This is the May 19, 2026, edition of “The Tea, Spilled by Morning Joe” newsletter. Subscribe here to get it delivered straight to your inbox Monday through Friday.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“The fact that the president’s losing sleep over my race, posting on social media, the fact they had to send the secretary of war to the district, that means they’re worried.”
— Rep. Thomas Massie on President Donald Trump’s attacks ahead of today’s primary in Kentucky
JOE’S NOTE
At least Nero stayed in Rome.
Pete Hegseth is fighting a war that conservative foreign policy scholar Robert Kagan says has no precedent in American history — a defeat that “can neither be repaired nor ignored.”
And yet Hegseth left Washington and flew to Kentucky in the middle of that war to campaign against a Republican Donald Trump hates — because that congressman wants the Jeffrey Epstein files released.
Trump has been trying in every way possible to cover up those files. He is doing everything he can, along with all of his billionaire supporters, to destroy a congressman who wants full accountability for the victims of Epstein and all the very powerful people around him. Some say, including the president.
And they call that conservative.
But as I’ve said for 10 years, there is nothing conservative about Donald Trump and his Republican Party. They have exploded the deficit in historic ways. The debt has skyrocketed.
Trump promised to balance the budget. He promised to pay off the debt. No matter when he leaves office, he will have piled on more debt than every other American president combined.
And they wonder why they’re getting crushed.
They don’t care about affordability. They don’t care about working Americans. They only care about doing what Trump tells them to do.
And we see the result:
The Atlas poll, rated A-plus, shows double-digit losses for Republicans on the generic ballot.
The New York Times/Siena poll — which usually trends more Republican than most — now has Democrats up 11 points on the generic ballot, 50 to 39.
Trump’s approval has hit a second-term low: 37%. Sixty-four percent of Americans say the Iran war was the wrong decision.
And the man running that war is in Kentucky.
Ten years ago, on Fox News, Hegseth said the military wouldn’t follow unlawful orders from its commander in chief. There’s a standard, he said. There’s an ethos. It’s on tape.
Now he’s ordered a Pentagon investigation into Sen. Mark Kelly — a retired Navy captain, a highly decorated war hero — for saying the exact same thing Hegseth said before he started blindly chasing power.
It’s a sad display. And American voters are onto it.
CHART OF THE DAY
Source: New York Times/Siena poll of 1,507 registered voters, May 11 to 15, 2026. Margin of error: +/- 2.8 percentage points
HEROISM IN THE FACE OF HATE
Before Amin Abdullah died, he got on his radio.
Already shot, the security guard at the Islamic Center of San Diego radioed a warning to teachers: Lock the classroom doors. Two hundred children were inside.
“By doing this,” the mosque’s imam said, “he saved so many, many, many souls.”
Abdullah, a father of eight, was one of three men killed Monday when two teenage gunmen opened fire outside the Islamic Center — the largest mosque in San Diego County.
Both suspects were found dead from apparent self-inflicted gunshot wounds in a car blocks away. Investigators found anti-Islamic writing inside the car, and police are investigating the shooting as a hate crime.
The attack is the latest in a sustained rise in violence against houses of worship since the start of the war in the Middle East. The Council on American-Islamic Relations received 8,683 civil rights complaints in 2025 — the most since 1996.
“When we don’t watch what we say about one another as Americans,” the imam said, “this is what we get.”
ON THIS DATE
In 2018, Britain’s Prince Harry wed American actor Meghan Markle in St. George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle.
WHAT THEY SAID
David Ignatius on Ukraine
“Ukraine now has the most modern army in Europe. They are learning how to do things with drones and electronic warfare that the United States is struggling to keep up with. Putin is going to realize this is not a country he can grind into the dirt the way he dreamed of four years ago.”
Jonathan Martin on the Democrats
“The challenge with a lot of Democrats is they don’t want to come to terms with Joe Biden’s decision to run when he shouldn’t have — and then Kamala Harris’ deficiencies as a candidate — because they don’t want to offend Biden, Harris, and the folks around them. No Democrat wanted to raise their hand and say, ‘Mr. President, it’s time to go.’ Now we’re living with the postmortem version of that.”
Jonathan Lemire on Trump’s hold over the GOP
“Trump still has a hold on the GOP. Trump has mobilized even his defense secretary — at a time of war — to go after Rep. Massie. And for good measure, Lauren Boebert, another Republican who defied him on the Epstein files. It shows you what Trump actually cares about.”
Claire McCaskill on ICE brutalities
“The majority of the people that have been swept up, and the children that have been impacted, are from families that all of us would admire. They pay taxes, support their families, worship, and coach Little League. And I do not understand how this administration behind Stephen Miller is doing this to a very important part of America — and I think they are going to pay a very high political price for it.”
David French on Trump’s stock trades
“When MAGA runs, it’s condemning Nancy Pelosi. Little did the rest of America know that essentially behind the condemnation was the assertion that you just weren’t grifty enough: ‘Here, let us show you how truly corrupt people can behave.’ We now have this dichotomy between what most Americans want and what the MAGA base will tolerate. All of this is having a cumulative effect — inoculating the rest of America against Trump.”
EXTRA HOT TEA
100,000
— The number of children who have been separated from their parents during the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown
ONE MORE SHOT
An orphaned kangaroo joey named Elli peeks from the sweater of zoo manager Nicole Hoffmeister in Abensberg, Germany, where Hoffmeister has been raising her — with her sweater standing in for a pouch.
CATCH UP ON MORNING JOE
The post The man running a war Americans don’t want is in … Kentucky appeared first on MS NOW.
