President biden challenged former President Trump to two debates, and trump accepted. Oh. Yeah. Trump agreed. He said, ill be there, assuming its okay with my parole officer. The first debate will be next month, which is the earliest a president ial debate has ever been. If were being honest, an early bird debate feels right for these guys. Boom, just like that, headtohead, toe to toe, mano and mango. Trump posted, just tell me when. Ill be there. Lets get ready to rumble rumble . Ive seen your rallies. I think you mean, lets get ready to ramble. Good morning. Welcome to morning joe. It is thursday, may 16th. I just have to ask, the Question Alex asks, why is it not friday . How is it not friday, guys . Its thursday. Were grateful that god has given us another day to come in and be together. Im very grateful. Were close to friday. Were not at friday. 24 hours, itll be friday. A lot to talk about. We have White House Bureau chief for politico, jonathan lemire. We have john heilemann. Mara gay is with us. Former treasury official and morning joe economic analyst Steve Rattner is up bright and early this morning. Did he bring charts on this thursday . I dont know. Maybe he did. I told him, i want him around the table. He comes in, goes to the fenway wall. Southwest wall. Southwest wall. He has charts. He leaves, and i take it personally after a while. Why is it not friday . I take it personally im not invited to the big boys table. Im off in the kitty corner. What did i do this morning, steve . I appreciate it. I said i wanted you here. Lets get through a couple things. We have a lot to get to. The debates, my god, its happening. Just saying. So excited. [ laughter ] lets talk about real things. Okay. Mike lupica says this might be the most Exciting Knicks Team. Debate. They won two titles in the 70s With Frazier and walt reid. Knicks fans, this is a team theyve loved the most in a long time. Patrick ewing teams made it to the finals in 1999. Brunson has taken the city by storm. They could have a game seven at home. It is difficult to imagine the crowd letting them down. Im cheering for the knicks because it is so exciting, but itll end up being the nuggets and the celtics. Lets hope. Heres the thing, what lupica says is Jalen Brunson is a great playoff performer. Its clearly true. I would be like, not since the days of walt clyde frazier. Please dont. There is an electricity in the garden that there hasnt been in a long time. Ive never said this before, never said it before, but ill say it are we on set with thank you, jimmy dolan. He gave us all those years of disappointment. Right. Abuse. Yeah. Its just made this moment that much sweeter. There ya go. Everybody has been so longing. Its been knicks fans have been in the desert for so long, being crapped on by jimmy dolan. They can now see the light. Through the dolan crap. Thank you for that. Yeah. Mara. It is a good 6 03 a. M. Image. Proving my New York Times sienna poll he has a Conspiracy Theory behind it. That every one of those polls skew Press Coverage for weeks to come. Right. The newspaper of record, new york post, collapsing polls. I hold up the paper of record for morning joe for a good reason. Fox news has their own polls out which show deadlock. The New York Times had an ipsos poll that showed biden ahead by four. Again, am i saying biden is ahead by four . No. It is a deadlock. Again, this ipsos poll, heres the new fox news poll that shows donald trump up by 1 percentage point. Joe biden is still pretty incredible. Biden has picked up three. Right. Mara, im always saying the day after a sienna poll, and its been for six months. Okay, you have a lot to live for. You have four children. Polls change. The trends, this cycle. You and a lot of people who like democracy. Sure enough, the next day, we will be hit by not one, by two, by four, five polls the next week that show were in a deadlock, right . But my point, it does skew Press Coverage for weeks to come. Im not asking you to defend the times. You dont do the polling. This is awkward. Im just saying, it is a draw. Also, polls are but one data point. I think we tend to right. Think of them as the only measure. Yeah. For whats happening. Theyre often out of context. Were polling actual human beings here. Thats imperfect. You saw in nevada, which is a notoriously difficult state to poll, that biden was down the most. That may be the actual trend, but the real shape of it is really hard to know. Youre just getting a snapshot in time. Right. The other thing here is it is hard to know when you have two people, two candidates for president , who really are quite unpopular overall, both of them, with the American Public. How much of this is people who are being polled right now who are not super political, theyre not politics junkies, they may not like either of them. Its still may. Theyre not thinking about this necessarily as a contest between two candidates. Theyre thinking, i dont like either of them. Talk to me in five months. Ill take the last guy. Right. The whole idea its going to be 13 points in nevada. Seriously, i will take any bets, it is going to be close. Democrats almost always win close races in nevada. Unbelievable. Now, finally to you before we get moving. Inflation. Inflation eases. Yeah. Stocks hit highs. Most importantly, from at least the numbers i saw yesterday, Grocery Prices going down a bit. Im telling you, between three things, really, especially for Younger Voters, Grocery Prices, its gas, and, of course, its buying a home. Or being able to have a nice place to rent out. Those are the three well, were not even talking about a car. I mean, cars are crazy. We basically trade in all of our cars. We have a gray kia mini van. I love it. Its reliable, and it is ten years, 100,000 miles. You dont have to go to do you have this part . Yeah, well have this part in about eight months. No, you know, i get up in the gray kia mini van and drive down the road like a boss. You should see us. Its the problem that steve has with his the rolls, you cant even use it. Yeah. Away for the parts forever. Forget about the gray cooler. Its crazy. Not even fighting us anymore. Im not going to get into the middle of that with you guys. Thank you, john, for attacking my lifestyle. That wasnt an attack. It was a show of envy. Im jealous. If you want, ill give you a ride in the bentley around the block. Lets do it. Wow. Steve rattner makes populists of us all. Youre teasing my appearance at the Southwest Wall in a few minutes, but we do have good news on inflation. Right. We have good news on food, energy, a lot of the prices are actually moderating. Theyre going up by reasonable amounts. Ill show you stuff about how Consumer Sentiment is closely tied to inflation. We know thats going to drive the election. Just to where you were a second ago, you know the real, clear average of polls shows it is a dead heat. It is a dead heat. I find that surprising. Again, my reaction is not so much to the times. Im dead serious. It is people who freak out disproportionately on the times and then the times doing 15 stories on their poll. Fox wont do 15 stories on their fox poll. Morning consult wont. Its become this Cottage Industry for people on the other side of the chinese wall that mara is not on. She has nothing to do with this. Please, do not direct any comments or tweets to her. Definitely not involved in the polls. Just for people at home, and its important for them to kind of see whats behind the scenes, for six months, since people have been freaking out about bidens team, im telling you every time i go in and talk to anybody thats running the campaign, the big part of the campaign, i dont know what theyre telling you and what theyre telling other people, they act like people that are holding four aces. What about this . Yeah, its pretty bad. What about this . Yeah, yeah, well, that looks really tough. Yeah, boy, trump. They really is this a criticism or no. Im telling you, they know something that i think a lot of us dont know. They look at numbers and see where things are going. Theyve had a theory of the case, when people realize donald trump is getting into the race, things are going to start gelling better for him. They understand you win politics by raising money and organizing on the ground. They understand Donald Trumps numbers are way down in every way, fundraising. Theyre not going to theyre never going to catch joe biden. As far as organization goes, we all know, anybody who has been involved in the political campaign, if youre tearing up, like, stakes in april and may, youre not putting them back down in july and august. Donald trump will be pounded on the ground. The blocking and tackling the biden people feel great about. They have a thousand clips of donald trump that, every day, theyre like, which one are we going to use today . Boop. It makes him look horrible. The Biden Campaign theyre supremely confident. Yes. Makes me nervous. Theyll confident it will be close. They know it is going to be tight. An aide told me in the last week or so that this person was saying, i feel good about where we are. We are going to win decisively, by less than a point. Thats how the race is going to be, tight. They like where they are. In part, the fundamentals. They have a better organization, far more State Offices and money on hand, and that advantage is probably only going to grow. They feel like once americans Pay Attention, and to maras point, most are not. There is skepticism whether tis will be the race. Its important for the debates to happen so early. First, there isnt an understanding now that so Many Americans vote early. It was going to be midoctober, and thats too late. Too many ballots have been cast. Im still having intelligent people with advanced degrees telling me, who is the republican nominee really going to be . Yeah. They think biden is too old. Trump will be in prison. He cant do it. There are people still skeptical. A biden person was telling me june is so important. What the june debate will do, itll grab donald trump, who has been turned into white noise, and hell be put in americans living rooms. Heres the guy, the nominee. Do you really want this again . They think itll change this. I dont know if im suffering from campaign posttraumatic stress, but dont go robby mook on me. Im not talking about algorithms. Talking about algorithms. There is a long way go. Anything could happen. Heres a theory of the case for the Biden Campaign, and i think theyre dead right, itll be a close race. In close races, it is the blocking, the tackling that wins it for you. We saw this in 2004. We thought that 2004 with bush against kerry was going to be just like 2000. You had ken melman who was blocking and tackling from january on, just phone calls every day, going around. Now, you have Jen Omalley Dylan doing it. Shes amazing. That adds up in close races. If you know it is going to be a close race, that stuff adds up. Again, maybe theyre wrong. I will tell you, the difference between this campaign and 16 is, there was arrogance in the 16 campaign. They made fun of donald trump. They said no way donald trump can win. They went on Saturday Night Live and mocked and ridiculed donald trump as the republican nominee. This is the one good thing about the New York Times polls, it scares the crap out of all the supporters who will say to fundraisers, please, may we give you more . I guess after the election is over, trump will probably say it was a conspiracy, the New York Times sienna poll always overplayed how bad things were for biden to juice his fundraising. Thats working, too. Lets get caught up on the news that broke on our show yesterday. President biden and donald trump agreeing to president ial debates. Things escalated pretty rapidly throughout yesterday afternoon, with both candidates announcing they have accepted two invitations to debate. Once on cnn on june 27th and again on abc news on September 10th. The rules will differ from past election cycles. The candidates agreed to bypass the commission on president ial debates, which had organized these faceoffs every four years since 1988. Biden also requested these guidelines, which trump begrudgingly accepted, or at least we think he accepted it. Never know. There be no audience in the room. That no Third Party Candidates be allowed to participate. That only a select group of news outlets can host. A candidates microphone be shut off if they go over their allotted speaking time. John heilemann, im skeptical that trump will ever put himself in that position where hes not saved by a roaring crowd. Have one outside, whatever. I think theres a lot of evidence to suggest that donald trump is not as good as his word and that he wont necessarily make good on this. The ill be anywhere at anytime pledge. The thing that trump has been the kind of Core Paradigm for the campaign, the Trump Campaigns Point Of View is, donald trump is strong. Joe biden is weak. Hes weak, failing, flailing, old, fumbling. They dont want the contrast. Donald trump is weak, failing, miserable. Thats not what they think. You dont think suzy wiles, chris, and the smart people on his campaign dont understand how often this guy loses his Train Of Thought . I think they do. Forgets who he is running against. Thinks Jimmy Connors, the tennis pro from 74 to 77 also brokered the Camp David Accords . They know. They know. I think they also have a darker they have a more critical view of joe bidens errors and missteps in this area than you do. Were just talking here about, not what the right Point Of View is, but are they going to let donald trump go debate. Yeah. It would be, i think, a very tricky thing for donald trump, whose main Point Of View is, i am the tough guy. I roll over everything. Im rolling over the legal system right now. Joe biden is weak and flailing. Im strong and tough. Im unstoppable. For him to have said, ill beat you anytime, anywhere, under any circumstances, and then back out. He has painted himself into a corner because i think trump did not necessarily believe, trump himself did not believe biden would eventually ever say hed take these debates. Now, he is kind of in a corner. Joe, i think donald trump always tries to leave himself wiggle room. Hes not left himself much here. If you ask me, you know, with a gun to my head, whether i think the debates are going to happen, i wouldnt say nothing close to 100 , but a lit more likely than not that trump feels he has no choice but to do the two. What about his campaign . He is going in not with knowledge, not with experience on The World Stage that was productive, but he is going to go in there with insults, with a firehose of falsehoods, with personal stuff about joe biden, and he is going to come at him hard. Thats going to be the challenge. Yeah. You laugh, but sometimes that throws people off. You never know. Jonathan lemire worked in 2016. Mika, im not laughing. Okay. Im smiling at the fact that when donald trump tries all of those things that he does in front of his fat elvis 77 crowd where they roar and say, please throw a sweaty scarf in my direction, it is going to be met with dead silence. The cameramen and women are going to be going i dont underestimate it. Nasty behavior is so shocking that it can be offputting. But its so past that. What about rfk jr. . He is not included in the debates, which his campaign put together vociferous opposition saying, look, were factoring in the polls here. We should be part of the race. Some americans may agree with him. The biden and Trump Campaigns have cut him out. He is not going to be part of these debates. Trump, we should note, is calling for more than just these two, and said hes gotten an agreement with fox news to host a third. The Biden Campaign says, no, this will be it, the president ial campaigns, plus a Vice President ial debate. Kamala harris and whoever trump picks for his running mate. Thatll be in july. There is a sense the Biden Campaign wants to box trump in. They know he was ahead of this, saying, ill debate you in any way. The Biden Campaign said, okay, well do it like this. Trump cant now be perceived as walking away from that. If he did, itd be a perception of weakness. Right. You know, mara, willie always says, i strongly recommend that our viewers watch a donald trump rally from the beginning to the end. To understand how disconnected this man is from reality. Yeah. Again, im just saying, 90 minutes in a deadly silent Studio Audience with nothing but laughter coming from cameramen and camerawomen and stagehands from the really stupid things that he says, i think it is a huge mistake for him. Well, theres a few things working in joe bidens favor in that sense. One of them is that donald trump has really enjoyed going on the platform of his choosing to communicate with the public for the past three, four years. That is going to be thats just going to end with this. The other thing is that i think the more National Events you have where all eyes are in one place, the better for joe biden. Yes. This is not going to be something that donald trump can introduce in his own way on his own platform. Americans are going to see from a traditional