This is the April 30, 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
“As to my political faith — I have never voted. My father was a Democrat, my mother a Republican, and I am an Episcopalian.”
— Gen. George C. Marshall, while serving as chief of staff of the U.S. army, 1941
JOE’S NOTE
George C. Marshall never voted in an election. A five-star general who rose to serve as both secretary of state and secretary of defense — and the only professional soldier in history to win the Nobel Peace Prize — he understood something that once went without saying: The military serves the Constitution, not the occupant of the White House.
Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, opened his remarks before Congress yesterday by holding up Marshall’s commitment to a nonpartisan military as his guiding light. A soldier invoking a soldier. A reminder of what the relationship between civilian leadership and the military is supposed to look like.
And then there’s Pete Hegseth.
Pam Bondi tried this same routine — the combativeness, the petulant grandstanding, the angst-filled performance focused on an audience of one. She embarrassed the president she was trying to impress. Donald Trump fired her.
Pete should know by now that you never go full Bondi.
As someone who served on the House Armed Services Committee, I can tell you: Those members’ primary concern is the safety and security of U.S. troops stationed across the globe.
Hegseth told members of Congress that questions arising from their Article I oversight duty were a bigger threat to America than Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and a government that has been the epicenter of terrorism since 1979.
Oil prices are surging. The war has cost $25 billion so far. Fourteen service members are dead.
A grown-up could have walked into that hearing and made the case that oil prices are rising but the blockade is actually working. Our military is performing brilliantly, and the greatest leverage over Iran is now economic. That’s what will ultimately bring them to the table.
Instead, Congress had to deal with a petulant child.
Hegseth went full Bondi. You NEVER go full Bondi.
CHART OF THE DAY
Source: Reuters/Ipsos poll of 1,269 U.S. adults, April 24-27, +/-3%; ABC News/Ipsos poll of 542 U.S. adults June 3 to June 4, 2022, +/-4.8%, Election Studies
ON THIS DATE
On April 30, 1975, the Vietnam War ended. As Communist forces closed in on Saigon, U.S. Armed Forces Radio began playing “White Christmas” on repeat — a coded signal to Americans that it was time to go. With sea lanes and airspace closed, helicopter airlifts were the only way out. More than 7,000 civilians were evacuated in less than 24 hours.
A CONVERSATION ABOUT PROGRESSIVE CAMPAIGNS
Kat Abughazaleh came within 4 points of winning a 15-way Democratic primary in Illinois — raising $3.3 million with zero outside money by turning her campaign into a community hub. Now she’s launched KAPOW, aimed at bringing that model to progressive candidates in tight races across the Midwest. She joined MS NOW political analyst Anand Giridharadas today on “Morning Joe” to discuss what Democrats need to do before November.
JS: Kat, your campaign showed other Democrats a great way to connect to their community and do the right thing. Tell us about it.
KA: From Day 1, we centered mutual aid and direct action. We didn’t ask for monetary donations; we asked for pads and tampons, food, clothes, winter coats, baby formula, Narcan, diapers. After the campaign, we didn’t want to abandon this infrastructure — this was the No. 1 persuader for undecided voters.
People feel helpless in the face of fascism. So when we say, “Here’s something you can do, and we want you to do it with us,” we make politics a team sport — and we’re able to serve our community and show our values.
Claire McCaskill: How do we keep the party together, especially after a heartbreaking outcome?
KA: Unity comes from a shared goal. That has to be about fighting for the working class, defeating oligarchs, and not caving to big-money interests like crypto, AI, and AIPAC. I believe that everyone deserves housing, groceries, and health care, with money left over to save and spend, and equal rights. I think that the vast majority of people want that too, but we also need to be holding people in our own party accountable.
If we do that, we can truly bring this party to what it once was: the party of the New Deal and the Civil Rights Act.
WG: What would you tell potential candidates about what you learned from the experience?
KA: If you actually want to connect with people, you have to show who you are and get creative. I feel like we have just become rote in politics; we’re doing the same things over and over again and expecting a different result, and that’s just not going to happen.
We are trying to make our campaign — of helping people — the expectation rather than the exception.
JS: Anand, you write about this in “The Persuaders.” How do these lessons apply?
AG: What I find so appealing about what Kat is doing is in the context of how historically unpopular Donald Trump has been in his second term. That unpopularity has not translated into support for Democrats, which comes from a lack of real reckoning about the connection to community.
In “The Persuaders,” I wrote that movements need to be homes, not just opinion factories. You don’t need to agree with everybody in your family, because there’s a deeper, baked trust. How can movements learn from that kind of trust?
JL: What’s your message to Democrats heading to the polls in November?
AG: Affordability, corruption and oligarchy — and the messaging behind those things — has gone mainstream. Regular people understand this notion of “there is a group of people who have this power and they’re making your life hard” a lot more than I remember seeing 10 years ago. One simple piece of evidence: Zohran Mamdani being the mayor of New York City today. There’s a lot of energy around taking power back, and there’s a lot more consciousness that’s been raised.
MB: Kat, final thoughts?
KA: If this were hopeless, they wouldn’t be trying so hard to stop us. They wouldn’t be sending armed goons on our street. They wouldn’t be trying to take our voting rights away. They wouldn’t be trying to subjugate the 99%. But we are more powerful than them, and I think the vast majority of Americans realize that we’re the ones with the power. It’s time for us to flex it.
PENCE TAKES THE STAND: PART TWO
By Ali Vitali
You can cross Mike Pence off the long list of people likely to run for president in 2028 — but he’s also not going anywhere.
The former vice president told me he’s quietly building what he hopes will become the institutional backbone of a post-Trump Republican Party: a think tank expanding fast enough to need a second floor, a growing roster of conservative policy hands fleeing an ideologically adrift Heritage Foundation, and a pointed argument that the GOP has lost its way on everything from tariffs to abortion to Ukraine.
EXTRA HOT TEA
$25 billion
— The Pentagon’s first public estimate of the cost of the war in Iran so far
Source: New York Times
ONE MORE SHOT
A woman mourns near a portrait during the funeral ceremony for Ukrainian service member Viktoriia Bobrova at St. Michael’s Golden-Domed Monastery on April 30, 2026, in Kyiv. Bobrova, with call sign “Flower,” served as an officer in the communications department in 10th Mountain Assault Brigade “Edelweiss.”
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