The Tea, Spilled by Morning Joe: Friday edition

This is the June 26, 2026, edition of “The Tea, Spilled by Morning Joe” newsletter. Subscribe hereto get it delivered straight to your inbox every Monday through Friday.

JOE’S NOTE

My father was a Nixon supporter. He believed left-wing reporters and the East Coast elites conspired to bring down the Republican president until Richard Nixon’s final days in office.

But once news reports of his tapes’ contents became public, Dad had enough.

“If this man has done half of what they say,” he muttered while reading the morning Atlanta Journal-Constitution, “then he’s unfit to serve as dog catcher.”

Millions of others must have reached the same conclusion as Dad, because a week later, Nixon resigned.

It was obvious — and should have been far earlier.

A half-century after the 37th president’s sins had been laid bare before history, the current vice president sat at the Nixon Library and blamed the “deep state” for bringing Nixon down.

Never mind the Watergate break-in. The enemies list. The Saturday Night Massacre. The robbery of a psychiatrist’s office. The abuse of power inside the FBI, CIA, and the Justice Department. The bugging of Americans’ phones. The lying under oath.

Never mind Nixon’s fingerprints smeared across the greatest political scandal of the century. Let’s just instead blame the constitutional breach on the hidden hand of the deep state.

It sounds vaguely familiar, doesn’t it?

JD Vance knows about the burglaries, the bugged phones, the break-ins. And he shrugs.

The vice president scoffs at political crimes that took down a president and mocks them as nothing more than a 12-hour news story. And thinks it’s “crazy” that Watergate ended an American presidency.

But that’s just Vance being Vance, defining deviancy down in hopes of excusing his own shameful behavior in office.

Unlike Mr. Vance, Richard Nixon was one of the most significant political figures of his time.

Nixon went to China. He created the Environmental Protection Agency. As vice president, he championed civil rights. He also received more votes than any other political candidate in U.S. history.

But the San Clemente politician also disgraced his office, weakened his country, and brought eternal shame to his legacy.

My father saw through Nixon’s actions and finally turned on a president he loved. Vice President Vance has seen the same evidence but laughs it off.

How pathetic. How cynical.

How perfectly predictable.

ON THE CALENDAR

The annual Pride March, commemorating the 1969 Stonewall riots, is set to take over the streets of New York City on Sunday. Find a spot — among millions — here.

In the nation’s capital, things are sizzling at the Annual Barbecue Battle, back for its 34th year. Prodigious pitmasters meet at the BBQ Battle Pit to vie for $50,000 — and bragging rights to the best smoke in town.

Country lovers in Chi-Town: Hideout brings back A Day in the Country, a Sunday-long celebration of Americana, bluegrass, and honky-tonk music, served alongside homemade pies, BBQ, and cold drinks. Treats for the eyes and ears alike.

Light on weekend reading? Austin and Charlotte are both hosting African American book festivals — Austin’s is its 20th — celebrating Black voices and their contributions to literature.

Out west, the Printing Museum of Los Angeles hosts “QWERTY: A Typewriter Festival.” Write your heart out on vintage keys, marvel at old design, and take home a story to tell. My type of weekend.

In Philadelphia, the Manayunk Arts Festival has “art lover” written — and painted, drawn, carved — all over it. The region’s largest juried art festival brings together work across media, rain or shine.

For the fabulous down south: Wynwood is throwing a special edition of Big Wig Drag Fest for Miami Pride. Drag, dance music, and club theater, all on the menu.

And on the pitch: The World Cup’s Round of 32 begins Sunday. Powerhouses France and Norway meet today; Colombia and Portugal play tomorrow. ¡Vamos!

MAILBAG

Thank you to all our readers who wrote in this week. As always, you’re welcome to write to us anytime.

What would $300 billion do for Ukraine or healthcare subsidies?

— Mark H., Manchester, N.H.

$300 billion for Ukraine would end Russia’s war of aggression against it, and more importantly, send a clear message to tyrants across the globe that aggression does not pay.

That U.S. support would free Poland, the Baltic states, and the rest of Central Europe from the fear of future invasions from Vladimir Putin.

Tragically, Donald Trump would rather direct that money to the terrorist state in Tehran than a group of freedom fighters trying to keep Europe free. What else does one need to know about Trump’s foreign policy?

$300 billion would also go a long way to reversing the tragic cuts to Medicaid that Republicans passed in their One Big Blighted Bill.

Those Medicaid cuts will disproportionately hurt the very people who voted for Donald Trump in rural America. Rural hospitals will shut down, emergency centers will disappear, and working Americans will be left with worse healthcare because the Republican Party chose instead to pass tax cuts for the richest billionaires in the world.

Workers need that money. Instead, it will be handed over to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and its radical Islamist clerics.

We can only hope the deal falls apart before Iran’s terrorist state gets even more powerful.

With Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner (real estate professionals who are not even [full] government employees) handling top level negotiations with foreign entities … what is Secretary of State Marco Rubio doing? It seems his job has been pre-empted.

— Anonymous

The secretary of state is clearly doing everything he can to stay as far away from the Iran negotiations as possible. He would much rather the vice president and U.S. negotiators take the fall for the current debacle unfolding in negotiations with the terror state. Rubio is instead focusing on a future invasion of Cuba.

So much for America First.

If we are so concerned about nuclear weapons in Iran, why wasn’t the same problem issued for North Korea in Trump’s first term? I feel like everyone has forgotten about that. Now North Korea has an open plan for nuclear weapons.

— James R., Greenville, S.C.

At their meeting during the 2016 presidential transition, Barack Obama reportedly told Donald Trump that his biggest problem would be North Korea’s nuclear program. And for the first six months of the president’s term, Obama was proved correct.

Reports out of the National Security Council and the Pentagon suggested the president’s team was considering options for launching a war on the Korean Peninsula.

An ill-considered meeting with North Korea’s tyrannical leader, and a handful of “love letters” later, Donald Trump lost his will to stand up to Kim Jong Un, and North Korea instead cemented its place as a nuclear power.

This geopolitical disaster was brought to you by the same president who once claimed Iran could never have a nuclear program — but has again backed down, with potentially catastrophic consequences for the United States.