This is the April 1, 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

“Today is about defending the pure idea of what America is and will be.” 

— Celebrity chef José Andrés at a rally today outside the Supreme Court, which is hearing a landmark case on birthright citizenship.

CHART OF THE DAY

ON THIS DATE

On April 1, 1976, a college dropout and his gadget-tinkering friend founded Apple in a California garage. The company spent the next 50 years proving it was no joke, building a $3.7 trillion behemoth that put a computer in every pocket.

Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, speaks in front of a photograph of himself and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak in 2010.

A CONVERSATION WITH DAVID REMNICK

“The cruelest irony is that the President who addresses the Iranian people in the language of liberation … now directs his fire at the one thing he cannot afford to leave standing: the truth.”

In a recent essay for the New Yorker, David Remnick writes that in the war with Iran, truth has been the first casualty. He joined “Morning Joe” today to discuss what’s at stake for the region — and for democracy at home. 

A CONVERSATION
With David Remnick

JS: David, I keep thinking of Abraham Lincoln’s famous line to Congress in 1862: “We cannot escape history.” Every time I see more bombs falling, more incursions, American leaders declaring victory, I keep thinking — there’s always blowback in the Middle East. What should we expect next? 

DR: We had a nuclear deal with Iran — however imperfect — that Donald Trump walked away from in 2018. Now we have a president intoxicated with the use of American military force, and Americans are left witnessing this and asking: What the hell are we doing, and toward what end?

Was there really the illusion that this regime was just going to be toppled by an opposition that is not organized — one that would have been mowed down in the streets? There’s a dangerous lack of realism about what’s actually possible in Iran.

Mike Barnicle: The American people still can’t get a straight answer — is this about regime change, Iran’s nuclear capability, protecting our allies? What are we doing in Iran? 

DR: The American people were never consulted — and neither was Congress. You don’t make treaties with your friends. You make them with enemies, through long, difficult, painstaking negotiations. We seem not to have had the stomach for that — or the skill, or the will. So instead we did what was close at hand. We sent in the bombers. And whatever the military precision of the strikes, we keep forgetting that human beings are being killed.

JS: You’ve written extensively about Israel. As a lifetime supporter of Israel, I’ve grown deeply troubled by [Benjamin] Netanyahu’s endless-wars strategy. What will the blowback be on Israel and the region?

DR: The moral damage done to Israel begins with the damage done to other human beings. What was done in Gaza was so beyond excessive, so horrific … I don’t think we’ve taken in how damaging it will be — not only to Palestinians, but to Israel itself. And now there’s talk of doing in southern Lebanon what was done in Gaza. I don’t know where it ends.

Katty Kay: David, where does this leave America’s standing in the world? 

DR: It’s a deeply dangerous time in American history. And I think Donald Trump has presented an emergency for this country for a very long time, but it’s gotten deeper and deeper.

JL: How much of this comes down to presidential leadership and credibility?

DR: We’re now in the sixth year of a presidency that is increasingly erratic, malevolent, corrupt, incompetent — and the president is perfectly willing to BS his way through every press conference, change his position by the hour, then change the subject entirely. It beggars the imagination. Historians will not be kind to him.

“DR. CLIWA” WILL SEE YOU NOW

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and his former mayoral rival, Curtis Sliwa, set aside their differences — and their names — to bring their combined talents to a new forte: drama and theater. The two politicians spoofed themselves in a skit for Inner Circle, an annual charity gala put together by the city’s press corps, and the reviews are in. 

“I think I just entered a fever dream,” one commenter said. Watch the production here.

EXTRA HOT TEA

5.75 million pounds 

— The weight of the Space Launch System rocket (when filled with propellant) to be used in the Artemis II mission set to launch Wednesday

ONE MORE SHOT

NASA’s 322-foot-tall Artemis II Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft stand on Launch Complex 39B at Kennedy Space Center yesterday in Cape Canaveral, Florida. The 10-day mission will take NASA astronauts around the moon and back and fly the astronauts 230,000 miles into space — the farthest any human has ever traveled from Earth.

CATCH UP ON MORNING JOE

The post The Tea, Spilled by Morning Joe: ‘Today is about defending the pure idea of what America is and will be’ appeared first on MS NOW.

From MS Now.