The Tea, Spilled by Morning Joe: ‘Denmark, itself, is irrelevant’

This is the Jan 22, 2026, edition of “The Tea, Spilled by Morning Joe” newsletter. Subscribe here to get it delivered straight to your inbox Monday through Friday.

“Without us, right now you would all be speaking German.” 

“Without us, most of the countries don’t even work.” 

— President Donald Trump

“Europe is a spectator while America and China dominate everything.”

— Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick

“Denmark’s investment in U.S. Treasury bonds, like Denmark, itself, is irrelevant.”

— Bessent 

“Weak and humorless is no way to go through life. The European model of leadership is failing.” 

— Sen. Lindsey Graham

In the Biden era, the right mocked Democrats for virtue signaling to their progressive audiences. 

In the Trump era, virtue signaling is just as common — but the performance has flipped. 

Now it is educated men who are expected to play the stooge, signaling feigned ignorance for the approval of a ravenous audience of one. 

Whether that means calling the country that sacrificed more of its sons and daughters per capita than any other member of America’s post-9/11 coalition in Afghanistan “irrelevant,” or dismissing our most important allies as “weak and humorless,” or sneering at the world’s second-largest economic bloc as helpless “spectators,” the pattern is the same. These lackeys dumb down their message and crank up their rhetoric to protect their temporary status in the White House. 

This virtue signaling for fools — who know little about American history or postwar realities — may play well in the dumbest corners of the Oval Office and TikTok, but it will one day mark these men as apparatchiks who were willing to torch America’s most important alliances to stay in the good graces of their boss for another five minutes. To paraphrase investor Warren Buffett, the tide will eventually go out, Trump will leave office, and these sad men will be exposed — left alone and naked, forever stripped of their reputations and dignity.

REPUBLICAN STATES SOUR ON TRUMP

Source: The Economist

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Ranking Member Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif., reminds committee members that the Trump administration continues breaking the law by refusing to release the remaining 99% of the Jeffrey Epstein files. The deadline for release passed more than a month ago.

The committee chairman, Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., used his position to hold Bill Clinton in contempt of Congress for failing to appear before the committee. 

Bill and Hillary Clinton had offered to make the former president available in New York. 

Nine Democrats joined every Republican member in voting to hold Bill Clinton in contempt.

EXTRA HOT TEA

The New York Times just released its latest poll on Donald Trump. The data is grim for the White House.

Less than one-third of Americans say that Trump has made America better since entering office for the second time. 

Trump is also upside-down on almost every issue.

His standing with voters on immigration is 16 points underwater; he is also minus 18 on the economy, minus 24 on the Ukraine-Russia war, minus 30 on the cost of living, and minus 44 on the Epstein files. 

Most damning for the president: The majority of Americans say he has made their life more expensive. 

Forty-two percent also rank Trump as one of the worst presidents of all time. 

A CONVERSATION WITH KEN DILANIAN AND LISA RUBIN

New reporting has raised serious constitutional questions about how Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents are carrying out arrests inside private homes. A Homeland Security Department memo obtained by the Associated Press appears to authorize agents to enter homes without a judge’s warrant — a move legal experts say may violate the Fourth Amendment. Ken Dilanian, MS NOW justice and intelligence correspondent, and Lisa Rubin, MS NOW senior legal reporter, joined us today to break down what the memo says, why it matters, and how it could be challenged in court.

Mika Brzezinski: What do you make of this memo, and is it a violation of the Constitution?

Ken Dilanian: Yes, Mika. This is remarkable and important reporting by the AP’s Rebecca Santana. She notes that no one knows how widely this memo has been used, but documents at least one case where ICE officers broke into the home of an immigrant and dragged him out based solely on an administrative warrant.

MB: What will Trump’s MAGA supporters think of the Feds’ expansion of powers to invade Americans’ homes without judicial authority?

KD: Many Trump supporters are frustrated that so many people with final removal orders remain in the United States and that ICE struggles to locate and deport them. It is a long-standing and difficult administrative problem. 

But that frustration does not override the Fourth Amendment. 

MB: Explain. 

KD: The Fourth Amendment protects all persons in the United States, not just citizens. A long line of Supreme Court decisions and case law ruled that those protections apply in these situations.

There is no such thing as an administrative warrant that, by itself, allows officers to break into a home without judicial approval. 

The Constitution guarantees that people should be secure in their homes, and that is a core principle. Legal experts say this memo has not been tested in court and likely would not survive a challenge, yet ICE agents still appear to be acting on it.

MB: Why is DHS keeping this memo secret?

KD: It is, in fact, another telling detail that the memo is being tightly controlled inside the agency. People are allowed to read it but not keep copies, and whistleblowers had to obtain a copy and slip it to a senator for it to become public. That level of secrecy goes beyond ordinary internal policy and is deeply troubling.

Willie Geist: Lisa, you have seen the whistleblower complaint. From a legal perspective, what is the crucial difference between a warrant issued by a judge and an administrative warrant from a [Justice Department] worker?

Lisa Rubin: An administrative warrant is issued by someone within the agency; there is no judicial check. 

A judicial warrant is presented to a judge with supporting grounds and is signed by that judge, and that has traditionally marked the line between when you can and cannot enter someone’s home.

There are narrow exceptions under the Fourth Amendment. For example, officers may sometimes enter without a warrant if they are in hot pursuit of a suspect, or to prevent imminent violence, such as an apparent domestic assault or likely killing behind a door. 

But nothing described here fits those exceptions in the case law.

Mike Barnicle: What kind of authority are ICE agents using to go into someone’s home?

LR: Essentially, the theory is that if they are arresting someone with a final order of removal, then a search based only on an administrative warrant is enough to get through the door. 

We have not seen the entire memo, and we do not know what constitutional justification it claims, but according to the whistleblower disclosure, ICE lawyers have advised that this meets constitutional standards. 

Like Ken, I am skeptical.

Barnicle: Does ICE have any obligation to publish this memo so the public can see it?

LR: They do not. Recently, my colleague Fallon Gallagher and I reviewed ICE and [Customs and Border Protection] use-of-force policies and were surprised to find one memo publicly available only because it was filed as an exhibit in ongoing litigation. It did not appear on ICE’s website.

Generally, ICE has no duty to publish these internal policies and often works hard to keep them from the public. What Ken described goes further: not just withholding it from the public, but preventing people inside the agency from keeping their own copies, which signals a level of secrecy that exceeds normal internal-only policy practice.

WG: And because of this reporting, ICE raids are now open to legal challenge. We will see how this story develops in the coming days.

RUTTE WALKS THE TRUMP TIGHTROPE

By Vaughn Hillyard, MS NOW senior White House reporter

I first met Mark Rutte just two weeks after the 2024 election. He stood plainclothed, in shorts and a T-shirt, as a seemingly unassuming Dutchman, waiting for a coffee in West Palm Beach, Florida. 

The newly named NATO secretary general was set, just hours later, to meet the newly re-elected Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago club and somehow try to harness the respect and attention of the man who, months earlier, had said during his campaign that he would “encourage [Russia] to do whatever the hell they want” if NATO countries don’t spend more on their military defenses. 

Seven months after that Palm Beach meeting, Rutte would publicly call Trump “Daddy,” inviting criticism for his overt and overzealous flattery of the American president. 

But seven months later — this week, while at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland — Rutte finds himself having perhaps proved, for now, to be the most effective diplomat (or at least one from a liberal democracy) to deal with Trump yet on the world stage. 

Overnight, Trump, after a meeting with Rutte, announced that the two men had reached a “concept of a deal” that would satisfy Trump’s demands for greater influence in and around Greenland — but fell far short of any promise to provide Trump or the United States the sovereignty of Denmark’s territory. 

Yet the about-face from Trump, seemingly reversing his demands made on global television just hours earlier, only deepened schisms over how to best approach and handle an increasingly hostile Trump: appease the American leader, or resist his weighty demands? 

Earlier this week, several longtime allies of the United States, including Canada’s Mark Carney and France’s Emmanuel Macron, effectively vowed to step away from their respective nations’ reliance on America. 

Other countries, prominently Middle East monarchies and the authoritarian governments of Belarus and Hungary, stood by Trump’s side at his “Board of Peace” signing, willing to make the necessary accommodations to the American president to avoid running afoul of him. 

I wrote about this dynamic here overnight.

But as we work our way through 2026, I think we’ll increasingly look at whether Rutte will be able to exist in that happy medium between appeasement of and resistance to Trump. Because as the global order quickly shifts, Rutte could be the one player keeping it all at least somewhat woven together.

ONE LAST SHOT

North American bird populations are continuing to decline nationwide, with more than one-third of U.S. species now of high or moderate conservation concern.

There has been a 30% decline in total bird populations in the United States since 1970.

SPILL IT!

Next week, musician Amy Grant will join us to discuss her new single “The 6th Of January (Yasgur’s Farm).” Have a question? Ask here, and we may feature your question on the show.

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