This is the May 13, 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
“He controls 1.4 billion people with an iron fist. I mean, he’s a brilliant guy, whether you like it or not.”
— President Donald Trump in October 2024, praising Chinese President Xi Jinping
JOE’S NOTE
Historians disputed for centuries whether Marie Antoinette ever actually said “Let them eat cake.”
There will be no such debate about what Donald Trump said in front of cameras yesterday.
As the president departed the White House for China, a reporter asked to what extent Americans’ economic struggles were motivating him to make a deal with Iran.
“Not even a little bit,” he said. “I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation. I don’t think about anybody … I think about one thing: We cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon. That’s all.”
John Heilemann has a theory about Trump: Everything he says is either a confession or a projection.
Yesterday was a confession.
At a moment when Americans are being crushed by the cost of groceries, gas, housing, and healthcare, the president says he isn’t thinking about anybody.
Seventy-five percent of Americans say everything costs too much. A new poll finds that most believe every household staple — beef, bread, gas, eggs — was cheaper under Joe Biden than it is today.
That’s the reality Americans are living.
Even Larry Kudlow, Trump’s own former economic director, is calling the numbers “lousy.”
But in Washington, money keeps flowing elsewhere while ordinary Americans fall farther behind.
Tulsi Gabbard told voters: “A vote for Donald Trump is a vote to end wars, not start them.” JD Vance wrote the op-ed: “Trump’s Best Foreign Policy? Not Starting Any Wars.”
The Pentagon’s price tag for the war they swore would never happen: $29 billion — and climbing.
And back home, the president keeps gilding.
Trump promised that his ballroom would be paid for by donors. “Zero taxpayer dollars,” he said. “One hundred percent by me and some friends.”
Yesterday, MS NOW’s Akayla Gardner pointed out that the ballroom had doubled in price — from $200 million to $400 million.
His response: “I doubled the size of it, you dumb person.”
Donald Trump has also proposed a golden arch for Arlington National Cemetery — where the nation buries its war dead.
And once again, the people he admits he doesn’t think about are paying for all of it.
Maybe Marie Antoinette never said “Let them eat cake”, but the man who is building a grand ballroom worthy of her opulence, just admitted on camera he couldn’t care less about the people he’s supposed to serve.
CHART OF THE DAY
ON THIS DATE
In 1981, Pope John Paul II was shot and seriously wounded in St. Peter’s Square by Turkish assailant Mehmet Ali Agca. Agca was sentenced to life in prison in Italy in July 1981 — but pardoned in 2000 at the pope’s request.
WHAT THEY SAID
JAKE SULLIVAN ON IRAN
“We got into this war on completely faulty assumptions, and now we’re fighting it on faulty assertions. Trump is in a very difficult position right as he walks into this high-stakes meeting in China.”
DAVID DRUCKER ON DEMOCRATS’ MIDTERM PROSPECTS
“Over the last decade, American politics has become increasingly balkanized and polarized. The Senate map is now becoming genuinely perilous for Republicans. But Democrats shouldn’t celebrate too quickly: To capitalize, they’ll still need to make gains in places like Iowa and Ohio, where Republicans continue to perform well. Even so, the political environment has shifted enough that control of the Senate is now plausibly in play — whereas three months ago, on the eve of the Iran war, it wasn’t.”
GILLIAN TETT ON THE ECONOMY
“It’s getting ugly. Much of the pain from the Strait of Hormuz closure in America has been partly masked by the fact that the stock market keeps going up on the back of all the excitement around AI, and that’s making wealthy people even wealthier. But for ordinary Americans right now, the cost of living is going up. And one of the most important metrics is the price of gas. This is a really nasty political squeeze.”
RICHARD HAASS ON CHINA AND IRAN
“The Chinese might intervene with Iran — as a favor not to the U.S., but to themselves. They do not want to see the strait closed forever, an expansion of this war, or the energy infrastructure in this part of the world destroyed. They’ll portray it as a favor to President Trump. But the question is, what will they expect in return?”
Trump is usually immune to political gaffes. This slip-up is different.
In his decade in national politics, Donald Trump has transformed the meaning of the political gaffe. As a campaigner and as president, he has demonstrated an uncanny ability to bulldoze over controversies stemming from embarrassing, tone deaf or outright offensive remarks. But it’s genuinely hard to see how a tin-eared remark he made Tuesday won’t haunt him.
EXTRA HOT TEA
30 out of 33
— The number of missile sites that Iran retains access to along the Strait of Hormuz, according to The New York Times, which cited classified assessments
ONE MORE SHOT
President Donald Trump receives flowers upon arriving at Beijing Capital Airport on May 13, 2026.
CATCH UP ON MORNING JOE
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