This is the Dec. 11 edition of “The Tea, Spilled by Morning Joe” newsletter. Subscribe here to get it delivered straight to your inbox Monday through Friday.
“Hey, Joe, are we going to be all right?”
It’s the question I get most often from viewers — and from Mika — regarding Trump’s Washington.
While I share their concerns, I remind them that this battle for America’s soul is playing out across the political spectrum, and people who understand what’s at stake are making a difference.
This week, New York City’s incoming mayor, Zohran Mamdani, told MS NOW’s Jacob Soboroffthat he would stand up to any illegal actions by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and have police officers arrest anyone who breaks the law.
Gov. Gavin Newsom has promised to do the same in California, where a federal judge just ordered the National Guard out of Los Angeles and back under the governor’s control.
On Tuesday, Miami voters pushed back against the excesses of Trumpism, electing a female mayor for the first time in the city’s history — and a Democrat for the first time in a generation.
And just last month, voters from California, New Jersey and Virginia delivered a powerful political rebuttal to MAGA policies.
Federal judges threw out “lawfare” cases against Letitia James and James Comey — and booted Alina Habba and Lindsey Halligan from their positions as U.S. prosecutors.
Republicans are now performing worse on the generic ballot test than at any point since 2018 — while the president’s approval ratings tank.
Meanwhile, on Capitol Hill, Republicans have, at least for the moment, found their voices on issues including alleged war crimes in the Caribbean to health care tax credits.
None of these successes suggest the hardest part of this era is past. The challenges ahead are significant, and our Madisonian democracy will continue to be strained under the weight of Trumpism until Democrats are in a position to provide meaningful checks and balances on Donald Trump’s power.
Until that time, let’s pray like there’s no such thing as work, and work like there’s no such thing as prayer.
We have a democracy to save. And more Americans are beginning to understand what is at stake.
“I think it’s imperative that CNN be sold.”
President Donald Trump, telling reporters that the news network should be sold and its personnel fired.
IT’S BEGINNING TO SOUND A LOT LIKE CHRISTMAS
I’m partial to Paul McCartney’s holiday hit “Wonderful Christmastime.” But when it comes to selling Christmas songs, move over, Elvis and the Beatles.
It’s Bing who’s still king.
Three of Bing Crosby’s songs make the holiday bestsellers list, with “White Christmas” also earning the title of bestselling song of all time.
Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” has reached No. 1 in 30 countries and has made more than $100 million in royalties. Talk about having a green Christmas!
SOURCE: Wigan’s Radio Station
CABLE-CUTTING AT THE WHITE HOUSE
President Trump has set his target on CNN.
“I think it’s imperative that CNN be sold,” he told reporters at the White House yesterday.
The cable network is now caught in a tug-of-war takeover battle among three media conglomerates — Warner Bros. Discovery, Netflix and Paramount. While WBD accepted Netflix’s blockbuster $82 billion offer (which did not include CNN and other cable channels) last week, Trump-aligned Paramount chief David Ellison quickly fired back with a hostile bid for all of WBD to stop the Netflix deal dead in its tracks.
Now the network Ted Turner created on June 1, 1980 — at the dawn of the cable news age — is in Trump’s crosshairs.
The president is demanding that CNN’s ownership be fired, and Ellison has reportedly promised to make sweeping changes if Trump lets him win the media merger war.
On “Morning Joe,” Jonathan Lemire labeled the White House’s interference a “gross overreach and an attempt for the president to grow the bubble that he lives in.”
“President Trump doesn’t want to hear stories about how Americans are struggling or how his own base is nervous about their economic future,” Lemire said. “He would prefer to only hear from billionaires and foreign leaders who tell him everything is going great.”
“The president does not do Bill Clinton’s ‘I feel your pain’ routine,” The New York Times’ Peter Baker added. “His speciality is ‘I feel your anger.’”
And when that anger comes from the MAGA base, the White House’s instinct is to blame CNN and other media outlets for asking questions that dare burst his political bubble.
Trump’s response to facing reality? Sell CNN.
SAD.
EXTRA HOT TEA
Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton had 12 marriages between them. The Hollywood couple even accidentally married each other a second time when they weren’t paying close attention.
NEVER TRUST A SCOTTISH SHEEP
Just in time for Christmas, the University of Cambridge has released a study that ranks the monogamy rates for mammals.
Think of the great holiday conversations you can now have on the topic with Aunt Gertrude.
You can let her know that among mammals, she and her human friends rank fairly high in the monogamy league, coming in at 66%. Humans fare better than meerkats (60%) but are beaten out by beavers (73%). The California deer mouse tops the rankings for reliability with a 100% rating — while Scotland’s Soay sheep are an unfaithful lot, coming in at a miserable 0.6%. Donald Trump now admits he did call majority Black nations “shithole countries” — a remark he publicly denied for years. At the same time, the Supreme Court is moving toward rulings that could roll back landmark civil rights protections. I sat down with Rev. Al Sharpton and Jonathan Lemire to discuss what’s at stake. JS: Rev, I want to ask you about Donald Trump admitting that he did call majority Black countries and continents “shithole countries.” Will confession be good for Donald Trump’s soul? AS: I don’t want to judge what would be good for his soul, but it’s clear his policies are race-based. He said it, and I’m glad he finally admitted it. But now he seems to almost be bragging about it. That’s obviously troubling. JS: What concerns you most? AS: That he didn’t stop there, Joe. He went on to ask why we don’t bring in people from countries with huge white populations. So he’s sending every race signal he can to Americans, which also justifies why he wants to intervene in Venezuela and Nigeria but pardons a drug lord from Honduras. JS: What should we think of the Supreme Court working overtime to gut the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts? AS: There’s no question that everything won in the Supreme Court in the 1950s and 1960s is now in jeopardy. We’re looking at the Voting Rights Act being totally gutted if they take out Section 2, while the Civil Rights Act is being undermined by making it unconstitutional to address questions involving race and discrimination. JS: What impact will that have on Black Americans? AS: These were the pillars of the civil rights movement — Martin Luther King and others fought for the Civil Rights Act of ’64 and Voting Rights Act of ’65. Is Donald Trump’s goal really to undermine the progress America made during the 1950s and 1960s? There are those of us who remain committed to making sure he doesn’t get away with it. JS: Jonathan Lemire, you mentioned an Atlantic piece by David Daley about the 40-plus-year history of John Roberts’ project to gut the Voting Rights Act. Tell us about it. JL: The story itself is worth a read, but a quick summary: When Roberts was just out of clerking in D.C. in the early 1980s, while at Ronald Reagan’sDepartment of Justice, he took some steps to try and weaken the Voting Rights Act. It’s remained a lifelong project for him. JS: How much progress did Roberts make under Reagan? JL: Roberts was defeated then — Reagan shifted gears, and Republicans in Congress didn’t have their backs, so the act was renewed. But now, as the article notes, Roberts doesn’t need legislative support. They could do it not through Congress, but in the court itself, where Justices Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and, of course, Thomas are all aligned with him. The conservatives have more than enough votes, and that’s what Democrats are bracing for as we barrel into a midterm election year. This interview has been condensed and edited for brevity and clarity. Bill Murray, Jane Curtin during “Weekend Update” in 1977. Growing up, the only sleep problem I had was staying awake. I slept through Neil Armstrong’smoon walk; I dozed through Johnny Carson’s late-night classics; I even slept through Econ 101. But that’s a story for another day. Falling asleep still isn’t the issue. It’s staying asleep. And that’s a problem because more studies are showing that getting fewer than seven hours of sleep per night can be downright dangerous to your long-term health. The only thing worse? Smoking. Sleeping is one of the strongest predictors of how long you’ll live. It ranks just behind smoking as a predictor of early death — but sits ahead of physical inactivity and even diabetes. So I’m trying to build some better habits: How about you? What helps you get a solid night’s sleep? Share it with the Tea, and we’ll pass along the best advice. As for me, I’m going to turn off my phone at night, skip the sweet tea after lunch and hit the sack like my life depends on it. Because it sounds like it does! Next week, actor Simu Liu joins us to discuss his upcoming spy thriller series, “The Copenhagen Test.” Want to ask a question? Send it over, and we will pick our favorite to ask on the show!
Former Rep. Joe Scarborough, R-Fla., is co-host of MS NOW's "Morning Joe" alongside Mika Brzezinski — a show that Time magazine calls "revolutionary." In addition to his career in television, Joe is a two-time New York Times best-selling author. His most recent book is "The Right Path: From Ike to Reagan, How Republicans Once Mastered Politics — and Can Again." Recommended
A CONVERSATION WITH REV. AL SHARPTON AND JONATHAN LEMIRE
HEY MISTER, PUT DOWN THE SWEET TEA
ONE LAST SHOT
CATCH UP ON MORNING JOE
SPILL IT!
