This is the Oct. 28 edition of "The Tea, Spilled by Morning Joe" newsletter. Subscribe here to get it delivered straight to your inbox every Monday through Friday.
Many Americans woke to the news that they slept through one of the greatest games in World Series history. The cross-border showdown between the United States and Canada is not only delivering heart-stopping baseball to fans this October, but is also firing irony straight down the middle of the plate like an Aroldis Chapman 102 mph fastball.
MAGA’s America First crowd loathes the thought of immigrants picking tomatoes in the Sunshine State or writing code in Silicon Valley, but they go absolutely bonkers when Japanese megastars like Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto work with a Dominican like Teoscar Hernández to push “America’s Team” past pesky Canadian rivals like Max Scherzer (who was born in the cold and forbidding northern province called “Missouri”).
If you’re keeping score at home, globalization seems to work just fine with this lot when it allows fans to gaze joyfully at 500-foot home runs soaring out of Chavez Ravine, but not so much when it delivers groceries to supermarkets or designs software for Silicon Valley’s entrepreneurs. Whether harvesting, hacking, or hitting, America’s newest immigrants keep proving Ronald Reagan right: that America stays ahead of the game when the world’s best and brightest show up to play ball.
"This is the presidency as a wrecking ball."
David Ignatius on Trump’s destruction of the White House
THE GOP'S WEAK TEA
Is the Boss MAGA’s Maestro?
The question came to mind while talking with Jon Landau and Warren Zanes on the set of Morning Joe. We were discussing Zane’s new film “Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere,” which stars Jeremy Allen White and takes the audience through the Boss’s battle with depression following his rise to superstardom in the early 1980s. Springsteen responded to that personal crisis with the cathartic album “Nebraska,” a collection of sparse songs laid down on crude recording equipment.
The lost heroes of Springsteen’s Nebraska were working-class young men scattered across the Rust Belt, trapped in the same dead-end factory jobs their fathers had.
A generation later, too many of their children are now languishing in the shadows of shuttered factories, drug epidemics, and the rising specter of artificial intelligence.
As Axios’s Jim VandeHei reported today on Morning Joe, the AI apocalypse is not coming; it’s here.
The lost souls of Springsteen’s America prove the grim reality that upward mobility for most working-class families is dead. The residents of “Nebraska” will also be the first to be crushed by cuts to Medicaid and food assistance — and the last to benefit from trillion-dollar tax cuts, billion-dollar bailouts and golden ballroom designs that would make Marie Antoinette blush.
Forty years after "Nebraska," Springsteen’s heroes are still looking for a reason to believe..
RETRIBUTION AND ROSARY BEADS
As President Biden’s reelection campaign teetered on the brink of collapse last July, Nancy Pelosi walked onto the set of “Morning Joe” to deliver Joe Biden a message that ABC’s chief Washington reporter Jonathan Karl considered a seismic event in the 2024 race.
That morning, Jonathan Lemire pressed Pelosi to answer whether she still supported her old friend for president. Pelosi demurred, just as she had earlier in the show when Mika asked whether Biden’s poor debate performance was disqualifying.
As the segment wore on, Lemire’s phone exploded with calls from Democratic operatives, campaign workers, and White House officials. With Biden already declaring himself in the race to the end, Pelosi’s lack of support was “devastating to Biden.”
Jon Karl recounted those momentous events earlier today on set and then told the rest of the story. In his new book “Retribution,” Karl reports that Pelosi left the “Morning Joe” studio that summer morning and was whisked to the West Wing of the White House. Upstairs in the Presidential residence, she told Biden and his political adviser that the polls were far more bleak than they had been led to believe.
The end was near.
As the meeting concluded, the president and former speaker took out their rosary beads and prayed together. Karl reports that it would remain the last meaningful conversation between the two Democratic leaders.
AND YOU THOUGHT FRONTIER AIRLINES WAS BAD
It’s not easy being green — especially when you fly directly into the eye of a Category 5 hurricane. While commercial airline pilots dance around thunderstorms, the crew on a WP-3D Orion turboprop (known as Kermit) voluntarily chose to soar straight into Hurricane Melissa’s 165 MPH winds — the strongest of any Atlantic storm this year.
What could go wrong?
Well, it turns out, a lot. Even for storm hunters who regularly fly into the heart of hurricanes, yesterday’s extreme turbulence proved to be too much to take. After likely striking a severe downdraft — which can cause a plane to drop thousands of feet in a few seconds — “Kermit” aborted its mission and returned safely to base in Lakeland, Fla.
But a few hours later, the Mean Green Machine and its crew returned to the scene of the storm to keep doing their job.
Mere mortals will be watching the Weather Channel today to follow developments as the Caribbean braces for the monster storm. Melissa could prove to be one of the strongest hurricanes on record to make landfall anywhere in the Atlantic Basin. But for those in need of an adrenaline rush like no other, try scoring a seat on Kermit (which, for added thrills, is older than most of its crew members).
One scientist on board described the experience as “humbling, mesmerizing and surprisingly poignant”—as well as “scientifically stunning and horrifying.”
And you thought dealing with spotty Wi-Fi service on American was rough.
MJ EXTRA SHOT
75% of all college students gamble regularly. And almost 10% of those students eventually become compulsive gamblers whose lives are wrecked by the addiction.
PAUL SOLOTAROFF, ROLLING STONE MAGAZINE
FROM THE BOOKSHELF
The New York Times once again featured online its list of the 100 Best Books of the 21st century. You can read it here.
The top 5 books in descending order are “The Corrections” by Jonathan Franzen, “The Known World” by Edward P. Jones, “Wolf Hall” by Hilary Mantel, “The Warmth of Other Suns” by Isabel Wilkerson, and the Times top-ranked book of the century (so far) is “My Brilliant Friend” by Elena Ferrante. Look through the list and you may conclude that, like me, you have a lot of catch-up reading to do!
CATCH UP ON THE MORNING
Kentucky gov. calls on Trump to fund SNAP benefits
Jonathan Karl on how Trump’s hush money case set stage for his victory
‘Unbearable’ examines the human cost of America’s broken pregnancy care system
SPILL IT!
Thank you for reading the very first edition of the Tea, Spilled by Morning Joe! Have a question for Joe, Mika or Willie? Send them over, and we will answer some of them on the show!
This has been The Tea, Spilled by Morning Joe. See you next time!
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