Then that altered intro ending up with a ripped up speech. There was no love lost last night between the president and the House Speaker. Good morning and welcome to morning joe, it is wednesday, february 5th. Along with joe, willie and me we have msnbc contributor mike barnicle, White House Reporter for the Associated Press jonathan lemire, former chief of staff to the dccc Adrienne Elrod and historian, author of the soul of america jon meachum. He is an nbc news and msnbc contributor. Just an overview of this thing, willie, its very interesting there were some people last night who were saying that, well, you know, donald trump, this is whether you like him or not, this was a really great speech for him. I mean, thats like me giving a speech this morning to red sox nation saying not only did we keep mookie betts, but we got manny machado, he will be coming in a couple months and aaron judge has decided to be a red sox and the yang yeast arent going to be playing. How do you qualify something as a good speech if its fed by lies and these are lies that are so easy to uncover on the google machine, whether its donald trump saying that republicans are fighting for preexisting conditions when theyre fighting to kill preexisting conditions for people like my son with type 1 diabetes. And the Jobs Creation quote, mika will be saying it in a little bit, its just absolutely preposterous that donald trump suggests that had he not turned things around from barack obama this economy would be in terrible shape. When hes riding the obama wave. Its an 11year recovery, barack obama creating far more jobs over his last three years in office than donald trump has created in his first three years. The lies were preposterous, and for some reason the press keeps feeding into this hype that somehow his economy is so much better than former economies. Its a lie. Well, the lie he has been telling from the beginning is that he inherited a mess from president obama, which is objectively untrue, Steve Rattner is here with charts to show thats not true. Mike barnicle bowed his head when you mentioned mookie betts name. The president programmed the state of the union like a tv show. In some ways it was like an episode of ellen you had a military reunion, a fourth grader receiving a scholarship, the medal of freedom to Rush Limbaugh, actually held the ceremony in the middle of the state of the union. It was very theatrical. For my money all the no handshake, the not saying the distinct honor and high privilege and ripping up the script at the end is not what the country needs. I know those will be viewed as sick burns or Michelle Carusocabrera drops or something in the far reaches of each sides teams but i dont think the country needs that kind of stuff right now. Well, by most accounts it was a state of the union unlike any other. We can at least say that. With an impeached president addressing a bitterly divided congress while also seeking reelection. Those divisions were on vivid display last night from the president looking away from the House Speakers outstretched hand to nancy pelosi ripping up the speech when he finished. At times it felt more like a Campaign Rally than a formal address when republican lawmakers chanting four more years. And democrats jeering the president for his remarks on the economy and health care. Trumps showmanship was also on full display, surprising a military family by reuniting an Army Sergeant with his wife and kids, promoting School Choice by announcing a scholarship for a pennsylvania student, and in a nod to his base awarding Rush Limbaugh with the president ial medal of freedom. Also notable, the president did not mention impeachment once during his speech. A little bit of a show of discipline there. Jon meachum, the president certainly showed discipline when it came to stage craft, not going on angry rants, but, again, i guess we can hand it to him for not losing his cool like he usually does and not wandering off into the fields, rhetorical fields, but again, the lies about the economy, the lies about preexisting conditions, the lies about so much of what he said up there really it wasnt meant for the American People, it was meant for an alternative universe, his alternative universe of voters. It really wasnt a state of the union and, like you, i suspect you know more about states of the state of the unions than you want to admit out in the world. And enjoy not only the spectacle, but the idea that, in fact, this is a moment where the branches of the government are supposed to have a conversation both with each other and with the rest of us about where we are and what we should do. This was not about the union and it was very much about trumps political state and his his folks. Thats been the consuming story of the last five years now. Hes never hes never wanted if hes wanted to hes never been able to act on it, to reach out beyond the people who already sent him. And one of the many tragedies of the era is that he has refused to learn from a president ial history that suggests president s who are remembered for big, bold things are president s who bring their supporters along to a place where the supporters didnt think they wanted to go. Nixon in china, reagan in the cold war, clinton and the new democrats. You have a history of surprising us, and there was nothing surprising about last night. It was in some ways the apothiosis of what we have been living through to some extent for the last five years. The limbaugh moment is very interesting. Limbaugh is an emblem. Reflexive partisanship of the era to the point when he was supporting talking favorably about pat buchanan back in 1992 and buchanan, as we know, is really in many ways with George Wallace the forerunner of trump. He was he helped drive buchanan to almost beating george bush, a sitting president in the New Hampshire primary. So sometimes in history its not that hard for those of us who do this. If you want a moment, if you want a couple days that represents the extremes and the polarities of this era, write about last night. Here he is on preexisting conditions and the economy. Ive also made an ironclad pledge to american families, we will always protect patients with preexisting conditions. And we will always protect your medicare and we will always protect your social security. Always. I am thrilled to report to you tonight that our economy is the best it has ever been. If we hadnt reversed the failed economic policies of the Previous Administration the world would not now be witnessing this great economic success. Okay. Let me bring in Steve Rattner for some charts and Fact Checking. I want to do a little Fact Checking myself and i put it through the morning joe super computer, the size of a city block, i tell you. The president saying that hes going to protect preexisting conditions. My super computer it spit back out the fact this is a damnable lie, republicans have been feverishly working to kill the preexisting conditions protection that would be afforded to people like my son with type 1 diabetes. Also, Steve Rattner, two other things. First, the economy is the best that its ever been. This is particularly maddening not because the president saying it and lying about it, and not because republicans in congress are repeating that lie, but because the media and ive been complaining about this for a couple years now the media parrots the president well, it is one of the best economies ever. Economic growth under jimmy carter was higher than it is under donald trump. Economic growth under jimmy carter in 79, the malaise year when things were supposed to be so bad was about a third higher than it is under donald trump in 2019. Donald trumps economy grew at 2. 3 . That is a trump slump that is weak, that is anemic, and i know that everybody on wall street they are all loving it, everybody the rich are getting really, really rich, but 2. 3 growth is pathetic. Under kennedy it was 5. 7 , under johnson 5. 1 . Under jimmy carter who donald trump has trashed before, 3. 2 . Under bill clinton 3. 8 and the trump slump throughout the three years the trump slump puts it at 2. 5 and last year after all of those tax cuts from multinational corporations and the very richest americans in the land, the economy only grew last year by 2. 3 . Steve rattner, its hard its hard to sort through all the lies from last night. I know a lot of people say, well, you have to admit it was a great great themes. Yes, great themes if youre cool with the person speaking lying all the time, but donald trump saying if we hadnt reversed the failed policies of the past administration, oh, we would never have this great economy. We are in the middle of an 11year obama economic recovery and all the lines are going like this, whether its job growth, whether its gdp. Its ridiculous. Steve, weve got you on so you can fact check, show us your charts and lets pick apart the lies that the president said last night to his supporters because it makes me sad that he lies this way to people who support him and makes me sad that they are like, well, he is the president so he must be telling the truth, but hes not. Hes lying. Tell us why. When i was watching the beginning of that speech i felt like i was living in a parallel universe, like i was in some other country, he was talk being some other country because everything he was saying made me of so little sense. It reminded me of the line every word she writes is a lie including the and and the buts. I will show you some lines. Lets start with job growth and he bragged a lot about the job growth, but as you can see here what were trying to show is that job growth under President Trump which has been significant was actually lower than job growth under president obama over the same 35 months, the end of obamas term versus the beginning of trumps term. The idea that theres something unprecedented happening here is ridiculous. Wait. Wait. Wait. Hold on a second. Im confused. Youre telling me that the gray that we are looking at right now is job growth under barack obama, his last three years in office, and the red is job growth under donald trump his last three years in office and actually donald trump is doing worse than barack obama. Lets forget about why donald trump lies. We know he lies. Why doesnt the media report this more . Why do they let donald trump keep going this is the media that is actually cooking the books for donald trump by looking at the dow and looking at unemployment, which, by the way, was going down in this direction under barack obama, why do they keep spreading this why does the media spread this lie that donald trump has somehow created the greatest economy when hes doing worse than barack obama in job creation . You have to ask the media that, but under obama there were 227,000 jobs a month created during this 35month period. Under trump it was 191,000. So 227 went to 191. Trump brags about lowering the Unemployment Rate by 1. 2 . Obama lowered the Unemployment Rate by two full percentage points. Any way you slice it this is at best continuation of the obama recovery and at worst the slower version of the obama recovery. So we can turn go to the next chart. We can turn if you want to wages because he bragged about wages last night. Wow. Indeed wages have been going up as you can see by the blue line up at the top here but when you adjust for inflation which is a really important thing to do because obviously what matters is what workers have in their pockets at the end of the day, which are these bottom lines here, you can see that, in fact, once again, real wages after adjustment for inflation rose slower under trump than under obama. Under obama they rose at an average of 1. 1 and under trump they rose at an average of 0. 6 . So you had faster growth in wages after adjusting for inflation under obama than you had under trump. Okay. So thats a lie as well. Wages adjusted for inflation are actually worse under donald trump than they were under barack obama. Again, not a surprise. Just a surprise that the media keeps letting donald trump get away with this lie as they have for the past several years. Its just lazy. They listen to what donald trump says, oh, yeah, wages are going no. No. And, you know, look at gdp, if you will, because thats i mean, you look at our Economic Growth that tells us not just how the richest of the rich are doing on wall street. That tells us how everybody is doing. So give us the story on gdp. So last night trump in his first or second paragraph said he wanted to talk about the incredible results in the economy that he has achieved. The incredible results amount to gdp going up by 2. 5 during his watch. Again, were comparing the same 35 months end of trump end of obama versus end of trump. Obama it was 2. 4 . So call it statistically a tie but essentially this is simply a continuation as you said earlier, joe, of an 11year recovery and the growth rate under trump is no higher than under obama, job creation has actually been weaker than under obama and so wages. And wages have actually been weaker under obama as well. So when you check the big boxes thats what you get, but theres there was so much else in that speech that were just lies on top of lies. He claimed, for example, that he made us independent in oil and gas production. Both of those things happened before he took office just to give you one thing thats yeah. I mean, willie, it is incredible what it guy claimed. Again, things that happened before he got into office, he just grabbed any good headlines from the past decade and used them in his speech. So of course, again, i just the media needs to make sure they dont go around talking about what a great speech it was because it really wasnt. It was packed with lies. It was. And the one about preexisting conditions is particularly galling considering the administration literally is in court fighting to overturn the obamacare. Jonathan lemire, everything that Steve Rattner said is true, he has the charts to prove it, but the president walked into the room with a new poll showing 49 approval in the gallup poll, 42 approval among independents and 63 approval on the economy. He probably could have gone in and said unemployment is at a 50 year low, inflation is low, Consumer Confidence is high without making up the lie that he inherited a mess from president obama which of course it did not. Thats right. And the speech certainly is worthy of a robust fact check and steve did a great job, there were many falsehoods in the president s remarks. The poll numbers polling from gallup is the highest of his administration, today of course he is likely to be acquitted in the senate for his impeachment trial which will draw that chapter of his administration to a close. And i think that what we saw last night is the donald trump that republicans love and republicans wish they would see more of. He was the show man, he was the reality tv star. The scholarship to the student, the president ial medal of freedom to Rush Limbaugh, a divisive conservative figure, the tearful reunion of the soldier coming home to see his family. He stuck to the script. Did he not go on tangents attacking the mess, the democratic mess in eye warnings he did that on twitter earlier but stayed away from that on the peach, he also did not mention the word impeachment once following the model set by bill clinton in 1999 when he also did not talk about his impeachment trial there. He was able to restrain himself for the time being. The president has shown moments of discipline before, they tend not to last very long. I think we will hear from him on those subjects later today. There is some talk from the white house the president might be making remarks later on the impeachment matter. We saw last night also the extreme partisan rancor that has enveloped trumps washington since he got here in january of 2016. The snubbed handshake with the House Speaker at the beginning, the chants of four more years from republicans when democrats sat on their hands and booed him when he talked about the economy he inherited from president obama and when Speaker Pelosi store the speech in front of the president. This is the second or third viral moment she has created from the speeches and she told reporters later that it was the appropriate thing to do as she was sort of channeling the frustration and anger from democrats after a speech that she believes says and we can fact check as well was full of lies. So, mike barnicle, yesterday wasnt a particularly good day for democrats. The past 24, 48 hours not particularly good time period for democrats. In fact, some could argue perhaps their worst. You do have the president in one poll at 49 , you have him about to beat impeachment because of a lot of republican senators say what he did was outrageous and terrible and impeachable but they are not going to vote to impeach him. And then lets just pile the mess up high on top of that. Iowa. You were smart not to go to iowa because it ended up i mean, the results who is going to believe the results when they finally come out . Things are so chaotic right now and they still have only given us 71 of the returns. We are a couple days in, they are not communicating, theyre not transparent. At first they told us there was nothing wrong with the app, it ends up it was a big app problem. How can we trust them when we saw in realtime in realtime on monday night the rules being broken. Them going through a first round and then asking people who didnt qualify to the 15 threshold who are you going to. Oh, no, were going to find more people to stay in. Mess. It was a chaos. It was a mess. And it reflects terribly on this Democratic Party. They dont have their act together in any way. Well, joe, the good news is that we will never have to Pay Attention to the iowa caucus again. It has always been so not a part of the american tapestry. Its fun, nice people out there, its truly not representative of the rest of the country. To the larger points that youve been making about