president biden challenged former president trump to two debates, and trump accepted. oh. yeah. trump agreed. he said, i ll be there, assuming it s okay with my parole officer. the first debate will be next month, which is the earliest a presidential debate has ever been. if we re being honest, an early bird debate feels right for these guys. boom, just like that, head-to-head, toe to toe, mano and mango. trump posted, just tell me when. i ll be there. let s get ready to rumble! rumble? i ve seen your rallies. i think you mean, let s get ready to ramble. good morning. welcome to morning joe. it is thursday, may 16th. i just have to ask, the question alex asks, why is it not friday? how is it not friday, guys? it s thursday. we re grateful that god has given us another day to come in and be together. i m very grateful. we re close to friday. we re not at friday. 24 hours, it ll be friday. a lot to talk about. we have white house bureau chief for pol
between donald trump and his rivals. a lot of attacks too. before we get to today s other business headline wes have a developing story for you. a major magnitude 8.3 earthquake off the coast of chile shaking the country leaving 3 people dead. waves of up to 15 feet pounding coastal areas. a billion people evacuated. this quake was to powerful that it was felt across the continent. we ll tell you more about this as we continue to follow the story through the morning. let s tell you about the big business stories that we re watching. the global markets are in a wait and see mode ahead of the fed decision. that comes at 2:00 eastern. you won t want to miss it. it tint stop another volatile trading session in china overnight. the shanghai composite closing down with those losses coming in the final 30 minutes. in europe the swiss national bank keeping it unchanged but if needed it will remain active in the currency market to weaken what it calls a significantly overvalued swis
and david powell is in london following the latest on the greek bailout talks, but first let s get you to some of the top stories we are following. disney is at it again. the world s largest entertainment company posted quarterly profits that were 10% better than a year ago. results improved at the disney theme park and merchandise units. frozen is still a big moneymaker almost $1 billion a merchandise sold. one clout, operating income fell at the disney table networks, the reason higher production costs at espn. after 20 years as the head of cisco, john chambers one as want to survive the boom and bust cycles, and now, he is stepping down as ceo. he will move to the chairman s seat, and earlier, mr. chambers discussed his new role. mr. chambers: i will be his wing man, the next frontier forces go, to power our growth not for one or two years but 10 years, focus on tea, strategic partnerships and speaking, so the bottom line is chuck will be the ceo. he will make the deci
nasdaq down by about 20. let s get to the other story of the morning. charter communications buying time warner cable for $195 in share in cash and stock. that deal is about $55 billion. they rejected charter last year instead going for the comcast transaction. today s news comes after months of speculation and after contrast dropped it s $45.2 billion merger agreement over antitrust concerns. that transaction was blocked but time warner looking like they ll get the better deal in all of this. we all looked at the comcast deal and said are you crazy you re going to get nothing when this is all over. $2 billion break up fee. but more than that you get a much higher price and a much greater likelihood that this deal will go through although rich greenfield had a very interesting comment this morning, i don t know if you saw it which suggested that while everybody thinks this will go through if people know i m going to get it to airlines joe so watch out, if the governme
energy prices are likely to be a point discussed at today s fed meeting. the fomc is expected to turn off its massive bond buying program while ensuring investors it will start ready to act should the economy be threatened. and we will have steve liesman joining us with the exclusives from the fe survey later this morning. the s&p case-shiller index, consumer confidence, and third quarter housing data. as for earnings, among the names posting quarterly results before the bell, dupont just hitting the tape. pfizer, auto nation, corning, when i will pool. coming this up afternoon, facebook will be on centers stage after a market closes. we have the dow looking like it will open higher. up about 11.5 points. the nasdaq will open higher, as well, by approximately 24 points. earnings per share, sales, 7.5 billion. revenue is 7.87 billion. so it s a different number. 7.87 compared to 7.95. so maybe just a little bit shy of expectations. but pretty close. and then for the year,