President s trade war and repeated attacks on amazon. Then theres his authoritarian trifecta. Going after the quote unquote he writes Justice Department and congratulating another strongman leader after democratic election most people dont think was terribly democratic. Mika is off in a family matter. Joe will be with us in a moment. Weve got National Affairs analyst, republican strategist and political commentator, and the president of the council on Foreign Relations and author of the book a world in disarray. So markets overseas are seeing losses this morning following the latest massive selloff on wall street to kick off the new quarter. The dow fell as many as 758 points yesterday before trimming its losses to close down 458. The nasdaq was the hardest hit shedding nearly 3 . Futures looking slightly like theyre up this morning. Stocks suffered heavy losses on the combination of fears of a trade war and the Tech Industry getting hit with new regulations. China announced yesterday it had implemented tariffs on 128 types of u. S. Imports in response to President Trumps tariffs on imported steel and aluminum. Meanwhile shares of amazon hammered yesterday as President Trump continued his attacks on twitter against the massive online retailer. He tweeted quote, only our money losing post office makes money with amazon. They lose a fortune and they will be paying. As we told you yesterday, while the post office is losing a fortune, the president is wrong to blame amazon for that. Federal regulators have found the Postal Services contract has been profitable for the post office. The losses are mostly due to pension and Health Care Costs and not its deal to deliver packages for the internet retailer. So joe, good morning. Theres a ton in there. The president for the moment you all went off the air yesterday just went on a twitter ram pauj a rampage and covered a lot of ground. He went on a tirade and peppered in false information and willie, how ironic that this is what the president does after praising sin clairs leaders for sending out basically fake news scripts and forcing people just like the old days of the soviet union to read those skrimts or be fired. But i think what we saw yesterday is that there is a cost if not for the president , even though there are polls that suggest there is a cost for the president doing this, but there is a cost actually for the rest of americans. Autocratic impulses do not align with free markets, do not align with constitutional republics like our own and you saw billions of dollars wiped out yesterday for retirees, for people that are investing in retirements, for people that have college funds. All because the president decided to tweet against a man who owns the paug wowashington. The markets have dropped 4 this year and theyve dropped not because of any fundamental changes in the economy but because of the president s own erratic behavior on twitter and on tariffs. Yeah, and i think, joe, i mean, certainly there are two different pieces othis and im happy to get a lot of blame on trump. Youve got a couple things going on that provide a little bit more of the larger picture. One is that the markets spent a lot of 2017 being able to absorb the volatility donald trump brings to our Economic System and they expected a great payoff with Corporate Tax cuts and now theyre looking down the road with nothing to kind of cushion the blow. Theres no Economic Relief further in sight. If there was some chance there was going to be a giant infrastructure bill, nobody really believes thats going to happen and so the markets now, its like trump alone and his actions kind of stark relief against that backdrop and then you do have a few things that arent about the fundamentals of the economy, but go to the tech sector more broadly having gotten itself in a whole bunch of trouble, some of that related to some activity back in 2016, 2015, but more broadly youve got this sense that democrats and republicans alike are more likely to potentially regulate Companies Like twitter and facebook as well as google and the leaders in the tech sector. You put all that together its a pretty nasty stew. Yeah, it really is. And richard, all politics is local as we like to say. Remember back in the early 1980s when some all time neo cons were attacking Ronald Reagan when he talked about importing grains from the soviet union. Here we have on the other side of the equation, you have a president of the United States actually without really even knowing what hes doing getting engaged in a trade war because it feels right, because it feeds an instinct that hes had for 30, 40 years and how strange that hes hurting a lot of the same people who helped elect him president. A lot of farmers across the midwest, especially in iowa are being punished because china did exactly what people like you knew china was going to do. They responded to Donald Trumps tariffs with tariffs of their own. Shocking. Yeah, its going to hurt not just american exporters, agriculture and otherwise, but also those american firms that have to use imports and thats the results of say the steel and aluminum tariffs the other day. Its as if the administration sees tariffs and more broadly protectionism as an abstract concept rather than as actually a policy tool that has real implications for american producers and consumers both directly and when others retaliate. Its just not being thought through, and its one of the reasons the market is beginning to tank. This administration has got to be really careful. They inherited a strong market. They added all sorts of fiscal stimulus because of tax cuts and spending increases but now among other things, the protectionism theyre going to bring down what was their single strongest calling card. Just to follow up on that. I was going to say just to follow up on that, plus the instability of this administration with all its turnover. As he was saying, the market responded well to trump because he did have a strong cabinet and that when he was elected people trust that. Now with all this turnover, its really causing a lot of problems within the markets as well. It really is. And willie, i just keep waiting for my conservative friends and we dont need a whole lot, but maybe a few could really come out on capitol hill and speak out strongly. My conservative friends need to speak out strongly against these tariffs, that undermine free trade, that distort the marketplace. The president s attacks on job creators. You look at his attacks on amazon, and you look at his attacks on other companies that he doesnt like. This is a president of the United States doing exactly what free market conservatives like myself have always said we dont want the federal government to do. You dont want the federal government picking winners and losers in the free marketplace. Thats exactly what donald trump is doing and according to the latest reports coming out overnight, he plans to continue to attack amazon, but what he doesnt realize is, is when he strikes out at amazon he causes he causes the entire tech sector to go down. And hes impacting people, you know, peoples jobs and its just like these tariffs, when he does something that he thinks feels good and feeds a political twinge, a misguided political twinge, he costs retirees and he costs people trying to set aside money in college funds, you know, just collectively, hundreds of billions of dollars. Well, its one of the many costs of having a personality driven president which is as you say, hes scratching an itch. He feels that Washington Post covers him unfairly so he has to go after jeff bezos, but richard, as joe said this has real world implications and if youre muddying the waters and if you really want to worry about the post office losing money there are things that you could do that have nothing to do with amazon, but what hes doing right now is picking on one of the most Popular Companies in america, in the world that people have a relationship with and not just hurting amazon, but if you look down the front page of the wall street journal, this slide in tech stocks yesterday, apple, netflix, all the way down. And its hurting biotech stocks. Theres technology across the board and joe made a good point. Its people with 401 k s, retirement plan, its a slow motion crisis but its coming. Its going to be Pension Plans. Weve got all sorts of states, municipalities and theyre not even close to being able to meet their obligations to working class americans and this is going to hit hard. All these Pension Plans are based on things like 7, 8 annual returns in the market. Those days are over and the sort of thing the president s going to do is actually going to accelerate the arrival where states and cities are not going to be able to meet their obligations to retired workers. Yeah, its interesting, the president s poll numbers went up one or two points to maybe 41, 42 on one or two polls and suddenly you saw screaming headlines that the president s roaring back and the president , this, that its really not. I think i read somebody from real clear politics saying at the time, hey, listen, 42 is within the median range. The guys been between 38 and 42 as low as 35, 34 . Well, of gallops latest polls come out and hes sitting at 39 . Again, about a third of the country, 35 of the country sometimes 40 of the country approve of what hes doing and the overwhelming majority of americans do not. I and again, all of this chaos, people seeing the markets falling down, the markets falling almost 5 so far for the year. All of the churning and again, it seems like this president is just not interested in getting any sort of momentum. He he wants to build up and tear down and have chaos every day. Right. Well, and again, i just think that you think as you look toward the midterm elections and you weve seen some of the data that weve seen over the course of the off years and other special elections weve looked at where republicans were even in the braces after the tax cut was passed. Republicans found it hard to capitalize on that politically. And as i said theres not much when you look at the legislative agenda between now and november, there really is none. We have confirmation hearings for a couple of big jobs but its not the combination of a long and sustained stretch of anticipated economic volatility and chaos matched with a long stretch of little or nothing happening on the legislative front leads almost towards what people have been expecting which is republicans getting hammered at the midterms and yet President Trump does not seem to even in the most selfinterested way look at that as the potential consequence hes facing. You would think that would discipline his behavior to some extent knowing that a democratic controlled house of representatives would pose a threat to his presidency. Might bring on impeachment hearings and so on and yet he cant even discipline himself even with his own skin at stake during this game. Yesterday rewe reported on anchors being required to read a script about fake news. That got widespread attention after dead spin published a Video Montage showing anchors echoing the same lines in the designated script. In a memo sent to sin clair employees yesterday, the Senior Vice President of news wrote, the critics are now upset about our we find it curious wed be attacked for asking our news people to remind their audiences that unsubstantiated stories exist on social media. President trump tweeted his defense of sin clair writing so funny to watch Fake News Networks among the most dishonest groups i have ever dealt with criticize sin clair broadcasting for being biased. Sin clair is far superior to cnn and even more fake nbc which is a total joke. The sin clair broadcast group which skews conservative owns or operates more than 190 stations including 22 nbc affiliates. Two of those are in states that voted for trump. The company is also seeking to acquire dozens more by purchasing Tribune Media. Lets bring in our senior media reporter for politico. Its good to see you. I think a lot of people woke up and heard about sin clair a couple of days ago when this video was making the rounds but talk about the basis of who they are, what they do and how Much Television they control and potentially could control Going Forward. Thats right. In some ways sin clair has flown under the radar and that might be a lot of National Media focuses on other National Media. We cover news organizations that are big in washington and new york city. The thing about sin clair they have reached a broad swath of the country. A large portion of the country that voted for donald trump. If their acquisition of Tribune Media goes through theyll own about 230 stations and have penetration about 72 of households in the United States. So whats got a lot of people concerned about this is not just that tribune is owning a lot of stations but also that tribune is known to force local stations around the country to people would assume are being run by people in their communities. This can include segments that push a conservative line. It includes commentary by former trump official and in addition, theyre forcing news anchors to read these promos that talk about fake news and seem to echo the talking points of trump that he uses to undermine legitimate news organizations. And people defended the clip, they say sin clair is an antidote to generations, they believe of biased news from the other side and as sin clair said yesterday in its statement, they said look, what were saying is theres a lot of unsubstantiated fake news out there and were here to keep our eye on it. Does that hold water for you . Another thing that they mentioned in that memo was saying mentioning stories like pizza gate which was a bogus conspiracy theory. I dont think anyone in the news media if anchors said were not going to run unsubstantiated conspiracy theories on tv. I think the problem was when sin clair started saying news organizations not just stuff on social media could be biased and they could run fake stories and they dont do their due diligence, i think thats what got a lot of journalists up in arms. One of the things were seeing right now which is striking to me is some local stations and some local anchors are pushing back a bit. We saw a station just last night in madison, a sin clair affiliate in madison say they werent going to run this promo. Some other anchors also jumped in on social media on twitter and facebook and raised concerns about the pro mamos and media consolidation more broadly. This really does talk about, if you will, richard, what this sounds like to you where you have somebody thats trying to get favors with the president , with the white house, sending out scripts to journalists all over the country and not only do they have mustread mustperform segments but more disturbingly to a lot of these anchors, they are scripts that they are forced to read, that set up the segments, that frame is segments and so many of these anchors were starting to find out believe that its just pure propaganda that theyre pushing to promote donald trump. What it looks like when you look at the map, joe, its a defacto International Television network and its one thats id logically fuelled in which the local fill yates have precious little independence or integrity and theyre forced to tow the company line or they lose their jobs and this to me is at the opposite end of what journalism is meant to be. Its meant to be a check and a balance, not a cheering squad, so this seems to me fundamentally at odds with the dna of this country and our politics. Ive got to tell you, this has got to make people uncomfortable. Well and the Vice President of sin clair said its curious theyre being attacked. We are trying to figure out any example of newspapers or television stations that actually gave people scripts and ordered them to read it. It would be like the New York Times going to Nick Kristoff saying this is the op ed that youre going to put in the newspaper this week and youre going to sign your name to it and go. And these local anchors, what theyre doing is theyre employing the people who really are the most trusted faces in news, and those are americas local anchors. Absolutely. And with those local anchors theyre already frustrated enough that they have to do so much reporting on donald trump and the National News just because it overtakes so much of the national discussion, so when they do get a chance to do local reporting it makes it even more curious for them and its harder for them to show that they dont have a bias and they just want to give the local news. And i guess, michael, to you, how much of a concern is it now for these local reporters that theyre going to now seeing that theyre kind of in some bias mode and theyre not really being there for their communities . Right. I mean, i saw one anchor at a rochester station who was responding to people on social media and wrote a pretty passionate Facebook Post saying how they were concerned that this damaged the reputation of not just this journalist but that the station, something they had worked on for years and i just looked at her twitter feed and you lad a lot of people in her community saying you know, why were you reading this, why would you do this . If you would read this thing that they put in front of you that you didnt agree with, what else are you going on air and saying that you didnt agree with. So not only did they invite a lot more scrutiny, especially trying for this acquisition of tribune but i think they may have damaged some of the trust that they have in local communities. What we see in polls is that americans most likely trust their local newscasts and i think people expect w