Ali Velshi reveals latest humiliation for Trump in devastating new poll

Subscribe to MSNOW Premium on Apple Podcasts for early access, ad-free listening, and bonus content to all of MSNOW's original podcasts, including the chart-topping series The Best People with Nicole Wallace, Why Is This Happening, Main Justice, and more. Plus, new episodes of all your favorite MSNOW shows ad-free, and ad-free listening to all of Rachel Maddow's original series, including Rachel Maddow Presents Burn Order. Subscribe to MSNOW Premium on Apple Podcasts. In 11 days, Donald Trump will give the first official State of the Union address of his second term. But if the polls are any indication, the American public has already told the president what they think about the state of our union. And it's a vision that's going to leave Donald Trump humiliated. According to multiple, multiple polls out this week, Americans are saying Joe Biden was a better leader than Donald Trump. The most humiliating of these polls for Donald Trump comes from his favorite polling group, Rasmussen, which is considered the most friendly to Republicans. Its polling director said, quote, if an election were held today between Trump and Biden, Biden would win. The polling comes 389 days after Donald Trump stood up in front of Joe Biden on Inauguration Day and said, quote, from this day forward, our country will flourish and be respected again all over the world. Our sovereignty will be reclaimed. Our safety will be restored. The scales of justice will be rebalanced. The vicious, violent, and unfair weaponization of the Justice Department and our government will end, end quote. Sit with that for a second. He was talking about a presidency that wasn't his when he used all those words. But ever since then, Donald Trump's done the opposite of what he said 389 days ago. We're less than two hours away from the third government shutdown of Donald Trump's second term. This one's a partial shutdown, but it's a big department, the Department of Homeland Security. Funding is set to expire at midnight as Democrats push back on Donald Trump's vicious, deadly immigration policies. And two and a half months later from Trump's operation in Minnesota that saw two American citizens who were no threat to anyone at all, Renee Good and Alex Preddy, killed by federal agents, the Trump administration says it's pulling immigration agents out of Minnesota. The decision was no doubt hastened by what you're looking at in front of you. Everyday Americans taking to the streets in a bitter cold, coast to coast, and saying, damn it, we have had enough of this. We've had enough of this. Many locals, citizens, and officials in Minneapolis say they're waiting to see just how thorough this withdrawal actually is. The New York Times reports, quote, The Trump administration's pullback of federal immigration agents from Minneapolis was a political retreat that showed that there are limits to what Americans will accept. as the president pursues his deportation agenda. The withdrawal came on the eve of a funding shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security with a drumbeat of polls showing public opposition to President Trump's immigration tactics that rose after the fatal shootings of two protesters by federal agents last month. As Republican lawmakers increasingly worry about their midterm prospects, a few began to offer critical statements on the issue. We now know that two ICE officers involved in a non-fatal shooting of a Venezuelan man in Minneapolis are now under investigation for lying. MSNOW reports, quote, federal prosecutors are investigating whether two immigration and customs enforcement officers lied under oath about the shooting of a migrant in Minneapolis last month. An ICE spokesperson said the about face on the case, which Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem initially called an attempted murder of federal law enforcement marks the latest instance in which immigration authorities have had to walk back such claims in the face of evidence contradicting them. On Thursday, prosecutors moved to dismiss the case, and on Friday, Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin told MSNOW that a joint review of video evidence by ICE and the Justice Department has revealed that sworn testimony provided by two separate officers appears to include untruthful statements regarding the shooting. Both officers are now on administrative leave. Today, my old friend and colleague Don Lemon entered a not guilty plea in federal court in Minnesota two weeks after he was charged with two crimes while covering a protest inside a church in the wake of these Minneapolis shootings by federal agents. People are finally realizing what this administration is all about. The process is the punishment with them. And like all of you here in Minnesota, the great people of Minnesota, I will not be intimidated. it. I will not back down. I will fight these baseless charges and I will not be silent. While the Trump administration doesn't seem to have an appetite for any consequences from the new trove of Epstein files, some people are facing some real world consequences. This woman, Goldman Sachs top lawyer, Catherine Rumler, announced that she will resign after her emails with Jeffrey Epstein were made public. The talent agent, Casey Wasserman, has lost some of his most high-profile clients, including two-time Olympic gold medalist soccer star Abby Wambach, over his relationship with Ghislaine Maxwell. Yesterday, the former prime minister of Norway was charged with gross corruption for his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. There are a bunch of others, none of whom have been charged with crimes related to sexual abuse or sexual assault. But this accountability has not extended to members of Donald Trump's inner circle connected to Jeffrey Epstein. Today, the Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez spoke at the Munich Security Conference where she said this. I think what we are seeking is a return to a rules-based order that eliminates the hypocrisies around when too often in the West we'd look the other way for inconvenient populations to act out these paradoxes, whether it is, you know, kidnapping a foreign head of state, whether it is threatening our allies to colonize Greenland, whether it is looking the other way in a genocide. Hypocracies are vulnerabilities and they threaten democracies globally. And so I think many of us are here to say we are here and we are ready for the next chapter. Leading off our discussion tonight is Robert Rice, who served as Secretary of Labor under President Clinton. He's a professor of public policy at UC Berkeley and the co-founder of Inequality Media. Professor, good to see you. Thank you for being with us tonight. Good to see you, Emily. Where to start? There's Munich, where the French have said it's time to be independent of the United States. There's America, where, as we see, the fallout from Epstein is not the same. There's an economy that is, if you look at the top, let's start with that, because you study this stuff. If you look at the top line numbers of the economy, they're okay. They're not bad. Unemployment is pretty low. We had a pretty good job creation numbers. Inflation looks like we're getting it under control. But this economy is wildly unfair and unequal. And it's getting worse. Remember, Donald Trump was elected in part because he said he'd bring prices down. And you had particularly young men in America voting for Donald Trump. They felt that they wanted somebody who was on their side economically and politically. Well, what did we just learn? A new poll of young men shows that most of them feel like they've got a bad deal economically under Donald Trump. Many Americans, in fact, the polls are showing most Americans feel that they were better off a year ago before Donald Trump came to town. You know, this is this is a major turnaround. This is a this is something that portends for the Republicans a very bad midterm election. If Donald Trump permits there to be midterm elections. I mean, you know, this is the man who staged a coup against the United States in 2020. So I can't predict what he's going to do. Well, he said he did say, you know, the party in power always loses seats in the midterm election for no good reason. So why even have the midterm election, which is you can you can write off as Donald Trump nonsense, except there's the Save Act, which is not boilerplate Republican voter suppression. This is a whole new level of things. You and me equally will be asked to provide could be asked to provide proof of citizenship to vote. This is not a pass, please country. Absolutely. Well, let's hope and expect that this will be something that does not get through the Senate. You can't get 60 votes for this in the Senate. And therefore, Donald Trump is not going to be able to get this actually enacted. But it is an indication of the kind of lengths to which he and his Republican lapdogs are going to go to try to, if not stop the election, at least make sure that the Republicans stay in power. I don't think they're going to succeed, but it's something that we all have to worry about and harden our election processes. I want to talk to you about these six members of Congress who went out and made a video that is as obvious as the hair that's not on my head. I mean, they made a video telling people in the intelligence and military community that you are not meant to follow rules that you know to be illegal. That's a fact. Everybody who's in the military and the intelligence community knows that. Donald Trump said that they should be punished perhaps by hanging. They continue to go after these six people. A grand jury, by the way, failed to indict. They said this isn't even worth a trial. I think that's very impressive and important, Alec. Grand juries, I mean, people in this country don't pay a great deal of attention to grand juries because they think, well, maybe grand juries are something like juries in criminal trials. They aren't. Grand juries are under the control of prosecutors, federal prosecutors. So in this instance, Jeanine Pirot, she was the U.S. attorney. She went to the grand jury and she laid out the evidence. There's nobody in a grand jury providing the contrary evidence. There's nobody there in any way saying you should not do this. That's why they often say a grand jury will indict a ham sandwich, because there's nobody on the ham sandwich aside in front of a grand jury. 99 percent. 99 of grand jurors always do what the prosecutors want But now we beginning to see citizens I mean this is analogous to the citizens of of the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St Paul. They are saying no. They're standing up. They are feeling their responsibility as citizens to say no to this tyranny, this administration that doesn't really believe in democracy or the Constitution. These are average people in these grand juries, just like they're average people in Minnesota. They're standing up and they're saying no. Bob, what do you think about in the midterm elections? There are there's a good path to success for Democrats in the House. There's a narrower path to success for Democrats in the Senate, but it exists. When you look at some of these interesting candidates like Roy Cooper in North Carolina or Alexander Vindman in Florida, they're careful, regardless of what they're talking about this administration, what they're saying about this administration, to land on the fact that this this is still a population that is affected by the economy and by the unfairness in this economy, by the rising cost of health care, by the rising costs of goods. How do Democrats approach this midterm election? We're worried about tyranny and authoritarianism and dictatorship, but people come out to vote on kitchen table issues. I think that's exactly right. I'm not sure that there is a contradiction there. I mean, they vote on kitchen table issues because they are scared, they're insecure, They don't know exactly where their next paycheck is going to come from. Most Americans really are facing an economy that in many ways, Ali, is a much, much worse economy than they faced in many, many years. And that economy has the backdrop of being in and run by or at least presided over by an administration that is not responsive to the people, that is not doing what people want, that is putting up tariffs, making everything more expensive. So when you I think it's a false dichotomy. I think most people are going to want to vote on the economy, but the economy is a problem for them, partly because they feel so powerless in this kind of dictatorship we're in. That is a good way to look at it. Thank you, my friend. Robert Rice is a former secretary of labor under President Clinton. He's a professor of public policy at UC Berkeley, and he's the co-founder of Inequality Media. Thanks for being with us tonight. Thank you, Alan. All right, coming up, Donald Trump's never-ending quest for retribution faced a lot of roadblocks this week. A lot of them because the American people are pushing back and the courts are pushing back and members of Congress are pushing back and winning. Rachel Maddow presents Burn Order. All episodes available now. It was a bad week in Donald Trump's never-ending quest for retribution. One after another, federal courts, juries, America's foreign allies, and even members of Trump's own party pushed back. On Tuesday, a federal grand jury declined to indict six Democratic lawmakers that the Trump Justice Department wanted to prosecute for urging members of the military to refuse unlawful orders. Donald Trump accused the six Democrats of seditious behavior and endorsed calls for them to be punished, at one point suggesting that the appropriate punishment would be hanging. All they did was remind members of the military of their legal right to refuse illegal orders. But 20 Americans who sat on that grand jury had more common sense and honor for the Constitution than Donald Trump does. Then on Wednesday, half a dozen Republicans in Congress joined Democrats to reverse Donald Trump's tariffs against Canada. It was largely symbolic. It doesn't have the effect of law, but something. And yesterday, a federal judge temporarily blocked Donald Trump's defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, from his attempt to censure the Democratic Senator Mark Kelly for participating in that aforementioned so-called illegal orders video. In a blistering ruling, United States District Judge Richard Leon wrote, quote, This court has all it needs to conclude that defendants have trampled on Senator Kelly's First Amendment freedoms and threatened the constitutional liberties of millions of military retirees. Our retired veterans deserve more respect from their government, and our Constitution demands they receive it. There was an exclamation mark at the end of that, by the way. You don't often see federal judges using an exclamation mark, but that ruling actually had quite a few of them. Senator Kelly called the effort to punish him and other Democrats a warning sign, in his words, a master alarm flashing for our democracy and something drawn straight from the authoritarian playbook. It's worth pausing on that because what failed this week was not just Donald Trump's legal maneuvering. What failed this week was Donald Trump's strategy of trying to use government power to intimidate political opponents without consequence. Thankfully, our courts resisted that effort. And overseas, our allies are moving on without leadership from the United States. Today, there's this big security conference that goes on in Munich. It's kind of the biggest one in the year. It's called the Munich Security Conference. The NATO Secretary General, Mark Ruta, said, NATO is the strongest it has been since the fall of the Berlin Wall, end quote. Which may be one of the dumber things I've heard this week. Other European leaders were more honest about their concerns with the United States under Donald Trump. The New York Times reports Friedrich Mertz, the chancellor of Germany, said that under Donald Trump in his second term, the United States' claim to global leadership has been challenged and possibly squandered, end quote. French President Emmanuel Macron also gave a defiant pro-Europe speech and seemed to be sending Washington a message as well. Politico reports that the French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday called on Europeans to become stronger and the U.S. to show some respect. A stronger Europe would be a better friend for its allies, the French president told a packed hall at the Munich Security Conference. Europe has to become a geopolitical power. We have to accelerate and deliver all the components of a geopolitical power, defense, technologies, and de-risking from all the big powers. De-risking from all the big powers. What a thing to say. But criticizing and creating chaos that divides us seems to be all Donald Trump actually knows how to do. Although Donald Trump is trying to make punishment and retribution a defining promise of his second term, in a lot of ways, and thanks to some good people, the machinery of the United States government isn't cooperating. The American people are not cooperating. The courts are not cooperating. Lawmakers, some of them are cooperating, but many of them are saying no. And our allies are forging a path without us as their leader. Joining us now is the Democratic Congressman Eugene Vindman of Virginia. He's a member of the Armed Services Committee. Congressman, good to see you. Thank you for being with us. You are a United States congressman. Your work right now, your constituents are in Virginia. That's the work you're concentrated on. But you are a guy with an eye on the world right now. And that Munich Security Conference, which is a really important place, had a lot of people whose energies were focused on what's going wrong in America and how that affects the world. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. This is an important conference. American leadership should be fully on display. But right now, unfortunately, it's lack of leadership. Right now, as opposed to what the NATO Secretary General said, we are frankly in the weakest position, the US in relation to NATO, that we've been since the start of the alliance. And we've got a lot of work to repair that. and having members of Congress from the Democratic Party show up there and indicate that we are still stalwart friends to the EU and NATO is critically important. Yeah. And by the way, Mark Ruta, the head of NATO, has got a hard job. I don't mean to dump on him. We should be honest. When he says NATO's in the strongest position it's been, I don't believe that to be true. But I think the point he's making is that the other members of NATO have come together fairly well to say we will uphold this remarkable alliance. That's a good thing. It's very bad for America that we're not part of that sentiment. No, again, you're right. And NATO has grown over the last few years between Finland and Sweden. But that occurred, obviously, under Joe Biden's administration. Right now, especially in light of the president's actions in recent months and threats to seize Greenland, we are in a position where this administration is cozying up to our adversaries in Russia and looking for some sort of deal and standing against our allies in NATO and Europe. And that's not where we want to be. it's it's not an abstraction, right? Why America needs to be part of NATO and why NATO needs to be strong is not an abstraction. Donald Trump has said he doesn't think they'll be there when we call NATO. And I tend to like to remind people we've only the world's only ever called once under Article five of NATO. And it's when it's after the the attacks of 9-11 when America called and NATO answer. Absolutely. Look, that's the only time Article 5 was ever actually implemented. And our allies, including the Dutch, who are the sovereign in charge of Greenland, came and over 26 members of the Dutch armed forces died protecting us. So it's well past time that we try to turn the corner and clearly indicate that we support NATO. And a lot of that's going to come from Congress. It's well past time that Congress actually sides with NATO and our allies. And I think we have a real opportunity in coming months to do that. And certainly, if not in coming months, then after the election, which is why I'm running for reelection in Virginia's first congressional district. And I invite your viewers to join me in my mission. Text JOIN to 82923 Talk to me about Virginia in the election The Supreme Court on Friday paved the way for state Democrats to move forward with a plan that would enable them to add four Democratic seats in Virginia Yeah, so absolutely. Look, you know, Virginians, common sense Virginians will make the decision. This is a referendum. So Virginians will make the decision. This is not a backroom deal. This is not a phone call from President Trump to Texas legislators in Alabama, North Carolina, Missouri, in places all around the country where he's trying to rig the election in order to win the midterms because he knows how unpopular he is. In Virginia, the voters get to vote on the new map, an emergency, temporary measure to fight back against Donald Trump's attempts to rig the election. Congressman, good to see you as always. Thank you for joining us. Congressman Eugene Vindman of Virginia. All right, coming up, Donald Trump tried to steal the 2020 election. He's basically telling us, telling us he's going to try it again. One of the states he's targeting is Arizona. The Congressman Greg Stanton of Arizona joins us next. Start your day with the MS Now daily newsletter. Each morning, read sharp insights from the voices you trust. Catch standout moments from your favorite shows. The second Trump administration has gone to unprecedented lengths to radically transform America. Stay up to speed on our latest podcasts and MS Now events and get fresh perspectives from experts shaping the news. It's everything you love about MS Now delivered to your inbox. Sign up at MS.now. I have fresh offer failure in Minnesota. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem turned her attention to lying about our elections. And she did it in Arizona, where Donald Trump attempted to overturn the results of the 2020 election. And although the Constitution gives states the primary responsibility for running their elections, Congress also gives authorities and duties to the federal government. Now, as the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, those authorities lie within my department and the responsibility lies with me. I'd love to see her point to some statutory authority. Just just one thing that gives her that authority, because I just consulted my little pocket constitution again. And it says pretty clearly that the responsibility for time, matter and place and enforcement of elections lies with the states, but that Congress can make amendments and adjustments, not the executive branch. Just yesterday, the Trump administration announced that it was ending the ICE debacle in Minneapolis that culminated in the deaths of two American citizens by federal agents under Kristi Noem's watch. We'll wait and see. And today, The Wall Street Journal is reporting on the chaos within the Homeland Security Department under Kristi Noem and her principal henchman, Corey Lewandowski, writing, quote, quote, staff, give polygraph tests to employees they don't trust, and have fired employees. In one incident, Lewandowski fired a U.S. Coast Guard pilot after Noem's blanket was left behind on a plane, according to people familiar with the incident, end quote. She left her blanket on the plane. Christine Noem's appearance in Arizona comes as the Trump Justice Department is suing That state, quoting the Arizona Republic, Trump's DOJ is suing for, quote, voter registration and election records that the Arizona Secretary of State's office says it can't legally hand over. Arizona is among 23 states sued by the federal government over voter data. Opponents in the states that have refused to cooperate have said the Justice Department is seeking information to bolster Trump's unfounded claims of a stolen election in 2020 and expressed worry about how the personal information will be used in the future, end quote. And that's just one part of a larger strategy by Donald Trump and Republicans to undermine the midterm elections. Last week, the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, inexplicably appeared at a raid at a Georgia election office, which is another state that Donald Trump keeps claiming that he won in 2020. And they were there to seize election records. 2020 election records are being seized by Tulsi Gabbard, who's the director of national. That's, you know, national intelligence like spies and stuff elsewhere. This week, the Republican-controlled House passed a bill under pressure from Donald Trump to address widespread voter fraud that doesn't exist and would disenfranchise potentially millions of American citizens in the process. The New York Times reports, quote, it would require voters to show proof of citizenship not only when registering to vote, but also every time they went to cast a ballot in a federal election. It's a show-me-your-papers kind of law in a nation that rejects that mentality. It's highly unlikely to pass in the Senate. Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski said she would oppose it and called it, quote, federal overreach. Today, Donald Trump made this false claim on social media, quote, there will be voter ID for the midterm elections, whether approved by Congress or not. Donald Trump tried to steal the 2020 election. He's basically telling us he's going to try it again. Joining us now is Democratic Congressman Greg Stanton of Arizona. He's a member of the Foreign Affairs and Transportation and Infrastructure Committees. Congressman, good to see you. Thank you for being with us. Good to be here. There's a little gaslighting going on about voter ID, right? At some point in the voting process, in the registration process, generally speaking, people have to provide some ID. Varies from state to state. That's not what the SAVE Act is about. The SAVE Act is actually talking about proof of citizenship, which means a birth certificate, a naturalization certificate, a passport or an enhanced ID, which only exists in driver driver's license, which only exists in five states. It's a whole different thing. Well, first off, what the SAFE Act would do is require every single state to hand over voter data. That is completely and totally illegal. The Tenth Amendment of the Constitution protects states right. There is no legal authority for the federal government to ask states like Arizona to hand over voter data. So, number one, that's the reason why the SAVE Act will be found unconstitutional if it ever were to become law. Secondarily, yes, it does put very onerous requirements. Imagine someone you have to register to vote in person. Imagine if you live in a rural Arizona or a tribal community. That can be a five, six hour drive where right now you can do it safely via the mail. That's a simple situation. What about someone who doesn't have a passport and may not have a certified copy of their birth certificate? They may not be in a position then to be able to prove that they are a United States citizen using those particular mechanisms. That predicts that puts a lot of people disenfranchised as a result of not having the proper paperwork. Millions and millions of Americans couldn't find you. More than half of Americans don't have a passport. Lots of people can't find their birth certificate. Lots of people change their name because they got married or they got divorced or for whatever reason. And the birth certificate doesn't match their car. We know of these instances where people say they go to register and they say, well, your name doesn't match your birth certificate because, you know, my parents didn't know who I was going to marry. So they gave me their name. Like, this is real stuff. And it's all based on the big lie. Yes. It is based on nothing. We have a wonderful voting system in the United States of America. We have a wonderful voting system right here in Arizona. Trump won in 2016. Joe Biden won in 2020. Trump won again in 2024. The only one they're looking at is 2020. And when these secretaries like Kristi Noem are out of favor with Trump, obviously she got fired from the work that they were doing in Minnesota. She did a terrible job leading FEMA for the Texas floods. She's on the outs. And what do they do? They come to a place like Arizona and just repeat the big lie. That's why Tulsi Gabbard was in Fulton County. She's on the outs of the administration as well. So what does she do? They play to an audience of one and continue to repeat the big lie. That's what this is right. And then Donald Trump starts floating this idea of this happened in Arizona with the with the cyber ninjas, where they started talking about Chinese and the bamboo and Italians and all like that. I think Trump suggested the Venezuelans are involved. that you just you just plant these seeds. I want to remind people, I think Arizonans understand this very well. The problem in America is not non-citizens voting. It's citizens not voting enough. Right. Sixty percent of people turn out in presidential elections. That number, I would love to be 100. That's what we have to solve for. We don't need to put friction in where no problem exists. It would be a stronger democracy if we made it easier for people to participate in the election. Let's make Election Day a national holiday so that more and more people can participate in the election. Let's make ballots by mail, voting by mail easier for our fellow Americans. That would get greater participation in our elections. That would help build a stronger democracy, not continuation of the repeating the big lie over and over and over again. That makes as weaker as a country. Secretary Noem said that Arizona is an absolute disaster when it comes to elections. I've spent a lot of time in Arizona, and despite what Donald Trump liked to say about the 2020 elections, it's not actually, it's not only not a disaster, voting in Arizona is kind of exemplary. Well, and actually, she picked the wrong state to make the case for the Save Act, Because under Arizona law, you actually do have to show DPOC, documented proof of citizenship, before you're allowed to participate. What we don't require is that you prove citizenship each and every time you vote. Once you prove you're a citizen, you get to participate in our election. So the state of Arizona is actually a model state for the exact thing that they're trying to point out. But what we won't do is hand over that voter data. That is a violation of the Constitution. The SAVE Act would require it. And that alone is a reason we can never let the SAVE Act become the law in our country And if it does become law it will be legally challenged and it be thrown out You think talking about things getting thrown out you think Kristi Nelm should be thrown out or at least impeached She has to. I mean, she is one of the worst cabinet secretaries in American history. Everything she touches, she blows. She screws up. I mentioned her role with FEMA after the Texas floods. They were so slow to respond. They didn't get urban search and rescue teams there until three days after they found the last body. They could have worked to save lives. She blew that completely. Obviously, what we've seen happen in Minnesota, she has no business running a law enforcement entity, untrained officers going out there wearing those masks without any use of force policy. Those tragic deaths were inevitable. That's a direct result from the poor leadership from Christy Noem. She got fired because of it. She got kicked out. They put Tom Holman in charge of the work in Minnesota. And now she's coming to Arizona to repeat the big lie. She's got to go. If the president won't fire, she needs to be impeached. I remember this in 2020. Arizonans are not interested in this. So you guys will sort it out. Thank you for being with us tonight. Congressman Greg Stanton of Arizona. Thank you. All right, coming up, one top economist is saying that Donald Trump's economy is looking, quote, more like the jaws of a crocodile. I'll explain that to you when I come back as Donald Trump continues to lie about the state of his economy. In one of the most bizarre, hostile and embarrassing congressional testimonies we've ever seen on Capitol Hill, Donald Trump's Attorney General Pam Bondi responded to a question about the Epstein files very specifically with this. Because Donald Trump, the Dow, the Dow right now is over, the Dow is over $50,000. I don't know why you're laughing. You're a great stock trader, as I hear, Raskin. The Dow is over $50,000 right now. The S&P at almost 7,000. And the NASDAQ smashing records. Americans' 401ks and retirement savings are booming. There's a great deal to unpack there. Just in case you're wondering, it has nothing to do with Epstein at all. That's number one. Number two, the Dow has been on a generally upward trajectory kind of forever. Presidents generally try to take too much credit for the performance of the stock market anyway. And number three, that response really shows how out of touch the Trump administration is with American people when it comes to the financial reality that most Americans face right now. Forget the stock market for a moment. It tends to be the purview of America's most wealthy. CNBC reports signs of rising financial stress, particularly among the middle income Americans, are warning flags about the U.S. economy's health in 2026. 26, experts say. Spending growth for higher income Americans have remained relatively stable between January 25th, January 2025 and January 2026, according to internal transaction data from Bank of America Institute released this week. However, spending growth slowed for lower and middle income households during that period. Now, what that is describing when the rich are doing well and spending a lot of money and making a lot of money, they're doing like this, their lines going like this, when the rest aren't, their lines like that. And that's the K-shaped economy, like the letter K. Those with higher incomes just keep doing better, largely through things like stock gains and home ownership. If you've got stocks and you own a home, it's been a great year for you. But everyone else is getting pressed by the rising costs of, well, everything. And Donald Trump's tariffs aren't helping that either. Back to that CNBC report, quote, as middle-income consumers are showing signs of stress, The K-shape is widening and beginning to look more like the jaws of a crocodile, said David Tinsley, senior economist at the Bank of America Institute. The New York Times reports the net worth of the top 1% of households climbed to a record share of nearly 32% of the national total. It's going to stop there for a second. 1% owns 32% of the national total of wealth in the third quarter of 2025. That's according to data from the Federal Reserve, which started tracking household wealth in 1989. One percent holds one third of all the wealth in America. The Times continues. Spending patterns have also split. Households earning under $75,000 a year are spending less on discretionary categories like travel and experiences than they did in 2019, while those making more than $150,000 are spending more, according to the Bank of America Institute. The economic conditions cultivated under Donald Trump have created headlines like these from the New York Times. Voters see a middle class lifestyle as drifting out of reach. Poll finds Business Insider writes the K-shaped economy is reshaping Valentine's Day spending. And the most shocking from NBC News, middle class Americans are selling their plasma to make ends meet. The chief economist at U.S. Bank puts it like this in a recent report. Today, we are returning to a typical pattern of extremely high income inequality, it now stands at a 60 year peak. The worry is not just where we stand now, but where whether ongoing developments will worsen the situation. Now, despite all that, Donald Trump continues to play pretend, saying things like this earlier today. We just had very good financial numbers, very low inflation. We brought costs way down and the numbers were surprising, except to me they weren't surprising. I wasn't surprising to him. Joining us now is my longtime friend and colleague, Sharon Epperson, senior personal finance correspondent for our sister network, CNBC. She's also the editor of the Money 101 newsletter. Sharon, nice to see you, my friend. Good to be here, Ali. Makes me crazy when people say costs are way down. It just makes me crazy because inflation is the rate at which prices go up. They go up. You'd like your wages to go up more than inflation. You'd like your wages to go up more than your rent goes up or your whatever. But Donald Trump, when he says prices have gone down, there's no prices have gone down. No, that's not what people are feeling. What people are feeling is a greater strain than they have seen in some time. In fact, when you talk about people who actually go to credit counselors to get counseling because they're having trouble managing their finances, The National Foundation of Credit Counseling is forecasting that financial stress will reach an all-time high in the first three months of this year. And what they're seeing is mostly middle-income consumers who are thinking that this is the time when they're supposed to be doing well in their jobs. Everything should be—they should be able to cover day-to-day expenses. And because the wages are not keeping up with the inflation that they're experiencing, their personal inflation, they are seeing themselves struggling. And that is what is really contributing to what David Tinsley is calling this jaws of crocodile shape for the economy, not just a K-shape. We're seeing a divergence between high and middle income that is greater than we've seen, according to Bank of American Institute, greater than we've seen since early 2022. Yeah, you and I have been in the business for a long time. I've never heard the jaws of a crocodile shaped economy. This is important because the thing that made America great was the middle class. The idea that there was this strong middle that can pay into the system, that can fund things like Social Security so that when people are older, there's money to pay back. They can help those who have fallen between the cracks, the poor and working class in America. When you hollow out the middle, you do do great damage to your economy in the long term. Because if you're really rich, it doesn't matter, right? You can make do with whatever you want. Absolutely. But it's the middle class that builds the highways. It's the middle class that builds the infrastructures and the Hoover Dam and the, and the, and the bridges and tunnels that we live. It's, it's their money that pays for that. And it's their money that they're now not having and having to borrow to pay for basic necessities and to pay for experiences that they may still want to have. And then the problem becomes, they're not used to having this, this kind of revolving debt that it's just a downward spiral that they can't get out of. Their incomes are not keeping up with it. And so they're having to make choices. Do I buy just cheaper items for everyday things? Do I do buy in bulk? Do I do, you know, what people are putting on their, on their sweethearts this year for Valentine's day is buy in bulk. They're putting in things about rent, about their rents. Let's split the rent. Like this is the way people are handling their relationships because the financial stress and strain that they're feeling is translating into every part of their lives. And so this is definitely having an impact on the middle class that they have not seen before. And the issue is, if I'm deciding whether to pay this bill or that bill, you're never going to get out of the cycle. Yeah. And if you run a credit card balance, what's the interest rate on that? 20-some percent for people who run a balance? 20-some percent. 20-some percent. But you don't have to wait, Alec. We don't have to wait for that 10% cap that were being promised by the Trump administration. There are still ways to get less than 10% on a credit card for more than a year, but you have to have a good credit score. You got to pay those bills on time. And that's why folks should follow Sharon Epperson. She's got the best advice on how you can actually manage your personal finances. Sharon, good to see you, my old friend. Sharon Epperson, senior personal finance correspondent for CNBC. Make sure you read her excellent work in CNBC's Money 101 newsletter. Okay, we'll be right back. author author jennifer finney boylan uh is known for exploring themes of gender identity and the trans experience her latest work cleavage men women and the space between us explores something even more fundamental of the human experience change tomorrow jennifer finney boylan will join me once again on the velsheban book club her book is incredible that's a 10 a.m eastern right here on ms now subscribe to ms now premium on apple podcasts for early access ad free listening and bonus content to all of MS Now's original podcasts, including the chart-topping series The Best People with Nicole Wallace, Why Is This Happening, Main Justice, and more. Plus new episodes of all your favorite MS Now shows ad-free. And ad-free listening to all of Rachel Maddow's original series, including Rachel Maddow Presents Burn Order. Subscribe to MS Now Premium on Apple Podcasts.