nancy, nancy! donald trump last night in his cnn town hall, calling january 6th a beautiful day. the event, of course, last night full of lies, misleading statements. we ll go through the biggest ones, and also his comments about writer e. jean carroll that drew laughs and cheers from the crowd. good morning. welcome to morning joe. it is thursday, may 11th. we have the host of way too early, white house bureau chief jonathan lemire. jen palmieri. jon meacham. and reporter for the washington post, jackie alemany. we watched a rerun from 2016 and what we saw throughout donald trump s presidency. he committed again last night the claim that the election was rigged in 2020. it was not, of course. he called january 6th a beautiful day. he said he was going to pardon the people who attacked police officers on that day. the list goes on and on and on. would not commit to supporting ukraine in its war with russia. we ll get into some of it but, frankly, no surprises in w
invasion of ukraine. and i will just end by saying that according to officials, there was a discussion of a possible face-to-face meeting going forward. there s no timeline for that, but they are going to follow up and set up that meeting. mj lee, thank you. let s turn now to selena wang in beijing, gathering chinese reaction to joe biden and xi jinping s phone call. what did china have to say about mo pelosi s possible trip to taiwan? reporter: while the readout did not specifically mention pelosi, they gave a strong warning about playing with fire when it comes to taiwan. in that readout, xi jinping said, we firmly oppose taiwan independence and interference of external forces and will never leave any space for taiwan independence forces in any form. if you play with fire you get burned, and i hope the u.s. side can see this clearly. america is sending in one of its top politicians to taiwan, is treating taiwan more like an independent country that. is a clear red line
just to put that in perspective with the president s proposal, the president has a relatively modest increase of 4% in his spending. he has some offsetting deficit reduction measures, which we ll talk about in a second. 47% proposed cuts to discretionary spending from republicans. as you move to the third chart, it represents a philosophical difference. where joe biden wants to find the money by raising taxes, and republicans want to do that by cutting spending. exactly, willie. first, you have the republican cuts that we talked about. essentially, $4.8 trillion of which virtually are $4.5 trillion by cutting taxes. ironically, most of the revenue raisers they want is by taking away the irs funding, which costs the government money, because we make money on the irs because of the audits and recovering money from taxpayers. so president biden, as i said, wants to increase spending modestly by $2.6 billion over
support this minimum corps orat tax rate. if she no longer has that shield of manchin, i just think the pressure of the knives being out and some kind of a primary contest against her would be so sharp. and i spoke with a prominent democrat who said it will be hard for the moderates to vote against it because of the deficit reduction measures, and the progressives are never going to vote against these climate provision. if pelosi was able to get the vote, i m told she s confident she can ultimately get the votes for this. a lot of people probably don t understand why senate republicans, excited about this chip bill, you know, to have more semiconductor manufacturing in the united states, would hear about this deal between manchin and schumer and then say, oh, well then i m not going to support the chip bill.
by congress to frighten itself into passing deficit reduction measures which means unless congress acts in the next 48 hours the bush tax cuts will expire along with federal unemployment insurance and a broad package of the spending cuts including defense spending will take effect. do weeks of fruitless negotiations and john boehner and senate leader are working on a deal this morning to avoid the fiscal cliff, or as chris hayes and i call it, the fiscal curve. the deadline is soft. it s not like every american is going to be handed a bill on january 1st and there s way to manage the damage if the country goes over. the senate is set to convene this afternoon with the house to follow tonight. there s a chance that a compromise will be reached, less than 48 hours before tax rates revert to their clinton dasher are levels and board across the board spending cuts talk effect. when the president took to the podium friday afternoon to urge the law enforcements to get their act together with