that sprays radio active material. to date, russia has offered no proof of ukraine s alleged plans and the ukrainian foreign minister has called russia s statements lies. the news follows confirmation that russia s defense minister and u.s. secretary of defense lloyd austin spoke multiple times between friday and sunday, with u.s. officials saying sunday s talk was meant to delin delineate the red lines russia might cite to justify the use of a nuclear weapon. things going from bad to worse for russia. you look at what s happening on the battlefield, going terribly in the south, going terribly of course in the east. you also look economically at what s happening. what was supposed to be actually leverage and we ve said this for some time here. that is russian gas, and the cutting off of russian gas to europe was supposed to be leverage, actually, all you do when you cut off gas supplies,
viewers would remember or have heard that, in fact, we used to own 100% of aramco and in a moment of panic after the yamaka war, we surrendered. it s a u.s. control is extraordinary. we re doing very well, and that s to the obviously the suffering of russia and putin s agenda. he can t really sell his oil, other than at a steep discount. a $35 a barrel discount, and he s the least efficient producer in opec. right. let s move through some of these others. by the way, it was the nixon administration that panicked and gave that away. second point, federal leases, this will be shocking to people, everybody hold on to your seats. my friends at the wall street journal editorial page, which i read every morning in national review, hold on to your seats,
scarboro, yeah, no. tough but fair. i want to ask you about what you just mentioned, the cartel between the saudis and the russians in opec plus. cutting production by 2 million barrels a day. that was seen by some here as a political move against joe biden, an october surprise. what really is the impact of that? will it cause gas prices to go up the way some people have said? this is another place where highly conflicted energy analysts are saying, well, the market commands that. the markets are tight. no justification for it. they re making returns that tiffany would like to get. most opec nations, especially the saudis, they re making 75, 80% returns when the price was $80 a barrel as it was a week ago. the saudis panicked, i don t know if they re afraid because of the oil price caps that we see consumers forming a cartel. they re going to suffer. who knows why they wanted to help putin or if they wanted to
business with to replace the weapons system. russia? russia is relying on iranian drones. iran is more of an enemy to saudi arabia than they are to us. they have very few options now. they have made a huge strategic mistake. associate dean at yale school of management, jeffrey sonnenfeld, grading on a curve this morning. thank you very much. great to have you on. would love to have you back, continue the conversation. also still ahead on morning joe, we ve got steve rattner s charts, but we are now one minute past the top of the second hour of morning joe, and we re exactly two weeks until the midterm elections and new polling is showing extremely tight races in several battleground states that were won by president biden back in 2020. so pennsylvania is one of them, and that s where democrat john fetterman and republican mehmet oz are vying to replace senator pat toomey, the latest cnn poll has fetterman leading by six
strategic move, talk about how stupid it was for the saudis to do this economically. thank you, joe, and mika, we all guessed wrong. he just knocked it out of the park. he secured an a plus next semester, too. i didn t think it was worth the risk but it was worth the risk. you re exactly right, joe. this was incredibly foolish for them strategically. no self-interest. they produced oil, extracted at $22 a barrel, very cheap because it s all u.s. technology, by the way. the russians it s $46 a barrel, much different, so they are making tons of money, very high in profit margins but what this has done is put a spotlight on the sweetheart weapons deals that we won t have time to get into now, but senator blumenthal and congressman ro khanna has proposed this bicameral legislation, take a look at something that none of our real allies have. the eu doesn t have it. the uk doesn t have it. australia, israel, canada, nobody has a deal that we have now with our aerospace industry