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Morning Joe
Morning Joe 4/11/25
00:47:56
Supreme Court says Trump admin must 'facilitate' release of man wrongly deported to El Salvador prison
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- [00:00]
Joe Scarborough
You know we love a good debate, right? Digging deep on the issues. It's kind of our thing. But here's something that shouldn't need in depth analysis. No matter what's happening in our country, people still need health care. That should be obvious, right? That's why Planned Parenthood health centers are here to provide birth control, cancer screenings, abortion and more without judgment. But they can't do it alone. If you believe everyone deserves access to care, donate now@plannedparenthood.org defend because healthcare shouldn't be up for debate.
- [00:31]
Willie Geist
TaxAct knows you probably don't need help.
- [00:34]
Joe Scarborough
Filing taxes, but if you get stuck.
- [00:36]
Jonathan Lemire
We have live experts you can talk to.
- [00:39]
Joe Scarborough
And who knows, you could hit it off and become long term tax staying.
- [00:44]
Jonathan Lemire
Up late at night talking about deductions, refunds, personal exemptions.
- [00:49]
Joe Scarborough
Heck, you could even fall in love.
- [00:51]
Willie Geist
And create a little dependent of your own one day.
- [00:54]
Joe Scarborough
Or they could just answer your filing questions. Tax act, let's get them over with. The biggest problem they have is they don't have enough time in the day. Everybody wants to come and make a deal and we're working with a lot of different countries and it's all going to work out very well. So we think we're in very good shape. We think we're doing very well. Again, there'll be a transition cost and transition problems. But in the end it's going to be, it's going to be a beautiful thing. That's President Trump taking an optimistic tone at the White House yesterday, talking about deals that he believe will come soon. The markets fell once again yesterday over concerns about its trade war with China. This morning Beijing is responding and they're responding in a big way. We're going to go through the latest in that escalation. Also going to be keeping a look at the markets that are down this morning right now in pre trade numbers but not quite as bad as they were yesterday. But again, we will be following that throughout our show. Good morning and welcome to Morning Joe. It's Friday. Happy Friday, April 11th. And with us we have the co host of our fourth hour, Jonathan Lemaire. He's a contributing writer at the Atlantic covering the White House and national politics. Also the host of Pablo Torrey finds Out on Metal Arc Media, MSNBC contributor Pablo Torrey. We got the managing editor at the Bulwark, Sam Stein, also NBC News and MSNBC political analyst, former U.S. senator Claire McCaskill. A big, big decision last night came out, the Supreme Court requiring the Trump administration to facilitate the release of a Maryland man who is mistakenly deported to a prison in El Salvador. Kilmore Bill Albra Garcia had an immigration court order preventing his deportation from the country amid fears that he could be harmed by gang members. But last month, ICE officials removed him anyway from the United States, claiming that he was a member of Ms. 13. The man was never charged or convicted of any crime. The Trump administration later admitted they made a mistake, but argued they couldn't do anything about it. Now, in another, I think, extremely important unanimous order, the Supreme Court has told the White House to take steps necessary to release Garcia from custody and, quote, ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador. The ruling stopped short of ordering the man's return to the United States. His case, however, must go to a trial court, though it's not clear when that's going to happen. Let's bring MSNBC and NBC News legal analyst Danny Savalas. You know, Danny, we've had so much thrown at us over the first three months of the administration. And as we've said. I know, as you've said, so many other people said it's been intentional on the administration's part to flood the zone to keep things coming, to see where the court bites, to see where the court doesn't bite. I think Danny and others I've spoken with believe that that have covered this White House closely and, and Washington for a very long time, that two of the most important things that have happened over the last three months, at least from the judicial, judicial branch, came from the Supreme Court this past week. A nine zero ruling that Brett Kavanaugh signed where all nine justices agreed, whether they were, whatever side they were on, on the issue that you can't just deport, whether you call them Venezuelan gang members or whoever you call them, you just can't deport somebody. They have to be given proper notice and they have to be given due process in front of a judge. That that is an extraordinarily clarifying opinion. And all nine justices agreed with that part of the opinion. The second part, the second thing happened last night and that was the return of Garcia, saying they have to facilitate the return of Garcia. And again, this wasn't 5 to 4. I must say I expected this to be a 5 to 4 decision. I was that cynical. But once again, unsigned, which means nine. Oh, so talk about the impact of this decision last night in particular, but the two taken together this week and what it means.
- [05:36]
Claire McCaskill
Yeah, let's start with the decision last night. The order is a win for the Trump administration, and at least that's how they're going to play it. Here's what I mean. A real win for Garcia would have been an order that says, hey, administration, I hear the Salvadorian president is going to be here Monday. Put Garcia on the plane, seated next to him in a reclining seat, and he better be here Monday with the president. That would have been a clear win. The reason I say this, the administration is going to call this a win, is there's a lot of space, a lot of loophole potential in this order. Consider this. One of the lines that we put up there on the screen was that the court ordered him to be returned, or, excuse me, to facilitate his return so his case could be handled as if it was properly handled. Remember, the 2019 order for Garcia by an immigration judge just really prevented his return to El Salvador. In theory, any of the other 193 countries out there might be perfectly all right. And if his case was handled the way it should, that could still result in his removal. And then there's even bigger wiggle room for the administration in the language with one word, effectuate. Yes, the lower court's order remains in place. The administration has to effectuate his return. But the court has to clarify, what does it mean by effectuate. I guarantee you, and here I am saying it now, the administration is going to say that whatever the district court clarifies, effectuate means the administration is going to say, well, guess what we say you don't have the power to order us to do that because you're essentially ordering us to engage in international relations, which you, an Article 3 court, another branch of the government, cannot order us to do. And we're going to be right back here where we were this last week. As this goes back up through the courts, I will just say, Joe, you're exactly right. Taken together, the two Supreme Court cases over the last week or so do stand for the idea that people subject to removal are entitled to due process. But sometimes even due process can be relatively hollow because as long as they give them that notice and as long as they give them that hearing, arguably these folks can still be removed. So, yes, a win for due process. But I promise you hear me now, the administration will call this a win for themselves, or at least that's how they'll play their hands, right?
- [08:03]
Joe Scarborough
Well, I mean, Claire McCaskill, I don't think anybody is arguing that if people are here illegally and if they may be members of Venezuelan gangs or if they, you know, they can be Deported. That's not the issue. The issue is we need to know the facts. They need to be given notice. They need to be given the right to go before the court. And now you have the Supreme Court saying you have to give them that due process. And then if they're deported legally, if they're deported in a way that is consistent with the law, that is. That's all anybody could ask in this case. Last night, though, I thought it was very interesting. The Supreme Court said, basically, we're going to follow the district court judge. They have to effectuate the return. Not in a way that's going to get in the way of what Danny was talking about, the president's powers and then the district court judge remodifying his order be very consistent with the Supreme Court. So I guess just on general principle, general law, it's a very strong declaration by the Supreme Court. Now the question is, how does it get implemented?
- [09:15]
Willie Geist
Yeah, I do think that this opinion, I agree with Danny in that I think Roberts wanted a nine. Oh, I think he wanted everybody in the boat. And so they kind of played games with the semantics of this, this effectuate versus facilitate. The bottom line is this. The Supreme Court has unanimously told Donald Trump, you can't race to the airport with a bunch of people and get them out of the country and then claim you can do nothing about it. That no longer can happen. That game is over. And that's really the takeaway here. And we had a Trump judge yesterday also basically citing the Supreme Court, saying, you've got to give notice, you've got to have a hearing. And that's really what I. We need in this country is the court to unanimously, even if the language was a little hinky, and they're going to have to go back and figure out the difference between effectuate and facilitate. It still is very strong that our Supreme Court unanimously said, no, Donald Trump, you can't do this, not in the United States of America.
- [10:23]
Joe Scarborough
Well, and that message also, of course, Jonathan O'Mear gets members of ICE, members of other people who are getting instructions to do something that, again, if these were five, four decisions and they were ambiguous, that would be one thing. It may be ambiguous in the application of it, but the overall legal theory, the Supreme Court in both of these cases, saying, as Claire said, unanimously, I get this, like Nixon US V. Nixon, when it was eight. Oh, unanimously. In this case, unanimously, saying, you can't round up people in the middle of the night. You can't grab people off the streets. You can't throw them in the back of the vans. You can't throw them on airplanes and then fly them, you know, to El Salvador or somewhere else without giving them due process first. Again, there's, you know, the devil's always in the details in both of these rulings. But the fact is the Supreme Court has now spoken out unanimously saying what we saw the first couple of months of the administration cannot happen moving forward.
- [11:32]
Pablo Torre
Yeah. As we're so fond of saying on the show, two things can be true at once. There are, there's some wiggle room. There's some details Danny rightly pointed out that are still up for debate. This is still a message sent nine zero from the Supreme Court. But lots of questions remain unanswered. This is not the only individual who attorneys and activists have said was improperly detained and deported. What happens to those others who are also in that El Salvador prison or who are also being held, like the tough student, like the Columbia activist, in a prison in Louisiana right now waiting for more legal proceedings? We also don't know, of course, Sam Stein, whether or not the Trump administration will listen. And that's, I feel like the big part here is this dangerous moment is we keep hearing from this administration saying, oh, well, we're not going to defy court orders. We're not going to defy court orders. Even though at times they have deflected, they've taken loopholes, they've attempted to get around them, they have claimed anyway, they have not flat out refused them. This seems to be setting up a moment. If they don't cooperate here, where that could be, they could be defying not just any court, but the Supreme Court. Talk to us about this moment.
- [12:39]
Sam Stein
It's incredibly delicate. Right. And I think we're all just sort of waiting to see what they do in response to this. I kind of count myself in the Dana camp, I guess, where they'll try to take a very narrow reading of this, maybe deport this man to a different country, maybe put him in Gitmo and say, well, we followed your order. And that's not really the spirit of the order, but it's technically under the order. But ultimately, look, I have to agree with Claire and Joe on this one in that we had a situation in which the first Supreme Court decision said everyone is granted the right to habe's petition, and then it raised the question, well, what if the administration decides, you know, we're going to get people out of the country before that petition could be heard, and then we're going to say you know, they're in some foreign jurisdiction and it's no longer our responsibility. That was the nightmare scenario. If the Supreme Court said, well, once they go into El Salvador, yes, you're right, there's no jurisdiction, you can't do anything about it. That was a nightmare scenario. And what we have here at least is a situation which the court says, no, you can't just do that. You can't just whisk people away without due process rights. You have to follow some normalcy, some normal rules. And now we wait. I guess it's kind of an uncomfortable, scary proposition that we're just sort of waiting to see whether the White House will play cute with the law, whether they'll respect the law or whether they'll violate, violated outright.
- [14:01]
Joe Scarborough
Well, and the question is again, Pavel, how, how, how they, they implement this and, and how aggressively they implement it, which probably won't be that aggressively how they try to get around this. But they will continue to say we are following court orders. They're going to continue, most likely, if you listen to what they've said the first three months. And if that continues forward, they may continue to try to do that. Again though, the law is out there and it can't underline this enough. When you're going against nine Supreme Court justices, you can't dismiss Clarence Thomas as a left wing Marxist lib judge when he's agreeing with the district court judge who is an icon to so many conservative jurists in Washington D.C. who they've dismissed as a Marxist. So now you've got Clarence Thomas, the ultimate conservative icon for a lot of legal scholars, saying, yeah, that district court judge that is at the center of the conservative legal movement in Washington D.C. yeah, they're not Marxist judges. They're agreeing with the entire Supreme Court. You guys did it the wrong way the first three months. Bring him back and let's get this right.
- [15:16]
Danny Savalas
It is really worth, I think, highlighting how extreme and how incompetent the process that this administration undertook with this story is. Joe, I often wonder, is it malice, is it incompetence? In this case, it seems safe to assume there is both. And the incompetence, it sort of accounts for that gap between is this outright defiance, is this circumvention of our justice system? I just keep on thinking of the tweet sent by the president of El Salvador once the planes took off. I'll just quote it for you here. Oopsie, too late. Crying emoji. What this is just to be very blunt about it, is clearly One country that is not really in favor of the rule of law cooperating with another country that is not really in favor of the rule of law. It's hard to distinguish. Is there a good guy in that dynamic, even vaguely? Danny, when I think about this, when I think about the story of how this is about cooperation with a country that has suspended parts of its own constitution, that has jailed people without due process, I would just like people to immediately know when I describe that dynamic, which country I'm talking about, El Salvador or the United States. It seems even grander than merely, wow, a Supreme Court ruling was pretty clear on this. There's something even larger being orchestrated.
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Joe Scarborough
Yeah.
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Claire McCaskill
Well, first, I encourage everyone take a look, Google Seekat where these folks are being held. I've heard people refer to it or compare it to Supermax adx Florence here in Colorado. Supermax is a resort compared to what's going on at SEACOT. There are any number of YouTube, YouTube documentaries you can check out right now. I've never seen anything like it. And I've spent a lot of time in prisons. See, cot is a nightmare. So the fact that someone's being held there is significant. The other thing, and I go back to the Supreme Court's order, what Joe was referring to earlier is exactly right to some degree. There's a contract between the US And El Salvador for the holding of these detainees, or whatever you want to call them, prisoners now. So there's a pressure point that could be something that any of these courts could have said. Well, if you have a contract, we find that you're not as helpless administration as you say you are. You can contract to send them there, you can contract to bring them back. But the orders don't say that the Supreme Court didn't direct that. And again, I hate to sound so pessimistic, but this isn't exactly a unanimous order. It's a no noted dissent. There's a subtle difference. That means that some of the justices may have disagreed, but they didn't do so publicly. Whether that's Clarence Thomas or somebody else, I don't know. But does it matter really, for purposes of what the lower court is directed to do? Probably not, but it might be a sign. What I think Claire was saying earlier, which is very telling, that maybe this was really about Roberts wanting to get unanimity in a sense, some form of consensus. So that might be what we're seeing. So it's interesting. I don't know how much that tells us about what we can forecast for the future from this court.
- [18:21]
Joe Scarborough
Well, you know, you know, the thing is, it is clear you're so right. So extraordinarily important that the Chief justice got a 9, 0 ruling on this and a 9, you know, and all nine of the justices lined up before, earlier this week on. On the principles of advance notice. You got to give notice to these, these migrants, and then they have to have their time in court. To make sure what? To make sure what? That we let drug gangs get away with, like, something? No, to make sure the process is done right. To make sure American values are upheld, even when we are deporting people who are here illegally. I do want to. Your prosecutor. I'm just curious, Claire, if you were standing before the Supreme Court and you had to make the argument, well, your honor, we really have no control over this El Salvador. Not in our jurisdiction. We really have no control. And then the defense lawyer said, yeah, but that's funny because Kristi Noem, who I think holds a pretty darn important role in your government, said this when she was visiting El Salvador. This facility is one of the tools in our toolkit that we will use if you commit crimes against the American people. When she was sitting there in this just ghastly photo, these horrible condition with these prisoners posing for a political photo, she said, this prison is one of the administration's tools in our toolkit that we're going to use if you commit crimes against the American people. How in the world would you able to. Would you be able to get around that quote from a member of the administration?
- [20:25]
Willie Geist
Well, first, I would remind the court that Pam Biondi, the Attorney General of the United States, walked away from a question of 60 Minutes saying, Isn't it true that 75% of the people you took to El Salvador have not been accused of committing a crime? I would point that out. Secondly, I think the important thing to point out here is this is a contractual relationship. This is contract law, not international diplomacy. Clearly, they work closely with this government to allow a propaganda movie to be made about the way the prisoners were brought in. And then Kristi Noem and her cosplaying that she's doing over and over again in some kind of weird fixation with photo ops. And then finally, and maybe most importantly is that this is a contract for a term certain. If you look at the details of this contract, Joe, the United States government paid El Salvador $6 million to hold these people for a year. They didn't say, they're all yours now. And they've only paid him for a year. And so inherent in that contractual relationship is that they can enter into a different contract saying, we do not want you to hold this person anymore, bring them back to the United States. And as Danny pointed out, or I think Sam Stein pointed out, the president is coming here from El Salvador on Monday. You can bet there will be questions about why, why wasn't this guy, you know, properly secured on the airplane coming from El Salvador back to the United States on Monday? So there's going to be some interesting stuff ahead. But I will say so far, the courts, Trump judges included, have been pretty good at sending the right signal about Trump doing the bad things he's doing to the Constitution.
- [22:18]
Joe Scarborough
Well, and this week unanimously saying, as the Supreme Court, the United States still stands for what the United States stands for when we're talking about due process, even against people who have been accused of being gang members. Okay, if they're gang members, great. Come and prove that in the court of law. You can't grab them off the street, throw them in a van and fly him out of the country. NBC News and MSNBC legal analyst Danny Savalas, thank you so much. And still ahead of the morning. So we're going to the latest from Wall Street. After stocks closed down yesterday, erased a lot of those huge gains from Wednesday's rally, Steve Rattner is going to join us. Plus, what we're learning this morning about a deadly helicopter crash in New York City's Hudson River. What a tragedy. A family of five lost. Morning Joe. Back in 90 seconds. The last thing you want to hear.
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- [24:58]
Willie Geist
Oil's down.
- [24:59]
Joe Scarborough
We had a successful bond market. So I don't see anything unusual today. So how close are you to the first country coming to actually make a deal with the United States over tariffs? Is it days, months? I think it's very close. But you know, we have to have a deal that we like. We don't want a deal that's going to be a bad deal. Or I could, I could make every deal in one day if I wanted to. I could do this in all, in one day. I could just say, here's what we'll do. And I was saying to the Mr. President, if you aren't able to reach the deals that you want to see at the end of the 90 days, will you put those higher tariffs in.
- [25:34]
Willie Geist
Place or will you extend the.
- [25:35]
Joe Scarborough
Well, that's what would happen. I mean, if we can't make the deal that we, we want to make or we have to make or that's, you know, good for both parties. It's got to be good for both parties. And then we go back to where we were.
- [25:47]
Willie Geist
Go back to the numbers that you announced last.
- [25:49]
Joe Scarborough
I think so. Wouldn't extend the pause. Yeah, that was President Trump and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessant talking yesterday about the impact of the administration's trade war on the economy. Earlier this morning, China raised tariffs to 125% which are going to go into effect tomorrow. That comes after the White House confirmed yesterday's tariffs on Chinese imports are at 145%. These are just crazy numbers. That news fueled another steep drop on Wall street, erasing major gains from Wednesday's historic average. You know, this is this reminding me a bit of what the market was doing at times during COVID Up, down, up, down this morning, I just, just checking across the numbers and Nikkei down about 3%, but it had gone up 9, 9 percentage points the day before. Europe actually right now is, is holding steady down just a little bit. But the S and P futures are up. The Dow Jones futures up half a percentage point, the dollar up about one and a half. So. So we will see again during COVID you had ups and downs and ups and downs as everybody was trying to read the market, what it meant. I wonder if we're going to go into that sort of phase right now where the market's desperately trying to find the bottom so people can get back in and try to make more money. It's though but if you talk to people on Wall street and across the country, they will tell you it's dangerous out there. Including our next guest, former treasury official and Morning Joe economic analyst Steve Rattner. Steve, just looking at the you know I am, as you know I am a liberal arts guy that went to the University of Alabama. I took Econ 101 and as I've said several times, spent the entire semester reading Sports Illustrated in the back row. So I'm not a guy that is prone to reading the futures. But I am, I have this past week, like a lot of people right now, not a not a great, not a great night in Asia, but not, not catastrophic. Europe's holding steady and the Dow seems the future seeming to be up a little bit despite this massive retaliation from the Chinese. What's your take on where we are in the markets and should we again I know you're not predicting but as far as the economy goes, a lot of people talking about recession, a lot of people talking about a possible future collapse in the markets. What are you looking at? What are you hearing?
- [28:26]
Steve Rattner
Definitely not predicting the markets, certainly not a day on a day to day basis. But let's step back from all the volatility in markets and talk about where we are and then we can talk about where we might be going. Where we are in the markets is a much worse place than where we started for all the ups and the downs and whatever the market is well below where it was before the President decided to embark on this craziness. The dollar is much weaker. Our treasury yields have gone up significantly, which raises the cost of borrowing for the government and exacerbates the deficit problem that you well know we already had. So nothing good has happened out of all this and a lot of bad stuff has happened out of all this. I have no idea where the President is going. Nobody does. He probably honestly has no idea where he's going on this. The tariff barriers or the tariffs, the so called tariffs on all these other countries, countries have, most of them are actually quite low. The issue is what we call non tariff barriers where the countries let our goods in on an equal footing with their own goods, or they come up with phony kind of restrictions about what kind of apples can come in the country or wheat or this or that. So it's a complicated situation. You'll remember in the first term, he went to tariff war against Canada and Mexico, ultimately negotiated the usmca, which I don't think changed a heck of a lot and backed off. And so that may be what happens here with most of the countries we have to come back to China. But with most of the countries, that may be a way he walks back in off this ledge he's put himself on. This is a total unforced error. This is the worst economic policymaking I've seen in 50 years of hanging around economic policy. My border colleague could do a better job of managing this economy than this administration has done so far. What you're hearing from the treasury secretary, from others is honestly just kind of gobbledygook. It makes no sense. Nobody would have said this is the road we should go down and where we go from here, who knows? As I said, my guess is he finds a way to crawl and off the ledge with most of these countries. The question is China. Those tariffs, as you pointed out, are massive now, and China is one of our three biggest trading partners. You're not going to be able to buy that new iPhone at any rate, reasonable costs very shortly if all this sort of stuff stays in effect. And let me make one last point, Joe. I just came back from four days in Europe. I was in London, I was in Germany, I was in Sweden. And it was a trip really not planned around the tariffs, was planned a long time ago around whether the Europeans were actually getting their defense together. We're going to start spending money on defense. Another subject that we could talk about, but obviously this all came up everywhere. The loss of confidence in America is extraordinary. They do not view us as a, not just not a reliable ally, not even a predictable ally. And they are really scared. They are going to try to get their act together that Europe is a complicated place. But we have done. He has, Trump has done incredible damage to the American brand in all these countries. Total loss of confidence in what was always the, what was always thought of as great American leadership on the world stage.
- [31:33]
Joe Scarborough
Now you know Jonathan Lemire listening to Steve Rattner talking about tariffs. I'm reminded of Harry truman in the 48 campaign jumping off the train, a man coming up to him and yelling in his face for five minutes about how much he couldn't stand him. The guy walked off and Truman turned to his adviser and said we'll mark him as undecided. I think Rattner's undecided on these tariffs and the handling of it. I'm wondering there is a question and there has been the belief among a lot of people on Wall street that these tariffs were always Donald Trump's opening bid last week. People say I don't think about that anymore. This is is far more than that. I am curious though, when I keep talking about Japan, South Korea, some of these other countries that would send a really positive signal to the markets. Do you get any sense for your reporting inside the White House how aggressively the White House is working with some of our major non European allies to strike deals?
- [32:43]
Pablo Torre
Steve and his border collie opposed to the president's economic plan. True to this, to this point, they are trying to the president, you heard him yesterday, sort of publicly trying to still project calm like he did on Truth Social with be calm and all caps and exclamation point a few days ago. But behind the scenes advisors are hoping. We've had the treasury secretary meet with the trade delegation from Japan in the last 24 hours or so. There are other meetings lined up but it's not clear exactly when those deals will get done. It's also not clear even if like say a solitary deal is struck what that will will mean. There seems to be to Steve's point, such deep damage here that yes, there'll probably be a flurry in the stock market if a deal is done but the long term confidence seems really shot. And Claire McCaskill, let's get you to weigh in on this. I mean this is, you know, yes, the market rallied a little bit the other day, lost half of those gains again yesterday. But we're still well down from where we were a week or so ago since Liberation Day. But it's not just about stock, the stock market. It's about the fundamentals. We talked about the bond market earlier this week. We Steve just brought in the crisis in confidence that we're seeing from our trading partners. Things are, to put it simply to use, a mess.
- [34:00]
Willie Geist
Yeah. And I think the point that Steve made about what damage Donald Trump has done that is not reversible by deals with individual countries and that is that the rest of the world now is looking at the United States as bizarre, out of step, not a good partner, not someone you can rely on. The chaos caused by this incompetence is real and it's not going to go away. And I would point Out. And I welcome Steve to correct me if he thinks I'm wrong about this, but it seems to me that if Donald Trump would have spent half the time uniting those nations that believe in democracies and freedom of speech and don't have autocrats in charge of them uniting them against China's trade policy, he could have done a better job of isolating China. Instead, I noticed yesterday that the EU dropped all tariffs against China's electric vehicles against their EVs. So what's happening is he's driving countries into the ever loving arms of China instead of isolating China against the rest of the world. He's now frankly united the world against the United States. And that will have an impact on tourism, it will have an impact on the selling of services in the United States, which hasn't been factored into these formulas at all, where we have a real trade imbalance in our favor. So this isn't going to get fixed by him claiming he's made great deals with all these countries when probably he won't be able to do that anyway.
- [35:36]
Joe Scarborough
Well, and that's one thing the Wall Street Journal editorial pages talked about. It's really important again that if he's going to fight a trade war, he fights a trade war with China and it's a one front war. I've always, always had the belief, you know, when people have come at other politicians wanting them to take on two or three big, big matters at the same time, if anybody ever talks to me, say you can fight at one, you know, fight a one front war. And if you, if you're fighting a trade war with China, all sides need to be focused on China. So Claire brings up a great point. The Wall Street Journal also this morning. Does Trump have a China strategy? If he wants Beijing to change, he needs the allies that he's tariffing right now. So obviously very important to get allies on side again. That's why Japan, that's why South Korea, that's why the EU getting all of them on board. Of course, Australia, always a stalwart American ally being on board. So, so critically important. And by the way, just, just a little footnote on what, what Clear said about Chinese EVs going into Europe, that is a huge threat, a huge threat to Tesla and Elon Musk. And it's a huge threat because Chinese EVs over the past several years have leapt ahead of Tesla as far as technology goes. So that is, that is, that would be very bad news for Elon Musk. Sam Stein, forgive me for being Cynical. But let me be cynical here for one minute. Sure. You know, we talk about how this is, you know, it's just going to be so catastrophic for the United States. And I certainly agree if we keep going in this direction, it will. But I'm sure, like me, you can look into your crystal ball and see the possibility of Donald Trump making these deals. The dow going from 39,000 back up to 44 or 45,000. Donald Trump declaring victory and people starting to trade with us again because guess what, you know, Willie Sutton robbed banks because that's where the money was. People will still come to America to do business because that's where the money is. If all this gets resolved, Donald Trump can declare victory and the stock markets go up to 44 or 45,000. I'm not saying that's going to happen. I'm just saying for everybody who doesn't think that that cynically could happen, they haven't been paying attention over the past decade.
- [38:15]
Sam Stein
Yeah, I agree with you to a degree. First of all, I want to correct Jonathan Le Maire because reporting is important. And he said it was be calm. What Trump said was be cool. And I think it's vital that we get the right words.
- [38:30]
Joe Scarborough
Exactly.
- [38:32]
Pablo Torre
You're right.
- [38:33]
Joe Scarborough
I have some fact checks. You were right.
- [38:34]
Sam Stein
It's embarrassing. It's embarrassing. Once I stop being your editor, look what happens. Secondly, he does a great job. Back to Joe's point. Back to Joe's point. I think. Yes. I mean, I'm sure this is what's going through Trump's head too. Right. I'll just cut 75 deals in the next 90 days and suddenly the stock market will jump up because I'm so great. But there's larger problems here. One is you spent the first 80 days of your administration dumping on all the countries that you want to cut deals with. You're threatening to annex Canada and going after Denmark over Greenland and making fun of the Europeans and, you know, the list goes on and on. So cutting those deals is not simple. It's not impossible, but it's not simple for sure. And 90 days is not a long period of time. But secondly, and Steve could probably talk more about this, there's long term damage that's being done to the perception of the US As a reliable economic partner. And you see that in the bond market, you see that in our currencies. You see that in the way that countries are approaching this 90 day period. They don't look at the US as a stable place where they can do investment. They don't look at us as a stable, they don't look at this president as a stable steward of the economy. And if the threat of tariffs coming back in, in 90 days is hanging over all these trade deals, that will continue. And so, yeah, maybe we'll get a momentary jump in the stock market when we announce a deal with Finland for something. But I think the long term damage is kind of already baked in and that's the real problem that Trump's going to have to face.
- [40:06]
Joe Scarborough
Yeah, it's going to be a real challenge. You know, it is interesting though. You look at what Trump has said about personal leaders. President Trump has talked about personal leaders. He says he has a good relationship with Keir Starm of the UK he said he has a good relationship in the Crown in France. He's actually even said positive things about Mark Carney and Canada. It will be interesting to see for a guy who believes that, that, that, that personal diplomacy can move diplomatic mountains, we'll see what happens when it's time to try to get those deals that I think most people, not only on Wall street, but Most people with 401 case would like to see done. Now listen, if you're an SNL fan, you know what Christopher Walken wanted? More cowbell. Well, kids around America right now, what are they jumping up and down in front of their TV sets and they're going, more Ratner. More Ratner. Don't worry, kids, he said it over to the Southwest wall with charts on how much the GOP budget will plan to add to the deficit. I know that is an issue that you're going to want to talk about at recess this afternoon with your friends in fourth grade. Well, stick around because Steve Ratner's back with that.
- [41:44]
Sam Stein
Auto insurance can all seem the same.
- [41:46]
Joe Scarborough
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- [43:03]
Pablo Torre
Welcome Eightrs here in New York City are trying to determine what caused a sightseeing helicopter to crash into the Hudson river yesterday, killing all six people on board. A truly terrible story. Let's go right to NBC News correspondent Sam Brock on the banks of the river. Sam, good to see you this morning. What's the latest officials are saying about what went wrong here?
- [43:24]
Jonathan Lemire
Sure. So Jonathan, good morning. The bottom line right now is we don't know what caused this crash. We can say definitively that the NTSB and the FAA both have teams coming out here set to investigate. But Jonathan, what I can tell you is I spoke with a man, Bruce Wall, who shot a video where you see the helicopter going down and then plunging into the water. And I asked him to describe for me what he experienced in those moments. And he said it sounded like something was breaking, to quote him, that the tail and that the rotor blades of the helicopter detached and in some of the video angles you'll actually see the blades themselves spinning after the helicopter has already plunged into the water. Right. So something catastrophic malfunctioned on this helicopter. In terms of the timeline, Jonathan, they left, according to New York City officials from the Downtown Heliport, about 258, 259 yesterday. And Crash ended up happening at least according to Wall from his video at 3:14. So you're talking about roughly a 15 minute flight path. This is a standard sightseeing tour that took place. There are literally tens of thousands of them around New York City every spot single year. Except in this case, of course, it ended tragically. Some new information that we're also getting is the identification of the victims. We now know, according to Siemens, which is this massive multinational company, that it was one of their executives from Siemens Spain who died and his wife and three children. His name is Augustine Escobar. So that all coming into light today, the Spanish prime minister saying it was an unthinkable tragedy. I want to play for you you real briefly here some of the excerpts of sound bites that we had with eyewitnesses who were walking along the west side Highway I'm on the New York side right now. This actually happened closer to Hobrook, Boken and Jersey City over my shoulder. I would like to play for you what they described seeing in the moments right before this happened. Take a listen.
- [45:11]
Joe Scarborough
It looked like the tail end popped, like something happened to the tail end and the main rotor went flying off. I think that it looked like that, that spun up in the air for a little bit as the main body hit backwards, upside down or spun. It's hard to see, but I know that the main rotor, like, you could see it just spinning and everything.
- [45:28]
Jonathan Lemire
Can you describe what that free fall looks like?
- [45:31]
Joe Scarborough
I mean, it's terrifying to see something that large kind of break up and everything. Can't really say, like, yeah, just we started praying that no one was really in it.
- [45:42]
Jonathan Lemire
So I just happened to be walking.
- [45:43]
Joe Scarborough
And I heard like, it sounded like.
- [45:45]
Jonathan Lemire
Like, like a engine just dying. And it just, it was like, doo.
- [45:48]
Joe Scarborough
Doo, doo, doo, doo. And I just turned, I look and I saw the helicopter crashing, splash into the water.
- [45:55]
Jonathan Lemire
Panic went through your mind, I'm sure.
- [45:57]
Joe Scarborough
Yeah. Right away I called 91 1.
- [46:00]
Jonathan Lemire
So Jonathan, the CEO of New York Helicopter Tours, spoke with a couple of different publications, including the Telegraph, and said in his 30 plus years of being in this industry, he has never seen anything like it. He also told the Telegraph that the pilot had phoned in to say he just needed some fuel. He expected to see the pilot, Jonathan, with about three minutes. And he said 20 minutes elapsed and did not hear anything. And then he spoke with someone in his office in the lower Manhattan area and they said that the crash had happened. He said he was devastated. Every single member of their company was devastated that his wife could not stop crying, that the loss of life. Life is just unthinkable, obviously. And you're talking about not just this couple, but also three children. We don't know their ages or much about their background at this point, but that's the reality that investigators are dealing with as they begin to comb through the wreckage. But they're still pulling out right now.
- [46:50]
Pablo Torre
Jonathan, a truly tragic story. We, of course, will bring along updates as they occur. NBC News correspondent Sam Brock. Sam Brock, thank you so much. Still ahead here on MORNING joe, back to politics. The House has advanced the president's budget priorities. The question is how do Republicans plan on paying for it? Steve Ratter is going to explain and yes, he'll have his charts. That's straight ahead here on MORNING Joe.
- [47:21]
Joe Scarborough
Take a look at some of the other stories that are making headlines The Dominican Republic has ended the search for survivors of a devastating nightclub roof collapse. At least 220 people were killed in this disaster. They include World Series champion Octavio Dotel and many other noted public figures in the doctor More than 500 people were injured when the roof caved in during a concert on Tuesday. An investigation into the cause is ongoing. The sentence confirmed the next Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of staff, retired Lt. Gen. Dan Kane, a former fighter pilot, replaces CQ Brown, whom President Trump fired in February. Fifteen Democrats voted to confirm the Pentagon removed several top officers during the administration's opening months in a purge of the military's senior ranks. And for Liverpool fans holding their breath throughout the spring, no full well that in the Premier League, it's the hope that kills you. Well, they've got something to cheer about. One of the top soccer players in the world is staying with Liverpool. Egypt forward Mohamed Salah has signed a new two year contract with the club. His previous deal was scheduled to run out this summer and there was speculation he was eyeing a move towards Saudi Arabia. Salah has 243 golds for Liverpool and 393 appearances and he really has this year for, for, for whatever reason. Pablo and we'll get to Jonathan here too. Also a Liverpool fan like me. But he's, he's, he's really been on top of his game this year. Last year not, not so much. You could tell he and Klopp were going sort of separate directions but man, this year he has been on top of the world, helping Liverpool stay on top, top of the Premier League. A lot of people saying over the past week or two that he was going to be leaving. So this comes as a pleasant surprise for many Liverpool fans like me.
- [49:21]
Danny Savalas
My only surprise here Joe, is that you didn't lead the whole show with this. I've been monitoring this. You know, it's funny to sort of juxtapose this to compare and contrast it with just the general economic picture. It's really good to be an elite world class athlete. Right now the rates are going up still despite all the uncertainties in every other marketplace. And when you have a buyer that is perpetually willing to overpay even the top talent in Saudi Arabia, it's going to always drive the price up. And the only question is if you're Liverpool, who has to consider do we want to break the bank and set records by paying this guy, is he worth it? And in this case this season, as you just alluded to, just, it's just obvious you gotta do it.
- [50:05]
Joe Scarborough
He did it.
- [50:06]
Danny Savalas
And they put him in a throne at midfield like I imagine you are, Joe on this show most days. And they said, we have our guy.
- [50:15]
Joe Scarborough
No, he is the guy. They call him the king of Egypt for good reason. You know, John Lemire, I have no doubt a couple of years ago he most likely would have signed with a club in Saudi Arabia. But that experiment has not gone well. A lot of Premier League athletes that have gone to Saudi Arabia, they stayed there, got money for a year or two and then came back to the Premier League.
- [50:37]
Pablo Torre
Yeah, Ronaldo stayed. He's scoring his goals there. But a lot of other players have left. This is a great, great, great news. I'll tell you. My boys who both have multiple Mo Salah jerseys are very pleased with this two year extension. Also, Joe talked they're going to sign Virgil Van Dijk to an extension that's coming in the next couple of as well. And you know, they sit atop the table. It's not over yet. No one's, no one's celebrating this championship just yet. But we like where we are. With a few weeks to go, good news.
- [51:06]
Joe Scarborough
No, no, no, no, no, no. We don't like where we are. Things are going to go terribly.
- [51:12]
Danny Savalas
There's the Red Sox. I was waiting for just that Red Sox spirit running through Liverpool running through.
- [51:17]
Joe Scarborough
And we're scared again. It's the hope that kills you and not closing well. You know, we are not closing well at all. It's been a rough month and a half. Let's move on to things that actually people want to hear us talk about.
- [51:33]
Sam Stein
Auto insurance can all seem the same.
- [51:35]
Joe Scarborough
Until it comes time to use it. So don't get stuck paying more for less coverage. Switch to USA auto insurance and you could start saving money in no time. Get a quote today, restrictions apply.
- [51:46]
Danny Savalas
USA.