This is the Nov. 3 edition of “The Tea, Spilled by Morning Joe” newsletter. Subscribe here to get it delivered straight to your inbox Monday through Friday.
Mar-a-Lago’s glittering “Great Gatsby” party this weekend laid bare the country’s widening economic divide and the president’s disconnect from working Americans. While Champagne flowed in the opulent South Florida club Saturday night, millions faced the loss of food assistance and skyrocketing medical bills because of Republican cuts. Trillion-dollar tax breaks aimed at billionaires, multinational corporations and tech monopolists make the rich even richer while those trying to make ends meet in Red State America head into winter facing rising heating prices and grocery bills.
The “Gatsby” soiree mirrored the Jazz Age excess that led millions blindly into the Great Depression. That Mar-a-Lago event was called “A Little Party Never Killed Nobody.” Don’t tell that to families relying on food assistance or a little help with their health care premiums.
For too many working Americans, the music stopped long ago.
They were careless people, Tom and Daisy — they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess.”
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD, “THE GREAT GATSBY”
THE SHUTDOWN STRIKES BACK
Republicans may have misread their formerly feckless Democratic rivals. With Congress careening toward a record-long government shutdown, it may be Trump and the GOP who are the ones with reason to worry.
New polls show most Americans blaming the president and his party for the shutdown, according to new NBC numbers, with the fallout starting to hit Republicans where it hurts.
And this week, that’s in Virginia and New Jersey, where polls show Democratic gubernatorial candidates Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherill with the advantage.
The real problem for Trump and the GOP is that Americans no longer trust the president on the economy. As we reported last week in The Tea, Spilled By Morning Joe, Trump’s long-touted economic edge is slipping fast while the “right track/wrong direction” mood has turned grim for the White House.
Meanwhile, only one-third of Americans believe that Trump has lived up to expectations on the economy — while two-thirds think he’s fallen short.
With numbers like these, the president is now reportedly getting involved — pouring millions into the New Jersey and Virginia races.
But it may be a little late. Can Mikie Sherrill really lose when the president boasts that he killed a tunnel that would’ve created thousands of New Jersey jobs and eased workers’ brutal commutes? And how can Abigail Spanberger fall short with federal employees from Northern Virginia facing layoffs while Trump brags about Russ Vought — aka “Darth Vader” — slashing even more?
Chances are good, they won’t.
TALKING BASEBALL WITH BARNICLE
JS: Mike, you believe we just witnessed the greatest World Series ever played. Why?
MB: I had always believed the 1975 World Series between the Reds and Red Sox was the greatest ever played. You had so many iconic moments, like the Carlton Fisk home run. And after baseball had a bad 10-year run, that World Series brought Major League Baseball back into the conversation of popular sports.
But I believe the World Series we just witnessed was actually the greatest World Series that has ever been played.
JS: We know this Dodgers team is historically good. But talk about magic of the Blue Jays?
MB: The Blue Jays were a really good team all along because they played baseball the way it is supposed to be played. They actually put the ball in play. There were a lot of unknown players, but they all did their jobs. They actually hit a lot of singles and a lot of doubles instead of always swinging for the fences, and a lot of those Blue Jay players became heroes through the course of the series by playing the game the right way.
DEATH STAR: 1, BASEBALL: 0
There are nights when fans are reminded why they fell in love with baseball. As Pablo Torre said on “Morning Joe,” the Fall Classic proved again this year to be a timeless event where anything is possible, a game where Miguel Rojas can join the sacred company of Bill Mazeroski with the swing of a bat. In that swing, Rojas delivered October dreams that generations of Dodgers fans will be talking about.
Channeling Pablo here: Game by game, minute by minute, second by second, baseball often seems to stretch time itself. Sometimes that clock runs forever, like the endless night last week when the Blue Jays took the Dodgers 18 long innings before losing.
But baseball fans didn’t just get one classic game from that long night — they got a series packed with them, one magical feat after another, until the story of this entire series became baseball scripture worthy of Cooperstown, N.Y., itself.
BOX OFFICE BLUES
Hollywood wanted a happy ending. What it got instead was a horror show.
This was Hollywood’s worst October in 27 years, pulling in just $425 million domestically. Big titles like “Tron: Ares” and “Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere” failed to catch fire, making this the worst box office weekend of the year.
Halloween weekend only deepened the gloom. “Regretting You” opened to $8.1 million while “Black Phone 2” hovered near $8 million, marking the feeblest Halloween weekend since 1993. The slump capped months of frustration as studios continued their struggle to get audiences back to theaters.
The year 2025 remains way below pre-pandemic highs, and the hope of a blockbuster season has faded.
Studios hope a stacked holiday lineup — “Wicked: For Good,” “Avatar: Fire and Ash,” “Zootopia 2” and “The SpongeBob Movie” among them — might turn the tide. Add Quentin Tarantino’s “Kill Bill” rerelease and a “Wedding Crashers” nostalgia run, and there’s still some optimism left in the projection booth.
The question heading into 2026 is whether moviegoing has a future — or is as passe as Donny Deutsch’s black Baby Gap T-shirts.
INTERLUDE
Incidentally, we had Mara Gay on this morning to discuss the mayoral race in New York City — but we did find time to ask her about her watch- and playlist:
“I’m reading Ada Limón’s “Bright Dead Things.” I’m listening to Lainey Wilson and Aretha Franklin’s “Amazing Grace” album a ton.
And I just finished “Slow Horses,” about the wayward MI6 agents. Desperately sad it’s over for now.”
EXTRA HOT TEA
1 in 7 men report having no friends. Boys are less likely to graduate from high school and college. Men account for 3 out of every 4 deaths of despair. And 98.4% of mass shooters are men.”
SCOTT GALLOWAY, author of "notes on being a man"
CATCH UP ON MORNING JOE
Trump hosts ‘Great Gatsby’ Halloween party as food assistance expired for millions
Joe reacts to new poll numbers breaking against GOP on economy
What to look for on Election Day in Virginia, New Jersey and NYC
SPILL IT!
This week, Maria Shriver, named to Forbes’ “50 Over 50” list for her work with the Women’s Alzheimer’s Movement and other initiatives focused on women’s brain health and impact, joins us ahead of the 50 Over 50 luncheon. Want to ask a question? Send it over, and we will pick our favorite to ask on the show!
Missed an edition of The Tea, Spilled by Morning Joe? Read previous issues here.
And thank you to our many readers who write to us! We appreciate all your well-wishes, questions and feedback. (For inquiring minds — Joe will have answers about his band soon!)
Have more to say? Just write here.