This is the Oct. 19, 2026, edition of “The Tea, Spilled by Morning Joe” newsletter. Subscribe here to get it delivered straight to your inbox Monday through Friday.

“If the United States will officially take the side of Russia … we will not prevail and we will not be able to stand.”

—

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on “Meet the Press” after President Donald Trump waived sanctions on Russia

In 1983, Ronald Reagan stood before a room of evangelicals in Orlando, Florida, and denounced the Soviet Union as an “evil empire.”

Two decades later, a former KGB officer named Vladimir Putin mourned that empire’s collapse as “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.”

Donald Trump has obviously taken the former KGB agent’s side over Reagan’s.

On Friday, the president waived bipartisan sanctions against Russia that he signed into law last month. He called it a “very simple” decision.

It’s an easy choice if you want America’s enemies to win.

Trump then approved the Russian diesel deal. Then the slowing of Starlink over Ukraine. That’s been followed by a week of non-denial denials from a president who bizarrely insists that no one is responsible.

The Keystone Cops routine would be funny if the consequences weren’t so deadly. Russia is moving closer to winning in Ukraine and setting their sights on the rest of Europe.

Even The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page now calls Trump “Mr. Putin’s best friend in the world.”

What an October surprise, and what bad news for Republicans.

GOP candidates are scrambling to distance themselves from the Trump-Putin alliance while losing support over the high cost of living and the low approval ratings haunting Trump.

A new Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll puts those approval ratings at 33%, lower even than after he encouraged the Jan. 6, 2021 attacks on Congress.

Only 18% of Americans say they’re better off than they were a year ago.

Yet through it all, the president can’t quit Putin — one of the most ruthless war criminals on the planet. Left behind are those freedom fighters who continue to defend Western democracy on the front lines in Ukraine.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy warns that they cannot continue fighting if America takes Russia’s side.

Tragically, Donald Trump already has.

CHARTS OF THE DAY

Source: Economist/YouGov poll of 1,403 registered U.S. voters conducted Oct. 10-12, 2026. Margin of error: ± 3.5%

ON THIS DATE

On Oct. 19, 2025, thieves broke into the Louvre and made off with more than $100 million in 19th century-era jewels, setting the stage for a year seemingly rife with art heists.

Kiran Ridley/Getty Images
A French forensics officer examines a cut window and balcony at the Louvre Museum in Paris following a robbery on Oct. 19, 2025.

WHAT THEY SAID

Jonathan Lemire on the midterms

“The fact that we’re talking about the Senate at all is instructive. The House has always been favored to lean Democratic, but the Senate is a true toss-up. Eight months ago, those seats weren’t even in play, but now they feel tantalizingly within Democrats’ grasp.”

David Ignatius on Trump’s decision to import Russian diesel fuel

“It’s a betrayal of Ukraine — courageous allied people facing the worst winter of their lives — for the frailest of political reasons. There’s no evidence to support the idea that this diesel deal will make a difference in the prices people pay. If anything, it’s making Trump more vulnerable politically, as Republicans pull back from him.”

Eugene Robinson on tech billionaires

“A handful of absurdly wealthy men have ridiculous control over a democracy, and we’re pretending that that’s OK. That’s not the way this is supposed to work, but there you have it: You go to Elon Musk for our national security concerns and to Mark Zuckerberg for our First Amendment rights. We’ve dug a hole for ourselves as a country that it’s going to take a while to get out of.”

The post Trump’s Keystone Cops routine would be funny if the consequences weren’t so deadly appeared first on MS NOW.

“Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls.”

— Jeremiah 6:16

What is happiness, and how can we get some?

Twenty years ago, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt turned to ancient wisdom and modern science for answers in his bestselling book “The Happiness Hypothesis.” Now, in a newly updated anniversary edition, he revisits that timeless question in a world transformed by smartphones, social media, and AI.

Haidt joined “Morning Joe” today to explore the sources of happiness, why children need room to struggle and fail, and how technology is crowding out the experiences that make us human.

JS: This book came out in 2006, before the smartphone era. What struck you most when you revisited it 20 years later?

JH: Two things. First, the ancient wisdom that has been passed down for literally 100 generations has held up remarkably well. And second, a year after the book came out, Steve Jobs stood on a stage and said, “Every once in a while, a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything.” We had no idea how profoundly smartphones would reshape our relationships and even the nature of our consciousness.

WG: So what is the happiness hypothesis? What actually makes us happy?

JH: Almost every ancient tradition says happiness comes from within. But when you combine wisdom from the East and West with modern psychology, the best way to understand it is that happiness comes from between: We need to be embedded in relationships, in productive work that matters, and in something larger than ourselves.

JS: So many of the 10 great ideas in your book parallel biblical teachings: Paul writing about doing the very thing he doesn’t want to do, Jesus saying, “Judge not that ye be not judged.” Why do we keep falling short?

JH: The ancients were incredibly insightful about consciousness, the tricks our minds play, the quickness to judge, human relationships, adversity, and suffering. My early work on moral judgment was all about how our inner lawyer is always building the case against others and the defense case for ourselves. We are evolved, engineered to be hypocrites.

Mike Barnicle: One casualty of smartphones that we rarely discuss is eye contact. What happens when we lose that human connection?

JH: The guys who created all this technology are generally not known for being very good at social relationships. They don’t understand that just interacting isn’t the same as making eye contact with another human being. And especially our boys: Because they spend so much time on video games and porn, and now gambling, they’re losing social skills.

JS: Young parents especially need to hear this: Hovering isn’t doing your children any favors. Why does backing off matter so much?

JH: One of my mother’s parenting dictums — which she learned from a therapist long ago in the ’60s — was “Don’t just do something. Stand there.” Don’t rush in to help, because it’s the struggle that causes the growth. Your child’s emerging social sense needs conflicts, exclusion, and setbacks, within limits. This is why we have childhood, to have those experiences.

WG: How do we reverse the damage from smartphones and technology and reclaim our attention?

JH: It starts with a recognition that we are Team Humanity. We often think if an alien invasion comes, maybe we’ll recognize we’re all in this together. Well, guess what? The alien invasion is here: AI is, in a sense, an alien entity. We’ve got to reclaim our attention first. That’s the prerequisite to everything else.

JS: When the next president takes on education reform, what part should screens play in classrooms?

JH: They were pushed in without any research to show benefits, and there still isn’t any. They’re so damn distracting that they seem to be causing the decline in test scores and reading. The tech barons themselves tend to choose schools that have no technology. So, for the most part, rip it all out of elementary and middle schools until it is proven to be useful.

JS: Many kids today can’t write a sentence or get through a book. What’s at stake?

JH: This technology is hurting their education in exactly the ways you describe. Basic skills matter, and books most of all. Once you give a child a smartphone, they crave the quick dopamine, and it becomes very difficult to read a book. If we lose books, if we lose the accumulated wisdom of humanity because all the next generation can do is consume little snippets on TikTok, then we’re done as a civilization.

This conversation has been condensed and edited for brevity and clarity.

MORNING JOE FAMILY MEETING

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CHARTS OF THE DAY

Source: Fox News poll of 1,202 registered voters conducted Oct. 9-12, 2026. Margin of error: ± 2.5 percentage points

WHAT THEY SAID

Willie Geist on Trump’s one-man show

“This is how Donald Trump views the presidency: You just do what you want. Congress is irrelevant. You don’t have to go to them for tariffs — or to start a war. Inside his own West Wing, Trump’s saying he didn’t really need to talk to his chief of staff or the FBI. It all comes from him and only him.”

David Drucker on the Trump Cabinet

“In the first term, there’s a learning curve for the president and everybody who works for him. Now, in the second term, everybody knows what they’re doing, but there’s a level of exhaustion, and the talent isn’t as good. Over the last few months, things have begun to unravel, with everybody looking over their shoulder and the president in a bubble of his own making. This is all going to show itself after the election — when everybody will have to deal with the fallout.”

Elise Jordan on James Talarico

“Talarico comes across as humble and willing to admit his missteps. He is not angry, and that’s such a big part of what voters are responding to. When someone shows a modicum of ‘Hey, I’m willing to work with the other side, and I’m not a crazy extremist,’ that goes a long way winning these crossover voters.”

The post “Don’t just do something. Stand there”: Jonathan Haidt and Joe Scarborough on raising children in the age of AI appeared first on MS NOW.