Comes to a possible trade war with china, that the president says you cant lose, were going to have to see if millions of voters in the heartland agree, they dont really seem to. So with us this morning on this very warm balmy friday morning across the northeast, i may even go swimming after wards. Opening day, joe. Thursday. Its opening day though. It is opening day at fenway so were excited about that, but its also about 15 degrees across the northeast. So we have political reporter for nbc news carol lee. Also White House Reporter if the Associated Press, washington anchor for bbc world knews america. Out with the new book, the confidence code for girls. I read it too along with willie trying to get that extra boost of confidence thats been so sadly lacking throughout my life. You need it, joe, clearly. I know, why do you think im reading the confidence code . Its an incredible book and mika and well be talking about it to audiences. Weve got winning historian john meacham. I think hes written a book too. Mika will be back tomorrow. So willie, yesterday was fascinating. This was, you know, we were just celebrating the life and the remarkable legacy of a woman who inspired inspired brown v board of education. Of course that takes you back to when eisenhower sent the National Guard to little rock to do extraordinary things. It transformed really our lives, our childrens lives, our lives, american culture. Now we have sort of the the brietbart inspired and culture inspired moving of National Guard troops down to the border. Nobodys really sure what theyre going to do there. Theyre not really allowed to make contact down there, but we have that and then we had conversation yesterday with the head of department of Homeland Security talking about the wall. But its not Donald Trumps wall that mexicos going to pay for. It seems like theyre going to be doing rehab on Barack Obamas part of the wall, so again, the last week has just seemed to be a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing. And all reactions to things that President Trump has said. You can go down the list of stories that were going to talk about today whether its the planned now pullout of troops american troops from syria, whether its the tariffs and the trade war thats come from it, whether its sending the National Guard to the border. The administration has had to formulate policy around the statement hes made. He signed a declaration to send National Guard troops to the southern border as joe said. It calls for the departments of defense and Homeland Security to work with border to enact security. Troops will not make contact with any immigrants and yesterday Homeland Security secretary said she hoped deployment would begin quote, immediately although she said shes still speaking with the four border governors and that a specified plan is not in place. Illegal Border Crossings hit a 46year low last year but the administration insists a surge over the last month and a potential up tick this month is cause for urgency. We are seeing more and more advertising and very unfortunately by the traffickers and smugglers to our south, specific to how to get around our system and enter our country and stay. We have documented cases of borrowing children, appearing at the border as a family unit in a fraudulent way. Why today, not yesterday, tomorrow . Today is the day we pant to start this process. The threat is real. George w. Bush sent troops to the border in 2006 while president obama sent 1,200 in 2010. In both cases they supported Border Patrol and did not carry out seizures or arrests and just to underline how ad hoc this policy has been, we heard from the National Guard saying we look for ward to times and dates of this plan. They actually have the National Guard in california have something in common with our fighting men and women over in syria, who are trying to stop isis from regaining their foothold in that region. And theyve been telling people like david for months they would like some guidance for monmonth this president doesnt provide guidance. Youve heard the threat is real, talking about the threat from i dont know if its this like mystery machine skoobj van because fox news mentioned it on saturday morning. I want to make sure that i understood you. Did you say that illegal Border Crossings are at a 43year low . I did. And the what the reason that the Trump White House is giving is because in the last month alone in the last month theyve ticked up a little bit, so that constitutes a crisis in their eyes and the actions that President Trump promised during the campaign, he believes now is the time to implement them. Well, you know, just continuing my streak of always being a little bit off, alex tells me last year was a 46year low and carol lee, you look at the trend lines. Theyre going in one direction, down. And we heard theyve been going down since 2008 especially since the 2008 recession. This seems to be a solution to a problem that we just dont have like we did during the Clinton Administration and during the bush administration. Yeah, it seems to be born out of the president s sort of restlessness that weve been seeing in recent weeks and ever since he signed that omnibus bill that he was frustrated with and threatened to veto and then signed he seems to be reaching for ways to kind of make up for that. And this is the latest in a series of things that hes thrown out there. I think one question thats really going to be critical in the next coming days is how theyre going to pay for this. Thats going to be a fight and where does this money come from . Because you can come up with this idea that he has and to put National Guard troops on the border, but thats going to cost a lot of money and its not clear exactly where thats going to come from so i think theres a sort of scramble as you said earlier. The president speaks and then everyone tries to fill in the gaps and make what he says into some sort of formulated policy. And john meacham, well really living though here in an alternate reality. What is it Kellyanne Conway talked about alternative facts. You have National Guard troops going to the border to protect the border that has fewer crossings since i mean, hell, there crossings have been going down for almost as long as i, you know, lowest since in 46 years. I mean, half a century. And then theyre talking about building building this wall for a problem that again is at a low ebb for almost half ocentury and were going to show you just a really i think unintentionally funny clip in a second. This week you have donald trump blasting the Washington Post as a lobbyist organization. It is not, thats a lie. You have the president of the United States talking about the United States post office and taxpayers having to subsidize their services. That is false. They do not subsidize those services as everybody has been saying over the last several days and also saying that amazon gets this sweet heart deal, this special this special cut rate when in fact, its just anybody that mails in bulk. I know i always ask this question of you, but how exactly do we put this in perspective when you have a president that every day is not only lying, but is making sure that his lies and his twisted distorted views of reality lets apply that to the border wall, actually impact policy, all right, we have that part of it, but then his own party says nothing. They dont stand up to him. They dont fight against stupid trade wars that hurt their constituents. They dont fight against the trump tariff tax that hurts consumers. I mean, i could go on and on. These arent just tweets. These are things that are hurting farmers and consumers and a lot of other americans. Well, hes taken the point about its better to be feared than to be loved to a remarkable maybe ultimate conclusion in the american context. I think the republicans youre talking about, if they dont fear him, they certainly fear his voters. And one of the things that to me is really fascinating about this week and the two issues youre talking about, which is the wall and the issue weve been talking about for a couple of days which is trade, is this is an elemental play for trump in so far as there is a play for him. The amazon stuff is interesting but that could very well be seen as the nfl players of the moment or the whatever the storm of the moment is. But there are two things that he has talked about since he began flirting with politics as far back as the late 1980s and thats trade and theres one thing hes talked about since that first moment when he used the birther issue to thrust himself to the heart of the right wing and thats the wall. And seems to me that theres a certain psychological interest, certain psychological significance that for all the as you put it for all the sound and the fury, for all the strutting and fretting up on the stage, he has gone back to two things that has that have stood him in good enough stead to propel him to this place in the life of the country. And that is the wall and thats tariffs. And i think that there i dont know if thats because hes worried about something that we dont yet know what it is, god knows what else there could be, but i think that its a sign that he knows that there are things coming he needs that base. And that base is interested in the wall and that base is interested in saying that other countries arent going to screw us anymore whether or not that has a basis in fact. And as john says the wall has been core to the president s message since he announced he was running for president. It was discussed yesterday when Homeland Security was up at the podium in an exchange with peter alexander. Will there be a wall or modifications to an existing wall . We have started building as you know. So were building real time. How much is sit being built at this point. Sf there was a wall before that needs to be replaced its being replaced by a new wall. So this is the trump border wall. And in many cases it will replacing current wall would count as new wall in your words. Yes, it would. We have a tool kit if you will, some of the port parts of the border are very different. In one place we have a wall that floats with the sand because of the conditions. In other places will have taller walls again depending. So willie, its renovate that wall then. I mean, which i guess you say build that wall and thats really easy, but build that wall, its a little harder for renovate that wall, which is actually all theyre talking about doing here. Yeah, i mean, jonathan, to watch secretary get twisted there. Because shes got to figure out what it means exactly, i guess the question is, is he building a new wall on the border or is he not building a new wall on the border . The chant renovate that wall and not clear how were going to pay for it is not the sort of catchiness that we saw in those rallies. This consideration is something that, you know, has been in the works for a while. That does not match up with reality. Its rhetoric and reality, an uneasy relationship. They are one of the greatest things, the greatest frustrations the president has is the lack of the wall which was his Signature Campaign item. Very frustrating for him that there was not much funding for that in the omnibus. One reason he said he would go veto it. A lot of this is linked to the same idea that the president is feeling more comfortable in his job. He feels more sort of emboldened and he wants to go back to trusting his gut and it goes back to trusting the Campaign Promises. His biggest success politically is of course his election. Its not the policies hes enacted since he took office, its the fact that he got the office to begin with and he is seeing that with the wall, with the tariffs and with the idea of pulling back american troops across from global hot spots including syria. This week, if his instinct has been to go with his gut, well, his gut has been making his head lie. If youre talking about amazon or a lot of these issues hes spreading misinformation every day and the question that i keep asking myself is, we knew this of trump, we certainly if we didnt know it of trump before we certainly know it now, everybody has to know it now, even his base has to know now that the man just doesnt tell the truth. But the question is, how far will the Republican Party go out on the line with a man who does grave violence to the ideas of friedmann and reagan and launching trade wars or uses the centralized state to try to punish a, one of the most innovative businesses in america, in the Free Enterprise system. Lies about that company, causes its stock to go down. I mean, i think ive watched enough episodes of billions to know that if you spread lies about a company or product to cause its stock prices to go down, the fec should be coming after you or the sec let me get my alphabet soup right. The sec should be coming after you and yet again, he keeps going and not a single republican leader stands up and says no. Enough. What youre doing is not only not conservative, its radical. Yeah, i mean, its been remarkable. One of the things weve all noted over the course of the last year and a quarter is the fact that the Republican Party will side with donald trump because there are those republicans out there up for reelection who see that Donald Trumps numbers are stronger than their numbers and they dont want to distance themselves because they fear incurring the wrath of their voters. We will get the answer to that i guess in november in the Midterm Elections, but there are two things that donald trump is doing at the moment that may so hamper the success that he has achieved on the Financial Markets. The threat of tariffs against china and bashing Tech Companies like amazon and weve seen the market really tumble dramatically in the course of the last month or two. Those are the things that might actually get the Republican Party to be more confrontational with donald trump because those are the kinds of things that actually have a real impact. Anyone with money in a 401 k , anyone with money invested in the stock market is feeling this at the moment and while the Republican Party has abandoned principles of free trade and abandoned principles of Debt Reduction over the past year, if they take a hit on the economy and the Financial Markets will that have them pushing back against some of the things the president is doing. Charlie had an op ed a couple of days ago where he called trumps tariff tax a cancer on on the economy. Yeah, he did. And donald trump listens to things like that. I mean, as carol pointed out a minute ago, he signs the omnibus bill, hes ripped and criticized from the right. Coulter says hes been a bust on immigration. It turns out his just like jeb bush and marco rubio. Has dinner with Stephen Miller and at come all these tweets that turn into sending our men and women of the military down to the border of mexico. A storm is coming this november and it could be a category 5. The latest warning from the partys majority leader. And the white house says no, its not the policy. U. S. Forces will be staying there to fight isis for now. But first, bill karins has a check on the forecast. I dont have anything to say that anyone wants to hear. More snow and more cold heading in. Were freezing this morning. Freeze warnings all the way down into alabama, birmingham, this morning, the windchill is in the 30s in atlanta. Teens chicago and buffalo and boston. Its still a little bit windy but not as bad as yesterday in the northeast. Now as far as today goes, well recover on the east coast but watch what happens. 30 and snowing in billings. Here we go again. Look at the path of snow. This is through saturday. We start the snow in montana and wyoming. Then snow in areas of missouri. Then friday night through the southern ohio valley, decent snow in West Virginia and then possibly some heavier snow in the Higher Elevations outside of washington, d. C. And maybe a little bit near philadelphia and baltimore during the day on saturday. So just incredible. We cant get rid of this winter pattern. So there it is on friday. Also a chance of strong storms there in the south. So well continue to update this forecast. The endless winter forecast well call it as we head throughout the upcoming weekend with more snow. Next week it looks like well finally turn the corner and begin to warm things up. Mid april. Washington, d. C. Youre one of those spots on saturday. I do expect you to see some snow. I dont think it will accumulate on the roads but just seeing it this time of year is annoying enough. Youre watching morning joe. Well be right back. Hen i trave. For leisure. So i go national, where i can choose any available upgrade in the aisle without starting any conversations or paying any upcharges. What can i say . Control suits me. Go national. Go like a pro. 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