transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:01] By the way, with Iran, how long are you willing to wait until you get a unified response?

Speaker 2:
[00:05] Don't rush me, Jeff. I hope the fake news, people like you, I hope the fake news are gonna be able to write about it accurately because when you say, oh, they're fighting very well, they're not fighting well, they've been obliterated, Jeff, obliterated. If you read the New York Times, the failing New York Times, subscriptions are way down, as you know. We have no pressure, it's only guys like you with a question like that about what's your time.

Speaker 3:
[00:26] What do you say to the American people who question how much longer this will take? Obviously, you know that they are having higher prices.

Speaker 2:
[00:33] You are such a disgrace. Do you know what I just said?

Speaker 1:
[00:35] So if you're asking for more time to sort out negotiations with them on…

Speaker 2:
[00:39] I'm not asking for more time. I'm not asking for them. No, it's somewhat time. I'm just… I'm not asking anybody for more time. The stock market is at an all-time high right now. I thought it would have been down 20, 25 percent. When we… Wait, can I finish my question, wise guy?

Speaker 4:
[00:56] Wow, I'll tell you, tomorrow night's White House Correspondent, Stinner Willie, I kind of think… look at it as the same kind of like… the end of It's a Wonderful Life where everybody… he gets Zuzu's petals and they get around the Christmas tree and they're singing all the things. I mean, this is going to be a hoot. The president getting together with a group of people that he loves and admires as much as he loves and admires the press.

Speaker 5:
[01:22] Deep respect. And so many members of his cabinet who share his respect for the press will be seated at the table in the room that night. I mean, the fragility on display in the last two clips, the end, what Sam Stein just showed of the president going out of his way to say that his crowds were bigger than those for Martin Luther King during the I Have a Dream speech. And then the inability, those were not gotcha questions in the Oval Office about the war with Iran. Those were very basic questions about where the war is headed and a timeline that he's been setting timelines again and again, two weeks, four to six weeks. It doesn't inspire confidence. Let's just say that.

Speaker 4:
[01:57] Well, yeah, and you know, the questions are really important questions and they're questions that not only we need to hear domestically, but also that the Iranians need to hear instead of the president popping off and asking like they asked a ridiculous question. I mean, it's very important for Americans to understand, for the Iranians to understand that the president's going to stay in this for as long as it takes to get the deal that America and the world needs or to say he's going to come home. Those are the most legitimate questions ever. And I think it really just suggests that that he's now been so insulated inside the White House that even questions like that seem unfair because he's got people in the cabinet coming up to him every second of every day and the advisors telling him every day how great he is. You're wonderful, sir. Yes, sir. This is going perfectly, sir. Sir, this is so great. And so he's asked, seriously, is I think a basic question, as you said, and also a very important question, and he's talking about fake news in the New York Times subscriptions. I will just say, as a matter of fact, the New York Times is doing as well or better than they ever have. They are one media outlet that hasn't capitulated to this administration, and they're being rewarded for it in a pretty extraordinary way by 2026 standards. The Washington Post, not so much. The Wall Street Journal, owned by Rupert Murdoch, a conservative newspaper on the editorial pages, doing extraordinarily well because they are still a conservative editorial page, but a conservative editorial page that has taken this administration to task time and time again when it's deserved. We're going to play for you more of the president's comments, as he seems to have given up on any timeline for ending the war with Iran, I will say it's a good thing that he's not rushing for the exits while the Iranians are saying they're not going to negotiate. Keep the blockade up at least for a little while longer. Meanwhile, there's some positive news tied to the Middle East after Israel and Lebanon agreed to extend their ceasefire for more than three weeks, but also more terrible killings coming out of that country, especially with members of the media. We're going to talk about that. Plus, we're going to go through the surprising arrest of a soldier who's accused of using classified information to win hundreds of thousands of dollars through an online betting market. I'm telling you, this is so corrosive. The betting, the legalized betting, the legalized marijuana, the legalized this, legalized that, that they, you know, that they're the the administration yesterday was announcing it's like guard rails are off and and this is coming from a so called conservative administration. There's nothing and I've been saying this for a decade, conservative, nothing conservative about this. It's all radicalism. Also with us on this happy Friday, we hope you're having a wonderful Friday. The co-host of our 9AM HOUR, staff writer at the Atlantic, Jonathan LaMere, a Boston Red Sox fan. TJ, we really need, we really need the cartoon trombone that anytime we say the Boston Red Sox this year, we need the wah wah wah. So if you can, if you can dial that up, because I know if I said Biff Pokeroba, for instance, we would have a picture of Biff Pokeroba's baseball card popping up. But we need the Red Sox trombone. There's Biff right there in Atlanta's stellar 1970s spring training facilities, Willie, which throughout the 1970s, a little late TJ, the Braves would lose 100 games a year. Can't figure out why with the training facility they have. We also have managing editor. Now TJ, here's your chance. We have managing editor of the Bullwark, Sam Stein. Sam is such a Red Sox fan that we actually went to game six of the 2013 World Series, but he's a Red Sox fan now. There you go. I think we need a third one. And finally, we have co-founder, CEO, grand poobah of Axios, Jim Van Dy. Jim has nothing to be sad about today. All going well. So, Willie, we're going to get into Iran. There's so much to talk about in Iran, but also so much to discuss right now about where the president's standing, not only with Democrats, but mainly with independents and even some Republicans. There was a Fox News poll out yesterday that shows the single issue that matters most to Americans is the single issue where Republicans are doing the poorest.

Speaker 5:
[07:13] And it's tied to the war. The latest Fox News poll shows Americans growing increasingly pessimistic about the state of the US economy. 70%, 7-0, believe the economy is getting worse. That's up 15 points from this time last year. Matches a previous record high. Twice as many say the president's policies are hurting the economy as opposed to helping. And a majority say grocery and gas prices along with health care and housing costs are a major problem. On the top issues, a combined 43% cite inflation. Affordability or the economy is their top concern. The issue of immigration trailing far behind there. So Jonathan Lemire, obviously this is directly tied to the war, the inflation that's come in just the last eight or nine weeks or so as a result of the Strait of Hormuz being closed, which Donald Trump says the United States is in complete control of the Strait of Hormuz. That's objectively not true. He said that yesterday. This is a problem, not just the morass that has become the war, but the domestic problems that come with it.

Speaker 6:
[08:12] No question. And to Joe's point, there are many analysts who say, yes, it's good that President Trump isn't cutting and running from the war in Iran because of the mess it would leave behind and leave Iran fully in control of the Strait of Hormuz. But something has to give. And he can talk as much as he wants about how, well, we use it less. And it's true. American ships use it less than others. But the energy economy is a global economy. The oil market is a global market. We're all feeling it. It's not just energy. We're seeing prices rise across the board. And that poll suggests people are deeply unhappy. And we also shouldn't forget, of course, that when Trump won in 2024, that was his signature promise. I'm going to bring prices down. And he's done exactly the opposite here. And he also, by focusing on the sort of international adventurism, Jim Vanahy seems like he's out of touch. And I think that's what these polls reflect as well, that Democrats, independents, and even we're seeing some Republicans growing dissatisfied with his stewardship of the nation, saying what he cares about. And that is clearly enriching himself and his family and also clearly trying to create a legacy, whether that's redrawing the world's maps or building ridiculous arches in Washington, DC., he cares about those things and not the things that actually matter to our lives.

Speaker 7:
[09:26] Yeah. And you need to put the polls in some context. It's almost impossible in modern polling, given the ideological impulses of base voters to get much lower than he is in terms of his unfavorable ratings, but also how unpopular he is when it comes to the economy, when it comes to inflation, even when it comes to the non-border enforcement part of immigration. He is very, very low, still has Republicans, most Republicans with him, but that's even sinking. And I think the biggest alarm for him and for Republicans is they look at the House map and it looks like almost impossible for them to keep control of the House. They look at the Senate and they start to look at states like Iowa, Ohio, Alaska, Texas, Maine, all which should be very, very winnable, maybe not even competitive, and they all look suddenly in danger. To me, the most interesting thing is talking to people around the president. Their language and body language has changed markedly in the last two months. They know they're in a huge hole and it's going to be really, really hard to get out of it. They don't even really defend it anymore. They understand that we're here by a series of choices that the president made by himself. How to prosecute this war was his choice. To do tariffs the way he did was his choice. To unleash ICE into neighborhoods before ICE was properly trained to do it was his choice. To then promote that in a very chest thumping type of way was his choice. And now Republicans are having to pay for that. And I don't think you're going to see Republicans in Congress necessarily like turn on him in force. But I can tell you right now there's a tremendous amount of pressure on the people around the president to change this cabinet, to get some more people in here, some fresh blood, some clear thinking. Or they worry they're just going to get wiped out. And as we're reporting this morning, day one, Democrats will impeach him. I don't think he cares that much. He's been impeached before. He'll survive it in the Senate. But that's the fate. And he can he can ignore the subpoenas. Oh, his friends and family can't. All those companies can't. Like, he's coming for a political hell, and that's going to be tough.

Speaker 4:
[11:38] Well, you know, it's going to be difficult on one side of it. On the other side of it, Donald Trump even told me after he got elected that he understands that it was all the trials, it was the perceived political persecution that got him elected president. He said, you know, they only charged me with one crime, I'd be in big trouble right now. But they came after me time and time again. And I wonder, Jim, if there's not a part of him that's thinking, okay, I'll be much better fighting against a Democratic Congress where they're trying to impeach me and they'll never succeed, I'll win there too, and my numbers will go up. So I'm just wondering, because at this point, it would seem that Donald Trump in the past would have backed down and would have figured out a way to go into Iran for two weeks and come out. Now, the further we get into this war, and I will say strategically, there are a lot of our allies in the region, the UAE, the Saudis, others, that are glad he's staying in there and not cutting and running because that would even be a bigger long-term disaster. But does it, I'm just curious, does it seem to you that he actually is focused more on his legacy of being the one president that can do what seven other presidents have not been able to do with Iran since 1979, and if he loses the midterms, okay, they're going to impeach him again once, twice, three times, and he's going to win all of those, and his numbers are going to go up?

Speaker 7:
[13:13] I just don't think that's how he thinks. I've seen no evidence whatsoever that he spends time thinking about his legacy or even thinking about one or two weeks from now. He's very reactive to what's sitting in front of him and where he can use the powers of the presidency to do what he wants to do on his term or just pick up the phone and try to shape a public debate, public discussion usually around him. You're definitely right that he's probably in a better political position when he's fighting Democrats who are coming at him from a thousand directions. I would say that strategy works better when the economy is strong and when people feel like prices are coming down, unemployment is low, that their prospects of getting better pay and a better job are higher. I think that is a big problem. Jonathan Lumiere talked about it earlier. Remember, the central promise of this presidency is, I'm going to focus on the working class, I'm going to tame inflation, and we're not going to go into foreign wars. None of those have happened. That's not a political statement. That's an empirical statement. Go down that list. It's absolutely true. And that's why he's in the political jam that he's in. And now his political jam is a Republican political jam. And I think it's going to be really hard to extricate yourself. Even if you get out of this war, the second order consequences of what's happened in the Gulf and what's happened in that region, that's going to, that's years. That's going to affect oil prices for years. It's going to affect Middle East infrastructure building for years. It's going to affect our own economy for years. The New York Times has some wonderful reporting by Jonathan Swan this morning just about how much munitions we've blown through in the Middle East. And we've blown through so much of the munitions that government officials think it might be impossible for us to defend Taiwan and China.

Speaker 4:
[14:45] Can I ask you this question? Jim. Can I ask you a question on this? How do we spend trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars on defense through the years? How do we spend more money than on defense in maybe the next 14, 15 countries on the planet? How do we do that and then run out of munitions when we fight a one month war, when we give munitions? You know, we heard a lot of this when we were giving munitions to Ukraine last year in the year. Oh, we're running short on munitions. Really? We're building this advanced weaponry that's costing hundreds of billions of dollars and we can't even fight a war against Iran for a month or so without getting reports that we're running out of munitions. How does that happen?

Speaker 7:
[15:40] The way it happens is one of the most important stories in the world today, which is because of technology, you can build a drone at $25,000 to $75,000 a pop, and then it allows the Ukrainians to fight Russia to a draw so far, and it allows Iran to be able to go to war with America and wreak havoc not just on our missiles, but also on our allies. And they're spending $25,000 to $75,000 a pop. We're often shooting at these drones or having to defend ourselves with things that take years and years and years to produce, missiles that cost millions and millions of dollars. It's called asymmetry. And that asymmetry that you're seeing in warfare is now going to unfold across business. It's going to go to geopolitics. You just don't necessarily need big size and might. And we have an amazing military. We have amazing weaponry. We have intelligence that would knock the socks off of the Chinese and any other company that could, any other country that could look at it. It just changes the equation. And the Iranians aren't stupid. They stockpiled that. They watch the Ukrainians do this. And so like, hey, we'll stockpile a ton of these low-cost drones. We'll wreak havoc. And we'll try to use asymmetry to give us power so that the next time the US or Israel thinks about striking us, they won't do it because they're going to see the hell that we can unleash in the strait and therefore unleash on the world economy.

Speaker 4:
[16:58] Yeah, and this is so important to underline. We have, I saw an important Washington newsletter this morning, a recitation of all the remarkable military achievements we've done. Just unbelievable, extraordinary success, one, two, three, four, five, seven. And I keep going back to, you know, we've degraded the Iranians' ability to fire missiles. We've degraded the Iranians' material to do this. It reminds me of what a CIA analyst who knows Iran probably better than anybody in the government told me weeks ago. He says, when I hear them talking about the percentages of weaponry that they've destroyed during this war, it reminds me of the body count numbers that we would get in Vietnam. Just not relevant in Sam Stein. Militarily, the United States did extraordinarily well in Vietnam. Militarily, the United States did extraordinarily well in destroying targets in Iraq. We've done extraordinarily well in Libya. We've done extraordinarily well time and time again. Our military's been able to do what our military's needed to do. But translating that into political victory, translating that into achievable gains, that's just not happening. And what Jim points out is that this Iranian regime can survive one military strike after another. They can even survive being choked off financially with a blockade because how much money do they need to tie up the Strait of Hormuz? This is just like the Houthis a year ago tied up the Red Sea.

Speaker 8:
[18:41] Yeah, and this is sort of why Trump's actions have been a bit perplexing because everything we knew about Trump prior to him coming back the second time in office was that he didn't want to do this type of foreign interventionism. That he looked at what happened in Iraq and said that was foolish, that he obviously skipped Vietnam, but he understood the history of Vietnam. And look, early on, the Venezuela operation was sort of a template for what was supposed to happen, right? In, out, new leader, don't get messy, done in a couple of days and have your objective or claim that your objective has been achieved. And that didn't happen here. And it is a bit surprising that he didn't try to get it off of him early, early on, say that the goals have been accomplished, that you degraded the regime, that you've set them back, that they couldn't be regional bad actors for a while, and that the nuclear ambitions were pushed back as well. But that did not happen here. And so now we're here, we're six weeks later, and honestly, if we went around the table and we asked to a person, what do you think the objectives are for the American government vis-a-vis Iran? I wouldn't be shocked if we had five, four or five different answers. It's hard to understand what the long-term objectives are here. Is it stopping their nuclear program? Is it regime change? Is it opening up the strait? Is it stopping their ability to cause chaos in the Middle East? It's not clear to me. And if you don't have clear objectives, it's very difficult to have an off-ramp. Finally, just to tie it back into the original part of the article, of the segment, which is how does Trump get back on track? How does he focus? How can he improve his numbers electorally? And we put those Fox numbers up about just how poor the public views his economic performance. Obviously, a lot of that is tied to what's happening in Iran. As Willie noted, the inflation from the closure of the Straits is affecting not just oil prices, but everything, plastic prices and food prices and shipping prices and the cost of airline fees and so on and so forth. And that's going to impact people. But as Jim notes, some of this is just Trump himself, right? So yesterday, he's trying to do an event on health care costs, and he's got something to announce about a pharmaceutical company striking a deal with him to lower prescription drug prices. It's the type of event that any president would want to just slam out of the park, easy. And he spent 10 minutes talking about the reflecting pool and how he's going to refurbish it, and what color he's going to paint it. And I just think his inability to keep attention and focus on things that matter, including this war, is really hampering this administration in ways that they don't want to acknowledge.

Speaker 5:
[21:16] And he seems frustrated that it had wrapped up sooner. Let's bring to the conversation former spokesperson for the US. Mission to the UN., Hagar Shamali. She also worked at the National Security Council and the Treasury Department. Want to get into the Lebanon and Israeli extension of the ceasefire there, but also get you in on this conversation about the New York Times report about the depleted munitions and that people inside the Pentagon are saying that we are at critically low levels. You have some skepticism about that report.

Speaker 9:
[21:45] Well, yeah, and that's because I've worked on wars when I was in the US government, and there is a level of combat readiness that the United States government is required to maintain, to protect our own homeland. That's normal, that's standard. And we've heard this claim before, right, when we were heavily arming the Ukrainians. We also heard the same claim. Oh, we're depleting our stockpiles. We can't do it anymore. And yet we were able to somehow miraculously and still, by the way, be able to then give arms to Israel after October 7. And by the way, now be involved in Iran. That's not magic. That's because we maintain certain, excuse me, we maintain certain stockpiles that we have to maintain for our own combat readiness. But also we are very easily able to ramp up production, that we did ramp up production, more was invested. And I'm just not as worried about it. Yes, we need to keep an eye on it. But you have thousands of military officials, not political, but military rank and file who work on this for a living. And they know very well how to do this.

Speaker 5:
[22:47] That's a good point. Let's move to the peace talks that took place in Washington yesterday. Lebanon and Israel elevated the president being involved directly in them. What was your takeaway? Good signs of progress there.

Speaker 9:
[22:59] Yes, very good signs of progress. Certainly from all three sides. I work on this issue very intimately. And what's interesting is, by the way, that meeting was fairly at the last minute moved to the White House and hosted by President Trump himself. That was not the original plan. And so it's exciting because you see the White House prioritizing this, the reason for which is likely because the president sees a potential win here, an opportunity, something that they can prioritize this because there's something good to come out of it. It's a good piece of news, particularly with what's going on in Iran. Some of the highlights I thought that were really important was one, that the president invited Lebanese President Aoun and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to the White House. This is the second time he says that. I think that's amazing. I do think it will eventually happen. It would be historic. But the fact that he's going right for it. The second is that he talked about this law in Lebanon that prohibits Lebanese from even speaking to Israelis. And he said, you know, no, that's got to go. We got to get rid of that. That is one of the biggest impediments to peace. And the third and the most important is that he highlighted, and he used, I thought these words were carefully calibrated, where he said, we're going to help Lebanon protect itself against Hezbollah. And that's the uniting factor here that makes these talks different than any moment in time. Why they're so historic and significant is the fact that you have two partners genuinely at the table who want a peace deal. Why? Because they see Hezbollah together as an enemy, Hezbollah as an Iranian entity, using Lebanon's land as a war launch pad. And so those words were chosen very carefully, right? We're in this together against Hezbollah. And I think that's going to be the theme going on.

Speaker 6:
[24:36] Yeah, some real signs of progress, to be sure. I think you're right, Trump is eager for a win, perhaps even a Nobel Peace Prize. Let's talk, though, about, we know that Iran insisted that there be a ceasefire in that conflict, the Israel-Lebanon conflict, before negotiations could continue. So, so far, that's held. The other material, the other stuff has not, most particularly the US naval blockade, Tehran, saying that has to go before we talk again. So perhaps it's connected to what we're seeing in this Lebanon talks or not. But if you could forecast, where does this go right now in terms of the Iran war? Because it does seem to be a pain threshold question. And right now the question is, who can take more? And it seems to be a very split answer.

Speaker 9:
[25:14] Yeah, there's a lot in there. First, you're right, on the Iranian side, they are trying to buy time. Time for them is everything. If they have time, they have time to rebuild, to restock, to reorganize. One of the things that Trump did note in the extension for the ceasefire is that, and he's not wrong on this, is the fact that the Iranian regime is now fractured and doesn't really know who's exactly leading. And it is actually fractured there. There's a lot of infighting, a lot of suspicion among them. And now, I don't love that he said that publicly as a point of negotiation because the Iranians view that as him blinking. But nonetheless, it is true that they are fractured, they are still trying to buy time, and Trump clearly does want a deal. We do see that as well. At the same time, you have this question of the blockade. Blockades like any financial measure, and I can tell you, because I worked in sanctions for a long time, they generally take time to work. They do work, but they take time. They're not immediate. And the Iranian regime, while it can sustain a lot of pain and financial pressure, there is going to be a point at which they're going to— they're not going to be able to pay their soldiers. And I always say this, that dictators are only as strong as their militaries are loyal. And if they're not being able to put food on the table, they're not going to be loyal for a while. That has its own risks, by the way, because it could lead to a military coup. Very tenuous situation. Now, on Lebanon, because you put it in context, while I'm glad that these tracks are being pursued very separately, and the administration is very careful to make that clear because they don't want to imply that Iran has any say in Lebanon— that's the crux of this, right? And I personally like that, too. I would be remiss if I didn't mention that these peace talks are happening in the context of Iran, and the Trump administration does not want Lebanon to be a sore spot while talks in Islamabad are happening.

Speaker 5:
[27:05] Former spokesperson for the US. Mission to the United Nations, Hagar Shamali. Always great to have your expertise here, Hagar. Thanks so much.

Speaker 9:
[27:11] Thanks.

Speaker 5:
[27:12] Still ahead on Morning Joe, US soldiers facing charges after being accused of using insider information to make a winning bet on the capture of Nicolas Maduro. Made money on it. We'll talk about that and the growing pattern of some well-timed trades during Trump's second term. And as we go to break, a quick look at the travelers' forecast this morning from AccuWeather's Bernie Rayno. Bernie, how's it looking out there?

Speaker 10:
[27:36] Willie, it's a cooler Friday along the eastern seaboard, your exclusive AccuWeather forecast. Back into the 50s, despite sunshine, Portland, Boston, New York City, 65. Still warm though, Indianapolis to Pittsburgh, spotty thunderstorms could impact the NFL draft in Pittsburgh here this evening as rain will be arriving late. Bone dry, Florida's southeast, spotty thunderstorm in Dallas. If you're doing any traveling, not too many problems today along east coast. To help you make the best decisions and be more in the know, download the AccuWeather app today. Enjoy the weekend. Enjoy the NFL draft and the view.

Speaker 5:
[28:40] A US Special Forces soldier involved in the operation to capture Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has been charged with insider trading. The New York Federal Prosecutor's Office says, Gannon Ken Van Dyke placed bets on the prediction market site PolyMarket in the week leading up to the operation. The indictment alleges he wagered about $33,000 and ultimately won almost $410,000. The Justice Department is charging the 38-year-old with unlawful use of confidential government information and commodities fraud among a number of other charges. He faces a long prison sentence if convicted. President Trump was asked about prediction markets in general yesterday.

Speaker 11:
[29:23] Are you concerned that federal employees are betting on these prediction markets and potentially getting rich?

Speaker 2:
[29:29] Well, I don't know about it, but was he betting that they would get him or they wouldn't get him?

Speaker 11:
[29:34] It sounds like he was betting on his removal from office, that Maduro would be removed. It sounds like he was involved in the operation.

Speaker 2:
[29:41] That's like Pete Rose betting on his own team. It's a little like Pete Rose. They kept him out of the Hall of Fame because he bet on his own team. Now, if he bet against his team, that would be no good, but he bet on his own team. I'll look into it. The whole world, unfortunately, has become somewhat of a casino. And you look at what's going on all over the world, in Europe and every place they're doing these betting things. I was never much in favor of it. I don't like it conceptually, but it is what it is. No, I think that I'm not happy with any of this, but they have all these different sites. They have predictive markets. It's a crazy world. It's a much different world than it was.

Speaker 5:
[30:23] Pete Rose making a cameo. This comes as Cal-She suspended three political candidates Wednesday for betting on their own races. There's also increased scrutiny over these platforms after several well-timed bets were placed prior to the US Iran ceasefire. Joe, the president is right that this is clearly a problem. Just interesting that he says he's against betting on the man who ran casinos for much of his life in Atlantic City. But there is no doubt this case of the US Special Forces soldier, the most prominent of them most recently, but this is going on all over the place. And we're seeing charges, accusations, whispers of it inside the Trump administration on other things as well.

Speaker 4:
[31:00] Yeah. I mean, and Jim Vande Hei, it's, again, I can't believe, and we mentioned this weeks ago, the stupidity of people in the administration connected to the administration, connected to decision making, that are passing along information, apparently, to people on Wall Street, or making massive, massive bets before invasions, before peace plans, before announcements of ceasefires, and people getting extraordinarily wealthy. It's as if they think they're operating in 1957 instead of 2026, where everything can be traced. Everything can be traced. Every wager can be traced. And I guess, you know, I guess this is just a natural outcome of a country that has just been swallowed up by gambling. And it is, President Reagan Casinas is fascinating. He thinks it's a problem. I certainly think it's a problem, a problem for, you know, an entire new, you know, entire generation of people who are going to be betting on everything.

Speaker 7:
[32:13] Well, it may be like leaving your kids home for the weekend with a fully stocked bar, unsupervised, and think, ah, they're not going to drink. I mean, if you allow people to gamble anonymously on anything at any time from anywhere, look what you get. This is what you're getting. And Mike and I are writing about this next week, this idea, like we're scaling sin. Like, and again, I'm not here to judge people, but like suddenly you can get high wherever you want to get. Soon you're going to be able to do mushrooms. You can gamble on anything. Get your Robin Hood hat, gamble on the markets. You go down the list and you give all of these things to people in an unsupervised, lightly regulated environment. And this is what you get. And you're hitting on the part that is just an outrageous level of corruption. People should be unbelievably pissed if there are people in this government or near this government that are bedding on war, bedding on activity based on inside information. It's no different than the crap that's happening on Capitol Hill, where members of Congress are allowed to buy and sell stocks based on information that they're getting from a paycheck that you gave them to put them on Capitol Hill to do your work. And instead, they're padding their pockets. That's where people should be losing their marbles. It's all nuts and people have every right to rebel against it.

Speaker 8:
[33:27] I agree with that. It's crazy. I've been looking on these Cauchy sites and Polymarket sites just since we did this segment because I was genuinely wondering if there were bets about whether this guy who bet on the Maduro raid would get a pardon. Unfortunately, not yet bettable, but there are things like, will Trump be photographed every day this week? You can bet on that. I mean, it's absurd stuff. And look, this is not, I mean, some of what Jim was talking about, it's not a kind of fun, honestly, drinking and gambling. But the truth is, is that this is going to end up with a lot of people in bad situations, not to mention all the insider trading, but gambling is an addiction. People are going to lose their life savings if they haven't already. We've already seen huge problems, obviously, in the NBA. If you remember, we started the season with a coach being arrested for gambling. This is a huge problem, and it's only going to get worse in politics too. And there seems to be zero appetite to actually try to put some sort of regulatory framework around this stuff.

Speaker 6:
[34:29] Yeah, it came too fast. We're not ready. There's no regulatory framework for this, not yet. And we have seen lots of suspicious bets, time to Pentagon activities, time to move the administration is made, lots of speculation as to who's profiting off of that. And Willie, on this one here again, this is classified information that was used. And yes, that mission went smashingly well. And President Trump even made a joke about it with about Pete Rose yesterday. But like this is the kind of thing that has real consequences and could someday really lead to a lot of danger for people.

Speaker 5:
[35:01] Yeah, you're right. It's completely unregulated. Then there's the other category of Eric Trump yesterday, talking on Fox News about the contract. He won somehow with the Pentagon. There's a lot going on in that swamp. Jim, you have a new piece out for Axios titled A Letter to Our Kids on Handling the Coming Hurricane of Change. In it, Jim writes this, Hey kid, we gotta talk. You're not behind, you're early. Nobody knows what the hell they're doing with AI yet. Not your professors, not your boss, not your friends. They simply know what you do. This is a big, perhaps, discovery of electricity big. The people who thrive in the next decade won't be the smartest or first to master it. They'll be the ones who use it smartly for their specific job. That lane is still wide open. It can still be you. It's fine to be skeptical or even a little scared of AI. It's not okay to ignore it. It would be like refusing to use the Internet. Jim, you've been so smart and focused on the issue of artificial intelligence, especially just kind of talking to another generation. This is the second you wrote a similar letter earlier. What is your message, not just to young people, but to people who are perhaps afraid of this technology, that it's not for them, they don't know how to use it, so they're going to kind of move on and look the other way?

Speaker 7:
[36:17] Yeah, I mean, we all either have kids or we don't have people who have kids, and you look at the data we've written this week about this, kids now think they're not going to get a good job, like 20% are confident about the job market. A couple years ago, that number was consistently 60% to 70%. They're scared as hell about AI and what it's going to do to their life and due to their job prospects. I get inundated with notes and calls from parents who are like, what do I even tell my kid? And that's why we ended up writing this piece. And what you have to say is like, this is, you are living history. We've talked about it today. The stuff that's happening at the presidential level, really a lot of this has not happened in 250 years. You have a technology that, I write, could be as big as electricity. Stuff like this doesn't come around every two or three years. It comes around every 100 years, every 200 years. And then you think about all the ways that we can have our mind either informed or manipulated by staring at our phones. So you are literally living history. And what I always try to tell people is like, one, especially with the new technology of AI, is stop ignoring it. Figure out how to use it for the job that you have. Figure out how to make it a force multiplier for the things that you care about. I can guarantee you as someone who runs a company and hires people, you have no chance whatsoever of getting a job a year from now if you're not super proficient in integrating it into your work. And for people who are worried, oh man, I made the wrong decision in college. Like, my whole college career was about making bad decisions. And most of us end up doing something different than what we went to school for. So you can adapt. And I think the principles that got all of us where we are, work hard, be a good colleague, be the first person in, last person to leave. A lot of those things that aren't really taught anymore still matter. And if you apply those to whatever you're doing, you're going to be fine and the world still has, it's like it's bountiful in terms of opportunity. It's just, it's a tough time and we just have to acknowledge that and maybe give people a couple tools to navigate it.

Speaker 4:
[38:11] Well, and Jim, let's talk to parents right now that are watching, because we're all parents. I've got four kids. You've got children. Let's talk to parents right now who may be hearing the wrong thing. So you've got to be, you know, you've got to be proficient in AI, which means you need to be, you know, you need to know coding. You need to know this. You need to know that. It's actually, just my instinct is it's just the opposite. Jensen Wang, the CEO and founder of NVIDIA. I said some time ago, you know, don't teach your kids coding. We've got that now, AI, it codes for us. You know, we're actually at a point now where a worthless degree like I had in liberal arts is actually, I personally think, I think it prepares you more. There's one of my favorite books is a book called Range. It says, don't hyper focus on this area of study or that area of study. Have extraordinary range. Don't be like Tiger Woods as a six month old son, that dad puts a golf club in and that worked for Tiger. He became extraordinary. But instead, look at the lesson of other tennis players who did a thousand different sports, and then they went out and played tennis, and Roger Federer, his mother wouldn't even teach him because he was such a bad student at five years old. So he learned to play basketball. He learned to skateboard. He learned to play soccer. He learned to play all these different sports, and finally when he was 15, his mom said, okay, you're ready to learn tennis. And Federer, because he knew how to pass a ball and anticipate in basketball, knew where the shot was coming, knew how to move, knew how to make the right angles, and he had range. And I think so many people are seeing AI, they're getting scared of AI thinking, oh, okay, my child needs to go into computer program. No, I think it's just the opposite. You're going to have that in front of you. You need a wide liberal arts degree or some degree where you have extraordinary range as a generalist and say, okay, this situation calls for this prompt. This situation calls for me using AI in a completely different way. This, I got to think out of the box here and use AI in yet another way when we're facing this project. That's at least sort of my takeaway right now, is people are looking at this technology in the wrong way. You need to have people who are flexible, who can move with the situation and can use the tools to do a lot of this heavy lifting for them, so they can think more strategically.

Speaker 7:
[40:55] Yeah, I think you're exactly right. It's a hybrid. You need to learn how to think, you need to learn how to work, but you also need to learn how to apply this technology to the work that you ultimately choose to do. Being blunt, I think a lot of schools are misleading your children in a big way. I've now spoken on a ton of different college campuses, and to be honest, I'm horrified at what they're being taught. They're just being taught to either ignore AI, don't use it to cheat, which you shouldn't use it to cheat, but they're not being thought about like, oh my God, think about all the ethical dilemmas that you're gonna have to wrestle with, and they're not being taught basic skills of how to take this technology and utilize it once you're in the workforce. The idea of academia is to both train the mind, open the mind, but also equip you for the workforce. And if you do those two things, if you learn to think creatively, if you learn to think distinctively, and you learn how to then work and utilize these tools at it, you're going to be fine. Yes, unemployment for youth is higher than you would want it to be, but overall, unemployment is at a historic low, almost a 50 year low. There's still more opportunity in this country than there is in almost any other country. There's a lot more good than people realize. However, you got to get in the damn game and do it. Any time wasted whining or worrying is time where someone else is going to leapfrog you. And I really think if we as parents can get that into our kids' heads, they will be fine. And they're the ones who are going to figure all of this stuff out, like our other generations have figured out previous technologies and adaptations.

Speaker 5:
[42:23] As always, you got to read Jim Vande Hei, his new piece available to read online right now. He's the CEO and co-founder of Axios. Jim, thanks so much as always. Sam Stein, thank you as well. Nice work on way too early, bud. Coming up, a Justice Department watchdog is launching a new investigation into the DOJ's compliance with the Epstein Files Transparency Act. Remember that? MS NOW reporter, legal reporter Lisa Rubin joins us next to discuss the significance of that and what she's hearing from Epstein survivors. Morning Joe is coming right back. Boy, is that a beautiful live picture just before the top of the hour, on a Friday morning, looking down the mall in Washington from the top of the Washington mine.

Speaker 6:
[43:16] You know what it needs is a gigantic arch spoiling that view just behind the Lincoln Memorial.

Speaker 5:
[43:21] Just you wait, it's coming, John. So the Justice Department's chief internal watchdog says it is investigating the DOJ's compliance with a law requiring the release of millions of pages of material linked to Jeffrey Epstein. The audit comes after months of complaints from members of Congress that the department has failed to comply with the Epstein Files Transparency Act by withholding documents about Epstein and his accomplice, Galen Maxwell. DOJ officials previously have said they did their best to follow the law's disclosure requirements. Joining us now, former litigator and MS NOW senior legal reporter Lisa Rubin and publisher of the newsletter, The Inc., on Substack, MS NOW political analyst Anand Girdardas. He's out with a new installment of his series on what he calls the Epstein class. Good morning to you both. Lisa, I think people, perhaps because of the Iran War and perhaps some have suggested by design, will forget that the Epstein Files was front and center at the conversation two months ago before this war started. So, what do we learn from this latest development about these ongoing discussions around the Transparency Act, reminding people again, it is a matter of law that these documents be released?

Speaker 12:
[44:31] It is a matter of law. And as you noted, not only members of Congress, but survivors and their lawyers have been somewhat up in arms about the ways in which these files were produced, complaining about redactions that were made that shouldn't have been made, all sorts of violations of victim privacy that are splashed across these pages. And of course, 3 million pages of documents that the acting Attorney General told us existed, but yet have been withheld. He says they were withheld perfectly lawfully. But one of the reasons he says they were withheld was on grounds of privilege, privilege that belongs, he says to the Department of Justice, that's not a grounds for withholding in the act. So now we have this announcement from the Inspector General at the Department of Justice saying they're going to do sort of an audit of how these documents were reviewed, collected, produced, redacted, and withheld, as well as looking at what happened in the aftermath when victims and their lawyers came forward to say, you got this all wrong. How did the department respond to those complaints? I heard from survivors and their lawyers yesterday, notes of cautious optimism about this audit. I thought this was a good thing until I spoke to a former Inspector General Michael Bromwich, who explained to me that an audit is sort of the lowest level review that an Inspector General can do. And one of the things that it doesn't include is sort of a 360 review by interviewing high ranking people at the department. That's because an audit is designed to sort of suss out, is there a problem and how do you solve it? Not, was there misconduct going on here for which individual people are responsible? That I think will be a big disappointment to survivors and their lawyers as well as members of Congress if that's how this review turns out.

Speaker 6:
[46:14] That's what I was going to ask you is if you had any initial reaction from survivors and their attorneys, but also what faith do they or you have that the Department of Justice, this will be even if a low level audit would be on the up and up, when we know that in Trump 2.0 in particular, they have purged so many of the career officials and installed just loyalists.

Speaker 12:
[46:35] Well, let me give you the good news first. The good news is that the acting inspector general is someone who's been at the Department of Justice for 40 years. He was a 20-year veteran of DOJ as a prosecutor. Then he went to the inspector general's office, where he's been since 2007. So people need not worry that the person who's in charge of this audit is somehow some low level political flunky. On the other hand, the very contents of an audit are, as Mr. Bromwich told me yesterday, not designed to get at the heart of what I think survivors and their lawyers are concerned about. That having been said, I heard from a bunch of survivors and their lawyers yesterday, and the reaction was mixed. Danny Bensky, who's been on our air a lot, is a very prominent and forward facing survivor, told me, it's amazing news, a little spark of hope. But then I heard from Eric Fudali, who with his partner, Lisa Bloom, represents about 10 Epstein survivors. And his response, I think, was very pointed, and maybe appropriately so. With the hopes that this is not just another partisan performance for this administration to pretend they care about Epstein survivors, I look forward to reviewing what the audit recovers from this clear attempt at thwarting transparency and accountability. And I think the reason Eric says that is, in all of the sturm und dreng about the Epstein files, we have not seen high level people at the Department of Justice put themselves forward to meet with or talk to Epstein survivors. Very famously, the former Attorney General, Pam Bondi, wouldn't turn around at a congressional hearing to look at them. And so when people like Eric Fudali say, I want to make sure this isn't another partisan performance at pretending we care about them, there is some predicate for a statement like that.

Speaker 5:
[48:13] Yeah, and the concern is that this is just a token move so they can say they did something. So Anand, in the fifth and final piece of your series, what you call the Epstein class, and a lot of people are calling now, you detail what you say makes these people so powerful. Anand writes this, Is this, in the end, what we might learn from the Epstein files? That these people do their kabuki fighting in public and have each other's backs in private, when stuff gets real. And we live lives with many of the same challenges, but imagine our neighbors to be as bloodthirsty and ignorant of the world as an uncontacted tribe of cannibals. Nothing can reach those adults. They are who they are. Nothing will ever change their mind. We have none of the sense of mercy for each other that the Epstein class displays for its own. That mercy, in their case, comes from class solidarity. It comes from the solidarity of patriarchy. And in their abiding mutual support, they encourage us, through the media organs they own, through the social media platforms whose algorithms they code, through the political levers they operate, to keep bickering. Our tribalism protects their impunity. Expand on that a little more, if you would, Anand.

Speaker 13:
[49:18] I mean, just listening to Lisa, you have a bunch of women made a decision over the last some years, some months, to basically make a potentially life-altering, for some, life-ending-as-they-know-it decision to come forward. I think we can say to a person, none of those women is gonna benefit on the level of an individual by that choice, right? I mean, no one's life gets better as an individual for doing that. But they did it, we saw the images of them on Capitol Hill and elsewhere. And through doing that, through their advocacy and the advocacy of others, we now have an unprecedented glimpse of gargantuan proportions, millions of documents of a giant operation of human trafficking, pedophilia, rape on an industrial scale. It's all in the open, we have it. We have a big part of what the Department of Justice has, if not all of it. And a regular person watching this could well ask, how many people have been in jail for marijuana related crimes over the years? And what? Not one arrest? Not one set of handcuffs? How many people do we have in jail for marijuana related crimes over the years? Not one person. And so it's worth noting that the Epstein story is not the beginning of impunity in American life. It is, I would say, the culmination of an age of impunity that has seen us through every single story. The Trump administration is a story of legal impunity. The financial crisis also had this phenomenon of not a lot of arrests. But I think the question is whether the Epstein story is just going to be kind of peak impunity in American life or actually a turning point where we look at ourselves and say, this is actually unacceptable. And the point in the piece is that at the top of American life, you have this group of people who have kind of infinite first, infinite second chances, I will say. They can mess up anything in policy and they get a better job. They can sell a bogus war and they get a professorship. They can, in this case, be part of this dastardly network and survive it. And down below, for 95% of people watching this, it feels like you don't even get first chances anymore in America. Forget second chances. So, and the point I wanted to make is I think a lot of that is because at the top, these people revealed in these files, they always stand up for each other. They always have each other's backs. Unfortunately, in the worst way, they have a kind of solidarity. And it made me think at the end of this work on this series that what would it look like for the rest of us actually to have a little more solidarity for each other? Maybe there's not a lot I want to learn from the Epstein class, but maybe this is one thing that can actually be learned from them, that maybe we should elevate, as they do, our interests, our shared interests with others over our clashing beliefs.

Speaker 5:
[52:21] One of the questions you ask in this piece is, in the end, will this have just been another story? Will this just have been grist for the mill for talk shows and social media and all that? I think to most people, it can't be. This is a real story about young women who were raped by rich and powerful men. We know that to be true. So, there are obviously rich and powerful men who would like this to be just another story that we move on from. But will it be?

Speaker 13:
[52:50] I continue to believe that this story is different, for some of the reasons you said. This story has a couple of things that I think allow it to reach people everywhere. It is about crimes against children. And in an age of division, I think one last thing we may all have in common is there is something biological in us that is allergic to inflicting pain on children. This story is global. The names in those files are everywhere. As I have traveled to different countries over the last year, this has been the thing people are talking about here, there, everywhere. Every country has its own version.

Speaker 5:
[53:34] And there has been accountability in some of those countries.

Speaker 13:
[53:37] In some ways, you have accountability in some of these places that had a very small fraction of the players, where we are number one with the number of players in the Epstein files. I continue to believe that this could be a moment of real reckoning, but we have to choose to treat this story as kind of like the capstone to an era we want to move beyond. I think this story can be a map to actually building the next world and talking about the survivors. The survivors actually point to other ways of being. They point to what it looks like to put a cause ahead of your own self. They point to what it looks like to have solidarity. They point to what it looks like to risk for the truth. Those are values that could be of great value to our society. And I truly hope this becomes, we look back as a kind of reckoning moment, not a moment to vent and move on.

Speaker 5:
[54:38] Lisa, I'll give you the last word on this. You've been listening intently, especially when he talks about the survivors.

Speaker 12:
[54:43] Well, I think Anand's point about the survivors and their solidarity is one that really resonates with me because among the survivors, you have ones who have identified themselves as not only registered Republicans, but Trump voters. And yet they have all found themselves in this together. And they have motivated people on the GOP side of the aisle to stand up for them. Now, as many of them, as many of us would like, no. But the Thomas Masses and Marjorie Taylor Greene's of this story will not be forgotten as a sliver of that hope of solidarity that I think the survivors deserve and that we all hope for in this world.

Speaker 5:
[55:20] And by this entire category of podcasters and people online who've been carrying the flag to their credit about the Epstein files for years, they're not going to let it go either, as they've shown. The fifth and final installment of Anand's series, the Epstein class, available to read on Substack Now. MS NOW Analyst, Anand, geared artist, thanks so much. As always, Lisa Rubin, thank you as well.