same level of support that he s had since the beginning of his presidency which seems unbreakable regardless of what the facts on the ground are. you might hate that or love that, it is what it. we did not hear from senate republicans after he made it comment yesterday. jon meacham, i want to appeal to your constitutional spidey sense when s hear the president saying i have an absolute right to do something, what do you hear? i hear an unamerican and undemocratic, unrepublican, lower case d, lower case r, impulse. i was thinking last night reading through all of this, i would urge folks who are inclined to support the president to think about this. if we had had this guy in the early days of the republic, i m not entirely sure we would have survived. part of what s working now
president zelensky in their call. anyone that looks at the president s transcript will see that the president was raising issues that were appropriate, that were genuine interest to the american people. that is vice president pence yesterday in phoenix trying, spinning to defend the president of the united states. welcome back to morning joe. it s friday, october 4th. donny deutsch is still with us along with former chairman of the republican national commit committee michael steele and joining our conversation mike barnicle. barnicle and robinson, it doesn t get any better. tainted only by you, don. i i ll bring it down. pulitzer prize winning columnist and msnbc political analyst eugene robinson and david french also joining us. joe and mika will be back on monday. we ve got a ton to get to, as we ve been saying all morning. but let s begin with the text messages released late last night. house democrats of three committees released text
schmidt joins us with his reporting detailing how president trump s top envoys pressured the president of ukraine to investigate joe biden and his son. plus, new reporting from the wall street journal just moments ago may be the strongest indicator yet that the president s pressure campaign may be working. morning joe is back in a moment. working. morning joe is back in a moment. yeah, that s half the fun of a new house. seeing what people left behind in the attic. well, saving on homeowners insurance with geico s help was pretty fun too. ahhhh, it s a tiny dancer. they left a ton of stuff up here. welp, enjoy your house. nope. no thank you. geico could help you save on homeowners and renters insurance.
president trump raised biden s political aspect as well as liz warren during a phone call with chinese president xi. the white house record of that call was later stored in the same highly secured electronic system as president trump s july 25th phone call with the president of ukraine. when asked about president trump s call with xi earlier this week, cnn said the white house did not deny that he raised joe biden. joining us now, donny deutsch and the cofounder and ceo of axios jim. gentlemen, welcome. there s so much to go through maybe ever than we ve had in this conversation. we have the text messages but the president of the united states standing on the south lawn saying ukraine should look into joe biden and by the way, so too should china. there s a method to the madman. he s got what i call the cat strategy when he s in trouble.
which has been in the news and reported yesterday or the day before actually that something called the ism manufacturing index had dropped for the second straight month into negative territory which signals contraction. this i think is almost entirely a phenomenon of the trade war. you can see that also in this yellow colored line down there which shows export orders also falling in the last two months. those are very sharply now in negative territory. and what s also interesting is that these all peaked back right about the time that donald trump began the trade war. this manufacturing world was improving, things were getting better, jobs were being added. he started putting the metal tariffs in place, then the other tariffs in place, and now it s been going pretty much straight down since then. let me ask you as we look at that the big picture question, the argument from president trump was that, you know, are leverage. these tariffs are leverage, it will bring china to the table a