. this is something we've been. >> talking about on this show since covid. >> about about. >> right now. >> we. we have a crisis. >> we need more. >> people actually up in the towers. we need more. people in the faa. >> we need more. people keeping. >> the skies safe. >> and willie, just. >> really quickly we're we're going to talk about doge. >> we have. >> mike allen, who. >> along with jim vandehei. >> wrote. an extraordinary. column talking about how doge. they didn't say this, i am. it's mainly. >> when it comes to budget issues. it's smoke and mirrors. >> think about this. >> that from the founding. >> of our republic. >> through 2001. >> it's the year i left

congress. so i. know over those. >> 220 years, the united. >> states accumulated. >> $5 trillion debt. in the last 20. >> years. 5 trillion over two centuries, over the last. 20 or so years, we've accumulated. >> up to. >> $36 trillion. >> now, the congressional budget. >> office says that if these republicans pass what they're about to pass, and if they move forward with tax cuts and they move forward with massive. spending increases in. >> defense, and they. >> move forward with all the things. >> they're talking. >> about. >> moving forward with the. >> the budget. >> let me get this number right. >> the budget. >> is going to increase another $23 trillion. over the next

decade. >> over the. >> next decade. and this is something i've been warning about my entire. >> adult life. >> let me. >> tell you. >> something, though. there are. >> no. >> warnings for this. >> we are in meltdown mode. >> here. >> and they're sitting around talking about. >> you know, passing legislation that's going. >> to increase the debt. another $20 trillion. >> over the next decade. >> and not even they're talking about doge. >> it's smoke. >> and mirrors. >> you're talking about a small, small percentage of what actually drives the. >> debt. >> what drives what. >> they're. >> going to do is they're. >> going to slash. >> medicaid. and they may think that only hurts minorities in inner cities. >> they are so wrong. the people who were most devastated are those who live in. >> red state america. >> those who have watched rural hospitals around them. >> shut down when governors wouldn't accept medicaid expansion. >> they slashed medicaid. they

are slashing rural health care that's already. in crisis. >> so everything. >> seems backwards here. >> they may think. >> it's all. smoke and. >> mirrors and not. >> to go on too long, but i am obsessed about it. neil ferguson talks. >> about ferguson's law. >> not not not. >> his law. but but someone else from the. >> 1800s. >> and ferguson's law states. >> that any great power that spends more money on. servicing their debt than on. defense risk. ceasing to become a great power. the united states is doing that really right now. we spend more money on interest on our. federal debt. >> than we do. >> in defending this country. >> and it's only going. >> to get so. >> much worse because of. >> the nonsense that's going. >> on in washington. >> dc right now. >> yes. >> so much. >> of what doge is doing is performative. as we said yesterday, literally sometimes

with elon musk wielding a chainsaw. but even these cuts, if you're actually serious about getting debt and deficit under control, which so many republicans have spent their careers talking about calling themselves hawks, that went away, of course, in the first trump administration, when he added more debt than any president had previously. and now you're exactly right. the outlines of this deal that republicans struck barely by the skin of their teeth by two votes in the house, and we'll get into some of the details. it does extend the trump tax cuts from 2017, blowing a massive hole in the debt. again, those cuts, of course, go to the wealthiest americans. and trying to find the savings, as you said, in places like medicaid and food assistance, 72 million americans rely on medicaid for their health care. that is not, as you say, just inner city minorities as perhaps they think. so that is health care for people. that is food for people across the country, urban and rural. so, mika, the what elon musk is

doing might feel good to the base. it might look good. like he's finally getting some efficiency in the government, but it doesn't actually do anything to get to the core right of our debt and deficit. >> we'll get more on this later. but the. >> backlash also continues. >> a group. of 21. >> civil service employees. >> whose team. was folded. >> into elon. >> musk's department of. >> government efficiency. all resigned yesterday. >> that's according. >> to a letter posted. >> online and shared with. >> media outlets. >> the letter stated. >> the career staffers. >> refused to use. >> their technical. >> skills to. >> quote. compromise core. >> government systems, jeopardize american. >> sensitive data or. >> dismantle critical. >> public services. >> a person familiar with the letter confirmed its. >> authenticity to nbc news. >> the news was first reported by the associated press. in a social media post, musk. >> called the ap report more fake news and. >> added these.

>> were. >> deemed political. holdovers who refused to return to the office. they would have been fired had they not resigned. okay. >> the white. >> house now finally has named the person it says is officially in charge of doge. it comes after lawyers for the trump administration could not tell a judge on monday who is running the task force created by elon musk. white house press secretary caroline leavitt was asked about that yesterday. >> elon musk is overseeing doge. there are career. there are no. elon musk is a special government employee, which i've also been asked and have answered that question as well. there are career officials at doge. there are political appointees at doge. i'm not going to reveal the name of that individual from this podium. i'm happy to follow up and provide that to you, but we've been incredibly transparent about the way that doge is working. >> except we won't reveal the name. despite making it clear that musk is overseeing doge. that was a quote there. the white house shortly after that briefing said, amy gleason now holds the title of acting doge

administrator. the white house did not say when gleason was appointed, but the decision appeared rushed because gleason is on vacation in mexico, according to the new york times. she told associates she was not aware ahead of time that the white house planned to make public her role. her linkedin profile has her listed as the senior advisor at the us digital service, a department that musk folded into doge. meanwhile, musk will be a part of president trump's first cabinet meeting later today. the billionaire is not a member of the president's cabinet. leavitt yesterday said musk will be there because he's working alongside the president and the administration's cabinet secretary. so peter baker, it's pretty clear and frankly, an insult to most americans intelligence to say that elon musk is not the one making these calls and running doge. he's going to be sitting in that cabinet meeting today. but does the white house have a sense that the clunky way in which

these cuts are being made and then being withdrawn, in some cases, emails threatening employees are being sent out and then departments are saying, no, actually, you don't have to abide by that email. is the white house worried about this at all? it doesn't sound like it from the president's point of view. he says musk should be more aggressive. >> yeah, i don't. >> think. >> they're worried too much. >> about it. >> i think some. >> of the confusion. >> and. >> chaos is baked in. >> i think it's kind of in some ways the goal. >> they're trying. >> to keep. >> people off, you. >> know, trying. >> to keep people confused and off their. back heels. you know, i think that. >> if you look at this department. of government efficiency, the name that they have. >> chosen for themselves, the trick is hasn't been all that efficient, right? so they had a list up, for instance, of the. largest cuts that they say they have made. to government programs. well, the five largest savings that they claimed have now been deleted from the site after reporters, including some of my colleagues, pointed out that they were riddled with errors. so they're trying. >> to. >> get their feet. >> planted on something that's very complicated. the government here is a $6 trillion a year.

operation for outsiders to come in, who have no experience there, and just suddenly be able to. >> make the kind of. >> sweeping decisions that they're making without any kind of background in it. i think you're you're going to have the kind of screw ups that we've seen so far. >> well. >> meanwhile. >> some republican. >> lawmakers are starting. >> to push. >> back against the. department of government efficiency. >> this is their. >> constituents are. >> complaining about the federal government layoffs. lawmakers are now publicly raising those concerns, toeing the line between criticizing the department. >> and supporting. >> its efforts. >> i think. >> that any process. >> you undergo where. >> you're trying to find efficiencies and if. that involves some reductions in force, it needs to be done in a respectful way. obviously, that's respectful. of people involved. but i do. >> think as. >> they go through this process. the objective of. doge is to try and figure. out ways to make government run more efficiently, more effectively and reduce its

cost, and make sure that the american taxpayer is getting a good deal on the tax dollars that they put into the federal government. >> i'm all. >> for some of the government. >> i'm all for also doing it in a deliberate. >> manner that allows people to adjust in their lifestyles. >> do you believe that elon musk and doge should have a. >> little bit more compassion? is that what you're saying? >> i think the messaging has to be. >> more along the lines. >> of this is good for america. >> but also. >> we need to do it in a in a little bit more, in my opinion. and i understand you always have to, but in my opinion we have to be a little bit more, give people more time to adjust. >> things are. happening a. little bit too fast. >> and furiously, i. >> think, and that's. >> why we've had some of these unintended consequences. we also saw the. national park service, some seasonal hires that are being reversed as well to reinstate those individuals. so instead of. doing this in a very broad way and then having. to

retroactively, you know, reverse your. >> decision. >> why don't we take a little. >> time, do it more. >> thoughtfully and thoroughly, making sure. >> we're. >> actually addressing, you know. >> the waste, the mismanagement and the unnecessary overhead, as. opposed to making. >> these rash decisions. >> and then having to backtrack. >> my district is firmly behind what president trump is doing and what. doge is doing to right this ship before that ship crashes into. >> a reef. >> of despair and we go broke. as a nation, i do think there are some valid concerns about the speed that this is happening. layoffs happen every day in america. >> when. >> companies are bought out. >> through consolidation. >> and automation and other things that no longer require services. of sometimes hardworking people. but that's what happens. and government employees are not immune from that. just because you. >> have a. >> government job, it's not a lifetime appointment like the. supreme court over there. well, i mean, i think we all agree on that and we all agree on waste. >> fraud. >> and abuse. but again, i must correct the congressman what.

>> he said at first, we have. >> to do this to somehow. >> save our ship. >> from crashing onto the shore. you know, because. >> of public debt. >> again. i would hope he knows. and if he doesn't. >> i would hope. >> he'd read. >> axios in the newsletter they put out. or just look. >> at. >> the congressional. >> budget office because mike ellen. >> the news column that you and. >> jim vandehei. >> wrote a couple of days ago. >> really clarifies everything. and his follow up. >> i followed up. >> on it this morning with what i was saying about about the debt. this is. >> this is, as you say, right here. >> trimming the fat is. >> harder than it looks. sure, 37%. >> of the contract. >> terminations aren't expected to. >> save any money. >> and you also, you talk about how actually the interest that we accumulate on the debt is more than. >> they're. >> going to be able to. >> ever cut. >> at doge. >> and that's the interest we accumulate. on the debt every day. >> this is we've heard of.

>> no pain, no gain. >> well, republican. members are. going to soon find this is all. >> pain. >> no gain. >> it does. >> nothing to get. >> us closer to being fiscally responsible. >> and not see. >> the government and our economy melt. >> down. >> under a pile of debt. >> yeah, joe. >> i've heard you. >> talking about these. >> issues for years. >> including when i had to call you congressman. and this is. >> what. we explain. >> in our. >> column, hard truths about. >> trump's budget cuts. >> and those just. putting out examples of. >> silly government. >> programs, mistaken. government programs, contract excesses. but what we show with the math. >> is that these are. >> drops of. >> water in the leaky bucket. of the us budget. and you look at the numbers, 60% of what's in

the. budget is going to. >> programs that. >> government absolutely has to spend, throw in defense. throw in interest. you're left with 16% of the budget, like very little for those in the government to work with. now, joe, it's super important to say the idea of doge. >> and what. >> doge is doing is super popular, both in polls and in my conversation with friends, relatives, coast to coast. even people in. >> your city, they like the idea of it. >> it's always. >> been that. it's always been. >> popular, hasn't it? as you as you point out here, when proxmire had the golden fleece award. >> what was that back. >> in the 60s? >> and 70s. >> al gore went on david letterman to talk about rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse. we've been around. but i will tell you this what i found, and i'm not talking about those two gentlemen, but what i. found when we were trying to do the hard work. >> to balance the budget. >> we did it four years in a row when people started talking

about things like this, it was to distract. >> from the. >> fact that you have. >> to find savings in medicare. >> and social security, in. >> defense spending. >> in these. >> other. areas that. take up 85. >> to 90%. >> of the budget. so they'll go, oh, look over. >> there. >> look at the bird over there. >> and then they. >> can wield. >> a chainsaw. >> and yet they. >> do nothing. as again. >> the congressional. >> budget office. >> the congressional, the congressional. >> budget office. >> says our debt is going to go up. >> another. $23 trillion over the next decade. >> that will cripple america. >> mike. that's right, joe. >> and you. >> can add senator alan. >> simpson. >> who peter. knows very well to that list. i remember, like, growing up in orange county, california, hearing about. the bill proxmire golden fleece awards, government excesses, the sort of paul harvey stuff, ronald reagan, of course, who on the after dinner circuit. really

played those up. but what we point out in this column that's up now on axios is that president trump is hemmed. in by three things one political. >> reality. >> including his need to keep. >> house republicans. who knows. so while second. he's hemmed in by what he has said about what. >> he's not. going to touch. >> including recently in. >> his interview with sean hannity, he talked about what. >> he would not touch. >> and of course, three is the math that you've been talking through. >> so one of the things. >> joe. >> you've always shared with me about what you. loved about. >> and. >> learned the most from. >> during your time. >> in congress was. >> town halls that. >> you did every. >> time you went home. to learn about whether or not you're doing a. >> good job for your constituents. and now. >> some house republicans. >> are putting the brakes on town halls. after pushback over. >> the trump. >> administration's cuts. >> the decision comes after a. >> number of. >> lawmakers faced angry crowds.

>> in their home. >> districts last week. >> republican leaders are urging. >> lawmakers to. >> stop engaging in them. >> altogether. >> or to. >> do tele town. >> halls to. >> avoid similar. >> incidents. >> gop sources tell. >> nbc news. the new. >> reluctance to. >> hold them. >> indicates there. >> are bubbling concerns. >> about. the impact the cuts. >> could have on. >> the gop's chances of holding its thin. >> majority in the house. >> next year. >> the viral. >> nature of video clips are spreading. from one district. >> to. >> another means a bad confrontation. >> in safe republican territory. >> could. >> influence voters in battlegrounds. and mike barnicle. >> at the. >> same time. aren't the. >> town halls. >> where you. >> you know, as a public servant. >> get feedback. >> from the very. >> people who. >> voted you into office? >> well, you. >> know, the furor at. >> the town halls over the weekend with. republican congressman, that's. >> a window of. >> opportunity for the democrats. >> is. >> the democrats best hope is what is going on right now, today in washington, dc. i was

stunned yesterday talking to a member of the ways and means committee who told me that 20% of the revenue that goes into the united states treasury goes to pay off. debt service. and the republicans are talking now about perhaps cutting medicare benefits, medicaid benefits, some social security benefits, some va benefits, a lot of benefits that people are used to getting and have been used to getting. >> for years. >> decades actually will now be cut. >> in favor of. >> a $4.5 trillion tax cut that. >> they will propose. >> that will largely go to billionaires and millionaires in large corporations, the corporate tax rate will be lowered, perhaps even more than it was lowered. this is a disaster in the making for the republican party. but worse than that, mika, it's a disaster for the united. states of america. >> all right. still ahead. >> on morning. >> joe, federal. >> workers staged. protests across. >> d.c. yesterday. >> to voice frustrations with. >> the sweeping. >> government layoffs. >> what some of.

>> those employees. >> are. >> saying about. >> the administration's. >> slash and burn approach. >> plus. >> the white house says it will. >> decide which. >> news outlets get to cover. >> president trump going forward. >> a sharp break. >> from tradition. >> what the white house correspondents. >> association is saying about that. >> morning joe is. >> back in 90s. >> we can't calculate our total taxes. >> do you realize. >> how many different taxes we pay? >> sales tax. >> different pos systems in all seven countries. >> and online sales? >> that's a whole other. >> system and different regulations. there's real estate credits, solar. >> incentives. >> and we have. >> no way to. >> integrate all that. >> no, >> but bdo does. >> people who know know b.d.o.

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>> time now. >> for a look at some of the other stories making headlines this morning. >> hamas is. >> mapping out its battle strategy for a potential return. >> to. >> war with israel. >> it comes as. >> mediators work to salvage the ceasefire that expires this weekend in the gaza strip. >> although the. >> terror group has been badly weakened. >> after 15 months. >> of fighting, it has started. regrouping its military. >> forces. repairing its underground tunnel network and. >> training new. >> recruits on how. >> to use weapons. more than 1000. >> musicians. >> including annie. >> lennox. >> kate bush. >> and cat stevens. >> are protesting. >> a. >> proposal in the uk that. >> would give. >> artificial intelligence firms access. >> to. >> copyrighted music. to push back on the. >> proposed law. the artists. >> released an album that is mostly silent except for. white noise, recorded in empty studios. according to the washington. >> post. >> a number of big name artists,

including elton john and paul mccartney, have spoken out against the plan, which they say. >> could undermine. >> the recording industry by making it more difficult for artists. >> to protect. >> their work. >> astronomers say the earth. >> is no longer. >> in danger of being struck by an asteroid. >> in the. >> year of 2032. >> okay. >> the chances of impact. >> have dropped to nearly. >> zero last week. >> the odds. >> of an. >> impact were more than 3%. >> that probability. >> was the highest ever. >> recorded for. >> an object of this size. >> or bigger. >> these odds are all over the place. i know it might come back. it's going to be. i'm not. >> going to. >> change course. >> we'll see. all right. there is new concern this morning at the nation's airports after the latest incident involving air travel, when a southwest airlines plane nearly collided with a private jet on the runway yesterday at chicago's midway international airport. nbc news correspondent erin mclaughlin has details. >> at chicago's midway international airport. an

investigation after yet another stunningly close call. the video, captured on an airport web cam, shows southwest flight 2504 nearly touching down the same moment a private jet crosses the runway. the flight abruptly pulls up, averting potential disaster. >> i thought. >> was 2500 for. >> going around. >> it was surreal. passengers emily novak and kaylee mask were on board the southwest flight from omaha. what went through your mind when you saw the video? >> shock. >> yeah. >> because we were so oblivious to what was happening, because the pilot was so calm and it acted like it was just an everyday, you know, thing. >> the faa says the flexjet private jet entered the runway without authorization. flexjet released a statement saying it's investigating and adheres to the highest safety standards. meanwhile, southwest says its crew followed safety procedures, circled the airport and landed safely. it's the latest in a string of air disasters and mishaps, from the midair collision that killed 67 near reagan national airport to the

air disaster in philadelphia. a crash landing in toronto and most recently, an emergency landing after a cabin filled with haze over atlanta. >> the circumstances. >> have. >> been quite. >> different in each one of these. accidents or incidents. so it's still too early to draw a common thread through. >> all of them. >> all of it rattling travelers nationwide. from a consumer confidence standpoint, are we nearing a tipping point? >> no, i. >> don't think we're nearing a tipping point. >> but aviation is still incredibly safe. >> and hopefully this is not the beginning of some long term trend. >> nbc's erin mclaughlin reporting there. joe, just a hell of a job by that pilot to lift a commercial airline in that touch and go to have the presence of mind to get it up, circle and land safely. obviously some bad communication on the ground there. >> well, you. >> know, we've been talking about this. >> for quite some time. >> last couple of years we've. >> seen some near. misses on runways. >> in part again. because

increased traffic. coming out of. coming out of the pandemic, but also because. >> we need. >> more people working for air traffic control. we need more people in the faa. we need more people in the tsa. >> and you're having. >> all of these cuts and slashing all these expenses. i just. >> again, i want. >> to go back to this accius article, willie. so here here is if you look at this, this is where the money goes. social security, health. >> net interest. >> on the debt, medicare. you go down all of these numbers. >> you know faa it's not even a dot here. >> so slashing air safety, slashing safety for. >> people that. >> make sure that that are nuclear, you know, or nuclear stockpile is safe. i mean you could go down the list. they're not even. dots on this budget. and, you know, i. want to take

two, two quotes from this accius article and. then have you talk about what's. >> going on in the hill. >> versus dodge. as mike allen. >> and jim. >> vandehei write, when you can't consider where federal. money really goes, most dodge. oddities and outrages. >> amount to rounding. errors in a sea of. >> government obligations. and they do. and those rounding errors. that they're supposedly. >> taking a chainsaw to, they're not. i mean, hardly even cutting, but. what they're cutting is dangerous. >> and then there's an old saying the us government consists of a military attached to an insurance company. and that is true. add up the defense budget. add up medicare, add up social security, add up medicaid, add up interest on the debt and you're getting close. >> to 90%. >> of what the federal government spends every year.

and so this i mean, you've got theatrics with doge, but nothing that's actually going to help us move closer to a balanced budget or. not increasing the sea of debt by. $23 trillion over the next decade is the congressional budget office says. >> and the cbo, of course, is regularly included in these conversations as they move forward on these kinds of legislative pieces. the cbo always has a score attached to them, so we always know what it's going to look like, how much it's going to cost, and then how much it's going to add to the debt over time. so i think it's really important, the way that you're highlighting this axios piece, where you basically show that doge is nibbling around the edges. now, one of the pieces i think that's the common thread here when we talk about the town halls that republicans are now so weary and wary of actually continuing with, one of the things that i heard from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle is that after they came back from being in their home districts last week, some of them having town halls

that were publicized, others just having these kinds of conversations with their constituents. medicaid was the key thing that continued coming up in these conversations. and i asked democrats if it's that voters and constituents are at an outrage point, or if they're just in a questioning and concerned point. and it is the latter, according to most of my conversations, which puts democrats in the position of having to educate people about what's actually at play in these budget reconciliation talks. and that's why you hear the house minority leader, hakeem jeffries, talking like this. >> watch the house republican. >> budget resolution will set in motion the largest. >> medicaid cut. >> in american history. >> it's outrageous. >> in many ways, this. >> is. >> a matter. >> of. >> life and death. >> and so every day. >> every week, every month, for. >> however long it takes. >> we're going to push. >> back and do everything. we can. >> to stop this. budget from

passing the house of representatives in. >> final form and ever becoming law. >> so, of course, we saw democrats scrambling on attendance issues that actually had been kind of a thorny issue within the caucus. i had been hearing yesterday, as i was on the hill, that democrats were getting a little bit annoyed that there were some really close bills that attendance issues could have forced not to pass. but then, of course, we saw members flying across the country, despite health issues, to be there to try to make a show of not letting this reconciliation procedural vote pass. but look on medicaid, this is going to be the key issue, joe, because the speaker says he didn't give concessions, but moderate members that ultimately fell in line with the rest of the party were voicing concerns about medicaid. and that's going to be a continuous conversation. jeff van drew apparently had conversations with president trump yesterday in his quest to get to yes. congresswoman nicole malliotakis, also of the new york area, had conversations apparently, on this issue. so it's an issue that maybe it's put away for now, but it's not

going to be for long. >> no it's not. you're so right. and the biggest problem if you look at this peter baker, is we're talking about doge and the problems they're having at town hall meetings in red state america right now with does listen to some of these numbers. when it comes to cutting. >> of medicaid. >> medicaid and what that would do to red state america, it would lead to rural hospital closures. medicaid accounts for up to 15% of rural hospitals revenue. and those hospitals are already struggling, as you know, over the past ten years. 120 rural hospitals have had to close down. they're having trouble getting doctors there. and also, as you know, as you go to red state america and a lot of cities and towns in red state america, their number one employers. i mean, i saw this when i went went to little rock

and interviewed bill clinton on on the 20th anniversary of his presidential library opening up the number one employer, health care providers, hospitals. and that's in one red state after another red state. so i'm saying all this just to say, if these republicans think they're having problems now with with cuts here and there with doge, when they start talking about slashing medicaid to give billionaires tax cuts, that's when, as ross perot would say, the rubber hits the road. and then that's when things get really tough. >> well, and you. >> you understand that. >> president trump. understands that too, right from the beginning. >> ten years ago when he started running, he said medicare. >> and social. security are always going. >> to be off the table. >> he said just the other day that medicaid was. >> off the. >> table, too. but it's obviously not. and i think that that's going to cause a. lot of conniptions. i think you're right. the trick. >> is. >> we're in this, you know,

this. >> loop, right? >> if you want to be serious about tackling the. deficit and the issues, joe, that you're talking about, you're going to have to look at the big. >> ticket items. >> that. mike refers. >> to in. >> his column. but if you go after those big ticket items, there's a lot of pain involved. and if. >> you think that your pain. >> so far with these d.o.j. cuts, as you rightly. >> say, this is, as. >> you say, nibbling around the edges, the big stuff is still to come, especially if you make the deficit even wider with more tax cuts. any rational look at the budget over the last decade or so has involved serious cuts, as well as tax increases, because there's a lot of red ink there. and if you're going to try to close that red ink, you have to look at a lot of different things, much of which would cause pain for people. but that's not what this is happening here. we're seeing here is a lot of a lot of gains politically, because we get to give tax cuts to people. that's always politically. >> popular. >> and we get to showcase things that look like waste and fraud through this dodge process, but

really don't amount to much. although it hurts individuals and, and employees and science funding and all these other things that actually matter to a lot of americans. and the bottom line is you haven't really. >> solved. >> the problem that you allegedly, ostensibly set out to, to tackle in the first place. >> all right. coming up, we're going to take a closer look at president trump's executive. order that goes after a law firm representing. former special counsel jack smith. morning joe counsel jack smith. morning joe will be right back. on chewy, save 35% and shop all your favorite brands. for any taste, or any diet, at prices you love. delivered fast. for low prices, for life of pets, there's chewy. (husband) we just want to have enough money for retirement. (wife) and travel to visit our grandchildren. (fisher investments) i understand. that's why at fisher investments we start by getting to know each other. so i can learn about your family, lifestyle, goals and needs,

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>> welcome back. the trump administration. >> says it will. >> now hand selects select the press outlets. >> that will be given pool. >> access to. >> cover. the president. >> bucking years. >> of bipartisan. >> precedent moving forward, the white house press pool will be determined by the white house press team. a select group of dc based journalists should no longer have a monopoly over the privilege of press access at the white house. all journalists, outlets and voices deserve a seat at this highly coveted table. so by deciding which outlets make up the limited press pool on a day to day basis, the white house will be restoring power back to the american people who president trump was elected to serve. >> so the. >> white house press pool. >> is a. >> small group of seasoned journalists. >> based in. >> the nation's capital.

>> who report. >> on the president's. >> daily schedule. handpicking, which outlets get. intimate access. >> to. >> the president. >> would give the administration more control over how it is covered. historically, the members of the white house. >> press pool. >> had been chosen on a rotating basis. >> by the white house correspondents. >> association, a century old group. representing the journalists. >> on the white house. >> beat. >> the responded to. >> the change. >> in a. >> statement. writing in part, this move tears. >> at the independence. >> of a free. >> press in the. >> united states. it suggests. >> the. >> government will choose the journalists who. >> cover the. >> president in a free country. leaders must not be able. >> to choose. >> their own press corps. >> this comes. >> as a federal judge declined to. >> issue a temporary. >> restraining order. >> against the. >> white house for. denying the. associated press. >> full access in covering. >> the administration, the ap was. >> barred indefinitely. >> from.

>> the oval. >> office and. >> air force one because of its refusal to change its style on. >> the gulf of mexico. >> after president. >> trump renamed it the gulf of america. >> this isn't. >> the first time. >> the. trump white. >> house has. >> attempted to limit. >> press access. >> back in. >> 2018. >> it temporarily. >> suspended the press. >> credentials of cnn's. >> jim. >> acosta for what the white house. >> called behaving disrespectfully. a u.s. district. >> judge later. forced the. white house. >> to reinstate. >> acosta's press credentials. >> mike barnicle, your thoughts? >> you know, there's a lot going on here, and there's a lot going on in that story. >> and it's. >> part of, i would think. >> a troika if you really pay attention. to what's going. >> on. intimidate the press. they're doing that kind of successfully co-op. >> the federal. >> police force, the fbi. >> try and. >> co-opt the military, the defense. >> department, through an appointed. >> secretary of defense who is totally unqualified to be

secretary of defense. i'm just saying pay attention to what's happening around us. >> yeah. >> and mike allen. the this is a real change in. >> tradition. >> which will have, i think, a big response from members of the. press corps. >> no question. because jim vandehei. >> and i are. >> up with. >> a column this morning on trump's media control strategy, pulling back the camera and looking at the fact that this is of a piece with the lawsuits, with the control of workspace at the pentagon, with the actions against ap and just around this table off camera, we've been talking about how there is going to be a democratic president. and that's one of the reasons that you see some conservative news organizations backing up. fox backing up ap, signing on to protests of how this is being done. now, what the white house told us for this column is we're

trying to open up new opportunities for people who think differently, are doing things different ways that the old system didn't serve people. and they say, we're going to be responsible about this, that the legacy traditional outlets are going to be very represented. they say we want the eyeballs. they even in our column, use the phrase a ratings bonanza. they say they want to leverage legacy outlets with new, different maga, nonpartisan other outlets. but this is a massive change. peter and i have been walking into those gates for decades now. there was always a certain way it was done. and mika, joe, one of the reasons was that the occupants of those chairs, the staff in there, thought the institution is bigger than us. the institution will go on after us. we are holding these roles in stewardship for the people who came before and after us. that is not the mindset of this

crowd. well, peter, it seems so shortsighted. again. >> you've been going. >> in there and out of there for a very long time. i've been in washington on and off for 30 years. and, you know, you don't buy the place. you just rent it and it's not even yours. at the end of the day. i remember walking around, forgive me for talking about my time in congress again, but i remember walking around during impeachment and talking to my fellow republicans on the floor. i said, you guys are talking and voting like there's never going to be another republican president. i think we better hold him to the same standard. we would want a republican president held to. well, that's the same thing here. i mean, we are seeing all these norms broken. and if republicans and if conservative outlets don't think, as mike said, that when a democratic president comes in,

he or she is going to do the same thing. they're sadly, sadly mistaken. i mean, first of all, there's a question of whether they can even do this. you remember when the white house tried to take jim acosta's badge, white house badge, and a judge stepped in and said, no, not, not, not your decision to make, but talk about this, the short sightedness of this and also how it will be limiting to the white house actually getting its message out to voters all across the ideological spectrum. >> yeah, i think, first. >> of all, the difference. >> with the. >> acosta thing in the first term was. >> at. >> least on the surface, they said the reason they were taking his pass was decorum, in other words, that he had behaved badly at a news conference. we can argue about that. and whether, in fact, that was really the reason. but that at least was the stated reason, the reason that they have given as a stated reason to get rid of the associated press is very openly and overtly about content, about what they say in their coverage, the fact that they won't use

trump's preferred phrase, gulf of america. and they stick with the traditional phrase gulf of mexico, which is still recognized by most of the world. the fact that is, the white house is saying, we will punish you. we will take something away from you if you don't conform your coverage to what we want it to be. so they can say it's all about opening up seats to other organizations, that's fine. i think most reporters there support that. the white house correspondents association for years has adapted and changed and admitted new and different types of media organizations in the pool already are are liberal oriented, conservative oriented, as well as traditional legacy mainstream media. that's been true for years. fox is there. and i remember to your point about there is, you know, to mike's point about there will be a day where this precedent will will be used in a way that the trump white house might not want it to. i remember during the obama white house, when they tried to keep fox out of a press pool event, and the other reporters, all of us said, no, that's not right, and basically

forced the obama people to back down and say, if you're going to invite, you know, all of us and you have to invite all of us, you can't make a distinction based on an organization that you just don't like. and so i think you're right. they they don't seem to understand that they want to be able to pick who asked the president questions. that goes against decades and decades of tradition. >> and the press office trying to sell this as an act of populism, giving power back to the people. and of course, as peter says, it just gives power to the administration to control the message. peter, stay with us. mike allen of axios, thanks so much. we've been talking a lot about your work this morning. those pieces available online now. president trump is stripping the security clearances of lawyers who provided free legal services to special counsel jack smith. the proposal, signed yesterday, points to staff at covington and burling law firm, which represented smith before he resigned from the justice department last month. the move comes after smith declared in a financial disclosure he received a gift of $140,000 of legal

services from the firm while in government service. smith brought two criminal cases, of course, against trump that then were dropped after the election. let's bring in former litigator and msnbc legal correspondent lisa rubin and nbc news national security editor david rohde. good morning to you both. so, lisa, what's going on here? is this as plain as it seems, a way to get back at jack smith? >> i think. >> it is exactly. >> what it seems, willie. a way. >> to get back at jack smith. not necessarily a particularly efficacious one, because if you look at what trump signed yesterday, it revokes security clearances from peter koskey, who is said to be jack smith's lawyer at covington and burling and any other lawyers who assisted in what they call to. let's see, it says who assisted former special counsel jack smith during his time as a special counsel. there may be an assumption in there that is completely belied by the truth. it's our understanding that covington burling provided personal services, individual services to jack smith, not to the office of the special

counsel. so it's premised on a false premise. but the other thing that it does is it revokes security clearances. it says that the government should review contracts and that if covington burling represents the government in any capacity, those should be reviewed as well. it's not clear that there are any contracts with covington burling, according to the washington post this morning. so this may be symbolic. what it is, though, is a shot across the bow at law firms all throughout the country. think very carefully about who you hire and who you represent in this era, because we are watching and we intend to investigate these people as part of our weaponization of the federal government. executive order. >> david. >> the crackdown by the administration on. >> certain. >> people. >> certain lawyers, law firms, that's one thing. but it's now seemingly extended into the national security space itself. i mean, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff basically fired things like that. >> that's that's. >> what's happening. and it's a

narrative of. >> like. >> corruption that somehow this law. firm was. >> doing something improper. >> because they work with. >> jack smith. and again, and we've talked about earlier in the week, but dan bongino being, you know, this right wing podcaster who has said. >> trump won the 2020. >> election, who has said that january 6th was somehow staged. is now going to essentially run the daily operations of the most. >> powerful federal. >> law enforcement agency in this country. and i was speaking. with a justice department official, former justice department official, yesterday. and their concern is that, you know, there is a terrorist threat in this country. there's lots of turmoil around the world. and these moves, you know, essentially someone who says things that president trump wants to hear gets to run the most powerful law enforcement agencies in the country. morale is terrible, and they will be distracted. and that. >> could. >> be a consequence. >> where i was going. >> i wonder how much this destabilizes. >> and weakens. >> america in the face of.

>> what seems. >> to. be setting up sort of a pattern for. >> retribution. >> its retribution. and it's you have to back trump's narrative. you have to say the fbi is corrupt. you have to say that jack smith had no right whatsoever to investigate him, that there was no reason to search mar-a-lago. a judge issued a search warrant for that. again, dan bongino has said that, you know, there never should have been that search. so it's just this narrative creating a reality that helps president trump politically, that doesn't fit facts on the ground. and for effective law enforcement and intelligence agencies, you have to have a basis in reality and not just have loyalists, you know, processing the information. >> and to david's point, there's reporting this morning that the fbi is launching an investigation into james comey, the former director of the fbi, for the investigation he initiated ten years ago, beginning to look into the trump campaign. so, lisa, what does someone like jack smith do with this? what are these people who know they're about to be targets or already are targets? how do

they brace themselves for this? >> well, i would say there is no neutrality right now. there are a number of law firms all throughout the country who i think are at a crossroads right now. do we hire people, for example, who have come out of the biden department of justice? do we hire them? understanding that hiring them might mean indemnifying them for the investigations of them that might be coming their way? there is no more neutrality anymore. and covington and burling has put out a statement essentially saying, we stand behind the decisions that we've made. jack smith is a client of the firm. he hired us in his personal capacity. but that's the line that they have drawn, to the extent that other law firms throughout the country are going to try and put their heads in the sand. there will be decisions to be made throughout. there are going to be people lined prosecutors whose names we do not know, who are subject to congressional investigations, department of justice investigations and the like, who are going to need lawyers. and similar to what we saw, for example, during trump impeachment, one, those people are going to need counsel. there is a large group of people who

are experienced in congressional investigations. but it's not limitless, right? and so at some point, law firms in washington and new york and in other places across the country are going to have to have tough conversations. are we willing to risk being in the spotlight and potentially losing some clients if we do the right thing here and offer representation to people who themselves are being targeted because they tried to follow the facts and follow the law. willie. >> msnbc legal correspondent. >> lisa rubin and. nbc news national. security editor david rohde. thank you both very much for being on this morning. and still ahead, our next guest argues president trump's purge of. >> pentagon leadership is lawful. >> but enormously destructive. eliot cohen will explain. >> his new piece for the atlantic. morning joe is coming right back. >> turn your back on. nature.

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>> buffet of all you can eat. butterfly shrimp and sirloin steak? >> yeah. >> that's. >> the reason. >> i don't get it.

there is mass. >> confusion among. >> federal workers. >> after elon. >> musk said that he was giving them another. chance to justify their jobs or be fired. but the white house is now saying that

responding to elon's request is voluntary. >> it's confusing. >> when you walk. >> in. >> the white house and. >> say, who is in charge? >> everyone just shrugs like they're. working at lids. >> at this point. how is anybody. >> supposed to know what to do with all this confusing information? forget running the government. these clowns couldn't get ten bridesmaids to a paint. >> and sip. >> i think it might. >> be time to give the planet. >> to the apes. >> because we're finished. >> all right. welcome back to morning joe. >> look at that. >> beautiful shot of new. >> york city. >> time to wake up, everybody. it is. >> wednesday. >> february 26th. >> mike barnicle and peter. >> baker. >> still with us. >> and joining the conversation this. >> morning, we have. >> u.s. national editor at the. financial times. editor. >> loose and. >> nbc news and. >> msnbc political. >> analyst. >> former u.s. >> senator claire. >> mccaskill is with us. >> house republicans. managed to. >> pass their. >> budget framework. on a. final hail mary. >> play at the last minute last. >> night throughout the day.

house speaker mike. >> johnson held. >> multiple meetings with. various gop holdouts. deficit hawks who had concerns. >> about. >> spending and moderates concerned. about medicaid cuts. it seems the speaker received an. >> 11th hour. >> assist from president. >> trump. >> who contacted the holdouts. the final. >> vote came down to 217 to 215, with. >> congressman thomas massie. >> of kentucky. >> being the sole republican. to vote down. >> the bill. >> speaking to. reporters after johnson. >> had this to say. >> about president. >> trump's involvement. >> what changed in. >> those ten minutes? >> we got everybody to yes. >> and did trump. >> how interim. >> how. >> instrumental was trump's involvement here? >> well, he was a big. >> help as always. >> did you. >> make any. >> commitments to the holdout. >> to get to this place? >> no, we just. >> got everybody. >> yes. >> i you know, claire mccaskill, this is again, i mean, this is all show biz. this is all

distractions. they're passing these resolutions. we've got a $36 trillion debt. the cbo, the congressional budget office, says that they're going to add another 23 trillion over the next decade. it took us 220 years to even add 5 trillion total to the debt. and there's a great wall street journal piece by neil ferguson that talks about ferguson's law, not neil ferguson's law, but the law of. an essayist from the 1700s. and he says this what i call ferguson's law states that any great power that spends more on debt service than on defense risks ceasing to be a great power. and then neil goes through centuries of examples of that happening. we are there now, and it's about to get exponentially worse. and you have the white house saying they're going to balance the budget. they're not. you had

donald trump promising 2016 he's going to balance the budget and pay off the debt and exploded at record rates. it's been exploding at record rates for 20 years now. and they're sitting around here pretending that a couple of cuts by doge is going to take care of the problem. it's as as mike allen reported. they're not even they're not even saving the amount of money that the united states is paying on interest, on the debt every single day. >> yeah. >> listen, doge is basically taking a claw hammer to find change in the couch. and that's all it is, is change in the couch. and they're not even accurate or competent in the way they're doing it. they're not doing it by grade. they're not doing it by job classification. they're not doing it by impact on human life and danger to the american people. it's just silly, performative crap. and

here's the thing, joe. the math here is so cruel. it is so cruel. and i want to look at this just just for a second. give me a second to look at this through a political lens. donald trump is the first republican candidate for president to win the lowest third of americans in terms of how poor they are in 60 years. not since 1960 did a republican win the poorest one third of america. so are they going to prioritize donald trump's promise to no tax on tips? are they going to prioritize no tax on social security? how about no tax on overtime? no way. they're not even getting to that. they instead are focusing on the very, very wealthy and put the whipped cream and cherry on top. yesterday he announces that anybody who is rich anywhere in the world can come to america and not have to worry about a

visa or residency, because if you're rich, you can come here. but if you're poor and you're struggling and your family is at risk, then we're going to put you in guantanamo bay. >> it's unbelievable. >> how he's. mistreating the poor. unbelievable. >> $5 million gold card. let's, let's for one minute, just for purposes of people that are watching this show and may not be moved by moral arguments, let's just talk about raw politics. and i'm so glad you're here because you represented missouri, a state that had a couple of big cities but was was was rural. these republicans that think things are bad right now. and i know, i know because i did like mika said, i held i hold town hall meetings that hold about 100 a year. and when we were making cuts to the budget through the normal regular order, had to go back and answer why, had to explain why we were slowing down the rate of growth for medicare, to

save medicare to extend its life? not easy to do, but we did it. but if they think that this is tough, talk about you talk about that lower third income earners are voting for republican president. these republicans are talking about slashing medicaid behind closed doors when they slash medicaid. we want you to explain, i can't i can't explain how important this is politically for people whose eyes may glaze over. don't focus, because i can tell you, claire, claire will tell you, actually, rural hospitals are already in a state of crisis. there have been hundreds of closures of rural hospitals over the past ten, 15 years. when people put their parents in nursing homes, they are medicaid funded nursing homes. when they go to hospitals in red state

america, they are hospitals kept open by medicaid funding. when they see doctors and nurses, those doctors and nurses are there because of medicaid funding and medicare funding. but medicaid funding plays such a huge role. these cuts are going to disproportionately impact the most disadvantaged americans in rural america, and they're going to do it and going to shut down more hospitals, shut down more nursing homes in red state america for tax cuts for billionaires and silicon valley. this this is not a good political move for anybody in any party at any time. >> yeah. >> the wall street did not put donald trump in office. the billionaire class did not put him in office. who put him in office? where poor people and frankly, rural america. and

you're exactly right, joe. listen, i've. i did a lot of town halls. i know something about angry. i did town halls. i went out of my way to go where people didn't like me. and i know about angry town halls, and they haven't seen even the beginning of it yet. they're all going to hide and quit doing them. i predict, like what happened during obamacare when a lot of my colleagues hid. but here, here we have 31 million children on medicaid, more people per capita on medicaid in rural america than urban america. and here's the other kicker on this. not only is this going to impact the base of donald trump's support, when medicaid goes away, people still show up at the emergency room. and what happens when they show up to the emergency room? they can't pay for it. and then the hospital has to absorb that debt. and guess where they get that debt from? they charge insurance companies more for people who are insured. so what donald trump is really doing, he's taking from the poorest

people in america in primarily in rural america. and he's making the middle class pay more for health insurance. that's what he is doing with this plan, all to please the folks that never really gave him much respect when he was a real estate developer going bankrupt in. >> new york. >> the tax cuts they're talking about in the outlines of this deal that was adopted yesterday by republicans, $4.5 trillion in tax cuts, mostly to the wealthy and to corporations over the next ten years. and we haven't even talked about food assistance alongside medicaid as well. meanwhile, there is still confusion surrounding that elon musk directed email that was sent to government employees demanding they explain five things they accomplished at work last week or face termination. earlier this week, musk said on social media workers would be given a second chance to respond or potentially to be fired, while president trump said those who don't answer the email would be, quote, semi fired, whatever that means. counselor to the president alina habba appeared

on fox news yesterday saying there would be repercussions for any federal employee who did not respond to the email. >> it's very simple. how can you not answer? you and i work hard. if we. >> go to. >> work within the first. >> five minutes. >> we could probably give five things that we've done at work, and i hope so. >> so my. >> response is very simple. the president. is not unkind. he's not being unfair, but he wants a response. now. >> if you need an. >> extra day to do it, god bless. but you're going to do it. >> he was. >> very clear also that if you don't, there will be repercussions. that has not changed. there's one person we're supposed to be listening to that's president trump. and what the american people mandated, which is what we're doing. people need to be accountable. you need to be able to answer the question. if you couldn't answer it yesterday, you have till today. but the reality is accountability is real. >> but later in the day, president trump caused more confusion by saying responding to the email is, quote, somewhat voluntary, right? >> well, it's. >> somewhat voluntary. >> but. it's also, if you don't

answer, i guess. >> you get fired. what it really is, is. >> what it. >> is do. people exist? >> we have this massive. >> government with millions. >> of. >> people. >> and nobody knows who's working for the government, who's not. >> semi fired. somewhat voluntary as of this morning. there remains no official broad guidance or deadline directive from the office of personnel management. that is the agency that sent the original email at musk's direction. so, mike, again, they're nibbling around the edges, going to fire people at make it sound like they're doing something about the budget. of course, it doesn't do anything about the major sources of our debt. but there's also sort of a callous nature to all this. you have the attorney for donald trump talking about people, you know, deal with it. list five things you did at work today. you got fox news hosts saying, well, maybe you have to get a real job now. so very dismissive about people's livelihoods. >> well, are you shocked at how.

>> quickly people. >> have become isolated from reality? sitting behind the confines of a security gate at the white house, employed by the president of the united states, flying on air force one to various spots in the country. you can lose touch with reality in a couple of days. that's what's going on here combined and loose. i would think after looking at this and reading about it of the doge people now for 2 or 3 weeks, combined with an incredible level of sheer incompetence. >> yeah. >> i mean, i think that's an understatement. >> and it's. >> extraordinary that a bunch of between 30 and 100 people, many. >> of. >> them. in their 20s, many of them with no serious career experience, no experience of evaluating employees or or coworkers, could be expected to go through hundreds of thousands, if not millions of emails from from the federal workforce and decide on the basis of. >> that whether. >> they'd done five. significant

things last week. this is clearly not a serious move by elon musk. it's a sort of assertion. it's a big. it's a. gesture of somebody who's trying to assert his authority in a performative way, and it's blowing up in his face. i do think we, you know, we ought to look at what's really happening and what's really happening. for example, since he's musk is supposed to be rooting out waste, fraud and abuse. look at what's happening at the federal aviation administration. starlink. his starlink people have moved in there. his space x people have moved in there. they they have a no bid contract. they are going to put 4000 starlink terminals in in at the faa, a classic sort of instance to me of abuse because this is a no bid contract, probably waste because it's a no bid contract and probably fraud. ditto. this

is what's really happening. this email and, you know, this sort of diversion on on to amy gleason as to who's really head of doge. these are these are sideshows. the real show is the gutting of the regulatory system in washington, dc, to the benefit quite frequently of elon musk's companies. that is waste, fraud and abuse. >> and peter baker. peter baker i'm just curious. i'm just curious. the is it the guiding of these bureaucracies? is it all show biz? is it i understand they're making they're they're making cuts that are damaging to the faa. they're making cuts that are damaging to nuclear security. they're making cuts that are damaging to the safety of people, whether it's, you know, the food and drug

administration and then desperately trying to get them back. guess what? i don't understand, and i'm curious what your reporting has shown is, is there going to be any attempt to stem the chaos of the messaging coming out of the white house, where you have the president saying it's kind of voluntary, you have other people saying it's not voluntary. you then have elon musk sending out more emails, and then you have kash patel and other agency heads saying, ignore those emails. i mean, this is i mean, this is obviously chaotic. any other white house, any other business, any other operation would move quickly to get on the same page messaging wise. but this seems to continue day in and day out. tell us what what does your reporting show? why? why? >> yeah, i. >> think i think i think this emphasizes just how much of an improvization this really is, right? somebody comes up with an

idea and they simply put it out there. there isn't any kind of vetting. there isn't any kind of, you know, thoughtful meetings in which people explore the pros or cons. if somebody's, you know, elon musk has an idea. it's on twitter or whatever we call it these days, a few minutes later and then people are supposed to be responding to it. i mean, look for the white house. i think they think this five questions email thing is a political bonanza. it's a great issue for them because it looks so common sense to regular americans. of course, anybody can spend five minutes writing an email describing five things they did at work last week. how hard could that be? any federal employee who objects to that must be entitled and must, you know, be somebody who should be gotten rid of. i mean, that's for them. they're loving this issue in that sense. and the confusion is part of the part of the story. that's okay with them. they don't mind that. it may not be the most, you know, sophisticated way to actually get your grip over a massive organization like the federal government and may not actually

be the way to find the right size for the shape of government, but it does create a lot of confusion. it does create a lot of chaos, puts people on their back foot and to the to the everyday american out there who says, i work really hard. i could name five things i did last week. it sounds appealing. >> so white house press secretary caroline leavitt yesterday explained why president. trump fired former joint chiefs chairman. >> c-q brown jr. on friday evening. let's take a listen. >> to that. >> he thinks he's doing a bad job, and it's time for a shakeup at the pentagon. and he has the right to do that. it's actually quite common from administration to administration to do such a thing. >> the president. >> of when. >> he swore him in as the chief of. >> staff for. >> the air force. >> called him a great. >> man and a. >> great gentleman. does he distance himself from. >> the remarks. >> that he made back in august of 2020? >> i think replacing him speaks for itself. >> let's bring in. >> contributing writer at the.

>> atlantic, eliot cohen, whose new piece is titled. lawful but enormously destructive. in it, eliot writes in part, quote, when confronted with civilian superiors behaving outrageously, the response of the american soldier, sailor, air fighter, or marine is to stiffen, look rigidly ahead. >> and follow lawful orders. >> but they reflect. and what they are thinking today is that the trump administration is determined to purge the military's leadership, that it has no respect for the. rule of law, including the law of armed conflict, and that it is willing to. >> put them under the. >> command of political generals of doubtful caliber. to say that they will find this demoralizing is an understatement. worse yet, a minority will applaud this. eliot, if you could continue with the concept you're putting on the table here about how

destructive this could be. >> so first, let me just correct. caroline leavitt. this is not common at all. presidents can and secretaries of defense can and very rarely do relieve senior officers at this level. there's nobody who thinks that general c.q. brown has been doing a bad job. i know the american military quite well. he has an enormous amount of respect, and deservedly so. he's a combat veteran. he's very talented. he's very thoughtful. nobody thinks this was a good idea. moreover, what secretary hegseth did was not just to fire general brown, but also the chief of naval operations, the first female chief of naval operations, the vice chief of staff of the air force, and, very significantly, the three judge advocate general, senior judge advocate general of the army, navy and the air force. so it's actually a swipe at a very important parts of the pentagon, including those parts that try

to keep us within the framework of law. and then what they did or what he did, rather, was to appoint a retired lieutenant general from the special operations community who had had seven years where he wasn't even on active duty as chairman of the joint chiefs. and that's again, it is legal. the president can do it. but according to the law, you're supposed to appoint a four star who's had either ins or who, the chief of a service or a vice chief. and, you know, that's a dangerous thing to do. you know, the united states military is a vast organization, and there's a reason why that law exists. it exists to make sure that you have the most experienced senior officers in command. and they threw that away. and then on top of that, they just there's no real explanation for this. i mean, caroline was making it up as she went along. and so, for that matter, was secretary

hegseth. and it leaves a lot of people with the suspicion that jerome brown was fired for being black. admiral franchetti was fired for being a woman. and the jags were fired for being lawyers. and that's a terrible message. >> ooh! >> claire. >> elliott. >> yeah. elliott, as somebody who spent a lot of time getting familiar with the uniform code of military justice, because i'm a former prosecutor and on the armed services committee, i wanted to understand how justice worked within the military. so can you take a minute and explain what these lawyers, these jag, the top officials in applying military justice, which is so important for regular order of the military, so important for discipline and command. can you explain how that feels to the military, that they know that meritocracy is gone in the pentagon, and now it's about your politics, especially within the jag corps? >> yeah. well, this i mean, this really is anathema. so let's be

clear about a couple of things. the jags are advisers. they don't command i mean they may command other jags in just in terms of the internal operations of that that branch of the military. but they are there to advise commanders and commanders like that. the reason why they like that is because they are committed to the rule of law. and here's the part that i think secretary hegseth really does not get the difference between us and them, them being people like jihadists or the russians is we believe in rule of law. we believe in the law of armed conflict. now, quite apart from that, there's also a lot of sort of housekeeping stuff. it can be contract management, it can be international law, particularly for the united states navy, which operates in complicated legal environments. but above all, it's the idea that we are a law based society, and our military reflects our values. and the danger here is, and i

think it's a real danger, secretary hegseth, that there'll be some elements of the military which thinks this gives them license to do dreadful things. and that's that's not only innately wrong, it ultimately leads to a breakdown in discipline. and it makes us worse. >> the new. >> piece is online now. >> for the. >> atlantic contributing writer. elliot cohen. good to see you. and thank you so much for coming on the show this morning. and still ahead on morning joe, we'll show you the tense moment during a house oversight committee hearing yesterday when chairman james comer threatened to forcibly remove a. >> democratic congressman. >> plus, ed lewis will explain what he's calling trump's 50% what he's calling trump's 50% doctrine. morning joe is asthma. does it have you missing out on what you love, with who you love? get back to better breathing with fasenra, an add-on treatment for eosinophilic asthma taken once every 8 weeks. fasenra is not for sudden breathing problems.

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>> a month. >> call 183337354495. >> or visit homeserve.com. live picture of the capitol at 728 in the morning in washington. it was a chaotic scene on the hill during a house oversight committee hearing yesterday, republican chairman james comer threatened to forcibly remove democratic congressman maxwell frost after comer initially barred frost from speaking for repeatedly calling president trump, quote, grifter in chief. here's how that moment unfolded. >> people like the grifter in chief trump and president. >> musk are openly using. >> their public offices. to enrich themselves.

>> to the tune of billions of dollars. so if. >> we. >> want. >> to look. >> at. >> waste, fraud. >> and abuse. >> which i'm down to do. >> why is. there complete. >> silence on the other side. >> of the aisle. >> about looking at the complete. grifter that. >> is the president. >> of the united. states and the richest man on. >> the earth, which is looking into things. >> like social. >> security and different things. >> like that. why don't we investigate. >> the real corruption? >> hold on, hold on. >> point of order, chairman. >> point of order. >> mr. chairman. >> hold on, hold. >> off. >> hold off. would you like to revise your. remark with respect to. improperly identifying the president of united states? >> i'll say president musk and grifter and chief trump. >> all right. >> grifter and mister. >> mister chairman. >> point of order. if i wanted to challenge someone to a fight, they would know it. thank you. >> and you're going. to maybe revise the disparaging. comment about the president, because that's supposed to be our

decorum here. >> and it is. >> supposed to be president musk and the president of. >> the. >> united states, donald trump, who. >> is. >> engaged in grifting of the american people, often use their public offices to enrich themselves. someone on the other side was just asking, how would. >> you feel if you called someone. >> else from the. >> hold. >> off. hold off. mr. frost. >> hold off. >> there's a there's a. >> pending motion. >> for disparaging the president. >> i can say i. >> can say that trump. >> is grifting. >> what i will. withdraw is calling him. >> a. >> grifter in chief. >> that is what i. the chair sustains the point of order, and the words in question are ordered stricken from the transcript of this proceeding. so. the member is barred from further participation. >> miss crockett. >> insulting people's appearance. >> as well. >> as trying to fight. them isn't a problem. >> point of order. it's a. >> yes or no. but we're so. >> sad. or that our.

>> our yes or. >> no, skipper? >> skipper. skipper, i want to say. >> it's despicable. >> that this committee. >> is going to. silence me for bringing. >> the gentleman's. words have been taken down. you're not permitted to. >> speak for the rest. >> of the hearing. >> making millions. >> of dollars. >> mr. ranking member, i'm going to have the sergeant at arms remove him if he doesn't refrain. >> chairman comer, threatening to have the sergeant at arms remove a member of that committee. maxwell frost of florida. claire mccaskill. jim comer. deeply concerned about decorum, he called, of course, the biden family, the biden crime family ad nauseam in his long investigation, where, by his own admission, there was a lot of smoke and someday he was going to find the fire. he also just published last month a book about what he called the biden crime family. >> i honestly have never in my life seen anything so outrageous as that. now, i know there's a lot of things that are outrageous that impact

americans. americans lives every day. so don't yell at me online. but this is really, really bad. what they're saying is, if you criticize the president of the united states as an elected member of congress, we will silence you. i mean, that's a really good way to lose the midterms. i hope that that that goes viral, because the truth is, the only thing we know about what must trump are doing in all these federal agencies is what he puts on his privately owned social media. he owns it privately. i mean, it is something that he bought for billions of dollars, and now he is lifting it up. the head of advertising for x has threatened advertisers. if they don't start buying ads. there will be consequences. he's he's cozying up to china so he can get teslas in china. and he's running the government. you've got trump actually selling crypto and

you've got trump who actually is letting people anybody buy these, this crypto and enrich him without us knowing who is buying it, how many bad guys are? they are grifters. they are using their positions to make lots of money, and that's a fact. and any member of congress ought to be able to say it. and that just infuriates me at that sleazy comer for saying that, that somehow he's got to be removed for speaking truth to power. >> all right. we've got a lot more to get to. >> thank you, claire. >> for that. coming up, the end of a legendary career in the wnba. morning joe will be right wnba. morning joe will be right back with much m got eyelid itching, crusties and swelling that won't go away? it could be... demodex blepharitis! and we're demodex mites. we're very common and super irritating to your eyelids... but we love making ourselves comfortable here! oh, yeah...steam time!

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watchdogs. >> our federal government now can discriminate against the citizens of the country. >> we are. >> all watching and waiting. >> to see who is. >> going to hold the line. >> don't miss the weekends, saturday. >> and sunday. mornings at eight. >> on msnbc. >> and lose. your latest piece in the financial times is titled the trump 50% doctrine. in it, ed writes this the worst things go for him in politics as it is meant to be played, the likelier he is to rip up the rule book. former vice president dick cheney had a rule that if there was a 1% risk of something happening, we must act as if it will. cheney was referring to terrorists after nine over 11 using weapons of mass destruction. the risk that trump will take america across the line into autocracy looks more like 5050. wright said a mistake of trump's opponents in his first term was to believe he would be undone by former special counsel robert mueller's investigation into his alleged russia collusion. the mueller

report, which was nevertheless damning, has been corroborated by trump's pro-russia moves in the past two weeks. but mueller's findings were a damp squib, partly because barr pre-released his recommendation not to prosecute. there will be no trump probes this time, so explain a little more, if you can, that 50% doctrine. yeah. thanks, willie. i mean, the in the first term, i was asked by my editor to, to write a piece asking, is trump a strong man, a fascist or whatever, whatever the preferred epithet? and i came to the conclusion, no, because a classic strong man takes control of the so-called power ministries, the military, intelligence, law enforcement, all the sort of repressive tools of the state. and trump in his first term made absolutely no effort to really put loyalists in charge of those. this time. he substantially accomplished that within a month, within 4 to

5 weeks, at remarkable speed. project 2025 sort of level planning. and therefore it looks a lot more ominous. and it looks particularly ominous as things go south elsewhere, the economy is not looking good. consumer sentiment is really falling quite sharply. inflation expectations are rising quite sharply. i think we are beginning to see the stirrings of popular distaste at these firings, these quite arbitrary firings of federal employees. and i think the fear is, as things go wrong for him in conventional politics, his temptation to use these tools that d.o.j. included, and the fbi to go after his enemies, to go after people in politics, in the media and elsewhere is going to rise. and that's why i put a sort of 50 over 50 on it. it's a fast and loose sort of

percentage, but it is a significantly greater risk, in my view, than it was in his first administration. yeah. and all the chaos that you're describing there, as you mentioned, sort of overshadowed the fact that prices have not come down as he promised they would. that the cost of eggs, for example, is through the roof. that may catch up to him as well. u.s. national editor at the financial times ed luce will be reading your new piece. ed, thanks so much. turning to some sports now and a pair of upsets in college basketball last night. >> oklahoma state is going to knock off number nine. iowa state 7468. >> fans in stillwater celebrating the team's first win over a ranked opponent this season after oklahoma state took down number nine iowa state at home last night. meanwhile, there was a an orderly court storming last night in georgia after the bulldogs upset third ranked florida 88 to 83. the crowd there, following instructions to wait 90s after the game in order to give

players and officials time to leave the court before rushing the floor to celebrate georgia's first win over the gators in six years. nice discipline by the dog fans there. first bulldogs victory against a top five team in since 2004. to the nba. last night's reunion in los angeles between luka doncic and the dallas mavericks team that traded him away to the lakers earlier this month, doncic posted his best stat line as a laker, finishing with 19 points, 15 rebounds, 11 assists. that is his first triple double in a lakers uniform. la beating the mavs 107 to 99. women's basketball superstar diana taurasi is calling it a career. taurasi, who played all 20 of her wnba wnba seasons for the phoenix mercury, is the league's all time leader in scoring and three pointers and retires as one of the most decorated athletes in history, with a resume that includes three ncaa

championships at uconn, three wnba titles and a record six olympic gold medalists. in an exclusive conversation with time, taurasi explains, mentally and physically, i'm just full. that's probably the best way i can describe it. i'm full and i am happy. mike barnicle, geno auriemma, the legendary coach of uconn, talking about her yesterday. she says she is, plain and simple, the greatest winner in the history of basketball. again, three national titles at uconn, three wnba titles and six olympic gold medals. >> yeah, i would think, you know, maybe bill russell comes closer to that than anybody. that's an incredible list of accomplishments. >> yeah. >> she was an incredible player and. >> an incredible. >> human being. >> i'm told. >> and fun to watch. great with the ball. could shoot, could pass, could do it all. congratulations to diana taurasi on a great career. turning to the nhl countdown to the career goals record in washington capitals star alex ovechkin, now is just two goals away from

passing the mark set by the great wayne gretzky. scoring washington's lone goal in a31 loss to the calgary flames. the 883rd goal of a veteran's career nets him a record extending 19th 30 goal season. so alex ovechkin, joe knocking on the door here of a record once believed to be untouchable for the great one. >> and he just gets better with age. i mean, you compare he goals late in his career with gretzky's goals late in his career. like i mean, he's getting better as he gets older on the ice. an incredible hat trick a couple of nights ago. and i'm talking as if i actually know anything about hockey. but i do see highlights. and this guy is. okay. i'll admit it. i watched pti as much as i can and that's where you get a lot of information. other thing i learned on pti is this watch out

because luka and lebron are starting to click. >> yeah. >> like the lakers. don't be surprised if that if that again that that horrific trade for dallas. but don't be surprised if those two start to gel because it looks like they're starting to do it. and as as i said on pti the other night, luka actually looked like he was starting to try. and so he is energized, not always energized in dallas. but i'll tell you what. watch out. it may be showtime again at the forum. >> yeah, i mean, they're in fourth place right now in the west, but they're only two games out of second place in the west. so a 40 year old lebron james who is just incredible. he remains incredible. things he's doing athletically. i mean, a player of his age is supposed to just be kind of getting his minutes and contributing where he can. he's still a superstar and he loves playing with luka.

somebody like full court passes. it's quarterback receiver stuff from luka to lebron. >> that's the stunning. >> thing for me. two things about luka. >> the stunning. >> thing is his ability to pass is. >> to be mindful. no, no kidding. of larry bird's. >> ability to pass. >> luka just. >> sees the whole court knows when to pass the ball. and joe's reference to pti. >> tony and. >> mike. >> i think, along. >> with many, many other people, were stunned. >> at that trade. >> stunned. yeah, yeah. tony. mike, just the absolute best. you know he's not the absolute best. willie talking about sports myself because you can tell what era that i'm stuck in because i talked about the forum. i think they left the forum in inglewood the late 90s. >> showtime. no. >> you're. >> referencing showtime. that made sense. >> yes. referencing showtime. yeah. the man. why do we say, hey, it's showtime at the so-fi arena? no. >> no, that's. >> no fun at staples center. no, it's showtime at the forum. but but yeah, it's going to get really exciting out in la before the end of the season. >> okay. up next. >> democratic congressman. josh

gottheimer. >> will join. >> us. >> fresh off his trip to qatar, where he. focused on getting the last american hostage held by hamas, edan alexander. back home, aiden's father, adi, will join us as well. plus, the wall street journal josh dawsey joins the. >> conversation with. >> his new piece entitled d.o.j. slip ups show challenges of defending trump's freewheeling approach. >> also ahead. >> four time oscar nominated actor ed harris will be our guest, along with the cast of his new film, my. >> dead friend zoe. >> morning joe will be right back. >> independent seniors have a new ally the. >> medical alert device. >> from consumer. >> cellular. and we're. here to find out how much they're loving it. first up. nancy. wait. where's nancy? >> over here. >> let me show you my garden.

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1-800-403-7539. >> will we. >> get to. >> phase two of this. >> hostage deal? >> and can. >> we get. >> that american. >> citizen, don. >> alexander. >> out anytime soon? >> so i, we. >> we will. >> get to stage two or. phase two. >> and i'm, i'm very focused on that. >> and i think it's. >> going to happen. and as. >> to don alexander, he's front. >> and center for us. >> i know. >> his parents. we talk all the time. he's critical. >> it's one. >> of president trump's. most important objectives is to get. >> all americans home. and we're

going. >> to be successful in. >> getting eden home. >> i believe. >> that was u.s. special envoy to the middle east steve witkoff on sunday, talking about the last american hostage believed to be alive in gaza after. >> more than 500. >> days after the terrorist attacks on october 7th, american israeli edan alexander. grew up in new jersey and volunteered to serve in the israeli army. he was stationed outside gaza on october 7th when he was taken hostage. at the time, he was 19 years old. he is now 21. joining us now is eden's father, adi, also with us, democratic congressman josh gottheimer of new jersey. his district includes eden's hometown. adi, i'll start with you. what do you make of the special andre envoy's words? but more if you could tell us about your son.

>> you know, our son. >> is a great kid. >> all american kid. jersey boy. >> grew up. actually. here. >> in new jersey. >> graduated from tenafly. >> high school in 2022. >> found himself on this. >> tragic day. >> next to the gaza. >> border, and. >> he was. >> taken hostage. >> but in regards of. >> steve witkoff, we actually. >> hopeful and optimistic. >> that the first. >> phase will be extended and. we will see. more hostages. >> out. including our son. >> congressman, can you update us on anything that we know about the efforts to not only get edan home, but to work on just ending the entire hostage crisis? >> well, i just came back from qatar over. >> the weekend, and. >> i'll just tell you my. >> number. >> one focus. and all of our. >> conversations are about getting it done. >> and all of. >> the. >> americans home. >> nothing is. >> more important. we don't leave any american behind. and we're very focused. and i'm working closely with the

alexanders and with the administration. >> to. >> make sure that that continues to be our focus. right. >> and that has to be. >> and making sure we get as we get to the hopefully end of phase one, we get him either home imminently or as phase. >> two. >> starts and keeping the process moving right. that that's got to be our most important goal in all of this is just keeping things moving forward so we can get it on home. >> heidi. good morning. i grew up a couple towns over from where you are right now, and don looks like so many kids i grew up with and knew and played sports with. so you talked about your son. i'm curious what gives you and your family hope? i can't imagine what these last, this last year and a half or so have been like for you. hour to our day to day. what gives you hope every day? >> first of. >> all. >> we consider ourselves. >> lucky that we. >> don't survive this day. >> it was. >> surrounded by. >> so. >> many militants. >> and. >> after conducting a short fight, he had to surrender. >> he was. >> seen by other. >> hostages in those tunnels

right. >> at the beginning. >> in october. >> and. >> even in november. >> and then. >> we saw this. video that hamas released. >> on. >> thanksgiving weekend. then eden. >> asked us. >> to remain. >> strong. >> to fight for him and hoping that. >> this nightmare will be over. >> this is what drives us forward. >> congressman. >> could you explain to people. watching and listening why this. >> hostage exchange program has been ongoing for so long? why is it so tenuous? >> well, anytime you're dealing with. terrorists like hamas, everything is going to be. >> tenuous, right? they don't. >> play by the rules. their parent company, iran, doesn't play by the rules. so every. negotiation is very difficult. and you've got a lot of players at the table. obviously. >> the united states. >> has been working incredibly. >> hard and beginning in the last administration, along with the israelis and the egyptians and the qataris and everyone else trying to get this done. and i'll just say, you know, about mr. alexander and the alexander family. i've never seen people with such hope.

>> and strength. >> and continued, just, just such a positive attitude day in and day out. and that makes a huge difference. you know, staying on everybody to focus on this. and he's a jersey guy, as was just said. and he's got to come home and he's just a regular all american kid. right. and the fact that he's been held at the hands of hostages for five more than 500 days is outrageous. it's appalling. we got to get him home. >> we'll be watching this so closely and so hopefully, alexander and democratic congressman josh gottheimer, thank you both very much for coming on the show this morning. thank you. we appreciate it. and still ahead, we're going to go through the chaos on capitol hill yesterday as house republicans were barely able to build enough support within the party to pass their budget resolution. meanwhile. some republican lawmakers are starting to criticize the way doge is operating will play for those comments, and mike allen of axios will take us behind the curtain of what he calls trump's

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of my ability to vote by proxy. so sam and i took a trip across the country. >> had a knee surgery. >> and a blood clot, an. >> infection in. >> my. >> knee. >> two clean. out surgeries. >> i've been in. >> the. >> hospital for the last. >> ten days. this is a. >> centerpiece of. >> the trump agenda. >> and i. wanted to. >> get my vote on the record. >> all right. democrats doing everything they can to challenge. >> the republican. >> led house budget proposal. >> that was. >> congresswoman brittany. >> peterson of colorado. >> who brought her. >> four week old son and. >> congressman kevin. mullen of california, who traveled. >> to dc. >> after being released. from the hospital. >> on monday. we'll go through what comes. >> next for that bill. >> plus, we'll have the latest on all things doge. as the white house finally reveals who is legally in charge of the task force and the new. reporting from the new york times on doj's

inaccurate savings claims. meanwhile, some republican lawmakers are backing away from town halls after contentious meetings with constituents. we'll tell. >> you why. >> and we'll. >> have an update for you on the near-miss at chicago's midway airport after a southwest airlines jet ditched its landing just in the nick of time. good morning, and. >> welcome to. >> morning joe. it is wednesday, everybody. just so you know, informing you wednesday, february 26th, along with joe, willie and me, we have msnbc contributor mike barnicle, the host of way too early, ali vitali, chief white house correspondent for the new york times. peter baker and co-founder of axios. mike allen is with us this morning. joe, we have so much to get to. today as. >> we do every day. >> we really do. and i mean, you look at the near miss in chicago. you look at all the

other problems that we're having right now. this is the last time. this is this is the last thing you'd want to do right now is cut faa workers. so last thing you would want to do is, is do anything that could inhibit air safety. you can go out, you can talk about die all you want to. this is something that has nothing to do with die. this is something we've been talking about on this show since covid about about right now we have a crisis. we need more people actually up in the towers. we need more people in the faa. we need more people keeping the skies safe. and i will just really quickly we're we're going to talk about doge. we have mike allen, who along with jim vandehei wrote a an extraordinary column talking about how doge they didn't say this, i am it's mainly when it comes to budget issues. it's smoke and mirrors. think about

this. that from the founding of our republic through 2001, the year i left congress. so i know over those 220 years, the united states accumulated $5 trillion debt. in the last 20 years, 5 trillion over two centuries, over the last 20 or so years, we've accumulated up to $36 trillion. now that congressional budget office says that if these republicans pass what they're about to pass, and if they move forward with tax cuts and they move forward with massive spending increases in defense, and they move forward with all the things they're talking about, moving forward with the

budget. let me get this number right. the budget is going to increase another $23 trillion over the next decade, over the next decade. and there's something i've been warning about my entire adult life. let me tell you something, though. there are no warnings for this. we are in meltdown mode here, and they're sitting around talking about, you know, passing legislation that's going to increase the debt. another $20 trillion over the next decade. and not even they're talking about doge. it's smoke and mirrors. you're talking about a small, small percentage of what actually drives the debt, what drives what they're going to do is they're going to slash medicaid. and they may think that only hurts minorities in inner cities. they are so wrong. the people who were most devastated are those who live in red state america, those who

have watched rural hospitals around them shut down when governors wouldn't accept medicaid expansion, they slashed medicaid. they are slashing rural health care that's already in crisis. so everything seems backwards here. they may think it's all smoke and mirrors and not to go on too long, but i am obsessed about it. neil ferguson talks about ferguson's law. not not not his law. but but someone else from the 1800s. and ferguson's law states that any great power that spends more money on servicing their debt than on defense risk ceasing to become a great power. the united states is doing that really right now. we spend more money on interest on our federal debt than we do in defending this country, and it's only going to

get so much worse because of the nonsense that's going on in washington, dc right now. >> yes, so much of what doge is doing is performative. as we said yesterday, literally sometimes with elon musk wielding a chainsaw. but even these cuts, if you're actually serious about getting debt and deficit under control, which so many republicans have spent their careers talking about calling themselves hawks, that went away, of course, in the first trump administration, when he added more debt than any president had previously. and now you're exactly right. the outlines of this deal that republicans struck barely by the skin of their teeth by two votes in the house. and we'll get into some of the details. it does extend the trump tax cuts from 2017, blowing a massive hole in the debt. again, those cuts, of course, go to the wealthiest americans. and trying to find the savings, as you said, in places like medicaid and food assistance, 72 million americans rely on medicaid for their health care. that is not, as you say, just inner city minorities

as perhaps they think. so that is health care for people. that is food for people across the country, urban and rural. so, mika, the what elon musk is doing might feel good to the base. it might look good. like he's finally getting some efficiency in the government, but it doesn't actually do anything to get to the core right of our debt and deficit. >> we'll get more on this later. but the backlash also continues. a group of 21 civil service employees whose team was folded into elon musk's department of government efficiency all resigned yesterday. that's according to a letter posted online and shared with media outlets. the letter stated the career staffers refused to use their technical skills to, quote. compromise core government systems, jeopardize american sensitive data or dismantle critical public services, a person familiar with the letter confirmed its authenticity to nbc news. the

news was first reported by the associated press. in a social media post, musk called the ap report more fake news and added, these were political holdovers who refused to return to the office. they would have been fired had they not resigned. okay. >> the white house now finally has named the person it says is officially in charge of doge. it comes after lawyers for the trump administration could not tell a judge on monday who is running the task force created by elon musk. white house press secretary caroline leavitt was asked about that yesterday. >> elon musk is overseeing doge. there are career. there are no elon musk is a special government employee, which i've also been asked and have answered that question as well. there are career officials at doge. there are political appointees at doge. i'm not going to reveal the name of that individual from this podium. i'm happy to follow up and provide that to you, but we've been incredibly transparent about the way that doge is working.

>> except we won't reveal the name. despite making it clear that musk is overseeing doge. that was a quote there. the white house shortly after that briefing said, amy gleason now holds the title of acting doge administrator. the white house did not say when gleason was appointed, but the decision appeared rushed because gleason is on vacation in mexico, according to the new york times. she told associates she was not aware ahead of time that the white house planned to make public her role. her linkedin profile has her listed as the senior advisor at the us digital service, a department that musk folded into doge. meanwhile, musk will be a part of president trump's first cabinet meeting later today. the billionaire is not a member of the president's cabinet. leavitt yesterday said musk will be there because he's working alongside the president and the administration's cabinet secretary. so peter baker, it's pretty clear and frankly, an insult to most americans intelligence to say that elon

musk is not the one making these calls and running doge. he's going to be sitting in that cabinet meeting today. but does the white house have a sense that the clunky way in which these cuts are being made and then being withdrawn, in some cases, emails threatening employees are being sent out and then departments are saying, no, actually, you don't have to abide by that email. is the white house worried about this at all? it doesn't sound like it from the president's point of view. he says musk should be more aggressive. >> yeah, i don't think they're worried too much about it. i think some of the confusion and chaos is baked in. i think it's kind of in some ways the goal. they're trying to keep people off their, you know, trying to keep people confused and off their back heels. you know, i think that if you look at this department of government efficiency, the name that they have chosen for themselves, the trick is it hasn't been all that efficient. right? so they had a list up, for instance, of the largest cuts that they say they have made to government programs. well, the five largest savings that they claimed have now been deleted from the site

after reporters, including some of my colleagues, pointed out that they were riddled with errors. so they're trying to get their feet planted on something that's very complicated. the government here is a $6 trillion a year operation for outsiders to come in, who have no experience there, and just suddenly be able to make the kind of sweeping decisions that they're making without any kind of background in it. i think you're you're going to have the kind of screw ups that we've seen so far. >> well. >> meanwhile, some republican lawmakers are starting to push back against the department of government efficiency. this is their constituents are complaining about the federal government layoffs. lawmakers are now publicly raising those concerns, toeing the line between criticizing the department and supporting its efforts. >> i think that any process you undergo where you're trying to find efficiencies and if that involves some reductions in force, it needs to be done in a respectful way. obviously, that's respectful of people involved. but i do think. as

they go through this process, the objective of doge is to try and figure. out ways to make government run more efficiently, more effectively and reduce its cost, and make sure that the american taxpayer is getting a good deal on the tax dollars that they put into the federal government. >> i'm all. >> for trimming the government. >> i am all for all. in a deliberate manner that allows people to adjust in their lifestyles. >> do you. >> believe that elon musk should have a little bit more compassion? is that what you're saying? >> i think the messaging has to be more. >> along the. >> lines of this is good for america. >> but also. >> we need to do it in a in a little bit more environment, and i understand that. but in my opinion, we have to be a little bit more, give people more time to adjust. >> things are happening. >> a little bit too fast and furiously, i think, and that's why we've had some of these unintended consequences. we also saw the national park service, some seasonal hires that are

being reversed as well to reinstate those individuals. so instead of doing this in a very broad way and then having to retroactively, you know, reverse your. >> decision. >> why don't we take a little time, do it more thoughtfully and thoroughly, making sure we're actually. >> addressing. >> you know, the waste of mismanagement and the unnecessary overhead, as opposed to making these rash decisions and then having to backtrack. >> my district is firmly behind what president trump is doing and what doge is doing to right this ship before that ship crashes into a reef of despair and we go broke. as a nation, i do think there are some valid concerns about the speed that this is happening. layoffs happen every day in america when companies are bought out. through consolidation and automation and other things that no longer require services of sometimes hardworking people. but that's what happens in government. employees are not immune from that. just because you have a government job, it's

not a lifetime appointment like the supreme court over there. well, i mean, i think we all agree on that and we all agree on waste, fraud and abuse. but again, i must correct the congressman what he said at first, we have to do this to somehow save our ship from crashing onto the shore. you know, because of public debt. again, i would hope he knows. and if he doesn't, i would hope he'd read axios in the newsletter they put out. or just look at the congressional budget office because mike allen, the news, the column that you and jim vandehei wrote a couple days ago really clarifies everything. and his follow up. i followed up on it this morning with what i was saying about about the debt. this is this is, as you say, right here. trimming the fat is harder than it looks. sure, 37% of the contract terminations aren't expected to save any money. and you also, you talk about how actually the interest that we accumulate on the debt

is more than they're going to be able to ever cut it. doge. and that's the interest we accumulate on the debt every day. this is we've heard of no pain, no gain. well, republican members are going to soon find this is all pain, no gain. it does nothing to get us closer to being fiscally responsible and not see the government and our economy melt down under a pile of debt. yeah, joe, i've heard you talking about these issues for years, including when i had to call you congressman. and this is what we explain in our column, hard truths about trump's. >> budget cuts. >> and those are just putting out examples of silly government programs, mistaken government programs, contract excesses. but what we show with the math is

that these are drops. >> of. >> water in the leaky bucket of the us budget. and you look at the numbers, 60% of what's in the budget is going to programs that government actually has to spend, throw in defense, throw in interest. you're left with 16% of the budget, like very little for those in the government to work with. now, joe, it's super important to say the idea of doge and what doge is doing is super popular, both in polls and in my conversation with friends, relatives, coast to coast, even people in your city, they like the idea of it. it's always been that. it's always been popular, hasn't it? as you as you point out here, william proxmire had the golden fleece award. what was that back in the 60s? and 70s, al gore went on david letterman to talk about rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse. we've been around. but i will tell you this what i

found, and i'm not talking about those two gentlemen, but what i found when we were trying to do the hard work to balance the budget, we did it four years in a row when people started talking about things like this, it was to distract from the fact that you have to find savings in medicare and social security, in defense spending, in these other areas that take up 85 to 90% of the budget. so they'll go, oh, look over there, look at the bird over there. and then they can wield the chainsaw. and yet they do nothing. as, again, the congressional budget office, the congressional, the congressional budget office says our debt is going to go up another $23 trillion over the next decade that will cripple america. mike. that's right, joe. and you can add senator alan simpson, who peter knows very well to that list. i remember growing up in orange county, california, hearing about the bill proxmire

golden fleece awards, government excesses, the sort of paul harvey stuff, ronald reagan, of course you on the after dinner circuit like really played those up. but what we point out in this column that's up now on axios is that president trump is hemmed in by three things. one political reality, including his need to keep house republicans. who knows. so while second, he's hemmed in by what he has said about what he's not going to touch, including recently in his interview with sean hannity, he talked about what he would not touch. and of course, three is the math that you've been talking through. >> coming up, president trump is stepping. >> up efforts to. >> punish his perceived enemies, among them lawyers at a washington law firm that helped the special counsel who investigated him, msnbc legal correspondent lisa rubin explains that. straight ahead on morning joe.

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can save up to 40%. hotel trivago. >> it's kind of amazing. >> wow. >> lumify eye. >> drops dramatically. >> reduce redness. >> in one minute. >> and look at the difference. >> my eyes look brighter and whiter. >> for. >> for. >> up to. tap into etsy for home and style staples to help you set any vibe. from custom lighting under 150 dollars to vintage jackets under 100. for affordable pieces to help you make a fresh start, etsy has it. >> one of the. >> things. >> joe, you've always. shared with me about what you loved about and learned the most from during your time in congress was town halls that you did every time you went home to learn about whether or not you're doing. >> a good job. >> for your constituents. and now some house republicans are putting the brakes on town halls

after pushback over the trump administration's cuts. the decision comes after a number of lawmakers faced angry crowds in their home districts last week. republican leaders are urging lawmakers to stop engaging in. them altogether, or to do. tele town halls to avoid similar incidents. gop sources tell nbc news the new reluctance to hold them indicates there are bubbling concerns about the impact the cuts could have on the gop's chances of holding its thin majority in the house next year. the viral nature of video clips are spreading from one district to another means a bad confrontation in safe republican territory could influence voters in battlegrounds. and mike barnicle, at the same time, aren't the town halls where you, you know, as a public servant, get feedback from the very people who voted you into office? >> you know, the furor at the town. >> halls over the weekend.

>> with. republican congressman, that's. >> a window of opportunity for the democrats is. >> the democrats. best hope is what is going. >> on right now, today in washington, dc. i was stunned yesterday talking to a member of the ways and means committee who told me that 20% of the revenue that goes into the united states treasury goes to pay off debt service. and the republicans are talking now about perhaps cutting medicare benefits, medicaid benefits, some social security benefits, some va benefits, a lot of benefits that people are. used to getting and have been used to getting for years. decades actually will now be cut in favor of a $4.5 trillion tax cut that they will propose that will largely go to billionaires and millionaires and large corporations. >> the corporate. >> tax rate will. be lowered, perhaps even more than it was lowered. this is a disaster in the making for the republican party. but worse than that, mika, it's a disaster for the united states of america. >> coming up, a look at what's driving the day on wall street

as investors watch the budget battle unfold on capitol hill. cnbc's andrew ross sorkin joins us here at the table. when morning joe comes right back. >> as a. >> cardiologist. >> when i put my patients on a statin to reduce cholesterol, i also tell them it can deplete their coq10 levels. >> i recommend taking. >> all coq10. qanon has three. >> times better. >> absorption than regular coq10. qanon the brand i trust. >> hi, grandma. i played baseball today. oh that's great. >> what position did. >> you play? >> first base. that's what grandpa used to play when our hearing. >> wouldn't allow. >> us to use a regular phone. it made us feel isolated. >> it became. >> difficult to communicate with our friends and family. >> clear captions was an easy solution for us. >> clear captions provides captions on a phone. like

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and i say yes to freedom of speech and expression. if you do too, please join us in supporting the american civil liberties union today. for over 100 years, the aclu has fought for your rights and mine. including the right to read all manner of books. so please call or go online to myaclu.org. for just $19 a month, only $0.63 a day. you can become a guardian of liberty and help protect all the rights promised to us by the u.s. constitution. make no mistake, this move to ban books is a coordinated attack on students right to learn. this is a clear violation of free speech. that's why the aclu is working to fight against censorship in all its forms. it is so important now more than ever. so please call or go to myaclu.org

and become an aclu guardian of liberty, for just $19 a month. use your credit card and you'll get this special we the people t-shirt and more to show you're helping to protect the rights of all people. the aclu is in all 50 states, d.c. and puerto rico defending our first amendment right of free speech and all of your constitutional rights. because we the people, means all of us. so please, call or, go online to myaclu.org today. psaki. each week, she talks to. >> some of the biggest names. >> in democratic. >> politics. >> with the biggest ideas for how democrats. >> can win again. the blueprint. >> with jen psaki. >> listen now. >> all of this can be overwhelming, but it is important to remember there are still checks and balances. there's a lot being thrown at the american people right now,

and it is really important to pay attention to it, but it is just as important to recognize how many of those things are getting announced. but they're not happening at all, or at least not yet. just try to remember we are not looking at the final score. we are still in the first quarter. keep your pads on. the game has just begun. >> time now for a look at some of the other stories making headlines this morning. hamas is mapping out its battle strategy for a potential return to war with israel. it comes as mediators work to salvage the ceasefire that expires this weekend in the gaza strip. although the terror group has been badly weakened after 15 months of fighting, it has started regrouping its military forces, repairing its underground tunnel network and training new recruits on how to use weapons. more than 1000 musicians, including annie lennox, kate bush and cat stevens, are protesting a

proposal in the uk that would give artificial intelligence firms access to copyrighted music to push back on the proposed law. the artists released an album that is mostly silent except for white noise, recorded in empty studios. according to the washington post, a number of big name artists, including elton john and paul mccartney, have spoken out against the plan, which they say could undermine the recording industry by making it more difficult for artists to protect their work. astronomers say the earth is no longer in danger of being struck by an asteroid. in the year of 2032. okay. the chances of impact have dropped to nearly zero last week. the odds of an impact were more than 3%. that probability was the highest ever recorded for an object of this size. coming up, we're going to get the european commission's perspective on president trump's approach to ending the war in ukraine. the bloc's high representative for foreign

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>> welcome back. the trump administration says it will now hand selects select the press outlets that will be given pool access to cover the president bucking years of bipartisan precedent. >> moving forward. the white house press pool will be determined by the white house press team. a select group of dc based journalists should no longer have a monopoly over the privilege of press access at the white house. all journalists, outlets and voices deserve a seat at this highly coveted table. so by deciding which outlets make up the limited press pool on a day to day basis, the white house will be restoring power back to the american people who president trump was elected to serve. >> so the white house press pool

is a small group of seasoned journalists based in the nation's capital, who report on the president's daily schedule handpicking, which outlets get intimate access to the president, would give the administration more control over how it is covered. historically, the members of the white house press pool had been chosen on a rotating basis by the white house correspondents association, a century old group representing the journalists on the white house beat. the aca responded to the change in a statement, writing in part, this move tears at the independence of a free press in the united states. it suggests the government will choose the journalists who cover the president. in a free country, leaders must not be able to choose their own press corps. this comes as a federal judge declined to issue a temporary restraining order against the white house for denying the associated press full access in

covering the administration, the ap was barred indefinitely from the oval office and air force one because of its refusal to change its style on the gulf of mexico after president trump renamed it the gulf of america. this isn't the first time the trump white house has attempted to limit press access. back in 2018, it temporarily suspended the press credentials of cnn's jim acosta for what the white house called behaving disrespectfully. a u.s. district judge later forced the white house to reinstate acosta's press credentials. mike barnicle, your thoughts? >> you know, there's a lot going on here, and there's a lot going on in that story. and it's part of, i would think, a troika if you really pay attention to what's going on, intimidate the press, they're doing that kind of successfully co-opt the federal police force. the fbi, try and co-opt the military, the defense department, through an

appointed secretary of defense who was totally unqualified to be secretary of defense. i'm just saying pay attention to what's happening around us. >> yeah. and mike allen, the this is a real change in tradition, which will have a, i think, a big response from members of the press corps. >> no question, because jim vandehei and i are. up with a column this morning on trump's media control strategy, pulling back the camera and looking at the fact that this is of a piece with the lawsuits, with the control of workspace at the pentagon, with the actions against ap and just around this table off camera, we've been talking about how there is going to be a democratic president. and that's one of the reasons that you see some conservative news organizations backing up fox backing up ap, signing on to protests of how this is being

done. now, what the white house told us for this column is we're trying to open up new opportunities for people who think differently or doing things different ways that the old system didn't serve people. and they say, we're going to be responsible about this, that the legacy traditional outlets are going to be very represented. they say we want the eyeballs. they, even in our column, use the phrase a ratings bonanza. they say they want to leverage legacy outlets with new, different. >> maga. >> nonpartisan other outlets. but this is a massive change. peter and i have been walking into those gates for decades now. there was always a certain way it was done. and mika, joe, one of the reasons was that the occupants of those chairs, the staff in there, thought the institution is bigger than us. the institution will go on after us. we are holding these roles in stewardship for the people

who came before and after us. that is not the mindset of this crowd. >> mike allen of axios thanks so much. we've been talking a lot about your work this morning. those pieces available online now. president trump is stripping the security clearances of lawyers who provided free legal services to special counsel jack smith. the proposal, signed yesterday, points to staff at covington and burling law firm, which represented smith before he resigned from the justice department last month. the move comes after smith declared in a financial disclosure he received a gift of $140,000 of legal services from the firm while in government service. smith brought two criminal cases, of course, against trump that then were dropped after the election. let's bring in former litigator and msnbc legal correspondent lisa rubin and nbc news national security editor david rohde. good morning to you both. so, lisa, what's going on here? is this as plain as it seems, a way to get back at jack smith? >> i think it is exactly what it

seems, willie. a way to get back at jack smith. not necessarily a particularly efficacious one, because if you look at what trump signed yesterday, it revoked security clearances from peter koski, who is said to be jack smith's lawyer at covington and burling and any other lawyers who assisted in what they call to. let's see, it says who assisted former special counsel jack smith during his time as a special counsel. there may be an assumption in there that is completely belied by the truth. it's our understanding that covington and burling provided personal services, individual services to jack smith, not to the office of the special counsel. so it's premised on a false premise. but the other thing that it does is it revokes security clearances. it says that the government should review contracts, and that if covington and burling represents the government in any capacity, those should be reviewed as well. it's not clear that there are any contracts with covington and burling, according to the washington post this morning. so this may be symbolic. what it is, though, is a shot across the bow at law firms all throughout the

country. think very carefully about who you hire and who you represent in this era, because we are watching, and we intend to investigate these people as part of our weaponization of the federal government. executive order. >> david, the crackdown by the administration on certain people, certain lawyers, law firms, that's one thing. but it's now seemingly extended into the national security space itself. i mean, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff basically fired things like that. >> that's that's what's happening. and it's a narrative of, like, corruption that somehow this law firm was doing something improper because they worked with jack smith. and again, and we've talked about it earlier in the week, but dan bongino being, you know, this right wing podcaster who has said trump won the 2020 election, who has said that january 6th was somehow staged, is now going to essentially run the daily operations of the most powerful federal law enforcement agency in this country. and i

was speaking with a justice department official, former department official, yesterday. and their concern is that, you know, there is a terrorist threat in this country. there's lots of turmoil around the worl. and these moves, you know, essentially someone who says things that president trump wants to hear gets to run the most powerful law enforcement agencies in the country. morale is terrible, and they will be distracted. and that could be a consequence. >> where i was going, i wonder how much this destabilizes and weakens america in the face of what seems to be setting up sort of a pattern for retribution. >> it's retribution. and it's you have to back trump's narrative. you have to say the fbi is corrupt. you have to say that jack smith had no right whatsoever to investigate him, that there was no reason to search mar-a-lago. a judge issued a search warrant for that. again, dan bongino has said that, you know, there never should have been that search. so it's just this narrative creating a reality that helps

president trump politically, that doesn't fit facts on the ground. and for effective law enforcement and intelligence agencies, you have to have a basis in reality. >> coming up, ed harris stars in a new movie alongside morgan freeman. we'll get a preview when the four time oscar nominee joins our conversation in the fourth hour of morning joe. >> she knows. she knows that i am not just searching for some am not just searching for some first time ever feel like a spectator in your own life with chronic migraine? 15 or more headache days a month, each lasting 4 hours or more. botox® prevents headaches in adults with chronic migraine. in a survey, 91% of users wish they'd started sooner. so why wait? talk to your doctor. botox® effects may spread hours to weeks after injection, causing serious symptoms. alert your doctor right away as trouble swallowing, speaking, breathing, eye problems, or muscle weakness can be signs of a life-threatening condition.

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light. >> that was sarah hyland. sarah, you can sing. oh my gosh. and ryan mccartan, who also can sing at the new york public library centennial celebration of the f scott fitzgerald novel the great gatsby. last year, the book was turned into a broadway musical that has become a smash hit. hyland and mccartan recently started their run as daisy buchanan and jay gatsby in the stage adaptation of the all american classic, and sarah and ryan join us now. also with us for the conversation, special correspondent at vanity fair, molly jong-fast. amazing. amazing to have you guys here. congratulations on this. >> thank you. >> you sound amazing. and, sarah, this isn't your first. you're like a broadway veteran. little shop of horrors. and now this. do you love it? i mean, we know her from modern family.

yes. but how is how is bringing the great gatsby to life on stage for you? >> oh. >> my gosh. >> a dream. a dream come true. i love. >> the. >> theater so much. >> it's like a second. >> home to me. and it's. >> so. wonderful to be back and to be with this. >> amazing group of people, and. >> to be able to have the opportunity and honor and privilege. >> to play. >> such an iconic character as. >> daisy buchanan is. >> just daunting and terrifying and delightful and. exhilarating all at once. >> amazing. and ryan, you guys have great chemistry off stage, the two of them finishing each other's sentences, making crazy. sounds and. >> so. well, the read you picked up on our. energy. >> very major vibe. yeah. it's a little cray, right? >> absolutely. >> definitely. >> well, jay. >> gatsby and daisy. >> buchanan are a little. >> cray cray. >> yeah. >> so do you guys do vocal exercises together to get ready for the show? >> oh, my god, no, but. >> we should. >> we should. >> what are your vocal exercises? >> i do. >> them for us right now.

>> oh, yes. okay. >> what does it sound like? >> i have a voice teacher, and. >> we taped. >> a whole exercise. >> and. i have the. >> same tape. >> what does it go like? >> you know. >> a big one. >> yeah. for this? >> yeah. >> john. >> block. >> what? >> zhang. >> zhang i love it. >> it's like it's. >> my deep voice. >> yes, exactly. >> yes. >> it's like. >> foam. >> rolling for your. >> vocal cords. yeah, i like it. you should try that, sarah. >> i should. >> i should, molly. >> so you have to sing the answers to my questions. no. i was kidding. you guys are warmed up, right? it should be fine. so, great gatsby, it's one of those books. tell me about your relationship with the text. >> do you want to go? >> i. i mean. >> i love. >> the book. i. i remember vividly having to read it as a sophomore in english. and, you know, something. >> that we talk. >> about is that people. >> think that they remember the. book because they remember the

romance and they remember the parties. and then they come and see the show and, you know, spoiler. but then everyone kind of dies at. >> the. >> end. >> or at least their dreams do. and people are like, oh god, this is a tragedy. >> it's like, yeah. >> f scott fitzgerald wrote it to be a farce. >> about the. >> american dream. >> yeah. >> and but they what i love about our show is that it. maintains the party and the romance as long as it physically can. >> and then it. >> hits you with 20 minutes of gruesome, terrible plot. >> so it maintains. >> what people think they remember about the book, but then gives you what actually happens in the book without, like, beating it over your head. >> and a. >> good answer. yeah, very good answer. >> glad i threw that to you. >> yeah, very obviously, i might add. >> so you want to go? so, sarah, tv versus broadway stage. the difference. what do you like better? what do you think? >> oh, goodness. >> everything about don't give me. >> that like. >> the corner of my eye. >> all the theater.

>> folks at home. >> look, i. >> the theater is such an experience. >> and a whirlwind. >> and not only do you create a relationship with everyone. backstage ensemble, creative team. >> all of the actors. >> all. >> of the dressers. >> the feedback. >> from. >> the audience. >> but also the relationship with the audience. and it's different every. single night. and that is the. joy of theater and of being an actor and finding little moments that you never thought were there, just in the spur of the moment because. >> of the energy and. interaction with the audience. and what they're giving you and what you're giving them is this intrinsic relationship. >> and so. >> i love the. >> theater, and television is wonderful. >> as well. >> yeah, but. >> the theater is. so it just feels so alive. yeah, yeah, it's jazz versus classical, i think. >> there you go. >> molly. you how different is your life doing theater versus doing television? like how is this sort of just explain to us sort of how it's different.

>> oh, a lot more water. >> the most amount. >> girl. >> so much water. >> i wake up three. >> times in. >> the. >> middle of the night. >> between shows. >> because we drink like a. >> gallon of water. >> really? >> during the show? >> yes, exactly. and so a lot of. >> water i get to sleep. >> in. >> and that's really nice. that's a nice difference. >> being an athlete. >> for sure. i mean, it's a it's a marathon. yeah. >> whereas i. >> like this is early for you in a way. >> yeah. >> yeah. >> i mean. >> you work. >> opposite hours of everyone else. >> yeah. >> nights and weekends and holidays. yeah, that's. >> when we work. >> and everyone else works monday through friday while we're. >> and it's hard. but once you get out there on that stage, right. it's just. >> like it is so infectious. and i mean. >> to piggyback on what you said, you know, with. >> tv and. >> film. >> you do. >> it and then. >> you watch it. >> back and you say, oh man, i wish i could tweak that. with

with theater. if there's something. >> that you want. >> to do differently. >> you have. 300 more chances. because you're going to do it night after night after night, and you get to keep editing and keep finding. and that exhilaration of being able to return. >> yeah. >> every time is just so perfect. >> so as i tease out your great gatsby and we say goodbye, can you do a little john for me? you go. ryan. the broadway musical adaptation. of the great gatsby is playing now at the broadway theater. costar sarah hyland and ryan mccartan. come on, ryan, thank you. >> i'm sorry. >> i'm supposed to. >> keep going. >> yeah. >> next time. >> next time. >> oh, wow. >> okay. keeping us waiting, i like that. okay. all right, guys, great to have you on. they're fun. >> they're really fun. they have good vibes together. yeah. >> okay. i want to have fun. here's here's here's the great news that's coming up next. stand by. we're going to hear from frustrated federal workers

who have just lost their jobs because of the spy d.o.j. plus, democratic strategist james carville has a new strategy for the party calling for a daring political maneuver. we'll go through his latest piece from the new york times. keep it right here on morning joe. that's how we feel. yeah. >> only we. know what. >> we. >> both been. >> work. play. >> blink. >> relief. work. >> play. >> blink. relief. >> the only 3. >> the only 3. >> in 1 extended businesses need shipping software that keeps up with their growth. with shipstation you can automatically sync inventory and manage returns across all your sales channels. ♪♪ so you fulfill your orders accurately. and ship the right products to the right customers. shipstation makes it easy to manage everything on one platform, with the lowest carrier rates... no matter how big you get.

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working at usaid. >> i really. >> felt that. >> we were. providing support. >> and care. to humanity. >> around the world because it's the right. thing to do. and that. >> made. >> me feel proud. no matter. >> who was president or no. >> matter what policies were in place that we had to follow. and now that's been stripped away from me and from my colleagues. and the world is noticing and the world is feeling the impact. i really loved the work that we were doing. >> and now.

>> i don't know what to do. and i have cried every day. >> i'm i think. >> that. >> that's normal. i have a. >> 15 month. >> old at home, and i'm looking at him and thinking, well, what's this country that we're now living in? >> you know, there's no. >> jobs for us. >> here in dc. i don't. >> know if there are jobs. >> for us, period. >> a lot of people's professional lives have. >> just been ruined. >> and i want to know how the senators are going to support us. how are they going to give us resources? how are they going to make sure that people's families are taken care of? >> you know. >> we're just witnessing like an entire industry is going down. and what are the senators going to do about it? >> terminated federal workers on capitol hill yesterday voicing their frustrations with the severe cuts being made by d.o.j. it's still unclear how many in total have lost their jobs so far. so we roll into the fourth hour of morning joe. now it is 6 a.m. on the west coast, 9 a.m. in the east. republicans are one step closer to passing a

sweeping budget bill that comes with a serious price tag. this, as confusion still swirls around that. elon musk or around the elon musk directed email to government employees demanding that they explain five things they accomplished at work last week. we have two reports for you, starting with nbc news capitol hill correspondent ryan nobles. >> overnight, a. >> win for. >> president trump. >> but it wasn't easy. >> thank you all for staying on a on a long night. we got it done. >> house republicans voting. >> for. >> the budget. >> plan trump endorsed. >> aiming to fund his. >> mass deportation. >> plan. >> implement a. >> massive $4.5. >> trillion tax cut. >> and slash between 1.5. >> and. >> $2. >> trillion from. >> the federal budget. >> every democrat. >> voted no. >> including one who flew. >> back with her. >> four week. >> old son. >> we were here to fight for all the kids in florida. >> hardline gop.

>> deficit hawks. >> believe the steep. >> spending cuts. >> aren't enough. >> and promised to. >> push for more as. >> the process. >> moves ahead. >> to the next. >> step, forcing. >> the president. >> to play. >> a key role. >> in shoring up support. >> what trump has been an incredible ally. >> in this whole process. >> talking to anybody that we ask that that, you know, really needed to clarify things. >> some republicans. >> holding out earlier. >> in the day. >> where are we going with this thing? it's just ridiculous. >> convinced? >> after speaking. >> with trump. >> the president. >> assured me that he would work towards cuts. he's never lied to me. he's like my wife. >> she's never lied. >> to me, and i've always trusted her. >> a similar bill passed. >> in the senate. >> but only. >> deals with half of. >> trump's agenda. the two sides. will now need to work. >> out their differences. >> i'm confident. >> we can put. >> 51 on the senate floor. >> the narrow margins. >> will make. >> this a. >> difficult task. >> especially because. republicans want trillions. >> in cuts. >> but won't. >> say where those. >> cuts are coming from. >> 86% of. >> the federal. >> budget comes from defense, social security, medicare and

medicaid, which covers healthcare costs for disabled and low. income americans. >> it will be. >> difficult to cut that much without. >> impacting the. >> programs millions. >> of americans. >> rely on. >> can you get. >> to 1.5. >> trillion without cutting medicare and medicaid? >> i'm not cutting. >> benefits to medicaid recipients. >> the president's. been very. >> clear. >> about that. >> in the. >> latest display of. >> elon musk's. >> enormous influence. >> across the trump administration. the tech billionaire. >> who has boasted. >> about taking. >> a chainsaw to the federal. >> government, is set to attend. >> president trump's. >> first cabinet. >> meeting of his second. >> term later today. >> multiple cabinet members have already. >> clashed, with musk, directing their staff not to. >> respond to that. >> email to federal workers. >> demanding a list of five things they. >> accomplished last week. the president, weighing in yesterday. >> after the administration's. >> hr department. >> the. >> office of personnel. >> management. >> said responding. >> is voluntary. >> musk posting that. >> employees would face termination if they did not respond. nbc's garrett haake

asking the president for clarity. >> do you see it as. >> voluntary. >> like opm has said, or mandatory? >> well. >> it's somewhat voluntary. >> but it's also, if you don't answer. >> i guess you get fired. >> later. >> asked whether. >> moscow is speaking for him. >> by threatening to. >> terminate federal workers. >> everybody speaks for me. >> i'm the one. >> i'll take responsibility. >> you know the. >> old statement, the buck stops. >> here, right? >> well. >> president trump continued. >> to praise the plan. >> i think it's. >> a very smart thing. >> some republicans are urging caution as. >> they face. >> backlash at home. >> we message this so it doesn't. >> come across. >> as this compassionate. >> while doge faced more scrutiny this week. >> musk's team. >> had touted its published list of savings. but according to the new york times. doge revised. >> it to. >> remove its five biggest savings. after multiple outlets reported errors and of the contracts it has canceled so far, 40% are not expected to produce any savings, according to an ap analysis of the government's. own data. earlier. >> 21 members of what.

>> was the us. >> digital service before it became doge abruptly resigned anonymously. >> posting online. >> that they won't use their. >> technical expertise. >> to compromise core. government systems, jeopardize. sensitive data or dismantle. >> critical public services. musk responded. >> these were political holdovers who refused to return to the office. >> they would. >> have been fired had they. not resigned. >> nbc's peter alexander, with that report and joining us now, we have nbc news national affairs analyst and a partner and chief political columnist at puck. john heilemann, co-founder and ceo of all in together, lauren leder and vanity fair's molly jong-fast is still with us as well. so, jay joe, where do we begin? >> well, i tell you, they're actually in related. if you look at the vote yesterday, the budget resolution yesterday, and you look at the controversy surrounding doge with in red state america, where you have

people that are actually going and now i guess they're going to stop having town hall meetings because they don't like what their constituents are saying at town hall meetings. that's, i guess, the order coming down from the top. john heilemann, though, if they think these doge cuts are hard, it's hard. it's difficult to express the. political fallout that they're going to face when they go slashing medicaid, veterans benefits, all of these other benefits faa safety, food and drug safety, national institutes of health, alzheimer's research. you just go through all of it. but but i want to just focus for a second on medicaid, because there's this misunderstanding among a lot of republicans i talked to. they think there's like inner city hospitals. they just do. they don't understand that cuts to medicaid, savage

red state america the most. there have been so many rural hospitals that have been shut down over the past ten, 15 years. they're understaffed. about 75% of rural hospitals don't have an adequate number of health care providers. 50% of children in rural america, in red state america, 50% are taken care of in rural america, of children by medicaid funding, where do people's parents go when they put them in nursing homes? nursing homes, funded in large part in rural america by medicaid, take these cuts they're talking about are going to savage red state voters, children, the elderly. and why?

because they have to pass donald trump's tax cuts for billionaires and millionaires. it's just not a good political equation for them. this this is not a winning hand for any party, let alone this republican party. >> well, yeah. for any political party. joe, you'll excuse me. i've woken up with. >> a frog in my throat. if you. >> can't understand. >> me, i'll shut up. >> i may not be able. >> to speak. they're walking into a political buzzsaw here. >> where if. >> they think that the pushback they've seen so far at these town halls has been problematic. >> and it has been so. >> bad that they're shutting them down, you can't imagine what. >> they're about to hit. >> when they try to cut $300. >> billion out of medicaid. >> which. as you said, touches both red. >> and blue. >> states and districts alike. it is going to be i think it's

going to be politically impossible for. >> them to. be able. >> to. make that. level of cuts. >> and that's where. >> we're. headed in this debate. >> sorry. well, i mean, yeah. >> yeah. no that's okay. and you saw molly. you saw mark that congressman lawler. mike lawler talking about no cuts of benefits for medicaid recipients. they're they're not going to be able to pass this budget and fund donald trump's tax cuts for billionaires, millionaires, multinational corporations, the richest americans. they're not going to be able to extend those tax cuts without slashing medicaid. and they basically said so in the outline of where this money was going to come from. that not only impacts. i talk about red state america. red state america is not just in kansas or wisconsin or central pennsylvania. that's also where i lived for a while, upstate new

york. yeah. and that's something that a congressman who may want to be a governor of the state of new york is going to be thinking about. and there are a lot of other republican congressmen and congresswomen that probably understand all too well that these cuts are going to hurt red state america as much as blue state america. >> well, you have to remember yesterday mike lawler voted for this $880 billion cut from medicaid. so the question is that's quite a lot of money. it would be over ten years, but it's still quite a lot of money. and i think, you know what from what i understand. and i talked to jeffrey's office yesterday and they, you know, their message to their to the members of congress is that they should go out and fight this thing. and what they're seeing in town halls on the democratic side is a lot of anger and action. and

you and you even see this with the polls, right? this is not something that is popular on any way, shape and form. >> well, you see it with the town halls, but they don't want to have them anymore, which i think is a way of actually sabotaging these republican members of congress who need that feedback to know where they stand so they can represent lauren, the people who voted for them. yeah. >> well, they did this. let's remember this happened in 2016, right? when many organizations, you know, really kind of got pulled people together to show up at town. halls and organize around them, and they shut them down then, too. and then people just showed up at their offices and stood outside day after day after day, demanding why they didn't hold meetings. and by the way, several of the representatives, including congressman. >> frelinghuysen in new jersey. lost their seat. immediately after that. that was. >> someone. >> who'd been in congress 30 years. >> he lost his seat after he refused. >> to meet with. >> his constituents. we were in texas this. >> weekend and did. >> a training for women, low

income women in that community, many of whom. >> are served by the. >> very. benefits we're. talking about. with 250 women. >> show up at the houston food bank to get trained on civic and political leadership, because they are seeing the effects. >> even already, of the cuts. folks who've lost their jobs, etc, are extremely concerned about the future. and i think, you know, while it. >> felt. >> a little slow in the lead up the last few weeks, the sense of paralysis. yeah, there's no question. americans are really. waking up and, you know, the political cost. >> is real. but like. >> i just don't. >> want to. >> lose sight of the human cost already. just the frozen. you know, freezing government spending story. >> today about. >> a young child with cancer whose treatment has been. halted because nih is not getting. >> the funding. >> that was required for. >> his clinical trial. >> i mean, there are thousands. >> and thousands. >> of really human impacts. >> and i think it's worth just thinking about for a minute. when you cut the federal government, like 30% of federal employees are veterans. >> yes, there is that angle as well, joe. >> well, you also have, of

course, proposed cuts. to the va, which i'm sure is going to be part of this equation too. >> yeah. >> we have we have an extraordinary crisis right now. and it's a crisis that republicans don't want to talk about. it's a crisis that democrats haven't talked about enough. it's a crisis both parties haven't talked about. and that is something we've been talking about nonstop for 18 years on this show. and i talked about my entire adult life. we have a debt crisis right now. the united states is $36 trillion in debt right now. you have people running around holding up chainsaws saying, we're going to cut government. well, they're talking about. as axios reported, just drips and drabs of government spending $36 trillion. the congressional budget office says that if we

keep moving in the direction that we're moving in, if republicans pass this budget, we are going to add another $20 trillion, another $20 trillion to america's debt that will cause a meltdown. we've been warning about it for a long time. that will cause a meltdown. republicans are only the party of fiscal responsibility. when democrats are in the white house. and as i've said before, mika, it's very hard. it's very hard to balance the budget. it's very hard to be responsible. but you do it with subcommittee hearings and then you do it with committee hearings, and then you do it on the house floor. you do the same thing in the senate. you work together, and nobody's going to be happy. everybody's going to have to make sacrifices, but they're going to be reasonable, rational sacrifices. and the idea of

extending tax cuts for billionaires and multinational corporations and millionaires at a time that we're in a debt crisis, and also at a time when this economy is running so hot that we have to keep interest rates up, is the antithesis of everything that every sane economist would say is the right thing to do right now. i've been talking mika this morning and we hope to get neil ferguson on, but neil ferguson wrote a column about ferguson's law and it's very simple. and it was a scottish political theorist, adam ferguson, in 1767 said this, that when great powers spend more money servicing their debt than they do on their military, then they cease to become great powers. and there has been one example after another example, and we're doing that right now for the first

time. we are doing that. we spend more money servicing the debt in america than we do defending our shores and defending our interests across the globe. interest on the debt and this deal. they're talking about passing for tax cuts for billionaires and millionaires and multinational corporations that skew against workers and people who actually earn an income, versus people who push paper around. i mean, this is devastating for america's economy. we cannot add $20 trillion to our national debt. and i am hoping there are some republicans in congress who understand they are signing our fiscal death warrant. if they move forward with this disastrous plan. they have got to come up with a fiscally conservative plan, a fiscally

conservative approach to save this country's finances, because we're going over a cliff right now, and everybody is talking about doge, and they're holding up chainsaws at cpac. that is smoke and mirrors. yeah, it's a joke. and it's going to put this country in an even more dangerous place fiscally. there has to be a few conservatives left in congress. there just have to be who understand? we have to get responsible fiscally and get our house in order. >> so to your point, molly, about veterans coming up a little later, we're going to have a freshman democrat who is a veteran himself, who is introducing legislation that might protect veterans. so we'll talk about that in just a moment. justice department lawyers are facing new challenges as they defend the executive branch's policies in a slew of legal cases, the wall street journal reports. the doj

is facing a mass exodus of lawyers, just as the flurry of executive orders from the president has resulted in a wave of new cases for them to handle. let's bring in one of the reporters for that piece in the journal. josh. josh. dawsey. josh, thank you so much for being on this morning. how will the exodus impact everything that's going on? >> well, what we're seeing right now is that the justice department is struggling to defend some of the trump administration's positions in some of these cases. they have had a number of federal judges, including. >> some trump. >> appointed judges, who have been. >> quite angry. >> with the. >> lawyers. >> who have not been able to answer basic questions. what really happens here? as my. colleagues and i reported. >> there's about 100. >> elite lawyers. >> at the justice department who are responsible for defending the government. >> in in court. >> and about 25 or 30 of those

people have. resigned in recent months. a lot of the others are. looking to resign. some of them have been unwilling to taken some of the most challenging cases that they viewed that they could make an argument for, such as the birthright citizenship order that the trump administration proposed at the beginning days. and it's really sort of a unit in crisis in this particular moment of the department of justice. >> and what about keeping up with all these legal challenges as new things arise? >> well, i think that office is going to have to bring in. new lawyers. i mean, this is sort of a office that has been bipartisan for many years. and, you know, they don't really take. >> political positions. >> they sort of defend. >> the administration, whoever it is, or republican or democrat, what they want to do. >> but a lot of the. >> lawyers in this moment where they've seen attacks on. >> on the. >> department of justice and sort. >> of. >> firings and resignations and some of the proposals from the trump administration have just decided. enough is enough. and they found jobs in the private

sector. others are looking. >> to leave. >> so it's going to be some of the department of justice has to deal with in the coming and the coming weeks. you know, josh, we've been talking this morning about the conflicting messages that are coming out of the white house and also from elon musk about doge and, and, and just how confusing it is for federal employees and also people that are trying to follow this to figure out what the strategy is. the same thing seems to be happening, happening with the justice department. you write about in 1st february hearing, judge carl nichols, who was actually a trump appointee in washington, was displeased with the difficulty of getting straight answers in a case about the administration's plans to dismantle the usaid. quote. this what the judge said. i need to know what the government's official position is right now. what is happening? judge nichols, the trump appointee, asked, is the government paying

people or not? talk about the difficulty that the government has and these government lawyers are going to have when there seem to be so many inconsistent messages coming out of the white house, so many that the lawyers can't even give judges straight answers on what the official position is coming from the administration. well, that's one of the elements of a story, joe. >> these lawyers. >> have gotten very frustrated where they've asked the agencies for information to defend these cases and have gotten information that is incomplete. or erroneous at times. >> i mean, these are. >> not lawyers who like to be struck down in. >> court by. >> judges or admonished by judges in this way. a lot. >> of them are pretty elite. >> lawyers, as we said. and i think you saw another case. i saw you mentioned the carl nichols case. there was another case where they asked the lawyer who is in charge of doge and the doj lawyer, you know, wasn't able to say. >> who was. >> running doge. we've seen a

number. >> of. >> cases where. >> the. >> judges have said, we, you know, we want to know x, y, or z. >> and the. >> lawyers have said, oh. >> we just can't answer that question or. >> have that. >> to file written corrections into the. record after they've given answers. >> that. >> were not correct. >> wall street journal reporter josh dawsey, thank you so much for coming on this morning with your reporting. we really appreciate it. and coming up, u.s. consumer confidence fell for the third straight month and saw its largest monthly decline in three and a half years. so just how worried are americans about the economy? this, as president trump considers even more new tariffs. cnbc's andrew ross sorkin joins us next to break it all down. morning joe will be right back. >> so understanding who. >> so understanding who. >> must be some ♪♪ no. ♪♪ -no. -nuh-uh. ♪♪

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the ball is. >> coming to us. >> and the other thing that i place. >> a lot of stock in are these organic town halls. these are. not being organized by. >> democratic interest groups. these are not. >> being organized by. >> the dnc. >> these are just people. coming up and saying, we don't like this at all. and you're seeing it. and as you point out, very, very smartly. >> in. >> georgia. >> in wisconsin. >> in. >> oregon. >> i saw something. >> even in. >> idaho, you know, when you. when you start to lose idaho. >> you you. got some. >> you got some problems. >> so i think we just have to play possum for a. >> little while. >> just let them keep coming. and musk. >> will turn out. >> if they keep. >> him, we'll. >> be the greatest generator. said this very specifically, the greatest generator of democratic. turnout ever. more than barack obama. >> democratic strategist james carville predicting elon musk's

work in the trump administration will actually benefit the democratic party. carville followed up those remarks with a guest essay for the new york times entitled, it's time for a daring political maneuver democrats, in which he urges his the party for the moment to, quote, roll over and play dead. so is it play possum or. >> well. >> what is. >> this, your metaphor? james carville would say, here's your daring political move. roll over and play dead. i don't, i don't i don't know that that's the case. you know, lauren, it's very interesting right now on doge. what's interesting is axios reported, generally it's a popular idea. like generally if you ask people, what do you think about this doge idea to cut waste, fraud and abuse in the federal government? they'll go, hey, that's a great idea. you talk about the specifics, though, suddenly and when people see it in their own life, suddenly it becomes more unpopular. so it does seem

democrats need to push the message of, you know, flight safety being impacted, nuclear safety being impacted, food safety being impacted, the medication that we give our children and our parents being i mean, you could go down the list where they've actually fired people and had to bring them back. but there there's a lot of cutting here that's a problem. but i will say and i'm curious what your thoughts are. thoughts are doge is just a drop in the bucket. as mike allen has said, fiscally but also politically, when we start seeing these massive cuts voted on, that's going to impact hospitals in upstate new york, hospitals in central pennsylvania, hospitals in alabama, universities in alabama, universities in iowa, research funding for alzheimer's go down the list. these massive cuts are going to impact people's lives in red state

america. and i just wonder how willing they are to gut hospitals from upstate new york to nevada. >> right? and look, everywhere i go, i actually hear, i think in our bubble, we all feel a lot of sense of frustration and rage at musk. i'm not sure people feel that way so much across the country yet. i hear a lot of folks say, you know, look, he's i don't like his methods, but at least he's finding corruption ways they like. they've been very effective at trying to persuade people that they're actually doing a good service. but i agree with you that most americans have felt so disconnected from government. this thing that elon musk is doing far away doesn't touch their lives. but as soon as it starts to get personal and starts to be in their backyard, i do think that starts to change things. and you're seeing that, you know, with folks, you know, who've lost their state government jobs or who aren't getting access to services. so in a sense, you know, congress, congress overstepping with this budget is the biggest is this huge gift. and i really disagree with james carville. i actually think democrats have to step up

and keep making the case that all of this is happening, not to make government better, to enrich people like elon musk. like you have to keep saying that they have been, but they're going to have to keep hitting that from now until the end of the election cycle. >> well, here's one thing. one democratic lawmaker from california is fighting back against the cuts made by the department of government efficiency, specifically regarding veterans, congressman derek tran has introduced the protect veterans jobs act, which would allow for the reinstatement of any veteran who was fired from the federal employment. from federal employment since president trump took office. and congressman tran joins us now. he's a member of the house armed services committee, and the house small business committee is also an army veteran. so thank you very much for joining us. tell us about the bill. and is it going to have widespread support? >> good morning. >> the bill itself is the protect. veteran jobs act, and. >> i just wanted to make sure.

>> that those veterans that were dismissed from their federal jobs without. >> cause find a place back. in the government. >> and the jobs that they worked so hard to get. and there's also. requirement that executive. >> agencies report. on future terminations of veterans. >> you know, this is a bill that i believe, where i can. get people to get behind behind it, because, you know, these veterans. >> have given up so much. >> to. >> protect us. >> and the least. >> we can. >> do is have their back when. >> when they need us. >> so it looks here like perhaps you don't agree with james carville's advice to democrats roll over and play possum, play dead, and maybe, perhaps look for legislation to introduce that shows the negative effects of what republicans are doing. >> you know, i. >> think there. >> is a time for. us to. >> act as an army veteran myself. >> you know. >> i take deep offense to

what's. happening to my fellow brothers and sisters who don the uniform. >> and this is my time to step up and. >> be proud of a piece of legislation. >> where. >> i could. >> do something to. >> help them. >> lauren. >> congressman, i wanted to ask you. >> not just about the veteran employees, but also the folks who are veterans who are losing their jobs because of the cuts of contractors. i have good friends who employ hundreds of vets. service disabled vet agencies have been preferred government contractor. they've all had to freeze their jobs and fire a lot of the vets that work for them. have you been thinking about how to address all the contractor faults that are also losing their jobs, that are veterans? >> yeah, 100%. i am. continuing to monitor the situation with my colleagues. this is this is a crisis. >> and you know, what i want to make. >> sure is. >> that the. >> ones that don the. >> uniform to protect our. >> country, who served our country. honorably and now want. >> to. >> continue serving our country. >> at a federal level in a federal job. >> we got to make sure we take. >> care of them. >> all right. democratic

congressman derek tran of california, thank you so much for coming on the show this morning. we appreciate it. and consumer confidence last month plummeted dropping to an eight month low far below expectations in the latest sign of a slowing economy. let's bring in the co-anchor of cnbc's squawk box, new york times columnist andrew ross sorkin. joe. i mean, consumer confidence in some ways, when you look at the grand scheme of things, does this match up? >> well, i was going to ask you, andrew, what what is driving this? is it the you know, we always talk about how ceos hate, hate, unpredictability. they don't know about the tariffs. they don't know about this. they don't know about that. i wonder is that is that sort of trickling down to consumers right now who they also see the possibility of tariffs. they see the possibility of interest rates staying high. what's

driving this? >> i think it's a. >> combination of prices remaining high, egg prices. remaining high, for example. >> but i. >> also think that. >> it is. >> this idea that the business community, while maybe not acknowledging it as publicly as they should, is starting to get concerned themselves about the tariff piece about the taxes piece about what's happening geopolitically and just, frankly, how much things have actually stalled out despite all of the things we heard were supposed to happen in november and december. we talked about it so many times now, you know, if you were going to make an investment and the whole idea is people are going to making investments left and right, nobody's making an investment right now because they don't know what to invest in. >> they don't know whether. >> the tariff is going to be on or off. >> they don't know what. >> their tax. >> policy is going to look like. they don't know. >> what the economy is going to look like. if doge. >> has its. way with the country and all of these. folks in the, you know. >> their. >> government employees lose their job. >> that is going to have. >> an economic impact. >> and so.

>> i think all of those. things are stifling. >> the economy. >> i think it's you know. >> it's interesting if you go back and look at what elon musk did say before the. >> election, he. >> said there was going to be pain. now, he suggested it was a temporary pain. because he believes there's rainbows on the other side. we'll see about that. >> but there. >> was always, you know, if. >> you're. >> going to approach the world like this, there's going to be some kind of pain. >> yeah. >> and look. maybe we have to take our medicine. i don't know, but then there's questions about how you take the medicine. >> but nonetheless, i think that's what's. >> really happening here. >> yeah. >> i mean, i mean, what kind of medicine are we taking like these tariffs? i mean, what economists think these tariffs are a good idea. wall street journal editorial board top editorial today. and you've seen it already andrew. trump's tariffs will punish michigan. and they write in part this quote if the goal is to harm the u.s. auto industry and workers and republican prospects in michigan, then by all means go

ahead. mr. president. once again, that is the conservative wall street journal saying this is a bad idea. >> oh, it's already happening. we've talked about it multiple times. ford and some of the. others are hoarding parts. they're hoarding supplies because and that's not because we have tariffs. it's because they're worried that tariffs will come. and that's going to have an additional cost. on those auto makers. interestingly they've already priced that the consumers priced out. so they're going to eat those costs. and that means that their profits are going to go down. and they're even arguing that if this if tariffs come on that you know, this could put them out of business in a year or two. so i think there's a lot of real issues that we've got to think about in terms of how all of this moves going forward. >> so andrew, there's there seems to be a disconnect. and since you you are friends of billionaires and those who run multinational corporations after these interviews, i don't think that i. rather they think i'm their friend. but go for it. and you yourself, you yourself are too big to fail as a wall street reporter. yeah. i'm trying, i'm

trying. so, so here's the disconnect. okay. so we understand there there were going to be a lot of startups. they're going to be a lot of mergers. a lot of people were ready like donald trump was going to go like and boom, they're going to go out of the gate. now we're hearing real concerns. things seem to be slowing down a bit. those mergers aren't coming together because there are too many questions out there, too many unknowns. and yet if you talk to you, if i talk to other friends on wall street who are incredibly connected, who say, for the most part, wall street is still with them, they go, yeah, there's chaos. yeah, it's crazy out there. but man, this needed to be done with government a long time ago. so, so talk about because i keep hearing this from different, different sources. right. really connected on wall street. i think there's a i think it's a mixed view. i think there's two views. i think there there are. >> there are. >> people who demonstrably believe. that we do need to get to this other side. and there is this sort of take your medicine,

let's figure out different policies. let's try to cut government. there is all of that. there are people who genuinely believe that. >> and then there. >> are others. >> who. >> frankly, come on television. >> tell. >> the public, this is great. i'm very. supportive of the president and what he's doing. la la la la la. >> and then. privately say, oh my goodness. >> i don't know what to do because i'm taking pain right now and i don't want to take the pain. you know, interestingly, i know steve cohen, the hedge fund manager who owns the mets, made a fascinating comment last week. most. most hedge fund managers today will never go public and say that. >> what. >> the administration is doing is, is wrong in any way whatsoever. last week he was down in florida at the same event that actually trump was at, where elon musk was at as well, and made the case that he is basically believing that, at least from a stock market perspective, that things are not going to get better, that things had run their course and that he was bearish for the first time. and that was almost a courageous thing to say in this environment.

>> well, we'll see if others continue to act like republican members of congress and say one thing when they're talking to a camera and another thing when they're off the camera. cnbc's andrew ross sorkin, as always. >> andrew. >> thank you so much. and, andrew, you are too big to fail. coming up, ukraine has reportedly agreed to turn over revenue from some of its mineral resources to the united states after intense pressure from donald trump. a short while ago, ukrainian president zelenskyy said he has yet to see a final version and noted that he has been invited to the united states on friday. it's not clear yet whether the agreement agreed includes security guarantees for ukraine. previous versions of the deal that was rejected by ukraine did not. mika. >> all right. joining us now, high representative of the european union and foreign affairs and security policy and vice president of the european commission, carla. she is the former prime minister of estonia and first woman to hold that

position. it's very good to have you on the show. what do you make of this agreement coming together with ukraine? >> well. >> it's good to be on the show first and second. >> we haven't. >> seen the details of this agreement, but ukraine is definitely having. >> or negotiating. >> with. >> the united states. and if they reach agreement, i think. >> it's good. >> prime minister, i have we've all followed your career and we've all. i would just say for me personally, i'm deeply grateful for the strong stand you have taken since this war began. deeply grateful for the personal story that you have shared with the world about your family suffering under stalin. and i ask you this your

feelings, because i know that as an american who who has felt secure since he was born from this country, i was shocked and deeply saddened by the vote in the united nations the other day. i cannot begin to imagine what it felt to you, somebody who's personally felt russian aggression having a massive impact on your family's life. how did you feel when you saw the united states voted with russia and north korea and china? >> well. >> we were we were very surprised. you know, united states of america clearly has some new friends. russia, belorussia, sudan, central africa, north korea. this is very, very interesting group of countries really. so it raises a

lot of questions. and of course, when the. >> question is who. >> is the aggressor and who is the victim, then it's very clear for everybody. >> it was. >> russia that attacked ukraine brutally on the 24th of february 2022. it was not. provoked attack. it was not that. >> you know, it's both sides. >> it's nothing like that. is as black and white as it can be. there's one aggressor and one victim. >> and curious, your thoughts about what happens if we give vladimir putin too good of a peace deal here or a cease fire deal? you know, in 2008, when putin invaded georgia, the united states and the west did nothing. in 2014, when he invaded crimea and ukraine and shot down commercial airliners, the united states and the west did nothing that encouraged him to invade again in 22. if we give him too good of a deal,

does that put estonia, latvia, lithuania, poland in danger of being invaded next? >> well, you already said it. i mean, every every time, you know, we don't react. >> or or. >> you know, somehow give putin what he wants. he's bolder the next time he takes a stronger, stronger steps. and, you know, being here in america, i always think that, you know, if after 911 would have you thought also to negotiate with osama bin laden and offer him something on top of the aggression that he already did to the americans? so, so the question here is that, i mean. we shouldn't give in. they only understand strength, and we have to be strong together with united states and also european. >> union. >> to step up and also defend ourselves. >> because otherwise. >> the. >> security of the. >> world is in, in concern. it's

quite a parallel you made there, but it makes a lot of sense. high representative for foreign affairs and security policy and vice president of the european commission. thank you very much for joining us this morning. please come back. it's great to have you on. and co-founder. thank you. and ceo of own together. foreign leader. thank you as well. coming up, a look at the new dark comedy my dead friend zoe, which follows the journey of a u.s. army veteran who served in afghanistan and is now struggling with ptsd. we'll speak with the cast, including four time oscar nominee ed harris. that's next on morning joe. >> for plant based healthy. >> blood pressure support. >> there's one brand. >> at walmart that stands. >> above the rest. >> it's super beats. >> discover why. >> more cardiologists recommend

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i guess what i'm looking for from you is, i mean, i know how the fire affected me, and there's always a constant fear that who's to say something like that won't happen again? that's fair. we committed to underground, 10,000 miles of electric line. you look back at where we were 10 years ago and we are in a completely different place today, and it's because of how we need to care for our communities and our customers. i hope that's true. [joe] that's my commitment. [ambient noise]

>> 80% off your. >> entire first order at fabletics. >> com as a. >> new vip member. >> each week. >> veteran lawyers andrew. >> weissman and mary mccord break down the latest developments inside the trump administration's department of justice. >> the administration. doesn't necessarily. >> want to be questioned on any. >> of its policy. >> main justice. >> new episodes drop every tuesday. >> there's a lot going on. there's a lot going on every day. you are the only person who has the power to effectively fire mayor eric adams and remove him from this position. are you feeling differently about that responsibility? what are you expecting from the trump administration on ukraine? what do you make of this existential question about whether or not court rulings are going to be treated as optional? why do you think the u.s. government is sending immigrants to guantanamo? watch what's happening in the country and watch what effect it's happening on. politics is politics is how this will turn around. >> grandpa. >> i've been dealing with some things. >> that's what. >> a soldier does. >> we suck it up. anybody else they don't know.

>> first platoon said. >> there's. >> a sniper. >> out there. >> you think i'm scared? >> where are. >> you going? >> zoe. >> you can't tell anyone. >> girl. >> damn, what a name. >> don't say that. what? >> i can joke about the dead. these are my people. >> hey. >> you didn't think. >> have you. >> ever played buck hunter? >> no. >> that's a new record. >> well, damn. >> yeah. >> i'm crazy. crazy enough. >> to say. >> all right, that was a look at the new movie, my dead friend zoe. the film follows a u.s. army veteran named merritt who, after serving in afghanistan, is struggling with ptsd, dealing with the loss of her best friend from her time in the military. while moving back in with her vietnam veteran grandfather. that's a lot. joining us now, costars of my dead friend zoe,

oscar nominated and golden globe winning actor ed harris, and actors natalie morales and sonequa martin-green. they all serve as executive producers on the project as well. i'll go down the line then. ed, i'll start with you. this is based on someone's real life experience. tell us who that is and more about the narrative. the plot. >> well, our dear director, kyle houseman stokes, who wrote the three of us individual letters and sent the script, and we all met with him and his passion and his need to make this film, and his desire to try. >> to. >> save some lives. it's based on his life, like he said, like 93%. he lost a couple good buddies when he came back from iraq. and so he really wanted to make this film and really in hopes that it would help some people get some help. so we're all said to be part what's so incredible about this film,

natalie, is that 90% of the actors i understand that served are veterans. it was written and directed by a veteran. and so this isn't just this isn't just somebody who dreamed a concept up. this is somebody who suffered the way that so many veterans are suffering still today. talk, talk about that. >> yeah. >> you know. >> i wish. >> kyle was here. to talk about his his own story, but yes, kyle houseman stokes. >> was a veteran. >> served in the army. and this story is about his own experiences. >> post post. >> getting home, you know and his friends that he lost in the war. so sonequa and i were. avatars for him and his friends, essentially. and it really meant a lot to us to be a part of that. but i. >> do also. >> want to say that even though this film is. about veterans, it's also for everyone. it's not. it's about people, really.

that's right. >> sonequa, you play merritt. talk to me about what that was like. and also just sort of what you brought to this film. >> it's it was such a tremendously. illuminating experience. you know. >> being able to tell the story like. >> ed and natalie. >> you know, have been saying, you know, kyle. was a staff sergeant, bronze star. >> you know. >> he he's he's made a. >> business of saving lives. he was. >> doing it before he did this film and. >> is. continuing that mission to save. >> lives with this film. and so i, i just. >> have. >> such profound respect for him. we all do. and he decided. >> to. have a black woman. >> tell his story. >> and a cuban. >> woman tell. >> his friends stories. you know, serve as, as, as a, as proxy. >> for his battle buddies. >> and so it was a. >> very complicated. >> challenging, fulfilling, beautiful, sort of irresistibly

touching experience. it was collaborative. we were a. >> family, and. >> we all. >> were all. >> honored to stand. >> with him. >> and like. natalie said, too, it isn't just for veterans. it is. it is a very specific story. >> but everyone, anyone can, can relate. to this kind of pain. >> guilt. >> shame, survivor's remorse, you know, mental health issues, everybody can relate. so we hope that people watch it and grow. >> from it. talk about it. >> and also it's. >> a comedy. >> that's true. >> it wasn't funny. >> i was going to say. >> i was. >> going to say and you could see it. it jumps off the screen that that yeah, you tackled serious subjects, but it's also it's a dark comedy and there's that one moment in there and i can't wait to watch the fraught

relationship between merritt and you, where merritt is trying to open up to your character who is a vietnam vet. and your response is basically, yeah, suck it up. and so that looks. >> like that's. >> again, that's a relationship a lot of people can probably relate to. yeah. this seems a little bit more involved than that, joe. but yeah, it does come down to. >> that at one point. >> yeah. and you know, it's funny. it's an entertaining film. i mean, i think people we had a screening the other night at the premiere and people really dig it. it just it's really a good film. >> you know, i look forward to it. and you're also starring in another movie. you're a little busy right now, coming out later this week. it's entitled riffraff and features a star studded cast of yourself, bill murray, jennifer coolidge, gabrielle union, pete davidson and lewis pullman. tell us about this. >> yeah, well, we shot it in jersey. >> beginning last. >> year, and dia de montijo was the director i had met at the

sundance film lab years ago. he was one of the fellows. i go out there as an advisor every summer and sent me the script. and it's riotous, it's pretty. funny and it's dark and bloody, and i think people are going to dig it. >> we'll see. >> how it goes. >> okay. well, for now, the new movie, my dead friend zoe is in theaters this friday. don't miss it. actors and executive producers ed harris, natalie morales, and sonequa martin-green. thank you all very much. and also, riff raff will be in theaters starting friday. riff raff, i love it. that does it for us this morning. ana cabrera picks up the coverage cabrera picks up the coverage after a short break. baby: liberty! mom: liberty mutual is all she talks about since we saved hundreds by bundling our home and auto insurance. baby: liberty! biberty: hey kid, it's pronounced "biberty." baby: liberty! biberty: biberty! baby: liberty! biberty: biberty! baby: liberty!

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