Rachel Maddow
Appearances
PBD Podcast
Signal War Plans Scandal EXPLODES | PBD Podcast | Ep. 566
Did you ever think you would make it? I feel I'm supposed to take sweet victory I know this life meant for me Adam, what's your point?
PBD Podcast
Signal War Plans Scandal EXPLODES | PBD Podcast | Ep. 566
And to everyone who hates when I win, the winged victory came to the Louvre in pieces and people still line up to see her. And I can only hope that despite my flaws and despite my cracks and my breaks, and there are many of them.
PBD Podcast
Signal War Plans Scandal EXPLODES | PBD Podcast | Ep. 566
that at every premiere and everything I do, people will wait in line to see.
PBD Podcast
Signal War Plans Scandal EXPLODES | PBD Podcast | Ep. 566
Visual effects push the boundaries of what we see on screen. Their work makes the impossible seem possible. With breathtaking ambition, they create magic that wraps its arms around our wildest imaginations.
PBD Podcast
Joy Reid FIRED, Alec Baldwin vs Trump Impersonator, Crenshaw Threatens Tucker | PBD Podcast | Ep. 551
Go ahead. Und ein noch größerer Programmwechsel ist um 7 Uhr, 7 Uhr östlich, wo Joy Reads Show, der Readout, heute Abend endete. Und Joy nimmt nicht einen anderen Job in der Netzwerke. Sie verlässt die Netzwerke altogether. Und das ist sehr, sehr, sehr schwer zu nehmen. Was ist dieses Mann? Ich bin 51 Jahre alt. Ich habe seit ich 12 Jahre alt war.
PBD Podcast
Joy Reid FIRED, Alec Baldwin vs Trump Impersonator, Crenshaw Threatens Tucker | PBD Podcast | Ep. 551
And I have had so many different kinds of jobs, you wouldn't believe me if I told you. But in all of the jobs I have had, in all of the years I have been alive, there is no colleague for whom I have had more affection and more respect than Joy Reid. I love everything about her. Ich habe so viel von ihr gelernt. Ich habe so viel mehr von ihr zu lernen.
PBD Podcast
Joy Reid FIRED, Alec Baldwin vs Trump Impersonator, Crenshaw Threatens Tucker | PBD Podcast | Ep. 551
Ich will sie als Freund hier bei MSNBC nicht verlieren.
PBD Podcast
S&P 500 Dives As Trump Hints At Recession | PBD Podcast | Ep. 559
News today, banner headline, markets rocked by Trump show economic fear across Wall Street. Right under that, next headline, NASDAQ 100 sheds $1.1 trillion in value. Right under that, next headline, stocks fall most this year with recession warnings blaring. Right under that, next headline, Tesla tumbles most since 2020.
PBD Podcast
S&P 500 Dives As Trump Hints At Recession | PBD Podcast | Ep. 559
Next headline over, billionaires at Trump's swearing-in have since lost $209 billion. Quote, the start of Trump's second term has delivered a stunning reversal for many of the billionaires who were seated behind Trump in the Capitol rotunda while he was being sworn in. This is my point.
Part Of The Problem
Joy Reid is Fired
And even bigger programming change is at 7 p.m., 7 p.m. Eastern, where Joy Reid's show, The Readout, ended tonight. And Joy is not taking a different job in the network. She is leaving the network altogether. And that is very, very, very hard to take. I am 51 years old. I have been gainfully employed since I was 12.
Part Of The Problem
Joy Reid is Fired
And I have had so many different kinds of jobs, you wouldn't believe me if I told you. But in all of the jobs I have had, in all of the years I have been alive, there is no colleague for whom I have had more affection and more respect than Joy Reid. I love everything about her. I have learned so much from her. I have so much more to learn from her.
Part Of The Problem
Joy Reid is Fired
I do not want to lose her as a colleague here at MSNBC. And personally, I think it is a bad mistake to let her walk out the door. It is not my call, and I understand that. But that's what I think.
Part Of The Problem
Joy Reid is Fired
I will tell you, it is also unnerving to see that on a network where we've got two, count them, two non-white hosts in primetime, both of our non-white hosts in primetime are losing their shows, as is Katie Fang on The Weeknd. And that feels worse than bad, no matter who replaces them. That feels indefensible, and I do not defend it.
Part Of The Problem
People Need to be Prosecuted
The government does all sorts of things for which we need experience, expertise, accumulated and institutional knowledge, a stable training base, and a stable work environment in which professionals can oversee sensitive, complex, and life or death matters of a thousand different kinds. What we have now instead is this wreckage. if you voted for Donald Trump, this is what you were voting for.
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
Maybe somebody should follow up on that. But reportedly, at the behest of Boris Epstein, they named a guy who was actively under investigation for statutory rape, drug use, and prostitution to be attorney general of the United States. And you can question Donald Trump's judgment in doing that. Sure, that's a discussion. What's in Trump's head? What are his aims? Fine.
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
I'm politically more interested in the fact that they then had the vice president elect J.D. Vance personally grab Matt Gaetz by the arm and walk him into the offices of all of these Republican senators who they then leveraged into endorsing Matt Gaetz for attorney general and saying, yes, they would vote for him. Give Matt a chance. Right. to have humiliated J.D.
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
Vance that way and cost those Republican senators forever. Those Republican senators will have it on their record that they thought Matt Gaetz was a great choice for attorney general before they then pulled him and wasted all that political capital. That's just political malpractice within the Republican Party and between the president and vice president.
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
And if that's how they're going to act, they should pay for it politically and they should be asked about that stuff constantly. J.D. Vance has been now twice publicly humiliated on core issues that he purports to be principled on. Law and order with Matt Gaetz and the pardons thing where he said anybody who attacked a police officer or was violent shouldn't be pardoned. And then they were.
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
He should be asked about that every time he pops his head above ground.
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
This is what you can expect. And if you have a problem, take it up with daddy.
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
I think being a supplicant and doing this sort of dear leader, yes, sir, whatever you say, sir. Yes, I'm going to turn in my mother. Yes, two plus two equals five. Yes, Matt Gaetz is a good attorney general choice. Yes, people who hit police officers with baseball bats should be punished. sprung from prison. Yes, the January 6th defense attorney should be the U.S. attorney, the acting U.S.
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
attorney in the District of D.C. All of these things are humiliations to every Republican who lines up with them. And there's no such thing as humiliation for Donald Trump. He doesn't, I think, experience shame or embarrassment. And again, I don't care to investigate why. But other Republicans do. And Donald Trump isn't going to live forever.
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
And the MAGA movement is maybe at its apex right now, but it won't be forever. All of these guys are going to have to run for something and they're all going to have to look at themselves in the mirror. And they all have, you know, mothers, children, and they have to live with themselves. And I do think that I'm not counting on human decency.
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
But I am counting on human embarrassment and shame and awkwardness, difficulty of answering questions about these things to be a moderating force in terms of what he can get from his own party. And I think what he can get from his own party for the foreseeable future is going to be the only de facto limiting constraint in terms of what he can get away with.
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
The thing that feels new in modern America, like in the past century, I'd say, in the United States, that is something that we do see in other countries. And this is something where even contemporary other countries, I think, offer a good lesson in terms of what this means, is the attempt to integrate... loyal, lawless paramilitary force with the state.
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
So we have these executive orders that direct people within the Justice Department and the intelligence agencies and even like the SEC and the FTC to investigate past actions by those agencies basically to see if if there's anything that they can use as a pretext to bring prosecutions against government officials and former Biden administration officials.
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
Like that's the use of the government to essentially terrorize the opposition and to terrorize the previous administration. At the same time, you've also got, you know, flinging open the doors of the federal penitentiary and letting out over 200 people who were actively incarcerated for federal crimes, most of which involved violence on January 6th.
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
And you've got pro-MAGA members of Congress like Lauren Boebert offering to give them guided tours of the Capitol now that they're out. I highlighted on the show on Tuesday night one of those guys who she was offering a tour of the Capitol flashing the white power sign behind her while she was saying it.
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
Those sort of twin threats that we're going to use the government to destroy opposition, but we're also going to use lawless, loyal, paramilitary, immunized force to physically menace people and to create an environment in the civic space that makes regular people afraid to enter, regular people afraid to participate. That is something that we've seen in lots of other authoritarian countries.
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
We've seen that, for example, in Turkey in modern times. We've seen that a little bit in Hungary. We've seen that in some other... We've seen it in the Philippines. Seeing that in the United States, those things happening at once feels new. And it's worth remembering that paramilitary violence and militias are illegal in every state in the country.
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
And even if they are going to be immunized federally, this may be a place for state law enforcement.
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
Right. He could put a new label on it, but he's still doing all the things he does.
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
How does that apply to like the Greenland and Panama stuff?
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
The thing that is interesting about it to me is that it is invented out of whole cloth for the purpose of this Trump term.
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
Sure, Russia has a lot of icebreakers. Okay, yeah, I've been covering that for 15 years. But this is a place they've decided to plant a flag and to put a lot of rhetorical energy, to put it in the inaugural, as you say. And I feel like it's a good test case for us to figure out the doing versus saying line. One of the things that's interesting now that he's president is that Panama's response to
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
was to go to the UN and to lodge a complaint with the United Nations saying, hey, one of the rules here of us all in the United Nations is we're not supposed to threaten and menace other countries. He's doing that. He said in his inaugural, we're taking it. And when asked ahead of his inaugural, will you rule out military force? He said, no, I won't.
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
Well, we actually aren't supposed to do that within the United Nations. He probably knows that. That's probably part of this. Similarly, with Greenland, there's a lot of, I think, very elementary level understanding about what it means to be a NATO, which is that if any NATO country gets menaced or attacked, all the other NATO countries are treaty bound to defend them and respond to it.
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
Very little discussion, though, about what happens when one NATO country threatens another. That's not a thing that we usually have. But we really can't do that within NATO. And threatening to take Greenland is threatening. And to do so potentially via military force is threatening to make war on our NATO ally, Denmark.
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
So it seems to me that maybe the important thing here is, you know, why did Trump have one of his executive orders be taking us out of the World Health Organization?
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
Yeah, it's because he doesn't want us to be in any organizations of any kind that represent the post-World War II international legal order. So take us out of the World Health Organization, thereby effectively probably collapsing the World Health Organization, really screw up NATO by threatening war on a NATO ally, potentially
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
forcing the question of whether or not the United States is rightfully within NATO within the United Nations start menacing another I mean Panama Panama does not have a military So, us proposing military force against Panama isn't actually even threatening a war, it's just threatening an invasion.
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
But it does so in a way that is already calling the question as to whether or not we are a member in good standing of the United Nations. So if all of this is about blowing up not just our international standing, but blowing up the post-war international order and all of the international institutions that we bolster that make up the post-World War II international landscape...
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
Well, then, you know, maybe these things have some logic. And it also means that Trump's second term in office will be the greatest pinnacle of achievement of Vladimir Putin, who more than anything wants to destroy the post-war liberal order and have a supposedly multipolar world where big countries just take what they want.
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
For us to stand alone or are we going to stand with them?
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
Because if it's China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea, which is the Axis that's like, for example, waging war on Ukraine right now. And that's the model that Trump likes in terms of how countries should not be constrained and how they behave. Is he proposing that, you know, he talks about his love letters from Kim Jong-un.
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
He says, I know I said that I would end the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours within one day of me being elected, let alone sworn in. But he actually said, but I need to talk to Putin. Yeah. in order to see how that's going to go. I mean, the way that he's easing up all of his big talk on China, everything that he had threatened against China, all of a sudden China's good.
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
China doesn't have to worry about anything. I mean, we'll see how it goes with Iran. Apparently, the last warning that the Biden administration gave to Trump's incoming national security team before they walked out of the White House was, watch out, Iran wants to kill U.S. government officials and former U.S. government officials.
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
Whereupon Trump immediately withdrew the Secret Service protection detail from John Bolton, which had been put in place because of the Iranian hitman who tried to kill him. The Axis powers, to the extent that there is one, are the people and the entities that Trump is acting most inexplicably positive toward.
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
And if we're gonna join that kind of an axis, I don't think that's the way Americans think of ourselves.
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
I would have hydrated more systematically. That's good. That's fair. Rather than relying on individual little paper cups of water that I filled up and then drank while coming back from the water cooler. Yeah, I would have taken, honestly, I would have taken better care of myself. I do think that that chaotic cadence of there being no normal day of, you know, the president, what is it?
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
He sleeps in until 10 or 11 in the morning and then watches some TV and rolls in around noon and then just pounds Diet Cokes until four in the morning and makes up policy based on whoever he last spoke to and posts it on his social media. I mean, that environment for people who are trying to you know, cover the most important country in the world and its workings, is trying.
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
It's physically trying. And so I think we need to do more tag team relay stuff. We need to take better care of ourselves. We need to, as you say, sort of calibrate to understand what the biggest threats are and what's just gross.
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
Yeah, I think there is a bias toward thinking that the institutions that we have are durable and that they'll always exist and that no work had to happen to get them and they'll defend themselves. But just look at elections, you know. one of the things that Pam Bondi talked about after the Matt Gaetz attorney general nomination fell apart and Pam Bondi got in there.
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
One of the things that is expected from the justice department under Bondi is that they're going to do some sort of examination of the 2020 election.
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
Because of this predicate lie that the election was somehow stolen from him. Now, Mm-hmm. dangerous, wrong, and something that we shouldn't depend on in the future. And it's really, really, really important that we have a 2026 midterm. It's also very important that we have a 2028 presidential election. But I don't think in 2025 you assign your Justice Department
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
to proclaim the falsity of a previous election because you're interested in holding normal elections going forward. You do that in order to discredit elections as a system in this country so that we don't have them anymore. And maybe that sounds like hair on fire. Maybe that sounds like I'm being alarmist because we did, in fact, just have an election. But I don't think we should assume that.
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
that that threat is resolved. I really don't think it is. And I think if you watch what he's doing, you can see the real danger there.
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
Mm-hmm. It could happen like that. And there's other factors at work here. I mean, what are the other constituent parts of democracy that we need to be worried about? One of them is the fourth estate. We need to worry about having an actually free press and not having state TV.
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
And the press is under incredible pressure from without, but also demonstrating all of the wrong instincts, I think, broadly speaking, in terms of supplicating themselves to the new power in Washington. And That is something that is not a fait accompli. It's not done. It's an iterative process. I think the public should react to that.
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
I think that people should vote with their feet and people should support independent and free-spirited press that isn't cowed and that isn't afraid and that isn't intimidated. But that is something that we need to fight for, too. And public opinion and public behavior there really matters. It's not a done deal. All of this stuff is – nothing's inevitable. All of this stuff is live. Yeah.
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
I mean, one of the wild cards here is, and this is something that's been surprising to me, you know, I think one of the sort of caustic and maybe slightly mean-spirited observations that was also true about the first Trump term is that while every president after a term looks about 25 years older than he did at the start of his term, that didn't really happen to Trump.
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
Like at the end of his four years, he kind of looked the same. And maybe that happens when you only roll him in the middle of the afternoon. Yeah. Maybe that says something about his work ethic as president. But as he is now sworn in for his second term, he looks old and unfit and frail. And he is the oldest person ever to take the oath of office as president.
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
And we've obviously just been through a version of this with President Biden and his age issue being so determinative and important in terms of what happened in the last electoral cycle. Yeah. But Trump doesn't look good. And J.D. Vance is like 15 and ready to go.
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
But those dynamics, I think, are going to be a real wild card in terms of what happens between these two men, between what happens in terms of how together Trump is. You don't get to age infinitely and poorly together. without it ultimately affecting the way that you behave and speak.
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
His second inaugural address for whatever you can say about its content was also delivered in a low slurring mumble.
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
He got to do all of his stuff, but it was also very poorly done.
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
He's never been like, you know, he's not Churchill, right? That's never happened. But he's also not himself. He's also just not as good as he was even a couple of years ago, even at the start of the campaign.
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
And to see him physically decline, if he's going to fall apart mentally and or physically in this term, that's really going to be a wild moment within this crazy and humiliated, magified Trump Republican supplicant party. I'm sure they'll handle it well. Yeah. Yeah.
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
Oh, I'm not afraid. But I do expect that they'll be, you know, that Elon Musk and all of the other, you know, who paid Rudy's settlement with the Ruby Freeman and Seamus? I'm assuming that all of the money people who are doing Trump's bidding in order to get their own interests catered to by the U.S.
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
government, I'm assuming that they will all fund a gazillion defamation lawsuits that are designed to ruin Trump. not only individual critics in the press and individual reporters, but also whole news organizations.
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
I am hopeful that news organizations writ large will understand this as a threat to them all, and they will band together and make sure that there aren't, for example, meaningful attacks on the Sullivan decision that defends the freedom of the press in terms of libel and defamation protections. So I'm not afraid.
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
I am eyes wide open and expecting that the courts will be used to try to destroy the press. But again, I think the public should have something to say about that when it happens. And I think that, again, there should be some unity within the news business to recognize that we are all in this together. It's not that they're going to protect their favorites. Right.
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
She should never be allowed to preach the message of Jesus in her life because she's not even talking about Jesus.
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
What do you think? I mean, it sounds like you're worried that we are just talking to ourselves. I am.
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
This is why no one's going to these. Yeah, this is why these denominations are dying.
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
I also think that it's one thing to think about it from a sort of 30,000 foot academic structural perspective. It's another thing to think about it in terms of like, what are you, John, going to do every day? What are your skills? What are you going to expend calories on today? Right. And you do what you can.
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
I mean, I'm very happy that MSNBC is actually very highly performing on TikTok and on YouTube. Volume-wise, we're among the most widely viewed news organizations on both of those platforms. That's good. During the transition, I did a series of segments that were for YouTube only, that weren't for TV, that were looking at the backgrounds of a number of the Trump nominees.
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
Those got huge traffic on YouTube. I was really happy for that. I am at Blue Sky and... at matto.msnbc.com, at Blue Sky and encourage you to be there because maybe right now it feels like Blue Sky is people who already listen to Pod Save America talking to each other about what they saw on MSNBC. But if it gets bigger, it won't all be that.
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
And when you're on an iterative social media platform, meaning it's a place where you don't just receive stuff, you interact with people, and that's an important part of what you're doing there, I think it's important to not be in a place where the interaction is rigged to favor MAGA outcomes.
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
And that's explicitly happening at... At Twitter. And I think that there's I think there's a reason that everybody has jumped ship from threads, which was a Twitter knockoff that seemed like it might be better. But now it's essentially going through the same process that Twitter went through because Mark Zuckerberg's politics have also followed Elon Musk's down that particular hole.
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
So if you're in an iterative environment where your interactions are going to be are going to be gamed in order to favor Donald Trump and Elon Musk's desired outcomes, don't do that. Don't don't. Don't spend your one precious life providing free content to those gentlemen.
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
I mean, what I do is talk about the news, right? So I read all day and do reporting and fact-checking and research and then try to observe what's happening in the world, try to make some sense of it, try to present it truthfully and explain what's important about it and why it matters and what might happen next.
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
And I'm doing that instead of one day a week on MSNBC, I'm now doing that five days a week on MSNBC. And I'll do that for the whole first hundred days. I'm trying to do as much of that as I can on social media as well. I'm trying to keep the pots that I've got boiling, boiling in terms of my next podcast and my next book and the other.
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
There's a scripted TV show and three different movies and a documentary that I'm doing interviews for right now and trying to do all that stuff. And I just feel like, you know what? I'm going to wake up every day.
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
I'm going to do my thing. And I'm going to do it in a way that I'm proud of and that I hope is persuasive. And I can't make people who don't want to hear it from me want to hear it from me. But if you are persuaded to hear from me, I hope that I'm always speaking in a way that is fair and persuasive and you can take it to the bank in terms of its factual spine.
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
Well, I mean, I think that there isn't much magic to it. You have to be excellent opposition. The Republican Party under Trump has consolidated power in Washington in all three branches of government, undoubtedly. It's a very narrow margin in the House. It's not that huge a margin in the Senate, but they've got everything. Therefore...
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
When you're in opposition from that position, I think the obvious thing to do is to stick a wedge in every awkward division among the party that has consolidated power. I mean, there's hugely incompatible forces at work within the MAGA universe, literally even between the president and vice president. Yeah. And so let's start there.
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
Yeah. So, I mean, yes, on H-1B visas, right? Should we have immigration controlled by corporations for that purpose in the way that we have or not? Yeah, on that stuff, but on everything. I mean, they can't even decide what they're going to do about SALT, about the state and local taxes deduction.
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
They're at a trillion-dollar impasse within their party on that issue alone. Okay, let's start there. You do have the palpable, self-loathing humiliation and escape-hunting fear of every Republican senator who was asked about the pardons of those violent felons. You do have, I think...
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
legit law and order minded Republicans in elected office, including some of whom had to run for their lives on January 6th.
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
One of their number, an elected Republican in the House of Representatives, is offering guided tours of the scene of the crime of January 6th to some of the people who were there with baseball bats and two by fours beating police officers and threatening to kill members of Congress not that long ago. So that's a divide there.
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
Yeah. And that party, the ruling power in Washington, which is, that's it. I mean, they are in complete control. They own everything that happens. They've got those divides among themselves. And just go with those hammer and tongs and make them figure out who they are. And I think that the American people are not going to like it.
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
But just, I don't think there's more magic to it than that right now.
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
I think that's, I mean, again, not magic, but that's real. And you can tell day to day that has an effect on you.
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
Yeah. I believe in compartmentalization. Absolutely. That's cool. Just do it. I mean, and everybody has to calibrate it differently, right? If you're caring for an elderly parent and also caring... For your kids and working full time and trying to do something at school like that, you're already compartmentalizing in order to get to a meal once a day.
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
I mean, so everybody has different levels and sort of different imperatives about how they need to do that. But I think as a principal, that's good. There are there should be certain times of day when you are not doing things that you were doing. otherwise doing in other parts of the day.
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
And so for me, that means starting looking at the news at a specific time and trying to stop looking at the news at a specific time. It means spending time outdoors. I'm a person who likes being outdoors when it's cold. Ice fish is my winter recreation of choice. And so far, it's been an excellent ice season. And so I try to just make myself do that. Conveniently, there is no cell surface anywhere.
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
There's also... Available ice fishing, at least where I live.
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
Which is really good. I mean, all that stuff matters to me. For me personally, it's important to read fiction. It's important to exercise. It's important to spend time outdoors and with animals and family and loved ones.
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
Yeah, take vitamins, drink a lot of water, drink less. It's okay. You'll be all right.
Pod Save America
Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
I will escape again on April 30th, which makes it very doable.
Pod Save America
Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
I forgot about that. And I was thinking, oh, I remember where this address is ringing a bell. And then I got out of the elevator and I thought, ah, this is where I did my gay love song call-in late night show.
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
Oh, yeah. Yes. All men. That was weird. But yeah, that was a little known grace note on my resume.
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
See, I thought it was love songs. And so the Collins were going to be like heart to heart, like, oh, he left me and I want to win him back and everything. But it was really like love songs. Like, I remember we met at the club and play that, you know, Diana Ross.
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
I feel like, oh, yeah, that's what these muscles are for. This is what we train for. You know, being back five days a week is its own experience for me. It's been a few years since I've been doing Monday to Friday shows. And so that's got its own vibe and its own feeling. But there is a cadence to the Trump chaos news cycle or a lack of cadence, rather.
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
The 24 hours a day, turning on a dime, internal incoherence. shocking for shock value, shocking for incompetence. All of that stuff is just kind of flooding back in terms of how to do it. And you can despair over that because the first Trump term was, broadly speaking, bad times for America. But I also think, well, you know what? We know a little bit about how to cover this.
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
We know a little bit about what to expect. We know a little bit about what he's like. And so it is our responsibility and our privilege to cover it As best as we possibly can. And I know how to do that. And I'm I'm here. I'm ready to go. Put me in coach. I'm ready to play.
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
You know what it was? In the flurry of first couple days of actions, there was the stuff about water in California. And Trump started sort of elaborating on it. There was an executive action about it, but then he also started talking about it, about how we need to turn the valve.
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
He thinks, I think, that North is also up. And that up, there's a water tower. Like, it's a New York building. And if you just turn the valve, then down gets the water. And in the campaign, you might remember him riffing a lot on the difficulty of washing his hair. And how many times he has to flush the toilet to make what's in the toilet go down the toilet. And I was realizing, like, oh...
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
It's one thing to think about the truly radical designs he has on for the country and for the democracy. But it's another thing just to remember, like the personal pathology that's going to be played out out loud. And just repeated until other Republicans start articulating it as a value, too.
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
And that the reminder of the nonsense of it, the human nonsense of it was is a visceral thing for me. Also, I also think like, wow, how could history have been different had he been able to realize his dream of being a plumber? Right. Maybe we as a country wouldn't be going through all this stuff.
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
Well, the flood the zone idea is real. And they they we not only live through that before, but they articulate that strategically. People like Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller and others. They don't want us to be able to focus on any one bad nominee because there are so many bad nominees. They don't want us to be able to focus on any one outrageous nominee.
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
action or policy, because there are so many outrageous actions and policies. And that's a strategy. And so that's part of the reason why we find it hard to focus. I do think that the pardons thing is going to be something that they regret.
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
And I think it's going to be something for which they have to pay a political cost, because we've already seen it just in the immediate aftermath of the pardons, that the just about every Republican elected official who is asked about it has to say, I haven't seen the details. I haven't, Tommy Tuberville, I haven't watched the videos of the police being assaulted.
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
The first 100 days, bills are passed, executive orders are signed, and presidencies are defined. And for Donald Trump's first 100 days, Rachel Maddow is on MSNBC five nights a week. Now is the time, so we're gonna do it. Providing her unique insight and analysis during this critical time.
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
So therefore I can't comment on it. But of course, anybody who assaults police officers shouldn't be pardoned. Seeing Republican elected officials, including the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, including all of these Republican senators who now have to, for example, vote on Trump nominees, seeing them unable to
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
To articulate a justification for it, seeing them uncomfortable, wanting not to be asked about it, knowing that it is indefensible and nevertheless being asked to defend it. That is constructive.
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
Because Trump may have his own. I don't know what's going on inside his head and I don't know exactly what he wants in the world and I don't like to think about that. So I don't – but I do know a little bit about how politics works.
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
And I do know that while he may want to be a one-man sort of tyrannical monarch-style ruler, he for now exists in a democracy that has other elements of authority and governance. And to the extent that Republicans are personally repulsed by what he's doing and asked about it constantly and can't defend it and –
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
essentially are being forced into a corner where they either have to hide from questions or say they disagree with them, that's probably good in terms of slowing down the worst things he wants to do. And I think it's a good sign that so many Republicans had a terrible, terrible first full day of Trump's second term.
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
From time to time, we enter into a period where people in public office very frequently do lots of terrible things. What turns them around? What stops them from doing terrible things? What makes them correct course and start doing the right thing instead? One thing that sometimes works is shame and embarrassment.
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
Being confronted with the wrongness of what they are doing, feeling shame or embarrassment, or at least the possibility of public rebuke and the awkwardness of being unable to explain their actions in a way that satisfies anyone. Sometimes you can't turn public officials around, but sometimes you can.
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
Sometimes that sort of thing can cause public officials who are otherwise behaving in ways that are weak and wrong to find their spine and to change their minds.
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
And then it's incumbent upon anybody who next encounters him to ask him the follow-up questions. So the peaceful protest is not something that has been criminalized in this country, in this environment around January 6th. January 6th was not a peaceful protest. Among the people who Donald Trump deliberately pardoned, even though he had the option not to, were people who explicitly pled guilty to
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
How do we strategically align ourselves to this moment of information, this moment of transition in our country?
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
Not to peacefully protesting, but rather to attacking police officers and trying to kill them with baseball bats and two by fours. So, I mean, it just it just means that this should follow Mike Johnson around like a smell.
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
Yeah. And think about what that means for the dynamic between Trump and J.D. Vance. In the same way with the Matt Gaetz nomination, right? I mean, they nominated somebody for attorney general, reportedly at the behest of Boris, who they later said... were shaking people down for bribes in order for him to suggest them to the president as potential appointees. I don't know.
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Rachel Maddow on Surviving Trump 2.0
The Rachel Maddow Show, weeknights at 9 p.m. Eastern on MSNBC.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Ep. 2145 - The NSA's Secret SEX CHATS?!
In all of the jobs I have had, in all of the years I have been alive, there is no colleague for whom I have had more affection and more respect than Joy Reid. I love everything about her. I have learned so much from her. I have so much more to learn from her. I do not want to lose her as a colleague here at MSNBC. And personally, I think it is a bad mistake to let her walk out the door.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Ep. 2145 - The NSA's Secret SEX CHATS?!
It is not my call, and I understand that. But that's what I think. I will tell you, it is also unnerving to see that on a network where we've got two, count them, two non-white hosts in primetime, both of our non-white hosts in primetime are losing their shows, as is Katie Fang on The Weeknd. And that feels worse than bad, no matter who replaces them. That feels indefensible. Yes.
The Charlie Kirk Show
THOUGHTCRIME: Renewal of the American Dream Speech Special
Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.
The Charlie Kirk Show
THOUGHTCRIME: Renewal of the American Dream Speech Special
out of praising a young man who thus far survived pediatric cancer, as if the president had something to do with that. This was in the midst of him praising Doge. Doge cuts, among other things, have cut off funding for ongoing research into pediatric cancer.
The Charlie Kirk Show
THOUGHTCRIME: Renewal of the American Dream Speech Special
For the record, the economy that he was left by President Biden was not a catastrophe. It was literally the best economy in the world. It was described by The Economist magazine as the envy of the world. That was the economy that was left to Donald Trump by Joe Biden.
The Charlie Kirk Show
When Should Trump Say "No More" To the Courts?
I mean, you know, the original cartoon came out in 1937, and very evidently so. There's a big focus on her love story with a guy who literally stalks her. Yeah. Weird. Weird. Super weird. So we didn't do that this time. So no prints or a different kind of prints? Thank you.
The Charlie Kirk Show
The Intel Agencies vs. America
I will tell you, it is also unnerving to see that on a network where we've got two, count them, two non-white hosts in primetime, both of our non-white hosts in primetime are losing their shows, as is Katie Fang on The Weeknd. And that feels worse than bad, no matter who replaces them. That feels indefensible, and I do not defend it.
The Charlie Kirk Show
THOUGHTCRIME Ep. 78 — Morning Routines? Great Pyramid Secrets? Snow Woke?
She's dreaming about becoming the leader she knows she can be. And the leader that her late father told her that she could be if she was fearless, fair, brave, and true. The original cartoon came out in 1937 and very evidently so. There's a big focus on her love story with a guy who literally stalks her. Weird, weird. So we didn't do that this time. I was scared of the original cartoon.
The Charlie Kirk Show
THOUGHTCRIME Ep. 78 — Morning Routines? Great Pyramid Secrets? Snow Woke?
I think I watched it once and then I never picked it up again. I watched it for the first time in probably 16 years. 17 years. The cartoon was made 85 years ago. And therefore, it's extremely dated when it comes to the ideas of women being in roles of power.
The Dan Bongino Show
Things Have Changed, It's Trump's GOP Now (Ep. 2390)
Hot off the presses, we are breaking this news right here, right now. You're going to think I'm kidding, but the presidential race appears to be tied in South Carolina. Yes, I said South Carolina, not North Carolina. South Carolina. And that's why lots of people had strong reactions when the Des Moines Register and Seltzer Iowa poll was posted last night.
The Dan Bongino Show
Things Have Changed, It's Trump's GOP Now (Ep. 2390)
This pollster, and she's got her track record, and this is out of a state where nobody saw it coming.
The Matt Walsh Show
Ep. 1543 - Incompetent Federal Employees PANIC When Asked What They Do All Day
And even bigger programming change is at 7 p.m., 7 p.m. Eastern, where Joy Reid's show, The Readout, ended tonight. And Joy is not taking a different job in the network. She is leaving the network altogether. And that is very, very, very hard to take. I am 51 years old. I have been gainfully employed since I was 12.
The Matt Walsh Show
Ep. 1543 - Incompetent Federal Employees PANIC When Asked What They Do All Day
And I have had so many different kinds of jobs, you wouldn't believe me if I told you. But in all of the jobs I have had, in all of the years I have been alive, there is no colleague for whom I have had more affection and more respect than Joy Reid. I love everything about her. I have learned so much from her. I have so much more to learn from her.
The Matt Walsh Show
Ep. 1543 - Incompetent Federal Employees PANIC When Asked What They Do All Day
I do not want to lose her as a colleague here at MSNBC. And personally, I think it is a bad mistake to let her walk out the door. It is not my call, and I understand that. But that's what I think.
The Matt Walsh Show
Ep. 1543 - Incompetent Federal Employees PANIC When Asked What They Do All Day
I will tell you, it is also unnerving to see that on a network where we've got two, count them, two non-white hosts in primetime, both of our non-white hosts in primetime are losing their shows, as is Katie Fang on The Weeknd. And that feels worse than bad, no matter who replaces them. That feels indefensible, and I do not defend it.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Elitist Maddow Smears MSNBC Bosses, and Culture Shift on Biological Reality, with Batya Ungar-Sargon, and Marcellus and Annemarie Wiley | Ep. 1013
It is not my call, and I understand that. I will tell you, it is also... unnerving to see that on a network where we've got two, count them, two non-white hosts in primetime, both of our non-white hosts in primetime are losing their shows, as is Katie Fang on the weekend. And that feels worse than bad, no matter who replaces them. That feels indefensible, and I do not defend it.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Elitist Maddow Smears MSNBC Bosses, and Culture Shift on Biological Reality, with Batya Ungar-Sargon, and Marcellus and Annemarie Wiley | Ep. 1013
Being put in this kind of limbo. The anxiety and the discombobulation is off the charts at a time when this job already is extra stressful and difficult. It is not news for me to tell you that the press and freedom of the press are under attack in a way that is really, it's a big deal for our country. It's very visceral for us here.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Elitist Maddow Smears MSNBC Bosses, and Culture Shift on Biological Reality, with Batya Ungar-Sargon, and Marcellus and Annemarie Wiley | Ep. 1013
In prime time, just so you know, I am here five days a week for the first hundred days of Trump's presidency as planned. And as planned, I will go back to just Mondays after that. That is not changing.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Elitist Maddow Smears MSNBC Bosses, and Culture Shift on Biological Reality, with Batya Ungar-Sargon, and Marcellus and Annemarie Wiley | Ep. 1013
In all of the jobs I have had, in all of the years I have been alive, there is no colleague for whom I have had more affection and more respect than Joy Reid. I love everything about her. I have learned so much from her. I have so much more to learn from her. I do not want to lose her as a colleague here at MSNBC, and personally, I think it is a bad mistake to let her walk out the door.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Special coverage of Donald Trump's address to a joint session of Congress
That was the longest State of the Union address in American history. Donald Trump addressing Congress for the fifth time in a setting like this. Just looking to see if he's actually going to start speaking again. started off on very contentious terms, Congressman Al Green interrupting at the outset when the president claimed a historic mandate from his victory in the 2024 election.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Special coverage of Donald Trump's address to a joint session of Congress
the economic decisions he's already made six weeks in, saying that the American people would have to bear with him, that there would be a little disturbance, that there would be an adjustment period. And again, he said, a little disturbance, essentially suggesting that the roiling that we saw in the markets is something that he knows he caused, but he hopes people will not mind.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Special coverage of Donald Trump's address to a joint session of Congress
Two big lists. I mean, whenever you're giving a speech, right, I'm terrible at giving speeches. But the one thing that I know about giving a speech is don't have a list of numbers.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Special coverage of Donald Trump's address to a joint session of Congress
Because you're just reading numbers and it sounded great when you saw them on the page, but nobody else can see them. And so he's reading all these numbers, but he did it twice. He did it on Social Security, exactly as you're saying. The other place he did it was on... USAID talking about what he is already illegally stopped altogether.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Special coverage of Donald Trump's address to a joint session of Congress
He's listing it in the same way that he listed it for USAID to justify getting rid of it. They are justifying getting rid of Social Security by calling it a criminal enterprise.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Special coverage of Donald Trump's address to a joint session of Congress
It was circumcision in Burma. The issue. I mean, if you're going to talk about like being mad at his staff, like I don't know if we're allowed to do that. But like to let him get to that part of the speech without telling him how to pronounce Uganda. Yeah.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Special coverage of Donald Trump's address to a joint session of Congress
Like he's speaking into a microphone. They know it's coming. They know he doesn't know how to say the word. And then he gets up there and he's like sounding his way through it. Like he's hooked on phonics. I mean, he's the president of the United States and it's just humiliating to him if he was capable of saying.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Special coverage of Donald Trump's address to a joint session of Congress
There was a lot of the culture works explicitly blaming Joe Biden for the price of eggs is probably not going to cut it for that much longer. Joining us now is one of the Democrats who actually walked out of the speech tonight, Florida Democratic Congressman Maxwell Frost. We saw him leave the House chamber. He took off his jacket. You could see the T-shirt he was wearing over his dress shirt.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Special coverage of Donald Trump's address to a joint session of Congress
It says no kings live here. Congressman Frost, really appreciate you making time to be with us tonight. Thank you.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Special coverage of Donald Trump's address to a joint session of Congress
Tell us about the decision to wear that shirt and to walk out at the moment you did.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Special coverage of Donald Trump's address to a joint session of Congress
For the record, the worst inflation in this country was in 1980. For the record, the economy that he was left by President Biden was not a catastrophe. It was literally the best economy in the world and was described by The Economist magazine as the envy of the world. That was the economy that was left to Donald Trump by Joe Biden.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Special coverage of Donald Trump's address to a joint session of Congress
Let me let me ask about that, the specificity of the message there. I mean, one of the issues that I think the country is sort of having a hard time calibrating, like getting a sense of like how how big is this?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Special coverage of Donald Trump's address to a joint session of Congress
How different is this from previous political confrontations we've had between people with different ideas about the way the government should run or what we should be doing with our money? I think one of the things that people just can't grasp is the King idea, right? The King idea is not just the unitary presidency, right? It's not just about consolidating power over the executive branch.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Special coverage of Donald Trump's address to a joint session of Congress
The idea of a King, which is what you had on your back of your shirt, is that you've got a unitary power, that the Congress is decorative or beside the point or could be abolished and nothing would happen. The The courts are decorative.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Special coverage of Donald Trump's address to a joint session of Congress
The courts are there to essentially ratify what the ruler wants to do and that the rule of law is really just the rule of the ruler and the law can be dressed up to occasion whatever it is he wants. Is that the scale of threat to this country that you think we are literally up against or is this a hyperbolic charge?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Special coverage of Donald Trump's address to a joint session of Congress
One of the things that we saw in the Democratic response from Senator Slotkin was an interesting choice. I'm not sure I've ever seen anything like this before. And you talk about your organizing background.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Special coverage of Donald Trump's address to a joint session of Congress
She sort of raised the alarm a little bit along the lines that you were talking about tonight and then said as a CIA officer, which is her past, that she's seen democracies flicker out in other parts of the world. And then she gave Americans a list of things they can do to try to hold on to our democracy,
The Rachel Maddow Show
Special coverage of Donald Trump's address to a joint session of Congress
She said pointedly, if there isn't a group that you feel like is in your area or among people who you know is doing the work that you think ought to be done, you need to found that group. You need to start that yourself. Very pointed organizing message from a member of Congress who's not thought of as a real radical. I wonder if that is true.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Special coverage of Donald Trump's address to a joint session of Congress
If I get your reaction to that and if you had anything to add in terms of what you think people within the sound of your voice ought to be doing right now, given the dire prospects that you see for the country.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Special coverage of Donald Trump's address to a joint session of Congress
For the record, Social Security is not paying benefits in large numbers to 300-year-old people or 250-year-old people or 200-year-old people or 150-year-old people. In fact, the idea of Social Security as a bastion of massive fraud and overpayment is completely false. For the record, U.S.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Special coverage of Donald Trump's address to a joint session of Congress
Congressman Maxwell Frost, one of a number of Democrats who did not make it through the speech tonight, left in the middle of the president's remarks. Congressman, I really appreciate you joining us tonight and being with us. It's always a pleasure to have you.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Special coverage of Donald Trump's address to a joint session of Congress
All right. I should mention, I gave you a list a little bit earlier on about the Democrats who we know did walk out during the speech. Other than the initial confrontation that happened basically right as President Trump started speaking, and that was Congressman Al Green. And they sort of performatively summoned the sergeant at arms to escort him out. Very dramatic moment there.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Special coverage of Donald Trump's address to a joint session of Congress
A number of other Democrats walked out during the speech. They include Maxwell Frost, who we just spoke with. Also, Ayanna Pressley.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Special coverage of Donald Trump's address to a joint session of Congress
Jasmine Crockett, Maxine Dexter from Maryland, Andrea Salinas from Oregon, Ilhan Omar, Pramila Jayapal, Melanie Stansbury from New Mexico, Jamie Raskin from Maryland, who we spoke with earlier this evening, Zoe Lofgren from California, who was a member of the January 6th investigation. Also, at least two Democratic U.S. senators. Left the room, Senator Chris Van Hollen and Senator Bernie Sanders.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Special coverage of Donald Trump's address to a joint session of Congress
One of the things that we have all been most looking forward to hearing tonight and checking in on is the reaction to the president's speech tonight from the four fired federal workers, four very impressive people. who Jacob Soboroff is with tonight in Washington. He watched the speech with them.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Special coverage of Donald Trump's address to a joint session of Congress
We told him that we'd come back to him after the speech and after the Democratic response to get the reaction of those four federal workers to what they heard tonight. Really looking forward to hearing this. We're going to have that right on the other side of this break. Stay with us.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Special coverage of Donald Trump's address to a joint session of Congress
auto company CEOs are not psyched and delighted and so excited about President Trump's economic policies, including his tariffs. Take, for example, the CEO of Ford, Jim Farley, who said that Trump's tariff policies would, quote, blow a hole in the U.S. auto industry that, quote, we've never seen. The president flat out lied about U.S.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Special coverage of Donald Trump's address to a joint session of Congress
Welcome back to our MSNBC special coverage of the president's speech to Congress tonight, the sort of not State of the Union and the Democratic response from Senator Alyssa Slotkin. Steph Ruhl, over to you.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Special coverage of Donald Trump's address to a joint session of Congress
versus European spending to support what used to be our allies in Ukraine. U.S. has committed about $125 billion to Ukraine's defense. Europe has committed about $259 billion. The president radically, radically misstating the character and quantity of our relative support for what used to be our ally now appears to be only Europe's ally and no longer ours.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Special coverage of Donald Trump's address to a joint session of Congress
Also, just like. What an, just what an impressive group of people, right? I mean, from any, all the different places I've ever worked in my life, like having a group of four colleagues that was that impressive and credentialed and articulate. It would be almost like working here. Let me just point out all four of those people.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Special coverage of Donald Trump's address to a joint session of Congress
Yeah. Well, and they've just been insulted and told that they're low productivity. It's just I mean, I live in the D.C.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Special coverage of Donald Trump's address to a joint session of Congress
For the record, Joe Biden did not close over 100 power plants. There were more utility-sized power plants up and running in the United States when Joe Biden left office than when he achieved office. For the record, there is no EV mandate. For the record, oil and gas production in the United States hit all-time records under President Joe Biden.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Special coverage of Donald Trump's address to a joint session of Congress
I should mention that joining us now is MSNBC senior contributing editor and the founding director of the Race Card Project, Michelle Norris. Michelle, I just got to get your reaction to both what you've seen tonight in terms of these speeches, but also what you've been hearing in terms of your reporting. Well, just what you were saying about the workers.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Special coverage of Donald Trump's address to a joint session of Congress
First of all, farming is not fun. Have fun. He literally used the phrase have fun.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Special coverage of Donald Trump's address to a joint session of Congress
There's also, I mean, it's the USAID cuts, it's the tariffs. In between are the programs like the USDA programs that have been cut, these supposedly wasteful government programs and contracts that Elon Musk and his team of interns are are cutting in New England where I live most of the time.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Special coverage of Donald Trump's address to a joint session of Congress
For the record, even Doge has never claimed that they have saved hundreds of billions of dollars in savings. The largest items they have claimed to achieve as savings in the U.S. budget have been debunked and they've been taken down, but even they don't falsely claim hundreds of billions of dollars worth of savings.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Special coverage of Donald Trump's address to a joint session of Congress
I mean, what we're seeing is small to medium scale farmers who have done projects that they signed up with USDA to do that are improvement projects for their land and for farming techniques. that are something the U.S. government wants to invest in in order to make the most out of our farming capability and our ag capability.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Special coverage of Donald Trump's address to a joint session of Congress
And they've done those things, whether it's fencing or soil amendments or something with their dairy herds. They've done these things. They're out. These are small farmers, you know, family farms that are out tens of thousands of dollars or in some cases six figures. And that money has been cut off. They've they've spent it. And because they were told they'd be reimbursed and now they're not.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Special coverage of Donald Trump's address to a joint session of Congress
And these places are not going to make it to June. They're not going to make it to a harvest season with the way that this stuff has been done. And there is no fixing it. There isn't undoing these programmatic savings, which they did with their, you know, blinged out Chinese chainsaw with all the glee and all of the insult along with the injury.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Special coverage of Donald Trump's address to a joint session of Congress
It's a really good point.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Special coverage of Donald Trump's address to a joint session of Congress
Because everybody has their own, essentially, account at Social Security. You can access it through the website. And how long is that website going to last? Well, that's why I say do it now. Our special coverage of this big night continues in just a moment. Do stay with us here on MSNBC.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Special coverage of Donald Trump's address to a joint session of Congress
For the record, and this is disgusting, the president made a spectacle out of praising a young man who thus far survived pediatric cancer as if the president had something to do with that. This was in the midst of him praising Doge. Doge cuts, among other things, have cut off funding for ongoing research into pediatric cancer.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Special coverage of Donald Trump's address to a joint session of Congress
For the record, I will note that Donald Trump did admit in his remarks today explicitly that Elon Musk is the head of Doge. And while that comes as no surprise to anybody who's been following the facts of this matter, that will end up in court because that is directly contrary to what the administration has overtly sworn to a federal judge. Thank you. about the leadership of Doge.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Special coverage of Donald Trump's address to a joint session of Congress
I should also note, and this doesn't have to be for the record, I'll just note it for our own experience tonight, that at that point in the speech, when the president talked about how we will no longer be ruled by unelected bureaucrats, Democrats in the chamber pointed and laughed at Elon Musk. Unelected bureaucrat. Nicole Wallace, I'm sorry to dump a lot of fact checks there.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Special coverage of Donald Trump's address to a joint session of Congress
Congressman Green repeatedly interjecting and then removed by the orders of the sergeant at arms while Republican members of Congress jeered and made gestures toward him, celebrating him being ejected over the course of the president's remarks. see how many empty seats you can see behind him just there.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Special coverage of Donald Trump's address to a joint session of Congress
And that's not even scratching the surface of the things that need to be fact checked there. That's literally what was off the top of my head. So there's more to say along those lines.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Special coverage of Donald Trump's address to a joint session of Congress
Who were convicted of it.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Special coverage of Donald Trump's address to a joint session of Congress
Lawrence, we're about three minutes out from what we're expecting to be the Democratic response from Senator Alyssa Slotkin. Let me get your initial response to what you just heard.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Special coverage of Donald Trump's address to a joint session of Congress
That's because Democrats as a group filed out quickly when he was done, but a number of Democrats left well before he was done, in the middle of his remarks. They included Jasmine Crockett from Texas, Maxwell Frost walked out, Maxine Dexter from Maryland, Andrea Salinas from Oregon, Ayanna Pressley, Ilhan Omar, Pamila Jayapal. That's only a partial list, a number of Democrats left during
The Rachel Maddow Show
Special coverage of Donald Trump's address to a joint session of Congress
You got one minute and 10 seconds.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Special coverage of Donald Trump's address to a joint session of Congress
All right. We are getting ready to go to Michigan, where freshman Senator Alyssa Slotkin is set to give the Democratic response. Now, no matter who you are associated with in politics, how you lean left or right or whatever, you should always say a prayer for the person who is giving the other party's response to the State of the Union, because it is a really hard thing to do.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Special coverage of Donald Trump's address to a joint session of Congress
Alyssa Slotkin is a very talented Democratic politician. She's speaking in Michigan tonight from a town that voted for her, but also for Trump for president. Alyssa Slotkin, the freshman senator from Michigan with a Democratic response tonight. Responses from the opposite party on the night of State of the Union addresses are very difficult. That was one of the better ones that I have seen.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Special coverage of Donald Trump's address to a joint session of Congress
Look, she said, as a former CIA officer, I've lived and worked in many countries. I've seen democracies flicker out. I've seen what life is like when a government's rigged. You can't open a business without paying off a corrupt official. You can't criticize the guys in charge without getting a knock on the door in the middle of the night.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Special coverage of Donald Trump's address to a joint session of Congress
So as much as we need to make our government more responsive to our lives today, don't for one moment fool yourself that democracy isn't precious and worth saving. And then she ticks through a three part list of things people watching right now should do in order to stand up for their country. Very, very effectively communicated speech, I thought, Jen.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Special coverage of Donald Trump's address to a joint session of Congress
the remarks. The president, in his what we believe was ad-libbing, we did not have prepared remarks from the president, which is unusual. White Houses usually distribute prepared remarks, so we don't know what was digression from those remarks and what was ad-libbed. But the president did repeatedly seem to be ad-libbing when he was remarking on the expected impact of
The Rachel Maddow Show
Special coverage of Donald Trump's address to a joint session of Congress
Are you telling me we're not going to get Greenland one way or another?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Special coverage of Donald Trump's address to a joint session of Congress
It's exact quote. We're going to we're also identifying shocking levels of incompetence and probable fraud in the Social Security program for our seniors and that our seniors and people that we love rely on. Believe it, governor. Believe it or not, government databases list four point seven million Social Security. And then he starts going into this list of all the people.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Special coverage of Donald Trump's address to a joint session of Congress
And it's like the dead voters in Pennsylvania.
The Rachel Maddow Show
War plans group chat scandal fits pattern of Trump's embarrassing weakness on information security
Thanks to you at home for joining us this hour. Really happy to have you here. This was Philadelphia today, a protest to defend the EPA. Honk if you love clean water. This was Duluth, Minnesota today, another big turnout of people protesting to stand up for the EPA. This was Chicago, Illinois today, more people out defending the EPA. It was a big protest today in Chicago.
The Rachel Maddow Show
War plans group chat scandal fits pattern of Trump's embarrassing weakness on information security
I mean, Jeffrey Goldberg, the journalist who was apparently accidentally included on this signal chain, this group text, says that among the things CIA director John Ratcliffe personally volunteered to this signal group chat, he put in writing to this group chat on this commercial app, among the things he posted there was the name of an undercover serving CIA officer.
The Rachel Maddow Show
War plans group chat scandal fits pattern of Trump's embarrassing weakness on information security
an active intelligence officer who Goldberg says was serving undercover. Chris Coons, Democratic senator from Delaware, responded to these revelations by saying, quote, every single one of the government officials on this text chain have now committed a crime, even if accidentally, that would normally involve a jail sentence.
The Rachel Maddow Show
War plans group chat scandal fits pattern of Trump's embarrassing weakness on information security
Senator Ruben Gallego, a Marine veteran, responded this way, quote, amateur hour. These are the geniuses that are also selling out Ukraine and destroying our alliances all around the world. No wonder Putin is embarrassing them at the negotiation table.
The Rachel Maddow Show
War plans group chat scandal fits pattern of Trump's embarrassing weakness on information security
Now, actually, to that point, it would appear that one person who was a participant in the group chat on Signal, it would appear that one of them physically was in Moscow. It looks like he was maybe even inside the Kremlin.
The Rachel Maddow Show
War plans group chat scandal fits pattern of Trump's embarrassing weakness on information security
while he was on this text group chat with these geniuses, among other things, reportedly naming an undercover CIA officer and debating very specific information about forthcoming military strikes. Quote, during the group discussion on Signal, Goldberg reported, CIA director John Ratcliffe named an active CIA intelligence officer in the chat at 5.24 p.m. Eastern time.
The Rachel Maddow Show
War plans group chat scandal fits pattern of Trump's embarrassing weakness on information security
That was just after midnight in Russia. Trump diplomatic envoy Steve Witkoff's flight did not last. leave Moscow until around 2 a.m. local time. A former Putin advisor who was still close to Putin said in a telegram post that, in fact, Witkoff and Putin were meeting at the Kremlin until 1.30 a.m. Steve, did you keep your phone with you while you were in Russia?
The Rachel Maddow Show
War plans group chat scandal fits pattern of Trump's embarrassing weakness on information security
Did you keep your phone with you while you were in the Kremlin? Was your phone turned on? What could possibly go wrong? We're supposed to not worry though, right? Because these guys are so savvy. They are so tough. They are New York real estate tough.
The Rachel Maddow Show
War plans group chat scandal fits pattern of Trump's embarrassing weakness on information security
This was the same trip to Moscow in which Steve Witkoff, Donald Trump's real estate friend, came back to the United States and told a heartwarming tale of how Vladimir Putin had given him a painting. a painting of Donald Trump, which Putin had made for Trump personally.
The Rachel Maddow Show
War plans group chat scandal fits pattern of Trump's embarrassing weakness on information security
And Steve Witkoff hand-carried that painting from Russia back to the United States and brought it to the White House and gave it to Donald Trump. Did anybody check that painting? Anybody, like, give it a close going over? Steve Witkoff did an interview with the pro-Russia ex-Fox News host Tucker Carlson in which he gushed about how much he, quote, likes Putin.
The Rachel Maddow Show
War plans group chat scandal fits pattern of Trump's embarrassing weakness on information security
Yesterday, we saw marches to support immigrants in San Francisco, California, and in El Paso, Texas, including members of the clergy in El Paso. In South Carolina, pro-Trump Republican Congresswoman Nancy Mace has been refusing to meet with her constituents in the 1st Congressional District in South Carolina in the Lowcountry, a new local group called the Lowcountry Accountability Alliance.
The Rachel Maddow Show
War plans group chat scandal fits pattern of Trump's embarrassing weakness on information security
He said, quote, I thought he was straight up with me. He said it was, quote, gracious of Putin to accept me, to see me in Moscow. He said, quote, I don't regard Putin as a bad guy. This is our negotiator. This is the quality of tough guy genius the United States is bringing to the table for these supposedly tough guy negotiations with the Russians to end the war in Ukraine, right?
The Rachel Maddow Show
War plans group chat scandal fits pattern of Trump's embarrassing weakness on information security
How's that going? Well, let's see. Let's just do a little math. So far, since Trump has been back in office, and since these negotiations have gotten underway, the tough guy negotiations, but being tough with Russia, get them to stop the war in Ukraine. So far, Trump has offered a few concessions. He's announced that the U.S. is no longer enforcing foreign agents law in this country.
The Rachel Maddow Show
War plans group chat scandal fits pattern of Trump's embarrassing weakness on information security
He's announced that the U.S. is shutting down all of our anti-foreign influence operations at the Justice Department and the FBI. He's announced that the U.S. is shutting down our so-called klepto-capture efforts to enforce sanctions versus Russia and stop them from evading sanctions. Trump has talked about ending sanctions altogether against Russia.
The Rachel Maddow Show
War plans group chat scandal fits pattern of Trump's embarrassing weakness on information security
Trump has said he wants Russia to rejoin the G7. Last week, we learned that Trump has cut off the program that tracks the Ukrainian children that Russia kidnapped and took into Russian territory. Trump is effectively telling Russia, hey, congratulations, you can keep the kids.
The Rachel Maddow Show
War plans group chat scandal fits pattern of Trump's embarrassing weakness on information security
Trump has restarted diplomatic relations with Russia and said that Russia will soon be reopening their embassy and all their U.S. consulates at full strength in the United States. Trump shut down U.S. Cyber Command operations against Russia.
The Rachel Maddow Show
War plans group chat scandal fits pattern of Trump's embarrassing weakness on information security
He shut down our joint efforts with Europe to counteract Russian sabotage efforts in Europe, which thus far have included multiple arson attacks, an attempted assassination, and packing letter bombs onto international flights. We're no longer working with our friends in Europe to try to stop those things. Russia has reportedly asked for the U.S.
The Rachel Maddow Show
War plans group chat scandal fits pattern of Trump's embarrassing weakness on information security
to restart direct commercial flights between Moscow and the United States. Trump hasn't said a word about that, but do you think he'll say no? And now today, Trump says, quote, "...the United States will help restore Russia's access to the world market for agricultural and fertilizer exports." The United States will assist Russia in obtaining lower maritime insurance costs.
The Rachel Maddow Show
War plans group chat scandal fits pattern of Trump's embarrassing weakness on information security
And the United States will assist Russia in enhancing their access to ports and payment systems for such transactions. So that's so far what Trump has given up to Russia. But hey. I mean, it's negotiation, right? What did he get in exchange? Well, there's no ceasefire or end to the war in Ukraine.
The Rachel Maddow Show
War plans group chat scandal fits pattern of Trump's embarrassing weakness on information security
But yesterday, while those tough guy talks were underway in Saudi Arabia, Russia did happily shoot a bunch of missiles into Ukraine while the talks were actively underway. And Trump did get a painting. We are not dealing with the sharpest tools in the shed here at any level. We, in fact, appear to be dealing with very profoundly dull tools.
The Rachel Maddow Show
War plans group chat scandal fits pattern of Trump's embarrassing weakness on information security
But it's our national security that they're destroying, not theirs. And the American people are wise to it. Which means if this system still works, it should make all of this politically unsustainable. We've got social security news ahead tonight. We've got Senator John Ossoff here live. Stay with us.
The Rachel Maddow Show
War plans group chat scandal fits pattern of Trump's embarrassing weakness on information security
has invited her to do a town hall with her constituents in her district this week on Friday. It does not appear that she is inclined to do that. In the meantime, they have put up these billboards in her district. Show your face, Mace. And missing Nancy Mace last seen dodging constituents.
The Rachel Maddow Show
War plans group chat scandal fits pattern of Trump's embarrassing weakness on information security
Washington State Democratic Senator Maria Cantwell today bringing a story from her home state paper to a confirmation hearing for Donald Trump's nominee to run the Social Security Administration.
The Rachel Maddow Show
War plans group chat scandal fits pattern of Trump's embarrassing weakness on information security
Senator Cantwell told that story today from the Seattle Times about this 82-year-old Washington State resident who was mistakenly declared dead by Social Security, which resulted in his benefits being taken away. He first tried to fix the problem over the phone.
The Rachel Maddow Show
War plans group chat scandal fits pattern of Trump's embarrassing weakness on information security
And then, as you heard the senator tell the committee there, he went down to the local Social Security office in person to try to sort it out. This is from The Seattle Times. Quote, it was like a Depression-era scene, he said, with a queue 50 deep jockeying for the attentions of two tellers. The employees were kind but beleaguered. Quote, they are so understaffed down there, he said.
The Rachel Maddow Show
War plans group chat scandal fits pattern of Trump's embarrassing weakness on information security
They think the office is about to be closed down and they don't know where they're going to go. It feels like the agency is being gutted. After waiting for four hours, Mr. Johnson admits he jumped the line. He says, quote, I saw an opening and I kind of just rushed up and told them I was listed as dead. That seemed to get their attention.
The Rachel Maddow Show
War plans group chat scandal fits pattern of Trump's embarrassing weakness on information security
One story, one town, one retired person trying to straighten out one problem with Social Security and finding a Depression era scene when he did so. But as Donald Trump and his top campaign donor and whatever Doge is continue to hack away at the way Social Security runs as an administration, the questions about Social Security are moving beyond an anecdote here or there.
The Rachel Maddow Show
War plans group chat scandal fits pattern of Trump's embarrassing weakness on information security
The question, of course, is how much the agency can take before it just stops working altogether. from the Washington Post today, quote, long waits, waves of calls, website crashes, social security is breaking down. Washington Post today provided this riveting reporting from social security offices around the country. Quote, in one office in central Indiana, the phone lines are jammed by 9 a.m.
The Rachel Maddow Show
War plans group chat scandal fits pattern of Trump's embarrassing weakness on information security
with hundreds of retirees, further taxing a staff of less than a dozen that is responsible for nearly 70,000 claimants across the state. The questions have become predictable. What is the U.S. Doge service doing to Social Security? Will the office close? Will my benefits continue? The employees, with no training yet on the impending changes, have few answers.
The Rachel Maddow Show
War plans group chat scandal fits pattern of Trump's embarrassing weakness on information security
Quote, I hope we're going to be here, the employee tells caller after caller, but I can't guarantee anything. This is what the Post found in Baltimore, Maryland. Quote, The staffer said his office is supposed to complete several software updates and modernization processes that are required by law within the next few weeks and months.
The Rachel Maddow Show
War plans group chat scandal fits pattern of Trump's embarrassing weakness on information security
But with the departures, it seems increasingly likely that it will miss those deadlines. His team has also called on to fix complicated technology glitches that stop payments. But many of the experts who make those fixes are exiting. He explains that glitches have to get cleaned up on a case-by-case basis. The experts in how to do that are leaving.
The Rachel Maddow Show
War plans group chat scandal fits pattern of Trump's embarrassing weakness on information security
Quote, we will have cases that get stuck and they're not going to be able to get fixed. People could be out of benefits for months. Again, that is from The Washington Post today, where they interviewed more than two dozen people and reviewed internal documents for this report. That headline, again, long waits, waves of calls, website crashes, Social Security is breaking down.
The Rachel Maddow Show
War plans group chat scandal fits pattern of Trump's embarrassing weakness on information security
That's happening in South Carolina, in Georgia, in Savannah, where constituents of Republican Congressman Buddy Carter have been protesting and demanding that he talk to them in an in-person town hall with his constituents. Last night, Congressman Buddy Carter instead opted to do a town hall by telephone.
The Rachel Maddow Show
War plans group chat scandal fits pattern of Trump's embarrassing weakness on information security
Joining us now is Lisa Ryan. She's a reporter for The Washington Post. She's the lead byline on this story. Ms. Ryan, thank you very much for joining us tonight. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much, Rachel. So you and your colleagues report that, for example, among all the other things, the Social Security website in the last 10 days or in a span of 10 days has crashed four times.
The Rachel Maddow Show
War plans group chat scandal fits pattern of Trump's embarrassing weakness on information security
Managers are so short-staffed, they're doing double duty as receptionists. They're taking frontline phone calls. What would you describe the atmosphere like, the mood like, the morale like among the Social Security staffers who are left at these frontline offices?
The Rachel Maddow Show
War plans group chat scandal fits pattern of Trump's embarrassing weakness on information security
Some of the impact of what Trump has done to the Social Security Administration strikes me as just very granularly specific in a way that is understandable even to people who have no idea how this agency runs. A Doge imposed spending freeze has currently left many field offices without paper, pens, or phone headsets at the exact moment phone calls are spiking.
The Rachel Maddow Show
War plans group chat scandal fits pattern of Trump's embarrassing weakness on information security
This includes the freeze that drove all federal credit cards to a $1 limit. I mean, even if you don't take Social Security benefits yourself, even if you've never been to this kind of agency, you imagine trying to run any sort of customer service operation without having pens or paper or headsets to answer the phone.
The Rachel Maddow Show
War plans group chat scandal fits pattern of Trump's embarrassing weakness on information security
It does seem like there's—I got the sense from your reporting that there's no relief in sight for those types of granular difficulties that make it just impossible to do almost anything. Is that fair?
The Rachel Maddow Show
War plans group chat scandal fits pattern of Trump's embarrassing weakness on information security
He might have thought that might have kept it a more low profile event, but alas, more than 10,000 people called in.
The Rachel Maddow Show
War plans group chat scandal fits pattern of Trump's embarrassing weakness on information security
Yeah, it's not going to end unless they take affirmative action to end it. And it does not seem, there's nothing that we've seen in any reporting that there's any intention to fix any of these things as they keep getting worse. Really vivid reporting and really, and I know it took a lot of shoe leather to do it. Thank you to you and your colleagues for doing this.
The Rachel Maddow Show
War plans group chat scandal fits pattern of Trump's embarrassing weakness on information security
Lisa Ryan from The Washington Post. Thanks.
The Rachel Maddow Show
War plans group chat scandal fits pattern of Trump's embarrassing weakness on information security
I appreciate it. All right. More news ahead. Stay with us.
The Rachel Maddow Show
War plans group chat scandal fits pattern of Trump's embarrassing weakness on information security
Democratic U.S. Senator John Ossoff had a rally in Atlanta, Georgia this weekend. He held that rally with his fellow Georgia U.S. Senator Raphael Warnock. A crowd of 2,000 very enthusiastic Georgia residents showed up. Senator Ossoff said at that rally President Trump was, quote, trying to poison our democracy with fear and intimidation. He declared Georgia will bow to no king.
The Rachel Maddow Show
War plans group chat scandal fits pattern of Trump's embarrassing weakness on information security
That was John Ossoff's weekend in Georgia. And this was John Ossoff's workday today in Washington as a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
The Rachel Maddow Show
War plans group chat scandal fits pattern of Trump's embarrassing weakness on information security
Joining us now is Senator John Ossoff of the great state of Georgia. Senator, sir, thank you so much for being here. It's a pleasure to have you here tonight.
The Rachel Maddow Show
War plans group chat scandal fits pattern of Trump's embarrassing weakness on information security
Let me get your reaction to what you heard today from John Ratcliffe and from the other intelligence officials at this hearing today. That was obviously a very sharp exchange between you and the CIA director. But what was your take overall on his testimony? What else you heard today?
The Rachel Maddow Show
War plans group chat scandal fits pattern of Trump's embarrassing weakness on information security
no risk really congressman carter really no no no risk at all We'll be back to that point in a moment. But in Kentucky, we reported last night on Republican Congressman Andy Barr not showing up to a town hall that his own constituents held in Lexington in his name. Even though he wouldn't come, they held it as a people's town hall at the beautiful Kentucky Theater in downtown Lexington, Kentucky.
The Rachel Maddow Show
War plans group chat scandal fits pattern of Trump's embarrassing weakness on information security
Do you think that people who are involved in this group text over Signal should resign or be fired?
The Rachel Maddow Show
War plans group chat scandal fits pattern of Trump's embarrassing weakness on information security
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
The Rachel Maddow Show
War plans group chat scandal fits pattern of Trump's embarrassing weakness on information security
Thank you. Thank you.
The Rachel Maddow Show
War plans group chat scandal fits pattern of Trump's embarrassing weakness on information security
They completely filled the place and then some. But Congressman Andy Barr did not show up. Instead, he, like Congressman Buddy Carter in Georgia, Andy Barr in Kentucky, also opted to do a telephone town hall instead of meeting with people in person. That apparently, according to local news reports, had its ups and downs.
The Rachel Maddow Show
War plans group chat scandal fits pattern of Trump's embarrassing weakness on information security
Good signs, lots of people. It was a picket and a protest. This sign says, factories today emit 1,500,000 tons less toxic air pollution than in 1990. Protect EPA workers, protect your family's health. I don't know who this person is at the Chicago protest, but may I commend you on excellent punctuation and grammar on that perfectly spelled sign. It's all perfect. A plus. Also a very good point.
The Rachel Maddow Show
War plans group chat scandal fits pattern of Trump's embarrassing weakness on information security
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. you
The Rachel Maddow Show
War plans group chat scandal fits pattern of Trump's embarrassing weakness on information security
So you vote for one guy, you get the other guy. That is democracy. Ta-da! Jeez. And as for Kentucky bourbon, guess which country is the number one export market for Kentucky?
The Rachel Maddow Show
War plans group chat scandal fits pattern of Trump's embarrassing weakness on information security
Oh, Canada, where they are taking Kentucky bourbon off the shelves, where they are experiencing a patriotic upsurge of Canadians promising to never again buy Kentucky bourbon because of Donald Trump and his genius tariff idea and his constant threats that he's going to go to war with Canada to annex them as the 51st state. So, yeah, you know, go Kentucky Republicans. Good luck.
The Rachel Maddow Show
War plans group chat scandal fits pattern of Trump's embarrassing weakness on information security
I see why you might not want to talk to your constituents in person anytime soon. So there's a lot going on today. And I have to say, this is one of those days in the news that just evoked like one spit take after another. I felt like all day long, I was like, doo-woop, you said doo-woop, what?
The Rachel Maddow Show
War plans group chat scandal fits pattern of Trump's embarrassing weakness on information security
I mean, just a sampling amid all the actual scientific research that Donald Trump is attacking and ending, including like, cutting off clinical trials for cancer treatments for veterans at the VA. I mean, all the stuff like that, that he is cutting. Trump is ordering up one new study for the federal government to do.
The Rachel Maddow Show
War plans group chat scandal fits pattern of Trump's embarrassing weakness on information security
Washington Post reports exclusively tonight that Donald Trump has tapped a fake doctor to head up this new national study. It is a study of just how terrible vaccines really are. And he and his administration have tapped to run this study, a man who is not a scientist and not a doctor, but he was disciplined in the state of Maryland more than a decade ago for practicing medicine without a license.
The Rachel Maddow Show
War plans group chat scandal fits pattern of Trump's embarrassing weakness on information security
They are decimating the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control, which together have given us basically every single major medical advance in humankind in the last 40 years plus. And instead, they're now hiring cranks off the internet to tell us how bad science is and how you shouldn't get vaccinated. Just amazing.
The Rachel Maddow Show
War plans group chat scandal fits pattern of Trump's embarrassing weakness on information security
Trump today unveiled yet another executive order targeting another major law firm for destruction because he thinks this is how he can make sure that people will stop going to court to try to stop him from doing things that are illegal.
The Rachel Maddow Show
War plans group chat scandal fits pattern of Trump's embarrassing weakness on information security
In particular, I think he also hopes that these kinds of attacks mean that no good big law firms will represent the people and the entities that he goes after on his enemies list. I mean, this is just the latest in a series of these that he has done. I will just say...
The Rachel Maddow Show
War plans group chat scandal fits pattern of Trump's embarrassing weakness on information security
But you know, I'm not a lawyer, but I spend a lot of time talking to lawyers and talking about stuff going on in the American judicial system. America's big time lawyers and big time law firms have spent a lot of time in the past few years gazing lovingly at themselves in the mirror, telling themselves what great patriots they are, right?
The Rachel Maddow Show
War plans group chat scandal fits pattern of Trump's embarrassing weakness on information security
Congratulating themselves on the proud history and standards of their profession. The best lawyers and best law firms in the country have been telling these inspiring tales for years now about how brave they will definitely be. When the country needs the rule of law to stand, it needs the courts to stand, it needs good lawyers to stand up to authoritarianism and save the democracy.
The Rachel Maddow Show
War plans group chat scandal fits pattern of Trump's embarrassing weakness on information security
Y'all have been telling yourself a very pretty story about your own patriotism and bravery for a long time now. Well, time's up. Now is the time to actually show it.
The Rachel Maddow Show
War plans group chat scandal fits pattern of Trump's embarrassing weakness on information security
Now is the time to actually show us all that you are the person who you told us you would be, that you are the profession that you told us you would be, that you will uphold the standards that you've been so proud of and crowing about so much for the last few years.
The Rachel Maddow Show
War plans group chat scandal fits pattern of Trump's embarrassing weakness on information security
In our new authoritarian system, the country's most powerful law firms right now are getting picked off one by one because, so far at least, they won't get together and stand together to say they're not going to take it. And they're not going to let this happen to any lawyer, to any law firm, to the legal profession which the country needs in order to fight to retain the rule of law.
The Rachel Maddow Show
War plans group chat scandal fits pattern of Trump's embarrassing weakness on information security
This was Washington, D.C. today. Yet more people coming out to defend the U.S. post office. We saw a bunch of protests, people defending the post office last week. Then we saw just a huge number of protests for the post office this weekend. Now, today in Washington, D.C., people came out to say hands off the post office. USPS belongs to us.
The Rachel Maddow Show
War plans group chat scandal fits pattern of Trump's embarrassing weakness on information security
American lawyers and law firms have been telling themselves that they're going to do great in this moment when it comes. This moment is here. And they are so far not proving themselves up to their own legend. Time is short to turn that around. You're depending on it as a profession, you're depending on it as individuals, your businesses are depending on it, but the country is depending on it too.
The Rachel Maddow Show
War plans group chat scandal fits pattern of Trump's embarrassing weakness on information security
This is not the time to get small. To underscore the point, the Republican Speaker of the House today said that he and the Republican-led Congress may start abolishing federal courts. They may start defunding federal district courts, thereby abolishing them. Sound like a good idea for our three co-equal branches of government to have one just abolish the other? Anybody home? Big law? Anybody?
The Rachel Maddow Show
War plans group chat scandal fits pattern of Trump's embarrassing weakness on information security
Trump signed another executive order tonight on elections, which, among other things, demands that all states hand over their voter rolls to Donald Trump's top campaign donor, Elon Musk, because Elon Musk will, I don't know, fix the voting rolls or something. Sound good? Like I'm telling you, it has been a day.
The Rachel Maddow Show
War plans group chat scandal fits pattern of Trump's embarrassing weakness on information security
You know, at one of the big protests at Tesla dealerships this weekend, at the one in Chicago, this caught my eye. A Getty photographer caught this sign at the Chicago protest. Go steal data from Mars. As all these things come to fruition and each new day comes to pass in this administration,
The Rachel Maddow Show
War plans group chat scandal fits pattern of Trump's embarrassing weakness on information security
what they are doing with our data, data security, their handling of sensitive information, has turned into the big populist issue of this administration, and it's turned into just a scandal-generating machine that we are seeing the fruits of every single day. I mean, we probably should have seen it coming,
The Rachel Maddow Show
War plans group chat scandal fits pattern of Trump's embarrassing weakness on information security
With Trump in his first term taking all the classified documents from his first term and stashing them in his bathroom at Mar-a-Lago, right, including classified documents concerning nuclear weapons, that was probably a hint that this was not going to go well in any second term.
The Rachel Maddow Show
War plans group chat scandal fits pattern of Trump's embarrassing weakness on information security
We should have seen it coming probably at the very beginning of his first term when he invited Russian government officials and a Russian media outlet into the Oval Office. And then he, surprise, gave them codeword-level classified information on ongoing covert operations by Israel.
The Rachel Maddow Show
War plans group chat scandal fits pattern of Trump's embarrassing weakness on information security
Yeah, we should have seen that this was going to be one of the problems that we were going to be dealing with on a daily basis. But now we've got, you know, it's every day.
The Rachel Maddow Show
War plans group chat scandal fits pattern of Trump's embarrassing weakness on information security
We've got him very thoroughly doxing hundreds of people, including his own lawyer, by inexplicably personally insisting that those people's full, unredacted social security numbers, birthdates, and birthplaces should be included, unredacted, in his release of otherwise basically worthless John F. Kennedy assassination files. Why did he insist on that? We still don't know, but he did it.
The Rachel Maddow Show
War plans group chat scandal fits pattern of Trump's embarrassing weakness on information security
And now they're apparently getting new social security numbers. Good luck on the 1-800 number waiting to get through to take care of that. We've had random kids who work for Elon Musk rifling through personnel files in the U.S. government and individual Americans' tax records and health information and hospitalization records and credit card and banking information. It's been a real treat.
The Rachel Maddow Show
War plans group chat scandal fits pattern of Trump's embarrassing weakness on information security
The American people really like this idea. Yeah, go steal data from Mars, why don't you? Get out.
The Rachel Maddow Show
War plans group chat scandal fits pattern of Trump's embarrassing weakness on information security
NPR reports today that last week, all Defense Department personnel received an advisory warning them that they should not use the app Signal even for unclassified information, not because of the security of Signal as an app per se, but because, quote, Russian professional hacking groups were targeting Signal users with phishing attacks. That was last week.
The Rachel Maddow Show
War plans group chat scandal fits pattern of Trump's embarrassing weakness on information security
This protest was based around rural letter carriers, people who deliver the mail in rural America. You see the signs there at the protest today in Washington. Rural America relies on the Postal Service. Also a good point, and very true.
The Rachel Maddow Show
War plans group chat scandal fits pattern of Trump's embarrassing weakness on information security
That followed a Defense Department instruction from two years ago in 2023 that reminded Defense Department personnel that Signal should not be used. It could not be used for any non-public Defense Department information. Nevertheless, Signal, of course, is the app on which Donald Trump's hand-picked defense secretary led a robust and detailed group chat about forthcoming military strikes in Yemen.
The Rachel Maddow Show
War plans group chat scandal fits pattern of Trump's embarrassing weakness on information security
Recall for a moment that in his infinite wisdom, Donald Trump chose for defense secretary a Fox News weekend host who faced allegations of philandering and serious alcohol abuse, including many, many alleged instances of drinking on the job. Pete Hegseth, of course, denied those allegations.
The Rachel Maddow Show
War plans group chat scandal fits pattern of Trump's embarrassing weakness on information security
And, oh, he looked so good doing it with his American flag handkerchief stuffed into his pocket in case he needed to wipe his nose. And so Donald Trump stood by him and his chiseled jaw for the job. And so he got the job. And now here he is, Pete Hegseth, confidently typing out with his thumbs that we are, quote, currently clean on OPSEC.
The Rachel Maddow Show
War plans group chat scandal fits pattern of Trump's embarrassing weakness on information security
while he was texting on signal reportedly about specific U.S. weapons systems, named human targets, and the sequencing and exact timing of the battle plan for forthcoming U.S. airstrikes abroad, with a group of people that included the vice president, the CIA director, the director of national intelligence, the White House chief of staff, the treasury secretary for some reason,
The Rachel Maddow Show
War plans group chat scandal fits pattern of Trump's embarrassing weakness on information security
the Secretary of State, and also a random journalist who they appear to have added to the chat by mistake, but nobody noticed he was there because apparently nobody looked. Because we're clean on OPSEC. Today at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, CIA Director John Ratcliffe told one senator, Democrat John Ossoff of Georgia, that this was not a mistake. Was this a mistake, sir? No.
The Rachel Maddow Show
War plans group chat scandal fits pattern of Trump's embarrassing weakness on information security
Oh, I guess this was all on purpose? We will speak with Senator John Ossoff about that in just a moment. But I mean, here we are, less than a week away from the news. This is less than a week after the news that Pete Hegseth apparently had planned a briefing in the most secure briefing room in the Pentagon. a briefing on the nation's most classified operational war plans for a war against China.
The Rachel Maddow Show
War plans group chat scandal fits pattern of Trump's embarrassing weakness on information security
He had planned a highest level, highest security Pentagon briefing on those super secret plans for a pro-China U.S. businessman with billions of dollars in debt to China and huge business interest in that country. who also happens to be the top campaign donor to the president.
The Rachel Maddow Show
War plans group chat scandal fits pattern of Trump's embarrassing weakness on information security
If Donald Trump is going to abolish, effectively abolish the post office like he says he wants to, or privatize it like Elon Musk says he wants to, rural states will absolutely take the worst of it by a mile, which itself is going to be really interesting for rural red state Republicans in Washington trying to justify that to their constituents.
The Rachel Maddow Show
War plans group chat scandal fits pattern of Trump's embarrassing weakness on information security
That plan was apparently only busted up at the last moment when the New York Times reported on it, which, I guess, embarrassed them too much to go forward with it, but Pete Pegseth had been planning on doing it. That was Friday. This signal group chat revelation was Monday, right? I mean, things are rapidly disintegrating here.
The Rachel Maddow Show
War plans group chat scandal fits pattern of Trump's embarrassing weakness on information security
Also, I mean, what do we do with the fact that mishandling classified information in this way is very clearly a crime? I mean, do we expect the FBI will be all over that? I mean, this stuff is criminal. It's not keeping nuclear secrets in the Mar-a-Lago bathroom level of crime, but it's a crime.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Busted: DOGE humiliated by brutal fact-checking, walks back bogus savings claims
Thanks to at home for joining us this hour. Really happy to have you here. So this did not go well for the Trump administration. This is what it looks like in a court of law when you flounder and lose and there is a court reporter there to write it all down. The judge. Right now, the court has before it a motion to enforce. I think there are some basic questions that have been posed here.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Busted: DOGE humiliated by brutal fact-checking, walks back bogus savings claims
So, for the period before the restraining order, this is going back to the February 18th Joint Status Report, the plaintiff's characterization of some of those decisions, and there's a wide variety, right, of grants and foreign assistance arrangements, contracts, was that all of them were under the same challenged authority, so there was a process. The judge, hey!
The Rachel Maddow Show
Busted: DOGE humiliated by brutal fact-checking, walks back bogus savings claims
Today, we can add to the list of principled resignations 21 people from Doge. People who had been held over from the U.S.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Busted: DOGE humiliated by brutal fact-checking, walks back bogus savings claims
Digital Service because they were expected to work with Elon Musk's team at Doge, 21 of them resigned today saying, quote, we will not use our skills as technologists to compromise core government systems, to jeopardize American sensitive data, or to dismantle critical public services. We will not lend our expertise to carry out or legitimize Doge's actions.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Busted: DOGE humiliated by brutal fact-checking, walks back bogus savings claims
Again, 21 members of the Doge service resigning today. The thing that is emerging, we're now five weeks and a day into this thing. The thing that is emerging as the real weak card in their hand, and I don't know if we should have known to expect this or not, but it's just becoming more and more increasingly obvious with each passing day. Their weakness is that
The Rachel Maddow Show
Busted: DOGE humiliated by brutal fact-checking, walks back bogus savings claims
they kind of suck at what they're trying to do. I'm sorry to use that phrase, but they really do appear to be terrible at their intentional actions, right? And, you know, you don't want like a surgical robot to be terrible at what it does. You don't want your letter carrier or your research scientist or your park ranger to be terrible at what they do.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Busted: DOGE humiliated by brutal fact-checking, walks back bogus savings claims
We need those folks to be good at what they do. And by and large, they are. The person you actually want to be terrible at his job is the guy who thinks it's his job to destroy your country's government. And Elon Musk is turning out to be very much up to that task.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Busted: DOGE humiliated by brutal fact-checking, walks back bogus savings claims
I mean, amid all the pushback of all these various kinds, the best assistance the pushback is getting from the Trump and Elon Musk side is that Elon Musk really does appear to have no idea what he is doing, and it is showing more and more every day. And so it is really hurting what he is trying to do. Which is so sad.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Busted: DOGE humiliated by brutal fact-checking, walks back bogus savings claims
Just take, for example, a short version of this saga from the last few days of Elon Musk initiating this email to all federal workers, including, hopefully, some people who no longer have access to their email because he ordered that they be put on leave and locked out of government computer systems.
The Rachel Maddow Show
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Oops, but that's how he's trying to contact them now by sending them emails to email addresses he won't allow them to check. Awesome. But this email, as you know, told everybody that they needed to give Elon Musk a list of the things they had done in the past week or else. If they didn't send him this list, that would be taken as a resignation.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Busted: DOGE humiliated by brutal fact-checking, walks back bogus savings claims
And immediately we saw multiple government agencies tell their workers, do not do this. Do not respond to this.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Busted: DOGE humiliated by brutal fact-checking, walks back bogus savings claims
The Defense Department, the FBI, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the State Department, the Homeland Security Department, the Education Department, the Commerce Department, the FDIC, the IRS, the Energy Department, FEMA, the CDC, the NIH, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, our beloved NOAA.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Busted: DOGE humiliated by brutal fact-checking, walks back bogus savings claims
They all told the people who work at those agencies, do not respond to this. And in that list, I just mentioned a few different components of the Department of Health and Human Services. Just looking at that one agency for a second to get a sense of how this played in an agency that is now run by... Robert F. Kennedy Jr.? I mean, look at how this played there.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Busted: DOGE humiliated by brutal fact-checking, walks back bogus savings claims
Elon Musk sends this, like, middle-of-the-night, insane email to everybody who works at HHS, everybody who works in the rest of the government. At HHS, they initially told their employees Sunday morning that they needed to respond to this email and do what Elon Musk said. Then an hour later, an email went out from the Trump-appointed acting director of the NIH.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Busted: DOGE humiliated by brutal fact-checking, walks back bogus savings claims
The judge says, that's in the court transcript. Hey, I guess I'm not sure why I can't get a straight answer from you on this. Are you aware of an unfreezing of the disbursement of funds? You've acknowledged that under the restraining order, any of the terminations or suspensions that took place before February 13th are invalid and shouldn't be given effect.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Busted: DOGE humiliated by brutal fact-checking, walks back bogus savings claims
which is part of Health and Human Services. And that person told all NIH employees, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, do not respond to this. Then a few hours after that, HHS as an overall agency told all employees actually pause, maybe hold just a second, we're not sure. The ultimate advice given to people who work at HHS
The Rachel Maddow Show
Busted: DOGE humiliated by brutal fact-checking, walks back bogus savings claims
was that they could respond to Elon Musk's threatening email if they wanted to, but they didn't have to. And if they did, quote, Do not identify by name or title any other HHS employees with whom you have been working. Do not identify by case name or otherwise matters you are working on. Do not identify any specific grants or contracts or any specific grantees or contractors.
The Rachel Maddow Show
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If you are engaged in any scientific experiments, research, or reviews, do not provide information that could allow anyone to identify the precise nature of your work. The advice ended with this, quote, assume that what you write will be read by malign foreign actors and tailor your response accordingly. That's how well this thing is going.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Busted: DOGE humiliated by brutal fact-checking, walks back bogus savings claims
The Office of Personnel Management, which is the entity under which Musk sent out this insane, like, apparent prank email, the Office of Personnel Management then tried to sort of cancel Musk's threatening email, saying, oh, we can't believe anybody took that seriously. Why did you think you had to do that? Obviously, complying with that request would be totally voluntary.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Busted: DOGE humiliated by brutal fact-checking, walks back bogus savings claims
You don't have to respond. And if you don't send it back, that won't be taken as your resignation. Where did you get that idea?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Busted: DOGE humiliated by brutal fact-checking, walks back bogus savings claims
That, forget everything we just said, email from the Office of Personnel Management appeared to be a knock-on effect, sort of a side effect requirement that they didn't foresee that had been set in motion thanks to another legal entanglement the Musk gang got themselves into when they set up this dodgy government-wide email system that enabled this nonsense in the first place.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Busted: DOGE humiliated by brutal fact-checking, walks back bogus savings claims
As part of setting up that email system, they apparently... promised that any email they sent on that dodgy system would never involve compelled compliance to respond from government workers. So then when they told government workers, you'll be fired if you don't respond, they had to say, just kidding. It was a weekend. It was late. We were a little, you know.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Busted: DOGE humiliated by brutal fact-checking, walks back bogus savings claims
Then Elon Musk thereafter said, no, no, no, I mean it. You do have to respond. I mean, If you were like in a grunge band in 1977 and all of you did like a lot of drugs, if one of you tried to fire the other members of the band, the rest of the band wouldn't take you seriously trying to do it this way.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Busted: DOGE humiliated by brutal fact-checking, walks back bogus savings claims
Another one of the recent legal entanglements for the stuff he's already tried to do forced the Trump administration to insist to a federal court recently that Elon Musk actually doesn't have a job of the type the president keeps describing.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Busted: DOGE humiliated by brutal fact-checking, walks back bogus savings claims
The Trump administration recently told the federal court that Elon Musk is not the head of this Doge service that seems to only answer to him and that the president has repeatedly said Elon Musk is running. They told the judge, no, no, no, don't pay attention to any of that. He's not running anything.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Busted: DOGE humiliated by brutal fact-checking, walks back bogus savings claims
That led to an especially awkward moment at the White House press briefing today in which the White House press secretary insisted that Elon Musk, per that attestation to the court, Elon Musk is not running Doge and somebody else is. But she said she couldn't say who it was. She said, quote, I'm not going to reveal the name of that individual from this podium.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Busted: DOGE humiliated by brutal fact-checking, walks back bogus savings claims
Are you aware of steps taken to actually release those funds? Trump administration lawyer. I'm not in a position to answer that. the judge. Well, we're 12 days into the temporary restraining order, and you're here representing the government.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Busted: DOGE humiliated by brutal fact-checking, walks back bogus savings claims
A few hours later, the White House announced that somebody nobody ever heard of is the real head of Doge, not Elon Musk. There is a person running this government agency. It's not Musk. It's a person. Her name is Amy Gleason, who reportedly works from Nashville, who was reportedly on who was reportedly, quote, scheduled to be on vacation in Mexico today.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Busted: DOGE humiliated by brutal fact-checking, walks back bogus savings claims
and who, according to the New York Times, quote, told associates that she was not aware ahead of time that the White House planned to make public her role today before the White House announced her. So, random Tennessee resident on vacation in Mexico, phone starts blowing up. They're saying I have what job? I have Elon Musk's job? That's what they want me to say is my job?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Busted: DOGE humiliated by brutal fact-checking, walks back bogus savings claims
They want me to say I'm running Tesla? No, oh, running Doge. That's what they want me to say is my job. In Washington? Did I mention that I live in Tennessee and I'm currently in Mexico? Okay, what do you want me to say? The word you're looking for is shambolic. There is a lot to get to tonight.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Busted: DOGE humiliated by brutal fact-checking, walks back bogus savings claims
Republicans control the House, which means they have a majority in the House and a majority is all they needed to pass their budget resolution. There were concerns all day that they wouldn't be able to get there, but they squeaked it by two votes in the end. Whether or not that difficulty in passing their own budget has
The Rachel Maddow Show
Busted: DOGE humiliated by brutal fact-checking, walks back bogus savings claims
Anything to do with Republican members of Congress absolutely getting roasted at town halls by their constituents every time they go home now. I don't know. But we've got more of that to show you, some footage of that kind of thing that will curl your hair tonight.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Busted: DOGE humiliated by brutal fact-checking, walks back bogus savings claims
Honestly, though, if you were looking for a theme in today's news, it is that the pushback against these guys really does seem to be finding its footing and increasing success, while the Trump side, in meaningful ways, appears to be... Coming to the end of its initial spurt of energy? Starting to crash out a little bit? Starting to stall and sputter? Watch this space. Lots to get to tonight.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Busted: DOGE humiliated by brutal fact-checking, walks back bogus savings claims
Stay with us. Change of plans. CNN is reporting today that the White House has halted plans to house thousands of migrants, the so-called worst of the worst, in a giant camp at Guantanamo in Cuba. According to CNN, they say this change of plans has come, quote, amid concerns over conditions for detainees. Concerns over conditions.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Busted: DOGE humiliated by brutal fact-checking, walks back bogus savings claims
You had represented in the initial February status report from the government, from the defendant, and you know, made issue of that it had been five days and there had been a holiday weekend. Well, now we are 12 days in, and you can't answer me whether any funds that you've acknowledged are covered by the court's order have been unfrozen? Trump administration lawyer,
The Rachel Maddow Show
Busted: DOGE humiliated by brutal fact-checking, walks back bogus savings claims
It may be true that the folks running Donald Trump's made-for-TV mass deportation operation are worried about the conditions at Guantanamo. Could be.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Busted: DOGE humiliated by brutal fact-checking, walks back bogus savings claims
Or it could be that the epic logistical complications and massive expense of trying to set up a pointless diversion to Guantanamo just so they can make propaganda videos about it and post them on social media may be the embarrassment of having been caught out already not sending the so-called worst of the worst, but instead sending people there with no criminal record at all.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Busted: DOGE humiliated by brutal fact-checking, walks back bogus savings claims
I mean, whatever the complication of factors that have come together to crash this Trump plan as well, just five weeks in, apparently, per CNN's reporting tonight, they have decided that this Guantanamo gambit, this too, is just not worth the trouble. But don't worry, there is a new and even more expensive and inexplicable and morally and legally disastrous idea right behind it in line.
The Rachel Maddow Show
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Politico headline today, quote, Trump allies circulate mass deportation plan calling for, quote, processing camps and a private citizen army. Quote, a group of prominent military contractors, including former Blackwater CEO Eric Prince, of course,
The Rachel Maddow Show
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has pitched the Trump White House on a proposal to carry out mass deportations through a network of processing camps on military bases, a private fleet of 100 airplanes, and a, quote, small army of private citizens empowered to make arrests.
The Rachel Maddow Show
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The Blueprint carries an estimated price tag of $25 billion and recommends a range of aggressive tactics to rapidly deport 12 million people before the 2026 midterms. Quote, It's not clear if the president has seen the plan which has been circulating among Trump allies since December.
The Rachel Maddow Show
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Eric Prince's partner in the proposal tells Politico they haven't been contacted by or had discussions with the government yet. The proposal suggests deputizing 10,000 private citizens, giving them expedited training and the same federal law enforcement powers of immigration officials, including the right to arrest other people.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Busted: DOGE humiliated by brutal fact-checking, walks back bogus savings claims
So $25 billion to have Blackwater set up a private army and a private air force in the United States that answers just to Trump and that rounds up people and puts them in camps. What could possibly go wrong? This seems like a totally well thought out... Concept, and definitely one that'll get really careful consideration if they're going to go through with it, right?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Busted: DOGE humiliated by brutal fact-checking, walks back bogus savings claims
Joining us now is Congressman Jason Crow of Colorado. He's a member of the Armed Services and Intelligence Committees. Earlier this month, after the Trump administration said a military base in his district would be used to detain migrants, Congressman Crow personally went to that base and got assurances that it would not be used for that purpose.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Busted: DOGE humiliated by brutal fact-checking, walks back bogus savings claims
Congressman Crow, it's a real pleasure to have you with us here tonight. Thank you for making time.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Busted: DOGE humiliated by brutal fact-checking, walks back bogus savings claims
I want to talk to you about some of what seems to me like some real crazy town stuff that's being proposed when it comes to immigration enforcement. Before we get to that, though, I do just have to ask you about this vote that just happened in the House within the last hour. It seems that your Republican colleagues very narrowly did approve their budget plan.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Busted: DOGE humiliated by brutal fact-checking, walks back bogus savings claims
Our viewers watching tonight, what should people know about what it was that was voted on tonight and what the consequences of this might be?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Busted: DOGE humiliated by brutal fact-checking, walks back bogus savings claims
All I can do really is say that the preparations are underway for the joint status report on compliance. The judge, I'm asking you right now what you are aware of. Sounds like the answer is no. If the answer is no, you can say no. That you're not aware of any actions to unfreeze the funds.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Busted: DOGE humiliated by brutal fact-checking, walks back bogus savings claims
Do you expect that this version that just passed the House, this resolution that was adopted, will be ultimately the version that the Senate votes on and ultimately the version that the Republicans try to make law?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Busted: DOGE humiliated by brutal fact-checking, walks back bogus savings claims
What the Trump administration most wants people in rural areas and red areas to think of when they think about this new administration is immigration enforcement. This is the thing that they want to be, the thing that they are most known for and that they have put the most effort into in terms of public-facing media.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Busted: DOGE humiliated by brutal fact-checking, walks back bogus savings claims
And I think some people would sort of credibly argue that they've made a lot of propaganda about what it is they are doing on immigration enforcement. I mentioned the CNN reporting earlier that the Trump administration appears to be abandoning its plan to send people to Guantanamo after having a little flurry of activity around that, in which they used to create a bunch of propaganda.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Busted: DOGE humiliated by brutal fact-checking, walks back bogus savings claims
Now they're not going to do it anymore. There's also now reporting in Politico that they're considering a $25 billion program to privatize immigration enforcement and have essentially mercenaries do it. Some of the language and the planning and the activity around this thus far seems almost surreal.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Busted: DOGE humiliated by brutal fact-checking, walks back bogus savings claims
I am asking you, this hearing is about enforcing the temporary restraining order and compliance with the temporary restraining order. Trump administration lawyer. So I do understand that, the judge. I want to know what actions have been taken, including whether funds have been unfrozen based on the temporary restraining order, and if so, what funds have and what funds have not.
The Rachel Maddow Show
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From the vantage point of your district in Colorado, what do you make of the reality of what they're doing and what they're trying to sell their voters on what they're doing?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Busted: DOGE humiliated by brutal fact-checking, walks back bogus savings claims
Congressman Jason Crow of Colorado, decorated veteran, Army Ranger, somebody who knows of what he speaks on these matters, particularly the proposal to use military force around these things. Congressman, I really appreciate you taking time to talk with us tonight. Come back anytime. I'd love to have you back.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Busted: DOGE humiliated by brutal fact-checking, walks back bogus savings claims
All right. Much more news ahead tonight. Stay with us.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Busted: DOGE humiliated by brutal fact-checking, walks back bogus savings claims
Footage from town halls in California and Georgia and Wisconsin in the last few days, where Republican members of Congress are being just sandblasted by their constituents about what Trump and Musk and Republicans are doing in Washington. Scenes like those have been playing out around the country over the last few weeks.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Busted: DOGE humiliated by brutal fact-checking, walks back bogus savings claims
And as this pressure has been upped against Republican members of Congress, we are starting to see some of those Republicans starting to take some of the gentlest possible steps toward... if not criticizing the administration, at least asking some questions. Let's start with Georgia Republican Congressman Rich McCormick.
The Rachel Maddow Show
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You just heard him there getting booed by his constituents when he told them he supports the cuts at the CDC, the Centers for Disease Control, because he said a lot of the workers there are, quote, duplicitous with AI. I think he meant duplicative. I don't know. But that was what he said last week. Now here is what Rich McCormick tells NBC News this week.
The Rachel Maddow Show
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Quote, If we have layoffs at the CDC, some people are going to be affected. The question is, do we give people time to adjust to their lives? And I think that's my biggest concern, is that we're being compassionate. He was excited to the point of forgetting grammar last week about replacing these folks with robots. This week he's calling for compassion.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Busted: DOGE humiliated by brutal fact-checking, walks back bogus savings claims
Trump administration lawyer. These would be, I think, the logical subjects of the joint status report that is underway. I don't have the ability to recite those particular facts at this hearing. The judge, 12 days into the restraining order, you can't give me any facts about funds being unfrozen based on the restraining order? Trump administration lawyer, quote, I can. I mean, the judge.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Busted: DOGE humiliated by brutal fact-checking, walks back bogus savings claims
Also consider Wisconsin Republican Congressman Scott Fitzgerald. He's the one who tried to tout all the waste and fraud that Doge has found before being shouted down by his constituents who yelled at him that he had literally no proof. Quote, literally no proof.
The Rachel Maddow Show
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Well, now here's Congressman Fitzgerald this week, quote, it would be better, I think, for members to have real specific information because we don't have it. I don't have it. We don't know what they're looking at and we don't know what the numbers are. I'm learning about this when I see a broadcast as much as anyone else right now because we haven't been briefed on it.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Busted: DOGE humiliated by brutal fact-checking, walks back bogus savings claims
We haven't been briefed on it. It would be better to have real information. I don't know. I bet it would be better. Republicans are starting to feel the heat from their constituents on this. And at the edges, they are finally starting to change their tune, at least incrementally. Not a full octave, but maybe a note or two.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Busted: DOGE humiliated by brutal fact-checking, walks back bogus savings claims
If the pressure on these Republicans is having an effect on them, the realization, the turnaround in some of them is coming at a really inconvenient time for them. And that's next. Stay with us. Tonight, just as we were starting the show, Republicans took one of their first big steps toward passing their budget.
The Rachel Maddow Show
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It's a blueprint that, among other things, would set the stage for huge cuts to programs like Medicaid, which literally tens of millions of Americans depend on for their basic health care, including millions and millions and millions of Republican voters. The budget passed along party lines tonight. It means Republicans are one step closer to making those deep unpopular cuts.
The Rachel Maddow Show
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The restraining order has been in effect for now 12 days, since February 13th, and there are just some basic questions. The restraining order was clear, and the court has said it was clear that defendants, meaning the Trump administration, could not continue the blanket suspension of foreign aid funds, pending review. That was based on a finding that the plaintiffs had shown irreparable harm.
The Rachel Maddow Show
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Do they keep going with this? As we're seeing Republican members of Congress and senators run up against a wave of outrage from their own constituents in town halls and constituent meetings in their home districts, should we expect a backlash from voters to effectively yank on the reins. Joining us now is Ezra Levin.
The Rachel Maddow Show
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He's co-founder and co-executive director of Indivisible, the nationwide grassroots movement that connects regular folks with their own representatives in Congress and the Senate. Ezra, it's nice to see you. Thanks for being here.
The Rachel Maddow Show
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Five weeks in, what do you make of the grassroots movement to try to stop what Trump and Musk are doing and to try to stop some of the most damaging things that Republicans want to do, for example, with this budget?
The Rachel Maddow Show
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Counsel, I hope you understand why this is important as the attorney who is presumably advising your clients and you're here representing them. The court has been clear. So if I were you, you know, I would think it would be very important to point to some sort of directive or something that indicates that the suspensions that are happening are happening under lawful authority.
The Rachel Maddow Show
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Ezra, one of the dynamics I'm trying to get my head around is if this budget goes ahead, they're going to make huge healthcare cuts that are going to crater state budgets, which is going to make state government very, very, very difficult, especially in red states, but in every state in the country.
The Rachel Maddow Show
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That's going to create divisions among politicians who would otherwise see themselves as allies and otherwise stand in common cause, particularly around the public messaging around these things. Does that afford new opportunities for the opposition?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Busted: DOGE humiliated by brutal fact-checking, walks back bogus savings claims
Ezra Levin, co-executive director of Indivisible. Ezra, it's good to see you. Thanks for your time tonight.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Busted: DOGE humiliated by brutal fact-checking, walks back bogus savings claims
All right. We'll be right back. All right. That's going to do it for me tonight. I will see you again tomorrow and every night this week at 9 p.m. Eastern. In the meantime, you can find me on Blue Sky. I don't know if you have Blue Sky yet, but I got to tell you, I enjoy it. I have no connection to them other than the fact that I'm an avid user. You should check it out.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Busted: DOGE humiliated by brutal fact-checking, walks back bogus savings claims
I'm on Blue Sky at matto.msnbc.com.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Busted: DOGE humiliated by brutal fact-checking, walks back bogus savings claims
The judge then announces there at the hearing that he needs a 15-minute recess, but don't go far, because it's only going to be 15 minutes. And after that, he's going to rule.
The Rachel Maddow Show
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And he comes back after 15 minutes, and he issues his ruling, which says, in part, plaintiffs have submitted evidence that defendants, meaning the Trump administration, have not lifted the suspension or freeze of funds as the temporary restraining order required. The Trump administration, the defendants, have not rebutted that evidence.
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And when asked today, defendants were not able to provide any specific examples of unfreezing funds pursuant to the court's order. The very point of a temporary restraining order is to prevent irreparable harms in the course of considering a preliminary injunction. So for these reasons, the court is going to grant plaintiff's motion to enforce.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Busted: DOGE humiliated by brutal fact-checking, walks back bogus savings claims
So to be clear, and to give effect to the court's temporary restraining order, the court orders as follows, quote, by 1159 p.m. on February 26, 2025, that's tomorrow, the restrained defendants shall pay all invoices and letter of credit drawdown requests on all contracts for work completed prior to the entry of the court's order on February 13th. Defendants shall take no actions to impede
The Rachel Maddow Show
Busted: DOGE humiliated by brutal fact-checking, walks back bogus savings claims
the prompt payment of appropriated foreign assistance funds and shall take all necessary action to ensure the prompt payment of appropriated foreign assistance funds. The parties remain under an order to file a joint status report by noon tomorrow. That report shall confirm what steps have been taken by that time. And that report shall confirm that such disbursements will be made by 11.59 p.m.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Busted: DOGE humiliated by brutal fact-checking, walks back bogus savings claims
tomorrow. And in the interest of ensuring compliance with the court's order, listen to this. To the extent there remain any disputes as to compliance. To the extent there remain disputes as to compliance, the party shall identify agency officials, employees, or other witnesses who can testify under oath as to those disputes. And scene.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Busted: DOGE humiliated by brutal fact-checking, walks back bogus savings claims
Federal District Court Judge Amir Ali in Washington today telling the Trump administration, you shut down foreign aid funds, and it appears at first glance that you were not legally allowed to do that. I ordered you to immediately restart those funds, and you have not done so. You now have until tomorrow to do it.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Busted: DOGE humiliated by brutal fact-checking, walks back bogus savings claims
And if you can't do it, or you have some excuse that makes you think you still ought not do it, I want the relevant officials in my courtroom and under oath telling me why they are not doing it. The motion to enforce is granted. Get those funds out the door by midnight tomorrow night. This nonsense is over. Just a humiliation for the Trump administration in court today.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Busted: DOGE humiliated by brutal fact-checking, walks back bogus savings claims
It sounds like there's evidence right now that that irreparable harm has deepened. Now, the plaintiffs seem to be saying that the blanket pause by the Trump administration was not lifted in any meaningful sense. The judge then says to the lawyer for the Trump administration, quote, I'd like you to tell me in simple terms what action you are aware of that the agency has lifted the blanket pause.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Busted: DOGE humiliated by brutal fact-checking, walks back bogus savings claims
Not only not doing what they are legally required to do, but unable to even spit out a complete sentence justifying why they're not complying with the court's order. Just a legal disaster and a humiliation. And that court... recessed after the judge gave his order at 1.09 p.m. today.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Busted: DOGE humiliated by brutal fact-checking, walks back bogus savings claims
And exactly 10 minutes later, at 1.19 p.m., 10 minutes after that legal humiliation today, this New York Times headline posted, Doge quietly deletes the five biggest spending cuts it celebrated last week.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Busted: DOGE humiliated by brutal fact-checking, walks back bogus savings claims
So while we're on the theme of the Trump administration being humiliated, I mean, literally within 10 minutes of a federal judge ordering President Trump and his top campaign donor, Elon Musk, to undo the biggest thing they have yet done to the United States government, their shutdown of all foreign aid.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Busted: DOGE humiliated by brutal fact-checking, walks back bogus savings claims
10 minutes after that court order to fix that by tomorrow or be prepared to be in my courtroom testifying under oath as to why you are breaking this lawful order. Within 10 minutes of that, the New York Times posts this story on how the five largest other things they claim to have done to the U.S. government aren't real.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Busted: DOGE humiliated by brutal fact-checking, walks back bogus savings claims
And so they've had to take them down off their website and stop claiming that they did them. Quote, last week, Elon Musk's government cost-slashing initiative, which he calls the Department of Government Efficiency, posted an online, quote, wall of receipts celebrating how much it had saved by canceling federal contracts.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Busted: DOGE humiliated by brutal fact-checking, walks back bogus savings claims
Now, the organization has deleted all of the five biggest, quote, savings on that original list, after the New York Times and other media outlets pointed out that those lists were riddled with errors. Quote, the last of the original top five disappeared from the site in the early hours of Tuesday. The website offered no explanation for why it had removed some items.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Busted: DOGE humiliated by brutal fact-checking, walks back bogus savings claims
But these were the original five largest savings on its list. First, an $8 billion cut at ICE, at Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The actual contract in question was worth not $8 billion, but $8 million. Next, three $655 million cuts at USAID. Quote, "...this was actually a single cut that was erroneously counted three times."
The Rachel Maddow Show
Busted: DOGE humiliated by brutal fact-checking, walks back bogus savings claims
in addition to not being $655 million three times, it's now only listed once, and instead of being listed at $655 million, it's listed at $18 million. So they were off there by hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Busted: DOGE humiliated by brutal fact-checking, walks back bogus savings claims
But wait, there's one more, a $232 million cut at the Social Security Administration, which appears actually, according to reporting from The Intercept, to be a project that is not worth $232 million. It is worth $560,000. So we're only off by... How big is the window on your calculator? And does it need batteries? So they're not sending their best.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Busted: DOGE humiliated by brutal fact-checking, walks back bogus savings claims
I mean, to the extent that we are supposed to think of the authoritarian overthrow of the U.S. system of government as some sort of benevolent mission, because these are math geniuses who are doing it. To the extent that that's why we're supposed to like the dismantling of the U.S. government, because they're so good at math. And so therefore, this must be good for us.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Busted: DOGE humiliated by brutal fact-checking, walks back bogus savings claims
Yeah, it turns out their math doesn't work.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Busted: DOGE humiliated by brutal fact-checking, walks back bogus savings claims
And even though they are having to rescind by court order the things they are most proud of doing, the biggest things they're trying to do, or they're having to rescind from their wall of receipts everything they previously said about all their other best and biggest moves, even though all of this stuff is getting wound back, literally all of the biggest things they said they have done are now getting undone or they never happened in the first place,
The Rachel Maddow Show
Busted: DOGE humiliated by brutal fact-checking, walks back bogus savings claims
Are you aware of steps that the agencies here have taken to actually unpause the disbursement of funds? Trump administration lawyer responds. So let me focus on that last point, if I might. The judge, well, I actually want you to focus on my question.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Busted: DOGE humiliated by brutal fact-checking, walks back bogus savings claims
Even still though, it's not like they're getting better or more humble or more accurate over time. Back to that New York Times article today, quote, some of the new canceled contracts Doge added to its website this week appear to make some of the same types of errors. The largest savings on the latest version of its list is a $1.9 billion cut at the Treasury Department.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Busted: DOGE humiliated by brutal fact-checking, walks back bogus savings claims
But as reported in the Times last week, that contract was actually canceled last fall when Joe Biden was president and when Doge did not yet exist. So that 1.9 billion isn't anything they did either. Even the stuff they say is their best, their biggest successes, their greatest hits, has all fallen apart under the most cursory scrutiny. And, you know, what have they done?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Busted: DOGE humiliated by brutal fact-checking, walks back bogus savings claims
They have fired a lot of people. And then they've had to unfire a lot of them when they realized that they actually had no idea who they were firing. We had the oops firings of workers at the National Nuclear Security Administration. Oops. Wrong people to fire. Those had to be rescinded. Oops, had to hire those people back. We had the oops firings, the people who work on bird flu.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Busted: DOGE humiliated by brutal fact-checking, walks back bogus savings claims
Oops, wrong people to fire. Those people have to be unfired and brought back. Now news that they're trying to unfire the people who work in really simple, really easy to replicate low productivity fields like overseeing the safety of the robots that do surgeries on humans. And the people who work on the safety of pacemakers and implanted defibrillators. Yeah, that's a waste of time.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Busted: DOGE humiliated by brutal fact-checking, walks back bogus savings claims
That's a waste of money. Who needs those things to be safe? Fire those people. Trying to unfire those people now. Today in Washington, there were more protests against these increasingly obviously shambolic efforts by the president's top campaign donor to try to destroy as much as he can of the U.S. government.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Busted: DOGE humiliated by brutal fact-checking, walks back bogus savings claims
I do want to hear your full answer, but has the government begun, has the government unfrozen disbursements as to those contracts or assistance agreements for at least that period? Trump administration lawyer.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Busted: DOGE humiliated by brutal fact-checking, walks back bogus savings claims
At that Hart Senate office building on Capitol Hill, there were a lot of fired federal workers of all stripes who essentially declared their own job fair in the atrium of the Senate office building, and then they went Senate office to Senate office carrying copies of their resumes. giving them to Senate office staff, trying to talk to U.S.
The Rachel Maddow Show
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senators about what they do and about the impact of their firings. They crowded into Senate office after Senate office after Senate office today. This follows the National Letter Carriers Union yesterday and people who support the post office showing up yesterday to give this answer to the Trump administration's efforts to dismantle the U.S.
The Rachel Maddow Show
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Postal Service, which I should mention is in the Constitution.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Busted: DOGE humiliated by brutal fact-checking, walks back bogus savings claims
The pushback against what Trump and his top campaign donor are doing to try to dismantle the government is real and it is widespread and it is increasingly sure-footed. It is in the courts where they are winning the overwhelming majority of court proceedings.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Busted: DOGE humiliated by brutal fact-checking, walks back bogus savings claims
It is protests in the streets and at government buildings, including protests that are seemingly increasingly effective at moving members of Congress and moving US senators to at least pay attention to them. It is in pushback from federal workers themselves
The Rachel Maddow Show
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including not just showing up and not just letting themselves be known and not just talking to the media and not just letting people know what they did, but we're also seeing principled resignations where people stayed as long as they could and pushed to stop what they were being told to do, and then they resigned so they could tell the public what was being done.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Exclusive: Exclusive: Senator Cory Booker reflects on his historic, record-setting speech
There are a lot of live wires tonight.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Exclusive: Exclusive: Senator Cory Booker reflects on his historic, record-setting speech
It's all the government's Alzheimer's programs. Trump just cut them today. Trump today fired 10,000 people who work at the FDA and the CDC and the NIH, including all the people working on Alzheimer's. They cut people working on bird flu and on measles. They cut hundreds of people from the Center for Drug Evaluation. And I'm sure the Trump administration thinks, well, what's the heck's that?
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Exclusive: Exclusive: Senator Cory Booker reflects on his historic, record-setting speech
Why do we care about that drug evaluation? We don't need that. We've got A.I., When they cut those hundreds of people from the Center for Drug Evaluation, that's the people who are responsible for the approval of new drugs and also the monitoring of side effects.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Exclusive: Exclusive: Senator Cory Booker reflects on his historic, record-setting speech
They also appear to have completely emptied out the part of the government that regulates tobacco because, yeah, there was nothing successful about that. We're going to have more on all of that ahead, but.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Exclusive: Exclusive: Senator Cory Booker reflects on his historic, record-setting speech
You should also know, to Senator Booker's point that he just made here live, you should also know that when the news of these mass firings of the nation's health experts started getting out this morning, when the word started getting out, within hours, people were lining the streets outside the CDC in Atlanta to protest.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Exclusive: Exclusive: Senator Cory Booker reflects on his historic, record-setting speech
To protest what Trump was doing, thanking the workers there for their work, telling them the value of the CDC and other health agencies, telling workers there to stay strong, saying that, you know, what madness it is to cut things like tuberculosis, monitoring and prevention and treatment, the deadliest disease ever known to humankind.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Exclusive: Exclusive: Senator Cory Booker reflects on his historic, record-setting speech
Senator Booker today on the Senate floor, he got emotional when he talked about the Trump cuts to the VA. He talked about the sacrifice of his fellow U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth, who was wounded so grievously in combat as a helicopter pilot for the U.S. Army in Iraq. Well, while Senator Booker was emotionally speaking about that today, we were reviewing this footage from Boise, Idaho.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Exclusive: Exclusive: Senator Cory Booker reflects on his historic, record-setting speech
That speech lasted 24 hours and 18 minutes, but it included things like him reading from the encyclopedia and him taking a bathroom break. Senator Cory Booker did nothing like either of those things. Tonight, Senator Booker blew past Thurman's record. He spoke until 8.04 p.m. for a total of 25 hours and four minutes.
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Exclusive: Exclusive: Senator Cory Booker reflects on his historic, record-setting speech
These Americans just outside their VA medical center in Boise protesting Trump's huge cuts to the VA and veterans care. One sign for the many veterans who staff that VA hospital in Boise who have now just been fired. Thank you, vets. You deserve a raise.
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Exclusive: Exclusive: Senator Cory Booker reflects on his historic, record-setting speech
Literally, while I was listening to Senator Booker talk about cuts to the VA and how so many of the people Trump is firing from the federal government are themselves veterans, I was simultaneously on another tab in my browser reviewing this footage of people turning out in Sacramento, California, outside the VA Medical Center there, protesting Trump's huge cuts to the VA workforce and what it's doing to veterans' care there.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Exclusive: Exclusive: Senator Cory Booker reflects on his historic, record-setting speech
Senator Booker, in his Senate filibuster, talked today about the Kafkaesque nightmare of how immigrants are being treated, people literally accosted on the street by masked agents in unmarked vehicles, people whose papers have only been secretly revoked, people grabbed by masked agents and then sent off to prisons indefinitely with no opportunity to contest the government's actions or contentions about them.
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with no right to defend themselves, no ability to contact a lawyer. While we were listening to Senator Booker talking about that today in his Senate filibuster, we got in this footage of hundreds of people protesting outside the so-called Chrome Detention Center in Miami, where Trump is sending so many of the people he's been arresting off the streets.
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People in Florida protesting what the Trump administration admits are severely overcrowded conditions there. People crammed into cells with nothing to sleep on, nothing to sleep under. People crammed into this facility with what is allegedly inadequate and frequently spoiled food and even insufficient access to water.
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Exclusive: Exclusive: Senator Cory Booker reflects on his historic, record-setting speech
In Tuscaloosa, Alabama, people turning out to protest a University of Alabama graduate student, an engineering doctoral student originally from Iran, who the Trump administration has inexplicably arrested and now jailed without explanation. He has no criminal record. He's here on a valid student visa.
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Exclusive: Exclusive: Senator Cory Booker reflects on his historic, record-setting speech
We are expecting this Saturday, this April 5th, to be one of the largest days of protests yet by regular Americans protesting against the Trump administration and what Trump is doing to the government and to the country. But we see these protests every day. Meanwhile, elected Democrats are more and more getting up on their proverbial hind legs.
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Exclusive: Exclusive: Senator Cory Booker reflects on his historic, record-setting speech
And, you know, as I said to Senator Booker, again, you know, you never know what these things will You never know when you're doing these things, if they're going to work. But you know for sure that it won't work if you don't do anything. And so now we've got Democrats trying more than they were trying before.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Exclusive: Exclusive: Senator Cory Booker reflects on his historic, record-setting speech
Now we've got news of the National Democratic Party, the DNC, suing Trump over his executive order, trying to seize national control of how states run elections, trying to force states to hand over their voter rolls to his top campaign donor, Elon Musk. The DNC is now suing Donald Trump to try to stop that executive order. I don't know if that'll work, but it won't work to do nothing.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Exclusive: Exclusive: Senator Cory Booker reflects on his historic, record-setting speech
Today, we got news of a group of Democratic state attorneys general suing Trump over the other massive cuts he's already instituted to health programs. In addition to the 20,000 people who they are firing or otherwise removing from the NIH and the CDC and the FDA, a few days ago, they cut $11 billion in public health funding that was slated for states and local governments.
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And the immediate effects of that $11 billion cut have been devastating already. It has reportedly already caused hundreds of firings, particularly in local and state governments' infectious disease departments.
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In Dallas, Texas, Dallas County's health director just yesterday told Dallas County commissioners that despite the ongoing out-of-control measles outbreak in Texas, those $11 billion in Trump cuts from last week, those cuts mean that Dallas is already having to cancel 50 planned measles vaccination events, including some in schools.
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And they are laying off staff from their immunization program in the middle of a highly infectious, out-of-control disease outbreak for which the only effective prevention is immunization.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Exclusive: Exclusive: Senator Cory Booker reflects on his historic, record-setting speech
Today, while Senator Booker spoke about Trump's efforts to bully the media into submission, we got word that House Democrats had announced their own investigation into Trump's FCC chair, Brendan Carr, and what they say are his efforts to corrupt and politicize the FCC to make it a tool of punishment against Trump's critics in the media and a tool to reward his allies in the media.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Exclusive: Exclusive: Senator Cory Booker reflects on his historic, record-setting speech
Today, while Senator Booker spoke about Trump's cuts to Social Security, he spoke about what a grave breach of faith that is with American people who have paid into those programs and who count on them to be there for them. Today, Democratic leadership held a shadow hearing in the U.S. House of Representatives about Republicans' efforts to destroy the Social Security administration.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Exclusive: Exclusive: Senator Cory Booker reflects on his historic, record-setting speech
And again, I don't know what any of those things will do, but it shows they're doing something. Senator Booker's marathon in the Senate today, maybe more than anything, was intended to clarify that, as he put it, this is a moral moment.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Exclusive: Exclusive: Senator Cory Booker reflects on his historic, record-setting speech
He said he had been challenged by his constituents to do more, to try to stop what Trump is doing to the country, to try to stop the authoritarian takeover and the destruction of our Constitution and our system of government. He said his constituents challenged him to think bigger about what he could do, challenged him to take risks.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Exclusive: Exclusive: Senator Cory Booker reflects on his historic, record-setting speech
In what he did in this 25 hours and four minutes of strength and endurance, he essentially tried to show the country that what's called for right now is extraordinary action, extraordinary sacrifice. Trying to give people inspiration and strength that they can maybe do more themselves than they thought they could. other Democrats in the Senate.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Exclusive: Exclusive: Senator Cory Booker reflects on his historic, record-setting speech
It was interesting to see over the course of today and tonight, we're just lining up to associate themselves with him to say how proud they are to serve with him. It's going to be hard to top what he did today, maybe ever, but by showing what he can do, he really has thrown down the gauntlet here to his fellow Democrats in elected office, but also to the country.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Exclusive: Exclusive: Senator Cory Booker reflects on his historic, record-setting speech
Just a historic day, massive, massive day. We've got lots to come tonight, this hour. We've got election results coming in as we speak in Wisconsin. We're keeping an eye on the final tally out of those two Republican congressional races in Florida. Those are deep, deep, deep red seats. The Republican candidate is going to win in each of those races.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Exclusive: Exclusive: Senator Cory Booker reflects on his historic, record-setting speech
But those are districts that were plus 33, plus 32 for the Republicans in November. Looks like Democrats might have closed that margin by maybe like half, which would be a disaster for the Republicans. We're watching those vote totals as we come in. Again, results expected out of Wisconsin soon. Stay with us tonight. You're going to want to watch this show.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Exclusive: Exclusive: Senator Cory Booker reflects on his historic, record-setting speech
That was the moment when he broke the record, but that was not the end. He then kept going. The whole time, Senator Booker was not allowed to sit down or use the bathroom. He did get help from his Democratic colleagues who took turns overnight and all through the day today asking Senator Booker questions.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Exclusive: Exclusive: Senator Cory Booker reflects on his historic, record-setting speech
It's election night in Florida and Wisconsin. We're keeping a close eye on all of it. In Florida, there are two special elections for Congress. One of those is for the seat formerly held by Matt Gaetz, who, yes, it wasn't a dream, really was Donald Trump's first choice for attorney general of the United States.
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Matt Gaetz was forced to withdraw from consideration for that position over allegations of illicit drug use and sex with a minor, all of which he denied. The other races for the seat formerly held by Michael Waltz, who's now Trump's embattled national security advisor. He's the guy who accidentally added a journalist to a group chat on Signal about forthcoming U.S.
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military operations and didn't notice the journalist was there ever. New reporting today from The Washington Post also reveals that Mike Waltz was also apparently using his unsecured Gmail account for some of his official duties as national security advisor. Wow. NBC News has not confirmed that reporting, but we will have a little bit more for you on that later ahead tonight.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Exclusive: Exclusive: Senator Cory Booker reflects on his historic, record-setting speech
Those two Florida districts, I got to tell you, they are deep, deep, deep red districts in Florida. Trump won each of those districts by huge margins. He won by 37 points in the Matt Gaetz district. He won by 30 points in the Mike Waltz district. So these are really, really, really red districts. But look at this for these special elections tonight.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Exclusive: Exclusive: Senator Cory Booker reflects on his historic, record-setting speech
Tonight, NBC News can report that the Republican candidate in Florida's first district. This is the Matt Gaetz district. His name is Jimmy Petronas. He is projected to win this race, which is not a surprise. But look at the margin right now with 98 percent of precincts reporting he's leading by less than 15 points. That's way less than half of Trump's margin in that district just from November.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Exclusive: Exclusive: Senator Cory Booker reflects on his historic, record-setting speech
Trump won there in November by 37, and the Republican there tonight is leading by less than 15. In the other one, Florida's 6th district, NBC News projects that Republican Randy Fine has won that race and kept that seat in Republican hands. And again, that is not a surprise given the Republican tilt of this district. But again, take a look at the margins here. Trump won this district by 30 points.
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Exclusive: Exclusive: Senator Cory Booker reflects on his historic, record-setting speech
We've now got 99 percent of precincts reporting. And the Republican is leading that race again by less than 15 points. That is a huge shift in Democrats' direction, even in deep, deep red districts in Florida. Now let's talk about Wisconsin.
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Exclusive: Exclusive: Senator Cory Booker reflects on his historic, record-setting speech
Wisconsin voters are heading to the polls today, are headed to the polls today for their Supreme Court election that is shaping up in some ways to be a referendum on Elon Musk. Elon Musk dumped $26 million into this race in favor of the more conservative MAGA pro-Trump candidate.
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Exclusive: Exclusive: Senator Cory Booker reflects on his historic, record-setting speech
Technically, this is a nonpartisan election, but the outcome will determine whether there's a liberal or conservative majority on that Wisconsin state Supreme Court. That could affect everything from abortion rights to voting rights to how congressional districts get drawn and therefore how many... Democrats and Republicans go to the House of Representatives in Washington from Wisconsin.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Exclusive: Exclusive: Senator Cory Booker reflects on his historic, record-setting speech
That still did not mean Senator Booker could sit down, but it did mean that for the time they were asking their questions, he could stop talking. For the length of time it took them to pose a question to him, whereupon it was time for him to start talking again. At the start of his speech at 7 p.m.
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Exclusive: Exclusive: Senator Cory Booker reflects on his historic, record-setting speech
It's a big deal. Democrats have lined up behind the more liberal candidate Susan Crawford. Republicans have been supporting the MAGA candidate Brad Schimel. Elon Musk has dumped, again, twenty six million dollars ish. Into this race, on behalf of the MAGA candidate, more money than has ever been spent by a single person on a judicial race in American history.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Exclusive: Exclusive: Senator Cory Booker reflects on his historic, record-setting speech
It's the most expensive judicial race in American history. Overall, outside spending in that race expected to reach $100 million. At least one local news outlet in Wisconsin is reporting that there are so many voters that turned out for this race today that some polling locations in Milwaukee faced a shortage of ballots today.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Exclusive: Exclusive: Senator Cory Booker reflects on his historic, record-setting speech
The local elections commissioner in Milwaukee urged voters to stay in line to vote as they work to get more ballots. Polls closed in this race just as we came on the air tonight. And so far, the vote that has been reported has come in more from Republican areas than Democratic ones. Right now, I've got to tell you, we've just got a very slim portion of the vote in.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Exclusive: Exclusive: Senator Cory Booker reflects on his historic, record-setting speech
We've got 27.8 percent of the vote in. And at this point, the Democratic-backed candidate, Susan Crawford, is at 58% of the vote. And the Republican-backed candidate, Brad Schimel, is at just under 42% of the vote. But again, this is just less than 30% of the vote in. We're going to be watching this come in. There's about 100,000 votes between them right now at this moment.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Exclusive: Exclusive: Senator Cory Booker reflects on his historic, record-setting speech
Talking to our elections team here, watching the results come in, they have been saying that it looks like Susan Crawford's margins have been outpacing Joe Biden's margins in Wisconsin from the 2024 election. Excuse me, from the 2020 election. Joe Biden, of course, won Wisconsin in 2020. So we shall see. But again, we've got less than 30 percent of that vote in now.
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Exclusive: Exclusive: Senator Cory Booker reflects on his historic, record-setting speech
And so we'll be watching that closely as it comes in. Republicans in Wisconsin have already succeeded in making Wisconsin one of the states where you have to show a valid photo ID to vote. Republicans are worried that if they lose control of the Wisconsin Supreme Court tonight, that voter ID law could go away.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Exclusive: Exclusive: Senator Cory Booker reflects on his historic, record-setting speech
So this year, Republicans also decided to put a measure on the ballot to enshrine that voter ID law into the state constitution. So to make it basically so as to make it harder for the state Supreme Court to take it away. Telling me NBC News projects. that the voter ID requirement has passed.
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Exclusive: Exclusive: Senator Cory Booker reflects on his historic, record-setting speech
Again, this is only with about 21% of the vote in in Wisconsin, but NBC is projecting that the voter ID requirement, again, this isn't a new voter ID requirement in Wisconsin, but it is enshrining it, rather than just being in state law, it would be in the state constitution, which would make it harder to rescind. We're also watching the race for superintendent of public schools in Wisconsin.
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Exclusive: Exclusive: Senator Cory Booker reflects on his historic, record-setting speech
That race is also technically nonpartisan. But Democrats in Wisconsin have thrown their weight behind the incumbent. Her name is Jill Underly, while Republicans have been supporting her challenger, who's a charter school advocate named Brittany Kinzer. At this hour, looking at the results that we've got thus far in that race.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Exclusive: Exclusive: Senator Cory Booker reflects on his historic, record-setting speech
last night, Senator Booker referenced the late Congressman John Lewis, civil rights icon, a mentor to many Democratic lawmakers, including Senator Booker. Congressman John Lewis famously advised getting into what he called good trouble. Senator Booker began his stand by saying that's what he intended to do.
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Exclusive: Exclusive: Senator Cory Booker reflects on his historic, record-setting speech
We've got just over 21 percent of the vote in and the Democratic backed candidate, the incumbent superintendent of public instruction, is leading the Republican backed charter schools advocate, her challenger in that race. But again, just over 21 percent of the vote in that race. And so we'll be watching that closely. We're going to be following all these races closely all night.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Exclusive: Exclusive: Senator Cory Booker reflects on his historic, record-setting speech
We are starting to get in big chunks of vote. We'll bring you new developments as we get them. Watch this space. Here's a real headline that appeared in The Washington Post today about our nation's national security advisor. Quote, Waltz and staff used Gmail for government communications, officials say. I should tell you that MSNBC and NBC News have not verified this reporting.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Exclusive: Exclusive: Senator Cory Booker reflects on his historic, record-setting speech
A National Security Council spokesman tells us tonight that Mike Waltz, quote, has never sent classified material over his personal email account or any unsecured platform.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Exclusive: Exclusive: Senator Cory Booker reflects on his historic, record-setting speech
But this, of course, follows reporting about Mr. Waltz's Signal Group texting about war plan scandal and the revelations this weekend from The Wall Street Journal that that was not the first time Mr. Waltz had convened Trump cabinet officials in a group chat on Signal, including reportedly about other military operations, not just the airstrikes in Yemen.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Exclusive: Exclusive: Senator Cory Booker reflects on his historic, record-setting speech
As this story has unfolded of top Trump administration officials discussing sensitive national security materials on group chats, I have to mention that it has gone almost unremarked upon that at least some of them have confirmed that they were participating in those chats from their personal devices, their personal phones, which are almost certainly less secure than official government issued devices for anything, let alone forthcoming military operations.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Exclusive: Exclusive: Senator Cory Booker reflects on his historic, record-setting speech
Meanwhile, today in the Senate, there was a confirmation hearing for Donald Trump's nominee to be the country's top military official, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Exclusive: Exclusive: Senator Cory Booker reflects on his historic, record-setting speech
This nomination and confirmation hearing were only necessitated because President Trump and his defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, fired the serving chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and other members of the military senior ranks. They fired everyone who was not a white man. As for Pete Hegseth, he took a trip to the U.S. Naval Academy today.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Exclusive: Exclusive: Senator Cory Booker reflects on his historic, record-setting speech
Ahead of that trip, he ordered the Academy to purge its libraries of any books with themes ostensibly related to diversity. The AP reports today that the Academy finished removing hundreds of books from its library before Pete Hegseth arrived in accordance with his order.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Exclusive: Exclusive: Senator Cory Booker reflects on his historic, record-setting speech
The New York Times reports that among the books the Academy was considering purging were the autobiography of Martin Luther King Jr. and a biography of Jackie Robinson. The Naval Academy also announced ahead of Hegseth's visit that it is ending the use of affirmative action in admissions at the direction of the Trump administration. Now, this is something special.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Exclusive: Exclusive: Senator Cory Booker reflects on his historic, record-setting speech
Because you might remember a couple of years ago when the Supreme Court ruled against affirmative action and university admissions, they specifically exempted America's military academies. They said America's military service academies were explicitly exempted from that ruling and they could continue to use affirmative action policies in order to maintain diversity in the ranks.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Exclusive: Exclusive: Senator Cory Booker reflects on his historic, record-setting speech
He began by saying he would disrupt the normal business of the Senate for as long as he was physically able because he sincerely believed the country was in crisis. Senator Booker started last night. He talked all night. He was still at it when we woke up today, delivering on his promise to disrupt the status quo any way he could.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Exclusive: Exclusive: Senator Cory Booker reflects on his historic, record-setting speech
as a matter of national security. Just a few months ago, a federal judge ruled that the Naval Academy could continue considering race in admissions because a diverse officer corps is important to America's national security. So by law, the U.S. Naval Academy can continue to consider race as one factor in admissions decision-making. An executive order from Donald Trump does not change the law.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Exclusive: Exclusive: Senator Cory Booker reflects on his historic, record-setting speech
They are not required to do this, but apparently the Naval Academy nevertheless decided to go along with Trump's order. I have to go along to get along. Thank you for watching. Thank you.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Exclusive: Exclusive: Senator Cory Booker reflects on his historic, record-setting speech
Thank you.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Exclusive: Exclusive: Senator Cory Booker reflects on his historic, record-setting speech
Thank you. Thank you.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Exclusive: Exclusive: Senator Cory Booker reflects on his historic, record-setting speech
Thank you for watching.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Exclusive: Exclusive: Senator Cory Booker reflects on his historic, record-setting speech
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The Rachel Maddow Show
Exclusive: Exclusive: Senator Cory Booker reflects on his historic, record-setting speech
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The Rachel Maddow Show
Exclusive: Exclusive: Senator Cory Booker reflects on his historic, record-setting speech
The Wisconsin Supreme Court race has implications far beyond Wisconsin. It's also the first statewide race since the November election, and it happens to be happening in the state that was the most closely decided among all the states that Trump won. Again, in Wisconsin, polls have just now closed.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Exclusive: Exclusive: Senator Cory Booker reflects on his historic, record-setting speech
Polls have just closed just now in Wisconsin, where a high-stakes Supreme Court election will decide the ideological split of that court that has implications for everything from abortion rights to voting rights to gerrymandering to potentially control of the United States House in Washington, potentially to the ultimate dispensation and integrity of the next presidential election.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Exclusive: Exclusive: Senator Cory Booker reflects on his historic, record-setting speech
Joining us now for his first TV interview since his record-breaking speech in the Senate, Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey, the new record holder for the Senate's longest ever speech. Senator, how are you?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Exclusive: Exclusive: Senator Cory Booker reflects on his historic, record-setting speech
Staying up 25 hours for any reason is a trying thing physically. What was different about the experience of it than what you anticipated? I mean, you stood by your fellow Senator Chris Murphy nine years ago when he did 15 hours. He described that today as a solidarity or a sympathy filibuster in that you stood with him during that time. So you've experienced some of the pain of this before.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Exclusive: Exclusive: Senator Cory Booker reflects on his historic, record-setting speech
But A, you're nine years older than you were then. And B, this was a lot. How was it different, and how much were you prepared for?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Exclusive: Exclusive: Senator Cory Booker reflects on his historic, record-setting speech
We will bring you results in that very important Supreme Court race as we get them in over the course of this hour. We're also watching the results from two special elections for Congress in Florida. Deep, deep, deep red districts where Florida Republicans had taken those seats by well over 30 points in both cases.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Exclusive: Exclusive: Senator Cory Booker reflects on his historic, record-setting speech
You used that phrase, take risks. You said repeatedly over the course of this filibuster, this speech, that you're motivated to do this by your constituents essentially challenging you to come up with something, to do something, to do something more than you thought you comfortably could do.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Exclusive: Exclusive: Senator Cory Booker reflects on his historic, record-setting speech
Can you tell us a little bit about the decision-making process that you went through about deciding to do this? Obviously, you kind of kept it under wraps. You prepared with your staff, but nobody publicly knew you were going to do this until you started it.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Exclusive: Exclusive: Senator Cory Booker reflects on his historic, record-setting speech
I don't know if you are conscious of how much this caught the attention and caught the imagination of the American people. I know that you're not using electronic devices on the Senate floor. You're not watching your TikTok numbers and your YouTube numbers and the C-SPAN. contemporaneous viewing numbers while you're there because you can't be.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Exclusive: Exclusive: Senator Cory Booker reflects on his historic, record-setting speech
But every time that I checked any form of media by which you could be live monitored, there were no less than tens of thousands of people watching in the same place that I was in that moment.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Exclusive: Exclusive: Senator Cory Booker reflects on his historic, record-setting speech
We're watching to see how far Democrats have been able to chase Republicans toward that finish line tonight as the polling numbers, excuse me, as the voting numbers, the voting totals in Florida continue to come in. New Jersey Senator Cory Booker, as I mentioned, will be joining us live in just a few moments, which itself is a miraculous thing.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Exclusive: Exclusive: Senator Cory Booker reflects on his historic, record-setting speech
What you've done with everything else that's going on with this administration and the horrific cuts of 10,000 people fired today from the nation's health agencies and all these other things, this is the biggest story in the country right now? You have captured people's attention for 25 hours.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Exclusive: Exclusive: Senator Cory Booker reflects on his historic, record-setting speech
And I'm wondering, for people who were moved by what you did, either among your Senate colleagues or just people who watched you from home, what do you hope they might do differently if they're moved by you and they feel the same sort of spirit that caused you to do what you did?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Exclusive: Exclusive: Senator Cory Booker reflects on his historic, record-setting speech
I'm listening to you and I hear you, but I'm also outside my body a little bit marveling at your cogency right now. I know that, I don't know if you know that you are still making sense, but you're still making sense and your sentences are still properly structured and it's starting to feel like a super human thing. I'm mindful of how much of your additional energy I'm taking right now.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Exclusive: Exclusive: Senator Cory Booker reflects on his historic, record-setting speech
Am I right that you wear one of those rings that monitors your
The Rachel Maddow Show
Exclusive: Exclusive: Senator Cory Booker reflects on his historic, record-setting speech
He'll be joining us for his first interview after his historic all day and then some speech on the Senate floor in Washington. Tonight at 7.19 p.m. Eastern, Senator Booker broke the record for the longest speech ever given by a United States senator. The previous record was set by arch segregationist Strom Thurmond. who tried to filibuster the Civil Rights Act in 1957.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Exclusive: Exclusive: Senator Cory Booker reflects on his historic, record-setting speech
Well, Senator, as I said, what you've done has captured the nation's attention and I think captured the moral imagination of this nation in a way that you were really demanding with what you did. And so I don't know what the outcome is going to be. You never know what the outcome is going to be of these things. I do know that if you don't do it, nothing's going to happen. And so I wish you rest.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Exclusive: Exclusive: Senator Cory Booker reflects on his historic, record-setting speech
And I think you should get checked out by a doctor. And I think you should hydrate. And I hope you get people to leave you alone for the next few hours.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Exclusive: Exclusive: Senator Cory Booker reflects on his historic, record-setting speech
Wow. Just after he hit the record tonight in the United States Senate, after he crossed that 24-hour, 19-minute threshold, you saw the applause there from the chamber. He set the all-time record for the longest anyone has ever held the floor in the United States Senate. In that moment, it was a surprise, at least to me, watching it live when Senator Booker announced that he would keep going.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Exclusive: Exclusive: Senator Cory Booker reflects on his historic, record-setting speech
But the very next thing he did after he broke the record is he said that he would take a question from his friend, the senator from Nevada, Catherine Cortez Masto. And in her question, she told him... You know, listen, Senator Booker, while you have been here holding the floor, there is a lot of news that has broken in the world.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Exclusive: Exclusive: Senator Cory Booker reflects on his historic, record-setting speech
And I don't know if you have heard about it because you have been holding the floor here for now 24 hours and 19 minutes. But she then told him some of the details about the absolute bloodbath of cuts. that Trump forced through today at the FDA and the CDC and the NIH and the other parts of Health and Human Services.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Exclusive: Exclusive: Senator Cory Booker reflects on his historic, record-setting speech
Senator Cortez Masto told Senator Booker on the floor tonight about Trump, for example, cutting funding for something called the Healthy Aging Program at the CDC. And that, you know, sounds woo-woo, right? Sounds something light, something that the Trump administration would certainly think expendable. You want to know what the Healthy Aging Program is at the CDC? No.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump is a repeat loser as his slash-and-burn rampage collides with U.S. law
Really happy to have you here. So these are Trump voters. These are people who voted for Donald Trump in this past election. They are all voters from Swing State, Michigan.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump is a repeat loser as his slash-and-burn rampage collides with U.S. law
Greensboro, North Carolina constituents of Republican Tom Tillis, who can hold a tune.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump is a repeat loser as his slash-and-burn rampage collides with U.S. law
For all the different ways that Donald Trump and his top campaign donor, defendant Elon Musk, are terrifying and turning off even their own voters, as we saw in those focus groups in Michigan, and all the ways they are terrifying and turning off and angering people who live in Trump Republican districts, for all the loss after loss after loss after loss, they are being dealt in the courts.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump is a repeat loser as his slash-and-burn rampage collides with U.S. law
There's one other element of what's going on with Trump that I want to point out here as a matter of... I just think this needs to be factored in more regularly when we talk about the public reaction to Trump, when we talk about public opinion of what he's doing.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump is a repeat loser as his slash-and-burn rampage collides with U.S. law
Because there is one thing about his presidency that... I mean, for all of the other unpopular and failing things about this young presidency, there is one thing about this presidency that is just... unprecedented in how radically out of step it is with the American people.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump is a repeat loser as his slash-and-burn rampage collides with U.S. law
There's such a difference between what Trump wants and what the American people want on one particular issue that I actually think it is not sustainable in normal small d democratic terms. So I just want to put this, I want to stick a pin in this because I think this is important now and it's going to get more important as things get weirder and weirder.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump is a repeat loser as his slash-and-burn rampage collides with U.S. law
This is from the NBC News poll that just came out yesterday. Americans were asked, in the war between Russia and Ukraine, with which of those countries do you sympathize more? Ukraine, 61% of Americans said, I sympathize more with Ukraine. Russia, the proportion of Americans who say, I sympathize more with Russia is 2%. 2% sympathize with Russia.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump is a repeat loser as his slash-and-burn rampage collides with U.S. law
Americans are asked, okay, well, that's where your sympathies are. Where do you believe the president's sympathies are? Where do you think Trump's sympathies are? Ukraine, 8%. Russia, 49%. Overall, Trump is underwater by minus 13 points on his handling of the war between Russia and Ukraine. significant majority of the public thinks that he is wrong in his handling of the Russia-Ukraine war.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump is a repeat loser as his slash-and-burn rampage collides with U.S. law
Americans ask specifically, hey, what's your idea, what's your view on Russia? The proportion of Americans who view Russia positively right now is 6%. The proportion of Americans who view Russia negatively is 68%. How about Vladimir Putin, the guy? How about him himself? The proportion of Americans who have a positive view of Vladimir Putin is 3%.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump is a repeat loser as his slash-and-burn rampage collides with U.S. law
The proportion of Americans who have a negative view of Vladimir Putin is 84%. Okay, so the American view on this is very clear. And the American people are very aware of how different Trump's view is to their own. All right, and this is, it's a statistical oddity. I'm not sure there's ever been anything like this before in presidential politics.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump is a repeat loser as his slash-and-burn rampage collides with U.S. law
But this is part of what the Trump presidency means. And it accounts for some of the weirdest stuff in it. I mean, they're, you know, today in the midst of all the other chaos that he is wreaking in our own government, right? They're today amid the news that they really are apparently going to go ahead with this change at Social Security.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump is a repeat loser as his slash-and-burn rampage collides with U.S. law
They're going to force 80,000 retired and disabled Americans every week to physically go in person to Social Security offices that they are also shutting down and firing people from by the thousands, as they announced today that they really are going to do that.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump is a repeat loser as his slash-and-burn rampage collides with U.S. law
They're today amid the disaster scene at FDA headquarters, where they told 10,000 people to show up at an office that has 6,000 parking places with no chairs or offices for most of them. And that's how they're going to run the FDA now. They're today amid the news that they've just, oops, fired hundreds of dam operators and engineers who operate the hydroelectric dams in 17 western states. Oops.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump is a repeat loser as his slash-and-burn rampage collides with U.S. law
accidentally fired all the people who keep the lights on and keep the dams safe there. I mean, there today, amid that sort of daily litany of that kind of wreckage, there's Donald Trump twirling his hair and spending two hours on the phone with his bestie, Vladimir Putin. Two hours on the phone, more than two hours on the phone.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump is a repeat loser as his slash-and-burn rampage collides with U.S. law
talking to his friend Vladimir Putin, who has, again, a 3% approval rating with the American people because the American people know who he is. But for Donald Trump, there is nothing Vladimir Putin has done that is wrong. There is nothing Putin has done that he disagrees with. And there is nothing Putin has asked of him that he has not given and more.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump is a repeat loser as his slash-and-burn rampage collides with U.S. law
I mean, literally, as soon as he got off the phone today, we got word via NBC News that Trump now would like the United States to give up its military leadership role in NATO. The American military command of NATO has been in force since Eisenhower. Trump's going to give it up. It's weird, right? He didn't campaign on that.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump is a repeat loser as his slash-and-burn rampage collides with U.S. law
So many of the weirdest things about the Trump presidency, in a Trump presidency that is deeply dissatisfying even to people who voted for him, right? For a Trump presidency where he's underwater on almost everything he's doing. For a Trump presidency where he's more deeply underwater on his signature issue of the economy than he's ever been in his entire life in public office.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump is a repeat loser as his slash-and-burn rampage collides with U.S. law
In a Trump presidency where he loses more times in court on a single day than most presidents lose in court in a term. The weirdest stuff that Donald Trump is doing seems to relate to his relationship with and affinity for a foreign dictator for whom the American people give approval ratings of 3%.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump is a repeat loser as his slash-and-burn rampage collides with U.S. law
I mean, Trump is now talking, he's now said multiple times in public, that our border with Canada is an artificial boundary. That's how he's described it, an artificial boundary. What is that? Where is that from? Well, that is the way that Vladimir Putin talks about Ukraine.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump is a repeat loser as his slash-and-burn rampage collides with U.S. law
It's not the way any American has ever talked about North America ever before, but Trump now talks about Canada the way Putin talks about Ukraine. I mean, as you heard those Trump voters lament at the top of the show, Trump is doing all this stuff he never campaigned on. He is talking about a US military invasion into Mexico. He is talking about a US annexation of Canada.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump is a repeat loser as his slash-and-burn rampage collides with U.S. law
He is talking about the United States going to war with Denmark, which means NATO, in order to seize Greenland. He has talked about wanting to seize Gaza. He has talked about wanting to seize Panama and has ordered the Pentagon to develop war plans for U.S. troops invading Panama. Where did all this come from? I mean, for all the stuff he's doing— At least a lot of it was in the campaign.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump is a repeat loser as his slash-and-burn rampage collides with U.S. law
Maybe people didn't believe him. You heard those Trump voters there saying, I didn't know he'd actually do it. But this is stuff he didn't talk about at his rallies. He didn't publish tweets about this stuff. He didn't air ads on it. He didn't campaign on it. You didn't hear Panama and Greenland and Canada in the campaign, did you?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump is a repeat loser as his slash-and-burn rampage collides with U.S. law
But it's apparently what he is planning on doing now that he is in office, while he is talking frequently and at exorbitant length with his friend Vladimir Putin, who the American people approve of at a rate of 3%. I think this has to be a bigger part of what we think of when we think about the American public's reaction to the Trump presidency and American public opinion about Trump's behavior.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump is a repeat loser as his slash-and-burn rampage collides with U.S. law
When that NBC poll came out this week, pollster Jeff Horwitt of Hart Research Associates, who conducted that poll along with a Republican pollster, Bill McInturff of Public Opinion Strategies, he said this about those Putin and Russia numbers and how differently the American people perceive Russia and how they believe their president perceives Russia.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump is a repeat loser as his slash-and-burn rampage collides with U.S. law
Hart said this, he said, quote, I cannot recall a moment in history when American public opinion and voters' views of a president, as to which country they are more aligned with, have been more in conflict with each other. The American public in conflict with its president on this point, which seems to be driving more and more of what this president is doing.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump is a repeat loser as his slash-and-burn rampage collides with U.S. law
The American people very clearly are very much against Vladimir Putin. The American president is very much for him. And that, amid everything else, is a test for us. Because in a democracy, that sort of divide should be unsustainable. That should be correctable by democratic means. Professor Tim Snyder joins us next.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump is a repeat loser as his slash-and-burn rampage collides with U.S. law
In northern Georgia, there's a town called Gainesville. It's not Gainesville, Florida. Gainesville, Georgia is small. It's home to about 47,000 people. Gainesville is also home to a regional office of the Social Security Administration, one of at least five Social Security offices in the state of Georgia that Donald Trump is trying to close, trying to get rid of. But look at this.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump is a repeat loser as his slash-and-burn rampage collides with U.S. law
Local residents in Gainesville, Georgia, just held as a protest a funeral for that Social Security office. They showed up in downtown Gainesville. They were all black as if it was a funeral. They held little coffins that said RIP Social Security.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump is a repeat loser as his slash-and-burn rampage collides with U.S. law
They also focused the bulk of their attention and their rhyming skills on their local Republican Congressman Andrew Clyde for his support for Trump and Elon Musk. See signs like this, Clyde lies as Social Security dies, and KKK lied dozes while Social Security closes, spelling Clyde with three Ks. And yeah, this is a relatively small protest, but Gainesville, Georgia is a relatively small town.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump is a repeat loser as his slash-and-burn rampage collides with U.S. law
The opposition to Trump is turning up in surprising places, in places that are doing it in their own totally independent, moving, and creative ways. Joining us now is Timothy Snyder. He's the author of On Freedom and On Tyranny. He's the Richard C. Levin Professor of History at Yale University. Tim, Professor Snyder, it's really nice of you to make time to be here tonight. Thank you.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump is a repeat loser as his slash-and-burn rampage collides with U.S. law
There's a lot that's going on that I want to talk to you about. But I wanted to ask you, now that we are this many weeks into it, what you make of the character of the opposition that we are seeing right now to Trump's presidency.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump is a repeat loser as his slash-and-burn rampage collides with U.S. law
What impact does opposition like this have and where do you watch for signs of its impact?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump is a repeat loser as his slash-and-burn rampage collides with U.S. law
One of the things that I have been sort of watching and not knowing what to do with, and I've been wanting to talk to you about it, is this very, very, very strong set of signals and public opinion polling from the American public about Russia, about disfavoring Vladimir Putin, disfavoring Russia under Putin, strongly siding with Ukraine over Russia in the Russia-Ukraine war.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump is a repeat loser as his slash-and-burn rampage collides with U.S. law
At so many of these protests, even in small towns and in red districts and all of it, unexpected places all over the country. You're seeing people with Ukraine flags and people making that a central point of the way they're protesting. You saw it in the protest against J.D. Vance. Go ski in Russia, you traitor.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump is a repeat loser as his slash-and-burn rampage collides with U.S. law
It seems to be really an animating thing for the American people, even though I feel like the punditocracy has been telling us for a long time that Americans don't care about anything beyond our borders. What do you make of that?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump is a repeat loser as his slash-and-burn rampage collides with U.S. law
And what do you think the clash ultimately will be between the American public having such a clear, strong, immutable opinion on that matter and the behavior of President Trump?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump is a repeat loser as his slash-and-burn rampage collides with U.S. law
crucial point and i think that's exactly right we have seen things in history in bad points in american history where we've had leaders influential people even elected to have been entranced by foreign dictators but the idea that the idea of how they would pursue that is that they would try to persuade americans to come along with them in that affection they would try to persuade americans to also be entranced by that foreign dictator in this case
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump is a repeat loser as his slash-and-burn rampage collides with U.S. law
That couldn't be further than the truth. It seems to be a personal connection. Timothy Snyder, I knew you'd know. Professor of History at Yale University, thank you for being with us tonight. I'd love to have you back soon.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump is a repeat loser as his slash-and-burn rampage collides with U.S. law
All right. More news ahead. Stay with us. So at the top of last night's show, we talked about a story that appears to be rapidly escalating and getting weirder and weirder each day now.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump is a repeat loser as his slash-and-burn rampage collides with U.S. law
It concerns the question of whether Donald Trump has now allowed his top campaign donor, Elon Musk, to start using armed force, physical force, against governmental or even non-governmental entities that Musk is trying to dismantle. The U.S. Institute for Peace was created by Congress during the Reagan administration. Officially, it's an independent nonprofit. It's not officially part of the U.S.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump is a repeat loser as his slash-and-burn rampage collides with U.S. law
government. Some of Elon Musk's doge people came to the Institute of Peace on Friday. They had FBI agents with them for some reason. They were refused entry, but then afterwards, a lawyer for the Institute told the New York Times that over the weekend, quote, the FBI threatened Institute employees over the lack of access to the building. She says the D.C. U.S.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump is a repeat loser as his slash-and-burn rampage collides with U.S. law
Attorney's Office got involved on Sunday night. The chief of the criminal division at the U.S. Attorney's Office in D.C. demanded access to the Institute's, quote, books and records. Quote, when the Institute resisted, he threatened a criminal investigation. We've asked the D.C. U.S. Attorney's Office for comment. We have not yet heard back. So that was Friday and then over the weekend.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump is a repeat loser as his slash-and-burn rampage collides with U.S. law
Then yesterday, Monday, Doge people arrived back at the U.S. Institute of Peace, quote, in a black SUV with government plates, escorted by what appeared to be private security who arrived in separate vehicles and were dressed in street clothing. Again, this institute is not a government agency. It's an independent nonprofit. Even its building is not a federal building.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump is a repeat loser as his slash-and-burn rampage collides with U.S. law
It's owned and operated by this institute. So, I mean, if someone was trying to break into your home or break into your office, what would you do? The institute did that. They called the cops. They called the police, the D.C. police showed up, and then the D.C. police escorted the Doge team into the building and kicked out the Institute's staff. What? The D.C.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump is a repeat loser as his slash-and-burn rampage collides with U.S. law
police put out this statement today saying that yesterday they were contacted by the U.S. Attorney's Office, who told them that the Doge people were the rightful leaders of the U.S. Institute of Peace and that the Institute's staff inside the building were unauthorized and refusing to leave.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump is a repeat loser as his slash-and-burn rampage collides with U.S. law
The Institute of Peace people then called the police to protect their building from Doge trying to break into it. Instead, the police helped evict them and let Doge in. We have previously talked about Doge invoking the U.S. Marshals. Now apparently they're using FBI agents and the D.C. U.S. Attorney's Office, some private security maybe, and now the D.C. police.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump is a repeat loser as his slash-and-burn rampage collides with U.S. law
These are Donald Trump voters, Donald Trump 2024 voters in Michigan. And they say they not only feel confused and frightened by what Trump is doing now that he's president, they're worried. In some cases, they're more than worried. They are convinced that this is all heading to the worst possible place.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump is a repeat loser as his slash-and-burn rampage collides with U.S. law
They're bringing all of this armed force to bear on what they're doing. which is arguably illegal. There was one other branch of government on the scene last night as all this was going down at the Institute. A member of Congress showed up to try to understand what was happening and do what he could. That member of Congress joins us live here next.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump is a repeat loser as his slash-and-burn rampage collides with U.S. law
So last night, the Doge team, run by President Donald Trump's top campaign donor, staged a hostile physical takeover of an independent nonprofit called the U.S. Institute of Peace. The U.S. Institute of Peace is not a government agency. Theirs is not a government building. They told the Doge staffers they could not come in, that they had no authority over them.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump is a repeat loser as his slash-and-burn rampage collides with U.S. law
Doge staff then physically forced their way in with the help of the FBI and the D.C. police. Congressman Don Beyer of Virginia heard what was happening and went there, along with his wife. He later wrote online, quote, I was at the U.S. Institute of Peace tonight to conduct congressional oversight over Doge's break-in.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump is a repeat loser as his slash-and-burn rampage collides with U.S. law
USIP is an independent nonprofit entity, and I will work to stop Doge's illegal power grab. Joining us now is Congressman Don Beyer of Virginia. Congressman, I really appreciate you being here to talk about this tonight. Thank you.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump is a repeat loser as his slash-and-burn rampage collides with U.S. law
What did you see last night when you went?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump is a repeat loser as his slash-and-burn rampage collides with U.S. law
What do you make of the use of all these various law enforcement agencies as part of these takeovers? We saw this with the U.S.-Africa Development Foundation. We saw it with some of the very early stuff that DOGE did, and we didn't know who they were saying they were going to call on to force their way in. But now it seems like they're invoking the U.S. Marshals, the FBI, and now the D.C.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump is a repeat loser as his slash-and-burn rampage collides with U.S. law
police as effectively their— muscle as their armed phalanx that will physically force them into places that they may not be legally allowed.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump is a repeat loser as his slash-and-burn rampage collides with U.S. law
The takeover and the shutdown of these agencies is being litigated in all sorts of ways and all sorts of places. I imagine it will be by USIP and US Africa Development Foundation. That one's already in court and all these other agencies.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump is a repeat loser as his slash-and-burn rampage collides with U.S. law
But this issue of what law enforcement is doing, turning up with guns and saying, we're taking you out of here physically, we're picking the lock, we're getting you out, and we're doing it on behalf of Doge, that seems like... an area for potential litigation. It also seems like an area for law enforcement oversight, congressional oversight, including of the D.C.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump is a repeat loser as his slash-and-burn rampage collides with U.S. law
police, the FBI, the Marshal Service, and anybody else who they're using in this capacity. Do you see any appetite for that among your colleagues on Capitol Hill?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump is a repeat loser as his slash-and-burn rampage collides with U.S. law
Yeah, and if somebody's calling the cops in D.C. for what is effectively a burglary or an armed assault, they should expect that the cops respond to it not on behalf of one political faction or another, but on behalf of a potential victim of crime.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump is a repeat loser as his slash-and-burn rampage collides with U.S. law
Congressman Don Beyer, Democrat of Virginia. Sir, thank you very much for your time tonight. And thank you for going there last night. Having your eyes on it is a really important part of this. Thank you.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump is a repeat loser as his slash-and-burn rampage collides with U.S. law
Yeah, well, you might yet. We'll be right back, sir. I have gone over my allotted time. I apologize. I will see you again tomorrow and every night this week at 9 p.m. Eastern.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump is a repeat loser as his slash-and-burn rampage collides with U.S. law
Those are all voters who voted for Donald Trump in swing state Michigan this past election. things on that dictator point they're making there, a couple things on that from today's news. Today was yet another really, really bad day for Donald Trump in court.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump is a repeat loser as his slash-and-burn rampage collides with U.S. law
Today, 24,000 people who Trump has fired from federal government jobs got reinstated thanks to a court order from a federal judge in Maryland. This is the lawsuit that was brought by 20 Democratic attorneys general in 19 states and Washington, D.C. This judge's order today forces the reinstatement of, again, 24,000 people that Trump has fired from 18 different agencies.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump is a repeat loser as his slash-and-burn rampage collides with U.S. law
The Education Department, the FDIC, which is the agency that provides insurance so your bank deposits are insured and you don't have to worry about them going away if you put your money in a bank. They're going after FDIC too. Yes, they are.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump is a repeat loser as his slash-and-burn rampage collides with U.S. law
The Commerce Department, Health and Human Services, Energy Department, the VA, Interior Department, Labor Department, USDA, General Services Administration, the Small Business Administration, the Transportation Department, the Treasury, the EPA, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, USAID. Again, 24,000 employees fired by the reinstated by that court ruling today.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump is a repeat loser as his slash-and-burn rampage collides with U.S. law
And speaking of USAID, additionally, on top of that ruling where USAID employees are reinstated by court order along with all those other agencies, a standalone blockbuster ruling from another federal judge today specifically ordering the Trump administration to reconstitute USAID and stop their efforts to shut it down, even to let them back into their building.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump is a repeat loser as his slash-and-burn rampage collides with U.S. law
The judge in this case said that the shutdown of USAID, quote, likely violated the United States Constitution in multiple ways. And in his very short two-page order today, he ordered that the Trump administration must reopen USAID. This is from the order. This is interesting.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump is a repeat loser as his slash-and-burn rampage collides with U.S. law
For purposes of the order, defendants refers to Elon Musk in his official capacity, the United States Doge service, and their officers, agents, servants, employees, and attorneys. Also, all individuals who at any time since the inauguration have served in the role of Doge team member or Doge leader, regardless of the formal personnel status of that individual.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump is a repeat loser as his slash-and-burn rampage collides with U.S. law
So the defendants here, everybody associated with Elon Musk and Doge. And those defendants are, quote, enjoined as follows.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump is a repeat loser as his slash-and-burn rampage collides with U.S. law
Defendants shall reinstate access to email, payment, security notification, and all other electronic systems, including restoring deleted emails for all current USAID employees and contractors, whether in active status or on administrative leave, meaning for all the people they've tried to force out of the agency, too. They need to be reinstated. They get all their emails back.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump is a repeat loser as his slash-and-burn rampage collides with U.S. law
They get all their systems back. Defendants shall provide written confirmation to the court that this requirement has been satisfied within seven days of the date of this order.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump is a repeat loser as his slash-and-burn rampage collides with U.S. law
Also, defendants shall not take any action or engage in any work relating to the shutdown of USAID, including placing employees on administrative leave, employee terminations, reductions in force, contract terminations related to any USAID employees or contractors. There can be no termination of USAID contracts or grants.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump is a repeat loser as his slash-and-burn rampage collides with U.S. law
no closures of USAID buildings or bureaus or offices, no permanent shutdowns or terminations of any USAID IT systems. Within 14 days, defendants shall submit to this court a written agreement among all necessary parties that ensures that USAID will be able to reoccupy its building, will be able to reoccupy USAID headquarters at the Ronald Reagan building in Washington, D.C.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump is a repeat loser as his slash-and-burn rampage collides with U.S. law
So they all get their jobs back, they get back in the building, they get all their emails back, and all electronic systems related to the operations of that agency, including all contracts and everything that applies both to employees and contractors, you need to stand that agency back up.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump is a repeat loser as his slash-and-burn rampage collides with U.S. law
Because what you have done to shut it down thus far, quote, likely violated the US Constitution in multiple ways. Now, this, of course, will be appealed. This will not be the final word. Even if Trump and his top campaign donor, Elon Musk, continue to lose this badly in court on this case, there's no telling how they'll try to finagle their way out of it anyway.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump is a repeat loser as his slash-and-burn rampage collides with U.S. law
But, you know, thinking about the dimmer switch between democracy and dictatorship, the courts here are drawing a line. And for all Trump and Musk's sadistic glee about calling these people who work for the U.S.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump is a repeat loser as his slash-and-burn rampage collides with U.S. law
government criminals and removing their name from the building and Elon Musk giggling and talking about putting it in a wood chipper, for all of their glee and sadism about this stuff, they're losing. They're losing under U.S. law. USAID, as of today, is hereby ordered back into existence under federal law.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump is a repeat loser as his slash-and-burn rampage collides with U.S. law
Trump was also soundly beaten in court today on his effort to try to throw trans service members out of the military. Now, the judge's ruling in this case is very measured and calm, but it just rips the Trump administration for even trying to say this is legal.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump is a repeat loser as his slash-and-burn rampage collides with U.S. law
Essentially, the judge ruled in this case today that the Trump administration never actually presented a real legal argument for why they think they're allowed to do this. They just asserted with no supporting evidence that anybody who's trans, by definition, is unfit for military service. And legally, that's not how it works.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump is a repeat loser as his slash-and-burn rampage collides with U.S. law
The judge said the service records of the plaintiffs, the people who brought this case, who all have stellar military records, the judge points out that the experience of just these plaintiffs in the military disproves that they are somehow manifestly unfit just because of who they are.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump is a repeat loser as his slash-and-burn rampage collides with U.S. law
So the judge issued an injunction against the Trump administration in enforcing this new ban on trans people serving in the military. And the judge wrote this in her ruling, quote, the court does not issue this preliminary injunction lightly. Judicial overreach is no less pernicious than executive overreach.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump is a repeat loser as his slash-and-burn rampage collides with U.S. law
But the coordinate branches must, by their mutual relations, be the means of keeping each other in their proper places. And that, of course, is a quote from the Federalist Papers from Federalist No. 51 by James Madison.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump is a repeat loser as his slash-and-burn rampage collides with U.S. law
The ruling continues, quote, The president and defendants could have crafted a policy that balances the nation's need for a prepared military and Americans' right to equal protection. They still can't. But this ban is not that policy. The court therefore must act to uphold the equal protection rights that the military defends every day. The court's opinion is long, but its premise is simple.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump is a repeat loser as his slash-and-burn rampage collides with U.S. law
It's awful. And these are all Trump voters. This is an Engageus focus group done with Trump voters this past week in Michigan.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump is a repeat loser as his slash-and-burn rampage collides with U.S. law
In the self-evident truth that all people are created equal, all means all. Nothing more, and certainly nothing less. End quote. Trump administration... just had a terrible day in the nation's courts today. They lost in court on their efforts to fire tens of thousands of people who work for 18 different government agencies. They lost in court on shutting down USAID.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump is a repeat loser as his slash-and-burn rampage collides with U.S. law
They lost in court on discriminating in this way against trans people. And Republicans supporting Trump are facing incredible blowback in their home districts from their own constituents. on all sorts of issues, on these and all sorts of issues. Look at this.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump is a repeat loser as his slash-and-burn rampage collides with U.S. law
In deep red Idaho yesterday, Republican Senator Mike Crapo tried to give a speech at a paid, ticketed event in Boise, but the real news story there that was covered by all the local Idaho news outlets who tried to cover it were the hundreds of people, including many military veterans, who turned up and stood outside the event protesting Senator Mike Crapo, demanding that he stand up and try to stop Trump from what he's doing.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump is a repeat loser as his slash-and-burn rampage collides with U.S. law
Idaho. Yesterday in deep red West Virginia, big crowds that were eventually asked to move by the building owner. They were asked to move their demonstration, what turned out to be a large demonstration outside the Morgantown, West Virginia offices of Republican Congressman Riley Moore.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump is a repeat loser as his slash-and-burn rampage collides with U.S. law
Again, West Virginia residents demanding that their Republican representative do more to stand up to Trump, do something to stand up to Trump. Georgia yesterday, middle Georgia, the top story in the local news last night was this yesterday afternoon.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump is a repeat loser as his slash-and-burn rampage collides with U.S. law
Constituents of Republican Congressman Austin Scott of Georgia, again, in this case, again, including many military veterans outside his office, demanding that he meet with them, demanding that he take a stand and try to stop what Trump has been doing. He wouldn't meet with them. He won't go to a town hall.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump is a repeat loser as his slash-and-burn rampage collides with U.S. law
So they convened in the parking lot outside Congressman Austin Scott's district office in middle Georgia. Up in Colorado, Colorado Springs, Colorado, Congressman Jeff Crank was made into a cardboard cutout. They had this one standing up by a microphone. They had this little one that they propped up on what I think was a little can of Folgers, maybe. Look at this.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump is a repeat loser as his slash-and-burn rampage collides with U.S. law
Hundreds of his constituents in Colorado Springs turned up to protest against Jeff Crank not standing up to Trump and refusing to meet with him about it. Look at this. This was also yesterday. Greensboro, North Carolina. A thousand people turned up for a Republican U.S. Senator Tom Tillis town hall, at which Tom Tillis was represented by an empty chair.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump is a repeat loser as his slash-and-burn rampage collides with U.S. law
A thousand people there in North Carolina mocking him for refusing to meet with them and for being too chicken to stand up to Trump on anything. And you know, nobody likes to be mocked. It's never a nice feeling, even if you deserve it. It's a whole different level of difficult to deal with though, when the people who are mocking you are a choir of little old ladies who are mocking you in song.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
Really happy to have you here. It has been another one of those days. NBC News reporting tonight that the Trump administration accidentally, oops, totally didn't mean to fire the people working on bird flu. No idea how that happened. Now the bird flu experts at USDA, they are trying to hire them back.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
The distance between what people think they voted for and what people realize they got ultimately does matter. Sometimes it's the only thing that matters. The Wall Street Journal yesterday spoke with Trump voters. who just one month in say they are now horrified by what they helped cause when they voted for Trump. Quote,
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
Stacey said, quote, when we said safer borders, I thought he was thinking, let's stop the drugs from coming into the country. I didn't know he was going to start raiding places. She said she didn't believe he would actually follow through on some of the more hardline policies he touted during the campaign.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
The 49-year-old Omaha, Nebraska resident said, quote, now I'm like, dang, why didn't I just pick Kamala? Emily Anderson from Duluth, Minnesota, categorizes her vote for Trump this year as the, quote, biggest mistake of my life. She is horrified by Trump's focus on deportations and use of Guantanamo Bay to hold migrants.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
She says that Trump has been too focused on, quote, ridiculous, flashy moves such as banning paper straws and renaming the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. Anderson's daughter's occupational therapist has stopped taking new patients over fears that the practice will have its federal funding dry up. Anderson said, quote, I feel so stupid, guilty, regretful. Embarrassed is a huge one.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
I am absolutely embarrassed that I voted for Trump. So as long as we still have a political process, right? Voters feeling that way. Trump voters feeling that way. Republican elected officials desperately seeking exemptions for their state from what Trump is doing to try to save their constituents from what Trump is doing, saying Trump's policies are bad if they apply in their state.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
Republicans finding Trump's actions and chaos and dysfunction not only damaging but indefensible, and they're being caught out at home, unable to defend the indefensible. If we still have a political process, that will matter in terms of what Trump can do and for how long. But there's one last thing I want to introduce into the mix here, one real wild card to watch for along these same lines.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
And it is something that isn't a bread-and-butter, home-district economic issue like these ones I've been talking about. It's actually a big-picture issue. But I think its political impact is something that's going to be important to watch because I think there's a chance it might be bigger than what they are expecting, at least what the pundit class is expecting.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
And part of the reason I think it's safe to say this is at least a wild card is because of how Trump has been talking about it. It's because it's been something that Trump has himself been so cagey and so palpably scared about talking about for so long that I think he knows the public really doesn't want to see this. And I'll show you what I mean. I'll show you what I mean here.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
Trump just today fired a huge proportion of their workforce. A senior engineer at the GSA, the General Services Administration, has also just resigned today, reportedly after trying to block people working for President Trump's top campaign donor, Elon Musk, trying to block one of Musk's guys from a system called Notify.gov. Notify.gov is a system whereby the government can contact you directly
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
It started with a simple yes or no question. Question. Have you spoken to Vladimir Putin since your election? Yes or no? Answer. I can't tell you. I can't tell you. It's just inappropriate. Trump interview after the election with Time Magazine. It's inappropriate? It's not appropriate for us to ask you if you've spoken to Putin? Or it's not appropriate for you to say that?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
That was December, about a month after the election. By that point, it was widely reported that Trump had taken calls from world leaders across the whole planet, like France and Israel and India, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the U.K., Ukraine, South Korea. Trump himself made a big deal of announcing before he was sworn in that he had spoken to President Xi Jinping of China.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
He said, quote, the call was a very good one. So he's bragging about and letting it be known about and sort of effusing about all of his calls with all of these foreign leaders all over the world, including very controversial ones like the president of communist China. But when you ask him if he talked to Putin, he says that's inappropriate. He doesn't want to talk about it.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
I don't know. I can't. I can't. It's being set up. Oh, that Vladimir Putin. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I can't. It's being set up. I'll be meeting with him. I can't say it's being set up soon. Again, that was Inauguration Day. Again, not the most forthcoming answer, but a little closer to getting an answer, maybe.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
That was only three days after the inauguration, three days later. Have you spoken to him? I don't want to say. Somebody getting so shy. Have you spoken to Vladimir Putin? I don't want to say. Why don't you want to say? Okay, how about another chance to clear it up?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
We will be speaking. We are already having discussions. So you've already spoken to Putin? I don't want to say that. I don't want to say? There's nothing that this man doesn't want to say. This man wants to say everything that has ever crossed his mind. He's the freest man in the world. But that I don't want to say, I can't say. It's not appropriate.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
That last clip takes us to the end of January by the first week of this month, February. Headline in the New York Post, exclusive. Trump reveals he's spoken with Putin by phone. Ah, no more Vladimir who, no more I don't want to say, no more how dare you ask me such an inappropriate question. Trump reveals he has spoken with Putin by phone.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
How many times have they spoken by phone, you might be asking? Quote, when asked how many times the two leaders have spoken, Trump said, quote, I'd better not say.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
You can't? Aren't you the boss? We do not play a lot of video on the show of President Trump talking. You might have noticed that. We have this sort of mantra that we try to follow, which is watch what they do, not what they say. So we don't play a lot of tape of him talking.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
But every once in a while, I think it is worth the exception just to see that this is something that he talks about the way he talks about nothing else. This is something that he's palpably scared to say or he feels constrained like he's not allowed to say. Why is he so scared of this one thing?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
Individual citizens can be contacted directly from federal agencies. It is a secure system. It's obviously very sensitive because it's your personal cell phone number that is linked to information about you and your status and involvement with any number of government agencies. Obviously, that's a very sensitive thing. But this man named Thomas Shedd, who until recently worked for Tesla...
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
See, he really doesn't want to say. He really, really, really doesn't want to say. He can't say. Who tells you what you can and can't say? Today, of course, we had the U.S. Secretary of State, the National Security Advisor, and whatever that real estate guy's job is. We had this high-level delegation from the United States meet in Saudi Arabia with the Russian government.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
ahead of what is promised to be a Trump meeting with Vladimir Putin very soon. No Western leader has met with Vladimir Putin since he invaded Ukraine three years ago. But the United States is not only apparently taking Russia's side now, changing sides in that war now, we're essentially changing sides in the world.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
The United States is now apparently against Europe and our allies of the last 80 years and for Russia. While the president repeatedly and eerily and in a very out of character way tells the American people he is not allowed to discuss that relationship or his communications with that leader.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
The political reality of this administration is going to be shaped by whether or not the people who oppose him oppose him strongly enough and effectively enough.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
The political reality of this administration and this presidency will be determined also by whether the people who voted for him are horrified enough by what they have wrought that they regret it and are willing to act differently and to speak out about their regret.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
The reality of this presidency and this administration will be determined in some part by whether or not Republican officials realize that their own survival as politicians depends not on sucking up to Trump, but by helping their constituents survive him. Strong evidence supporting all of those strikes against Trump so far, frankly. But this is one other thing to watch.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
If we really are now abandoning the free world and lining up instead with the world's dictatorships, and Trump is unwilling to even explain why, just watch. The American people are going to have some feelings about that, too. Just watch. The wave of high-level resignations in response to the Trump administration continues to swell.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
This is not people being fired by the Trump administration or people taking them up on their threat to resign or else. This is people resigning on principle after they tried to stop the Trump administration from doing something they're not supposed to be able to do.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
Late last week, you will remember, the Department of Justice had seven high-profile resignations, all of them over the decision by the Trump administration to drop corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams, which the Trump administration was demanding explicitly in exchange for a promise from Mayor Adams that he would help with Trump's anti-immigrant policies.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
To understand why this was such a Rubicon that principled, even conservative members of the Justice Department were not willing to cross, today a former U.S. attorney named Carol Lamb drew an analogy in an op-ed for The New York Times that I think is quite clarifying. She said, quote, imagine, for example, a president agreeing to hold off on bringing corruption charges against a U.S. senator.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
as long as that senator signs on to the president's agenda. In light of last week's events with the Adams case, this crass scenario has suddenly become plausible. I think Carol Lam is right there. In fact, you could imagine the Trump administration saying that for a whole swath of senators, you know?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
All the senators on this committee, we're going to bring sedition charges against all of you, unless you do X. What's the difference, right? After those seven resignations over the Adams affair last week, the question of what's actually going to happen to Adams in that case is up in the air.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
but was just installed inside the GSA by the president's top donor, Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla. Mr. Shed apparently demanded full read-write access to that Notify.gov system.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
New York's governor, Kathy Hochul, has been considering whether to use her unusual powers as New York State's chief executive to remove the mayor from office. Oddly, in New York State, the governor does have that power to remove the mayor of New York City. Today, she met with key city leaders for a discussion about that.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
Tomorrow, the federal judge that's been overseeing the Adams case has ordered both the mayor and federal prosecutors to appear before him in court and explain the rationale for asking that these charges be dismissed.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
That could end up being anything from a pro forma hearing to a real opportunity for that judge to grill the prosecutors about why they're taking this extraordinary action of dropping this case, particularly given that there's been all these high profile resignations from the Justice Department saying this is an unprincipled and potentially illegal thing to do. So we'll be watching that closely.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
But again, all of this comes amid these principled resignations from career prosecutors at the Justice Department. And today we got another one. And this one is unrelated to the Eric Adams case. Denise Chung is a veteran prosecutor. Until recently, she was head of the criminal division at the U.S. Attorney's Office in D.C.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
That's the same office President Trump has put under the auspices of a defense lawyer who was at January 6th himself and whose clients included January 6th defendants. Today, Denise Chung, a career prosecutor in that office, the head of its criminal division, resigned. NBC News reporting tonight, quote, veteran federal prosecutor resigns over bank freeze order from Trump appointee.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
Bank freeze order. In her resignation letter, Chung wrote that she was asked to review documentation to open a criminal investigation into whether a contract had been unlawfully awarded during President Biden's administration. The Washington Post was first to publish the resignation letter. In the letter, Ms.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
Chung said that she did not believe there was sufficient evidence to freeze bank assets in this matter and that she lacked the legal authority to do so. She apparently was nevertheless ordered to do it. She says she was then asked for her resignation.
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Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
When NBC News reporter Ryan Reilly asked DOJ for comment on that resignation, the Justice Department responded by saying this, quote, refusing a basic request to pause an investigation so officials can examine the potential waste of government funds is not an act of heroism, just a failure to follow the chain of command.
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Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
In response, the lead engineer in charge of that system, a GSA employee named Stephen Riley, apparently, quote, objected to Shedd's ability to view phone numbers and variable data for members of the public, information that Shedd, quote, would be able to download and store without anyone knowing.
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Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
It's unclear what they mean when they say a basic request to pause an investigation, since Denise Chung says she was actually ordered to launch an un-predicated investigation, not pause one.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
If the administration can order prosecutors to use the criminal justice system to shut down programs they don't like, to freeze the assets of people they perceive to be their enemies even before the courts get a chance to rule on the case, That would turn the Justice Department into a whole new toolset that a power-hungry president could use against his political enemies.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
What should a prosecutor do in that case if they believe that bringing such a case, bringing such a criminal matter, would be unpredicated? What should they do? Today, Denise Chung decided the only thing to do was resign. Joining us now is NBC News Justice Reporter Ryan Riley. Ryan, thanks for joining us tonight.
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Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
Let me ask if your reporting has advanced beyond what I've just explained or if I got any of that wrong.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
But just to bear down on this and get to the nub here, I think, particularly for people who aren't lawyers, who aren't necessarily steeped in what Justice Department protocol is, what she's saying is, I was ordered by political appointees to bring a criminal investigation that is not warranted by the facts.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
And as part of bringing that criminal investigation, they wanted me to seize assets in a bank account even though there's no reason to bring a criminal investigation which would warrant such an extreme step. That's basically what she's laying out, even though she's doing it in very lawyerly terms, as the grounds for which her resignation, she thought, was warranted.
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Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
Riley wrote to his colleagues that once he had obtained this information, Shedd, quote, could also grant the same access to others. He said, quote, we have not received a justification for this request, which makes it difficult to suggest alternative approaches that would accomplish Jed's goals while still being protective of personally identifying information for members of the public.
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Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
They did this with the National Nuclear Security Administration as well, which we talked about on last night's show. Now it's with the bird flu workers. Oops. What does this button do? Does anybody know what this button does? I thought I should ask because just a minute ago I just pushed it. Does anybody know what it does? Got any other buttons I can push?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
Yeah, and it's one thing to threaten to be a concierge prosecution service for the president's enemies, as you put it. It's another thing to actually be the prosecutor who has to demand that a bank seize assets when there's no factual predicate for that investigation that would lead to such a step.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
I mean, that's something that a judge will eventually review, and that prosecutor would ethically and professionally be on the hook for that, regardless of whether or not the U.S. attorney told him to do it. I mean, what they're asking these folks to do, I imagine this is not going to be the last resignation we hear about.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
NBC News Justice Reporter Ryan Riley, thanks for helping us understand this tonight. I really appreciate it. No problem. Thanks for having me. And actually, I'm the one who left the gloves there. So I'll be back. I'm going to go pick them up.
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Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
Kristi Noem, the new secretary of Homeland Security, thanking her boss in a commercial. The Department of Homeland Security says this will be a nationwide multi-million dollar ad campaign praising President Trump. And the multi-millions in question here are not like Kristi Noem campaign funds or Donald Trump campaign funds. It's official Homeland Security funds.
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Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
Taxpayer dollars to praise Donald Trump for his great leadership and to warn illegal immigrants to stay away because Donald Trump is so great. Your taxpayer dollars at work, dear leader ads that we're paying for out of Homeland Security funds.
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Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
Meanwhile, in the name of austerity and government efficiency, members of the CDC's public health team that has been responding to an ongoing tuberculosis outbreak in Kansas City, Kansas, they've been let go because, you know, got to pinch our pennies, got to be very efficient in the era of doge, doggy, dodgy, whatever they want to call it.
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Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
Riley said, quote, I don't believe I can operate a program and system without the ability to manage access to personally identifying information about American citizens. He said, quote, as a result, I have submitted my resignation to GSA. Today will be my last day.
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Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
Today, the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston closed abruptly. A sign on the door cited an executive order, and the library clarified in a statement that it had closed because of, quote, the sudden dismissal of federal employees at the JFK Library. By tonight, the National Archives had announced that the JFK Library will reopen tomorrow, but who knows?
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Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
It was a surprise to them when they had to close today. As you're getting ready to file your taxes, looking forward, hopefully, to a tax refund? I hope. Senior officials at the IRS have reportedly identified 7,500 IRS employees for possible firing right now. Less than eight weeks from when taxes are due.
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Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
USA Today offering its readers today this advice, quote, IRS cuts may mean refund delays and long waits. File early before potential cuts, CPAs say. While all that has been playing out in the news today, there's also the matter of what exactly is happening at the Social Security Administration.
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Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
At the Washington Post and NBC News, it was reported last night that the acting head of the Social Security Administration had suddenly resigned after some kind of clash with Elon Musk's team over access to sensitive data in the Social Security system. Now, this story, again, first reported last night. It's still evolving tonight.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
The events so far are worrying to a lot of people who depend on their Social Security checks. We've got a former leader of the Social Security Administration joining us to sort out what we know next. So many Americans depend on their Social Security as their primary income, as a big piece of their income.
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Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
That monthly check and the expectation that it'll be there when you retire, it's a foundational thing for literally tens of millions of Americans. Joining us now is Martin O'Malley. He was Social Security Commissioner during the Biden administration. We called him today.
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Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
about these concerns that we learned about this weekend with the acting head of Social Security Administration resigning, apparently in some sort of clash over access to data and systems at the Social Security Administration, access that the people who were demanding it apparently weren't supposed to have. Mr. O'Malley, it's really nice to see you. Thanks for being with us tonight.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
Do you know what the Doge group was trying to access at Social Security that would have caused the administrator to resign?
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Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
The lead engineer at the General Services Administration trying to protect your personally identifying information linked to your cell phone number and resigning in protest when he couldn't do it.
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Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
Given the regulatory structure and the statutory structure that you just described, is this actionable? If they've improperly accessed this information, is that the basis for legal action against anybody who's done it?
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Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
In resigning on these terms, he has let we, the public, know that President Donald Trump apparently wants to give your cell phone number and personally identifying information about you, including any of your interactions with any federal government agency, to a random guy from Elon Musk's car company.
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Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
Only got about a minute left here, Mr. O'Malley. I'm sorry for that. But I just wanted to get your reaction to the claims by the president's top campaign donor and now today by the president himself that Social Security has millions of fraudulent recipients, millions and millions and millions of fraudulent dollars going out the door every day. What's your reaction?
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Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
Martin O'Malley, who is Social Security Administrator under the Biden administration. Sir, thank you very, very much. That's going to do it for me tonight. I will see you all again tomorrow night and every night this week at 9 p.m. Eastern. In the meantime, you can find me at bluesky at matto.msnbc.com.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
And wants to give him this information in a way that would allow him to walk out the door with it and give it to anyone else he wanted. So by resigning, trying to stop it, being unable to stop it, resigning in protest, and then explaining exactly why he resigned and what the problem was, he has let the public know that this has just happened to us, which itself is a mitzvah.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
But that wasn't even the highest profile or most shocking protest resignation today. That one would be another one from the Justice Department. And we're going to talk about that in just a moment with reporter Ryan Riley. He's been all over this story, and I'll let Ryan explain it in detail.
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Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
But in short, it appears that they are now ordering career nonpartisan federal prosecutors to bring at least one federal criminal prosecution of a Biden administration figure. A prosecution that that career federal prosecutor thought was unwarranted by the law. And it thus effectuated a new high profile principled resignation in Washington today. So we're going to get to that in a moment.
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Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
Demanding unfounded prosecutions. That's a thing. There's also another really unsettling element of that DOJ story and that resignation that has to do with money and them going after bank accounts that they're not supposed to be able to go after. We'll get to that story in just a moment.
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Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
One of the other things we're watching, though, as things get wilder and more off the chain with each passing day, is whether there is any sign of any limiting instinct that is coming from the Republican Party, of which President Trump is ostensibly the leader. Take, for example, Glenn Youngkin. He was once thought of as a Republican with a bright future in this country's politics.
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Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
He's the Republican governor of a purple state. He's the governor of Virginia. When the Republican Party briefly considered the possibility of running someone other than Donald Trump for president this last election cycle, Glenn Youngkin was seen as probably the most electable non-Trump choice that the Republicans could make. They didn't go down that road, though. They picked Trump.
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Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
And so Glenn Youngkin has melted back into the scenery. He's been plodding along as governor of Virginia in his final term in office. But in Virginia, you do have to consider politics along a slightly different timeline than everywhere else. And that's because Virginia has off-year elections. What that means is that Virginia this year will elect a whole new legislature and a new governor.
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Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
this year in 2025, just a few months from now, which means that Virginia election this year will be the first big partisan test of how Americans are feeling about the country and about politics and about the two political parties now that we've got Trump back in office. So imagine being a Republican governor of a purple state with that kind of pressure on you, right? And in Glenn Youngkin's case,
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
The Washington Post reports tonight that the Trump administration is considering a plan to incinerate $500 million worth of COVID tests that you've already paid for. It's not because there's anything wrong with these COVID tests. It's just because, I guess, you know, COVID tests. Icky. $500 million worth of perfectly good COVID tests that we, the taxpayers, already purchased. They are in storage.
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Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
His state also has over 145,000 civil federal government, excuse me, civilian federal government employees. 145,000 Virginians who are civilian government employees of the federal government. Even more people who work as federal government contractors. In fact, in his state, they get more federal contract money from the federal government than any other state in the country.
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Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
Why is Virginia so well-off? Well, it doesn't hurt that they get over $100 billion a year in federal contracts paid to various Virginia businesses and other entities. And, you know, that's fine for Virginia.
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Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
It's fine for the Virginia economy, as long as the federal government isn't now being run like a ketamine-fueled drive-by shooting and arson spree led by a 19-year-old who goes by the name Big Balls.
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Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
If that is, in fact, how the federal government is being run, and it is, then being the governor of a state like Virginia, which is so radically dependent on the federal government and federal contracting and federal funding, that's a problem. That's like going to bed and thinking you're a human and waking up in a burlap sack full of rabid minks.
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Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
That's like, oh, I guess our state isn't going to work anymore. You might remember that the first full day Trump was in office, he ordered an immediate and indiscriminate freeze of all federal funding. The day after that, Glenn Youngkin, governor of Virginia, poor thing, he wanted to do an event to announce a new round of Virginia school test results.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
And I'm sure that's what he wanted to talk about. What do you think people wanted to ask him about instead? Headline, Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin says voters asked for Trump disruption as fallout continues. Dateline, Richmond.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin had a message early Wednesday for everyone claiming President Donald Trump's on-again, off-again, on-again freeze on trillions of dollars in federal spending would create chaos. Youngkin told reporters at an event rolling out Virginia school test scores, quote, the steps that President Trump is taking are steps that he told everyone he was going to do.
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Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
A few hours after he spoke, the White House rescinded the memo ordering the freeze. A little after that, White House Press Secretary Caroline Lovett said, actually, the freeze is still coming. Youngkin's office did not respond to a request for comment about the changing status.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
So here's a Republican governor in a state where Republicans are going to have to try to get elected again this fall, in a few months, in a very purple state. And as Virginia residents are being mass-fired and having their livelihoods completely thrown into the air in a maelstrom of inexplicable chaos, he's like, I'm a Republican, so I support this. I support this. Yes.
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Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
He actually said at that event, quote, there may be some disruption to Virginians along the way. And I'm very empathetic to those concerns. We can get through this. But he also said he supports President Trump all the way. So, yeah, way to stand up for your people, Gov. We'll get through this. I have so much empathy. We'll get through this.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
And then later that day, they announced they were rescinding the funding freeze anyway. So he had to, that morning, get out in front of the cameras and just eat it politically. He has to say he accepts what Trump is doing to cause all of this harm to his state and the residents of this state.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
They send him out there to the cameras to have to say that, to put that on the record, and then they change their mind and reverse the decision anyway. Oops. Did I just push that button? Can I un-push it? Anybody know what this button does? After that first couple of days of the new Trump administration, understandably, Glenn Youngkin has not been poking his head above the parapet much since.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
He did try again today, however. He tried to do a press conference this morning about a looming winter storm barreling its way toward Virginia. In the ensuing four weeks since the last time he tried to talk about what Trump was doing to Virginia, You know, in the past four weeks, things have only gotten worse.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
Things at the proverbial crack house in Washington have only gotten more dangerous and more insane. But still, Glenn Youngkin, as a Republican, doesn't feel brave enough to say that he disagrees with anything that Trump is doing, right? I mean, if you're looking for that, you're looking for the vertebrates exhibit around the corner. This is something else. This is not that.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
They are stockpiled right now, set to be distributed for free to the American people in the event of another big uptick in COVID. But instead, the Trump administration apparently wants to destroy them because, you know, government efficiency. The Trump administration just today fired more than 10 percent of the staff at the National Science Foundation.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
And so here's the local press coverage on what Governor Glenn Youngkin had to do today. Dateline Richmond. Governor Glenn Youngkin said today that the state is preparing an aid package for Virginians losing their jobs in the Trump administration's gutting of the federal workforce. But he said the cuts are necessary.
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Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
In his first extended public remarks on the cuts, Youngkin told reporters that he feels deep concern for those who are anxious about their employment future as the White House purges people at almost every agency.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
Hundreds of workers at the FAA lost their jobs over the weekend, for example, and a sweeping elimination of workers ahead of a Tuesday deadline affected mapmakers and cancer researchers and FEMA staffers, among thousands more cut over the past few weeks. But Youngkin defended the Trump administration's actions
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Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
which disproportionately affect Virginia as one of the top states in the country for federal employment and spending with more than 140,000 federal workers. Even one of Youngkin's signature achievements, a computer science laboratory high school in Richmond, has been touched by the cuts with cancellation of a federal grant for a teacher residency program.
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Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
The governor said he wanted it known that, quote, we understand and we're here to help. He said the state, quote, will have the ability to support federal workers through any job dislocation. But the governor declined to provide details about what kind of help the state is prepared to offer. He said that when the plan is ready, quote, I want to communicate it in a package.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
We'll have a good one for you. Get back to me. I don't know what it's going to be, but it's going to be good. I don't know. It'll be great. We're going to come up with something.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
In the meantime, please report that I said that I support Donald Trump a thousand percent and also that I am working to figure out how to clean up the giant, deliberate mess he is making of people's lives and our economy in this state, for which I have a lot of empathy. Say that, too.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
even though I definitely a thousand percent support this infliction of pain on people who live in my state and even on myself, even though we've done nothing wrong. Can you get all that in the lead? Thank you, sir. May I have another? Can you put that as the caption? Did I mention that Virginia has elections this year? In just a few months?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
You feel like your Republican politicians in Virginia are looking out for you? So we're going to keep watching this dynamic. Republicans who can't actually bear what Trump is doing to their own states and to their own constituents, but they're too scared to say they're against it.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska asking for exemptions to Trump's cuts and actions specifically for Indian tribes in Alaska. Republican Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa asking for an exemption for Iowa farmers to the tariffs on Canada. Republican Florida Congresswoman Maria Elvira Salazar asking for an exemption to the indiscriminate deportation policies.
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Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
Republican Senator Katie Britt asking for an exemption on the massive cuts to scientific and medical research, saying, you couldn't possibly mean Alabama for those cuts, could you? Not Alabama. You want these cuts elsewhere, right? Republican Senator Susan Collins of Maine saying the same thing, saying, surely those cuts don't apply to the universities and labs in Maine.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
She said if it applies to the ones in Maine, that would be, quote, devastating. So certainly they don't mean Maine, right? They couldn't. Republicans just eating it in their home districts and their home states as their party's leader does things that are devastating to those states and to those constituents. And just seeing that in states all over the country is a lot of things.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
National Science Foundation was founded in 1950 to promote science and engineering and work on U.S. defense and public health. National Science Foundation provides a quarter of the federal support that goes for basic research at NASA. America's colleges and universities. It's how we fund astronomy observatories. It is how we fund our research stations in Antarctica.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump agenda stymied by principled federal workers as protest resignations mount
It gives me many, many feelings of many different kinds. But as a matter of political science, it's also important to watch in terms of what kinds of constraints this president, this administration might ever feel. Political scientists will tell you that one of the only constraints that matter on an ascending authoritarian is the constraints put on him by his own party.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
thanks to you at home for joining us this hour. Really, really, really happy to have you here. Man, there is so much to get to today. It has been such an incredible news day. There's so much to get to, and a lot of it is really terrible. To buoy ourselves for that, to get ourselves ready for that, you want to start with something, Fenny? Let's just do it. Let's start with something funny. Okay.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
We're expecting a relatively big protest, a big march for veterans and by veterans in Washington, D.C. this Friday, March 14th. Today, federal workers who Trump has fired were at the Senate office building in Washington protesting against what Trump and his top campaign donor, Elon Musk, are doing to the government. A number of Democratic senators supported them today in this protest on the Hill.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
Today, in New Jersey, people protested against Trump's immigration policies and against a proposed site for a new prison, a new detention center for immigrants that they want to put in at Delaney Hall in Newark, New Jersey. A big crowd of people turned out today to protest against that. Today, there was a very large protest in Tennessee, at the Tennessee state capitol.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
A lot of young people turning out there to protest against legislation in Tennessee that would block kids from schools. based on their immigration status.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
We continue to see ongoing protests in Republican congressional districts, like this one in Salisbury Township in Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, where constituents of Republican Congressman Ryan McKenzie are demanding, in this case protesting outside his office, demanding that Congressman McKenzie meet with his constituents, that he come back to his district and hold a town hall with them.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
So far, he is refusing to do so. And that dynamic is getting really interesting now as Democratic members of Congress and even Democratic candidates are starting to hold town halls in Republican districts because Republicans themselves are too scared to meet with their own constituents. And so Democrats are filling the gap. Democrats are holding constituent meetings
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
for Republican districts, people who are represented by Republicans but can't get their Republican representatives to meet with them. And that dynamic, we've got more on that story coming up in just a moment. That's getting really interesting in terms of Democratic versus Republican politics. This was the scene today outside the headquarters of the U.S.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
Department of Education as people protested against Trump's effort to dismantle and ultimately abolish the Department of Education. This protest today was this morning. I think Republicans have convinced themselves that this is a winning issue.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
closing the Department of Education, even though poll after poll shows that big majorities of the American public don't want the Department of Education to be abolished. Nevertheless, they apparently are going through with it. This protest in Washington, again, was this morning. This afternoon, the Education Department told its employees that they should not come to work tomorrow.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
Because sure, yeah, that guy would just pull up outside your apartment and beep, beep, come say hi.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
And then thereafter, they publicly announced that they're going to try to fire basically half the people who work at the Education Department tomorrow. More than 1,300 people they're going to try to fire out of their jobs at the Department of Education tomorrow. We're going to have more on that story in a moment. We'll be speaking with a civil rights lawyer at the Department of Education.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
She's also the president of the local union that represents people who work at the Education Department.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
with the attempted shuttering of the Education Department tomorrow, which, again, is a wildly unpopular idea with the American people, with Trump now going back again to the National Nuclear Security Administration for more cuts to that agency, more cuts to the people who keep our nuclear weapons from accidentally blowing up, with the shambolic, now just disastrous mishandling of this big measles epidemic in Texas,
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
By the vaccine conspiracy theorist who Trump put in as health secretary, is that measles epidemic now is over 250 cases and two deaths? with the increasingly bizarre news of the cuts that they're making to food safety, of all things, under the leadership of Donald Trump Jr.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
's hunting buddy, who Donald Trump thought was the best person to put in charge of food safety in this country, with all of these wildly unpopular things that they are doing every single day, even before you get to the president turning the South Lawn of the White House into a used car lot today to try to sell cars for his top campaign donor, I mean, with all of these...
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
just vile and unpopular and embarrassing things that they are doing. I think it's safe to say that more protesting against Donald Trump is probably to be expected. But you know, I think even if the opposition to Trump keeps growing and spreading and deepening the way it has been, I'm not sure we're gonna see a crowd like this anytime soon. This was the crowd that turned, look at this.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
This was the crowd that turned out in Mexico City day before yesterday, on Sunday, to cheer for the president of Mexico, who is experiencing a huge upsurge in popularity in her own country since Trump started attacking Mexico with this tariff stuff and she started standing up to him.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
It is making her way more politically powerful than anybody thought she could be at this moment as her country absolutely rallies in her patriotic defense. Similarly, the president of Ukraine is going through a huge boost in his own domestic popularity, his own popularity in Ukraine absolutely spiking as the people of Ukraine consolidate their support for him in the wake of Donald Trump and J.D.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
Vance embarrassing themselves by haranguing President Zelensky in the Oval Office. Today there was a monumental, hugely important, just historic meeting of the military chiefs of what are now the most important countries in the West. It was a meeting basically of the army chiefs of the whole free world today. We naturally were not invited. This is the lead from Reuters about that meeting today.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
Quote, more than 30 army chiefs among Washington's closest allies met in Paris today without their U.S. counterparts seeking to take on more responsibility over the Ukraine war, given President Donald Trump's unpredictability and rapprochement with Moscow.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
The closed-door gathering of 34 army chiefs, including NATO alliance and EU members, as well as Japan and Australia, was a rare and possibly unprecedented convening without the United States. The free world is still standing up for Ukraine. They are just doing it now without us. Today in Saudi Arabia... Trump administration announced a plan for a ceasefire in Russia's war in Ukraine.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
Secretary of State Marco Rubio meeting for some reason in Saudi Arabia. I don't know. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said this plan is all good to go. As far as he's concerned, he just has to go run it by Russia now. You know, sit tight here for a second. I got to go check with my manager. I'm sure it'll all be fine.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
Apparently, the way the Trump administration is running their deal by the big guy, running the deal by the boss, is that they're sending Donald Trump's real estate friend, Steve Witkoff, to go meet personally in Russia with Vladimir Putin to get his OK, to run the whole end-the-war plan by Putin. Steve's going to do it. Steve's great, you know, I mean, Steve's a real estate guy.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
So I'm sure it's gonna go great. I mean, if there's anybody who has consistently proven themselves to be really savvy, really on top of things, really unfoolable, when it comes to the Russians, it's these New York real estate guys, right? Am I right? They're so savvy. They never get fooled. So I'm sure this will all be fine. They never get played. They're so savvy.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
Those Russians will never know what hit them. Nice tie. You like my tie. Dasvidaniya. Got lots of news to get to tonight. Congressman Mark Pocan is here. We've got the latest on the news that they're going to try to close the Department of Education tomorrow. Got lots to come. Stay with us. In politics, a long line of people usually means a long line of voters waiting to cast a ballot.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
But this long line, this is constituents who are actually waiting their turn to speak to one person. They're waiting in line to try to speak to their member of Congress, who is Republican Kevin Kiley. They are waiting in line in Congressman Kiley's office in Nevada City, California, so they can each, one by one, Ask him to please hold a town hall with them.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
I'm sure we've got one scheduled. I'm sure it's, don't look at my website. Can we schedule something? Don't schedule something. With no official town hall on the schedule, the local Indivisible chapter plans to hold their own town hall for Congressman Kiley's constituents. They're going to do that on March 20th. Perhaps Congressman Kiley will teleport in or something.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
Meanwhile, check out what's happening in New Jersey. For several weeks now, people in the congressional district represented by Republican Congressman Tom Kaine have been asking him to hold a town hall as well. So far, no joy. But Somebody's going to fill that vacuum.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
Now that the Democratic former congressman who used to hold that seat, who lost that seat to Tom Kane in 2022, he says he's ready to go and he'll do it.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
Former Democratic Congressman Tom Malinowski has now announced that he will hold an in-person town hall in his very competitive former district on Thursday night this week because the Republican who represents that district now is apparently too afraid to do it. Consider also what's going on in Wisconsin.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
Republican Congressman Derek Van Orden has been refusing to hold a town hall with his constituents as well. This weekend, Democratic Congressman Mark Pocan, who represents a neighboring district, he stepped in to hold one this weekend to simply, essentially to take in the slack.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
Congressman Pocan arranged to hold the town hall that he had this weekend way over in the corner of his district, about as close as he could get to the neighboring Republican district that's represented by Derek Van Orden. He invited Congressman Van Orden to show up. The congressman did not, but his constituents did.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
The local news station WKOW wrote up the event like this, quote, In a town with just over 1,000 residents, hundreds of people packed the village of Belmont's community building Saturday. The building was filled to capacity with people even waiting outside and peeking through the windows to hear Congressman Mark Pocan.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
Congressman Pocan may have inspired more than a huge turnout in that corner of his district. Today, the Democrat who narrowly lost to Republican Congressman Derek Van Orden, today she announced that she's going to go up against him again this November. Rebecca Cook is her name. As Congressman Mark Pocan put it this morning, quote, I think Derek Van Orden's morning just got bad.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
Joining us now is Congressman Mark Pocan, a Democrat of Wisconsin. Sir, it's nice to see you. Thanks for making time to be here.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
Tell me about the decision process that you went through about holding this somewhat unusual town hall in a corner of your district that's definitely a more Republican-leaning county, very close to the Republican-represented district that's held by Congressman Van Orden.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
I read some local press accounts of what was discussed at the town hall that you held and what kinds of issues people were raising with you. A lot of people were focusing on fears about those potential Medicaid cuts, given how many people in Wisconsin use Medicaid as their health insurance. And that's kids, that's old people, that's everybody in between.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
What would you say emerged as the sort of themes that people were most concerned about and that would have talked to their Republican congressman about had he shown up?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
Yeah, people are smart. They can say, oh, we're not going to touch it at all. We're only going to deal with the fraud. We're only going to—but people are smart. And when they realize that all the supposed fraud evidence is all lies, it just—it means their skirt is showing a little bit here. Democratic Congressman Mark Pocan of Wisconsin, thanks for talking to us about this.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
And I'd love to stay in touch with you. I imagine this is going to be unsettling for your neighbor in that Republican district. I'd love to hear how things proceed there.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
Let us know.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
We've got more news ahead tonight. Stay with us. It started with a sort of mysterious notice this afternoon, a reference to security concerns that went out to all employees at the U.S. Department of Education. Quote, beginning today at 6 p.m., all education department offices will be closed for security reasons. Employees must vacate the building by that time.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
Lest anyone tell you that we should trust Donald Trump on dealing with the Russians. Not getting played by the Kremlin. Him definitely having lots of savvy when it comes to dealing with Russia. Lest you hear that argument. You can just think of that beautiful moment of Donald Trump enthusiastically pumping the hand of the Gorbachev impersonator. I like your tie. Oh, you like my tie?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
This notice also said all education department offices would be closed tomorrow and no employees would be allowed in. Now, this notice had no details about what these security reasons were. But it was pretty clear what was coming. After all, we've been through this a couple times already now.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
It was just over a month ago when people who work at USAID got an email saying their office would be closed the next day and they shouldn't come to work. That was right before Trump set about completely dismantling that whole agency.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
Employees at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, same thing, sent a very similar note saying their office would be shut for the following week, just as the White House ordered the entire agency to stop all of its work. And sure enough, tonight, just after the 6 p.m.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
deadline for Education Department workers to vacate their offices because of some security concern, Trump Education Secretary, the billionaire pro-wrestling executive Linda McMahon, announced that her department is cutting its workforce in half. They will begin firing more than 1,300 people from the Education Department tonight. And then, of course, she went straight to Fox News.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
I know there's a lot of terrible things to talk about. I want to start with something funny from the 80s. So it's 1987. A real estate developer in New York City named Donald Trump takes his first trip to Moscow in what is then the Soviet Union. By all accounts, he kind of falls in love with the place. He decides he wants to build a hotel there or something. Who knows?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
You know, if you find yourself starting to feel a little tug on your heartstrings for those 1,300 people who are out of a job tonight at the Education Department, don't worry. We kept all the good people. We kept all the good people. The 1,300 people who are getting fired tonight, they just aren't—they're not good. They're not good. Who is this for?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
The vast majority of the American people do not want this. A poll earlier this month, Reuters-Ipsos, earlier this month found that fully 66% of Americans oppose abolishing the education department. Nearly half of Americans strongly oppose it, while only 16% are strongly in favor of it.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
This is not something Americans want, but Donald Trump is trying to do it anyway, apparently starting with firing fully half the people who work at that agency tonight. One of those people fired tonight. A union leader at the Education Department joins us live here next. Stay with us.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
This is from NPR on the Trump administration's announcement tonight that they're firing 1,300 people from the U.S. Department of Education. Quote, Minutes later, AFGE Local 252 told NPR that Sharia Smith was laid off, along with all five of the chapter's other union officers. Joining us now is Sharia Smith. She's president of the union, representing 2,800 employees at the Education Department.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
She served our country as an attorney for the Education Department's Office for Civil Rights until this evening. Ms. Smith, thank you so much for being here on tonight of all nights. I am sorry for what you're going through.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
Donald Trump later said he totally didn't fall for it at all. You definitely knew that was an impersonator. Sure. Sure you did. Judge for yourself. So there's that. We'll come back to that in a moment. But the news today really has just been astonishing. After yesterday's massive trillion-dollar dive in U.S.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
Is it the case that your whole office is being closed and your colleagues, all of your colleagues at your office are being fired as well, the whole thing?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
I know that this has all just happened in the last few hours, but with what they've been telegraphing about their plans for the Education Department, I know that you and your union colleagues and your colleagues at work more broadly have to have been expecting the worst.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
Do you believe that your union or that the employees more broadly have recourse to fight these firings and have recourse to fight their efforts to abolish the department?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
You know, Linda McMahon, in explaining what she's doing here, has also said that the American people should expect that there will be no interruption to any of the programs that the Education Department administers. I have to ask you if that is possible with what they're—even just what they're planning tonight, with half the workforce gone overnight.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
Sharia Smith is the president of the AFGE union that represents Education Department employees. She's an attorney for the Education Department's Office for Civil Rights. She was fired this evening, but as she says, she believes that she and her colleagues have absolute recourse to fight back against these firings as illegal. Ms.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
Smith, again, I am sorry for what you and your colleagues are going through tonight. Thank you for taking the time to talk us through it. And please stay in touch with us as this proceeds. I know this won't be the last we'll be hearing from you.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
All right. Good luck to you. We'll be right back. All right. Thanks for being here with us tonight. I will see you again tomorrow and every night this week at nine o'clock Eastern. In the meantime, you can find me on Blue Sky. I don't know if you have Blue Sky yet, but I'm there and I like it. I think you should try it. I'm on Blue Sky at matto.msnbc.com.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
stock markets because of Trump's tariff chaos, today he was not at all chastised by yesterday's market reaction. His pronouncements and mumblings on tariffs got even more chaotic and incoherent, and the Dow dropped yet another 500 points today. And then at the end of the day today, after two days of that, Republicans in Congress did something truly amazing.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
I had complained previously about the fact that if you wanted to post a video clip on Blue Sky, you could only post up to one minute because that was the restriction they had, you can now post up to three minutes, which makes it way more useful for circulating news clips and stuff that's happening in the news that you want people to see in a journalistic capacity.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
So I'm very grateful to Blue Sky for upping that time limit to three minutes. It makes it even more useful for reading the news. Thanks.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
Republicans are facing this political situation now, right, where the markets are tanking. Economists are forecasting a Trump recession. Literally, he inherited an economy that was the envy of the world. And in less than two months, Wall Street's in a tailspin, and economists are upping their predictions of a U.S. recession by double digits per day.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
So Republicans are facing a political situation in which their party appears to be doing this, right? The U.S. economy looks like it's being destroyed for fun by Donald Trump because someone once told this guy a thing he didn't understand about tariffs. And so now he's doing this and real people are feeling the pain. But here's the thing.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
The way Trump is able to put these tariffs on-off, on-off, up-down, postponed exceptions, no exceptions, on-off, on-off, the reason he's able to change these ruinous policies as quickly as he can pronounce them is because he declared an economic emergency that gives him the power to unilaterally declare these tariffs. That kind of emergency, though, it also has kind of an eject button.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
When you declare that kind of emergency, Congress also gets the power to call the emergency off to stop the president from doing this. So Congress could just vote and declare this so-called emergency to be over, and then Trump would no longer have the power to single-handedly destroy the U.S. economy in the way that he has been.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
So because of that, because Congress has the power to call off the emergency, taking away Trump's tariff power, Democrats in Congress planned to make Congress vote on that exact thing. They planned to force a vote.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
So Republicans, who mostly say they don't like tariffs, Republicans would be forced to either go along with the tariffs anyway because Trump is doing them, or they'd cast their vote to stop Trump from doing these tariffs. What would Republicans do confronted with the need to make up their mind on a vote like that, right?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
How would they deal with not just the prospect of opposing Trump, which inherently makes them cry and hide immediately, but then on the other side of it, the other side of that vote is this very real pain and loss of money. And, you know, they and their constituents and the businesses in their district are all feeling and facing it's real.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
The following year, 1988, Donald Trump is back in New York, and the leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, is going to come to New York. He's coming to New York to participate in the United Nations General Assembly. And on the occasion of that visit, Mikhail Gorbachev coming to New York City, Donald Trump decides to invite him over, because he's going to be in town.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
So Republicans in Congress have the power to stop Trump from doing what he's doing on tariffs. What will they do with that power? The Democrats are going to force them to take a vote on this. What are they going to do with that power? Headline. Republicans quietly cede power to cancel Trump's tariffs, avoiding a tough vote. Cede power.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
They literally had the power to stop Trump from doing something that is hurting the country materially every single day. They have the power to stop him from what he's doing. And so what did they decide to do with that power? They decided to give that power away so they no longer have that power, so they don't have to decide what to do with it.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
House Democrats had planned to force a vote on resolutions to end the tariffs on Mexico and Canada, a move allowed under the National Emergencies Act, which provides a mechanism for Congress to terminate an emergency like the one Trump declared when he imposed the tariffs on February 1st.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
That would have forced Republicans, many of whom are opposed to tariffs as a matter of principle, to go on the record on the issue at the time when Trump's commitment to tariffs has spooked the financial markets and spiked concerns of reigniting inflation.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
But Republican leaders today, on Tuesday, slipped language into a procedural measure that would prevent any such resolution to end the tariffs from receiving any vote this year. They're literally ceding their power, giving it up. We don't want that power. And it gets better.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
In order to give up their power, in order to save themselves from the terrible dilemma of whether or not to cast a recorded vote— on whether or not Trump should be allowed to keep hurting the country on purpose. In order to avoid having to cast a vote on that, Republicans had to figure out some way out of this trap.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
They had to come up with some way out of the provisions of this national emergency law. I mean, the national emergency law says Congress can end the emergency. He declared a national emergency in order to give himself the ability to proclaim these tariffs. The national emergency law says if a resolution to end the emergency is introduced in Congress, Congress must consider that.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
They have to start the process of voting on it within 15 days. So now we know Democrats are introducing that resolution. That starts the clock ticking. That means Congress is going to have to vote on this 15 days. Tick tock. In order to get around that binding requirement in the law, what did Republicans do?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
The whole rest of the Congress. I am not kidding. Quote, Each day for the remainder of the 119th Congress shall not constitute a calendar day for the purposes of this emergency declaration. The New York Times tonight called it a, quote, particularly unusual contortion. Republicans in Congress, quote, essentially declared the rest of the year one long day.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
so that 15 days will never elapse and they will never have to vote. And that is how the Republican-led Congress voted to give away its own power to Donald Trump so hopefully no one would know that they were actually responsible for not stopping him when they could have. Think it's going to work? Think nobody's going to notice what they did?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
You know, even though Mikhail Gorbachev is the leader of the Soviet Union and Donald Trump is real estate guy in New York City, Donald Trump apparently convinces himself that Mikhail Gorbachev is going to do this. They're going to hang out. That, yes, Gorbachev has to go to the United Nations to do head of state things. But also, sure, since he's around, he'll drop by Donald Trump's apartment.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
I mean, with what Trump is doing right now, whatever happens to the markets and to your retirement account and to prices in the stores and the weakening of the dollar and failing small businesses where you live and failing large businesses the longer this goes on. I mean, just remember, Republican members of Congress had the power very simply to stop him from doing this.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
And they explicitly gave that power away so they wouldn't have to do it. One of the places where Trump is getting stopped every day and now with increasing frequency is in the courts. You might remember one of the very first court challenges to Trump that we covered here on this show in recent weeks.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
One of the very first people who Trump tried to fire and she challenged it in court saying, you don't have the legal right to fire me. I don't work for you. I'm taking you to court. One of those first challenges. early cases, you might remember from the show, was Gwynne Wilcox. She's a member of the National Labor Relations Board.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
And Trump announced right away, as soon as he was sworn in, that he was firing her from the National Labor Relations Board. And she said, oh, no, you aren't. You do not have that right. She immediately took him to court. came to us here on the show to talk about it when she filed that case against him.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
Well, that case just a few days ago became one of the many court cases that Donald Trump has lost and that the people challenging him have won. And in the case of Gwynne Wilcox, that led to Gwynne Wilcox going back to work yesterday in Washington at the headquarters of the National Labor Relations Board, where she has been reinstated because she fought him and she won.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
And when she got reinstated and she went back to work yesterday, the whole dang office came out to cheer for her and clap and celebrate that she beat Trump and she's therefore back at work and that agency is therefore back at work.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
National Labor Relations Board member Gwen Wilcox reinstated at her job at the National Labor Relations Board after she sued Donald Trump and won to challenge her firing and get reinstated. Today was another day of just loss after loss after loss for Donald Trump in court.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
Today, one federal judge ruled that Doge, the austerity and government demolition force run by the president's top campaign donor, Doge must disclose its records. They had structured Doge in such a way that they thought they'd be able to keep everything they're doing secret from the public, that no records would have to be shown to the public about their work.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
A judge today said that they must hand over all records of their work and right away. The judge said it was because of the, quote, unprecedented power and, quote, unusual secrecy of the group thus far. Also today, a federal appeals court again sided against Trump on his effort to defy and thereby change the part of the U.S. Constitution that says if you're born here, you're an American.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
Federal judges, one after another, have ruled against him on this. Today, it was a U.S. appeals court, just one level below the U.S. Supreme Court. Also today, a federal judge blocked Trump's cuts to hundreds of millions of dollars for teacher training. That ruling came in response to a lawsuit that was brought by eight attorneys general who are Democrats from Democrat-run states.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
Yesterday, a federal judge blocked Trump from deporting a young man who is a lawful permanent resident of this country. He has a green card. Trump sent immigration agents to arrest him, and they said they were taking away his green card, revoking his legal status in this country because he has been an outspoken critic of the war in Gaza.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
A federal judge will hear his case tomorrow and in the meantime has ordered Trump to not deport this young man. Yesterday, in the USAID case that had gone all the way up to the Supreme Court, where Trump lost in the Supreme Court and then it came back down, in that lower court that it came back to last night, Trump lost again.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
Donald Trump is so convinced of this that when a Mikhail Gorbachev impersonator comes to Trump Tower to make fun of the whole situation, Donald Trump himself comes out of Trump Tower onto the sidewalk and greets the Mikhail Gorbachev impersonator as if he is the real Gorbachev, who's really there to come see him, the real leader of the Soviet Union.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
That federal court judge in that case ruling that Trump is not allowed to just unilaterally undo things that Congress has done by law. It's an important constitutional ruling. This is the case that's about funding for foreign aid programs, funding for services that have already been provided.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
In the form of foreign aid, the judge now says the Trump administration has to start paying those outstanding invoices at a rate of at least 300 invoices per day. They must do it. The National Endowment for Democracy has now announced that its funding has started up again, thanks to that court order that stopped the Trump administration from blocking those funds.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
So, I mean, that's not even all of that. It's just like a slice. There's a zillion ongoing court cases trying to stop the most blatantly illegal things that Trump is doing. And every day, what we're seeing is that those proceedings are mostly cutting against him. And yeah, we don't know how all of these cases are going to work out in the end.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
But for now, he's being stopped in court one way or the other every single day of the week and sometimes twice on Saturdays. The American people continue to show up and say no to what he's doing in significant numbers.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted
Yesterday, we saw a bunch of protests at VA medical centers all over the country, people protesting against Trump's huge cuts to the VA already and the larger cuts that he has planned. That includes this protest in Eugene, Oregon, at the VA medical center there. Also, there was a protest yesterday at the VA in Parma, Ohio, in Northeast Ohio.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
This is going to be a really good show. I'm glad you're here tonight. Thanks for being here. So this was Washington, D.C. today, ahead of the big snowstorm that is rolling into Washington right now. Tonight, that is a snowstorm big enough that it's already canceled some of the action we thought we were going to be watching late into the wee hours tonight on Capitol Hill.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
Are you going to be closely monitoring this situation, ensuring that the Treasury Department maintains its strict procedures because of this extremely sensitive and confidential data that you understand the importance of protecting, even if you don't understand that maybe you shouldn't believe them when they give you false assurances about what they're doing with it?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
Honestly, the most important thing here in this news might be that all these Republican senators and all these Republican members of Congress right now feel compelled to write these letters, to come up with some kind of explanation to their constituents for what Trump is doing. And they feel compelled to do that because their constituents are inundating them with complaints and concerns about it.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
Because that's what's happening right now in the United States of America. The people are not having it. This weekend, 1,500 people turned out for a single protest Trump and Musk meeting at a church in downtown Santa Barbara. The organizers figured they had plenty of space. They knew they could fit 450 people inside. They thought that would be plenty.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
Well, they filled up the 450 seats in the church and then another thousand plus people showed up and filled the church courtyard and then they filled the surrounding sidewalks. In Columbus, Ohio, where I just showed you those images from the big protest at the Tesla dealer in Columbus, Ohio, they too had what they thought was going to be a normal, indivisible meeting this weekend.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
They filled the church that they had booked for that meeting wall to wall, and then they stuffed the overflow as well. Columbus, Ohio. Stuff's happening. And the pushback is real, and it is in places you might not expect it. And as always, it is getting results. Can't win if you don't play. And sometimes the pushback gets big results. Sometimes it gets small results, but it always gets something.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
Today, for example, the National Park Service has caved. They've had to partially pull back. on their Trump hiring freeze. Democratic senators and Democratic members of Congress screamed bloody murder about the fact that the Park Service having this hiring freeze meant, among other things, that the country's national parks were not going to be able to open this summer.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
Because the hiring freeze meant that the Park Service wasn't going to be able to hire the thousands and thousands and thousands of seasonal workers they have to hire every year in order to freaking run the parks. Oops! Now, this is only a partial rollback of that hiring freeze for the national parks, but it is a rollback.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
And it is in response to the hue and cry and people screaming bloody murder about it. Today, I should mention, was also another totally solid day in terms of Trump being stopped and tripped up in the courts. Now, I mentioned this Treasury case where we now have, in black and white, the Trump administration admitting...
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
in print that, yeah, they did give full read and write access to Elon Musk's little band of teen marauders when they accessed the most sensitive major payment system in the whole U.S. government at the U.S. Treasury. Their Treasury payment system access has now been blocked by a federal court twice. The Trump administration, importantly, has appealed that.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
And I can tell you tonight they have lost that appeal. Again, that's on access to the Treasury payment system. Today, a federal court also ordered the Trump administration to restore scientific data they took down off of websites at the CDC and the FDA. Also on the resign or else emails that they've been sending, threatening all federal employees.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
Last night at midnight was supposed to be the new deadline for the Trump administration to force all these or threaten all these federal employees into resigning. That deadline was supposed to be last night. There's a reason that deadline, like Friday's deadline, came and went. It's because the judge hearing that case has blocked that resign or else gambit again now.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
We reported here last night that the head of the Office of Special Counsel, not the one at the Justice Department, but the one that oversees whistleblower laws and protections in the executive branch, that official, the head of the Office of Special Counsel, had been fired by Trump, but the guy who was fired was challenging it in court.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
Well, today, that firing has been blocked in court thanks to a federal judge. Also, the rip it down to the studs cuts to NIH medical and scientific research funding, which I should note is set by law. It's not just a president's idea that he can change when he wakes up on the wrong side of the bed. Those cuts have now been blocked twice by federal courts. How about USAID?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
Reverend William Barber, civil rights leader, also speaking there, Kenny Robertson, the national vice president of the American Federation of Government Employees. But this is a big protest today in Washington, D.C., in support of federal civil servants, the people who work in the U.S.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
The attempt to illegally shut down USAID as if, again, Trump can just do that with a whim, right? Let alone his top campaign contributor can do that with a whim. The effort to shut down USAID has now been blocked by the federal courts. And now today, a second lawsuit has been filed in federal court to force them to pay the USAID contractors who they have been refusing to pay.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
How about that overall federal funding halt that's been blocked by the courts as well? We've been reporting that the courts then had to rule against the Trump administration again after the Trump administration chose to defy the first order in that case.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
Well, now a federal appeals court has upheld those lower courts and told the Trump administration in no uncertain terms they must restore that funding. They are not allowed to freeze that funding and they are not allowed to defy the courts when the courts tell them they can't do it. And you know, again, thinking practically.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
Because symbolic victories matter, symbols matter, but practical victories are better. And in terms of thinking about how all these things work together, just let's take a little bit of a case study, the Department of Education.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
You might remember, in terms of protests in Washington, you might remember last week, very dramatic day, at the headquarters of the Department of Education, Democratic members of Congress and senators raced down to the Department of Education to stop the Trump administration's plans to try to potentially close it down on the fly, to get into all its sensitive computer systems.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
Weird, supposedly self-proclaimed security guards not wearing uniforms physically blocked members of Congress from getting in there. That was last week.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
Democratic members of Congress are now threatening that if Republicans go ahead with plans to try to unilaterally and illegally shut down the Education Department, Democrats in Congress will refuse to help Republicans do absolutely anything in Congress. And that might sound like a sort of one threat. That might sound like no big deal.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
But Republicans have such a tiny majority in the House, they need Democratic help to do pretty much anything. And yes, that includes needing Democratic votes, undoubtedly, to keep the government open and running at all past this time next month.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
If Democrats in the Senate are going to say no unanimous consent, no yes votes on any nominees, we're going to make you stay up all night and hold the floor for all these things. We're going to make everything go as slow as possible. We're going to grind this thing to a halt. They're using the powers of the Senate to do that.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
Members of the House, Democrats in the House don't have the same toolkit that that that Republican excuse me, they don't have the same toolkit that Democrats have in the Senate, but they do have a toolkit. And with a margin as slim as it is, in the House with Republicans having such a tiny majority. They know they can't do anything without at least a few Democratic votes.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
government, a support for them and also a protest in defiance of what we're seeing from the Trump administration to try to effectively destroy as much as they can of the federal government.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
Democrats are now saying, you want to shut down the Department of Education, you're not going to get any Democratic votes or any Democratic help for anything. We're going to bring this place to a halt. And you know, what does that mean? at the Department of Education, right?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
Musk and his random team of JV hackers started to announce the cancellation of contracts at the Department of Education today. On what authority? Democratic members of Congress soundedly alarmed at the press that this was happening today.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
While that was happening today, a federal judge heard the lawsuit that will try to kick Doge and his Musk minions out of the Department of Education the way the courts have told them to get out of all of these other agencies. And so you've got direct action. You've got legislation threats effectively. You've got threats in terms of the political system on Capitol Hill.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
You've got the press being alerted to what's going on. You've got Democrats doing everything they can, including no business as usual to try to stop it. And no, I don't know if that will work to save the Department of Education as now this lawsuit tries to stop Trump and Musk from what they're doing. But I do know that they've got public opinion against them on this too, right?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
What Trump and Musk are trying to do to the education department, they don't have the people with them on this. A huge majority of voters in this country, more than 60% of all registered voters in this country, want the Department of Education to not be eliminated. And so I know that the public is going to fight them on this. I know Democrats are fighting like heck for it.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
I know that the courts are standing up against what they're doing here. And I know that people are in the streets in Washington and all over the country, even in places you wouldn't expect. Not just for protests, but turning out in huge numbers for organizing meetings, to organize everything they can to stop what Trump is doing.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
This follows an equally large and energetic protest yesterday, also in D.C., this one outside the headquarters of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, one of the agencies that Trump is trying to just unilaterally shut down, even though that legally does not appear to be within his power.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
And no, I do not know if it will work, but I do know that if you don't do it, they'll take all the ground they can. And I do know that if they are gonna get stopped, it's gonna take everything all at once. It's gonna take public opinion. It's gonna take Democrats being smart. It's gonna take organizing in the streets. It's gonna take organizing in clever and unexpected ways.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
It's gonna take people standing up and saying, no, we're not doing this. And I do know that from sea to shining sea, Americans are looking like they're willing to do that. Like they're willing to do what it takes to say no.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
Some of what is motivating this upsurge and this anger and this rejection of what they're doing, specifically related to Elon Musk, broke today in an important story in The New York Times. And that's what we're going to cover here next. Stay with us.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
So last night we talked about a sort of worryingly long list of actions the new administration has taken that just happened to benefit the president's top campaign donor. Everything from cutting the competition for Elon Musk's EV charging stations to firing investigators who were looking into his refusal to reveal his contacts with foreign governments.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
Well, today, the New York Times is out with new reporting that makes that list a whole lot longer and may help explain even more of some of the inexplicable firings and shutdowns that the administration seems to have prioritized in these first three weeks that they've been in power.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
For instance, we've talked here on the show about how Trump has hamstrung agencies that deal with workers' rights, including the National Labor Relations Board and the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission. Why did he go after those agencies? Well... He fired top officials at those agencies and didn't replace them. That makes it impossible for those agencies to do their job. Why did he do that?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
Why do we understand why that got a priority action from this administration? Well, I don't know, but the Times reports today that those agencies are handling two dozen workers' rights investigations and at least one big lawsuit alleging racial harassment at Elon Musk's companies. Ah.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
In similar fashion, Trump has also fired FEC Commissioner Ellen Weintraub, Federal Elections Commission, and effectively shuts down the FEC, which polices campaign finance violations. It may be helpful to know that that's the same FEC that was overseeing complaints from this last election about Elon Musk giving people million-dollar checks to, quote, encourage voter registration.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
This protest yesterday at the CFPB noted, among other things, people at that protest noted that this agency, for example, is handling hundreds of consumer complaints about Tesla, the car company owned by Elon Musk. This is an agency that would be overseeing the new thing Elon Musk just announced about his social media company, which used to be called Twitter.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
a lottery that he held, even though it is illegal to pay people to register to vote. Last week, we brought you the story of Phyllis Fong, the Inspector General for the Department of Agriculture. She was fired by Donald Trump. You might remember her story. After she was fired, nevertheless showed up to work the next day anyway, saying, my firing was illegal, and so I'm going to work.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
They marched her out of the office, apparently. Well, it turns out, in 2022, Phyllis Fong, quote, opened an investigation into Elon Musk's brain implant startup company, Neuralink, stemming from allegations that Musk's company had, quote, mistreated dozens of test monkeys. Mistreatment that Elon Musk himself denies.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
Why was it so important to fire the inspector general of USDA as one of your first actions? Well, I don't know, but that's what she was doing to bother Elon Musk. Trump has also fired the head of the Office of Government Ethics. That is the agency tasked with investigating right now whether or not the Doge project is itself a conflict of interest for Elon Musk.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
Again, we don't know what is motivating or setting the priority list for this new administration in its first three weeks.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
But there is a lot of overlap between the administration has done and what you might imagine is a wish list for the president's top campaign donor who's been allowed to essentially have his way with the federal government, including a lot of elements of the federal government that were complicating his business life or cramping his style.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
Joining us now is Eric Lipton, investigative reporter at The New York Times, lead byline on that investigation into Elon Musk's companies and their interactions with these agencies that have been hamstrung and attacked by the administration. Mr. Lipton, I appreciate you being here.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
So I spotlighted some of the things that you reported today in The Times. Let me ask if I misconstrued any of those or if there are any other examples that you turned up that you feel like our audience should know about.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
Yeah, and I mean, I know I'm just sort of cheerleading for your reporting here, but the examples that you found and that you document are really blunt. I mean, you say that you didn't find examples of him reaching in and directing the end of an investigation. But like, take, for example, him wanting to expand Twitter X so that it also involves a payment system.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
But ahead of that storm, this was Washington today. Tons of people in the streets. People turned out just outside the U.S. Capitol, Upper Senate Park. to protest, to support the civil service, support the people who work for the government, to protest our government being dismantled by President Trump and, of course, by his top campaign donor.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
That is something that would be regulated by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, by the CPFB. He announces that, or CFPB, He announces that a few weeks ago, then gets hand in control of a big portion of the U.S.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
He wants you now to be able to use that social media platform, not just for all your needs for posting about weird Nazi race science and threats against reporters or whatever. He now also wants you to be able to use that social media platform as the place where you do all your banking and keep all your money. Because, yeah, trust him, what could possibly go wrong?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
government, and then announces CFPB RIP, in effect claiming credit for personally killing that agency, which takes the agency off the board as a potential regulator for this thing he has just announced he wants to do with his business. I mean, I know that the I know that some of there's a lot of acronyms here and I know that financial conflicts of interest sound like a sort of esoteric thing.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
But this is like a cartoon Western level of of of cartoon Western explication in terms of the simplicity of how much his actions here have benefited his own business interests. I just feel like it's very, very, very clear.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
Eric Lipton, investigative reporter for The New York Times. Thank you for your reporting on this. Thanks for your clarity and for making time tonight to help us understand it, Eric. I appreciate it.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
It really is like, you know, if you were a bank robber and you also had the power to zero out the budget of the police department that was otherwise going to arrest you for robbing the bank. That's what this is. It's not complicated. This is our life. We'll be right back. In Stuttgart, Germany today, former Fox News weekend host Pete Hegseth arrived at U.S.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
European Command headquarters for his first overseas trip as defense secretary. There, he was greeted by U.S. military families loudly booing him. About two dozen people who live at the base gathered to protest Pete Hegseth and his new policies, including his crusade against racial diversity and his scapegoating transgender people and kicking them out of the military.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
Now, protests by military families against a defense secretary are extremely rare in any circumstances, but it's particularly impressive to attract a booing crowd of military families when you're not even three weeks into the job. Well done. Another member of the Trump administration is making his first trip abroad right now. That's J.D. Vance, the vice president. He was in Paris today.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
He announced that just weeks ago before he went to war against the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which is the government agency that would be overseeing and regulating that genius use Twitter as a payment service idea, which Musk just announced.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
He will next head to Munich, where more than 200,000 people turned out this weekend. One of the largest crowds Munich has ever seen. All protesting against that country's far-right nationalist party, the AFD, what Germans consider to be the inheritor of the Nazi party's legacy in Germany and which nevertheless counts Donald Trump, J.D. Vance and Elon Musk among its biggest fans and promoters. J.D.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
Vance will attend the Munich Security Conference. He'll meet there with NATO allies and possibly with Ukraine's president. On Ukraine, there was reporting last week that we were going to get a big announcement in Munich this week. President Trump has a special representative for Russia and Ukraine, Keith Kellogg.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
Keith Kelly was expected to present Trump's big plan at the Munich Security Conference, Trump's big plan to end the war in Ukraine. This big peace plan from Trump reportedly involves letting Russia win, letting Russia keep all the territory it has seized during its three year long invasion. And yeah, sure, that's one way to end the war. you Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for watching!
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
Now he's announced that he's killed that agency himself, effectively unilaterally, thanks to the power vested in him as the president's top campaign donor. That's not how the law works. He doesn't get a unilateral say in what government agencies we have in America.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
Thank you.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
And these people doorstopping the CFPB's headquarters yesterday in Washington, including lots of elected officials and lots of people who weren't elected officials. That was all part of telling him that he does not necessarily get his way here. You see some of the signs here. Hands off our CFPB. Elon is stealing your data. Thanks, federal workers. Stay strong. CFPB protects Americans.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
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The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
This is a good one. Dogs against Doge. Look at the eyes on that one. Who's a good dog against Doge? That was Washington yesterday and today. Outside of Washington, check this out. This was West Virginia today. Parkersburg, West Virginia. This is in the northwest part of the states right near the Ohio state line.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
And a few days ago on Friday, ProPublica reported that this little city in West Virginia was about to be the next target of Elon Musk's flying wedge of government saboteurs. Elon Musk's little group has been so eager to get their hands on the super sensitive Treasury, U.S. Treasury payment system, which sends out, you know, your Social Security check, your
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
secret payments from our intelligence agencies to their secret assets and sources abroad. They were so eager to get their hands on that sensitive U.S. Treasury payment system. But once they did that, they realized there was another really sensitive payment system inside the Treasury Department. And it's called CARS, C-A-R-S, the Central Accounting Reporting System.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
It's based at the Bureau of Fiscal Service inside the U.S. Treasury. And they have their offices in Parkersburg, West Virginia. And ProPublica just reported a few days ago, Friday, that Trump was sending Musk's team physically out to Parkersburg, West Virginia, to go mess with that system, too. And so over the weekend, West Virginia organized.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
The ACLU of West Virginia, the Democratic Party of West Virginia, the Democratic Party of Wood County, which is where Parkersburg is, people who work at that Treasury Department office there, people who know people who work at that Treasury Department office there, they all sounded the alarm. They decided to all get together.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
And then today was the day, the day those Doge guys were supposed to arrive in this little community in rural West Virginia. But look, there were like hundreds of people who turned out to say no. People who turned out with signs telling them and bullhorns telling them back off and not here, you're not doing it here.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
Quoting Woody Guthrie there, all you fascists bound to lose and defend our public workers and hands off the treasury. No kings in America. Doge is the real steel. Parkersburg, West Virginia, everybody, in the snow and the freezing rain and the wind today. West Virginia. We're also starting to see an upsurge of this kind of thing. You see the location here, the setting here?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
We're starting to see an upsurge in protests targeting Tesla dealerships, Tesla charging stations, just as sort of the corporate representation of Elon Musk since he owns Tesla. We talked last week about a seemingly impromptu protest at Tesla charging stations in the bitter cold up in Waterville, Maine. Well, now look, they're starting to happen all over.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
at a Tesla dealership showroom thing in Manhattan. Sort of a big crowd turned out there with very good signage. Stop Musk's coup. Elon Musk is not my president. This is a coup. Take away the keys from Elon. Don't buy swastikas. Also look in California, in San Luis Obispo, at a Tesla dealership there. More of the same, stop the coup, stop Musk, save our democracy, follow the rule of law.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
This is a pretty good one. Bad doge. I've been wondering if we should call, I mean, why do we say doge, right? Like, why are we playing along with the joke and their framing of it? Like, there's just as much of a case that we should be calling it doggy instead of doge. I don't know. That's a pretty compelling case. Bad doge. Another big protest at a Tesla site, this one in Ohio, in Columbus.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
There's a whole bunch of people there. The OHIO chant is useful for any occasion and any cause in Ohio. It works here. OHIO, Elon Musk has got to go. You can see the signs in Columbus as people turned out to protest against Elon Musk and his role in the Trump administration. Delete Musk. Boycott plutocracy. This one, just the word Elon with a big F in front of it. That's pretty good.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
Elon hands off private data, health info and tax money. It's another one. Not for nothing, but I will tell you, Forbes tonight reports that Elon Musk's personal wealth has dropped to 42 billion dollars this month. Really? As shares of Tesla have started to fall off a cliff.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
This follows earlier reporting that you might have heard here on the show about how Tesla sales all over the world, especially in Europe, are really dropping down by a lot, down like 40, 50, close to 60%. Tesla sales down by that much in the most important European markets.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
Tesla's stock price in February alone is down 19%, with one prominent analyst warning yesterday, quote, the negative downturn in consumers' perception of Elon Musk... could result in a headwind to sales for Tesla, whereupon Tesla stock dropped 3% in one day alone yesterday. And, you know, this is interesting in terms of thinking about the the sort of practical and political import of that.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
Reporters at the Bulwark got their hands on a bunch of letters sent by Republican members of Congress to their constituents about Elon Musk. Now, why are Republican members of Congress writing to their constituents about Elon Musk? It's because their constituents have been complaining to their Republican members of Congress about Elon Musk telling them this. This Musk business is sick and wrong.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
And what are you going to do about it? We can tell that is the tone of the communication about Elon Musk to the offices of Republican senators and members of Congress. We can tell that because of what we now see. in these letters published by the Bulwark, of Republican members of Congress, what they are saying back to their constituent in their own letters, right?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
Letters that they probably do not want read out loud on national news. So let's do it, right? Okay. Senator John Curtis, Republican from Utah, dear redacted, Thank you for reaching out to share your thoughts on the Department of Government Efficiency and Elon Musk's role in the new administration.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
It is important that Doge operates with appropriate oversight to maintain transparency, prevent conflicts of interest, and ensure its work remains focused on serving the American people. That's what Senator John Curtis, Republican of Utah, is telling his constituents. Well, is he actually working to ensure that?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
In the Senate, is he working to ensure they're maintaining transparency and preventing conflicts of interest? What are you doing about that, Senator? You're telling your constituents that's what you're working on. What are you actually doing? Are you willing to do it out loud to Elon Musk's face or just privately to a constituent and then you're not actually going to do it?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
Congressman Mike Flood, Republican of Nebraska. Here's another. Thank you for reaching out to my office regarding Mr. Elon Musk's efforts in the Department of Government Efficiency. Please know you're not the only one who has expressed concern. And I want you to know I hear you.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
The Treasury Secretary told me to my face that Mr. Musk absolutely does not have full access to the federal payment system. Although this process is stressful, I want you to know that I take my responsibility under the Constitution very seriously. Article 1 of our U.S.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
Constitution gives members of Congress the power of the purse to decide and direct spending following a successfully passed budget signed by the president. I intend to protect Nebraskans, says Congressman Mike Flood. I intend to protect Nebraskans and appreciate the fact that you feel the same.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
He assures his constituent that he's writing to, quote, Congressman Mike Flood of Nebraska might want to check if with the most recent court filing and the case that's trying to stop Musk from what he's doing at the Treasury. Because in the government's filings in that case today, they admit it isn't read-only access. It's full access. It's read and write access.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
And oops, guess they told you wrong. Are you going to make that up to your constituent who you calmly assured that everything was fine because you got told to your face it was read-only access? You going to correct that? Here, too, is Congressman Daniel Webster, Republican of Florida, assuring his constituents along the same lines.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
Quote, my staff reached out to the White House to clarify the work Musk and the engineers on the Doge task force are doing. Members of the Doge team are being vetted. Oh, are they? Are they? Are they? Members of the Doge team are being vetted to ensure qualifications are met. and then monitored by Treasury officials throughout their work.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
Treasury Secretary Scott Besant granted the Doge team access to the Treasury's payment system in a read-only capacity. Diddy, though, Congressman? You're banking on that. You're telling this to your constituents, Congressman Daniel Webster. But here is the government's filing in the Treasury case today.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
Quote, on the morning of February 6th, so Thursday, it was discovered that Mr. Ellis's database access to the Treasury payment system had been configured with read write permissions. That's not read-only, it's read-right. It's the exact thing you've been telling your constituents they're not doing. Turns out they're doing it.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
All these members of Congress are assuring their apparently quite angry, quite insistent constituents that none of that happened, definitely didn't happen. We got assurances. It happened. Here's Republican Senator Deb Fischer writing to her constituents in Nebraska. Thank you for sharing your concerns with me.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
I understand that the Treasury Department's payment system contains extremely sensitive and confidential data. It is critical for the Treasury Department to maintain its strict procedures to ensure that this data is protected. And what does Senator Fischer think? Are those strict procedures?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
Well, as she assures her constituent, quote, they have access to read only data from the department's payment system. But that's not true. at the government's own admission. And Senator Deb Fischer is not only telling her constituents, hey, calm down here, calm down here, it's read only. She's assuring her constituents that she is on this. She is all over it.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress
Quote, please be assured, I will continue to closely monitor this situation in the days and weeks ahead. Will you? I don't know how closely Senator Deb Fischer is monitoring it, but what she's telling her constituents is happening. to reassure them, to talk them down, tell them stop freaking out, is not actually what's happening. Are you going to send follow-up letters?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
Thanks to you at home for joining us this hour. Really, really happy to have you here. So this was not one of the hands off protests that we saw all over the country this weekend. This was a different thing. And you will see the wind was playing tricks with people.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
He's done enough in these 70, 80-whatever days to make a very large number of people mad at him and want to resist him for a million different reasons. And strategically, for the resistance against Trump, that's good. That's how you get more than 1,400 protests in all 50 states, including not one but a bunch that hit 100,000 people or more.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
of the 1,300 people in the town who showed up this Saturday to march in Sackets Harbor and to demand the return of that mom and her kids. This is from WWNY Local Channel 7, which covered the march. noting the children were students in the Sackets Harbor School District.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
And in all of these protests in all 50 states, there was no violence. There was no vandalism. There were no reported arrests of any protesters anywhere. In one town in Indiana, there was one report of one guy arrested who was a bystander, but then they let him go and that was it. This was just a massive show of American people standing up peacefully saying, no way, nope, we are not having it.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
And no, we don't know what the direct impact of what these protests will be, what these protests will ultimately do. You almost never see that, right, as a direct consequence of a rally, right? You never know exactly what it's going to do.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
That said, there is a family that is coming home today to Sacketts Harbor in New York after almost that entire town showed up on Saturday to demand that they be returned. But everyone from Palm Beach Gardens near Trump's golf course in Florida to Anchorage, Alaska, to the huge crowd that turned out in Salem, Oregon, to the big crowd that turned out in Frankfort, Kentucky. I mean, look at this.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
To the huge crowd that we saw, massive crowd that we saw in Minnesota and St. Paul at the state capitol there.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
I can tell you one of the consequences of these people turning out in so many places this weekend and in such great numbers, one of the direct consequences we absolutely can measure is that everybody in all of these places knows that if they themselves are upset or worried or mad or scared about what this administration is doing, they know they are not alone.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
We, the whole country, know that the people are not just taking things lying down. The people are now proving that they will show up and they will do it everywhere. And likely, frequently. This is a point that I haven't heard made all that widely in the wake of these protests.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
But I think one of the important things strategically about the fact that this wasn't just one big protest in Washington, D.C. this weekend. I mean, it was a very big protest in Washington, D.C. It was over 100,000 people in Washington, which is a big deal. But the fact that it wasn't just Washington, that Washington was just one protest among many,
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
is actually, I think tactically, one of the smart things that the organizers of this weekend's protest did. Because holding disparate protests all over the country, not just one big protest in one place, means that people can do this again and again and again.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
I mean, you look at really effective protest movements against rising authoritarianism in countries like Poland, where the population essentially rose up and took their democracy back through frequent mass protest. One of the things you realize about mass peaceful protest movements fighting against authoritarian takeover is that they have to stay peaceful and they have to be relentless.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
At this rally on Saturday, calling for the return of the family, demonstrators carried American flags and signs saying things like, hands off our kids and return the children. It was the local Democratic Party in Jefferson County, New York, that organized this rally.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
They have to frequently, frequently, frequently protest again and again and again. And it is hard and it is expensive to get yourself to travel to some faraway capital to protest if the protest is always in the capital.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
But it's not hard or expensive to get yourself to your town square, or to the downtown in the city nearest you, or maybe even to your state capital, even if you have to do it time after time after time. And when we have seen it work against rising authoritarians in European countries, And all over the world, frankly, it has been and the protests have been recurrent.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
And I believe that is what we are about to start seeing in the United States of America, because this was April 5th. But it looks like it's going to happen again in two weeks, on April 19th. Saw you there on Saturday. See you there two Saturdays from now. Sustainable, repetitive protests.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
peaceful, non-violent, big tent, everyone welcome demonstrations with, yes, kids there, also dogs, also old people, also righteous indignation and fear and sadness, and also music and funny signs and a determination to outclass, to outlast, and to ultimately put down a would-be authoritarian revolution. Persistence.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
In Reuters' Ipsos polling last week, the proportion of the American public who said they strongly identify with the MAGA movement is 11% of the population. The proportion of the American public who says they do not identify with the MAGA movement at all is 52% of the population. In the Marquette University poll that came out last week, Elon Musk's approval rating is underwater by 17 points.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
Americans say Trump's tariffs will hurt them rather than help them by a margin of 30 points. Americans say they are against Donald Trump closing the Department of Education by a margin of 30 points. Americans say they are against Trump's threats to annex Canada and make it the 51st state by a margin of 50 points.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
We've also seen Democratic governor of New York, the Democratic governor of New York, Kathy Hochul, also getting involved in this case. She put out a statement saying she, quote, cannot think of any public safety justification for ICE agents to rip an innocent family, including a child in the third grade, from their Sacketts Harbor home.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
What Trump is doing and what he most wants to be known for is not popular, is deeply, deeply unpopular. But protesting against him sure looks like it's popular. Expect more of it. We've got a lot to get to tonight. We've got the Supreme Court taking action on the bizarre Alien Enemies Act case.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
There's new fresh hell when it comes to what Trump is doing to Social Security and new fight back against it to talk about. We've got a lot to get to tonight. Stay with us. I remember on Friday we showed you people protesting outside a federal courthouse in Maryland. That was during a court hearing on the case of a Maryland father, a man named Kilmar Abrego Garcia.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
He was driving to his mother's house with his nonverbal autistic five-year-old son in the car with him when he was stopped and arrested. The Trump administration then flew him to a notorious high-security prison in El Salvador, despite a previous court order specifically forbidding them from sending him to that country.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
He's not known to be a member of this Venezuelan gang that Trump said he wanted to send all the gang members to that prison. He does not have a criminal record. The Trump administration has even admitted that they made a mistake by deporting him to that prison. But even so, they argued that they were under no obligation to get him out and bring him back, nor did they intend to.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
Well, on Friday, as people protested outside, the judge in that Maryland courthouse ruled against the administration, saying that, in fact, they had to go get Kilmar Abrego-Garcia and get him out of that prison and bring him back to the U.S. by 11.59 p.m. Eastern time tonight, Monday night.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
Then today, as we got closer and closer to that judge's deadline, the Trump administration went to the Fourth Circuit Federal Appeals Court to try to get the order to return Mr. Abrego Garcia put on hold. The appeals court did not give them what they wanted. Then they tried again. They appealed all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
Chief Justice John Roberts today did agree to put the looming midnight deadline tonight on hold pending further action from the Supreme Court. So what that means specifically for right now is that the U.S. government doesn't have to bring Mr. Abrego Garcia back from El Salvador tonight by midnight. Who knows whether they were even trying to do so.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
Within the last couple of hours, we also got another decision from the Supreme Court on a different case involving the Trump administration flying people to that same prison in El Salvador. This was a case challenging the Trump administration's citation of a wartime power, the Alien Enemies Act, as their justification for flying people to that El Salvador prison.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
She says, quote, that is not the immigration enforcement promise to the American people. It is just plain cruel. I want this family returned to New York State and believe ICE needs to immediately answer for these actions. The principal at Sackett Harbor Central School marched in Saturday's rally.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
The Trump administration says they are gang members. Whether or not there's any evidence to support those claims, they said that the— The Alien Enemies Act allows them to send gang members to a foreign prison, even though it's not a wartime. We're not in wartime and we're not at war with that gang, but they've tried to piece it together as their justification for what they did there.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
Well, tonight, in a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court decided that the Trump administration can fly people to that El Salvador prison using the Alien Enemies Act, but only if it notifies the people who are slated for deportation with enough time for them to challenge their removal in court. I said it was a 5-4 decision. The three liberal justices were in the minority here.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
Justice Amy Coney Barrett sided with the three liberal justices in this decision. We're still working out exactly what this will mean for people being deported under that Trump order. In her dissent, though, Justice Sonia Sotomayor made reference to Kilmar Abrego-Garcia. writing, quote, what if the government later determines that it sent one of these detainees to the Salvadoran prison in error?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
The government takes the position that even when it makes a mistake, it can't retrieve individuals from the Salvadoran prisons to which it has sent them. The implication of the government's position is that not only non-citizens, but also U.S.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
citizens could be taken off the streets, forced onto planes, and confined to foreign prisons with no opportunity for redress if judicial review is denied unlawfully before removal. Sotomayor says, quote, history is no stranger to such lawless regimes, but this nation's system of laws is designed to prevent, not enable, their rise.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
Supreme Court also has ruled that any challenge to deportations under the Alien Enemies Act has to happen in the U.S. state where the person who's making the challenge is being confined, is being imprisoned. That may mean that the federal court case in Washington, D.C., in this matter, is going to have to move to a new federal court in Texas. We shall see.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt, who has been handling this case on behalf of the ACLU, told us this tonight, quote, we are disappointed that we will need to start the court process over again in a different venue, meaning Texas.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
But the critical point is that the court rejected the government's remarkable position that it doesn't even have to give individuals meaningful advance notice to challenge their removal under the Alien Enemies Act. Gelernt says, quote, that is a big victory. Joining us now is Simon Sandoval-Moschenberg. He's the attorney for the man mistakenly deported from Maryland, Kilmar Abrego-Garcia.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
Mr. Sandoval-Moschenberg, thank you so much for joining us tonight. It's a pleasure to have you here.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
Let me start by getting your reaction to the Supreme Court's decision in this other case and ask if you have any sense of what it might mean for your client.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
She said she was there just representing herself, not representing the school, not representing any union. But she said, quote, we graduate only about 40 students per year at our school. So we know every face. We know every personality. And we are missing them.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
In terms of Mr. Obrego-Garcia, this has captured the imagination of a lot of people around the country. I watched footage of protests in every state of the country, and I feel like I saw your client's name a lot of times and people referencing his case. It feels profoundly Kafkaesque and almost...
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
inexplicable for the administration to be announcing that they mistakenly sent him to this prison and also that they have no plans to get him home. How do you think ultimately that this is going to resolve? What do you think the most likely course is in terms of his case and ultimately his fate?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
The Trump administration, including the president himself, has mused openly about wanting to send U.S. citizens to this prison in El Salvador. We've had reporting from The Wall Street Journal within the past week that not only does the Trump administration want to continue its relationship with El Salvador and its operation of this prison, which has created this unimaginable situation for
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
all the people who have been sent there, but especially for your client. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the administration is looking to create similar arrangements with six or seven other countries around the world, including places like Rwanda, where they want to send people who they don't want to incarcerate here.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
And I think what Sackett's Harbor shows, she says, is that when you rely on your community and you remember that your neighbors love you and your classmates love you and the teachers are going to be there for you, they're always going to stand up and say, I will show up for you. I will rally for you. I think that's how we get through this. She said that again at that march.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
They want to incarcerate them abroad, under the authority of some other country. Do you expect that they're sort of testing the waters with this El Salvador arrangement, but that ultimately they have in mind a larger regime along these lines applying to a larger number of people.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, attorney for Kilmar Abrego-Garcia, ongoing case. We're following it closely, as are so many people in the country. Thank you for helping us understand tonight.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
All right. More news ahead here tonight. Stay with us. This was in Chicago on Saturday. Got measles? Me neither. Thanks, science. This is one in Seattle. You wanted cheap eggs, but got measles instead. This was in Atlanta. Markets down, measles up. Fight for America. These are just among the many, many amazing signs at the hands-off protests across this country on Saturday.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
There was a whole subcategory of signs devoted to measles. Welcome back, measles. Because, as the United States contends with the worst measles outbreak in this country in decades, President Donald Trump has slashed billions of dollars in federal funding from not just federal but also local and state health departments. Stick a pin in that. More on that in a second.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
Trump has also installed as the nation's top health official a man who has made a career out of demonizing vaccines, saying, among other things, that vaccines were causing a, quote, Holocaust in America. Secretary of Health and Human Services, RFK Jr., still an unbelievable phrase. He has in the past praised measles, saying getting measles can be good for you.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
This weekend, he traveled to the epicenter of our current measles outbreak, traveled to Texas for the funeral of the second unvaccinated child to die of measles there in just the last few weeks. This time, it was an eight-year-old girl named Daisy. After her funeral, a social media post from RFK included the line, quote, the most effective way to prevent the spread of measles is the MMR vaccine.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
You see that way down there in the post, buried in the middle of the third long paragraph? That is a true statement. That is a scientifically accurate statement. So for a moment there, we were all on the same page. But he couldn't help himself. Just a few hours later, just a few hours after he left the funeral of this eight-year-old girl, RFK Jr.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
Again, that was a thousand people out of a town of 1,300 people. That was on Saturday. And now today, Monday, the school district made this announcement, quote, we are relieved and grateful to share that after 11 days of uncertainty, our students and their mother are returning home.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
was up with a new post, this time praising two Texas doctors for treating measles patients there with quack remedies that are unsupported by any scientific evidence. One of the doctors released a podcast earlier in the outbreak describing mass infection as, quote, God's version of measles immunization. Would God invent a version of measles immunization that killed children?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
The other one was once disciplined by Texas medical regulators for inappropriate use of certain treatments. Those are the people he's praising right after coming out of the funeral of the unvaccinated eight-year-old girl.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
But even if you wanted to listen to version one of RFK, the guy who earlier in the day did, under his breath, vaguely recommend the measles vaccine, well, even if that was compelling to you, getting the measles vaccine just got a lot harder in Texas because dozens of free measles vaccine clinics have been canceled right in the epicenter of this outbreak because of the Trump administration's huge funding cuts to local health departments.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
We may be about to find out just how quickly decades of public health success can be undone and at what cost. The epidemiologist and immunologist Dr. Michael Mina wrote this in the New York Times under the headline, quote, I study measles. I'm terrified we're headed for an epidemic. He said, quote, measles is among the most contagious viruses known.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
A single case can cause dozens more in places where people are unvaccinated. Infants too young for vaccination, immune compromised people and the elderly are all at risk. Measles isn't just a fever and a rash. It can cause pneumonia, brain inflammation, permanent disability and death.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
The virus can go dormant in the body only to reemerge a decade or so after infection and cause rapid and fatal brain tissue deterioration. Mina says, quote, this outbreak in Texas may still seem small, but that's exactly how it starts. Each case is a spark, and the fuel is all around us. Dr. Michael Mina joins us here live next. Stay with us.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
Keeping track of what Donald Trump is doing to healthcare in the United States has become sort of a collection of horror movie headlines that can actually be hard to keep track of day to day, because they're not releasing this information in any sort of systematic way.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
We just have to figure out that, for example, as we learned last week, Donald Trump appears to have fired the doctor who provided him with monoclonal antibody treatments when he had COVID, which may have saved his life. The doctor who may have saved his life, Trump has just fired.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
The New York Times reported Friday night that Trump has closed the federal lab that tracked drug-resistant gonorrhea in our country. Oh, yeah, why would we want to treat that? Why would we want to track that? Trump has closed the Head Start regional office that serves Idaho, Washington, Alaska, and Oregon.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
The World Trade Center health program for 9-11 first responders, Trump just fired the administrator. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
We remain committed to providing the care, understanding, and sensitivity necessary for all students and staff as we begin the healing process from this traumatic experience. In the midst of this difficult time, the strength, compassion, and resilience of our community have shown through. We are very thankful to everyone who has reached out with kindness and offered support.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
Thank you.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
Wow, if only we all lived in places like this, right? Where people were willing to come out and show up and make themselves heard for us when we needed help. Oh, wait, we do. We do. All over the country, it turns out, we do live in just those places. These are some of the more than 1,400 protests that took place this weekend protesting the actions of the Trump administration.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
... ... ... ... ... ... ...,.,,,,,,. S S S S S S S,.,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,.,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,.,,,,.,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
I mean, this is me showing you 20 of them all at once. I could show you 20 at once for this entire hour, and we still wouldn't get through all of them. If you follow me on Blue Sky, I posted footage from hundreds of different protests that all took place this weekend on Saturday. But just looking at this 20, let me tell you what you're looking at here.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
Starting at the top, going left to right, and then top to bottom. Upper left-hand corner, that's Atlanta, Georgia. Police estimated at least 20,000 people turned out in Atlanta, Georgia. Los Angeles, where the L.A. Times said the number was easily in the tens of thousands. The crowd may have reached 100,000 in Los Angeles alone. Another huge one in Seattle.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
Minimum estimates there, maybe 14,000 people. But just keep going. Huntsville, Alabama, Portland, Oregon, Davenport, Iowa, Charlotte, North Carolina, Green Bay, Wisconsin, Lansing, Michigan, Palm Beach, Florida, Phoenix, Arizona had a huge one. Providence, Rhode Island, Salt Lake City, Utah was huge. Austin, Texas, Buffalo, New York, Columbia, South Carolina, Indianapolis, Indiana was massive.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
Sacramento, California, another huge one. Detroit, Michigan, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. I mean, that's 20 of, again, you know, more than 1,400. Here's 20 more. Again, left to right, top to bottom. Upper left-hand corner, that's Baltimore, Maryland. Then go left to right, across the top, and then we'll go down.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
Baltimore, Maryland is the upper left, then Pittsburgh, PA, Tampa Bay, Florida, Helena, Montana, Rapid City, South Dakota. Washington, D.C., the crowd was estimated at 100,000 people-plus. Chicago, Illinois is next to D.C. there. The crowd estimate there was even larger than it was in Washington. Denver, Colorado. Tulsa, Oklahoma. New York City, where it was said to be easily 100,000 people.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
Honolulu, Hawaii. Boston, Massachusetts. Local press reports also cited nearly 100,000 people on Boston Common. And I'll tell you, the letters to the editor page today at the Boston Globe is full of people outraged that the Globe didn't give the event better coverage, given how huge it was in Boston. Then we've got Dallas, Texas, Grand Rapids, Michigan, Hartford, Connecticut, St. Paul, Minnesota.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
That was a massive turnout at St. Paul, Minnesota, at the state capitol. And then the last two there, Savannah, Georgia, and Cincinnati, Ohio. It was cold and rainy enough in Joplin, Missouri, that people put their signs in plastic bags. And if they didn't bring their mittens, they put their socks on their hands to try to keep warm while they held their signs.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
It rained like the Dickens as well in northeast Louisiana, but that wasn't enough to keep people at home. They just held their umbrellas and their signs. In Terre Haute, Indiana, people just made space for all the umbrellas and smiled through it. They hung tough through the rain. In deep red Naples, Florida, Organizers there say they had 7,000 people turn out in Naples, Florida.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
And yeah, that's good weather, so I know, but that's also a county that went for Trump by 33 points in November, and they had 7,000 people turn out on Saturday. Detroit, Michigan, when people came out, they waved across the river to Windsor, Ontario, where protesting Canadians waved right back. People protested in Dillingham, Alaska, on Bristol Bay.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
People protested at the end of the Iditarod sled dog race in Nome, Alaska. People woke up there Saturday morning to a balmy zero degrees Fahrenheit, but still people got out in Nome, Alaska to go say their piece. Look at the people turning out in Chagrin Falls, Ohio. Look at the people turning out in El Paso, Texas. In Pittsfield, Massachusetts, 2,000 people turned out in the drenching rain.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
Green Bay, Wisconsin had a really big crowd. Look at that. Look at Statesboro, Georgia. So many people turning out in so many, so many red states. Look at this is Gulfport, Mississippi. Gulfport, Mississippi, they marched with a big Trump sucks banner. Helena, Montana had a really big crowd. So did Knoxville, Tennessee. So did Northwoods, Wisconsin.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
This is Sackets Harbor, New York. Sackets Harbor is way up on the shore of Lake Ontario in sort of northwestern New York. It's not that far from the Canadian border. And about a week and a half ago, immigration agents went to Sackets Harbor, New York, and they took three kids and their mom, a third grader, a 10th grader, and an 11th grader.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
I don't know if you watched the show on Friday night, but you might remember we had this group of older ladies in New Jersey. It's just a friend group in New Jersey who sent us pictures on Friday of them getting ready to protest this weekend. Again, this is a friend group for which the average age is 90. I've got two updates for you on that.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
First of all, they absolutely did get out and protest this weekend. Again, average age 90 in this group. You see some of them with their wheelchairs and their—or at least, excuse me, their walkers there.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
But also, I had guessed on Friday's show that the lady who was making the dump Trump sign, see on the back of the table there, on the back on the right, I had guessed when we showed this picture on Friday night that the lady making the dump Trump sign with the legs sticking out of the trash can, I had guessed she must have been an artist or an art teacher. Turns out I was right.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
She is a retired art teacher. And she, in fact, got out there this weekend with gusto.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
You know, the thing I most want to be when I grow up is an old person. And, boy, am I getting there fast. But there were a lot of people out there this weekend who are beating me to it. And it was one of the most inspiring things about everything you saw this weekend. On the left side of your screen here, that's Montrose, Colorado. Hands off. One depression was enough.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
On the right side of your screen, that's Madison, Wisconsin. We 100-year-olds see no future with Trump. On the left side of your screen, that's Harrisonburg, Virginia. Hands off Medicaid. On the right side of your screen, that's Houston, Texas. This old lady is pissed and fighting for our Constitution.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
In Newtown, Connecticut, two canes and a quote from Senator Cory Booker's marathon filibuster this past week. This is a moral moment. In Grand Rapids, Michigan, they had a special protest just for seniors that you see on the left side of your screen there that was separate and apart from the thousands of people who flooded into downtown Grand Rapids for the big protest there.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
Grand Rapids, not big enough to hold just one protest, one for seniors and one for a huge number of people in the downtown. In Flagstaff, Arizona, we had Good Dog, Good Trouble. And in Huntsville, Alabama, and lots of other places, we had dogs against Doge. In Los Angeles, we had some signs that made me really strongly want to know the backstory.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
On the left, you see here, you know times are bad if you partner with your ex-husband to protest. And you know times are bad if you partner with your ex-wife to protest. These two apparently were married for 30 years. They are... Obviously, amicably split up now, but back together this weekend to protest the Trump administration. Also in Los Angeles this weekend.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
I don't want to know the backstory to I Bite Fascists. Let's just assume that's apocryphal. We saw this. Penguins Against Fascism. This was also Los Angeles. No tariffs, no tyrants, just krill. This is a protest sign we saw several different places this weekend. This is Riverside, California. Honk if you've never drunk-texted war plans.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
We also saw variants of this calling back to one of the ugliest moments in the presidential campaign. They're eating the checks. They're eating the balances. They're devouring our democracy. This was San Jose, California. This was a good one from Newark, Delaware. Do not panic. Organize. a special one there for college campuses and law firms.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
Three kids and their mom, they took them from Sackets Harbor and they flew them to Texas. And this mom and her three kids have been in some kind of immigration prison ever since. Yes, including the third grader. The population of Sackets Harbor, New York is about 1,300 people. But as you saw that local reporter say there, there were about a thousand people
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
We saw a lot of signs along this very scary general theme. This was from Washington, D.C. this weekend. Resist like it's 1938 Germany. Also from Washington, don't like surprises? Protect Noah with the tornado imagery there. This was West Palm Beach, Florida, one of many, many signs and flags that we saw in support of Ukraine this weekend.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
These were signs from Atlanta, Georgia, which, of course, is home to the CDC. Markets down, measles up, fight for America. Hands off my earned Social Security. Hands off disability rights. Also, this one's nice. Mild-mannered church lady against oligarchy. In Honolulu, fascism is bad, says history. I can't sing, but here's one you can sing from Des Moines, Iowa.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
Super callous, fragile, racist, narcissistic, POTUS. We believe your fascist dream is something quite atrocious. We'll resist the oligarchs and always work for justice. Super callous, fragile, racist, narcissistic, POTUS. I cannot tell you how many times I had to practice that. Let's end the show right now. from a hot daytime protest in Baton Rouge, Louisiana on Saturday.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
You see on the right there, bad doge with a squirt bottle with the water in it. Off, bad doge. And then you see resist the criminal and his little doge too. In Boston, courage is contagious with rage colored in on courage. Stand up now or bow down later. Also, Boston rejects tyranny. Fair point there. In Lansing, Michigan, this is the government our founders warned us about.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
In Novi, Michigan, they had great signs in Novi, Michigan. It's a hard no on being Russia 2.0. And my dad taught me to stand up to bullies. And this is a good one. I'm a really mad scientist. In Tupelo, Mississippi, President Musk must go. And no kings in America. In Omaha, Nebraska, look, they lined both the bridge here, the overpass bridge here, and both sides of the street.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
You see all the people here in Omaha? The big sign there, better together. In New York City, let them eat Teslas. Also, some of the many penguins against tariffs. These ones in cute sweaters. In Columbia, South Carolina, we tariffed penguins, but not Russia? This one made me laugh out loud in Avon, Ohio. Thou shalt keep hands off women's health care. Chapter four, verse five, book of fallopians.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
In Seattle, only you can prevent fascist liars. We saw this one a bunch on Saturday. I've seen better cabinets at Ikea. and Cheyenne, Wyoming. Oh, I love you. Hands off Medicare, Social Security, and Stormy Daniels.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
The reason I wanted to show all of those signs from these various protests is because some of them were very funny, but also because it shows you just a slice of how many different reasons people participated in these protests, how many different reasons people have to be mad at this administration and to be willing to stand up and protest against this administration.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fierce backlash against Trump's agenda seen in sweeping, nation-wide protests
And if you're just thinking about how things are going to go in our country and what this means strategically, what it means, baseline, whether or not you protested this weekend, whether or not you're even in sympathy with the people who protested this weekend, the huge variety of reasons people protested this weekend tells you that the proverbial tent of people allied against Donald Trump right now is really, really, really big.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
Really happy to have you here. So on July 10th, 1940, the German Air Force started its large-scale attack on our closest overseas ally, on Great Britain. That was the start of the Battle of Britain. And at that point, Great Britain was the last man standing in Western Europe. The Germans had spread out into Austria and then into Czechoslovakia.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
FDR expended a huge amount of political capital to do that, and also just capital, money, to send Britain as much support as he could manage, short of us getting into the war ourselves in 1940. That's what FDR did. That is what we remember the United States doing as a country. But at the time, it definitely wasn't like a consensus decision.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
I mean, I know Trump's in a hurry, but at this point, I mean, we're just deciding whether we're going to be called Trumpistan or Ameristan. Which one polls better? I mean, either way, six weeks into this term, what is on President Vladimir Putin's wish list that he is not getting?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
Trump is inviting the Russians to establish a full diplomatic presence in the United States once again to reopen their embassy at full strength and all of their consulates. Headline on that at CNN, Russia seeks talks, excuse me, Russia sees talks with U.S. as an opening to rebuild its spy networks.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
The cybersecurity publication Recorded Future was first to report this weekend that Trump has now told U.S. Cyber Command to stand down in all of its operations targeting Russia. From The New York Times, quote, Hospitals, infrastructure and cities have ramped up, many emanating from Russia.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
Sabotage efforts in Europe, including suspected Russian attempts to cut communications cables, mysterious explosions and Russian directed assassination plots, have also accelerated in the past year. The U.S. until now has been central in helping European nations fight back, often in covert cyber operations. But now that cooperation could now be in jeopardy. with, again, U.S.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
Cyber Command being ordered to stand down its operations against Russia. Yesterday, Mike Turner, Republican congressman, former Intelligence Committee chair, told Face the Nation on CBS, hey, that can't be right. They asked him about those reports. He said he was, quote, certain that the Trump administration could not possibly have told Cyber Command to stand down on Russia. But yeah, believe it.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
In fact, they have. Tonight, they demanded the resignation of the chief of the FBI's New York field office, who spent most of his career investigating or supervising counterintelligence cases. Tonight, he has been forced out. Tonight, U.S. stock markets have tanked because we are imposing huge tariffs on our two closest trading partners on Canada and Mexico as of midnight tonight.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
We're also, for some reason, sending Striker Brigade combat vehicles to our border with Mexico while threatening to send U.S. troops over the border and into Mexico. Tonight, Reuters reports that the White House has told the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Treasury to start removing sanctions on Russia. And tonight, of course, they have made it official.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
that we are full stop cutting off the aid we have been providing to Ukraine. The aid that Congress approved and that Trump therefore does not have the legal power to stop, but he is stopping it anyway. Again, Ukraine doesn't have islands that we could seize, but presumably if they did, we'd have them by now. Who is this for?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
I mean, tell me, tell me who is the swing state voter in Pennsylvania or Nevada or North Carolina whose issue in this election was, I don't think Vladimir Putin is getting enough of what he wants. Tell me who is the median voter in some bellwether county in Arizona who thinks, you know what? Russian cyber attacks have gotten so bogged down and difficult.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
It's getting so it's really difficult to just ransomware a hospital in Arizona these days. Isn't there anything we can do to help with that? Is there a single voter in the United States who thinks that Canada is the bad guy in the world and Russia is the good guy in the world? And so let's threaten Canada and learn Russian. Is there anyone? Who is this for? And what did they do to get all of this?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
That is definitely what President Roosevelt wanted to do, but lots of other people in the country did not want to do that at all. Remember that date, July 10th. That's when the German Air Force started attacking the British mainland, July 10th. Exactly one month later, on August 10th, 1940, a sitting U.S. senator gave a national speech on the radio in which he demanded that England...
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
What has Russia given up to get this list of things that they have received in the first six weeks that Donald Trump has been back in the White House? He's the dealmaker, right? What's the other side of the deal? This weekend, the foreign policy chief of the European Union said, quote, the free world needs a new leader. The first rest of the free world is trying.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
This weekend, the prime minister of Great Britain and the president of France announced that they would form a new coalition of the willing to support Ukraine. And they hoped they might get support from the United States for that effort. The United States, our government has has changed sides in the world. And it seems pretty clear they will not be doing that.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
Our government now sides with Russia and against America's allies. And we spent years trying to figure out why the Republican Party and its new leader would be inclined in that direction. It now sort of doesn't matter. What matters is the new reality is that he controls the government, and that's the way that he has changed the U.S. government's orientation in the world.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
And it really is hard to imagine what else Putin might want that Trump hasn't already given him in just these six weeks. But you know what? The American people haven't changed. We haven't changed sides. We know who we are. And we know who Vladimir Putin is. Less than 10% of the American people say the United States should trust Vladimir Putin. It's not us. It's not the people of the American.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
It's not the American people. It's not the people of the United States. It really isn't us, but it is our government that appears to be under some kind of sway from Russia. That said, as long as we're a democracy, we the people should be able to fix that. We should be able to turn our government around.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
I don't know how long it will take or by what means it will happen, but the government of this country and the people of this country have two radically different ideas about whose interests the United States should serve. Whether the American people come up with a way to fix that divide or not is going to determine the course of world history.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
That was Dr. Sarah Cooley until recently. She was a scientist at NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which is the part of the federal government that does, you know, little things that anybody can do. Tracking hurricanes and tornadoes and tsunamis, you know, stuff you can do at home.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
Hundreds of scientists like Dr. Cooley were fired from NOAA last week, part of Trump and his top campaign donor, indiscriminately eliminating whole parts of the U.S. government, especially the parts we use. Dr. Cooley, along with about a thousand other former NOAA employees and supporters and just members of the public, And Democratic members of Congress and the U.S.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
Senate all stood outside NOAA headquarters today, just outside D.C., to protest all those firings, to protest those weather forecasters and scientists who have just been fired from their jobs. They held up signs that said, Save NOAA. Firing the scientists creates a bleep storm. There was also... Another protest in D.C. today.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
This was to defend the federal government as well, just a few miles down the road. This one was for employees for the CFPB, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Employees there were ordered by the White House to stop all of their work.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
should say thank you to us. They should be way more grateful. They should show us some respect. Frankly, all our allies should for all that we've done for them. And it was time, frankly, for them to start paying us back. That senator's name was Ernest Lundin. He was a senator from Minnesota.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
They held this rally not at CFPB headquarters, but outside the federal courthouse in D.C., where a court fight is underway challenging the legality of that stop work order. This crowded gathered today outside the McPherson Square metro station in D.C. It's the closest metro stop to the White House. It's also right near the headquarters of the V.A., Veterans Affairs.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
These protesters were there to support all the people who are still employed by the U.S. government and people who are employed, especially at the V.A., people just holding up signs and applauding for them, thanking them on their way to work. The signs they're holding say federal workers are heroes. This is all today.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
This is over the weekend in D.C., a big crowd turning out for a transgender unity rally. They started in front of the U.S. Capitol. They marched to the White House. It was also another weekend of protests at Tesla dealerships all over the country, protesting what the president has assigned his top campaign donor to do to the federal government.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
There were big protests at Tesla dealerships in Tucson, Arizona. and in Boston, Massachusetts, and in Springfield, New Jersey, and in Superior, Colorado. Also at the Tesla dealership in New York City on the west side of Manhattan, there was a really big protest there. There were actually nine people arrested at that protest.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
There was also a big protest targeting another company owned by the president's top campaign donor. This was SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California, this weekend, right near the LAX airport in Southern California. Lots of people turned out there. This guy came dressed as Elon Vader. Donald, I am your daddy. Congresswoman Maxine Waters turned up at that protest as well.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
The SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne is in her district. This was Dublin, California, this weekend, right near where I grew up in the East Bay. Members of the community there protesting against the use of a closed correctional facility as a detention center for ICE.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
There was also a big march in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania this weekend, protesting the massive indiscriminate cuts to the federal workforce. There was another protest for federal workers in San Francisco this weekend. A crowd hung an upside-down flag across from the Golden Gate Bridge.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
Protesters also lined up along the side of the road this weekend outside President Trump's club in Palm Beach, Florida. Then there's also what happened in the national parks this weekend. Check this out. This was in Yosemite National Park in California, also on the edge of the Grand Canyon in Arizona, at the St. Louis Arch in Missouri, at Bar Harbor, Maine, just outside Acadia National Park.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
There were Save Our Parks protests at more than 100 different national parks all over the country this weekend protesting the firing of parks employees. by the Trump White House. And when I say it was all over the country, I mean it. They were really all over the place. This was Denali National Park in Alaska, the Arches National Park in Utah, Valley Forge National Historic Park in Pennsylvania.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
And in Congress, he had formed something called the Make Europe Pay War Debts Committee, which said that we shouldn't be helping our so-called allies in Europe at all because, frankly, those allies, especially England, they owed us. They owed us money from the First World War, money they hadn't been able to pay back yet.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
Those folks standing out in the snow were protesting at the Indiana Dunes National Park. This was outside Rocky Mountain National Park in northern Colorado. People lined up on the side of the Signs so people could see them on their drive into the park because of the firing of park staff by Donald Trump.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
The staff at Rocky Mountain National Park has announced that they are not going to be able to keep that park open this summer. They will not have enough people. That is the fifth most visited national park in the entire country. They say they will be closed this summer because of Trump's firing their staff.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
Some protesters scaled this cliff inside the park and hung an upside down flag, some symbol of distress. You will remember protesters did a similar thing in Yosemite a few weeks ago, hanging that upside down flag. We not only saw it again in Colorado this weekend, we also saw it at Joshua Tree National Park in California and off the second flat iron in Boulder, Colorado.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
So lots and lots going on this weekend. The American people are making themselves heard. They are showing up. Also this weekend, the vice president decided to take a vacation. He brought his family to Waitsfield, Vermont this weekend to go skiing at Sugarbush. Waiting for him at the ski resort were hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of angry Vermonters.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
telling them how much they support Ukraine and how much they do not support J.D. Vance, especially after his insulting display of Russian talking points in the Oval Office with the president of Ukraine. Some of these signs are very memorable. J.D. Vance Zelensky is 10 times the man you are. This one, we saw a number of different iterations of this one this weekend. Vance is a traitor.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
Go ski in Russia. Also, I don't ski, so I assume this is some cardinal sin of the slopes. I don't know. It says Vance skis in jeans. Again, I don't know, but sounds bad. It wasn't just Vermont that showed their support for Ukraine. There were tons of actually pro-Ukraine, anti-Russia, anti-Trump, anti-Vance protests all over the weekend.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
We've got more on that ahead with a live report from our Pentagon correspondent coming up as we're starting to absorb this news that the U.S. is not only dropping sanctions against Russia and cutting off all aid to Ukraine, but also ordering a U.S. military cyber command stand down in all of its operations against Russia. Stay with us.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
Just a moment ago, I showed you some of the protests that greeted Vice President J.D. Vance when he tried to go skiing this weekend at Sugarbush in Vermont. Waitsfield, Vermont, absolutely filled up with people telling him to get out of town. J.D. Vance is a traitor. Go ski in Russia. But you know what?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
Do not underestimate the stamina and determination and cold tolerance of New Englanders when it gets to this part of the winter. They can pretty much take anything. So not only did they protest J.D. Vance at the ski mountain up in Waitsfield, Vermont, telling him to get out of town, there was also a whole other group of protesters waiting for him when he tried to get out of town.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
This wasn't Waitsfield. Just drop the chyron here so people can see here. This was the route to the airport for J.D. Vance in South Burlington, Vermont. protesters also turned up there, sending him off as he tried to leave the state. They called it his farewell send-off.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
We should focus now on making them pay us back rather than us giving them any more help. I mean, who cares that they're being invaded and attacked by the huge Nazi war machine, which has already invaded and taken over the whole rest of Western Europe? Not our problem. We should be collecting right now on what they owe us for helping them already the first time around.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
And, you know, it wasn't just Vermont getting out in the streets to show their support for Ukraine and their objections to the United States allying itself with Vladimir Putin. This was Charlotte, North Carolina this weekend and Bentonville, Arkansas and Washington, D.C. and Seattle, Washington this weekend.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
Protesters holding pro-Ukraine, anti-Russia demonstrations in the wake of President Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance allying themselves with the Russian Federation and against our ally. And that was this weekend. Now, today, we are confronting a series of headlines that seem to make it official. Defense Secretary Pete Hegsath orders a halt to cyber operations against Russia.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
Trump administration halting cyber operations against Russia, even as Russia appears to have intensified its cyber operations against our allies in NATO and in Ukraine. Further news just tonight as we're getting on the air that the United States is not only starting the process of dropping sanctions on Russia.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
White House reportedly ordering the Treasury Department and the State Department to explore the end to Russian sanctions, but also now putting a stop to all U.S. aid to Ukraine in the middle of this war. Joining us now is NBC News correspondent Courtney Kuby. She covers the Pentagon and national security. Courtney, it's really nice of you to make time to be here tonight. Thank you. Thanks.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
Thanks for having me. Can you put sort of in layman's terms for us what these things together mean? We've seen the headline about cyber command. We've seen the headline about dropping Russian sanctions. We've seen the headline about pausing all U.S. aid to Ukraine. Can you help us understand what what viewers might need to understand about what this means for this U-turn in the U.S. government?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
And no way should we be giving them any more help. Ernest Lundin was actually so into the idea of the Make Europe Pay War Debts Committee that he formed a second committee with a similar name that focused specifically on how they should pay their debts to us. His other committee said that they should pay their war debts to us by giving us their islands. Islands for War Debts Committee.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
And just to be clear, with all of these things that Russia has now received effectively, just in terms of deal points from the U.S. government, you know, halting aid to Ukraine, moving to end sanctions on Russia, having a high-level U.S. government meeting between the Russian U.S. government —
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
President Trump publicly advocating that Russia be let back in the G7, saying that he wants to have a one-on-one summit with Vladimir Putin, Russia being invited to reopen their embassy in full consulate strength in the United States. With all of these things that the U.S. has now given to Russia in terms of deal points, has Russia given us anything?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
Yeah. At some point, the math doesn't work, right? Courtney Kuby, I really appreciate you being here. I really appreciate it. Thank you. All right. We've got more news ahead. Stay with us. I'll be part of our MSNBC State of the Union coverage starting tomorrow at 8 p.m. Eastern. One of the things that still seems quite up in the air is how Democrats are going to handle things tomorrow.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
Seems like several Democratic lawmakers are going to boycott all or part of Trump's speech. Oregon Senator Ron Wyden says he'll be listening to his constituents in a teletown hall, which he has scheduled to start. the exact same time that Trump will be starting his speech. Washington Senator Patty Murray says she's also not planning on attending.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
Another approach among elected Democrats is to go to the speech, but to bring as their guests people who have been fired by Trump or Elon Musk. We're also watching for protests, protesters planning to turn out at state capitals around the country tomorrow and also in Washington, D.C.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
Most of the public pushback we've seen in these past six weeks has been directed at Trump and Elon Musk and Republicans. But some has also been directed at Democrats, as people have called on Democratic elected officials to fight harder, to break protocol, do more, come up with new and creative ways to do what they can to stop things or at least slow things down or make them more embarrassing.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
In the past on this show, we've talked about a grassroots organizing group called Run for Something, which encourages progressive Americans to run for political office, particularly if they've never done so before. Run for Something says they are now having a run on their services. Five hundred to six hundred people reaching out every day now to say they want to run for office.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
Joining us now is Amanda Littman. She's president and co-founder of Run for Something. She's also the author of the forthcoming book, When We're in Charge, The Next Generation's Guide to Leadership, which comes out in May. Amanda, thanks for being here. Thanks for having me. I thought this was a typo. Five hundred to six hundred people a day.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
That was his idea. Our allies are in the middle of being invaded and bombed and occupied by the Nazis. But this seems like a good moment to see if we can get some stuff off of them.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
Bigger now than it was in 2017?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
Idaho.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
So if you want to run in Idaho, we would love to help you win. We have a dedicated audience in Boise. I'm telling you. Hello, Boise. I even know how to pronounce it. Amanda Lippman is right here. I'm just saying. I pointed out in the intro there that some of the protests that we've been seeing are I'm not even sure if we should call them part of some of the sort of uprising that we're seeing.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
It's a lot of anger toward Republican elected officials and toward the administration. But we're also seeing sort of constructive frustration directed at Democrats to do more, come up with better strategies, be louder, be stronger in your opposition. Are you seeing any reflection of that in the way that people are reaching out to you at Run for Something?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
Last question for you. Given that feedback that you are getting directly from people coming to run for something, do you feel like you have a sense from looking at that data, from interacting with those people about what the feeling is in the country among people who are frustrated with what's going on?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
Amanda Littman is the president and co-founder of Run for Something. Amanda, thank you very much. It's good to have you here. Thanks for having me. All right. We'll be right back. Stay with us. All right, that does it for me tonight, but I will see you back here tomorrow night, not at the same time. Coverage tomorrow night starts at 8 p.m.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
Eastern because there's that speech thing that happens at 9. So I'll be here with the team starting at 8 o'clock for the run-up to the speech, and then we will have the reactions and the responses afterwards. I will see you then. In the meantime, you can find me on Blue Sky. I'm on bluesky at matto.msnbc.com.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
Yeah, see, we've got these debts. They owe us. Let's seize their islands to cover some of their debt to us. Let them fight off the Nazis themselves. They owe us. We shouldn't be helping them anymore. Less than two weeks after giving that speech on the radio, Senator Ernest Lundin was dead in a mysterious plane crash.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
And then they took Poland and Denmark and Norway and Belgium and the Netherlands and Luxembourg and France. Nazi Germany was just rolling through all of those countries. And at the end, Britain was it. Starting July 10th, 1940, the might of the German Air Force turned its sights to destroying and ultimately trying to take Britain as well because they wanted all of it. They wanted all of Europe.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
When they pulled his body out of the wreckage, they found in the pocket of his jacket a draft speech that he had been planning on giving in the United States Senate that was kind of along the same lines as that radio address. Definitely don't support our supposed allies as they are fighting Hitler. Who cares about whether or not they can fight Hitler off or not?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
What's so bad about Germany anyway? That was the draft of the speech in his pocket. He never got a chance to deliver that speech because he died in that plane crash. But that speech that he had on him, they had in his pocket when he died. Turns out that speech was written for him. By the Nazi government, by a Nazi agent, by the Hitler government's top paid propaganda agent in the United States.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
Turns out that Senator Ernest Lundin was being paid by the Nazis. He had been on Hitler's payroll the whole time. Hitler's government was paying him to argue in Washington to use his position as a U.S. senator to make this case to the American people that we shouldn't be helping our allies fight back against the Nazis in Europe.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
We should instead focus on getting them to apologize to us for not being able to pay back everything we did for them in the First World War. We should be getting them to show their gratitude to us now by figuring out what they can do, what they can give up of their own resources to prioritize paying us while they're fighting off the Nazis or whatever. That happened in August 1940.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
How was your day today?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
85 years ago, in 1940, Ernest Lundin was just a senator. It wasn't the president or the vice president.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
And ultimately, we did not adopt as a country this proposal that Hitler had stuffed into his mouth with a wad of cash, this proposal from him that we should refuse to even dig a grave for our allies, that we should not only refuse to help them, we should pile on them, make things even harder for them than they already were. We did not go along with that. Ernest Lundin died in that plane crash.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
Not long thereafter, he was exposed as a paid Nazi agent. And then he quickly was forgotten. We didn't choose his course 85 years ago. We chose to go with what President Roosevelt wanted to do. We chose a very different course. And in so doing, the United States not only stood up for our allies and stood against the Nazis, the United States became the leader of the free world.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
And now it is 85 years later. It's 2025. We're six weeks into Donald Trump's second term as president. And our ally Ukraine doesn't have any islands to give up to us. But they do have minerals, I guess, that we could take off them, that we could mine.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
And so under Donald Trump, our offer to our ally Ukraine, as they try to fight off an invasion from Russia, our offer to them is that they should be so lucky that we would deign to take all of their minerals. They'd be lucky to get such a deal with us. In fact, they'll only even get that deal. They'll only get the privilege of us taking their resources off of them if they grovel for it.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
But even then, maybe not. And there's a lot going on. There's a lot to get to just just tonight in this hour on this show. We're going to be talking tonight about the protests all over the country this weekend at national parks and at national historic sites.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
As Trump's massive and indiscriminate firings of the federal workforce have led to the first announcements that some parks will be closing down and no longer open to the public, even though those are our parks and our land.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
as rare winter wildfires raced through North Carolina and South Carolina and Georgia tonight, forcing a state of emergency in South Carolina, forcing evacuations from multiple parts of those states.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
Tonight, we've got footage from the protest that was held today at NOAA, at the National Weather Service in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, where Trump has inexplicably fired meteorologists
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Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
and the staff at the Storm Prediction Center, and staff at the National Hurricane Center, and the technicians who maintain radar systems for the Weather Service, and the people who staff the Modeling Center that is the foundation for all our national weather forecasting capability.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
And at that point, the United States had to decide what we were going to do. Here was not just our closest overseas ally, but here was the last country standing in the way of total Nazi domination of all of Europe, which is what Hitler seemed to want to use not only for its own ends, but he seemed to want to use that as the cornerstone of a global Third Reich. Nazi world domination.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
We will have more to come tonight on the protest today and this weekend that targeted the president's top campaign donor at some of his many businesses. The president has given his top campaign donor the right somehow to fire whole swabs at the United States government. Lots of protests against that campaign donor all over the country this weekend.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
We'll be taking a look at some of that, as well as the protests targeting the vice president when he made a genius decision to take a ski vacation in Vermont, which is apparently a place he has never Googled. One of the remaining senior officials at USAID clicked send on a report this weekend just before he was fired.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
The report detailed that agency's assessment of the consequences of President Trump and his top campaign donor just shutting off U.S. humanitarian aid and foreign aid full stop. USAID's assessment of what that will cause is a harrowing list. including nearly 28,000 new cases this year of highly infectious hemorrhagic fevers like Ebola and Marburg. 200,000 children this year paralyzed with polio.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
18 million new cases of malaria this year. USAID says we can also look forward to a 30% global rise in multidrug-resistant tuberculosis just this year. A single case of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis, just for perspective here, costs about $150,000 to treat. We'll have a 30 percent rise in multidrug resistant tuberculosis worldwide this year.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
Nicholas Enrich, acting administrator for global health at USAID, was told this weekend that he was being fired. He then clicked send on those reports. So even though he was being pushed out, at least the country would know what they are doing there and what the consequences may be. And now he has gone from that job. So there's a lot going on.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
There's a lot to cover every day, increasingly with each passing day. But I got to tell you, even just since Friday, since our last show Friday night, the litany of things that have happened, the litany of things Trump is doing specifically for Russia is a list that would make Ernest Lundin blush. I mean, you might have seen the show that we did on Friday night.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
Even before today, even before this weekend, we had the Justice Department making a major change. Justice Department prosecutes foreign agents under the Foreign Agent Registration Act. Trump Justice Department announced they will no longer enforce the Foreign Agent Registration Act.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
The FBI and the cybersecurity division at the Department of Homeland Security, they both have election security units that monitor and combat foreign influence operations, specifically targeting our elections. Under Trump, that FBI task force and that part of CISA, the cybersecurity agency, have both been shut down.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
Trump's Justice Department has also announced that it is closing its unit that seeks to enforce economic sanctions against Russia. Task Force KleptoCapture is now gone. Russia kicked USAID out of Russia in 2012. Vladimir Putin has sought since then to demonize USAID and to try to get USAID kicked out of as many other countries as he can.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
Well, Trump decided that USAID would be the first agency he and Elon Musk would target to fully shut down. Last week, Trump specifically shut down the American project that helps Ukraine keep up its electrical grid.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
keep its electrical grid up and running as Russia has bombed it and attacked it over and over and over again during this war, specifically to try to freeze the civilian population to death in order to force Ukraine to surrender. Before last week, the United States was the major source of assistance to Ukraine to keep its electricity on, to keep that grid up.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
And here's little Great Britain standing as the last thing between them and control of that continent. So what were we going to do? What President Roosevelt wanted to do was help our ally, help Great Britain stand up to the Nazis, help them hold the line.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
As of last week, Trump has withdrawn that help. At the United Nations, under Donald Trump, we sided with Russia and against Ukraine and all of our allies when it came to a resolution marking the third anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Trump now says that Russia should be allowed back into the G7. Trump sent a high-level delegation, a U.S.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
government delegation, to meet with the Russian government in Saudi Arabia. He says he's looking forward to meeting Putin himself in person. Maybe he will invite him to the White House. I fully expect that he will.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
Trump appointed a new director of the FBI who was recently paid $25,000 to appear in an anti-FBI propaganda film made by a guy who has been paid by the Kremlin to make pro-Russian propaganda. In his first day on the job at the FBI, he announced that he'd be moving 1,500 FBI agents out of Washington and that he'd mostly be working from home in Las Vegas.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
Also, that nobody has to wear a suit anymore at the FBI. The New York Times reports that he also, in his first meeting with FBI agents, seemed to not know that intelligence and counterintelligence are two different things. Mr. Patel used the words intelligence and counterintelligence, quote, interchangeably.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
suggesting that he was confusing them, according to half a dozen people familiar with the call. That's FBI. However, how are things going over at CIA? Well, at CIA, they are carrying out the largest mass firings in 50 years. And then they sent a list of CIA employees to the White House in an unclassified email.
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Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
CNN now reports on a new naval intelligence document which says our foreign adversaries, including Russia, have, quote, directed their intelligence services to ramp up recruiting of U.S. federal employees working in national security, targeting those who have been fired or who feel they could be soon.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
The Washington Post now reports that at the National Nuclear Security Administration, among the people Trump mass fired and then belatedly tried to rehire were people, quote, with Q-level security clearances, which gives them access to America's nuclear secrets.
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Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
Nuclear nonproliferation experts in Washington warned of the risks of firing such workers who have knowledge that is highly valuable to rogue states and terrorist groups. One senior Trump advisor has now publicly suggested that the U.S.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump accidentally builds broad coalition of opponents energized by his unpopular agenda
should break up the so-called Five Eyes intelligence-sharing arrangement that we have with our closest allies, including Great Britain, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. And again, these are all things we ran through most of these on Friday. But honestly, just from a news show's perspective, you need a whole team just assigned to this beat of... How fast is America becoming Belarus?
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Holy crap on steroids!': Top Trump officials exposed in shocking, sloppy military security blunder
Thanks to you at home for joining us this hour. So 250 years ago yesterday, a man stood up in this church in Richmond, Virginia. It's called St. John's Church. It's still there today. It's on East Broad Street in Richmond.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Holy crap on steroids!': Top Trump officials exposed in shocking, sloppy military security blunder
That's from the ABC affiliate WTXL in Tallahassee, Florida. This is from San Diego, California.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Holy crap on steroids!': Top Trump officials exposed in shocking, sloppy military security blunder
It's a nice thing for Glenn Youngkin to have done, right? Then he left. He walked out of the church, and this is what happened. Let me just show you just one more minute of this here. This is from a different angle.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Holy crap on steroids!': Top Trump officials exposed in shocking, sloppy military security blunder
And that's from San Diego. I just want to show you just one more. I just showed you one from California, the previous one from Florida. This one is from the border, from the northern border. Last one. Just watch this.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Holy crap on steroids!': Top Trump officials exposed in shocking, sloppy military security blunder
I'm telling you, it's everywhere. The Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez rallies in the last few days turned out just massive numbers of people. 34,000 people in Denver on Friday. More than 23,000 people came out the next day, Saturday, in Tucson. Numbers like that are turning everyone's heads in politics, and they should.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Holy crap on steroids!': Top Trump officials exposed in shocking, sloppy military security blunder
But do not sleep on the fact that there are so many Americans showing up in so many places on literally every single day of the week in every single freaking state in the country, every single one of them trying to figure out how they can most effectively oppose this president and what he's doing to the U.S. government.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Holy crap on steroids!': Top Trump officials exposed in shocking, sloppy military security blunder
And, you know, we've got a lot to cover tonight in the wake of those massive—the massive number of protests defending the U.S. Postal Service. Trump's postmaster general, Louis DeJoy, tonight has resigned, effective immediately.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Holy crap on steroids!': Top Trump officials exposed in shocking, sloppy military security blunder
Axios is reporting tonight that Trump's acting director of Social Security told people at a meeting today that these ruinous cuts and radical policy changes that they're forcing through to Social Security right away. He told people at a meeting today, according to Axios, that these cuts and changes are happening explicitly at the demand of the White House.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Holy crap on steroids!': Top Trump officials exposed in shocking, sloppy military security blunder
These are the changes that the former Social Security director, Martin O'Malley, told us here on Friday night. He believes bring the Social Security system 90% of the way to breaking entirely. The director, the acting director of Social Security Administration saying that those changes are happening and they're happening at this pace specifically because the White House is demanding it.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Holy crap on steroids!': Top Trump officials exposed in shocking, sloppy military security blunder
Also today, Washington has just been rocked by this insane story of Trump's national security advisor, his secretary of defense, his intelligence director, his CIA director, his secretary of state.
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'Holy crap on steroids!': Top Trump officials exposed in shocking, sloppy military security blunder
his treasury secretary, and apparently the guy in charge of everything at the actual White House, whose name is Stephen Miller, all participating, apparently, in a group text over Signal in which they circulated detailed war plans and apparently classified information about a military attack in Yemen. They did it in a group text.
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'Holy crap on steroids!': Top Trump officials exposed in shocking, sloppy military security blunder
And the reason we know is because they accidentally included the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic magazine in the group text while they were planning that military operation. We're going to talk about that with Senator Mark Warner, top down account on the Intelligence Committee tonight. And there's a lot more to get to. I will just say, though, just in closing, word to the wise.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Holy crap on steroids!': Top Trump officials exposed in shocking, sloppy military security blunder
Are there any Democratic elected officials within the sound of my voice, any Democratic senators in particular, who are watching this kind of stuff that we have been covering, right, who are watching this huge upsurge in energy and the American people getting up and getting out and showing up in person and doing everything they can as regular people to try to find a way to save this country and to fight what Trump is doing?
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Holy crap on steroids!': Top Trump officials exposed in shocking, sloppy military security blunder
If there are any Democrats who are watching that, who want to try to latch on to some of that, want to tap into some of that, want to do what they can with that public upsurge. May I just note. That tomorrow in the United States Senate is the confirmation hearing for Trump's nominee to permanently lead the Social Security Agency.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Holy crap on steroids!': Top Trump officials exposed in shocking, sloppy military security blunder
That might be an occasion on which people would be looking to hear from you and see if you can do something to make a difference. Tomorrow also will be the Senate Intelligence Committee's worldwide threats hearing. Good time for that. That hearing, among other things, will take testimony from at least a couple of the people who are on the group text.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Holy crap on steroids!': Top Trump officials exposed in shocking, sloppy military security blunder
And I think this one is helpful because in this angle, you can see him greeting and shaking hands with the men in wigs who have just done the reenactment, smiling and pretending like nothing's going on around him. And then there's kind of this big reveal when he gets down to the SUV that's waiting for him. Watch.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Holy crap on steroids!': Top Trump officials exposed in shocking, sloppy military security blunder
With all the apparently classified information about the forthcoming military operations that included a journalist because they had no idea he was there. I mean, this may not be time for give me liberty or give me death, but it is time for give me something.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Holy crap on steroids!': Top Trump officials exposed in shocking, sloppy military security blunder
And tomorrow, Washington is going to afford a couple of very big opportunities for Democrats to show what they have to offer to a country that is looking for Democrats to have something to offer. Be right back. So here's three proper names, proper nouns, actually. Michael Waltz is the national security advisor for Donald Trump. That's one. Signal. That's two.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Holy crap on steroids!': Top Trump officials exposed in shocking, sloppy military security blunder
Signal is a free, very popular encrypted messaging app that lots of journalists and public officials use for private communication. And the third proper name, proper noun here is Jeffrey Goldberg. He's the editor in chief of The Atlantic magazine. And here is the astounding collision of those three proper names.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Holy crap on steroids!': Top Trump officials exposed in shocking, sloppy military security blunder
National Security Advisor Michael Waltz, Signal, the encrypted messaging app, and Jeffrey Goldberg, a well-known journalist. Quote, the Trump administration accidentally texted me its war plans. By Atlantic Magazine Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg. He says, quote, on Tuesday, March 11th, I received a connection request on Signal from a user identified as Michael Waltz.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Holy crap on steroids!': Top Trump officials exposed in shocking, sloppy military security blunder
I accepted the connection request, hoping this was the actual national security advisor and that he wanted to chat about Ukraine or Iran or some other important matter. Two days later, Thursday at 428 p.m., I received a notice that I was to be included in a Signal chat group. It was called the Houthi PC small group. A message to the group from Michael Waltz read as follows.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Holy crap on steroids!': Top Trump officials exposed in shocking, sloppy military security blunder
Team, establishing a principles, misspelled, principles group for coordination on Houthis, particularly for over the next 72 hours. Now, you could see why Jeffrey Goldberg would be skeptical that this is real, right? That he really has been added to a private chat group for high-level coordination of something having to do with the Houthis and the war in Yemen.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Holy crap on steroids!': Top Trump officials exposed in shocking, sloppy military security blunder
But the list of the people in the chat appeared to include not just Trump National Security Advisor Michael Waltz, but also Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. Still amazing. Still amazing.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Holy crap on steroids!': Top Trump officials exposed in shocking, sloppy military security blunder
Trump's Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Trump's Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, Trump's Middle East envoy and real estate friend Steve Witkoff. who incidentally says he recently took a painting of Donald Trump to the White House as a gift from the Kremlin. Did you guys x-ray that? Also, the vice president of the United States, J.D. Vance. All these people appear to be on this group chat.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Holy crap on steroids!': Top Trump officials exposed in shocking, sloppy military security blunder
If journalist Jeffrey Goldberger remained skeptical that these were actually those people on the chat, the Trump officials in the chat apparently didn't realize that their discussion now included a very well-known Washington journalist.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Holy crap on steroids!': Top Trump officials exposed in shocking, sloppy military security blunder
It actually appears that not only were they all talking about this topic on Signal, but none of them checked to see who else was in the group while they were chatting. Nobody said like, oh, who's in this group? Jeffrey Goldberg says Pete Hegseth at one point told the group, quote, we are currently clean on OPSEC. They were not clean on OPSEC. They were not clean on operational security.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Holy crap on steroids!': Top Trump officials exposed in shocking, sloppy military security blunder
Not even close. We know he sent that text because a journalist was in the group chat that he was texting. Currently clean on OPSEC. Must have felt cool to say it, though, right? So what skeptical Jeffrey Goldberg saw in that chat ended up becoming sensitive enough that he doesn't fully describe it in his story today.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Holy crap on steroids!': Top Trump officials exposed in shocking, sloppy military security blunder
But he does report that on the morning of Saturday, March 15th at, quote, 1144 a.m., the account labeled Pete Hegseth posted in Signal a team update. Goldberg says, I will not quote from this update or from certain other subsequent texts.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Holy crap on steroids!': Top Trump officials exposed in shocking, sloppy military security blunder
What I will say in order to illustrate the shocking recklessness of this signal conversation is that the Hegseth post contained operational details of forthcoming strikes on Yemen, including information about targets, weapons the U.S. would be deploying, and attack sequencing. According to the lengthy Hegseth text, the first detonations in Yemen would be felt two hours hence at 1.45 p.m.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Holy crap on steroids!': Top Trump officials exposed in shocking, sloppy military security blunder
250 years ago yesterday, a man named Patrick Henry stood up in that church in Richmond, Virginia, and he gave a speech that is still remembered now, not just decades or generations later, but literally centuries later. This was, give me liberty or give me death. Now, it's not at all clear to historians if Patrick Henry actually said those exact words in that speech that day.
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'Holy crap on steroids!': Top Trump officials exposed in shocking, sloppy military security blunder
Eastern time. when, sure enough, the first explosions from the U.S. military strikes were reported in the capital of Yemen. And then the group chat celebrated the military effort with great work and good job and fire emojis. Jeffrey Goldberg says he watched the attack play out from his car in a grocery store parking lot.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Holy crap on steroids!': Top Trump officials exposed in shocking, sloppy military security blunder
Once he had seen enough to know that this actually had been a real group chat with those actual people, he got out. He left the chat. They had apparently been texting him and each other classified information on a commercially available non-classified text-based communication system.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Holy crap on steroids!': Top Trump officials exposed in shocking, sloppy military security blunder
A spokesperson for the National Security Council later confirmed what Jeff Goldberg already understood, quote, this appears to be an authentic message chain, and we are reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain. The administration confirmed for NBC News that it is reviewing how this happened. The whole story is, I mean, how is this real life?
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Holy crap on steroids!': Top Trump officials exposed in shocking, sloppy military security blunder
I just, how are these people in charge of what they're in charge of? I will tell you that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters today, quote, nobody was texting war plans. I will also tell you the president said that he hadn't heard about any of this until a reporter asked. Said he had no idea. News to him, didn't know a thing about it.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Holy crap on steroids!': Top Trump officials exposed in shocking, sloppy military security blunder
Well, we will all have plenty of opportunity to hear more about it. The ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, Senator Jack Reed, called the carelessness by Trump's cabinet, quote, stunning and dangerous. He said, quote, I will be seeking answers from the administration immediately.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Holy crap on steroids!': Top Trump officials exposed in shocking, sloppy military security blunder
Democratic Senator Chris Coons from the Foreign Relations Committee said this story, quote, calls for a prompt and thorough investigation. Saying this is a shocking breach of the standards for sharing classified information that could have put American service members at risk.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Holy crap on steroids!': Top Trump officials exposed in shocking, sloppy military security blunder
Because God keeps a date book, two of the Trump cabinet members who were in that group chat, Tulsi Gabbard and John Ratcliffe, were already scheduled to appear on Capitol Hill tomorrow morning as witnesses for the Senate Intelligence Committee's open hearing on worldwide threats. Joining us now is Senator Mark Warner, Democrat of Virginia.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Holy crap on steroids!': Top Trump officials exposed in shocking, sloppy military security blunder
He's the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee. Sir, it's always an honor to have you with us. Thanks for making time to be here tonight. Thank you, Rachel. Let me start by getting your reaction to this story. Let me also ask if you learned about it in the Atlantic the way that we all did, or if there was some governmental response that we don't know about here.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Holy crap on steroids!': Top Trump officials exposed in shocking, sloppy military security blunder
Let me ask if this is a big enough shock that you expect that some of your Republican colleagues may join you in calling for John Ratcliffe to resign, calling on Pete Hegseth to resign. I mean, I feel like I've covered a lot of embarrassing, inadvertent releases of sensitive information of various types, where things through recklessness or negligence have been released.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Holy crap on steroids!': Top Trump officials exposed in shocking, sloppy military security blunder
This seems to have been a deliberate decision to create a completely insecure communications medium that is compounded by the stupidity of having included a journalist and not knowing they were doing it. But I just feel like this is so much worse than anything we've ever seen for people operating at this kind of a level. Will Republicans care about it?
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Holy crap on steroids!': Top Trump officials exposed in shocking, sloppy military security blunder
Virginia Democratic Senator Mark Warner, senior Democrat on the Intelligence Committee. I know you've got a very big day tomorrow with this very, very high pressure hearing. Thank you for taking time to join us tonight. I appreciate it, sir.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Holy crap on steroids!': Top Trump officials exposed in shocking, sloppy military security blunder
We've got more news ahead. Stay with us. Appreciate it. So here's the proclamation that was sent out from the White House last weekend. Invocation of the Alien Enemies Act by the President of the United States of America.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Holy crap on steroids!': Top Trump officials exposed in shocking, sloppy military security blunder
This is the proclamation in which Donald Trump invoked a law from the 1700s that says when we're at war, the president can immediately deport and jail anyone his administration picks. In this case, picks as belonging to a Venezuelan criminal gang, which is something that has nothing to do with wartime. But regardless, they put this out, and there's Donald Trump's signature on the proclamation.
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'Holy crap on steroids!': Top Trump officials exposed in shocking, sloppy military security blunder
Within hours of that proclamation, the Trump administration put hundreds of people on planes bound for a prison in El Salvador. And they had no legal process at all. People were just grabbed, chained, and sent to a foreign prison. A federal judge blocked any further flights like this and spent the week repeatedly grilling Trump administration lawyers about it.
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'Holy crap on steroids!': Top Trump officials exposed in shocking, sloppy military security blunder
He said on Friday, quote, why was this proclamation essentially signed in the dark on Friday night or early Saturday morning? And then these people rushed onto planes. I mean, it seems to me the only reason to do that is if you know it's a problem and you want to get them out of the country before suit is filed. Thank you.
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'Holy crap on steroids!': Top Trump officials exposed in shocking, sloppy military security blunder
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'Holy crap on steroids!': Top Trump officials exposed in shocking, sloppy military security blunder
Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin of Virginia, hearing from his constituents in Richmond, Virginia yesterday, his peaceful and nonviolent but very loud and very angry constituents. You know, because of where we are in the calendar, we are now starting to have lots of commemorations of things related to the 250th anniversary of the founding of our country, right?
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'Holy crap on steroids!': Top Trump officials exposed in shocking, sloppy military security blunder
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'Holy crap on steroids!': Top Trump officials exposed in shocking, sloppy military security blunder
Our revolt against a tyrannical leader who ruled by fiat, the founding of our democracy and our divided system of government with its checks and balances to prevent the emergence of another king. Lots of anniversaries, lots of historical commemorative events coming up on this theme. Just to...
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Just a note, if you are a politician who is going to try to associate yourself with that history, do be aware that your relationship to our current struggles along these lines in this country to hold on to our democracy, that will undoubtedly be front of mind for many of your constituents. One of the things that is in our original Constitution from the 1700s is the U.S. Post Office.
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At the end of last week, we covered a bunch of protests all over the country related to the post office, people fighting to save the post office. Trump has said he wants to effectively abolish it. His top campaign donor, Elon Musk, has said it should be privatized.
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And when we covered this at the end of last week, I thought this was a lot in terms of public response against Trump on the post office, people standing up to defend the post office. That was the end of last week. Turns out that was nothing compared to what happened this weekend.
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In our production system here on this show, we can do something on screen that's called a two box that shows two pieces of tape simultaneously at once. I sometimes drive everybody nuts by asking for a four box, which shows four pieces of tape at once. In order to cover the postal service, Protests? We've had to create something we've never done before.
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'Holy crap on steroids!': Top Trump officials exposed in shocking, sloppy military security blunder
It's a 20 bucks to even start to show you how many demonstrations and protests there were this weekend just of people defending the U.S. Post Office. This isn't even all of them, but this is as many as we can squeeze onto a screen. I mean, we saw protests in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where the first postmaster general was Ben Franklin, and in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania as well, and St.
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Paul, Minnesota, and San Jose, California, and Los Angeles, California, and Providence, Rhode Island, Seattle, Washington, Buffalo, New York, Charlotte, North Carolina, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Green Bay, Wisconsin, Cleveland, Ohio, Melbourne, Florida, Newark, Delaware, Denver, Colorado, Washington, D.C., San Antonio, Texas.
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'Holy crap on steroids!': Top Trump officials exposed in shocking, sloppy military security blunder
Omaha, Nebraska, Roanoke, Virginia, Las Vegas, Grand Rapids, Michigan, Decatur, Georgia, Fort Wayne, Indiana. In Indianapolis, we had to put them up twice because there were two in Indianapolis. In Boise, Idaho, there was a protest to defend the post office on Sunday alongside all these other ones.
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'Holy crap on steroids!': Top Trump officials exposed in shocking, sloppy military security blunder
But in Boise, that followed this additional big protest in Boise on Saturday at the state capitol in Ruby Red, Idaho. At this protest at the state capitol in Idaho, people showed up to defend public lands and the national parks, including some people who showed up in Idaho to that event on horseback.
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'Holy crap on steroids!': Top Trump officials exposed in shocking, sloppy military security blunder
There were other protests this weekend to defend public lands and the national parks at Mount Rainier this weekend in Washington State and at the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Tennessee and in Florissant, Colorado and in Calabasas, California. See the signs there? Re-hire our rangers.
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In San Luis Obispo, they were protesting for public lands and to preserve the California coast, where Trump is now demanding oil drilling off the California coast. This sign will stick with me from San Luis Obispo this weekend. It's got Smokey Bear, and it says, Only you can resist fascist liars.
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Might have been kind of stolen from Shakespeare and later attributed to him. I don't know. But regardless, it was a good speech. It was important. It's credited in part with Virginia choosing to join what would become the Revolutionary War against the tyrannical King George, which is how we got our independence as a nation. It's how ultimately we got our Constitution and our Bill of Rights.
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As President Trump and his attorney general and Republicans of all stripes have spent the past couple of weeks trying to intimidate Americans out of specifically protesting against the car company owned by the president's top campaign donor, the American people this weekend showed in very large numbers that they are not going to be dissuaded from peaceful, legal, nonviolent protest for or against anything they want.
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Because we don't need to clear that with the government. Because we are Americans and it is our right to peacefully protest if we want to. Look at this. This is Cherry Hill, New Jersey. Look at the size of the protest here. This is just a passerby filming this from his own car as he drove past. And he's driving, like, at speed, right?
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But the protest is so big, it goes on for so long, it ends up being kind of a long video in order to try to capture the numbers of people who are out just at this one Tesla dealership in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. The organizers of that protest in Cherry Hill say they think there were 600 or 700 people out at this one protest at this one Tesla dealership. just this weekend. Look, it's still going.
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'Holy crap on steroids!': Top Trump officials exposed in shocking, sloppy military security blunder
There were Tesla dealership protests this weekend in Colorado Springs, Colorado and in Arlington, Virginia and in Bartlett, Tennessee and in Franklin, Tennessee and in Boston, Massachusetts. And in New York, New York City has a Tesla dealership. There's a very large protest at the Tesla dealership in New York City this weekend.
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In Chesterfield, Missouri, there was a protest at the Tesla dealership. In Chicago, Illinois, in Rockville, Maryland, in Pasadena, California, there was a big one in Pasadena, California this weekend. There has been most weekends in recent weeks in Pasadena. In Washington, D.C., there are now recurring protests at their Tesla dealership. Regularly has a DJ. And at the Washington, D.C.
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Tesla dealership, people are dancing because they are billing this as the Tesla takedown dance party weekly in Washington. At the Tesla protest this weekend in Austin, Texas, this sign stuck with me. Porsche, fast. Ferrari, faster. Tesla, you can read it. I never thought that fastest was an imperfect homophone for fascist, but I guess it is. And now I can't stop thinking about it.
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'Holy crap on steroids!': Top Trump officials exposed in shocking, sloppy military security blunder
This weekend in Kalamazoo, Michigan, people turned out for a hands-off-our-social-security protest. In Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, and in Virginia Beach, Virginia, people turned out to protest against Trump and Musk and the cuts to the federal government.
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Same thing in Westwood, California, where Congresswoman Maxine Waters turned out in support, as she has for many of the protests that have happened in her district. In terms of town halls with members of Congress or without them, when people turned out anyway, even though their member of Congress wouldn't come, there's been almost too many of them happening right now to sum them all up.
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'Holy crap on steroids!': Top Trump officials exposed in shocking, sloppy military security blunder
And they're starting to get more attention in the media, and so you may have seen some of the coverage of these elsewhere. I will just tell you, as a person who has been watching this stuff pretty closely for pretty much eight weeks now,
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It is how we got our democracy. And on the occasion of that 250 year anniversary of Patrick Henry's give me liberty or give me death speech, which again, that 250 year anniversary was yesterday.
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My impression of what's going on with the town halls in particular is that, number one, we're seeing the number of these types of events just explode, including in places you would not necessarily expect to see them. These are definitely not like a blue state liberal area phenomenon. They are that. but they are also everywhere else in the country.
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'Holy crap on steroids!': Top Trump officials exposed in shocking, sloppy military security blunder
You're also, number two, seeing the numbers of people turning out for these things just go through the roof.
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You're seeing that when Democrats are going to Republican districts to hold town halls where the Republicans won't do it, you're seeing it where Democrats are holding their own town halls, and you are seeing it where they can't get a member of Congress to come to the town hall at all, but Americans just show up. Americans are showing up all over in big and increasing numbers.
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'Holy crap on steroids!': Top Trump officials exposed in shocking, sloppy military security blunder
We are starting to see these numbers both of events and of bodies and the number of people turning out at individual events, I think, tip over into something that's qualitatively different than what we had previously seen. I'll show you just a little bit of what I mean just from this weekend. Mishawaka, Indiana, right?
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Not a place we've ever covered here on this show before, but look, hundreds of people turned out to protest against their Republican Congressman Rudy Yakim. I think that's how you say his name. He's refusing to meet with them, and so here in Indiana are his constituents.
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Ogden, Utah, hundreds of people protesting against their Republican Congressman Blake Moore, demanding that Republican Congressman Blake Moore stand up to Trump. Look at this event, Columbus, Ohio. Jen Psaki had Sherrod Brown on her show tonight talking about organizing in Columbus. Look at this in Columbus.
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A huge event demanding that Republican Ohio Senators Bernie Marino and John Husted meet with their constituents, that they find it within themselves to stand up for Trump, stand up to Trump. Another huge event in Lexington, Kentucky. Kentucky. Look at this. Demanding that Republican Congressman Andy Barr stand up to Trump or at least show up and talk to his constituents about why he won't.
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In Lewiston, Idaho and in Moscow, Idaho, two big empty chair town halls to which Republican Congressman Russ Fulcher would not show up to face his Idaho constituents. Nearly a thousand people turned out in Billings, Montana. demanding to meet with their Republican senators and Congressman Troy Downing.
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The current governor of Virginia, Republican Glenn Youngkin, went to that church in Richmond, Virginia yesterday, where they reenacted the whole dramatic speech, including the give me liberty or give me death thing, which may or may not have actually been said in that. speech 250 years ago. But still, it's a really nice, important thing to commemorate. 250 years is a big anniversary.
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In Cape Fear, North Carolina, they had a more than full house at a huge event for Senator Tom Tillis. 150 people turned away at the door. Senator Tom Tillis did not show up to meet his constituents. They put a comedian on stage wearing a giant foam core cutout of Tillis' face and the face of Republican David Browser, their Republican congressman in Cape Fear, who also did not show up.
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Hey, you guys, this is what your constituents are doing without you when you don't show up for constituent events. In Waterloo, Iowa, a packed house full of Republican Congresswoman Ashley Hinson's constituents. The Congresswoman herself not even answering questions from some local media about why she won't show up or talk with people in her district.
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'Holy crap on steroids!': Top Trump officials exposed in shocking, sloppy military security blunder
Same thing with Republican Congresswoman Mary Miller, a no-show in rural Jacksonville, Illinois, where her constituents, according to local news reports of this event, they really, really want to talk with her about Medicaid cuts, which they think will be absolutely devastating in her district. But she's a no-show. Congressman Neil Dunn is a Florida Republican.
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He represents a district in Tallahassee. Veterans in his Florida district are demanding that he at least look them in the eye when he doesn't stand up to what Trump is doing and what he's allowing to happen. Watch this local coverage.
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Democrats not immune from voter wrath as pressure to impede Trump mounts
Thanks to at home for joining us this hour. So there is a town in California called Yucca Valley. It's a beautiful place. It's located in the Mojave Desert. And the good people of Yucca Valley have this man representing them in Congress. His name is Jay Obernolte. He is a Republican. He was first elected to Congress just a couple of terms ago in 2020.
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Democrats not immune from voter wrath as pressure to impede Trump mounts
Does it help? Does it advance Democrats' ability to stand up against Trump and Musk and what's happening in Washington, to have people at these town halls, to have people protesting in various symbolic and important places, either that represent the government or that represent some of the forces that are at work right now within our government?
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Democrats not immune from voter wrath as pressure to impede Trump mounts
Does people showing up and doing direct action, peaceful, nonviolent direct action, to try to put steel in your spine, among others, Does it help or is it more of a hindrance to you?
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Democrats not immune from voter wrath as pressure to impede Trump mounts
Oh, the big, ah, at the end there, they almost know what he's gearing up to do, right? Remember purple district barely went for Trump, but here's how, how Congressman Obernolte answered that question.
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Democrats not immune from voter wrath as pressure to impede Trump mounts
Democratic leader in the House, Hakeem Jeffries. Leader Jeffries, it is a real honor to have you here. I know that your time is valuable. Come back anytime, sir. I'd love to talk to you anytime you can stand it. Thank you so much.
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Democrats not immune from voter wrath as pressure to impede Trump mounts
I'm going to take a little point of personal privilege here just for a moment, if it is okay with you. You may have already heard about changes that have been announced at MSNBC over the last couple of days. The new president of our network made it official today. Some of our shows are moving to different time slots or expanding or going away altogether.
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Democrats not immune from voter wrath as pressure to impede Trump mounts
In prime time, just so you know, I am here five days a week for the first hundred days of Trump's presidency, as planned. And as planned, I will go back to just Mondays after that. That is not changing. What is changing is that the show, Alex Wagner Tonight, is not coming back at 9 after the first 100 days.
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Democrats not immune from voter wrath as pressure to impede Trump mounts
Instead, Alex will be a senior political analyst for MSNBC, and Jen Psaki will start hosting the 9 p.m. hour all the other nights except for Mondays. So that's a big change. And even bigger programming change is at 7 p.m., 7 p.m. Eastern, where Joy Reid's show, The Readout, ended tonight. And Joy is not taking a different job in the network. She is leaving the network altogether.
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Democrats not immune from voter wrath as pressure to impede Trump mounts
And that is very, very, very hard to take. I am 51 years old. I have been gainfully employed since I was 12. And I have had so many different kinds of jobs, you wouldn't believe me if I told you. But in all of the jobs I have had, in all of the years I have been alive, there is no colleague for whom I have had more affection and more respect than Joy Reid. I love everything about her.
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Democrats not immune from voter wrath as pressure to impede Trump mounts
I have learned so much from her. I have so much more to learn from her. I do not want to lose her as a colleague here at MSNBC. And personally, I think it is a bad mistake to let her walk out the door. It is not my call, and I understand that. But that's what I think.
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Democrats not immune from voter wrath as pressure to impede Trump mounts
I will tell you, it is also unnerving to see that on a network where we've got two, count them, two non-white hosts in primetime, both of our non-white hosts in primetime are losing their shows, as is Katie Fang on The Weeknd. And that feels worse than bad, no matter who replaces them. That feels indefensible, and I do not defend it. But there's just one other piece of it that you should know.
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Democrats not immune from voter wrath as pressure to impede Trump mounts
From your side of the TV screen, you will mostly see changes in terms of who's in the anchor chair. And actually, everybody who's going to be in anchor chairs from here on out are great colleagues and great at what they do. And you are not going to be disappointed in who's on our air and what you're going to be seeing.
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Democrats not immune from voter wrath as pressure to impede Trump mounts
But one thing you cannot necessarily see is that the people who get our shows on the air, they're really being put through the ringer. Dozens of producers and staffers, including some who are among the most experienced and most talented and most specialist producers in the building, are facing being laid off. They're being invited to reapply for new jobs.
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Democrats not immune from voter wrath as pressure to impede Trump mounts
that has never happened at this scale in this way before when it comes to programming changes, presumably because it's not the right way to treat people and it's inefficient and it's unnecessary. And it kind of drops the bottom out of whether or not people feel like this is a good place to work. And so we don't generally do things that way.
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Democrats not immune from voter wrath as pressure to impede Trump mounts
Maybe all of our folks, including most of the people who are getting this very show on the air right now, maybe they will all get new jobs here, and I hope they do. But in the meantime, being put in this kind of limbo, the anxiety and the discombobulation is off the charts at a time when this job already is extra stressful and difficult.
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Democrats not immune from voter wrath as pressure to impede Trump mounts
It is not news for me to tell you that the press and freedom of the press are under attack in a way that is really... It's a big deal for our country. It's very visceral for us here. I know that the business of the press is not an easy thing, and I know that no job is forever.
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Democrats not immune from voter wrath as pressure to impede Trump mounts
But I think I'm safe in saying for all of us anchors who you know through the TV, please know that what pains us the most is not what happens to us. It is what happens to our coworkers on whom we depend and who you don't necessarily know, but we respect and love them and depend on them. And did I mention we respect them?
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Democrats not immune from voter wrath as pressure to impede Trump mounts
This is a difficult time in the news business, but it does not need to be this difficult. We welcome new voices to this place and some familiar voices to new hours. It's going to be great, honestly. And we want to grow and succeed and reach more people than ever and be resilient and stay here forever. I also believe, and I bet you believe, that the way to get there is by treating people well.
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Democrats not immune from voter wrath as pressure to impede Trump mounts
Finding good people, good colleagues, doing good work with them, and then having their back. that we could do a lot better on, a lot better. I'll be right back. People gathered in Washington, D.C. this weekend on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to show support for our allies in Ukraine. Today marks three years since Russia invaded its neighbor.
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Democrats not immune from voter wrath as pressure to impede Trump mounts
People marched in Grand Rapids, Michigan, carrying Ukrainian flags, stop Putin, stop war. There was a pro-Ukraine rally at the state capitol in Madison, Wisconsin. There was another at the state capitol in Salt Lake City, Utah. Also at the state capitol in Columbus, Ohio. People rallied in support of our allies in Ukraine in Detroit, Michigan.
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Democrats not immune from voter wrath as pressure to impede Trump mounts
And in Boston, Massachusetts, there was a huge turnout. In Houston, Texas. In Reno, Nevada. And all around the world, from Toronto to Warsaw, from Paris to Melbourne, Australia.
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Democrats not immune from voter wrath as pressure to impede Trump mounts
all these people all across our country, all across the world, all standing in solidarity with the people of Ukraine as they mark three years of trying to stay a country, of trying to resist this unprovoked Russian invasion. But here's how the U.S. government under Donald Trump marked that milestone today. This was the banner headline today at the Washington Post this afternoon. Quote, U.S.
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Democrats not immune from voter wrath as pressure to impede Trump mounts
sides with Russia against Ukraine war resolution. Quote, Washington breaks with Europe, refusing to condemn Moscow on third anniversary of invasion. And, you know, U.N. resolutions are non-binding. Votes like this are symbolic. But this is essentially the U.S. declaring pretty much formally that we're on Russia's side now. U.S.
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Democrats not immune from voter wrath as pressure to impede Trump mounts
was one of only 18 countries in the world to vote against Ukraine and with Russia on this today. So who are our allies now? Who are we allied with now? Well, based on this vote, we now stand with Russia, obviously. Also North Korea.
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Democrats not immune from voter wrath as pressure to impede Trump mounts
Iran, Belarus, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Central African Republic, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Hungary, Israel, Mali, the Marshall Islands, Nicaragua, Niger, Sudan, and the United States of America. What a club to be part of. Welcome to our new Axis. And how are we doing with the countries that have long been our allies?
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Democrats not immune from voter wrath as pressure to impede Trump mounts
You know, the European nations that have been our closest allies for the last 80 years or so. Well, there was a remarkable moment, kind of an embarrassing moment in the Oval Office today, one in which I thought President Trump might burst.
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Democrats not immune from voter wrath as pressure to impede Trump mounts
He's sitting there next to President Emmanuel Macron of France, and Trump tried to claim right there in front of Macron that somehow Europe is going to be getting back all the money that it's invested in Ukraine to support its defense against Russia. The U.S. is somehow getting screwed. We gave them the money, but Europe, it was just loans, and they're getting all the money back.
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Democrats not immune from voter wrath as pressure to impede Trump mounts
The French president then interrupts the president of the United States to correct him, to say, actually, Europe has given more money than the United States to Ukraine's war effort and isn't getting any more of it back than the U.S. is. Watch this and watch how President Macron touches Trump's arm here. Watch Trump's reaction.
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Democrats not immune from voter wrath as pressure to impede Trump mounts
No, in fact, to be frank, I can't even do a fake French accent. To be frank. But you see the way he puts his hand on Trump's arm? Like the way you do when Grandpa starts going on again about something he saw on Fox News? Now, Grandpa, we talked about this. You keep saying Europe is getting all its money back from Ukraine. But, Grandpa, to be frank, that's just not true.
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Democrats not immune from voter wrath as pressure to impede Trump mounts
At a press conference later in the day, Trump said he thinks it is, quote, very much to the benefit of Russia to make a deal. I'm sure it will be, with the American president apparently quite hell-bent on making Russia as happy as possible. To the list of things that will undoubtedly make Russia very happy in this Trump era, we can now add destabilizing the U.S. military as of this weekend.
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Democrats not immune from voter wrath as pressure to impede Trump mounts
Former Secretary of the Air Force has had a stark warning for the public on that front, and he's going to join us to discuss that here next. Senior U.S.
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Democrats not immune from voter wrath as pressure to impede Trump mounts
military officers and senior civilians in the Defense Department, really senior, like people who serve on the Joint Chiefs, people who are secretaries of the various branches of the military, I have been able to meet and interview and get to know more of them than you'd think.
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Democrats not immune from voter wrath as pressure to impede Trump mounts
I wrote a book about the military a decade or so ago, and that started a process in which I met a lot of these folks, and it's been an honor. And while folks at that very senior level come from all sorts of different backgrounds, they come to those leadership positions through all sorts of different routes.
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Democrats not immune from voter wrath as pressure to impede Trump mounts
By the time any of them have served at the most senior ranks of the military and the Defense Department, I think one of the things you can say about all of them in unison is that they are measured. They are calm. The word unflappable is almost right, but it feels like it needs a more worrying root word than flap, right? These are people who are, like, epically even-keeled.
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Democrats not immune from voter wrath as pressure to impede Trump mounts
And that is why I asked to be on the show tonight the man who, until last month, served as Secretary of the United States Air Force. His name is Frank Kendall. He is a West Point graduate, an Army veteran, a former Undersecretary of Defense, and for the last four years, he was Secretary of the United States Air Force. He is not a flappable man. And yet.
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Democrats not immune from voter wrath as pressure to impede Trump mounts
Friday night, President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced the sudden and unexplained removal of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the highest-ranking officer in the United States Navy, the Vice Chief of Staff of the Air Force, and the senior lawyers, the senior legal officers in the Air Force and the Army and the Navy.
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Democrats not immune from voter wrath as pressure to impede Trump mounts
Now, Frank Kendall responded to that in writing. And what he wrote, to me, is the unflappable veteran defense official version of an air raid siren. Just listen to this, quote, President Trump's decision to fire senior military leaders without cause is foolish and a disgrace. It politicizes our professional military in a dangerous and debilitating way.
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Democrats not immune from voter wrath as pressure to impede Trump mounts
What frightens me most is the removal of three judge advocates general, the most senior uniformed legal authorities in the Defense Department. Their removal is one more element of this administration's attack on the rule of law and an especially disturbing part.
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Democrats not immune from voter wrath as pressure to impede Trump mounts
The military's top judge advocates general are the senior military professionals who interpret and enforce the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the rules that guide troops in the field. They have the independent legal authority to tell any military commander or political appointee that an order from the president or the secretary of defense is unlawful, cannot be given, and should not be obeyed.
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Democrats not immune from voter wrath as pressure to impede Trump mounts
Mr. Trump and Mr. Hegseth will now get to choose the JAG leadership for all three military departments. One has to ask why JAG leadership was singled out for replacement. This is part of a much larger pattern of disrespect, even disdain for the rule of law. If there is one characteristic of this president and this administration, it is the utter lack of respect for legal constraints.
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Democrats not immune from voter wrath as pressure to impede Trump mounts
Kendall says, quote, we are in danger when the legal constraints and how the president uses the military, including within the United States. He concludes with this. The replacement of the military JAG leadership is one skirmish in that war, but it is time for the American people across the political spectrum to recognize what is happening.
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Democrats not immune from voter wrath as pressure to impede Trump mounts
Quote, America has a rogue president and a rogue administration, and we need to acknowledge that and respond. Joining us now is Frank Kendall, who until last month was Secretary of the United States Air Force. Secretary Kendall, it is a real honor to have some time with you tonight. Thank you for joining us.
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Democrats not immune from voter wrath as pressure to impede Trump mounts
Am I right to read this as you essentially sending an alert that although to civilians this might not have registered at first glance like the biggest deal, given everything else, you're essentially telling the public this is a very big deal and one that needs a response?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Democrats not immune from voter wrath as pressure to impede Trump mounts
In terms of the removal of those legal officers, I found it striking that in the announcement about their removal, they weren't even named, implying that they were removed as a class of people rather than as individual public servants and officers who were removed for some specific reason as to how they were doing their job.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Democrats not immune from voter wrath as pressure to impede Trump mounts
And Obernolte had a pretty easy reelection this year. His constituents sent their Republican congressman back to Washington by a big margin, by more than 20 points. But although he had an easy ride in his district, overall, this isn't a bright red county in California. Yucca Valley is in San Bernardino County. Biden won there in 2020 by 10 points.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Democrats not immune from voter wrath as pressure to impede Trump mounts
What is the thing you most worry about in terms of replacing senior legal military officers at this level and doing so as a group?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Democrats not immune from voter wrath as pressure to impede Trump mounts
It's almost proud of it, right? I'll tell you this, the American people voted for change in November, and change is what they're getting, and then he gets shouted down by a couple hundred people booing him to his face. His constituents.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Democrats not immune from voter wrath as pressure to impede Trump mounts
When you said America has a rogue president and a rogue administration, I'd like to hear how you define those terms and what you mean by that. I take you at your word that you chose those words very carefully, but you followed that assertion immediately with, we need to acknowledge that and respond. So I'd also like to hear from you what you think the appropriate response is.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Democrats not immune from voter wrath as pressure to impede Trump mounts
Frank Kendall, former Undersecretary of Defense until last month, Secretary of the United States Air Force. Sir, thank you for your service to our country. Thank you for helping us understand this time. And thank you for writing this in the blunt terms that you did. At least for me, it really broke through and it made me understand this in a way that I didn't previously.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Democrats not immune from voter wrath as pressure to impede Trump mounts
If you're a Republican member of Congress continuing to carry water for this administration, continuing to defend what Donald Trump and his top campaign donor are doing to the United States government, this is perhaps not an unfamiliar vibe these days. I mean, we're seeing this at town halls all over the country.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Democrats not immune from voter wrath as pressure to impede Trump mounts
And it's scary to me, but I appreciate your expertise. Thank you. a scary time rachel thank you yeah thank you as the daughter of a uh former air force jag in particular i gotta say all right we'll be right back I want to show you two very different, totally incredible expressions of protest in our time. The first one depends on nature, on an annual natural event that's called firefall.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Democrats not immune from voter wrath as pressure to impede Trump mounts
Look at that. Every February, the way the sunset hits this waterfall at the top of the rock formation called El Capitan in Yosemite National Park, it creates a surreal orange glowing effect, almost like the waterfall is made of fire. Firefall at Yosemite is a really big tourist attraction, like on a geologic scale.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Democrats not immune from voter wrath as pressure to impede Trump mounts
Thousands of people camp out to look up at this exact spot where the February sun hits the waterfall in just this way. Well, it's now February and firefall is on. And on Saturday this weekend, a group of Yosemite Park employees made it the site of a peaceful but dramatic protest. They climbed to the top of this 3000 foot rock formation and they hung an American flag upside down. which in U.S.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Democrats not immune from voter wrath as pressure to impede Trump mounts
flag code is the symbol of dire distress.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Democrats not immune from voter wrath as pressure to impede Trump mounts
The park employee who provided the flag told the San Francisco Chronicle the point was to bring attention to what is happening to the parks, by which he means the Trump administration indiscriminately cutting huge numbers of jobs in the national parks, about 1,000 so far, enough to raise questions about how well the parks can function, not to mention potentially opening up public lands as widely as they can to drilling and mining.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Democrats not immune from voter wrath as pressure to impede Trump mounts
upside-down American flag in Yosemite. That's just an incredible expression of protest. That's number one. The second example happened today all the way across the country at the Department of Housing and Urban Development in Washington, D.C., where senior level managers at HUD have been told to expect half of their staff to be fired.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Democrats not immune from voter wrath as pressure to impede Trump mounts
Now, I should tell you that what I'm about to show you is super gross, really gross. So if you would like to turn away, now is your chance. Throughout the D.C. headquarters for the Department of Housing and Urban Development, there are internal TV monitors, the kind that might show you what's for lunch in the cafeteria or whatever.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Democrats not immune from voter wrath as pressure to impede Trump mounts
But instead, today, when employees showed up for work the first day everybody was expected to be back in the office full time, instead, on those monitors, they saw this. a fake-ity fake video of President Trump passionately kissing the feet of Elon Musk with the text Long Live the Real King superimposed over it.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Democrats not immune from voter wrath as pressure to impede Trump mounts
We're also seeing, you know, huge protests like these ones all over the country this weekend. There were protests all over the country this weekend marking the third anniversary of Russia invading Ukraine. People out there in the streets demonstrating their support for Ukraine, their opposition to Russia and its dictator, Vladimir Putin.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Democrats not immune from voter wrath as pressure to impede Trump mounts
What appeared on those internal TVs at HUD today needs to not exist in nature, and thank heavens it does not. From our own very helpful internal network guidance on this, quote, our editorial teams indicate this video appears to be AI-generated and fake. Yes. Yes. Thank you, Jesus. The video does have telltale signs of being fake.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Democrats not immune from voter wrath as pressure to impede Trump mounts
If you look closely, which I don't recommend, you might notice, for example, that Elon Musk is depicted as having two left feet. We ourselves have not seen Mr. Musk's feet, but the ones on screen at HUD today do look like fictional feet. NBC News has reached out to the White House for comment. We will keep you posted.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Democrats not immune from voter wrath as pressure to impede Trump mounts
But from the tops of the mountains to the bottoms of the president's top donors' fake feet, Americans are getting creative in their pushback. Creative and unforgettable. We'll be right back. All right, that's going to do it for me for now. I will see you again tomorrow and every night this week here at MSNBC at 9 p.m. Eastern.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Democrats not immune from voter wrath as pressure to impede Trump mounts
Even as the Trump administration switches sides in that war and now appears to be supporting Russia. There were also more protests over the weekend at Tesla dealerships in places like Seattle and Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and New York and San Francisco. There was also a very dramatic protest in Yosemite National Park this weekend. Federal workers sending up a classic sign of distress.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Democrats not immune from voter wrath as pressure to impede Trump mounts
American flag upside down at the top of El Capitan. A way of letting the country know that things are not okay. We're going to be talking later on in the show about this big dramatic show of force we are seeing all over the country. And about this real, I think, shock to the system for Republicans who are daring to speak to their own constituents. But to be clear...
The Rachel Maddow Show
Democrats not immune from voter wrath as pressure to impede Trump mounts
Democratic members of Congress aren't necessarily finding it easy either. They are getting pushed really hard at their own town halls as well, at their own congressional offices. Not because they're siding with Trump and his top campaign donor like Republicans are. No Democrats are doing that. Democrats are getting pushed because even though they're in opposition to what Trump and Musk are doing,
The Rachel Maddow Show
Democrats not immune from voter wrath as pressure to impede Trump mounts
Many Democratic Republican, excuse me, many Democratic members of Congress around the country are finding out loud that their constituents think they're not doing enough. Yeah, being in opposition is one thing, but you're not doing enough to fight back. This was over the weekend, a town hall in Cincinnati held by Democratic Congressman Greg Lansman.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Democrats not immune from voter wrath as pressure to impede Trump mounts
Here was the local press coverage at a Cincinnati town hall. A Democratic congressman is urged to be more confrontational. Another 300 or so people showed up in Hawaii on Saturday to put pressure on their Democratic congresswoman, Jill Takuda. One constituent of the congresswoman telling her, quote, have a backbone, please, please.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Democrats not immune from voter wrath as pressure to impede Trump mounts
This was just last week, dramatic footage that ricocheted around the country from a town hall held by Democratic Congressman Paul Tonko.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Democrats not immune from voter wrath as pressure to impede Trump mounts
This past election, Trump just very narrowly won San Bernardino County just by just by a couple of points. So it's an interesting it's an interesting place. And over the weekend, Congressman Obernolte held a town hall in his home district and that sort of purple, interesting part of California and Yucca. And this is how it went pretty much right from the jump.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Democrats not immune from voter wrath as pressure to impede Trump mounts
We have to take the gloves off. Americans pushing Republicans really hard, particularly when they try to defend Trump, but Americans also really pushing their Democratic members of Congress to do more, to fight harder against this White House and what feels like a real crisis in Washington.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Democrats not immune from voter wrath as pressure to impede Trump mounts
And that's happening not just to Democratic members of Congress you're learning about for the first time here because I'm showing you tape from their town hall. It's happening to all the Democrats, including the Democratic leader in Washington, Hakeem Jeffries, leader of the House. This was outside his office in Brooklyn, New York on Thursday.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Democrats not immune from voter wrath as pressure to impede Trump mounts
Hundreds of people calling on him to be more aggressive toward this White House, to stand up. faster, to stand up more firmly, to fight harder against Trump and his top campaign donor. It happened to Leader Jeffries again the very next day in Oakland, California. This was outside an event where Congressman Jeffries was giving remarks. Hundreds of people gathered outside demanding that he do more.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Democrats not immune from voter wrath as pressure to impede Trump mounts
And I absolutely understand the sentiment, but what can he do? What does he believe is within his power? Joining us now is the man himself, Democratic leader in the House, Hakeem Jeffries. Leader Jeffries, it's a real honor to have you here tonight. Thank you so much for joining us.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Democrats not immune from voter wrath as pressure to impede Trump mounts
So every day now, I feel like we're getting more and more tape and dramatic reportage from congressional town halls all around the country, seeing Republican members of Congress pressed by their own constituents, even by their own Republican constituents, about what Trump and Musk are doing that the public doesn't like.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Democrats not immune from voter wrath as pressure to impede Trump mounts
But we also see voters imploring Democrats, and you specifically, to fight harder, to not be nice, to break protocol, to get arrested if that's what it takes. How are you hearing those calls? What can you tell voters tonight who say you could be doing more than you're doing?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Democrats not immune from voter wrath as pressure to impede Trump mounts
And I got to say, the mobilization is a bottom-up, very, very grassroots, very organic, coast-to-coast uprising.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Democrats not immune from voter wrath as pressure to impede Trump mounts
And what they are pushing against is what's happening in Washington, but what they are trying to push up and push forward is you and your colleagues to try to further empower you and further inspire you, by one way or another, to find new tactics, to find new avenues, to find new leverage. I mean, let's take this budget thing.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Democrats not immune from voter wrath as pressure to impede Trump mounts
You're going to expect this vote potentially as early tomorrow in the House. The Republicans' margin in the House is razor thin. We know at least one Republican is planning on voting no on that budget. You say you think you'll have every Democrat voting no. You've also asked members of the Democratic caucus to meet tomorrow on the Capitol steps.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Democrats not immune from voter wrath as pressure to impede Trump mounts
to try to make clear to the American people, members of the House Democratic Caucus should join us on the East Capitol steps at 12 noon tomorrow to make clear to the American people the stakes of what's happening. What are you planning for that event? What should the American public expect around this budget fight and how consequential it'll be?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Democrats not immune from voter wrath as pressure to impede Trump mounts
The case that you are making against Republican policies here is one that I hear and is cogent and that plays to a greater or lesser extent, I think, all across this country. The other thing that Americans are stressed out about, though, right now is that policy doesn't feel like it's the main conversation. right now.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Democrats not immune from voter wrath as pressure to impede Trump mounts
It feels like we are in the middle of a ketamine-fueled middle-of-the-night autocratic power grab that is rendering Congress irrelevant, that's rendering policy irrelevant, and that's rendering the rule of law an afterthought, if not a joke, to those who are planning on staying in power indefinitely without benefit of further elections. I mean, it is not about—I mean, it is about a bad budget.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Democrats not immune from voter wrath as pressure to impede Trump mounts
That's one of the things you have to contend with. But the fight here feels like it's on a different scale than the kinds of legislative counterpoint stuff that I think Democrats and Republicans are used to fighting over.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Democrats not immune from voter wrath as pressure to impede Trump mounts
And I think what Americans are sort of clamoring for is to hear from you personally, as the senior Democrat in Washington, in the House where the margins are so narrow, to hear from you that you understand the scale of the threat and you have ideas about how to interrupt what feels like something that we have not experienced since the Civil War in terms of the threat to our republic.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
Thanks, Stuart Holm, for joining us this hour. Really happy to have you here this Monday night. They said that by nightfall, the turnout was somewhere north of 325,000 people. Look at the size of this. We knew in advance that this is going to be a big demonstration. The government knew it was coming.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
President Donald Trump's son, Don Jr., the brunette, he visited Serbia last week and said that he thought the protests there were artificial, that they weren't real. The real Serbian people certainly wouldn't be protesting against their leadership. The Serbian president posted photos of himself with Don Jr., He was greeting a head of state or something.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
That's why we covered it here on this show when it happened. That led last week to a lawsuit being filed against the U.S. Marshals. Democracy Forward filed this lawsuit last week, asking in part why, quote, individuals associated with Doge have repeatedly invoked threats to engage the U.S. Marshal Service when seeking questionable access to agency buildings and information.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
So that happened at the U.S. Africa Development Foundation a couple weeks ago, led to the lawsuit against the U.S. Marshals demanding information from the Marshals last week. Well, now tonight, it has led to another physical confrontation. And this time, the agency in question actually did call the cops. In this case, it's something called the U.S. Institute of Peace.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
It works on things like research in conflict zones and training future diplomats. It was created by Congress during the Reagan administration. It was created in 1984. But it is not an official part of the U.S. government. It does not act in the name of the U.S. government. It is a separate institution. Nevertheless, on Friday, representatives from Doge showed up unannounced at their building.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
And they showed up unannounced this time not with somebody claiming to be a U.S. marshal. This time they showed up with... FBI agents? Wait, the FBI works for Doge? They demanded entry into the U.S. Institute of Peace. The Doge team was reportedly met by lawyers for the Institute who informed them, quote, of the Institute's private and independent status as a non-executive branch agency.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
They told them they could not come in. The Doge representatives on Friday then departed. That was Friday. But now, today, apparently it is... Come to a different ending. We got this alarming quote from the CEO of that independent organization tonight. Quote, Doge has broken into our building. The New York Times reports, quote, the U.S. Institute for Peace called the D.C.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
police on the Musk team members in an effort to stop them from trespassing because the institute has control of its own building and the land it sits on. But instead, the D.C. police allowed them to enter and kicked out the Institute's officials.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
FBI agents, reportedly, and the local police are being used by one government agency as an armed force against another part of the government, another government agency that controls its own building and that says you can't come in. What's going on here? And how do we figure it out? Joining us now is somebody who has been trying to pry loose some of the truth of what's going on here.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
Skye Perryman is the president and CEO of Democracy Forward, which sued the U.S. Marshals Service last week, asking why Doge was repeatedly invoking the marshals while trying to force their way into various buildings in Washington. Ms. Perryman, thanks very much for joining us. I appreciate it.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
So we've been trying to follow this as it has been unfolding. It sort of dribs and drabs, and now this dramatic unfolding tonight. Let me just ask if there's anything that you know about this that either contradicts what I just said or can further advance the story.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
The Serbian president also ordered police in that country to raid the offices of four of the major civil society NGOs in that country. The police went in without warrants. They went in armed and they just took everything at those organizations. The justification for them doing that was Donald Trump. Trump is trying to abolish USAID, trying to close down America's foreign aid agency.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
The lawsuit that you've already filed concerning the Marshal Service, are you seeking information from the Marshal Service as to whether or not their personnel have been seconded to Doge somehow? Are you trying to find out under what authority whoever those people were might have been operating when they used force to get into that property?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
I know that Democracy Forward, that your organization, is involved in a lot of litigation against the president and Doge and what they're doing to try to dismantle the government. I do want to ask, though, if there is precedent for this type of
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
Controversy, this type of dispute, I feel like when I cover things in other countries, one of the things I watch for to try to understand what kind of country that is, is when physical force is used to settle legal or political disputes, when guys with guns show up in the middle of what I would otherwise expect to be something that was a subject of a summons.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
I don't know of anything else like this before. I profess I might be ignorant to this part of D.C. dramatic history. But do you know of any precedent for something like this for one part of the government using armed physical force against another?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
Skye Perriman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward. You are a very, very, very busy woman, and this is a very busy organization that you are running. Thank you for taking time out tonight to help us understand this. We appreciate it. Thanks for having me. All right. More news ahead here tonight. Stay with us.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
So tonight we are right in the middle of a very important clash between the Trump administration and the courts. And it has been rapidly developing and escalating over the past 48 hours or so. As we talked about on Friday Night Show, the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 is a law that is a wartime law in this country. It's used during wartime only.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
The last time it was used was during World War II when it was used to put Japanese Americans in internment camps, something for which the U.S. government later apologized and paid reparations under Ronald Reagan.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
Nevertheless, in an unannounced written statement this weekend, Donald Trump claimed that that was the law he would use as the basis for deporting people who he determined to be members of a Venezuelan gang. He would use that law to deport people immediately, without any due process or any legal consideration at all.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
Organizations, including the ACLU, sued immediately to block him from using that 1700s law. The chief judge of the Washington, D.C., federal district court held an emergency hearing on the ACLU's lawsuit late Saturday afternoon.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
In so doing, Trump's top campaign donor Elon Musk called USAID a criminal organization. Remember when he said that? That has had consequences. Serbia's government is deciding that they're taking that literally. Well, it's Donald Trump's top campaign donor saying they're criminals.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
And at that hearing, the ACLU's lawyer, Lee Gelernt, told that judge that it was his understanding that planes were about to take off or possibly had taken off during the hearing, carrying hundreds of men out of this country toward a prison in El Salvador. There was a Trump administration lawyer there representing the government.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
That lawyer said he couldn't give the judge any information about that at all. So, again, this was an emergency hearing late on Saturday, and the judge ended up basically saying, listen, there are difficult questions of law here. These are going to have to be worked out in the courts. For now, I am blocking the Trump administration from deporting people under this law from the 1700s.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
They are blocked from using this law as the basis for these deportations until we can hash out these legal questions. So the judge actually said to the Trump administration lawyer, quote, you shall inform your clients, meaning inform the Trump administration, of this immediately.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
You should inform them that any plane containing these folks that's going to take off or is in the air needs to be returned to the United States. Those people need to be returned to the United States. Quote, this is something that you need to make sure is complied with immediately. By all appearances, that order... was not complied with immediately.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
NBC News reports that two flights carrying these men were in transit when the judge issued his ruling, but they did not turn around. They continued on their way. The Washington Post reports that a third plane was still on the ground at the time of that ruling. It hadn't taken off in Texas until after that judge's ruling had been issued. The next morning, the pro-Trump
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
President of El Salvador announced that his country had accepted 238 men from the United States. He posted a slickly produced three-minute propaganda video of some of these men being sort of manhandled and pushed around and all of them having their heads shaved by armed Salvadoran military or security forces. President Trump happily posted the video as well.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
The president of El Salvador says these men will be jailed in a massive prison in his country for as many years as the U.S. wants to pay him to keep them there. They have not been charged with crimes and thereby sentenced to serve this time. They're just being locked up indefinitely at the pleasure of El Salvador.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
At the White House press briefing today, Trump's press secretary listed all the crimes these men ostensibly committed. But a senior Trump administration official tells NBC News that these men have not necessarily been convicted of any of these crimes. Still, though, they're in prison now in El Salvador indefinitely, having been disappeared out of this country with no process whatsoever.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
They're taking that literally and essentially operating now on the assumption, or at least on the pretext, that any organization that ever got any support from USAID must be a criminal organization. And so now they've got armed police raids and shutting those organizations down and the threat of, in fact, criminal charges.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
We don't even know who these guys are. They keep saying they're Venezuelan gang members. We don't even know if they're Venezuelans, let alone gang members.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
Unsurprisingly, the federal judge who held that hearing on Saturday where he made it abundantly clear that nobody was supposed to be sent to El Salvador, he called a new hearing today to assess whether the Trump administration had knowingly violated his court order.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
Quote, a federal judge pressed a Justice Department lawyer today over why the Trump administration did not comply with his order to temporarily halt deportations under an 18th century law. and asked why key information about the flights was being withheld over the weekend.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
In a tense hearing, the judge summarized the administration's position on his court order Saturday as, quote, The Trump administration lawyer at this evening's hearing still refused to provide any information about the flights.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
And so the judge has now ordered another hearing for tomorrow at noon at which the Trump administration must give him the information he wants or explain the legal rationale for why they are not giving it to him. And if they don't, then. Well, then. Hanging in the balance immediately is the fate of untold numbers of people who Donald Trump may try to send to this Salvadoran prison.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
President of El Salvador has said openly that he'd be happy to put U.S. citizens there, too. But also hanging in the balance is whether the Trump administration is considering not just trying to wheedle their way out of it, but whether they're considering openly flouting a court order. which is a very fast trip down a very short street in terms of how much of a republic we still are.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
Joining us now is Lee Gelernt, Deputy Director of the ACLU's Immigrant Rights Project, who has been facing off with the Trump administration in these court hearings. Mr. Gelernt, I know that you haven't slept a wink and that you are very busy and under a ton of stress. Thank you for making time to be here.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
Did I explain any of that? Go ahead. Go ahead.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
The government had parked a whole bunch of tractors around their Capitol building in anticipation that there were going to be a lot of people there. And they thought the wall of tractors might put people off, I guess. All through that afternoon, Saturday afternoon, you could see the crowd starting to build up in the capital city.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
That said, the people of that country in absolutely massive numbers would seem to disagree. What's going on in that country started as a group of students protesting against corruption and its consequences. In November, there was a disaster at a Serbian train station. The concrete roof of a train station in Serbia collapsed and it killed 15 people.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
What options does the judge have if the judge concludes the worst here, that the administration is deliberately flouting his order? What could the judge do to bring the administration into compliance?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
I mean, honestly, that without any explanation about whatever special relationship we have with El Salvador to be able to do this, you think about the other countries. leaders around the world that Trump considers himself to be in common cause with. He considers to be like of his marching order.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
And if they do this, why aren't they then gonna send other groups of people in this country to Hungary or to Serbia or to North Korea or to Russia? I mean, picking a random country abroad and saying, well, they're out of our, they agreed to take these people. We sent them with zero due process. We just rounded them up and sent them. And this other country will do with them what they will.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
I mean, there's no bottom to that once it starts.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
And that might not sound like a political event, but it has sparked this huge political movement because students, after that disaster, took to the streets and said, reasonably, that the reason that train station roof was improperly built and it therefore collapsed is because the government is corrupt.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
Yeah. League Alert, Deputy Director of the ACLU's Immigrants' Rights Project. I realize this fight is very much joined and this is still developing and you've got another hearing tomorrow. Thanks for helping us understand it tonight and keep us surprised.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
All right. More news ahead here tonight. Stay with us. So this is a story that we have highlighted in recent days on our sort of growing list of Trump reversals, things Trump tried to do, and then he had to back off once people got wind of what he was doing. Either he couldn't stand it being publicized, couldn't stand the criticism, couldn't defend it. It was too something.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
And even though they wanted to do it, they had to change their mind. In this case, it was about Social Security. You might remember us covering this story last week. They wanted to cut the phone line that you call if you need help or you have questions about your Social Security. Now, Social Security is for elderly and disabled people, so killing off the phone number
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
that those folks used to call the Social Security office when they have a problem or a question or they need to file a claim, that would be a serious blow to the actual way that agency serves the people it serves. So the Washington Post published that story that they're going to cut the Social Security phone line. Hours later, they reversed the plan. They scrapped the plan.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
Oh, geez, that was a terrible headline. People really didn't like the sound of that. Okay, we won't do that anymore. So we covered that reversal last week here on the show. Apparently, they're not done messing with Social Security and this part of it, though.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
Because today, the newsletter Popular Information first, and then Axios, and then the Washington Post, all these outlets ultimately obtained a memo that is outlining their new plan to cut off the Social Security phone service a different way. This came out the day after that reversal, right? They floated this plan, or the Washington Post found out about this plan to cut off the phone service.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
It got publicized. People freaked out. They reversed the plan. The next day, they came up with this other way to cut the phone service. This internal memo outlines a plan to add a new, quote-unquote, anti-fraud step that the agency acknowledges would force millions of Social Security recipients to file in person at a field office rather than over the phone.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
And yes, those are the same field offices they are closing all over the country. The internal memo about this change estimates that this one change would send 75,000 to 85,000 people a week. to Social Security's already understaffed, backlogged, in-person field offices, many of which they are closing, right? Trump and Musk are laying off 7,000 Social Security staffers.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
They are closing dozens of field offices, but they nevertheless are still trying to kill the phone line, which they say will send 75,000 to 85,000 elderly and disabled people into essentially forced appointments at those field offices by design. Field offices where it already takes more than a month to get an appointment, and that's even before they start closing down dozens of them.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
And that's the kind of construction you get when the only criteria for getting a government contract is cronyism and bribery instead of actually knowing how to do the work. That is the kind of accident you get when your terrible train station construction passes inspection and opens up to the public, not because it's actually safe or properly built, but because the necessary bribes were paid.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
The reporter who got that scoop joins us next. Stay with us. An internal Social Security Administration memo sent Thursday last week details proposed changes to the claims process that would debilitate the agency, cause significant processing delays, and prevent many Americans from applying for or receiving benefits.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
The biggest change contemplated in the memo is to require Internet identity proofing for any benefit claims made over the phone. If a Social Security recipient is unable to utilize Internet ID proofing, Customers will be required to visit a field office to provide in-person identity documentation. Many people served by the Social Security Administration cannot access the Internet.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
Under the new system, this would force these populations to visit an office to have their claims processed. The memo estimates it would require 75,000 to 85,000 in-person visitors per week to Social Security offices to implement this policy. Social Security offices currently do not have the resources to handle an influx of in-person appointments of this size. They're cutting 7,000 staffers.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
They're shutting dozens of field offices. They're ending in-person services at some offices altogether. And even before those changes take effect, Social Security offices no longer accept walk-ins. And right now, the wait time for an appointment— averages over one month. Joining us now is Judd Legum. He's writer of the independent newsletter Popular Information.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
He's the first person to obtain this memo from Social Security. Judd, thanks very much for being with us. Thank you for this reporting.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
This just seems like, I know we've heard of a lot of changes and proposed changes at Social Security that are freaking a lot of people out, people who are recipients of Social Security in particular. This seems so unbelievably impractical to me. It's hard for me to believe that this is a real prospect that's still on the table. Do you think that it is?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
Is there any corresponding sort of implementation memo, right? If they're saying internally and officially at Social Security that this would result in 80,000 more people needing to use field offices per week, is there also implementation work being done to scale up the capacity of the field offices to be able to do that?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
Corrupt countries, oligarchic countries, autocratic countries are lousy countries. Bad governance means bad standards of living, means bad economies, means worse lives for everybody except the people at the very top. And these students started demonstrating against their Putin and Trump-style corrupt government in November.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
And that's even before they start shutting down dozens of them. Judd Legum, writer of the independent newsletter Popular Information. We subscribe here at The Rachel Matter Show, and it's a really great resource. You're doing great work there, Judd. Thank you. Thanks. We'll be right back. All right, that's gonna do it for me for now.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
I will see you again tomorrow and every night this week at 9 p.m. Eastern.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
And now they are turning out hundreds of thousands of people in the streets of their capital. And it is very possible that that government will fall. Despite a friendly visit from Dong Jr. Another 50,000 people turned out in Hungary this weekend. Look at this. To protest against the Trump and Putin-aligned dictator in that country, Viktor Orban, look at this crowd in Budapest on Saturday.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
Viktor Orban is the tool that Vladimir Putin is using to try to break apart the EU. Viktor Orban has also provided the Trump movement in this country with much of its playbook for what they're doing to our country and to our government right now, firing as many civil servants as they can, discrediting, attacking, intimidating, ultimately trying to co-opt all of the media.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
attacking and trying to close down colleges and universities, discrediting and attacking judges and the court system. That is all Viktor Orban's playbook. And the Trump movement credits him with all those good ideas, which they are now trying to put in place in the United States. Viktor Orban has been in power in his country for 15 years now.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
But when they ended up at night at something like three hundred and look at that. 325,000 people in the streets. I think pretty much everybody was surprised. This happened Saturday in Serbia, in a country that's only got about 6.6 million people.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
He has turned his country into an autocracy, and although his family and his friends have become very, very, very rich, Hungary's economy is also trash now for everyone else. And so Hungary...
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
In large numbers, Hungarians are turning out in shockingly large numbers against him and in support of a rising opposition party that very well may beat him and remove him from office if he allows the next rounds of elections to happen in Hungary. Also this weekend, in Romania and in the nation of Georgia, there were more huge anti-Putin, pro-Europe, large-scale protests.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
Russia is accused in Romania of not only interfering in their last election, but also just outright trying to mount a military coup to oust the government there to instead install a pro-Russian, pro-Putin puppet regime. Vice President J.D.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
Vance has taken up Russia's talking points against the Romanian government, criticizing them while the EU has taken steps to try to help Romania defend itself against Putin. In the nation of Georgia, they also have a pro-Putin, pro-Russia authoritarian government, even though much of the population of that country wants Georgia to be part of Europe instead.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
The opposition in Georgia, the pro-European, pro-Western opposition in Georgia has mounted increasingly large demonstrations in their capital city. They've actually done a large-scale demonstration in their capital city every single day for the last 110 days. Today was day 110. They are protesting the government itself.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
They've, interestingly, and I think importantly, been protesting against state TV, which is just relentless Russian-style propaganda now. But they're mounting those demonstrations in the nation of Georgia 110 straight days now and counting. Lest you feel like we're all alone here. We've got plenty of company.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
And they're doing it in massive, unified protests over there, particularly in huge numbers this weekend. Here, we're doing it mostly in widely dispersed protests all over the place, all the time. Some of them large, some of them small. This was Boise, Idaho, at the state capitol on Saturday. Deep, deep, deep red Idaho. Look at this.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
Thousands of people turned out in Boise on Saturday protesting against Trump and what he and his top campaign donor are doing to the U.S. government. This was in lower Manhattan this weekend. What they call a die-in. Thousands of people protesting what Trump and Musk are doing and their threats to things like Medicaid and Medicare that tens of millions of Americans rely upon.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
Protests against Trump and his top campaign donor are everywhere. People in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and in Olympia, Washington this weekend protesting at their state capitol buildings in support of veterans and against Trump's cuts to the VA. People in Kansas City, Missouri this weekend saved the civil service.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
They got a third of a million people to show up at a single demonstration when they don't even have 7 million people in the entire country for their population. If you want to compare that to us, if we got a similar proportion of our country's population to all show up for the same demonstration, that would be a demonstration of about 17 million people. Yeah, this is just massive.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
People in Reno, Nevada this weekend outside the office of Republican Congressman Mark Amaday. And like I said, some of these protests are big, more big protests this weekend in Boston on Saturday, in Tarrytown, New York, where they said courage is contagious this weekend. But some of these protests are small, too, which actually shows its own kind of courage.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
Little protests, little sort of sparky, spunky protests this weekend in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware and in Canton, Ohio. even after President Trump and his top campaign donor and the Attorney General, Pam Bondi, all started threatening Americans who don't support Elon Musk's car company.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
They started threatening people that they'd be hit with terrorism charges or that these, you know, boycotting Tesla or protesting against Tesla was somehow specially illegal in a way that other forms of protests aren't, which is nonsense legally, but they issued the threats anyway.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
Even after those threats last week from Trump, from Musk, from Attorney General Pambadi, there were dozens and dozens and dozens of protests at Tesla dealerships all over the country this weekend. There was a big one in Tucson, Arizona, another big one in Pasadena, California, another one in Seattle, Washington.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
But they were everywhere from Golden Valley, Minnesota, to Santa Rosa, California, to Loveland, Colorado, to Cleveland, Ohio, to Austin, Texas, to South Burlington, Vermont. Protesters all over the country. with this simple and now defiant message. Just asking people simply, if you drive a Tesla, please sell it. And if you own stock in Tesla, please dump it.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
Elon Musk is not a government official, right? He was never elected. And so this is the way people are trying to protest against Elon Musk and his role in our government. We saw constituents of Republican Congressman Lloyd Smucker turn out in Lancaster, Pennsylvania this weekend. They held essentially a mock town hall in the name of Congressman Smucker.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
Since he won't hold any real ones with his actual constituents, they did it for him. Same thing in Arizona. Tucson area constituents of Republican Congressman Juan Siscomani held a big town hall in his name because he won't meet with his constituents now at all. And so they met without him. They saved him a seat.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
We also saw big and frankly angry demonstrations from Mahmoud Khalil and other permanent residents or people with valid visas who have nevertheless been arrested or deported. You've seen the five alarm constitutional fire Trump set this weekend by appearing at least to defy a court order when he
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
chose to disappear several hundred men out of the country without any legal process at all, apparently on the pretext that Trump can use wartime powers even though we're not at war. I say this was a five-alarm constitutional fire. Over this matter, there was a big showdown on this in court this evening.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
Tonight here live, we're going to be talking with the lawyer who got the court order that should have turned around those planes this weekend. It's the same lawyer who was arguing the case in court tonight. We're going to be speaking with him live just after that court hearing in just a moment. You're going to want to see that.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
But before we get to that, and that is an urgent story, there's one other story that is breaking just tonight. It's just developed sort of within the past couple of hours. And I want to bring this to you first. I'm not sure you've seen this elsewhere. You might remember a couple of weeks ago.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
We covered here on this show a sort of, in the grand scheme of things, a small-scale confrontation in one small government office in Washington. It's a little agency that you definitely haven't heard of. It's called the U.S. Africa Development Foundation.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
This is Belgrade this weekend. Serbia's president is pro-Putin and pro-Trump. The people of Serbia are not. And they are mobilizing in almost unbelievable numbers now to try to get rid of their president. These are the biggest protests that have happened in that country in a generation. Absolutely massive.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
And the reason we covered what was going on there is because something unusual happened there when Trump went after that office, went after that agency and tried to shut them down. At that agency, they had a physical confrontation with people from Doge, from the Elon Musk austerity group. These would-be anonymous young men who work for Elon Musk. They showed up. Do you remember the story?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
They showed up at that small government agency and they demanded to be let inside. And that small government agency told them no. They said, we're an independent agency. We are actually not part of the executive branch. You have no legal authority over us. You have no legal right to come in. We do not invite you in. We say you can't come in. You cannot come in.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
And the Doge kids left when they were told they couldn't come in. But then the next day, they came back with muscle. They came back with people who said they were U.S. Marshals. And we think those people were possibly armed. They were carrying guns. Now, the U.S. Marshals Service consistently will not comment on this. They will not say whether or not those people were actually U.S. Marshals.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
We have some reporting that suggests they may not have been U.S. Marshals. Nevertheless, they reportedly claim to be U.S. Marshals. And with those men, with those people claiming to be U.S. Marshals, the young men from Doge did physically force their way into that agency and then locked out all the actual staff and changed the locks.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
So whether or not you, you know, your heartstrings are pulled by the fate of that individual agency, right? You can see why this might be a qualitatively more worrying thing than some of the other stuff we have seen.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
I mean, there are legitimate legal disputes as to whether this Doge group has any legal authority over some of these agencies that they're trying to get into so they can take over their systems and fire their staff and shut them down. Those disputes are legal disputes that need to be sorted out legally.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
You can't just use guns to force your way in in the meantime as a means of settling that dispute. If there's a legal dispute as to whether or not you are allowed in a U.S. government building and you cast that aside and say, we've got guns and that's the grounds on which we're coming in. What that is, is an armed assault on the U.S. government. That is an armed assault on a U.S. government office.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
That's a break in. That's call the cops territory. That's barricade the doors territory. I mean, at that point, what's to stop the little government agency from bringing in their own armed force, right? And then we shoot it out. That said, if there is an armed part of the U.S.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
government, somebody whose agents are allowed to carry weapons, who have badges, who are allowed to use physical force as part of their job, it's the U.S. Marshals or anyone else.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
If they are now working for Doge against other parts of the government that you might think have an equal claim to their services and protection, well, then if that's the case, Doge is something different than we thought it was. Do they have an army?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.'
I mean, if the president has given his top campaign donor the ability to use physical force, the ability to use the force of arms against other parts of the U.S. government, we are in a different place than we thought we were. Worrying possibilities were raised by that conflict at the U.S.-Africa Development Foundation when that unfolded a couple of weeks ago.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
Really happy to have you here. Great to have you with us. Today, of course, was President's Day. And today we saw protests all over the country once again in Washington, D.C. Yes, as you see in the upper left-hand corner of your screen here, but also in state capitals all across the country. You see there Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and Denver, Colorado.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
So they're being told they're being fired for performance reasons, but there's nothing in any of their performance reviews that would support that. In fact, quite the contrary. We're seeing that at FDA where they fired people who were in charge of regulating the computer chips Elon Musk wants to graft into your brain.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
We're also seeing similar reports in the firings of the National Nuclear Security Administration folks. People being told they're being fired for poor performance, even though there's nothing in their performance review history that would suggest any poor performance. Same thing is happening among people being fired at USDA.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
and at the Department of Education, and at the US Forest Service, and at the VA, and at the Small Business Administration, and at the Department of Transportation. NBC News reviewed documentation there that shows people being fired supposedly for performance reasons had just received, quote, exceptional performance reviews. And so, I don't know if the pattern here seems as obvious
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
to everybody as it does to me, but it seems to me like it's pattern, right? There was no $50 million in condoms for Gaza that Hamas used to make their bombs. There are no 150-year-old Americans getting social security checks. The Reuters news agency did not get a government contract to deceive the public.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
The government does not fund the New York Times or Politico to produce positive stories about Democrats. The U.S. government does not pay for celebrity junkets to Ukraine. That was literally Russian propaganda. And the U.S. government is not right now trying to fire hundreds of thousands of people who work in the U.S. government because they've all had bad performance reviews.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
This isn't happening. One way to tell when somebody doesn't actually have a good reason for what they're doing is when every reason they give you for that thing is very obviously made up. None of the things they're saying about why they need to do these mass, and in many cases, apparently illegal firings, holds up once you put it up to the light. But they're going ahead.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
They're now firing the people who work at the CDC on bird flu, as bird flu becomes a massive multi-state epidemic affecting tens of millions of animals in America, and increasingly, people. They have now stopped all of the programs in Mexico run by the State Department's Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
What do these programs in Mexico do for the State Department's Bureau of International Narcotics Law Enforcement? What do they do? Oh, that's the part of the U.S. government that tries to stop the supply chain for fentanyl coming into this country. All of their actions have been stopped. They've now started firing people at the part of HHS that funds child care and Head Start.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
They are firing the people who work at Gettysburg. They are firing the people who work at Shenandoah National Park in Virginia. And, you know, and I asked a minute ago, like, who voted for this? You know, maybe you don't care about any of those things that I just mentioned. Maybe you only care about stopping immigration.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
about making immigration restriction work like lightning, making that the most important and top priority thing that the US government does, you know, go fast, get people out of here. Maybe that's your motivation. I don't know. I think it might be for some people who voted for Trump, right? If so, please consider that Trump is also now firing immigration judges.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
in large numbers, with no explanation and no notice. With more than 3 million immigration cases backlogged in the system, they are firing the judges who handle those cases, which will grind the system further to a halt. Because... Efficiency. Efficiency.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
Tonight, The Washington Post is reporting and NBC News has confirmed that whatever Trump has sent Elon Musk's people to do at the Social Security Administration, it was apparently alarming enough to the career official running that agency right now that she resigned. Quote, the acting commissioner of the Social Security Administration left her job this weekend after a clash with Elon Musk's U.S.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
Doge service over its attempts to access sensitive government records. Again, that's sensitive government records at Social Security. This follows a story also broken this weekend by the Washington Post that Elon Musk is also trying to access the most sensitive individual tax records that are maintained by the IRS. Personal individual IRS tax records.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
We're going to be speaking with a reporter who broke both of those stories, the one on Social Security, the one on the IRS. We're going to be speaking with him in just a moment. But I also have to note, and I kind of can't believe this, but for the fifth time since Donald Trump was sworn in just four weeks ago, we are also tonight watching developments in yet another plane crash.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
This time it's a Delta Connections flight that originated in Minneapolis. It crashed on landing at Toronto Pearson International Airport. The flight was carrying 80 people. 18 have been injured. Some of them have been hospitalized. The FAA commissioner had taken action against Elon Musk's SpaceX company. Musk demanded his resignation. He resigned on Inauguration Day.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
Trump didn't bother appointing a replacement to run the FAA until after the first plane crash of this presidency, the mid-air collision over the Potomac River in Washington that killed 67 people. That was soon followed by another deadly plane crash in northeast Philadelphia, which killed people both on the plane and on the ground. That was soon followed by another deadly plane crash in Alaska.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
That's from the Today Show in 1983, a profile on the Hanford nuclear site in Washington state. A Hanford nuclear site, Richland, Washington, was opened as part of the Manhattan Project during World War II. And when that very cheery, slightly eerie Today Show story on it ran 40 years later, Hanford at that point in 1983 was still chugging along, still open.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
In between, we had a plane crash into a tug on the ground at Chicago O'Hare, critically injuring an airport worker. We had a flight catch fire on the tarmac at Houston. Passengers had to evacuate not just down the stairs but down the slides. We had two planes smash into each other on the ground at SeaTac.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
We had a small jet careen off the end of a runway into another small jet last week in Arizona. Four people injured in that crash, one person killed. And now we have had this new crash of the Minneapolis to Toronto flight with the plane now upside down on the runway. Several people in critical condition, excuse me, several people hospitalized.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
And frankly, what looks like a miracle that people weren't killed. There have been five plane crashes in the United States, or in flights originating in the United States, since Donald Trump started this second term as president four weeks ago.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
The Trump administration just, between plane crashes four and five, told hundreds of employees at the FAA that they are fired, many of them expecting to be locked out of their offices as of tomorrow. which will be another day, once again, in the immediate aftermath of yet another plane crash, because we've had five so far since Donald Trump has been in office this term.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
The government does all sorts of things for which we need experience, expertise, accumulated an institutional knowledge, a stable training base, and a stable work environment in which professionals can oversee sensitive, complex, and life or death matters of a thousand different kinds. What we have now instead is this wreckage. If you voted for Donald Trump, this is what you were voting for.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
Today, thousands of Americans in dozens of cities and in the U.S. Capitol came out and said no to what's going on. Let's stop this. The view from there and a U.S. senator who was with them. Coming up. Stay with us. That was Hillsborough, Oregon this weekend. It's a middle school gym, obviously a very hot ticket, a very full house.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
And that was not like some highly anticipated local sports playoff. That was not very well attended auditions for the middle school musical. This was a political event. This was a town hall. All these people turned out in person on a Saturday night in Hillsborough, Oregon, to come talk to and hear from their U.S. senator, Senator Ron Wyden.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
And that announcer who was saying she was going to have to call capacity, she did end up calling capacity. They had to close the doors and not let anybody else in. So many people showed up at this town hall. People were standing out in the hallways outside the gym listening in on loudspeakers. Senator Wyden participated in two separate town halls this weekend for his constituents in Oregon.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
The local ABC affiliate reported that between the two events, thousands of people showed up. Quote, it is rare for thousands of people to join these town halls. And it might be rare, but it is not just Oregon and it is not just middle school gyms. One of the things we've been trying to keep an eye on recently is telephone town halls that members of Congress have been holding.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
Members of Congress who have to be in Washington because Congress is in session, but they want to connect with their constituents back home. They want to take questions. They want to tell people what they think is going on. People have been calling into telephone town halls with their members of Congress in massive numbers, like kind of shockingly massive numbers.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
The last of Hanford's nine nuclear reactors was not shut down until 1987. That shutdown was in the wake of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in the Soviet Union in 1986. That 1986 disaster had a way of focusing the world's attention on the threat of mass radioactive contamination. And again, Hanford shut down its last nuclear reactor the following year.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
This, for example, was Congressman Richie Neal of Massachusetts last week from his very messy desk in Washington. More than 8000 people from his western Massachusetts district dialed into his town hall. This was Congressman Joe Courtney of Connecticut. More than 10,000 people from his district dialed into his town hall. This was another one from Virginia Congresswoman Jennifer McClellan.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
She also got 10,000 people from her district to call into a town hall. In Maryland, Congressman Jamie Raskin's district, 13,000 people joined. Look at this one. This is Congresswoman Valerie Foushee. She's a relatively new member of Congress from North Carolina. She just started her second term. She held a telephone town hall last week for her North Carolina district.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
More than 19,000 people called it. Over 19,000. This is becoming a defining feature of what it is to live free. alongside whatever's going on with this administration, people from every state, red states, blue state, every chance they get an opportunity, people are showing up in person, making time in their day to at least join a telephone town hall.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
People who by and large are quite upset about what the White House is doing. People want to know what they can do. And today, this first President's Day of Donald Trump's second term in office, it was another big day of in-person protests. Protesters turned out at state capitals all across the country today. Look at this. Atlanta, Georgia, in the upper left-hand corner.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
Sacramento, California, upper right-hand corner. That's Austin, Texas, in the lower left. In the lower right, that's Indianapolis. In Boston, Massachusetts today, we had tons of protesters. Look at this. On the Boston Common, they then marched to the government center. And beyond state capitals, these protests were all over. City Hall in Burlington, Vermont today. Look at that.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
People climbed up on the snow banks to get some more height, get a better vista. There were protests in Tucson, Arizona and Ellsworth, Maine, Portland, Oregon, Hartford, Connecticut. People turned up in Chicago, Illinois today, in Winter Haven, Florida. There was a huge protest today in New York City, in Union Square. Look at that. Lower left-hand side there. New York, New York.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
Also a big turnout in St. Paul, Minnesota, where the high temperature today was four degrees. This gentleman getting right to the point in St. Paul, freezing my bleep off for democracy. This was the statehouse in Annapolis, Maryland today. Hundreds of Maryland residents showing up to protest the White House, including Maryland U.S.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
Senator Chris Van Hollen, who was there in person today to rally with his constituents. Senator Chris Van Hollen joins us live here next. Stay with us.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
That was Senator Chris Van Hollen speaking at multiple protests in Washington, D.C. over these last few weeks, pushing back against Donald Trump and the new administration, and specifically against Elon Musk's takeover of federal agencies by power that we have yet to see vested in him in any way that makes sense in terms of U.S. government structure.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
Today, Senator Chris Van Hollen went to another protest, this time at his own state capitol in Annapolis, Maryland. It was one of a ton of demonstrations all across the country today at state capitals and cities from coast to coast. Joining us now is Senator Chris Van Hollen, Democrat of Maryland. Senator, I really appreciate you making time to be here tonight. I know you've been really busy.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
Thank you.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
So you are a man who has a job in the United States Senate. You have nevertheless made it a priority to get out there in person, both at protests in Washington, D.C., and also in Annapolis today in your home state alongside your constituents who are mad and upset and angry.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
I guess upset and mad and upset and angry are all synonyms, but I think that pretty much rounds it up about what's going on in Washington. Can you tell us about why that's important to you and what you think the effect is of these demonstrations?
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
But you don't just shut down a nuclear site like that and walk away. Hanford has continued to be a site not only of national security importance, but also of frequent news coverage, much less cheery news coverage over the years, but all about that same site.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
And look at that, Columbia, South Carolina, big turnout. The same coalition, same group that organized protests at 50 state capitals a couple of weeks ago organized these as well today. Big turnout, lots of places. And, you know, it wasn't just at state capitals. We saw pretty big turnout at a lot of town halls, city halls, any location basically that has anything to do with government.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
I think that they may use some of the cuts that they're pursuing to justify the kind of tax cuts that they want, but I also don't think that they care whether or not those tax cuts are paid for.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
They've asked for a $4 trillion rise in the debt ceiling, so clearly they're not planning on shrinking down the government's fiscal responsibility to such a great degree that those tax cuts will be paid for. I mean, when we're looking at the kind of stuff they're cutting,
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
Hundreds of people cut at the FAA in between the fourth and fifth plane crashes that have happened since Trump has been back in office and he's only been there a month. We're looking at them cutting security engineers from nuclear cleanup sites.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
We're looking at them cutting people who oversee some of the most important, sensitive and subject matter specific sort of non-transferable jobs that you could possibly imagine in terms of the U.S. government. I feel like, and I think some of what you're seeing from your constituents, if I can read those signs is right, is that they're not just, they're not trying to save money.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
They're trying to destroy the U.S. government. They're trying to make the U.S. government stop functioning in ways that hurt people and that hurt this country. And that to me doesn't seem like it's driven by fiscal concerns.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
Senator Chris Van Hollen, thank you so much for your time tonight, sir. And thanks for getting out there with your constituents in person to be able to give us that perspective as well. I know we'll be checking in with you in weeks ahead as this story moves on. Thank you, sir.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
All right. Much more news ahead coming specifically on what seems to be going on with Elon Musk gaining access to the most sensitive personal records stored at the IRS and the Social Security Administration. New reporting tonight that that has resulted in a protest resignation at the very top of Social Security.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
We've got the reporter who broke both the IRS story and that Social Security story joining us next. Stay with us. Headline, Musk's Doge seeks access to personal taxpayer data, raising alarm at IRS. This is from Jacob Bogage and Jeff Stein at the Washington Post with reporting that has since been confirmed by NBC News and others. Quote, Elon Musk's U.S.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
Doge service is seeking access to a heavily guarded IRS system that includes detailed financial information about every taxpayer, business, and nonprofit in the country, according to three people familiar with the activities, comma, sparking alarm within the tax agency.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
The Washington Post reporting that Doge could get access to what's called the Integrated Data Retrieval System, which enables tax agency employees to access IRS accounts, including personal identification numbers and bank information. It also lets them enter and adjust transaction data. Eek. and automatically generate notices, collection documents, and other records.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
IDRS access is extremely limited. Taxpayers who have had their information wrongfully disclosed or even inspected are entitled by law to monetary damages. The request for DOGE access to the system has raised deep concern within the IRS.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
According to the Washington Post, the White House is pressuring the IRS to give access to this system to one of Elon Musk's gang of young software engineers, a 25-year-old who has recently been trying to delete his online history of amplifying white supremacists and praising the writing of a man who became a leading Holocaust denier.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
This comes as the Washington Post newly reports tonight, and NBC News has also now confirmed that the acting head of the Social Security Administration has suddenly stepped down after what's described as a clash with Musk's team over access to very sensitive data in that system, in the Social Security system. So the Social Security system, that reporting is new, but this IRS reporting system,
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
Elon Musk's little helper is reportedly seeking access to that very, very sensitive IRS system. The White House is reportedly pressuring the IRS to let him have it. But as far as we know, he doesn't have that access yet. So as we're following both of these stories, part of what we need to sort out here is, is this something that is threatened? Is this something that is a fait accompli?
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
How will we know? Joining us now is one of the reporters who broke this story, The Washington Post, Jacob Bogage. Mr. Bogage, thank you so much for being with us tonight. I appreciate it. Oh, thank you so much for having me. Did I get any of that the wrong way around? Did everything I say there comport with your reporting and what you understand? Totally checks out. Great. Okay.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
So as of tonight, do we know whether this young staffer from Elon Musk's team has access to that sensitive IRS system? Has he been given entree into that system yet?
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
Jacob, in that sequence that you just described, they can obviously, if they want to, and they clearly do, they can fire their way through people who are resisting them one after the other. In some cases, we've heard in some agencies about what sound like almost physical altercations, trying to keep Doge people out of skiffs, places where there's classified information and that sort of thing.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
But the other thing that's often operative here is the potential for a legal challenge, some sort of injunction to stop these staffers, these doge people from accessing systems like this one at the IRS or the one at the Social Security Administration that led to the head of that agency resigning over the weekend, as you also reported.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
Do we know about whether legal threats are sort of part of the mix here with these sensitive systems?
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
Washington Post reporter Jacob Bogage, who, along with your colleagues, has been a bit of a scoop machine on this beat. Thank you for your reporting. Thanks for helping us to understand it and come back when you got new stuff. Thank you.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
All right. We'll be right back. Stay with us. Alright, that's going to do it for me for now. I will see you again tomorrow and every night this week at 9 p.m. Eastern.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
Well, who the hell do they think they are? That was from 1990, not long after Hanford stopped operating as a nuclear production facility and the country started... contemplating the seriousness of the contamination problem there. It was not just cows grazing on radioactive grasses over the years. It's been radioactive bunnies and radioactive tumbleweeds.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
And ultimately, the revelation that it was tens of millions of leaking radioactive waste. Over Hanford's 40 plus years in business, that facility produced nearly two thirds of the plutonium that was used to build our American arsenal of nuclear weapons. It also created a massive 580 square mile site that is believed to be the most contaminated radioactive site in the Western Hemisphere.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
You might remember last week we talked about that sort of insane drone footage that we got, video footage that we got of the drone hitting Chernobyl. Russia crashed what appears to have been a drone carrying explosives into the big concrete and steel cocoon, the big sarcophagus that encases the destroyed nuclear reactor at Chernobyl from that radioactive site in Ukraine in the former Soviet Union.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
That site from Chernobyl, they've got that reactor encased, actually has sort of a twin in Hanford. Hanford has also built those same kinds of protective casings, that same kind of reinforced sarcophagus or cocoon around their dead, destroyed reactors. And the point of those very eerie structures is to contain the radioactivity inside the Those destroyed nuclear sites.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
Until sometime in the future, they may be cooled off some, and hopefully by then we'll have better technology for handling so much waste and debris that is so radioactive. In August 1976, there was an explosion at one of the buildings at Hanford, and that building where that explosion happened was so radioactive that they could not open it up to start cleaning it until 29 years after the explosion.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
happened in 1980. The room where it happened was sealed in 1989. They didn't open it up to start cleaning it until 2005. I don't know what your job is or what the hardest job is that you've ever had, but I'm going to venture a guess that none of us have any envy for the American heroes who do the work of suiting up into hazmat suits and respirators
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
and entering those facilities at Hanford and handling the tens of millions of gallons of radioactive waste that is currently leaking out of those underground tanks that date back to the 1940s. Mostly what they're trying to do now is vitrify it. You know the word vitrification? It means to turn something into glass.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
You can see some of the images here from outside City Hall in Orlando, Florida and San Francisco. Also big protests in Seattle and in Philly. We're going to be looking in detail at some of those big protests today all over the country. That's coming up in just a few minutes. You will want to see that for sure. We're also going to be talking with a U.S.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
They're trying to turn much of the radioactive waste at Hanford now into glass and these massive vitrification plants because they're hoping that if they turn it into glass, it won't leak again when they bury it because it won't seep because it's glass. I mean... One of the things we have to do as a country is manage that mess that we made at that site.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
We're, you know, sure, we needed all that plutonium, okay, but in making it, we really did create the most contaminated radioactive site in the Western Hemisphere, which happens to be in an inhabited U.S. state, right in the middle of our country, right? And so that work, that terrifying, painstaking, very difficult, very expensive work just has to be done. Radioactivity does not clean itself up.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
And if you leave it alone, it has a way of following you home. Donald Trump just fired the people who do that work at the Hanford nuclear site. Headline, Trump layoffs leave Hanford nuclear site with skeleton crew. Senator Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington, quote, the Trump administration has begun indiscriminately laying off Hanford workers in Washington state.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
Trying to run Hanford with a skeleton crew is a recipe for disaster that could have irreversible impacts. Cutting the people who do cleanup work, security engineers, they're cutting at Hanford. In the Pacific Northwest, there is still a working commercial nuclear reactor that feeds the largest electricity supplier in that part of the country, which is the Bonneville Power Administration.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
Trump, in addition to firing the cleanup crews at Hanford, also just fired hundreds of people, more than 600 employees who keep the lights on at Bonneville, too. Mass layoffs at Bonneville Power Administration raise concerns about reliability of power grid. They're firing electricians there, engineers, line workers, cybersecurity experts.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
Again, that's the power grid, the biggest electricity supplier in the Pacific Northwest, including some of their electricity being supplied by a big commercial nuclear plant. Is that what you voted for? Cutting the people who maintain the power grid? Cutting the security engineers? who managed the cleanup at one of the worst sites of nuclear contamination in the world, which is in our country.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
Trump has also now started firings at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, which does, among other things, nuclear security. You know, we also have a whole National Nuclear Security Administration. Or at least we did. Now we don't have a whole one because of what Trump has decided to do to them. I mentioned that footage from last week from Chernobyl.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
When that Russian drone smashed into the reactor shield at the Chernobyl nuclear site last week, one of the reasons we knew that was very bad but it wasn't a radioactivity catastrophe is because our own government, one of our own agencies in the federal government, the National Nuclear Security Administration, maintains sensors.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
at the Chernobyl nuclear site to monitor in case anything goes wrong there. So when that Russian drone attack hit the Chernobyl reactor sarcophagus, one of the ways we were able to be sure that that didn't result in a catastrophic release of radioactivity is because we've got expert nuclear monitoring at that site.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
senator who joined the protest at his state capitol today. U.S. Senator Chris Van Hollen is going to be joining us live here this hour in just a few minutes. So there's a lot to show you, a lot to talk about in terms of how that all went down today. A big national day of protest against the Trump administration. We'll get to all of that.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
That is maintained by the National Nuclear Security Administration, which is part of the federal government. Here at home, the National Nuclear Security Administration maintains and refurbishes and ensures the safe and secure storage and transportation and maintenance of our nation's thousands of nuclear weapons. NNSA runs the National Nuclear Labs.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
They develop nuclear propulsion systems for our nuclear submarines. They are the people in charge of making sure that terrorists don't get their hands on a nuclear weapon. or that nuclear weapons technology doesn't get stolen and sold on the black market. They are also in charge of making our new nuclear weapons and inspecting those weapons, and Trump is firing them. Firing hundreds of them.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
The agency only has like 1,900, 2,000 people. Thursday night, they sent out termination notices to more than 300 of them. Termination notices reportedly to hundreds of staff of the small, expert, professional, very important National Nuclear Security Administration. Isn't there anything about the name of that agency that might suggest to you that maybe this isn't the best place to make cuts?
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
What about National Nuclear Security Administration bugs you and makes you think that one is dispensable? Do you want to ask your mom? How old are you? You ever worked in this field? By Friday, the geniuses in the Trump administration had maybe Googled what this agency does or something, maybe heard from a few members of Congress.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
And so after sending out those firing, those termination notices on Thursday night, they tried on Friday to take it back. They tried to unfire. the hundreds of people from the National Nuclear Security Administration that they had just fired the night before.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
But because, again, they're geniuses, they fired these people effective immediately and cut all of these people off from their work email and all their work computer systems and everything.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
And then a day later when they decided, ooh, maybe we shouldn't have fired the National Nuclear Security Administration, they had no way to get in touch with all those people they had just fired to say, oops, sorry, please, will you come back? This is the level of expertise and efficiency we're dealing with with this new administration.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
Trump administration officials on Friday, quote, attempted to notify some employees who had been let go the day before that they are now due to be reinstated. But they struggled to find them because they did not have their new contact information.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
In an email sent to employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration, obtained by NBC News, officials wrote, quote, the termination letters for some NNSA employees are being rescinded, but we do not have a good way to get in touch with those personnel. Do you know any of them?
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
Could you drive around your neighborhood and knock on some doors, see if we can get our National Nuclear Security Administration personnel back? Because we don't know how to find them.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
But we are going to start tonight here, here on Nuclear Street.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
The president of the United States allowed his top campaign donor to send basically random, unvetted young people with no experience and no subject matter expertise at all into the agency that keeps America's nuclear weapons secure. And Donald Trump had those kids fire the people who worked to keep America's nuclear weapons secure.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
And he had them fire them without those kids apparently having any idea what those people in that agency do. and without any way to get them back once they realized, okay, maybe no, that wasn't a good one. Has it occurred to any of you to maybe resign? If you're running a government this way, on national nuclear security grounds alone, have you considered resigning?
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
People have resigned for much smaller sins and much less damage to their country than this. Have you been any part of this process? In the White House, in Doge, any part of the Trump administration that has overseen the accidental firing of the National Nuclear Security Administration? Have you considered resigning?
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
This weekend, USA Today reports that 20 people in the Office of Neurological and Physical Medicine Devices at the FDA were just fired. Perhaps coincidentally, that is the unit at the FDA that was investigating Elon Musk's company, the company that he owns that wants to graft computer chips onto people's brains. People doing that oversight work for Elon Musk's company are just fired at the FDA.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
And on that point, on that story, here's the thing we're seeing over and over again now. Quote, the dismissal letters sent to FDA reviewers cited performance reasons, even though these employees had no issues on their prior performance and had received top-notch rankings several weeks ago, according to two sources familiar with the matter.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
Thanks to you at home for joining us this hour. So this was the front page at Bloomberg News today. Banner headline, markets rocked by Trump show economic fear across Wall Street. Right under that, next headline, NASDAQ 100 sheds $1.1 trillion in value. Right under that, next headline, stocks fall most this year with recession warnings blaring.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
In the southwest, he's already got a big footprint in Moldova. He appears to be aggressively meddling in the government and elections of Romania already. And of course, due west of Ukraine, sharing a long land border with Ukraine is our very close ally, Poland.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
This weekend, President Trump's top campaign donor, Elon Musk, tweeted insults at the foreign minister in Poland and bragged about how Ukraine would collapse without what he called my Starlink system. My Starlink system. That's his satellite internet terminals that are widely used in Ukraine and that Poland mostly pays for.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
Secretary of State Marco Rubio then jumped in on that and demanded that the Polish foreign minister should say thank you to Elon Musk. There's a lot to say about this radical 180-degree shift the United States is currently making, switching sides in the world and in the war to join Russia and turn against our allies.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
FinTech, meaning financial technology stocks, plummet as Wall Street worries about consumer spending. And even this one, industry specific, another industry specific one, Delta Airlines slashes earnings outlook citing weaker US demand. Why is Delta citing weaker US demand for air travel?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
I mean, Poland has just announced that it's now going to require every adult male in the country to undergo military training, and they are going to more than double the size of their army. And that is not because they're trying to make anybody feel impressed about their defense spending. It's because they're expecting to soon be at war with Russia because they're expecting Russia to invade them.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
France has announced that now that the United States no longer appears to be allied with Europe, and it has been our nuclear umbrella that has been seen as the primary nuclear defense of Europe,
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
President Emmanuel Macron of France is now saying that since the United States no longer appears to be allied with Europe, it may have to be France that posts its nuclear weapons as protection all over Europe now. They're talking about wildly expanding the nuclear deterrent afforded by France in Europe. Both Poland and Germany are also now talking about getting their own nuclear weapons. Oh, good.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
Trump has, meanwhile, just cut our support for nuclear nonproliferation detectives all over the globe. These are the people who hunt for those who are trying to illicitly acquire nuclear weapons or materials. They work all over the world, including Iran. Trump has just cut our funding for those activities.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
Wired Magazine reports that Trump and Pete Hegseth at the Pentagon are about to cut 75% of the Defense Department programs that aim to stop proliferation of nuclear weapons, as well as chemical and biological weapons.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
NBC News reports tonight that Trump additionally is just going to fire 8 to 10 percent of all the generals and admirals at the senior levels of the United States military, because sure, why not? That one he's going to put a bow on when he delivers it to Red Square, I think, right? That one's extra special.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
But amid all the things going on with our flipping sides and us now berating and hurting our previous allies while we take very, very ambitious steps to destroy not only our alliances, but our own military power, our intelligence relationships, and our own economy while we're doing that, right? gutting the U.S.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
federal government, hurting the military, hurting our intelligence relationships, ruining our alliances, and trashing the economy. Well, we're busy with all of those things. There's just one other thing that kind of, I think, brings all sides of the news today together. Member at the top, I said stick a pin in that.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
I mentioned that there's this new reporting on the impact of what Trump and Musk are doing at the FAA, Federal Aviation Administration, amid all these plane crashes and the crisis they are causing by firing all the people who keep the planes in the sky. At the Atlantic Magazine, Isaac Stanley Becker reports on a SpaceX employee
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
who has now been installed at the FAA, quote, to deploy equipment from Starlink across the FAA's communication network. Starlink, of course, Elon Musk's satellite internet terminals company. The directive, quote, promises to make the nation's air traffic control system dependent on Elon Musk, using equipment that experts say has not gone through strict U.S.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
government security and risk management review. So just put those two things together.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
It's because, quote, demand for air travel, demand in the domestic market for air travel slumped in February after a series of aviation industry accidents, winter storms, and reduced government travel. Just on that one piece of it, whether or not Americans are interested in flying anywhere these days.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
While we've got, this weekend, Elon Musk threatening our ally Poland, which is more than doubling its army, talking about nuclear weapons, and preparing to be invaded by Russia, we've got Elon Musk threatening them, saying, you know, my Starlink system, my system, is what is determining the course of the war right now. So be quiet, small man. He actually said that. Be quiet, small man.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
It's my technology, my Starlink system that is deciding the war. I'm the one. And while we've got Musk behaving that way against one of our allies when it comes to Starlink, we apparently are simultaneously giving over all US airspace to Starlink as well. by letting him take over U.S.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
air traffic control technology at the FAA, installing his own company in place of the companies that have been cleared by the FAA to provide that technology. Not to put too fine a point on it, but as noted today at The Atlantic, quote, Starlink presents many risks, said one expert, quote, part of the risk is that Musk could simply choose to switch the devices off.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
If Starlink runs American airspace, because that's what Donald Trump is letting his top campaign donor do, that gives Elon Musk the ability to shut down American airspace at will. Because after all, Starlink is my Starlink system, according to him. And he can do with it what he wants. Now Donald Trump says that's what's going to run air traffic control in the United States. Seem like a good idea?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
U.S. Senator Mark Kelly is with us tonight. He just got back from Ukraine. He joins us here live next. Over the weekend, Arizona U.S. Senator Mark Kelly went to Ukraine, where he met with Ukrainian officials and soldiers and ordinary people living with the fallout from Russia's three-year invasion of that country.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
After he got home, Senator Kelly posted about his trip on Elon Musk's social media platform, Twitter. He said in part, quote, What I saw proved to me that we can't give up on the Ukrainian people. Everyone wants this war to end, but any agreement has to protect Ukraine's security and can't be a giveaway to Putin. Putin is a war criminal who targets hospitals routinely. I visited one in Kyiv.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
Injured soldiers told me how they wanted to get back to the fight. Nurses there shared their stories of the invasion with me through tears. He said, I met with Ukrainian pilots flying challenging combat missions against the Russians who are protected by a considerable electronic warfare and surface-to-air missile system defense.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
When Trump cut off these Ukrainian pilots from US intelligence that they needed to plan their missions, he blinded them to the threat and he put them and their aircraft at risk. But worse than that, it helps the Russians advance further into Ukrainian territory to murder more Ukrainians. President Trump says the Russians are, quote, hitting them hard in a tone of voice that implies approval.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
It is sickening to see from an American president, quote, hitting them hard means more dead Ukrainian kids. Senator Kelly says, quote, I visited the wall of remembrance to pay tribute to Ukraine's dead soldiers. I'm bringing back what I saw and learned from Ukrainian leaders, service members and the Ukrainian people to show the direct impact our support is having on the ground.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
He says the world would become a very cold and lonely place if we continue this ridiculous screw you, go it alone foreign policy. It is dumb and it will not age well. And it puts you and your kids and your grandkids at risk. After Senator Kelly posted that online, he got a response from President Donald Trump's top campaign donor.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
After yet another plane crash this weekend, this time in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, the Atlantic magazine is now reporting on how things are going at the FAA under Donald Trump and his top campaign donor, Elon Musk, who owns both Twitter and also SpaceX, the troubled space company, with its subsidiary, Starlink, the satellite internet company. The Atlantic reports, quote,
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
Elon Musk said in response to the combat veteran, Navy commander and U.S. astronaut, quote, you are a traitor. Senator Kelly then responded by saying, traitor? Elon, if you don't understand that defending freedom is a basic tenet of what makes America great and keeps us safe, maybe you should leave it to those of us who do. Joining us now is Arizona U.S. Senator Mark Kelly.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
Senator, I really appreciate you joining us this evening. I know you've had a lot of travel time recently.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
OK, I can hear you. Go ahead, sir. I can hear you.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
In terms of these negotiations, such as they are, that are happening, in terms of the posture of the U.S. towards this conflict, it appears to me from the outside, just as a citizen looking at this, that nothing has been asked of Russia and that, to the contrary, everything that Russia might conceivably have asked of the United States, short of U.S.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
troops bombing Ukraine itself, has been offered to Russia without concession by this president. I don't know why Marco Rubio personally feels like the right vessel for that, given his previous clear-eyed warnings and criticism about Vladimir Putin.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
Do you feel like there's anything the United States could do, if it had its wits about it, to try to change some of the way that Trump is interacting already with Russia and Ukraine in a way to make it more likely that Ukraine loses this war?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
Senator, I have to ask you, and I apologize in advance for doing this, but I have to ask you if you have any response tonight to what the president's top campaign donor, Mr. Musk, said about you, bluntly calling you a traitor in response to you writing about your trip to Ukraine.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
occur, sometimes suddenly, it falls to aeronautical information specialists to update charts and maps and flight procedures that each day guide more than 45,000 flights and 2.9 million passengers across America's more than 29 million square miles of airspace.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
Well, it seems like certainly SpaceX could use some executive help at this point. Maybe some more time might be available. Senator Mark Kelly, I really appreciate you taking time tonight. Thank you for talking to us tonight, sir. Thank you, Rachel. All right. More news ahead here tonight. Stay with us. It started with an ad in the New York Times. It was 1960, March 29th.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
And the Times ran this full-page ad soliciting donations for the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. and for college students in the South who had been fighting segregation there. And this fundraising appeal, heed their rising voices, it listed a bunch of ways in which the students in particular were allegedly being harassed and terrorized in the South.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
Now, there was a city commissioner in Montgomery, Alabama, whose name was L.B. Sullivan. And L.B. Sullivan saw that ad and decided he would sue the New York Times over that ad, sue them for libel. The ad in the Times accused Southern officials of violence and intimidation, of violating the Constitution. And Mr. L.B.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
Sullivan said that that meant that the Times had defamed him as a Southern official because he said there were details in the ad that were exaggerated or incorrect. And he sued the Times. This was the headline in the local paper in Montgomery. State finds formidable legal club to swing at out-of-state press.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
In his new book, which is called Murder the Truth, New York Times reporter David Enrich describes what happened next. He says, quote, Sullivan's lawsuit went to trial in the Montgomery courtroom of Judge Walter Jones, who maintained segregated seating, was a devout promoter of all things Confederacy, and who believed in what he called the white man's justice.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
As the Sullivan trial was about to get underway, some prospective jurors showed up to court in Confederate costumes, toting pistols. Quote, it took the jurors barely two hours to return a verdict against the New York Times. The paper was ordered to pay Sullivan a half million dollars. It was the largest libel judgment in the state's history.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
Quote, for racist Southerners, this was the equivalent of a green light. The courts could be used to scare the press into silent submission. The New York Times, fearing a tidal wave of litigation, banned its reporters from setting foot in Alabama. The Times' lawyers urged staff not to write articles that detailed the state of Alabama's institutionalized racism. That wasn't the end, though.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
Quote, Trump's drive to downsize the federal government, as directed by Elon Musk's Doge initiative, is drastically reducing the number of aeronautical information specialists. and other workers in critical safety roles at the FAA. Interviews and internal FAA records show that as many as 12% of the nation's aeronautical information specialists have now been fired or have exited the agency.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
The Times eventually got this case with L.B. Sullivan taken all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. And in 1964, the Supreme Court surprised everybody with a landmark, unanimous Supreme Court decision that changed journalism in this country forever.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
In the simplest terms, the precedent means that there can't be free speech and a free press if news outlets can be sued into oblivion over mistakes or good faith errors. The court established a new standard. A public figure suing a media outlet for libel would have to prove that the outlet knowingly lied or acted with reckless disregard for the truth.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
David Enrich writes in his new book that after the Sullivan decision, quote, reporters uncovered wrongdoing in Vietnam and the White House and the Pentagon. It was not a coincidence that the Washington Post cracked open Watergate in the years after Sullivan.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
If the burden of proof in a defamation case had still rested with the defendant, with the press, and if even honest mistakes had remained punishable under the law, the costs of publishing such a series of investigations might have been prohibitive.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
As his presidency circled the drain, Richard Nixon blamed the Sullivan decision and had his administration craft legislation that he hoped would supersede the precedent and put the media back in a pen. Richard Nixon did not succeed at putting the media back in a pen, but he would not be the last to try.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
David Enrich makes a compelling and alarming case in this very important new book that the legal protections that undergird the free press in this country, that make it possible to do adversarial investigative journalism in this country, they're on much shakier ground than we may realize.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
Donald Trump and his allies have made no secret of their desire to criminalize journalism with constant attacks on the media as the enemy and an explicit campaign promise from Trump that he would somehow, quote, open up America's libel laws. That means something specific.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
Trump's billionaire supporters have already launched aggressive legal attacks on media outlets that are specifically designed to bankrupt those outlets and shut them down, and they have had some success with that. A once fringe right-wing idea that the whole New York Times v. Sullivan precedent could be overturned is now publicly supported by two Supreme Court justices.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
The attack on this foundational protection for the free press in this country has been a long time coming from the far right. but it looks like it may finally have arrived. David Enrich joins us next. Stay with us. It's from the new book Murder the Truth by New York Times reporter David Enrich, which comes out tomorrow.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
Quote, around the time that the first Trump administration began reshaping the federal judiciary, a handful of lawyers, judges and politicians embarked on another quest, one that went far beyond the traditional efforts to complain about and sow distrust toward the media.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
Their goal was to eviscerate the longstanding Supreme Court rulings that shielded journalists, activists and everyday citizens when they wrote or spoke critically about important people and institutions. Joining us now is David Enrich. He's business investigations editor at The New York Times.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
His new book is called Murder the Truth, Fear, the First Amendment and a Secret Campaign to Protect the Powerful. It comes out tomorrow. David, I've really been looking forward to talking to you about this. Thank you so much for being here. Congratulations on the book.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
I have to say, I was hoping as I got toward the end of the book that you would reveal the big plan to save the First Amendment and save the free press. You have documented exhaustively how we got to this point where the legal protections for the press are so, so endangered. Do you think that there is a way to save the press and save these protections?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
12% of everybody who has that job in America is gone since Trump took over. aeronautical information specialists, the people who rewrote planes when bad stuff happens.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
I think that one of the things that you make clear in the book that I felt like was really valuable is the relationship between protections for the press and solid democracy and having a sense of the population knowing what the government is doing, holding the government accountable, and making the government do fewer bad things.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
I mean, that connection that you can't—the whole democracy dies in darkness idea— as poorly phrased as that is, is really clear. This institutional protection is part of why we've had the solidity in our democracy that we have come to enjoy. I have to wonder if the sort of growing libel industry and defamation industry that you describe is part of why our democracy is weaker now.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
The notches they've already put in their belt against the press and making the public hate and distrust the press, I think you're suggesting that the feedback loop is there in terms of whether or not the public is benefiting from what the press does for our democracy.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
Right under that, next headline, Tesla tumbles most since 2020. Next headline over, billionaires at Trump's swearing-in have since lost $209 billion. Quote, the start of Trump's second term has delivered a stunning reversal for many of the billionaires who were seated behind Trump in the Capitol Rotunda while he was being sworn in. That was the front page at Bloomberg News today.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
Yeah, it's a systemic effort. And just as the power grab in Washington is in large part to sort of obviate the power of Congress, that's an important thing to understand, but everybody hates Congress and so nobody wants to stick up for them. In the same way, the power grab to disempower and take away all protections for the press to operate is...
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
This, of course, comes after The New York Times reported on a confrontation a few days ago at the White House between Musk and the Fox Business Channel host who Donald Trump saw fit to install as our nation's transportation secretary. Quote, Mr. Duffy said the young staff of Mr. Musk's team was trying to lay off air traffic controllers. Quote, what am I supposed to do, Mr. Duffy said?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
a systemic and important thing, but you have to take the side of the press, which is very unpopular, in order to make the case. You found the right way to do it in telling the story in terms of how this works as an institution, why we need the press and these protections for the country. David, congratulations on the book again. I really appreciate it.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
David Emrich's new book is called Murder the Truth, Fear the First Amendment and a Secret Campaign to Protect the Powerful. It is a really, really, really important contribution that is worth understanding right now. All right, we'll be right back. All right, that's going to do it for me for now. I will see you again tomorrow and every night this week at 9 p.m. Eastern.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
In the meantime, you can find me on Blue Sky at matto.msnbc.com. At Blue Sky, highly recommended.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
I have multiple plane crashes to deal with now, and your people want me to fire air traffic controllers? And stick a pin in that for a second. We'll come back to the president's top donor and what he's doing to American air travel in just a moment and how we ought to be thinking about that given what's going on in the news right now.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
But as the markets crash today and as Wall Street and the business sector and economists broadly start to righteously freak out about what the American people have wrought by reinstalling Donald Trump in the White House— Have a look at this from this weekend. This was another weekend in which we saw people protesting all over the country at Elon Musk's car company, at Tesla dealerships everywhere.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
Protests this weekend at the Tesla dealership in Pasadena, California, which is Southern California, also Palo Alto up in Northern California, in Decatur, Georgia. in Vancouver, Washington, in Boston at the big Tesla dealership there, in Chicago at the Tesla dealership on the Gold Coast there, in Manhattan at the Tesla dealership.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
There was another big protest this weekend at which people did civil disobedience and got arrested. I think this is the second, if not the third time that people have actually done civil disobedience and had to be dragged out of that Tesla showroom in New York City. This is a big weekend of protests.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
Women's Day this weekend brought out a lot of anti-Trump, anti-Elon Musk protesters, plus people standing up for abortion rights and for immigrants rights. We saw big women's marches this weekend in Atlanta and in places as far flung as Lexington, Kentucky and Pittsburgh, Kansas and Indianapolis. In New York City, there was a big march. In Los Angeles, they had a really big women's march.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
There were protests and big marches in Boston and in Sacramento and in Portland, Oregon, and at the state capitol in St. Paul, Minnesota. People demonstrated peacefully in Cincinnati this weekend, targeting Vice President J.D. Vance while he was out with his young daughter. His interactions with those protesters apparently made him very, very, very angry.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
Saturday saw a big protest in Bethesda, Maryland to defend the NIH protest. Look at the size of this. In Bethesda this weekend, lots of people turned out for that.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
Saturday night in Washington, D.C., there was a nighttime march for drag where they marched to the Kennedy Center to protest Trump's recent personal takeover of the Kennedy Center and his executive orders attacking transgender people in every conceivable way.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
Saturday in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, there was a daytime protest to defend veterans, a protest in Milwaukee against the massive cuts that Trump has slated for the VA. New York Times reporting this weekend that Trump's huge VA cuts have already cut off midstream clinical trials for veterans with advanced cancer.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
These are clinical trials for veterans who effectively don't have any other treatment options left, and they are facing death. And these clinical trials at the VA might be their best shot to live, but they are canceled now because of the cuts that Trump has already imposed on the VA that is ahead of the 80,000 people he says he's going to fire at the VA by June.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
On Saturday in Washington, people unfurled this huge Ukraine flag for a don't abandon Ukraine protest that was on the ellipse outside the White House. In Texas, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren traveled to Austin, Texas this weekend, and Elizabeth Warren rallied. Look at this. In Austin, Texas, turned out 3,500 people at the state capitol in Austin.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont continued his project of rallying people all across the country this weekend. He has been specifically focused on House districts that are currently represented by Republicans. Look at this crowd. Kenosha, Wisconsin, on Friday night, 4,000 people turned out in Kenosha to see Bernie Sanders. The next morning, elsewhere in Wisconsin, he was in Altoona.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
Banner headline at NBC News this afternoon, quote, markets suffer brutal sell-offs as recession fears grow. This was the banner at USA Today. Quote, stocks plunge amid recession fears. Here was CNBC. Dow tumbles nearly 900 points. NASDAQ suffers worst day since 2022 as recession fears erupt. Tesla shares plunge 15%. That's in a day. Suffering steepest drop in five years.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
In Altoona, Wisconsin, on Saturday morning, more than 2,500 people showed up to see Bernie Sanders. That's about a quarter of the town's entire population. Then on Sunday, Senator Sanders went to suburban Detroit, Michigan, where he spoke to 9,000 people. More than 9,000 people turned out in Michigan to see Bernie Sanders.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
Town halls with members of Congress continue to be packed and also really interesting. In Washington state this weekend, Democratic Congresswoman Emily Randall held a packed town hall in Tacoma Friday night. She was then slated to hold another one Saturday morning in Bremerton, Washington. But so many people packed into that one that the venue filled up in minutes.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
She apparently made the decision on the spot that she would just stay and hold a whole second town hall after the morning one so that people could get in from the overflow to ask her questions. She just doubled up.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
And also, I watched a lot of the footage from those town halls, and her constituents were asking her questions, but Congresswoman Randall's constituents were also there to holler at her to do more. Congresswoman Randall is one of the Democratic members of Congress who walked out of President Trump's speech to Congress last week.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
And she did get a huge round of applause from her constituents for that. But the tone of that town hall was really anguish from her constituents about what's happening in Washington and honestly demands to her that she do more, more, more, that she somehow find a way to be even more confrontational against Trump.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
Again, in Texas, Congressman Joaquin Castro held a packed house, had a packed house at his San Antonio town hall. Local news interviewed some of his constituents who were in tears, talking about how concerned and angry they are about what Trump is doing to the government. And this is an interesting one. This is a Republican.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
In Western Michigan, Republican Congressman Bill Huizenga, I think that's how you say his name. It's H-U-I-Z-E-N-G-A, Huizenga. He held a teletown hall this weekend with his constituents. He actually told his constituents on the call that he didn't want to do an in-person town hall because he thought people would be disruptive if he showed up in person. So he just did it by phone.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
Even still, even though it was just on the phone, that still led to his local ABC affiliate in Western Michigan getting him on the record and on tape from that teletown hall with this.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
Republican Congressman Bill Huizenga from Michigan, afraid to meet his constituents in person, but telling them in a telephone town hall, Elon Musk has tweeted first and thought second. He has plunged ahead without knowing and understanding what he legally has to do or what he is going to be doing.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
The actions of Donald Trump and Elon Musk are indefensible, according to Republican members of Congress. And they do not want to have to admit that on camera in front of their constituents, let alone face them eyeball to eyeball. But doing a teletown hall still gets you on tape, even when you're just there on the phone.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
In Kansas this weekend, Republican Congressman Ron Estes thought that he figured out how to fix this problem. This is fantastic. Congressman Estes called for a rally. He called for a big pro-Trump rally and protest event in his district. And it was to be sponsored by a right-wing group called Americans for Prosperity. So this event, it was Saturday in Wichita, Kansas.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
Again, called by the congressman to telling his constituents to show up to protest for Donald Trump. And the event was drowned out by a much larger group of anti-Trump protesters who showed up to protest against Donald Trump and also against their congressman, Ron Estes.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
Again, that was supposed to be the pro-Trump event. Dang nabbit! Republican Congressman Ron Estes of Kansas, trying to get people to rally for Trump, trying to get some good press for the Republicans and Trump, but then the number of people who turn out in Kansas to protest against him and against Trump just totally dwarfs what he was trying to do.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
Musk says he is running his businesses, quote, with great difficulty as shares tank. And it just keeps going. I mean, you know, how specific do you want to get? Tariffs are lose-lose for U.S. jobs and industry, Economist says. BlackRock executive says Trump deportations will have severe impact on agriculture and construction.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
Let me just show you, like, one more little 10-second blip of this. This is the very end of that local news package on KSN in Kansas. Congressman Estes, how'd it go trying to get some good press for your pro-Trump event that was totally swamped by anti-Trump protesters? How did it go?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
Republican Congressman Ron Estes of Kansas. Step one, invite the media. Step two, forget that your own constituents are horrified at Donald Trump and looking for any opportunity to protest him. Step three, leave without talking to the media. Very important. Hope that they forget that you are the one who invited them to be there to show off all the Trump love in your district.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
There were also good-sized protests today in New York City after the Trump administration sent immigration agents to address a legal permanent resident of the United States, a green card holder, who had also been involved in protests against Israel's war in Gaza at Columbia University.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
Tonight, a federal judge in New York has blocked the Trump administration from deporting that young man and forcing him out of the country, despite the fact that he is a legal permanent resident and has a green card.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
That federal judge has called a hearing on the matter on Wednesday, says he wants everybody involved in that case to be there in person for that hearing, and that young man cannot be sent out of the country. In this case, the administration has made clear that's not only something they want to do, it's something they want to do specifically and only because of this man's political views.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
There's no criminal allegations against him. There's no material support of terrorism allegations against him or anything. There's nothing. They just don't like his politics. And they see that as reason to revoke his legal status in this country and try to force him out.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump puts U.S. at risk with increasing reliance on Musk
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in addition to defending and advancing that, also joined with Elon Musk this weekend in a bizarre attack on our ally Poland. I mean, just for context here, many observers believe that after Trump gives Putin free rein to do what he wants in his war in Ukraine, Putin will keep going and push into Georgia in the south, which he already invaded in 2008.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fills administration with 'big team of losers' that voters have already rejected
Really happy to have you here. So 2008, Barack Obama was elected president of the United States. He had been a U.S. senator, you might remember. Had he lost that presidential campaign, he would have returned to just being a U.S. senator. But he did not lose. He won. And because he became president, that meant there was a vacancy.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fills administration with 'big team of losers' that voters have already rejected
It's not just self-dealing and corruption. It's a third category that poses the risk of what I would call autocratic breakthrough. That's like the political science term for it. It's not just something turning out bad. It's not just you doing things in a way that is corrupt or for your own self rather than for the people you're supposed to be serving.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fills administration with 'big team of losers' that voters have already rejected
It is breaking systems so that you can't be stopped. It's when they do things with their power that aren't just bad, that aren't just corrupt or self-dealing. They are designed to change the government and the country and the system so they can never be removed from power. So opposition to them becomes impossible or illegal or dangerous. So it doesn't matter what we want or what we don't want.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fills administration with 'big team of losers' that voters have already rejected
It doesn't matter what we intend to vote for or vote against. They're staying anyway, and they'll do what they want regardless of how the rest of the country feels about it. That's autocratic breakthrough. And in that category, there's stuff to watch. The attacks on the media are not important because you have to like the media.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fills administration with 'big team of losers' that voters have already rejected
They're important because without the media, the public's not gonna know things the government doesn't want them to know. The attacks on the inspectors general, on the oversight agencies, they're not necessarily important because you have to love the inspectors general on the oversight agencies. But again, it's a categorical change.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fills administration with 'big team of losers' that voters have already rejected
In taking out the inspectors general and the oversight agencies, these guys are protecting themselves from being investigated or being stopped by those watchdogs, but they're also preventing the public from knowing about whatever malfeasance may be going on.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fills administration with 'big team of losers' that voters have already rejected
And in that category, the autocratic breakthrough category, the changing the system so we can't be removed from office so that we can act without regard for what the American people want or say or do, In that category, the big kahuna is the attack on the courts. You may have seen the headline tonight. We had a federal judge block the big cuts they just imposed on scientific and medical research.
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Trump fills administration with 'big team of losers' that voters have already rejected
The amount of scientific and medical research funding and the way that funding is structured is set up by law. And to cut it unilaterally is to violate that law. So those scientific and medical research cuts have been blocked tonight by a federal judge.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fills administration with 'big team of losers' that voters have already rejected
We've also had a federal judge block the resign or else threats against millions of federal workers that are trying to induce them into quitting their jobs. That has been blocked by a federal judge. We've had a federal judge block the Elon Musk improper access to the Treasury's payment system. That has been blocked by a federal judge.
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Trump fills administration with 'big team of losers' that voters have already rejected
We've had a federal judge block their efforts to send three Venezuelan men to Guantanamo. We had a federal judge block the release of the names of FBI agents who worked on January 6th cases. We've had three different judges block the effort to overturn birthright citizenship, the American principle enshrined in the Constitution that says if you're born here, you're American.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fills administration with 'big team of losers' that voters have already rejected
We have had two federal judges now block the government funding halt. We have had a federal judge block the shutdown of USAID and the order that everybody at USAID has to be fired or put on leave. We've had judges stop thing after thing after thing. that they've been trying to do. And all of those losses in court, I mean, we're only three weeks into the administration.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fills administration with 'big team of losers' that voters have already rejected
He wanted a six-figure job for himself after his governorship. He wanted his wife put on corporate boards for another six-figure payout. He wanted big campaign donations. He demanded a cabinet position for himself in Obama's new government. Or better yet, he wanted to be an ambassador. He really liked the idea of being an ambassador. Rod Blagojevich, as I mentioned, did a lot of this on tape.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fills administration with 'big team of losers' that voters have already rejected
How have they lost in court this many times already? Well, it's because they're doing a lot of things all at once that seem, at least at first glance, to be quite illegal. And so judges are stopping them from doing these things as fast as lawsuits can be filed. But the important thing here is the response to these court orders. Because in, for example, the funding halt case,
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fills administration with 'big team of losers' that voters have already rejected
where the judges are saying, you cannot halt these funds, these funds have to go ahead. In the USAID case, where the judge says, you cannot shut USAID and put the whole staff on leave, you have to reverse that. In those cases already, we have had the new administration lose in court. And we have also had the new administration appear to defy those court orders.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fills administration with 'big team of losers' that voters have already rejected
In both cases, the plaintiffs have gone back to court in those cases saying, Your Honor, your ruling is not being obeyed. They're still doing what you ordered them not to do. And that has bad consequences, true, right, directly. There's a reason these cases were brought in the first place, which is you can't do this illegal thing. And also, if you do this thing, it causes harm.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fills administration with 'big team of losers' that voters have already rejected
So the fact that they're defying the court orders directly has bad consequences. USAID still being shut has bad consequences. Those funding halts still have bad consequences. But categorically, the most important thing here is their willingness to defy the courts because that is the ultimate autocratic breakthrough.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fills administration with 'big team of losers' that voters have already rejected
A declaration that the rule of law does not apply to them, that it cannot constrain anything they want to do, that is worse than any one outcome, right? That is a forever decision. That means nothing anyone else wants and no court ever rules against will ever again have any impact on what our government wants to do to us. That is a category of its own. That is the key to autocratic breakthrough.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fills administration with 'big team of losers' that voters have already rejected
And that is where we find ourselves on the precipice looking over the edge tonight. Elizabeth Warren joins us next. Stay with us. Amid everything, did you notice the little announcement that the Trump administration has ordered a halt to all federal funding for electric vehicle chargers across the United States? EV charging stations.
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Trump fills administration with 'big team of losers' that voters have already rejected
You might think that would be a problem for Trump's billionaire co-president, his largest campaign donor, Elon Musk, who runs the electric car company Tesla. But you know what? There's a reason he's not complaining. Quite the contrary. And it's because Elon Musk's company, Tesla, already has the biggest private charging network in the country, bigger than all of his competitors.
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Trump fills administration with 'big team of losers' that voters have already rejected
So as he posted on his social media site last year, quote, take away the subsidies. It will only help Tesla. Well, now Donald Trump has done just that, leaving Tesla unchallenged as the largest EV charging network in the country with no one really having any chance to catch up to them. Then there's one of Musk's other companies, SpaceX, a huge government contractor.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fills administration with 'big team of losers' that voters have already rejected
Back in December, the New York Times reported that the Defense Department's inspector general had opened a review into SpaceX for potentially violating rules about keeping sensitive government secrets out of the hands of our foreign adversaries. Elon Musk's own foreign travel and his contacts with foreign governments had reportedly not been disclosed regularly to the U.S.
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Trump fills administration with 'big team of losers' that voters have already rejected
government, which not only impeded his own security clearance, but also reportedly led, in part at least, to this inspector general's security review of potential national security risks surrounding his companies and specifically him. Well, when Donald Trump took office, he fired that inspector general conducting that review. along with 17 other inspectors general across the government.
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Trump fills administration with 'big team of losers' that voters have already rejected
Then there's Elon Musk's social media company, formerly known as Twitter. When Elon Musk took over that company, one of his goals was to turn it into a digital payment company. He wanted everybody to start using Twitter the way they used Zelle or Venmo to send money electronically. Starting this year, he announced a big new plan to do that.
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Trump fills administration with 'big team of losers' that voters have already rejected
He was eventually charged with trying to shake down a Chicago newspaper and a Chicago children's hospital. He was charged with trying to shake down people who had contracts with the government for kickback campaign contributions. He was charged with lying to the FBI and he was charged with trying to sell that Senate seat. Ultimately, Rod Blagojevich was convicted and he got 14 years in prison.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fills administration with 'big team of losers' that voters have already rejected
But, you know, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the government regulator that makes sure credit card companies and banks can't charge you junk fees or unnecessarily hike up your interest rates and screw you over that way. The CFPB also regulates the kinds of digital money transfers that Elon Musk now wants to do at Twitter.
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Trump fills administration with 'big team of losers' that voters have already rejected
And as Lever News points out today, the CFPB has just been finalizing new rules for that kind of payment system. When over the weekend, they got shut down. Musk and the Trump administration shut the CFPB down entirely.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fills administration with 'big team of losers' that voters have already rejected
So if you voted for Trump because you thought banks and credit card companies are the good guys and they need more opportunities to screw people over on small print scams and junk fees and ballooning credit card interest rates and all the rest. Well, if so, today must feel great. Must feel like you got a lot for your vote.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fills administration with 'big team of losers' that voters have already rejected
The pushback against Trump's efforts to defund the police, to defund the financial police, has begun in earnest. Lawsuits have been filed already challenging Trump's shutdown of the CFPB. Today in Washington, protesters and lawmakers, look at this, turned out again in the street. rallied in support of CFPB and its workers outside of its headquarters.
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Trump fills administration with 'big team of losers' that voters have already rejected
This was today in Washington, people showing up in person and Democratic lawmakers showing up there to support them. One of those lawmakers is Senator Elizabeth Warren. She was instrumental in the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau during the Obama administration, and she has been defending it ever since. Joining us now is Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fills administration with 'big team of losers' that voters have already rejected
Senator, thank you so much for making time to be here tonight. Happy to be with you. Tell me about this protest today at CFPB headquarters.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fills administration with 'big team of losers' that voters have already rejected
What do you make about the way they have done this? Because you and I have spoken before since the formation of the CFPB about all the ways that Republicans have tried to come after it and all the ways that, you know, people who represent these financial institutions have tried to kill it, have tried to undermine it.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fills administration with 'big team of losers' that voters have already rejected
If it was this easy, if it was just a proclamation, tell all the workers to go home, stop working on any of this stuff. And by the way, we're shutting the building. Why didn't they do it like this before? It seems to me like that might be an indication that this isn't actually a legal way to close this agency.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fills administration with 'big team of losers' that voters have already rejected
But you know what? he might yet get to be ambassador to something. It might yet work. It just took a while and a long stint in prison in the meantime. Because today, President Donald Trump said he is going to pardon Rod Blagojevich. In confirming the pardon today, President Trump denied widespread reports that he's also going to name Rod Blagojevich ambassador to Serbia,
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Trump fills administration with 'big team of losers' that voters have already rejected
Let me ask you about the point you just raised there about how the Supreme Court has weighed in on this twice already and said this is a constitutionally sound agency that can't be—you can't just wish it away. I feel like this is not an original thought.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fills administration with 'big team of losers' that voters have already rejected
I think a lot of people are having this thought at the same time, which is for all of these court challenges that are happening, most of which are succeeding at stopping the things they've tried to do in these first three weeks— For each of those, we have started to see them now make noises about potentially defying those court rulings.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fills administration with 'big team of losers' that voters have already rejected
We have had in the USAID case and in the halt to government funding case, we've had the plaintiffs in those cases go back to the judges and say, your honor, your order, that the government needed to stop doing what they were doing. They seem to be defying your order. We're gonna need something stronger.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fills administration with 'big team of losers' that voters have already rejected
What do you make of this big, I think, constitutionally existential question about whether or not court rulings are going to be treated as optional by these guys? Their brazenness at breaking the law, whether it's with the CFPB or USAID or any of these other things they're doing, seems to me born of a kind of confidence that.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fills administration with 'big team of losers' that voters have already rejected
can only come from their expectation that the courts don't mean much at the end of the day and that illegality is not necessarily a reason to avoid doing something that they really want to do.
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Trump fills administration with 'big team of losers' that voters have already rejected
When Trump was asked about that today, he said, no, he doesn't think he's gonna name him ambassador to Serbia, now at least, quote, but I would. He's now cleaner than anyone in this room. He's now cleaner. Yeah, because you just cleaned him. Would Donald Trump really pardon a felon and then name that person to be an ambassador? Yes, yes, he would. Jared Kushner's dad, Charles, he was a felon.
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Trump fills administration with 'big team of losers' that voters have already rejected
Senator Elizabeth Warren, thank you for your time tonight. It was really interesting also to see you out there with protesters today, people showing up and putting themselves on the line, showing up in real life to stand up for the CFPB and the people that work there. I appreciate you being there with those folks and telling us about what it was like. Thanks for being here tonight, ma'am. You bet.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fills administration with 'big team of losers' that voters have already rejected
Thank you. We'll be right back. Stay with us. I mentioned at the top of the show that one of the people who's been working with Elon Musk, the president's top campaign donor, as they've been going around sort of ripping out the guts of every government agency they can get into, is somebody who has been linked to hacking and other cyber criminal enterprises online.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fills administration with 'big team of losers' that voters have already rejected
It's interesting, though, why he lost one of his most recent jobs before he got this one with the U.S. government. This is the email that reportedly went around when he got fired from that job. He was working as an intern at a cybersecurity firm. This, according to Bluebird News, quote, Edward has been terminated for leaking internal information to the competitors.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fills administration with 'big team of losers' that voters have already rejected
This is unacceptable and there is zero tolerance for this. After Edward, the intern, was fired, he reportedly posted online that even after the company had fired him for leaking company information to a competitor, Edward had managed to get himself access to, quote, every single machine at that cybersecurity firm that had fired him.
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Trump fills administration with 'big team of losers' that voters have already rejected
He bragged that he could have wiped all the company's customer support servers if he had wanted to. Edward, that fired intern, is now older and wiser. He's now 19 years old. And he now works for the president's top campaign donor. And in that capacity, 19-year-old Edward is now a, quote, senior advisor at the U.S.
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Trump fills administration with 'big team of losers' that voters have already rejected
State Department, where he now has been given access to all of the IT and data management functions for the country's entire diplomatic operation in every country on Earth. One current U.S. official telling The Washington Post, quote, this is dangerous. And hey, I'm no expert, but it doesn't sound good.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fills administration with 'big team of losers' that voters have already rejected
He had to vacate his Senate seat in order to move to the White House. And that meant the governor of Illinois would have to appoint somebody new to take that US Senate seat that Barack Obama was vacating. Now, in pure partisan terms at the time, Democrats were not all that worried about that because the governor of Illinois was also a Democrat.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fills administration with 'big team of losers' that voters have already rejected
Kind of does sound like a national security concern to have a 19 year old who already in his young life has a history of leaking sensitive information. And then to give that 19 year old access to all centralized data at the U.S. State Department. I don't know. It just seems off.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fills administration with 'big team of losers' that voters have already rejected
It really is just the latest in a string of national security news coming out of this White House that could really curl your hair. Elon Musk's JV team also has access to the payment system at the Treasury Department that not only controls all things the U.S. government pays for, those things include, for example, details of secret payments made to foreign assets run by U.S.
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Trump fills administration with 'big team of losers' that voters have already rejected
intelligence, payments to U.S. businesses abroad who have secret contracts with our intelligence services like the CIA. Speaking of the CIA, their entire workforce has been told to resign. They've all been sent that resign or else email. Then there's Trump's pick to lead the FBI.
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Trump fills administration with 'big team of losers' that voters have already rejected
Kash Patel, who we just learned on Friday, was paid $25,000 for his participation in an anti-FBI film made by a Russian-American filmmaker who makes propaganda for the Kremlin. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fills administration with 'big team of losers' that voters have already rejected
Trump pardoned him already and then named him ambassador to France. Hey, Paris, here's your felon. Glad you're one of our most important allies in the world. And, you know, maybe Rod Blagojevich will be on his way to Belgrade as ambassador if he did. That really would be effing golden, right?
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Trump fills administration with 'big team of losers' that voters have already rejected
Thank you. Thank you.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fills administration with 'big team of losers' that voters have already rejected
I mean, took him a while to cash in on this extortion plot, but he got there in the end with an assist from Donald Trump. Blagojevich and Charles Kushner, of course, would make a great sort of nucleus of the diplomatic core for Donald Trump, perhaps alongside New York City Mayor Eric Adams.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fills administration with 'big team of losers' that voters have already rejected
Thank you. Thank you.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fills administration with 'big team of losers' that voters have already rejected
You may recall that New York City's unctuous mayor, Eric Adams, was indicted in September for allegedly taking foreign campaign donations and bribes, including from the government of Turkey. Mayor Adams denies the allegations, but he then spent campaign season and since sucking up to Donald Trump in the most public and humiliating ways possible. Now, tonight, Trump's Justice Department
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fills administration with 'big team of losers' that voters have already rejected
has ordered the supposedly so independent federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York, main justice, Trump's appointees there, have ordered SDNY that they must drop the charges against Eric Adams. Now, I mean, SDNY has some decisions to make, even if they do drop these charges. It seems pretty clear that New York City is not interested in having Eric Adams around anymore.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fills administration with 'big team of losers' that voters have already rejected
I do not think that he will be reelected. But hey, maybe he could be Trump's new ambassador to Turkey. He's already got like half their stuff. He could be like, I'm moving into the embassy, but actually, can I just put a return label on all this stuff you shipped me? Again, he denies those allegations. I want to show you something here. See if you can spot the pattern here. A few days ago,
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Trump fills administration with 'big team of losers' that voters have already rejected
Donald Trump appointed a new spokesperson for the Defense Department. His name is Sean Parnell. If that name sounds at all familiar, it's because the last thing he did in politics was fail in his effort to win a U.S. Senate seat from Pennsylvania.
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Trump fills administration with 'big team of losers' that voters have already rejected
Mr. Parnell dropped out of the Republican primary after a judge took away custody of his children and ruled that Mr. Parnell had been violent and abusive toward the children and his wife. of dropping her off on an interstate on the side of the road when she was six months pregnant and telling her to get an abortion. She accused him of choking and strangling her.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fills administration with 'big team of losers' that voters have already rejected
He denies the allegations, but that all came out during the campaign. And after the judge's ruling in that case, Mr. Parnell dropped out of the Republican primary and he thus failed to win that U.S. Senate seat in Pennsylvania. That is the last thing that Sean Parnell did in public life. That's the last thing he did in politics. Now Donald Trump has named him spokesman for the Pentagon.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fills administration with 'big team of losers' that voters have already rejected
Person who won that Republican primary for that Senate seat in Pennsylvania and then lost the Senate race in the general election, that was Mehmet Oz, Dr. Oz. Trump has now named him to run Medicare and Medicaid. So that was the Pennsylvania Senate seat in the Georgia Senate races.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fills administration with 'big team of losers' that voters have already rejected
Obviously, Barack Obama had been a Democratic senator. Just in terms of the partisan math, nobody thought it would be that big a deal. Turns out that for the governor of Illinois, his party affiliation was not the most important thing to know about him. The most important thing to know about him was that he was a total crook.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fills administration with 'big team of losers' that voters have already rejected
There were four different Republicans who lost while trying to get Senate seats from Georgia in 2020 and 2022, who have all now been named to things in the Trump administration. Kelly Loeffler. lost a Georgia Senate race in 2020. Trump named her to head the Small Business Administration. David Perdue lost a Georgia Senate race in 2020. Trump named him to be ambassador to China.
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Trump fills administration with 'big team of losers' that voters have already rejected
Doug Collins lost in the primary for Georgia Senate in 2020. Trump named him to run the VA. Herschel Walker lost a Georgia Senate race in 2022. Trump named him to be ambassador to the Bahamas. Carrie Lake lost her run for Arizona governor in 2022, and then she lost her run for Arizona senator in 2024. Trump just named her to run the Voice of America.
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Trump fills administration with 'big team of losers' that voters have already rejected
Lori Chavez de Riemer lost her House seat in 2024 in Oregon. Trump named her to run the U.S. Labor Department. Brandon Williams lost his House seat in 2024 in New York. Trump named him to run the National Nuclear Security Administration. God help us all. Lee Zeldin lost his race for New York governor. Trump named him to run the EPA.
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Trump fills administration with 'big team of losers' that voters have already rejected
Caroline Leavitt lost her campaign for a congressional seat in New Hampshire. Trump named her White House press secretary. The only thing wrestling executive Linda McMahon ever did in politics was lose two consecutive U.S. Senate races in Connecticut. Trump named her secretary of education. The last thing Tulsi Gabbard ever did in politics was disastrously lose a presidential run in 2020.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fills administration with 'big team of losers' that voters have already rejected
Trump has named her director of national intelligence, which is like a horse walks into a bar joke without a horse or a bar. The only thing Robert F. Kennedy Jr. ever did in politics was run and then quit a presidential campaign this year. Now he's Trump's nominee to lead Health and Human Services. Who is Harmeet Dhillon? Harmeet Dhillon lost a race for Republican Party chair this year.
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Trump fills administration with 'big team of losers' that voters have already rejected
Then Trump named her to lead the Justice Department Civil Rights Division. Sam Brown lost a Nevada Senate race this year. Trump has put him at the VA. Dave Weldon lost a race for state legislator in Florida. Trump has now named him to lead the CDC race. Dan Bishop lost the attorney general's race in North Carolina this past year. Trump has made him the number two official at OMB.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fills administration with 'big team of losers' that voters have already rejected
Bo Hines just lost a congressional race in North Carolina. So Trump put him on his new crypto board. Joe Kent has lost two consecutive races for Congress in Washington state. Trump just named him head of the National Counterterrorism Center. You noticing a theme here? I mean, I could go on, but are you noticing a theme?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fills administration with 'big team of losers' that voters have already rejected
I mean, people keep saying no one elected Elon Musk, and that is definitely true. But, you know, at least in his case, he didn't try. He didn't run for something and have the people resoundingly say, no, we don't want you. We'd prefer someone else and not you. And so you will lose this race.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fills administration with 'big team of losers' that voters have already rejected
But in this second term, they really are stuffing the whole administration with people who have not just once upon a time lost an election here or there. All politicians at some point usually lose something. Now, this is like the last thing you did was lose a thing.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fills administration with 'big team of losers' that voters have already rejected
A crook who decided to sell that Senate seat for anything he could get and then to talk about it on tape.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fills administration with 'big team of losers' that voters have already rejected
They almost seem to be going out of their way to find people for whom the last thing they did in politics, the last thing they did in public life was ask the public to approve of them. And the public said, no, we do not want you. It's almost as if they are going out of their way to say, oh, you, the people are saying no. We say that doesn't matter because you may not want us.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fills administration with 'big team of losers' that voters have already rejected
You may not want this. You may not want us. But this is who and what you're getting and you're stuck with it. Doris Kearns Goodwin wrote her famous, brilliant book about Abraham Lincoln building his brave, capable government out of a team of rivals. With Trump, it's like a big team of losers, people who the American people explicitly do not want.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fills administration with 'big team of losers' that voters have already rejected
People who just had the opportunity to be voted into office by the American people, and the American people said definitively, no, don't want you. And so Trump is saying, well, that's who you're getting, and you'll like it. How many of these folks can I find? So there's a lot going on, like there is every day now. Tonight, more tragic news. Tonight, yet another fatal plane crash.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fills administration with 'big team of losers' that voters have already rejected
We are three weeks into this new administration. And as of today, we've had just in that three-week period, we've had the deadliest fatal plane crash in more than 20 years. The midair collision over the Potomac River in Washington that killed 67 people. That was followed a couple days later by the crash that killed seven people and injured 24 more people on the ground in Philadelphia.
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Trump fills administration with 'big team of losers' that voters have already rejected
That was followed by a plane catching fire on the runway in Houston, forcing all the passengers to evacuate downstairs in slides. That was followed by the crash between a plane and a tug at the airport at Chicago O'Hare, critically injuring an airport worker. That was followed by this Japan airplane's
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fills administration with 'big team of losers' that voters have already rejected
slicing into the wing of a Delta plane at SeaTac that was followed by another deadly crash at the end of last week. Ten people dead in a Bering air crash in Alaska, just outside of Nome, Alaska. And now, today, another fatal crash as a small jet slid off the runway at the airport in Scottsdale, Arizona and smashed into another jet. One person is dead. Three are injured.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fills administration with 'big team of losers' that voters have already rejected
We'll be watching for more news on that as it develops this evening. But again, that crash is in Scottsdale. And this is the fourth fatal aviation incident in the United States in three weeks. One midair collision, two single airplane crashes, and now two planes smashing into one another just off an airport runway. When's the last time we had four fatal aviation incidents in three weeks?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fills administration with 'big team of losers' that voters have already rejected
The administration's explanation thus far has been to blame diversity somehow and also to say, well, you know, we'll take care of it. We'll have the cost cutters who work for the president's top campaign donor get to work in getting into the aviation system. None of the kids who work for Elon Musk have any aviation experience or safety experience or any experience whatsoever.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fills administration with 'big team of losers' that voters have already rejected
doing anything like this, except there is that one kid working for Musk who appears to have been pretty deeply involved in working in and around criminal hacking and extortion groups. So at least there's that. So there's a lot going on. There's a lot going on every day.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fills administration with 'big team of losers' that voters have already rejected
But so as to not get too overwhelmed with the pace of things, with the, I think what we're all experiencing as this torrent of bad news. I do think it's possible to recognize that not everything sort of fits in the same bucket. Not all of these things are the same, right? So in one category, I would put bad outcomes, right? Plane crashes, bird flu jumping species and sparking new outbreaks.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fills administration with 'big team of losers' that voters have already rejected
American farmers having been told by the government that if they install new fencing and dig a new well and upgrade their electrical, the government will subsidize that, will reimburse them for doing that. Now that those American farmers have spent that money, the Trump administration has decided they're not in fact paying them for it. So now those farmers are potentially going to go bankrupt.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fills administration with 'big team of losers' that voters have already rejected
Right. The shuttering of programs that prevent the spread of multidrug resistant tuberculosis, programs that stop famines, programs that test cancer drugs and all the rest. All of these things are are bad outcomes. I mean, I would even say like Charles Kushner, that's a bad outcome. Right. Having a convicted felon as the ambassador to one of our most important allies, that itself is bad.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fills administration with 'big team of losers' that voters have already rejected
Rod Blagojevich, that's bad. Pardoning politicians for profound and proven corruption. That's just a bad outcome on its face. So that's one category. So there's a second category, which is self-dealing and abusive office.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fills administration with 'big team of losers' that voters have already rejected
We're going to talk this hour about some of the amazing benefits that Donald Trump's top campaign donor, Elon Musk, is getting for himself and his companies now that Trump has let him take over running the government. There's things like, you know, the inherently worthless Trump meme coin on which he's made tens of millions of dollars already.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump fills administration with 'big team of losers' that voters have already rejected
I'm not going to give it up for f***ing nothing. It's f***ing golden. Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich tried to sell Barack Obama's vacated Senate seat. He tried to use that Senate seat appointment essentially to extort things from all sorts of people, all sorts of ways he thought he should get paid. for making that eventual appointment.
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Trump fills administration with 'big team of losers' that voters have already rejected
thanks to the suckers who are willing to pay for it, right? There's all that. There's the bad outcomes. There's the self-dealing and corruption. So those are the first two categories. But the thing that we're gonna focus on tonight, and that I think, in a good sense, I think a lot of the country is starting to focus on right now, is a different category. It's not just a bad outcome.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fresh from scandal over group chat attack plans, Hegseth's conduct opens him to ridicule
Really happy to have you here. Happy Monday. Something is happening right now, right this second in Washington, in the Senate. And this is a bit of a surprise. At 7 p.m. Eastern tonight, Democratic Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey started talking on the floor of the Senate. And I think to the surprise of all his colleagues, he soon made clear that he is not intending to stop talking tonight.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fresh from scandal over group chat attack plans, Hegseth's conduct opens him to ridicule
Pete Hegseth also, according to The Wall Street Journal, quote, brought his wife, a former Fox News producer, to two meetings with foreign military counterparts where sensitive information was discussed.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fresh from scandal over group chat attack plans, Hegseth's conduct opens him to ridicule
The meetings included the Ukraine Defense Contact Group at NATO, a closed-door meeting of that group, more than 50 countries represented there, and also a very sensitive meeting with the British defense secretary. Pete Hegseth has been bringing his wife to these meetings. Does she have a security clearance?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fresh from scandal over group chat attack plans, Hegseth's conduct opens him to ridicule
This is the same wife, you may recall, who Mr. Hegseth brought with him to his meetings with U.S. senators ahead of his confirmation process for this job. That, of course, made it socially awkward for those senators to ask him at those meetings about the rape allegations that he had faced in California and his alleged serial infidelity and problems with drinking on the job.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fresh from scandal over group chat attack plans, Hegseth's conduct opens him to ridicule
He has denied the rape allegations in California. And, of course, he was never charged in conjunction with those allegations.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fresh from scandal over group chat attack plans, Hegseth's conduct opens him to ridicule
That said, the Associated Press is also now reporting on the strange circumstance that has arisen at the Pentagon in Mr. Hegseth's short time there, in which not only is he bringing his wife to sensitive meetings with foreign military leaders, but he's also somehow got himself into a situation where his baby brother, his younger brother, Phil,
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fresh from scandal over group chat attack plans, Hegseth's conduct opens him to ridicule
has also ended up on the plane to Guantanamo with Pete Hegseth and also on the plane last week to Hawaii. What is his little brother doing there? Good question. Quote, based on Phil Hegseth's publicly available resume, his past experience includes founding his own podcast production company. OK, so naturally, it makes sense that he's now paid by the U.S.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fresh from scandal over group chat attack plans, Hegseth's conduct opens him to ridicule
taxpayers to go everywhere with his brother, the defense secretary, who has assured us that he definitely won't drink on the job anymore and who apparently thinks it's OK to bring his wife to NATO meetings. This follows Mr. Hegseth also giving a naval officer's commission to his personal lawyer.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fresh from scandal over group chat attack plans, Hegseth's conduct opens him to ridicule
and telling him that now he, Pete Hegseth's personal lawyer, will now be in charge of reforming all lawyering in the U.S. military. He's just named him an officer. This, of course, follows Pete Hegseth's fantastically expensive and honestly strange decisions to send not one but two U.S. Navy destroyers to hover around the U.S. border doing nothing. also to use U.S.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fresh from scandal over group chat attack plans, Hegseth's conduct opens him to ridicule
military planes to fly handfuls of people around the world in the most expensive possible version of how to do a deportation flight. The New York Times reporting tonight that Hegseth's failed gambit to stand up a U.S.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fresh from scandal over group chat attack plans, Hegseth's conduct opens him to ridicule
military role at Guantanamo, specifically to make it look like Guantanamo has something to do with Trump's deportations, that gambit has thus far cost taxpayers about $40 million in its first month. Now, this whole Guantanamo thing is a plan that has essentially been scrapped now, but only after Pete Hegseth moved nearly 1,000 U.S.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fresh from scandal over group chat attack plans, Hegseth's conduct opens him to ridicule
troops there and then back and had them sent up a tent city and then kind of dismantled it. Because these guys, don't forget, government efficiency. Can't allow old people to call the Social Security office anymore. But, hey. We got to save money. Pete Hegseth needs to fuel up the C-17s to fly like five guys around so they can make TikTok videos about how tough they are. See my tattoos?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fresh from scandal over group chat attack plans, Hegseth's conduct opens him to ridicule
Tomorrow, Pete Hegseth, in his infinite wisdom, has decided to visit the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. We don't know if he'll bring his little brother or his wife, but we'll see. Per his orders... The U.S. Naval Academy is apparently scrambling to get books out of the library before he gets there. Books like a biography of Jackie Robinson.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fresh from scandal over group chat attack plans, Hegseth's conduct opens him to ridicule
That's got to be out of there, I guess, before Pete Hegseth gets to the Naval Academy because it's so offensive. Because, you know, he's really focused on lethality. Where's my brother? Can my wife sit behind me at the meeting with the defense secretary from the other country? So there's a lot going on tonight. The financial markets have just completed their worst quarter in years.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fresh from scandal over group chat attack plans, Hegseth's conduct opens him to ridicule
Again, this does not appear to be a normal speech in the United States Senate ongoing right now in Washington. Senator Cory Booker has taken over the Senate floor tonight and is saying that he does not intend to relinquish the floor. He intends to, as he said, it disrupt the normal business of the United States Senate. He says, quote, For as long as I am physically able.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fresh from scandal over group chat attack plans, Hegseth's conduct opens him to ridicule
Born almost exclusively out of the expectation that Donald Trump is going to announce yet more economically disastrous tariffs this week on Wednesday. The attacks on higher education continue. Now Harvard University has moved into Trump's crosshairs. as the universities have not yet figured out how to band together to resist these attacks from the administration.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fresh from scandal over group chat attack plans, Hegseth's conduct opens him to ridicule
And so they're still picking them off one by one. That said, law firms have started to figure that out as well. Law firms have now started to figure out in a big way that they ought to stick together rather than Trump allowing them to pick off law firms and lawyers one by one. And a big turnaround from the way things were going with big law firms just last week. We're now seeing law firms
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fresh from scandal over group chat attack plans, Hegseth's conduct opens him to ridicule
stand up and say they are banding together to stop Trump from his attacks on the legal profession. We're going to be talking about that in days ahead here this week on the show.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fresh from scandal over group chat attack plans, Hegseth's conduct opens him to ridicule
I think that is something that's likely to be hugely consequential, not only for the overall fight for democracy, but for how we are seeing the Trump administration try to maneuver in the legal landscape they have created for themselves over this past 71 days. So like I said, there's a lot going on. But right now, tonight, we are watching Senator Cory Booker holding the floor.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fresh from scandal over group chat attack plans, Hegseth's conduct opens him to ridicule
for what looks like it might be an all night filibuster against Donald Trump and the actions of his administration thus far. We've got eyes on that tonight as that continues to unfold live. We've got eyes on the big Wisconsin Supreme Court election and the two big Florida congressional elections tomorrow. We've got a live update on those coming up.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fresh from scandal over group chat attack plans, Hegseth's conduct opens him to ridicule
Plus, we've got Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal joining us live. We've got so much to get to tonight. Busy night. Stay with us.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fresh from scandal over group chat attack plans, Hegseth's conduct opens him to ridicule
In Washington state this weekend, Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal did turn up at an anti-Elon Musk, anti-Trump Tesla takedown rally in her district in Seattle. There were hundreds of these all over the country this weekend.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fresh from scandal over group chat attack plans, Hegseth's conduct opens him to ridicule
In the midst of this rising tide of Americans who are angry and fearful about what's happening in Trump's second term in office, Americans increasingly willing to stand up and do something about it, Congresswoman Jayapal has also started hosting events that are designed to teach the strategy and tactics of nonviolent resistance and protest. These movements have sort of taken off on their own.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fresh from scandal over group chat attack plans, Hegseth's conduct opens him to ridicule
She's getting specific for how to do training, practical training on how these things work, how they stay nonviolent, and how they can be most strategically effective. She's calling them resistance labs. The first one was a week and a half ago. Congressman Jayapal told a local radio station, quote, we thought we'd have a couple hundred people. We had 850 people sign up.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fresh from scandal over group chat attack plans, Hegseth's conduct opens him to ridicule
We had to stop people from registering because we didn't know if we had room to In the end, a crowd of about 500 people packed the building for that first in-person training. They ended up having to turn people away because they couldn't fit them in.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fresh from scandal over group chat attack plans, Hegseth's conduct opens him to ridicule
This weekend, Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal decided she would hold a follow-up, a second so-called resistance lab. The congresswoman says more than 1,500 people took part in the follow-up event this weekend, not just people who are constituents, not just people from Washington state. She says it was 1,500 people in 31 different states.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fresh from scandal over group chat attack plans, Hegseth's conduct opens him to ridicule
and he is a fit and able man, so I don't know how long that means he's going to be there. The last thing that Senator Booker was involved in that was anything like this was nearly a decade ago, when Senator Chris Murphy, you may remember this, held the floor for 15 hours. This was in protest of gun violence. It was right after the Pulse nightclub massacre in 2016. Senator Cory Booker actually...
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fresh from scandal over group chat attack plans, Hegseth's conduct opens him to ridicule
Joining us now is Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, Democrat from the great state of Washington. Congresswoman, it's really nice to see you. Thanks very much for being here. Thank you for having me, Rachel. Help me understand this idea of the resistance lab and what you're talking about in practical terms at these events.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fresh from scandal over group chat attack plans, Hegseth's conduct opens him to ridicule
I feel like this is a really important categorical shift that you're talking about. I feel like over these last 71 days and into the transition, a lot of what we've seen, a lot of the organizing that we've seen has essentially been consciousness raising about how bad it is, about what is at stake, about how people are being hurt, about what is dangerous for
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fresh from scandal over group chat attack plans, Hegseth's conduct opens him to ridicule
hurtful, potentially irreversible about what's happening. It's all been sounding the alarm. What you are talking about here and what these trainings are about, sort of assume that people get that, but now need to talk about in practical terms, well, what's the most effective way to respond to that? It's not necessarily that people need to know the latest bad thing that Trump is doing.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fresh from scandal over group chat attack plans, Hegseth's conduct opens him to ridicule
People have now heard enough and they understand enough about what the risk is here that it's time to get practical about what to do in response. I want to ask, given that sort of curriculum that you're describing, how replicable is it? Is this something that has to happen in person? Is this something that can happen in large format settings?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fresh from scandal over group chat attack plans, Hegseth's conduct opens him to ridicule
Is this something that should only happen in small groups? What's the what's the what's the means of transmitting this curriculum and its lessons?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fresh from scandal over group chat attack plans, Hegseth's conduct opens him to ridicule
supported him for those 15 hours and participated in part of that filibuster. That 15-hour-plus filibuster succeeded nine years ago in forcing the Senate to allow some votes on some gun safety laws.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fresh from scandal over group chat attack plans, Hegseth's conduct opens him to ridicule
When's the next one? When's the date? Oh, you still got me? I've lost her. Yeah.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fresh from scandal over group chat attack plans, Hegseth's conduct opens him to ridicule
I'm right here. When's the date of the next one?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fresh from scandal over group chat attack plans, Hegseth's conduct opens him to ridicule
The following year, 2017, Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley held the floor for more than 15 hours protesting Republicans effectively stealing a seat on the United States Supreme Court when they would not allow
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fresh from scandal over group chat attack plans, Hegseth's conduct opens him to ridicule
Congresswoman Firmilla Jayapal, thank you for your time. We'll be on this. We're going to cover the next one when it happens. Appreciate it. Thank you. All right.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fresh from scandal over group chat attack plans, Hegseth's conduct opens him to ridicule
Stay with us. Tomorrow, the congressional seats that were vacated by Florida Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz and Mike Waltz will have their new occupants decided at the ballot box in special elections. Boy, those guys turned out to be great choices for Trump, right? Those are the kinds of safe red seats that Republicans really shouldn't even have to campaign for.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fresh from scandal over group chat attack plans, Hegseth's conduct opens him to ridicule
Gaetz won that seat in November by 32 points. Mike Waltz won that seat in November by 33 points. These seats... shouldn't be competitive on paper. But despite that, Democrats are making a run for it in both of those districts, making Republicans fight for those seats, which itself is fascinating.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fresh from scandal over group chat attack plans, Hegseth's conduct opens him to ridicule
So we'll be watching what happens in those Florida congressional elections tomorrow with great interest. But the legitimate toss-up race tomorrow is, of course, happening in Wisconsin, in the swing state that was closer than any other state in the country in last year's presidential election. Tomorrow is a race for a seat on Wisconsin's Supreme Court.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fresh from scandal over group chat attack plans, Hegseth's conduct opens him to ridicule
It will dictate control of the highest court and arguably the nation's most competitive battleground that'll substantively affect everything from abortion rights to gerrymandering to voting rights, everything. could potentially have a huge impact on, for example, the next presidential election. This is also the first statewide race we have had since Donald Trump came back into office.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fresh from scandal over group chat attack plans, Hegseth's conduct opens him to ridicule
It has been the most expensive judicial race in history already. And the outcome is anybody's guess. Joining us now is Ben Wickler, chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin. Ben, I know you have not slept in more than a month, roughly. Tell us how you're feeling about this race heading into tomorrow.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fresh from scandal over group chat attack plans, Hegseth's conduct opens him to ridicule
confirmation proceedings to go ahead for President Obama's nominee, Merrick Garland, and they instead essentially held that seat open until Donald Trump could put a Republican nominee on the bench instead. In terms of the record here, the longest filibuster in American history was 1957.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fresh from scandal over group chat attack plans, Hegseth's conduct opens him to ridicule
When I saw the news at the end of last week that the president's top campaign donor, Mr. Musk, was planning on coming to Wisconsin to personally campaign for Mr. Schimel in this race, I thought, wow, that's got to be good news for the Democrats.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fresh from scandal over group chat attack plans, Hegseth's conduct opens him to ridicule
I thought, that's got to be—to bring the guy who has poured more money into this than is imaginable in a judicial race, to bring in somebody who's got a double-digit underwater approval rating in this country, who a lot of people in this country feel like is taking over the U.S. government in absolutely the worst possibly imaginable terms.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fresh from scandal over group chat attack plans, Hegseth's conduct opens him to ridicule
I imagine that has to actually kind of energize the other side in Wisconsin. That said, fans of Elon Musk and Donald Trump are probably excited to see him campaign this weekend as well. How do you think that all played out?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fresh from scandal over group chat attack plans, Hegseth's conduct opens him to ridicule
Radical segregationist Strom Thurmond held the Senate floor for 24 hours and 18 minutes, all to block the passage of a civil rights bill. I do not know if Senator Cory Booker intends to try to go that long. I don't know if it's humanly possible to do that without sitting down.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fresh from scandal over group chat attack plans, Hegseth's conduct opens him to ridicule
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fresh from scandal over group chat attack plans, Hegseth's conduct opens him to ridicule
Without taking a bathroom break, I think Senator Thurmond did take a bathroom break, but senators now would not be allowed to do that. That said, 24 hours is almost humanly impossible. Senator Cory Booker started tonight at 7 p.m. Eastern time. He said, I rise tonight with the intention of disrupting the normal business of the United States Senate for as long as I am physically able.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fresh from scandal over group chat attack plans, Hegseth's conduct opens him to ridicule
I do not know how long Senator Cory Booker is going to be out there, but it looks like he's intending to be there for the long haul. So we will have eyes on that all night. We've got Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, former chair of the Progressive Caucus, who's going to be joining us in just a moment. We'll be checking in on what's going on with Senator Booker over the course of the night.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fresh from scandal over group chat attack plans, Hegseth's conduct opens him to ridicule
We'll check in on what's going on with the reaction to what he's doing there. Eyes on that over the course of the night tonight. Of course, it is only U.S. senators who can hold the floor of the U.S. Senate. But in the past few days, we've seen thousands of Americans hold down a little patch of sidewalk somewhere near their local Tesla dealership.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fresh from scandal over group chat attack plans, Hegseth's conduct opens him to ridicule
Literally thousands of Americans this weekend put the phone down, got offline, put on their sturdy shoes and went out to a Tesla dealership somewhere near them. There were hundreds of protests this weekend at Tesla showrooms and dealerships, all against the billionaire owner of Tesla, who, of course, purchased himself a U.S.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fresh from scandal over group chat attack plans, Hegseth's conduct opens him to ridicule
presidential election this fall and who has since busied himself with the apparently exhilarating task of destroying the U.S. government. These protests this weekend in Columbus, Ohio, in New York City, I've been showing you, but they really were everywhere. I mean, look at these. These were protests against President Trump's top campaign donor in Detroit, Michigan and Washington, D.C.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fresh from scandal over group chat attack plans, Hegseth's conduct opens him to ridicule
and Seattle and New Orleans and Brooklyn, New York. There were protests against Trump. Elon Musk against the man who who bought Donald Trump the presidency in Savannah, Georgia and Mesa, Arizona and Jacksonville, Florida and El Paso, Texas, Buffalo, New York, Berkeley, California. This was some of the signs in Claremont, Florida, just west of Orlando. Unplug unelected Elon quit buying elections.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fresh from scandal over group chat attack plans, Hegseth's conduct opens him to ridicule
This was a good one. Call your representatives repeatedly. This one, sorry to dorks everywhere, I'm one of you, but fascist dork kind of works as a sign. Also this one, perfume smells good, Musk stinks. Forgive me on this one. I don't mean for this to be an ad hominem attack on the way Mr. Musk smells. I have no idea how he smells.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fresh from scandal over group chat attack plans, Hegseth's conduct opens him to ridicule
I just wanted to point out, though, that from places as disparate as Florida and also Mount Kisco, New York, the theme of Elon Musk being a stinker is kind of turned out to be a thing at these protests. Musk is the scent of corruption. This was Akron, Ohio, this weekend. We love the USA, not oligarchy. Also, DOGE stands for D-O-G-E, deranged oligarchs get everything. This was Pasadena, California.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fresh from scandal over group chat attack plans, Hegseth's conduct opens him to ridicule
Don't test drive fascism. This was Cathedral City, California. Dogs hate DOGE. They call Cathedral City Cat City, so you know you were going to see some annoyed dogs at this protest. This was Rockville, Maryland. America is trapped in a burning Tesla. And also this sign sort of made to look like a highway sign. Trump and Musk look out for billionaires. Who's looking out for you?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fresh from scandal over group chat attack plans, Hegseth's conduct opens him to ridicule
San Jose, California. Your Tesla paid for fascism. San Francisco, handmade sign. I sold my Tesla. Also, this one goes from zero to 1939 in three seconds. Tesla, the swastika. In Vallejo, California, DOGE, D-O-G-E, equals Department of Greed and Evil. Here's one from Texas. The left side of your screen here, this is a sign we saw a week or so ago at an anti-Elon Musk protest in Austin, Texas.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fresh from scandal over group chat attack plans, Hegseth's conduct opens him to ridicule
You might remember this one. Porsche, fast. Ferrari, faster. Tesla, fascist. But now look, this is on the right side of your screen, also Austin, Texas. This past weekend, different person update to the sign. NASCAR equals fast. Formula One equals faster. Trump and Musk equal fascist. The protest at the Manhattan Tesla dealership in New York. Look at this.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fresh from scandal over group chat attack plans, Hegseth's conduct opens him to ridicule
particularly big and particularly dramatic, just brought this corner of New York City to a stop. People also brought tombstones and laid down in front of the dealership in a die-in against what Trump and Musk are doing to the American government and to the country. But these protests really were everywhere, not not just in big cities and not just big ones.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fresh from scandal over group chat attack plans, Hegseth's conduct opens him to ridicule
I mean, look at these protests against Musk and Trump in Chesterfield, Missouri, in Kalamazoo, Michigan, north of Virginia, Rockville, Maryland. Like I mentioned before, Tigard, Oregon, West Covina, California. Even on top of the many, many, many protests. against Trump's top campaign donor that we saw at Tesla dealerships this weekend, and it does seem like there were hundreds of them.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fresh from scandal over group chat attack plans, Hegseth's conduct opens him to ridicule
There were still yet more protests against Trump and Musk, like this big one in Kansas City, Missouri, on Saturday. People in Kansas City marched about a mile from downtown Kansas City to Union Station. Then they masked at the lawn of the National World War I Museum and Memorial. The same day in Salt Lake City, Utah, people stood up for the trans community.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fresh from scandal over group chat attack plans, Hegseth's conduct opens him to ridicule
at the Utah State Capitol in Salt Lake City on Saturday. On Sunday, there was a really big, look at this, really big show of strength and support for immigrants and against Trump. This was Dallas, Texas. Marchers started at the Cathedral of Our Lady of Guadalupe, and they marched to Dallas City Hall. There were angry and fired up town halls this weekend.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fresh from scandal over group chat attack plans, Hegseth's conduct opens him to ridicule
These were town halls done by Republican Congresswoman Victoria Sparks. She held two town halls in her district on Friday night and then again on Saturday during the day. In both cases, she had absolutely full houses in Indiana, hundreds of people inside and even hundreds of people who couldn't get in, who protested outside.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fresh from scandal over group chat attack plans, Hegseth's conduct opens him to ridicule
In all cases, Victoria Sparks's constituents just gave her nothing but the hardest of hard times for her professed support for Donald Trump and Elon Musk. That said, you know, she's definitely hearing what people are saying to her.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fresh from scandal over group chat attack plans, Hegseth's conduct opens him to ridicule
Congresswoman Sparks told her constituents at these events this weekend that she understood they were, quote, frustrated, quote, very frustrated with Elon Musk in particular. She admitted that the Signal group text national security debacle, in her words, is, quote, actually very bad. Again, a Republican congressman having to admit that as her constituents would not let up on her about it.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fresh from scandal over group chat attack plans, Hegseth's conduct opens him to ridicule
The following day, Sunday, also in Indiana, of all places, yet more upset constituents flooded an empty seat town hall, which they held for their Republican member of Congress, Jim Baird. Unlike Victoria Sparks, Jim Baird will not actually agree to meet with his constituents who are equally mad at him.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fresh from scandal over group chat attack plans, Hegseth's conduct opens him to ridicule
So his constituents held an overstuffed town hall in Lafayette, Indiana, this weekend without Congressman Baird in attendance. So Americans are doing stuff and in large numbers and in disparate places.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fresh from scandal over group chat attack plans, Hegseth's conduct opens him to ridicule
And the pushback that you see, not just in blue states, but in red states and not just in blue districts, but in red districts, all of these protests you are seeing, the town halls you are seeing, all the yowling that the American people are doing against Trump and Musk and what they're doing. You never know exactly what effect that's going to have, that's going to have and where.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fresh from scandal over group chat attack plans, Hegseth's conduct opens him to ridicule
You can see this pushback creating pressure against them, creating self-consciousness among the Republicans who have to try to defend what they're doing and see how their constituents feel about it. But you never know exactly where it's going to pay off. That said... You know, the calendar says it's spring. And if you are looking for green shoots, they really are everywhere.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fresh from scandal over group chat attack plans, Hegseth's conduct opens him to ridicule
Consider this inadvertently hilarious press release from the Trump administration. This was flagged by journalist Judd Legum at Popular Information, who has been all over what the Trump administration has been doing to Social Security in particular.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fresh from scandal over group chat attack plans, Hegseth's conduct opens him to ridicule
You know how we here have been covering for a few weeks now how Trump has published a list of dozens of Social Security field offices that he was going to close all around the country. Once that list was published, You know, as you might expect, people just revolted over his plans to do that. Well, now look at this.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fresh from scandal over group chat attack plans, Hegseth's conduct opens him to ridicule
Now the Trump administration says they are, quote, correcting the record about Social Security office closings, insisting that you might have received some inaccurate information about those Social Security office closures. They're insisting now that they never had plans to close those offices at all. yeah, you crazy Americans, you crazy old people, right?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fresh from scandal over group chat attack plans, Hegseth's conduct opens him to ridicule
Where did you hear that we were going to be closing social security offices? We definitely never published this very detailed list of dozens of social security offices that we were going to close. And then, oh, when the blowback and the pushback against us doing that knocked us on our butts, we definitely just didn't decide to pretend that it wasn't us and that we'd never said that.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fresh from scandal over group chat attack plans, Hegseth's conduct opens him to ridicule
Their efforts to dismantle the Social Security Agency are as dangerous as anything else they are doing in this country, especially because the people who will be most negatively affected by their dismantling and undermining of the Social Security Agency are the people who most...
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fresh from scandal over group chat attack plans, Hegseth's conduct opens him to ridicule
who most need the support that they get from Social Security and who have the fewest resources to try to make up for it if these guys screw it up. It's profoundly dangerous what they are doing. And that's why you're seeing not only old people and disabled people who get Social Security revolting, you're seeing every American with a drop of empathy in their soul. revolting over that.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fresh from scandal over group chat attack plans, Hegseth's conduct opens him to ridicule
Because to do something that irresponsible and cruel to a population to whom we owe so much, and that is by definition in need of what that agency provides them, and potentially frail or unable to advocate for themselves when they are hurt by what this administration is doing, yeah, there's going to be pushback with you guys messing with Social Security.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fresh from scandal over group chat attack plans, Hegseth's conduct opens him to ridicule
Now that there has been pushback that they can't handle, they're just pretending that they weren't attacking Social Security at all. Nice try. The Signal group texting about war plants, that scandal is also continuing to blow up, even though they keep trying to pretend either it didn't happen or it's over now.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fresh from scandal over group chat attack plans, Hegseth's conduct opens him to ridicule
The Wall Street Journal reporting this weekend that this apparently was not the first time that Trump National Security Advisor Michael Waltz had convened a Trump, a group of Trump cabinet officials in a group chat on this commercial texting app. Quoting from The Wall Street Journal this weekend, quote, two U.S.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fresh from scandal over group chat attack plans, Hegseth's conduct opens him to ridicule
officials also said that Waltz had created and hosted multiple other sensitive national security conversations on Signal with cabinet members, including separate threads on brokering peace between Russia and Ukraine, as well as other military operations. Sources, quote, declined to address if any classified information was posted in those chats. So, yeah, this thing isn't going away.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Fresh from scandal over group chat attack plans, Hegseth's conduct opens him to ridicule
Wait till we find out what all the other ones were. And then there's Pete Hegseth, the Fox News weekend host who Donald Trump appointed to lead the Defense Department. In recent days, we have learned that Pete Hegseth not only posted a detailed timeline of a forthcoming military strike to that group chat on Signal, which inadvertently included a reporter.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
Have you ever been at the beach and seen a Coast Guard helicopter? doing Coast Guard helicopter things at the beach or at the seaside. My dad, God bless him, he's like a savant when it comes to identifying planes and helicopters. In every other way, my dad seems like a normal man.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
Because it's not only got the normal helicopter rotor on top, it's also got this distinctive vertical tail rotor as well, that circular tail rotor. It's unmistakable. It's a really big aircraft. And ones like this, they really stand out. But did you know, if you need to, you can stuff one of those huge orange Coast Guard helicopters inside another aircraft.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
But it nevertheless did brush Trump back. Supreme Court today allowed to stand that court ruling we covered here last week in which Trump was ordered to restart foreign aid funding that was approved by law that he had nevertheless illegally stopped. That federal judge had ordered Trump to restart that funding. Trump had not done it despite the judge's order.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
Then last week on Wednesday, that judge issued a motion to enforce, to compel the government to actually follow his order and restart that funding. And that deadline for them to restart that funding was Thursday at midnight. Thursday, just before midnight, Trump rushed to the Supreme Court to try to get them to rescue him from that deadline. And they did say they would consider it.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
They considered it Friday midday. And then they sat on it Friday night, Saturday, Saturday night, Sunday, Sunday night, Monday, Monday night, Tuesday, Tuesday night. Who knows? Maybe they were waiting till Trump did his State of the Union thing last night. But then this morning after the State of the Union, they slid this thing under the door.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
An unsigned, as I say, mealy mouthed, mild mannered little court order that nevertheless does require Donald Trump to start that funding. He cannot blow that judge off. The ruling was five to four. Chief Justice John Roberts and Trump appointed Justice Amy Coney Barrett siding with Elena Kagan, Katonji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor in telling Trump no.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
In terms of what happens next, both sides in that case, the Trump administration and the plaintiffs, they're going to have to file a joint status report by 11 a.m. tomorrow in the courtroom of the judge who told the Trump administration they need to restart that funding. They need to file a joint status report tomorrow at 11 a.m. saying what they're going to do.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
But the Supreme Court has weighed in on this now, and they are not, as yet, on this, letting Trump just blatantly break the law. So we'll see what happens tomorrow at 11. But, you know, no rush, right? No rush in restarting this funding. I mean, among other things, the Supreme Court's been sitting on it for nearly a week. And that funding is still stopped.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
I mean, in the meantime, today, this morning, people were arrested on Capitol Hill outside a meeting between a Trump State Department official and members of Congress.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
These people got arrested protesting the fact that HIV treatment still isn't restarted, even though the Trump administration keeps saying that that's one of the things that they agree shouldn't be cut off, and they agree that should get a waiver, and they agree that funding should be flowing. It's not flowing. It's not happening.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
And so these people today were on Capitol Hill, engaged in civil disobedience, getting arrested to try to get that funding pried loose to keep people alive. Pushback comes in all sorts of ways.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
Lawsuits, court orders, individual officials refusing to go quietly and fighting personally as high as they possibly can to keep standing the systems and protections inside our government that are supposed to protect us and protect the American government from arbitrary and corrupt lawless action. There is friction and resistance inside the government and in the U.S.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
military when people are being asked to do things that are expensive and pointless and wasteful and embarrassing and ultimately indefensible, even when they happen on Fox News at 7 o'clock. There is journalism and therefore public attention to the indefensible costs and consequences of some of their most hurtful and ill-advised decisions.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
The local news coverage, for example, of the cost to American families and especially to American small businesses of Trump's this this this tariff stunt that he's pulling. The local news coverage of this has just been devastating. And it is unavoidable. It is in red states and blue states all across this country, in cities and small towns and anywhere there is a news outlet.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
And so, yes, today they've started to say, OK, maybe not on some of these tariffs. We will have more on that coming up tonight. But it's also very brave people, very relentless and brave people protesting, engaging in civil disobedience. People are willing to be arrested if necessary. It's also people peacefully protesting in the streets. Look, this was Boise, Idaho yesterday.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
You can take that helicopter and put it inside another aircraft. It's like a turducken. Look, this is one of those big Coast Guard search and rescue helicopters being put inside another aircraft, being put inside a Coast Guard C-130. Just to give you some idea of how big a Coast Guard C-130 is. That's how huge that plane is. You could put a whole helicopter inside it. One of the big ones.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
This is at the capital of one of the most conservative states in the country. This is Boise, Idaho. People protesting against Trump in the lead up to his State of the Union address last night. This was Phoenix, Arizona yesterday. Another big crowd protesting at their state capitol ahead of Trump's speech last night. Look at the numbers that turned out yesterday in Utah, in Salt Lake City, Utah.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
Look at this. Utah, bright red Utah. Look at the people who turned out in little Corning, New York, and in Bakersfield, California, and in West Hartford, Connecticut, and outside the Office of Personnel Management in Washington, D.C. Pushback takes all forms. And it has turned them back or at least slowed them down on almost everything they have tried to do already.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
And it's easy to get overwhelmed with what they're trying to do. But look also at what they have been stopped from doing, what they have been slowed down from doing, what they've been embarrassed over and what they've had to quietly claw back, hoping no one notices. I mean, they're clearly bent on an authoritarian takeover and destruction of the U.S. government, right?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
There's no illusions now as to what they're trying to do. They know they need to go fast if they are going to go far. Today, the headlines showed the increasing scope of their appetite, right, to try to destroy more and do it more thoroughly. They want to fire 80,000 people from the VA, and they'll tell you they love veterans while they're doing it.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
firing of 80,000 people from the VA, among other things, will be the firing of tens of thousands of veterans themselves who hold those jobs. But they're going to try it, see how much of that they can get away with. They said today they want to fire 40,000 plus people from the IRS.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
Because what better way to grind a country into dust than to eliminate the means by which it collects funds so it can continue to operate? If last night's State of the Union and the latest pronouncements from the president's top campaign donor are anything to go by, it would seem that they're about to come next for Social Security. So the VA, the IRS, Social Security.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
And then tonight there's this. Reopening the immigration prison where they locked up awful little kids. Quote, the Trump administration is reopening a sprawling detention center in South Texas for migrant families facing deportation, resuming the practice of detaining children. Four years after the Biden administration ended it.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
Everywhere they go, everything they have tried to do, they are running up against opposition and annoyance. They are running up against their own stupidity. They are running up against their own ignorance. They are running up against the law. They are running up against journalists figuring out what they are doing. They are running up against the revelation that the American people really
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
dislike what they are doing and people who and people are willing to let that be known. They're running up against constituents, even Republican constituents, people who live in bright red districts and states telling their members of Congress and their senators how much they dislike what Trump is doing. They're running up against people protesting against it.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
The pushback all over this country has thrown down stop strips in the road to flatten their tires and at least slow them down and sometimes to stop them. And it has happened everywhere. And none of it has been easy, given the scale of what they are trying to do to this country. But the feedback loop here is very clear six weeks in. It is working. And redoubled efforts will mean redoubled results.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
We've got a lot more to come on that tonight. Plus one big warning for something to watch for that is coming. It's all ahead. Stay with us.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
C-130s can carry whole helicopters. C-130s are so big, they can carry six-wheeled armored U.S. military vehicles. C-130s can carry more than 21 tons of cargo and airdrop it wherever you need, anywhere in the world. C-130s are just massive. For U.S. military transport, they have no trouble hauling more than 90 fully equipped U.S. troops plus all their gear anywhere in the world.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
That was just tonight, just within the past hour or so. The attorney general from Arizona, Chris Mays, speaking in a high school gym in Phoenix tonight. She was speaking at what's being billed as the first of a series of community impact town halls. that are being held by Chris Mays and by Democratic state attorneys general from other states.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
They're doing to be these town halls all over the country on the impact of the mass firings in the federal government and Trump's other attempts to dismantle the U.S. government. Again, Democratic state attorneys general holding these town halls. The first one tonight in Phoenix. It's ongoing right now.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
Also tonight, the leader of the Democrats in the House, Hakeem Jeffries, is holding what they're calling a national update and call to action after Trump's speech to Congress last night. That's happening right now as we speak online. Hakeem Jeffries and a number of other Democrats, including the newly elected chair of the Democratic Party. On Planet Republican, things are a little different.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
Yesterday, Republican members of Congress were told explicitly by their leadership that they should stop having town halls with their constituents. Stop meeting with the people who voted for you. This isn't a good time. Democrats are getting no such advice, quite the opposite. And Democrats have been holding huge town halls. For example, look at this. This is Oregon this weekend.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
More than a thousand people showed up for a town hall in Gresham, Oregon, hosted by Congresswoman Maxine Dexter, a Democrat. There were so many people who turned up for her town hall. They had to pull out extra bleachers. There were people sitting on the gym floor because they still couldn't get into the bleachers. A lot of people were there just to cheer her on.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
A lot of people were there to also ask her to do more to oppose the Trump administration. One voter at the event told Oregon Public Broadcasting, quote, I've been calling and messaging her office every day for the past month, asking her to take more drastic action than she is. I think we're running out of road right now.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
But that huge town hall for Congresswoman Dexter and her constituents, that was Saturday. Last night, Congresswoman Dexter was back across the country at President Trump's speech to Congress. She was among several Democrats who left the House chamber during President Trump's speech. And I will tell you, I screwed up and twice described Congresswoman Dexter as being from Maryland.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
It's because I had written in my handwritten notes to self, Congresswoman Dexter, M.D., to remind myself that she's a doctor. And in the moment, because my brain is the size and texture of a teaspoon of split pea soup at this point in my career, I read MD as Marilyn, not she's a doctor from Oregon. Congresswoman Dexter on the left here walked out.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
of President Trump's speech last night, along with her fellow Oregon Congresswoman Andrea Salinas. Joining us now is Democratic Congresswoman Dr. Maxine Dexter from the great state of Oregon. Congresswoman Dexter, I am very sorry for saying you were from Maryland last night, and I did it twice. I apologize deeply.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
Well, I'd had you on the brain anyway, because I had looked at that footage from the huge town hall that you had in your district this weekend on Saturday. It's one of the biggest ones that I've seen anywhere in the country. Seeing that high school gym or middle school gym, that school gym fill up like that with your constituents. And seeing some of the tape from there, seeing the energy, it was...
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
To me, it was very moving. I just have to ask you what you made of that and whether that was what you expected.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
When your constituents are bringing that frustration and that sense of urgency and desperation to you, are people articulating what it is they want you to do? Or if there is some idea of scalable action or more effective action or more dramatic action that they think is within reach that they want to see you do?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
They're just they're just massive. They're like airplane hangers that are also airplanes. Last week, the Trump administration sent the U.S. secretary of defense and a Fox News host and a Fox News channel camera crew all the way to Guantanamo Bay in Cuba to be there for the arrival of a C-130.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
Or is it is it more an inchoate sense that something must be done, but I don't know what it is?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
You represent a district that voted for you, a blue district. Right next door is a red district. The part of Oregon that you're in is a patchwork in terms of its ideological makeup and the relative levels of passion among its citizens about various things.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
Ask if there's anything that's happening that might be surprising to you at all or sort of coming down in non predictable partisan ways as we're starting to see some of the impact of these big cuts to federal workers and big cuts to government programs. Is it coming down in a way that couldn't necessarily have been predicted in advance in terms of the impact in different types of districts?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
But you'll be talking to him and there's some tiny fly speck on the horizon that you can't even hear and you can barely see. And he'll whip around and say, oh, a DC-7. I think that was built in 1978. Yeah. be like, oh, I didn't realize that Satabria was still flying out of that airfield. I haven't seen that there in a few years. Like, dad, how do you know this stuff?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
Congresswoman Maxine Dexter of Oregon, thank you for joining us tonight. And stay in touch. Seeing that huge turnout in your district last night, you're saying it's the first in-person, single, solo town hall you've ever done is really interesting.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
As you continue holding these events and you see the way things are evolving in your district, we'd love to have you back and keep talking to you about how your constituents are feeling. Thank you.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
More news ahead. Stay with us. For a president on the way to give a State of the Union address, this was not a great headline for that day. Quote, Atlanta Fed shock sounds Trump session warning. The Federal Reserve Bank in Atlanta forecasting yesterday that the U.S. economy, American GDP is shrinking right now at an annualized rate of 2.8 percent, minus 2.8 percent.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
to be there for the arrival of one of these C-130 military aircraft, one of these huge cargo planes landing at Guantanamo with very important cargo on board. They landed one of these huge military aircraft there, this one that can hold more than 20 tons of gear. It can carry multiple armored vehicles. It can carry whole helicopters in its belly.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
Now, that is just one forecast. It's an early forecast. But, you know, Trump session is not a great headline for a President Trump on the day of his first big speech. But here's another one from today, the morning after his big speech. Quote, private employers added just 77,000 jobs in February, far below expectations. And again, this is just a forecast, in this case from private industry.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
We don't get official hiring numbers until the monthly official jobs report comes out the day after tomorrow. But 77,000 is less than half the new jobs that were created last month. And it's half of what Wall Street has been expecting. Very worrying economic news.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
And it comes on top of Wall Street posting its worst loss of the year this week on Monday when Trump announced that he was going through with his tariff plan on Canada and Mexico and China. Some of those losses in the markets were regained today after Trump had second thoughts and walked some of that back. But barely six weeks into this second Trump presidential term,
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
Economic indicators are blinking red in response to Trump's action as president. But, you know, they're called economic indicators for a reason. Measurements like these, measurements like the jobs report and GDP and economic growth, all these things, they're supposed to indicate what is going on in the economy.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
They're supposed to help the public and businesses and policymakers understand what is happening with the economy. What if they could just change those indicators, though? Turn the lights off so they didn't blink at all, red or otherwise. What if they could just change what these numbers mean and whether they indicate anything real about the economy?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
And I said at the top of the show I had a big warning for you. This is what it's about. Over the weekend on Fox News, Trump's newly appointed Commerce Secretary Howard Letnick floated the idea of changing the way we calculate GDP in this country. Letnick says he wants to take government spending out of the equation.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
Just just take that out and say that's not part of it, which would, of course, obscure the effects of everything Trump does in government, let alone his top campaign donor who's given free reign to do whatever he wants to the government. It also turns out Elon Musk, the president's top campaign donor, is into this idea.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
On Friday, he himself posted online that we should change the way we calculate America's economic growth, America's GDP. Never mind the pesky concerns of economists about interference in the federal data. We should just calculate it in a different way, a better way, a way that suits them better.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
In the category of watching what they do and not what they say, though, here's something that Commerce Secretary Howard Letnick has just done. Wall Street Journal was first to report that Secretary Letnick has now disbanded two advisory committees whose job it is to make sure that the economic data from the federal government are accurate.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
An expert who worked on one of those now disbanded committees tells the Wall Street Journal that their work, quote, goes to the essential transparency of these statistical agencies. When you remove that transparency, then that diminishes trust. Already just six weeks in, Trump has taken a number of actions that have potentially disastrous economic consequences in this country.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
They landed one of these huge planes there and out popped nine guys. A total of nine people that they flew to Guantanamo on an active duty U.S. military aircraft with massive cargo capacity. presumably because they wanted it to look like a big operation. After all, they had the 7 p.m. host from the Fox News channel there and the defense secretary there in person. So this thing had to look big.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
And in many ways, the country is already feeling it. If they are going to cook the books so that economic indicators like unemployment numbers and economic growth and whether or not we're in a recession or a depression just don't mean anything anymore because they've recalculated them with special Trump numbers, What does that mean for our ability to know the truth about what's going on?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
And what does it mean for us economically? I'll ask somebody who knows next.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
Donald Trump's commerce secretary asked on Fox News about worrisome new economic indicators. And his response is, don't worry, I control the statistics. I'm going to change those. Joining us now is Jared Bernstein, who is chair of the Council of Economic Advisors under President Joe Biden. Mr. Bernstein, it is nice to see you. Thank you for being here.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
Is it possible to change the basic statistics we have for the U.S. economy? And what would be the consequences if those data are no longer considered reliable?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
The Federal Economic Statistics Advisory Committee, the Bureau of Economic Analysis Advisory Committee. Those are impressively boring titles, Jared. But why would you want to get rid of those things? What is it that entities like that do that the Trump administration might want to do away with? Mr. Letnick has has gotten away with that, has done away with those committees as of today.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
Jared Bernstein, chair of the Council of Economic Advisors under President Joe Biden. Jared, if this is what it seems like it's going to be, I have a feeling we're going to be talking to you about this a lot in the next few days. So stand by, my friend. Thank you.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
We'll be right back. All right, that's going to do it for me for now. I will see you again tomorrow and every night this week at nine o'clock Eastern here on MSNBC.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
But I kid you not, there were only nine guys inside that whole huge plane. When you use a plane like that to fly nine people into a Fox News photo op, you know what that is? That's a really expensive photo op.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
And if you think that C-130 was a little big for that job, consider that the Trump administration, in its infinite wisdom, in its relentless search for efficiency, they not only have been using C-130s for flights like this, they have also been using C-17s, which are an order of magnitude bigger. In a C-17, you can't just fit one helicopter inside.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
You can fit whole fleets of helicopters inside them. You can roll eight Humvees into a C-17 all at once. You can put a 70-ton M1 Abrams tank in there and drop it anywhere you want. C-17s are just unimaginably enormous.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
And the Trump administration, again, I kid you not, has also been using C-17s, according to the Wall Street Journal, approximately 30 times to fly random little groups of immigrants to different places. For a flight, say, to India, they charged the taxpayers $3 million for a single flight on one of these military aircraft, just so they could do it using one of these huge planes.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
Cost for using one of these big military planes, at minimum, is like over $28,000 an hour. That's what they're doing. That's what they're using it for. Why? Why are they doing this? Why are they wasting all of this money and all of these military resources, active duty military resources?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
Quote, the administration has opted for military planes for these flights, quote, for reasons of optics, said one U.S. defense official. optics. Got to get the photo op right. Tell me more about all the waste, fraud, and abuse you're targeting by firing the people who contain Ebola outbreaks while you're using C-17s and C-130s to fly. You used a C-130 to fly nine guys to a Fox News photo op.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
You could have fit those guys in two Nissan Sentras with a seat left over. But no, they spent on that one flight nearly a quarter million taxpayer dollars for that one trip. So it would look very militaristic and cool and tough on the Fox News 7 p.m. show with Laura Ingram. Hey, that's your money that they spent on that.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
I've always been very impressed with my dad that he could do that and a little embarrassed that I can't. But when it comes to Coast Guard helicopters specifically, at least those I can usually say, hey, that's one from the Coast Guard. It's because they're usually painted in very bright, distinctive like orange and orange and white.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
The Wall Street Journal was first to report today that the Trump administration is finally now, quote, suspending costly deportation flights using U.S. military aircraft. Quote, the Trump administration has conducted roughly 30 migrant flights using C-17 aircraft and about a dozen on C-130s, according to flight tracking data.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
The military flights have taken longer routes and transported fewer migrants at higher cost to taxpayers than the government's typical deportation flights on civilian aircraft. Alongside that reporting from The Wall Street Journal today, NBC News is now reporting that the whole sending people to Guantanamo thing is off as well. Quote, President Donald Trump's plan to use the U.S.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba to detain 30,000 immigrants has been hitting major legal, logistical and financial hurdles ever since he surprised many in his own administration by announcing it. Now, as agencies spar over responsibility for operations there and over blame for what has gone wrong.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
There is a growing recognition within the administration that this was a political decision that is, quote, just not working. The Pentagon is also discussing bringing home some of the more than 1,000 U.S. troops who were surged to Guantanamo in the first days after Trump's announcement. You might remember that Trump announced that they were going to fill up Guantanamo with 30,000 bad guys.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
Remember he said it was going to be the worst of the worst? The largest number of people they sent was 178, all of whom were quickly shipped out to somewhere else. More than a quarter of the people they had there at the time when they had the highest numbers there, more than a quarter of the people they had sent there had zero criminal record and zero criminal charges pending against them.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
The worst of the worst. Got to put them there with Al Qaeda. And we're going to have 30,000 of them. And we're going to drop them off on five motorcycles. Really? But apparently that's done now. You know, it was never clearly legal for them to be using U.S. military resources for these flights or for what they were having the military try to do with these folks at Guantanamo.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
But they nevertheless announced it. They made a bunch of social media videos out of it and Fox News hits it. And now they can't get away with it for any longer. And so now they're just quietly no longer doing it and not saying anything about it. We are barely six weeks in and this already is quite the theme.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
They are trying all sorts of incredibly reckless, incredibly expensive, incredibly ill-advised things. And then those things fail because they can't work or because they can't handle the pushback against them. Or they face lawsuits and court orders because these things are obviously illegal or they're just too stupid to live.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
And so then they stop doing these things and they cave and they try to pretend they weren't doing them at all. We're only six weeks in and we're already seeing this for military flights for deportations and sending immigrants to Guantanamo for some reason. Right. Those things already appear to be over as of today. Also, this one today.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
Headline Trump agency pulls 443 sites off market in real estate reversal. Real estate reversal. What? This is from Bloomberg News. Quote, at 2 p.m. Tuesday, so yesterday. The GSA posted a list of 443 properties it was considering for sale, an inventory that ranged from a toll booth in El Paso to the FDA's research campus in Silver Spring, Maryland.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
But also, unless you're around a bunch of other military aircraft for some reason, they are usually bigger and way more serious looking than anything else that might be flying around, like than any news helicopter or tourist sightseeing helicopter or anything like that. They're really recognizable.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
In the next five hours, more than 100 of those 443 properties were removed from the catalog, including the agency headquarters of the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Justice, the Department of Labor, and the VA. By this morning, less than 24 hours later, the entire list had been removed.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
Quote, the about face capped a stunning 18 hours that shook federal agencies and threatened already wobbly commercial real estate markets. The sale of some of these properties could have created unique problems. The inventory of properties for disposal included, for example, one specialized satellite facility for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Maryland.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
Also, a 3.1 million square foot FDA research lab. Also, get this, get this, look at this. A Northern Virginia campus that doesn't appear in federal property records, but has long been associated with the Central Intelligence Agency. They tried to sell the CIA. The president had his top campaign donor try to sell the CIA.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
And the headquarters building of the Department of Justice and the headquarters of the VA and the specialist satellite facilities without which we cannot have, I don't know, weather forecasts. They tried that yesterday and then, oops, oh, pushback. Who could have expected? And so then today, less than 24 hours later, they took it all back. They took them all down.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
Trump tried to fire the chief of the Merit Systems Protection Board. A court ordered her reinstated. Today, that Merit Systems Protection Board ordered the reinstatement of more than 5,000 people who work for the USDA, for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. 5,000 people who were illegally mass fired by Trump. Those more than 5,000 people must now be reinstated for at least the next 45 days.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
That ruling comes after Trump tried to fire another person he's not allowed to fire, Hampton Dellinger, who heads up the federal office that oversees whistleblower protections and civil service protections. Trump tried to fire him, too. That is apparently illegal. Dellinger has fought it vociferously in the courts, including one trip already to the Supreme Court.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
And it looks like another trip to the Supreme Court is probably on the way. But in the meantime, while he has been reinstated, he told the Merit Systems Protection Board to weigh in on the mass firings at USDA, which appeared to be blatantly illegal. That board did weigh in on them. They had to fight their own firings along the way to get there. But They fought them.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
And now those more than 5,000 workers at USDA must be reinstated. A ruling by a federal judge in California on the illegality of mass firings carried out by Trump's Office of Personal Management. That ruling appears to have stopped Trump for now from going ahead with his plan to fire more than 5,000 people from the Department of Defense.
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Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
The most recognizable helicopter that you see for things like Coast Guard search and rescue and Coast Guard law enforcement missions is this one you see here, the CH-65 Dolphin. And that one, once I point this out, every time you see one, you'll know exactly what it is.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
Quote, the Pentagon's planned firing of 5,400 employees has been temporarily delayed after a federal court decision blocking such dismissals. Same thing at the National Science Foundation. The director of the National Science Foundation has ordered 84 of the 170 employees who were laid off from that agency last month to be reinstated immediately.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
The reversal comes in response to a federal judge's ruling that the Trump administration exceeded its authority when it outlined steps to fire an estimated 200,000 federal workers. Same vibe, different explanation or rather sort of lack of an explanation when it comes to people fired from the CDC. Quote, emails went out Tuesday to about 180 CDC employees who got termination notices last month.
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Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
A message was sent with the subject line, quote, read this email immediately. It said, quote, after further review and consideration, a February 15th termination notice has been rescinded. Employees were told they were cleared to return to work today, Wednesday. Quote, you should return to duty under your previous work schedule. We apologize for any disruption that this may have caused.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
Associated Press notes, quote, the CDC is just the latest federal agency trying to coax back workers soon after they were fired. Similar reversals have been made among employees responsible for medical device oversight, food safety, bird flu response, nuclear weapons and national parks. So military flights for deportations? No.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
Sending random immigrants to Guantanamo like they're Al Qaeda or something? No. Selling the CIA? No. And the Justice Department and the VA and every other federal building they can find in the phone book? No. Firing the guy who's in charge of whistleblowers? No. Firing the Merit Systems Protection Board? No. Firing 5,000 people at USDA? No.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump power grab tripped up by distinctly American resistance
The firings at the National Science Foundation and the CDC and the freaking Pentagon? No. No. Not all of them, at least. Not as many as can be stopped. And then there was today at the United States Supreme Court. An unsigned, mealy mouthed, mild mannered, seemingly deliberately obtuse and confusing little ruling from the United States Supreme Court that I mentioned it was unsigned.
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Donald Trump fired the man who likely saved his life; U.S. may never fully recover from Trump's cuts
So are you tired of all the winning yet? Are you enjoying all of the greatness? May I introduce you to Takilao? Takilao is three teeny tiny islands in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. That's our best approximation on our mapping software here at MSNBC HQ. Takilao, again, about three, it's three islands. It's in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. About 1,500 people live there.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Donald Trump fired the man who likely saved his life; U.S. may never fully recover from Trump's cuts
Turns out none of that worked. We probably should have seen the result coming when we saw the big, feisty, very fired up protests in Green Bay, Wisconsin, the day of Elon Musk's event there this weekend. People covered both sides of the street. They made tons of noise. You see them with their they had a huge wraparound banner that says Wisconsin not for sale.
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Donald Trump fired the man who likely saved his life; U.S. may never fully recover from Trump's cuts
I mean, there was many signs at that protest there against Elon Musk as against Brad Schimel, as against Musk and Trump's candidate for that Supreme Court seat. And of course, as I mentioned, this was Green Bay, Wisconsin, so they're blunt. Packer fans don't like Nazis.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Donald Trump fired the man who likely saved his life; U.S. may never fully recover from Trump's cuts
After the results came in last night, one Republican Party county chair in Wisconsin told Politico.com, quote, I'm honestly shocked. I thought we had it in the bag. I thought Musk was going to be an asset for this race. Really? Have you looked around recently? Have you talked to any of your neighbors?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Donald Trump fired the man who likely saved his life; U.S. may never fully recover from Trump's cuts
So in Wisconsin, Susan Crawford won easily against Trump and Musk's candidate in that Supreme Court race. But it wasn't just her. There was also a superintendent of schools race statewide race in Wisconsin that went the same way with the Democratic backed candidate beating the Republican backed candidate and pretty easily.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Donald Trump fired the man who likely saved his life; U.S. may never fully recover from Trump's cuts
In those two deep, deep red congressional districts in Florida that also had elections last night, we saw the Republican candidates win in both. But Democrats cut way, way into their margins. Trump won in both of those districts by at least 30 points just in November. But last night, Democratic candidates cut those margins at least in half.
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Donald Trump fired the man who likely saved his life; U.S. may never fully recover from Trump's cuts
Democratic candidate Josh Wheal ran in Florida's 6th district. He said the issue that resonated the strongest with voters for his campaign was definitely Trump and Musk attacking Social Security, something that I think Democrats all over the country are taking note of. Aurora, Illinois, is the second largest city in Illinois after Chicago. They had their mayoral race last night.
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Donald Trump fired the man who likely saved his life; U.S. may never fully recover from Trump's cuts
Now, the incumbent mayor in Aurora was a Republican backed mayor. He was first elected in 2017. He was easily reelected in 2021. He expected to be reelected again last night. But the Republican backed mayor of Aurora, Illinois, was ousted last night, lost his seat to a challenger who has was backed by Democrats.
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Donald Trump fired the man who likely saved his life; U.S. may never fully recover from Trump's cuts
Well, Donald Trump just declared trade war on the Keeling Islands. All 593 Keeling Islanders will now be hit with an American government 10 percent tariff that will apply to, you know, anything they might ever want to export here to us. You know, make it here, Keeling Islands, if you're going to make it. May I introduce you to Yanmeyan Island?
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Donald Trump fired the man who likely saved his life; U.S. may never fully recover from Trump's cuts
Last night's wins and surprisingly good showings for Democrats also follow, I think, some undercovered election results from Louisiana this past weekend. The Republican governor in Louisiana and the Republican-led legislature there put four different constitutional amendments before voters in Louisiana this weekend, and they lost. All four of them lost.
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Donald Trump fired the man who likely saved his life; U.S. may never fully recover from Trump's cuts
In Louisiana, one independent Louisiana pollster interviewed by the Louisiana Illuminator explained that even in red state Louisiana, there was basically no keeping up with the organization and outrage on the Democratic side. Even with the Republican governor, the Republican legislature all lined up behind these constitutional amendments, they couldn't get any traction.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Donald Trump fired the man who likely saved his life; U.S. may never fully recover from Trump's cuts
Starting early on in the process, quote, Democrats and black voters showed up in far greater numbers than Republicans during the early voting period. The pollster said, quote, I have just never seen an early vote this strong for Democrats.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Donald Trump fired the man who likely saved his life; U.S. may never fully recover from Trump's cuts
That follows, of course, other special elections earlier this year where we've seen Democrats pick up legislative seats in deep, deep red districts in places as far flung as Amish country in Pennsylvania and in the great state of Iowa. And, you know, it's in part probably some of these election results.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Donald Trump fired the man who likely saved his life; U.S. may never fully recover from Trump's cuts
It's in part, I think, some of the polling about how outraged and disgusted the American people are with what Trump and Musk are doing in Washington.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Donald Trump fired the man who likely saved his life; U.S. may never fully recover from Trump's cuts
I think it's in significant part what people are seeing on street corners, out in front of Tesla dealerships, out in front of Social Security offices and VA offices with Americans protesting every single freaking day of the week now against what Trump and Musk are doing. When you put it all together, we're really starting to see some wind in elected Democrats' sails.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Donald Trump fired the man who likely saved his life; U.S. may never fully recover from Trump's cuts
With, of course, Democratic Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey galvanizing national support and national attention, rapturous attention from Democrats and critics of Trump and Musk, with his record-setting 25-hour-plus filibuster against Trump that ended last night.
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Donald Trump fired the man who likely saved his life; U.S. may never fully recover from Trump's cuts
We've now got Democratic Senator Ruben Gallego saying that he will personally block all Trump nominations to the VA in protest of Trump's deep cuts to VA personnel. We've got Hawaii Senator Brian Schatz, of course, putting a hold against all Trump nominees to the State Department in protest of Trump's dismantling USAID.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Donald Trump fired the man who likely saved his life; U.S. may never fully recover from Trump's cuts
We've now, on top of that, got California Senator Adam Schiff putting a hold on Trump's nomination of Ed Martin, to be U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C. Ed Martin, who was personally at January 6th and has been using the powers of the U.S. attorney's office in D.C.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Donald Trump fired the man who likely saved his life; U.S. may never fully recover from Trump's cuts
as its interim chief, exactly the way you think it might be used by someone who was at January 6th for Trump's attempt to violently overthrow the U.S. government and install himself in power for life.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Donald Trump fired the man who likely saved his life; U.S. may never fully recover from Trump's cuts
Today at Tufts University in Massachusetts, students walked out in support of the Tufts University grad student who was snatched off the street by masked federal agents this past week and flown to an immigration prison in Louisiana despite a judge's order that she not be moved out of state. Yesterday in Tennessee, did you see this footage? Look at this. This is an 80-year-old woman
The Rachel Maddow Show
Donald Trump fired the man who likely saved his life; U.S. may never fully recover from Trump's cuts
who was arrested at the state legislature in protest. She refused to leave. She was there in protest of Republican policies targeting even elementary school kids for arrest and deportation. She told state troopers in Tennessee that she did not mind being arrested, but she was not going to help them do it. They were going to have to carry her out.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Donald Trump fired the man who likely saved his life; U.S. may never fully recover from Trump's cuts
The troopers picked her up out of her chair and carried her out. of the state capitol, 80 years old, and then put her in the patrol car and took her off to jail. Bodily. Today in Washington, outside the Supreme Court, a raucous, loud, rollicking protest with a good sense of humor, while the Supreme Court heard yet another Republican abortion ban case.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Donald Trump fired the man who likely saved his life; U.S. may never fully recover from Trump's cuts
One of the things they did here at this protest is they made fake magazine covers, which you can see here. It's a fake People magazine cover there that says, Brett Kavanaugh, sexist man alive. A fake scientific American, unscientific American cover featuring Samuel Aliko instead of Alito. The FDA, who needs it when we've got Joe Rogan? Also a mock-up of Time magazine, turn back Time magazine.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Donald Trump fired the man who likely saved his life; U.S. may never fully recover from Trump's cuts
It is a volcano, a volcanic island, mostly covered in glaciers, hundreds of miles from anything else in the Arctic Ocean. Yanmeyan, I think that's how you say it. It does have an airstrip, but... Nobody lives there. Population zero humans, many polar bears. That said, rest assured, we, the American people, are now protected from the predatory economic piracy of that uninhabited island.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Donald Trump fired the man who likely saved his life; U.S. may never fully recover from Trump's cuts
John Roberts, the man who presided over the death of the Constitution. And that was outside the Supreme Court today. Also in Washington today, a rally outside the Capitol, a rally in protest opposing federal cuts to HIV funding.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Donald Trump fired the man who likely saved his life; U.S. may never fully recover from Trump's cuts
Trump this week just absolutely decimating the FDA and the CDC, cutting core government funding for everything from HIV to Alzheimer's to bird flu to IVF to measles to everything in between.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Donald Trump fired the man who likely saved his life; U.S. may never fully recover from Trump's cuts
We are going to see hundreds of protests all across the country this weekend, Saturday, April 5th, what is likely to be the largest yet day of protest against this administration in these 70 some days since they've been in office. Tonight here on this show, we've got former FDA Commissioner David Kessler here in person. We've got Wisconsin Democratic Party Chairman Ben Wickler here.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Donald Trump fired the man who likely saved his life; U.S. may never fully recover from Trump's cuts
So much to get to tonight. So much winning. Stay with us.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Donald Trump fired the man who likely saved his life; U.S. may never fully recover from Trump's cuts
You can start to lame duck this thing on April 1st. Take it one chunk at a time. Minnesota Governor Tim Walz paid a neighborly visit a couple of weeks ago to Eau Claire, Wisconsin. He told people to not look four years down the road to the next presidential election. He said, look just ahead. Look to the race for Wisconsin Supreme Court April 1st. Start to lame duck this thing now.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Donald Trump fired the man who likely saved his life; U.S. may never fully recover from Trump's cuts
And of course, last night, Wisconsin went to the polls and they elected the Democratic backed candidate to the state Supreme Court. And they elected her by a lot. Susan Crawford beat the conservative candidate by 10 points, which tells you a little something about the political temperature right now in a swing state where Trump actually won in November.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Donald Trump fired the man who likely saved his life; U.S. may never fully recover from Trump's cuts
After the results came in last night, Wisconsin's Democratic Party Chair Ben Wickler said this. He said, Wisconsin's Supreme Court election demonstrates Musk and Trump have gone too far, and any politician allied with them could swiftly face the end of their career. He said, quote, in a moment of national darkness, Wisconsin voters lit a candle.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Donald Trump fired the man who likely saved his life; U.S. may never fully recover from Trump's cuts
Let the lesson of Wisconsin's election ring out across the country. Hope is not lost. Democracy can yet survive. And the voice of the American people will not be silenced. Joining us now is Ben Wickler, chair of the Wisconsin Democratic Party, who hasn't slept in weeks. Mr. Wickler, thank you so much for being here. And congratulations on a victory I know you fought really hard for last night.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Donald Trump fired the man who likely saved his life; U.S. may never fully recover from Trump's cuts
Wow, that's almost hard to get your head around. Ben, let me ask you about the money part of this. I mean, in politics, like when you take political science classes, sometimes you use money as a substitute for all other available metrics in terms of figuring out what kind of elections you should expect or look forward to.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Donald Trump fired the man who likely saved his life; U.S. may never fully recover from Trump's cuts
What are the lessons from this race where Susan Crawford was up against essentially infinite money, more money than had ever been shoveled into a judicial race by any single donor ever, more money overall in any judicial race ever in the history of this country, and more money as a possibility of a donor with zero ceiling on what he could have spent?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Donald Trump fired the man who likely saved his life; U.S. may never fully recover from Trump's cuts
I mean, most people facing an electoral sort of horizon like that would think that they had no chance. What did you learn in Wisconsin about what it is to run against a bottomless checkbook?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Donald Trump fired the man who likely saved his life; U.S. may never fully recover from Trump's cuts
Thanks to our genius strongman ruler who has put the American government to work, Donald Trump has just slapped a 10% tariff on Yan Mayan Island just in case anyone ever moves up there and tries to screw us over with their Yan Mayan Island underpriced exports and stuff. On the other end of the world, there's Heard, H-E-A-R-D, Heard Island and also McDonald Island. They're in Antarctica.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Donald Trump fired the man who likely saved his life; U.S. may never fully recover from Trump's cuts
A resounding, resounding result last night and very well articulated by the chairman of the Wisconsin State Democratic Party, Ben Wickler, here tonight. Ben, congratulations again and thanks for joining us tonight. And I'm amazed you didn't even mess up your hair. That was beautifully done.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Donald Trump fired the man who likely saved his life; U.S. may never fully recover from Trump's cuts
All right. More news ahead with us here tonight. Stay with us. Last week, President Trump attended a Women's History Month event. I know you thought that wasn't allowed anymore. But there was Donald Trump hosting a women's history event at the White House. At this event, he displayed his well-known knack for speaking about women in a totally normal and non-creepy way. He said, quote,
The Rachel Maddow Show
Donald Trump fired the man who likely saved his life; U.S. may never fully recover from Trump's cuts
We're going to have tremendous, tremendous goodies in the bag for women, too. The women between the fertilization and all of the other things that we're talking about. It's going to be it's going to be great fertilization. I'm still very proud of it. I don't care. I'll be known as the fertilization president. And that's OK. That's not bad. That's not bad. I've been called much worse.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Donald Trump fired the man who likely saved his life; U.S. may never fully recover from Trump's cuts
Actually, I like it. Right. I like it. Thank you. I'll be known as the fertilization president. We think he's referring to IVF treatments, which he promised as a candidate would be free if he got elected after other Republicans were supporting banning IVF. Anyway, well, how's that going? Headline CDC's IVF team gutted, even as Trump calls himself the fertilization president.
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Donald Trump fired the man who likely saved his life; U.S. may never fully recover from Trump's cuts
Quote, a team that tracked how well in vitro fertilization worked across the U.S. was abruptly cut Tuesday as part of the sweeping layoffs at the Department of Health and Human Services. One team member telling NBC News, quote, it's surprising to me President Trump said he was the fertility president. How does cutting this program support that?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Donald Trump fired the man who likely saved his life; U.S. may never fully recover from Trump's cuts
administration has given out zero information on the 10,000 people it fired yesterday from federal health organizations. And so we're only now starting to piece together the scale of the carnage as these 10,000 fired government workers start to speak up and talk to the press or social media about what has happened inside their agencies and what jobs they were fired from.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Donald Trump fired the man who likely saved his life; U.S. may never fully recover from Trump's cuts
I mean, this is just a sampling. At the FDA, quote, offices focused on food, drug, and medical device policy were hit with deep staff reductions. At the CDC, fired employees included those studying injuries, asthma, lead poisoning, smoking, and radiation damage, as well as those that assess the health effects of extreme heat and wildfires.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Donald Trump fired the man who likely saved his life; U.S. may never fully recover from Trump's cuts
HIV prevention was a big target, including teams leading HIV surveillance and research and a group of health researchers who were working on preventing transmission of HIV from mother to child. The AP says, quote, scores of government employees who help administer the early childhood program Head Start have been put on leave.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Donald Trump fired the man who likely saved his life; U.S. may never fully recover from Trump's cuts
They are only reachable by boat and it takes two weeks by sea to get there from Australia. Heard and what's the other one? McDonald Island. Sorry. Hurd and McDonald Island. I know I don't have to apologize. I'm not offending anybody. They're totally uninhabited. Both of them. They're also active volcanoes. So even if you wanted to move there, even the penguins might caution you. Right.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Donald Trump fired the man who likely saved his life; U.S. may never fully recover from Trump's cuts
Preschool operators say they have received no communication from the office of Head Start and don't know who to turn to. NBC News reports that several divisions at HHS focused on the safety of people who work in mining. Those divisions were cut entirely. The whole office that administers LIHEAP, the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, that whole office is gone.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Donald Trump fired the man who likely saved his life; U.S. may never fully recover from Trump's cuts
That's a program that literally keeps the heat on in millions of American homes through the winter. They just zeroed it out. From NPR, quote, HHS layoffs hit Meals on Wheels and other services for seniors and disabled people. At least 40% of staff in those areas fired. Wired magazine reports that the CDC's vessel sanitation program has been eliminated.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Donald Trump fired the man who likely saved his life; U.S. may never fully recover from Trump's cuts
It, quote, helps the cruise industry prevent public health issues, inspects cruises and provides information on outbreaks. I definitely definitely get rid of that. Also gone, the branch of our government that works to eliminate childhood lead poisoning.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Donald Trump fired the man who likely saved his life; U.S. may never fully recover from Trump's cuts
Like I said, we are piecing this together from what we can discern from the firings, oftentimes from what we hear from the people themselves who have been fired. What we are piecing together appears to be a portrait of pretty total destruction of the most advanced scientific and health institutions in the entire world. Former FDA Commissioner David Kessler joins us here next. Stay with us.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Donald Trump fired the man who likely saved his life; U.S. may never fully recover from Trump's cuts
Dr. David Kessler has led prestigious medical schools. He is known and beloved for his landmark work on HIV and AIDS, for taking on the tobacco industry. He was the longtime commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration. During COVID, here on this show in particular, you may remember he became a familiar, even reassuring voice during a very deeply scary time.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Donald Trump fired the man who likely saved his life; U.S. may never fully recover from Trump's cuts
Now, with what appears to be the wholesale gutting of the country's health infrastructure currently underway and as yet poorly understood, there's only one person I really wanted to talk to. Joining us now is Dr. David Kessler, former FDA commissioner, former chief science officer for the Biden administration's COVID-19 response. Dr. Kessler, it's really nice to have you here. Thank you.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Donald Trump fired the man who likely saved his life; U.S. may never fully recover from Trump's cuts
What's your reaction to what we know thus far of these cuts?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Donald Trump fired the man who likely saved his life; U.S. may never fully recover from Trump's cuts
They're active volcanoes, one on each island on both Hurd and McDonald Islands. I will say those volcanoes and the penguins and seals who live there. they will never menace the American economy again as they have in the past by flooding us with their cheap exports of what, like fresh air, cool breezes, a waft of eau de penguin. I don't know. What do they send us?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Donald Trump fired the man who likely saved his life; U.S. may never fully recover from Trump's cuts
Thank you. Thank you.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Donald Trump fired the man who likely saved his life; U.S. may never fully recover from Trump's cuts
Thank you.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Donald Trump fired the man who likely saved his life; U.S. may never fully recover from Trump's cuts
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Donald Trump fired the man who likely saved his life; U.S. may never fully recover from Trump's cuts
The uninhabited Antarctic volcanoes of Heard and McDonald Islands were just slapped by Donald Trump today with a steep 10% tariff. Are you tired of all the winning, America? Can you just feel the practical economic benefits that MAGA leadership is bringing to us at last? Isn't it a relief? Agence France-Presse picked up on another one of these as well. This is super genius.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Donald Trump fired the man who likely saved his life; U.S. may never fully recover from Trump's cuts
Quote, Britain's Falkland Islands, population 3,200 people and around 1 million penguins, got particular punishment from Trump's tariffs today. Quote, the South Atlantic Territory was walloped with tariffs of not 10%, but 41% on exports to the United States. 41% tariffs on the Falkland Islands because... Yeah. Our president waited until late in the day to announce these genius tariffs today.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Donald Trump fired the man who likely saved his life; U.S. may never fully recover from Trump's cuts
One of the three islands that makes up Takilao is apparently known for its famous swimming pigs. As for its economy, Takilao kind of doesn't register on any international scale of economic measures because Takilao doesn't really have much of an economy. It's basically subsistence, agriculture and fishing and, you know, enjoying the swimming pigs.
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Donald Trump fired the man who likely saved his life; U.S. may never fully recover from Trump's cuts
He waited specifically until just after 4 p.m. Eastern time because the financial markets close at 4 p.m. Eastern time. And he didn't want to see that reaction in real time. After the markets close, there's no active trading on the American stock markets, right? But people trade in futures that indicate essentially what they think the markets are going to do when they open up tomorrow.
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Donald Trump fired the man who likely saved his life; U.S. may never fully recover from Trump's cuts
This is the lead right now at CNBC.com explaining how that's going. Quote, U.S. stock futures cratered. As President Donald Trump unveiled sweeping tariffs of at least 10 percent and even higher for some countries, raising the risks of a global trade war that hits the already sputtering U.S. economy.
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Donald Trump fired the man who likely saved his life; U.S. may never fully recover from Trump's cuts
Futures tied to the Dow Jones industrial average lost one thousand sixty nine points or two point five percent. S&P 500 futures dropped three point six percent. Nasdaq 100 futures lost four and a half percent. Yeah. Are you tired of all the winning? Did you vote for the rich guy because you thought he'd be good with money?
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Donald Trump fired the man who likely saved his life; U.S. may never fully recover from Trump's cuts
CNBC quotes Art Hogan, chief market strategist at B. Reilly Wealth Management, saying, quote, what was delivered was as haphazard as anything this administration has done to date. And the level of complication on top of the ultimate level of the new tariffs is worse than had been feared and not yet priced into the market.
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Donald Trump fired the man who likely saved his life; U.S. may never fully recover from Trump's cuts
At The New York Times, they described a broad range of economists, quote, revising their forecasts down for growth and up for inflation. As a result of Mr. Trump's announcement, Nancy Lazar, chief global economist at Piper Sandler, had previously expected a flat next quarter in terms of U.S. economic growth. She now expects that U.S. economic growth in the second quarter may be negative.
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Donald Trump fired the man who likely saved his life; U.S. may never fully recover from Trump's cuts
It may fall 1 percent, quote, because you're going to be increasing prices more aggressively and it's going to negatively impact the consumer space more than we had anticipated. She said, quote, it's an immediate hit to the economy. And when she says it's going to negatively impact the consumer space, the consumer space, that's where we all live.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Donald Trump fired the man who likely saved his life; U.S. may never fully recover from Trump's cuts
That's the negatively impacted space, the place where regular humans live and have to spend money on stuff. We in our office contacted Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman just after Trump made his announcement today to ask his initial reaction. He told us this, quote, Trump's tariff announcement was full on crazy.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Donald Trump fired the man who likely saved his life; U.S. may never fully recover from Trump's cuts
Not only is he imposing higher tariffs than almost anyone expected, but he's justifying them with completely false claims about other countries tariffs. I don't know where his numbers are coming from, but they have nothing to do with reality. Krugman told us, quote, it's a really bad day for the U.S. economy. And here's something interesting.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Donald Trump fired the man who likely saved his life; U.S. may never fully recover from Trump's cuts
I think a lot of what Trump is trying to do in his style of leadership, as it were, is trying to create not only the impression of success when it's not there, like him saying his first two months in office have been perfect, which is hilarious. But he's also trying to create an impression that he is omnipotent, that he has all the power. He has powers that no other president has ever had.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Donald Trump fired the man who likely saved his life; U.S. may never fully recover from Trump's cuts
He has all the power and nobody else in the U.S. government, nobody else in the United States of America has any power to do anything of their own, let alone any power to stop him. But to that point, it's worth getting specific about this. The reason we are all spectators here while Donald Trump purposefully craters the U.S.
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Donald Trump fired the man who likely saved his life; U.S. may never fully recover from Trump's cuts
economy and threatens to throw the entire world into a pointless trade war fueled recession, if not depression, which is what he's doing tonight. reason we're all spectators to that is because he has given himself, he says, the power to do this all by himself.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Donald Trump fired the man who likely saved his life; U.S. may never fully recover from Trump's cuts
When he was sworn in for the second term, he declared an economic emergency that would allow him to just burp out tariff proclamations on his own say-so whenever he felt like it, with nobody else in the government having to be involved in it at all. All because he said it's an emergency.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Donald Trump fired the man who likely saved his life; U.S. may never fully recover from Trump's cuts
Now, quick reminder here that when the previous president, Joe Biden, was leaving office, The Economist magazine decided to do a special report on the state of the U.S. economy that was being left to the next president. This was The Economist cover for that special report. It shows the U.S. economy as a bundle of bills posing as a rocket ship soaring into outer space.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Donald Trump fired the man who likely saved his life; U.S. may never fully recover from Trump's cuts
Donald Trump just imposed an across the board, no exceptions, 10 percent tariff on Takilao. Take that, Tokelau bandits. You will screw over the United States of America no longer. May I also introduce you to the Keeling Islands. Keeling Islands are roughly halfway between Australia and Sri Lanka in the Indian Ocean. Keeling Islands is 27 islands, but 25 of them are uninhabited.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Donald Trump fired the man who likely saved his life; U.S. may never fully recover from Trump's cuts
The headline, quote, America's economy, the envy of the world. But then the new president took over. Donald Trump got in and he immediately declared that this envy of the world economy was a complete disaster. It was an emergency, so much so that he needed effectively dictatorial powers to set new economic policies by fiat, just on his own say so.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Donald Trump fired the man who likely saved his life; U.S. may never fully recover from Trump's cuts
Whatever he feels like is policy, it's just in effect because he said it. And with those emergency powers, that's how he's been able to single-handedly do his best to destroy the U.S. economy and potentially much of the industrialized world economies. There is a way, a legal way, a policy way to interrupt this dictatorship mid-catastrophe.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Donald Trump fired the man who likely saved his life; U.S. may never fully recover from Trump's cuts
And I don't mean time traveling back to last October to show voters tonight's headlines, although I do fantasize about doing something like that all the time. Now, the actual way to stop this dictatorship mid-catastrophe, the way to stop this part of Trump's one-man wrecking ball operation against the U.S. economy is for Congress to do something very simple.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Donald Trump fired the man who likely saved his life; U.S. may never fully recover from Trump's cuts
For Congress to simply declare with a simple majority vote that actually there isn't an emergency. Yes, Trump proclaimed an economic emergency. That's how he gave himself these emergency powers. But Congress could simply just say, actually, no, there isn't an economic emergency. So, no, he no longer has these powers.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Donald Trump fired the man who likely saved his life; U.S. may never fully recover from Trump's cuts
He is no longer empowered to single-handedly drunk drive our country into this particular wall. They could do that. And tonight, the United States Senate did. They actually passed a bill like that about the supposed economic emergency we're in with regard to Canada. And they passed this resolution in the Senate that expressly says there is no economic emergency here. They passed it 51 to 48.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Donald Trump fired the man who likely saved his life; U.S. may never fully recover from Trump's cuts
All Democratic senators supported it. And so did these four Republican senators, Rand Paul, Susan Collins, Mitch McConnell and Lisa Murkowski. gave us a 51 to 48 vote. And that means it passes. It only takes a simple majority to pass this kind of resolution in the Senate.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Donald Trump fired the man who likely saved his life; U.S. may never fully recover from Trump's cuts
And so this resolution, effectively taking away some of Trump's emergency powers to set tariffs on his own say-so, it has passed the Senate. And that means it now goes to the House. And in the House, Democrats have been trying to bring up this exact same resolution since Trump started bludgeoning the economy with these tariff announcements. The House, like the Senate, is controlled by Republicans.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Donald Trump fired the man who likely saved his life; U.S. may never fully recover from Trump's cuts
But just like the Senate, the House is probably likely to pass this resolution if it got a vote. All the Democrats would vote for it. And enough Republicans in the House probably would join with Democrats to pass it.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Donald Trump fired the man who likely saved his life; U.S. may never fully recover from Trump's cuts
And if they did, with the Senate passing it and the House passing it, that would mean that the proverbial gun was taken out of Trump's hand and he could be stopped from shooting any more holes into the American economy and the global economy.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Donald Trump fired the man who likely saved his life; U.S. may never fully recover from Trump's cuts
The problem is that the Republican Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, saw this coming and took a dramatic and bizarre step to prevent any possibility that the House of Representatives would ever have to vote on anything like this to take away Trump's powers.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Donald Trump fired the man who likely saved his life; U.S. may never fully recover from Trump's cuts
The rule is if somebody brings up this kind of resolution in the House after a certain number of days, it's supposed to be mandatory that it actually gets a vote. In order to avoid that mandatory vote, House Speaker Mike Johnson got Congress, got the House to proclaim that the whole rest of this year in Congress is one long day. The whole rest of this Congress only counts as one calendar day.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Donald Trump fired the man who likely saved his life; U.S. may never fully recover from Trump's cuts
So that means multiple days will never elapse, technically, and that means they will never be forced to take the vote in the House, which would pass. And if it passed, that would save the American people and the American economy and the global economy from the tariff disaster that Trump is unilaterally imposing under emergency powers that allow him to act by fiat as if he is a dictator.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Donald Trump fired the man who likely saved his life; U.S. may never fully recover from Trump's cuts
So in other words, there is a cure to this disease. There is a readily available, dramatically effective, proven legal antidote to this poison. And Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson grabbed it out of our hands and flushed it down the toilet to make sure we can never take it so Donald Trump can keep doing this to the economy. Are you tired of all the winnings?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Donald Trump fired the man who likely saved his life; U.S. may never fully recover from Trump's cuts
The vote tonight in the Senate to take away these emergency powers from Trump, with which he's doing all the tariff stuff, that vote in the Senate tonight does happen to be the largest and most significant rebuke to Trump that congressional Republicans have yet mustered in his second term in office.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Donald Trump fired the man who likely saved his life; U.S. may never fully recover from Trump's cuts
Theoretically, if people could pressure Mike Johnson into allowing a vote on this same resolution in the House, it would actually be a rebuke that meant something, that maybe saved the economy. But unless and until that happens...
The Rachel Maddow Show
Donald Trump fired the man who likely saved his life; U.S. may never fully recover from Trump's cuts
Several of those uninhabited islands have a real plastic trash problem, but that is not because anybody lives there, but because plastic trash from other countries makes its way across the Indian Ocean and washes up there. The two islands of the Keeling Islands that are inhabited, out of the 27 islands there, those two inhabited islands have a total population of 593 people.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Donald Trump fired the man who likely saved his life; U.S. may never fully recover from Trump's cuts
Some Senate Republicans have shown a little strength here, but until anything happens in the House, it's Trump and House Republicans standing together to throw us all off the cliff. Also, we can slap those Antarctic penguins with big tariffs in case they ever turn into humans and start making stuff that they might want to sell us. That'll show them.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Donald Trump fired the man who likely saved his life; U.S. may never fully recover from Trump's cuts
And, you know, I don't I don't know if these actions by Trump and congressional Republicans are why Americans are sort of showing how they feel about Republicans in the way they are right now. But it does this stuff about the economy. It does coincide with this big flurry of election results we've just had in the past week.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Donald Trump fired the man who likely saved his life; U.S. may never fully recover from Trump's cuts
In which Democrats are doing very, very well and Republicans are doing very poorly. Republicans are at least losing huge amounts of ground, if not just losing altogether. We're going to speak momentarily with Wisconsin Democratic Party Chairman Ben Wickler after that stunning 10-point win last night by the Democratic-backed candidate in the Wisconsin state Supreme Court race.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Donald Trump fired the man who likely saved his life; U.S. may never fully recover from Trump's cuts
She was up against a Trump endorsed ultra MAGA candidate. He benefited not only from twenty five million dollars from Elon Musk, but also from a last minute blockbuster campaign event hosted by Musk in Wisconsin, in which he gave out million dollar checks and told Wisconsin voters that the fate of humanity rested on whether or not this MAGA candidate guy was going to win.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
I'm really happy to have you here. So, she is a special government employee. Just two and a half weeks after Trump was sworn in for this term as president, he put out a press release announcing proudly that she would be a, quote, special government employee and senior advisor of the newly created White House Faith Office. In that role, I guess, she would now like you to send her $1,000.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
He also worked at a startup that hired convicted hackers. He went by the online moniker Big Balls. We would later learn that Trump and Elon Musk, in their infinite wisdom, specifically gave Big Balls, who again had been fired from a previous job at a cybersecurity firm for leaking company secrets, Trump and Musk gave that specific kid access to the systems at the top U.S. cybersecurity agency.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
Great choice. Then Trump fired the staff of the nation's nuclear security agency, the people who oversee the nation's nuclear weapons stockpile. Then Trump scrambled to unfire all of those nuclear safety workers because, oops, but in many cases,
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
They couldn't figure out how to reach them because, in their infinite wisdom, they forgot to collect contact information from those nuclear security workers before cutting them all off from their government email accounts. This includes people with Q-level security clearances who are cleared for access to our nation's top nuclear secrets.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
Those are great folks to lose track of and to fire for no cause. Trump then fired people at the CDC in charge of tracking the ongoing bird flu outbreak. That turned out to be a mistake as well. They then tried to hire all those people back, but didn't get them all back. Trump then instituted not only firings, but a hiring freeze that applied to, among other things, the national parks.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
Why is it particularly bad to do that at the national parks? Well, among other things, the national parks every year have to hire a whole new cast of employees for seasonal employment because the national parks have greatly increased visitors during vacation season. Hiring freeze isn't going to work at the national parks, right? You have to hire lots of new people every year. So they did that.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
And then, oops, turns out they realized they couldn't do that. Turns out it would be wildly dangerous to radically understaff American national parks. Who knew? So they had to reverse that, too. Then a few days after that reversal, we saw them again scrambling to rehire people they had fired from the FDA this time. Headline.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
The FDA scrambles to rehire entire teams overseeing medical devices after Doge fired them all, saying their terminations are quote, rescinded effective immediately. By this point, we're about a month in to the perfect two months. It was February 22nd, just about exactly a month in, when Elon Musk sent his first what-did-you-do-last-week email.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
He demanded that all federal employees email his Doge teenagers a list of what they got done that week, or else it would be cause for immediate firing. That threat then promptly was deflated within 24 hours. The leaders of multiple agencies in the government, people in Trump's cabinet like Tulsi Gabbard, say, told their workers and their agencies explicitly don't reply to Elon's email. Womp womp.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
At that point, Elon Musk had a running list of all the massive and spectacular savings he and his kids at Doge had found by cutting out supposed fraud and waste from the federal government. They claimed to have found billions of dollars in fraud. It was all on their website for you to see. But then
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
February 25th, the New York Times reported that the five largest items on that list had just quietly disappeared because it turns out they hadn't actually saved all that money. They'd just done all the math wrong. Day after the rug was pulled out from under Doge on that, they had to erase another big cut from their list. Doge claimed they had found $2 billion of waste and fraud to cut out from VA.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
That's what you get if you send $125 to the head of the White House Office of Faith Programs. Again, she is a special government employee of the United States. She is asking for your money. But I got to tell you, I watched the whole pitch. They're not really going for the $125 gift. That is not the target.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
Turns out a lot of that money was for stuff like, oh, I don't know, Medical services for veterans, cancer programs for veterans with cancer, burial services for veterans who die. Boy, that really does sound wasteful, right? So yeah, again, oops, they had to reverse course on that, reinstate some of that stuff. Saturday after that was March 1st.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
We learned another obvious but alarming side effect to all of Trump and Musk's firings through the federal government. CNN reported that U.S. intelligence showed that Russia and China were rushing to take advantage of the moment and working hard to recruit as many disgruntled workers as intelligence assets as they could get. You tired of all the winning yet? You tired of all the perfection?
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
The very next day, Sunday, March 2nd, the Dow started its trip off the cliff after Trump said he was going to go through with his tariffs on our closest trading partners, like Mexico and Canada and also China. The next day, you could watch live on the Fox News channel as the stock market tumbled down and down and down while Trump doubled down, down, down on his tariffs.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
Since then, we've seen industry after industry come forward to say just how much the tariffs have been just slaying them economically. But Trump is plowing ahead. A week after tanking the stock market with that incipient trade war, Trump pulled yet another reversal.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
Since taking office, he's been insisting on using military aircraft for deportations, been making a huge deal about these deportations, deporting migrants, many of whom we now know had no criminal history whatsoever. But he wanted to make a big deal out of the fact that he was using military aircraft to send them where? To Guantanamo.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
Very transparent stunt to get footage like this to use for propaganda purposes. It was also unbelievably, eye-wateringly expensive. So quietly, on March 5th, they stopped using the military aircraft. And a week later, they stopped using Guantanamo. They returned everybody they'd been holding there back stateside. Because they'd already got all their propaganda films made.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
Don't tell anybody we're just not doing that anymore. Along the way in their hunt to rid everything in the federal government of diversity, equity, inclusion, they purged a photo of the plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Japan from a Defense Department database. We believe that's because the plane, the Enola Gay, has the word gay in its name.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
So obviously just having pictures of that plane anywhere is going to make everybody gay. Look what it did to me. The next week, people still employed by the FDA and ordered back to the office told reporters they had returned to find offices that could not fit them with broken equipment and not enough chairs for people to sit in.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
Last week, Trump released the JFK assassination files, unredacted, including 400 unredacted social security numbers and birthdates and birthplaces. Trump managed, among other things, to dox his own lawyer who only found out Trump had done it when a reporter called to ask him about it.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
They want you to know that the big stuff, the really miraculous stuff, kicks in when you give her $1,000.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
Also, last week, the New York Times was forced to report that Elon Musk was about to get, the very next morning, a top-secret briefing for the U.S. military plan for any war that might break out with China. After he says he saw that report, Trump, quote, contacted White House Chief of Staff and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to ask them, hey, what's this briefing you're doing for Elon? That sounds like a big deal. He learned about it in the New York Times, he says. And so then they called it off. And briefly, that was a, you know, stop everything, what the heck is going on news, right?
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
The president's top campaign donor with all of his business ties to China and his multi-billion dollar debts to the Chinese getting a briefing on the U.S. military plans for going to war with China?
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
But, I mean, just to show you how these first two months of the Trump term is going, here's the news from the very next day, after Trump announced there would be no such Elon Musk China war plan briefing. This is The Washington Post, Saturday, March 22nd, just four days ago. Tax revenue could drop by 10% amid turmoil at IRS.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
Staff cuts and disruptions related to Doge have officials bracing for a sharp loss of revenue for the U.S. government. The prediction, officials say, is directly tied to changing taxpayer behavior and President Trump's rapid demolition of parts of the IRS. Rapid demolition. Neat.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
Seems like Doge, if those predictions seem to be borne out at IRS, will have succeeded in robbing the United States government of a half trillion dollars in revenue it would have otherwise received because, again, in their infinite wisdom, they have decided to destroy the IRS, which collects money to fund the government.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
Everybody who's ever run a business knows that the most efficient thing you can do in getting your bottom line straight of your business is to make sure you no longer have the capacity to earn any money. Right? It's been perfect. These two months have been, other than this little glitch with the giant group text about forthcoming military operations, everything has been perfect.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
I will mention just today the Social Security Administration has announced that they are not going to go ahead with the changes they'd previously announced that would force millions of retired and disabled Americans to go in person to a Social Security office to do things that they can now do by phone while they are simultaneously closing Social Security offices and firing their staff.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
Turns out, per the Washington Post tonight, they had not done anything. any training to prepare their staff for this giant change, which they were going to implement as of Monday. They also had not actually done any work to set up the new system that they were going to try to shunt these tens of millions of Americans into.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
Washington Post notes today that the people who might have been called upon to invent and implement such a new system have mostly all been fired from the Social Security Administration. So there's nobody there to do that work. And so the thing will be delayed. The headline here, though, is right. Trump administration, quote, backs off plan to cut phone services after backlash.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
I mean, yeah, sure, they hadn't actually done anything to prepare for it, but it's not like they'd be afraid to go ahead with what they were doing because it wasn't well planned. What about the last two months tells you that? What happened here is that the backlash mattered. People being outraged and pushing back mattered and stopped them.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
They say they still want to go ahead with these planned changes at Social Security in two weeks instead of Monday. We'll see about that, but for now, the pushback has worked.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
Trump announced new 25% tariffs on car sales today, which sent the futures for America's auto company stocks well off the cliff tonight, as Trump inflicts yet more economic pain on American businesses, on American consumers, and the country as a whole. Tomorrow, Trump is sending his vice president to Greenland, which he is threatening to take by force.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
Don't miss. This is what comes with the $1,000. You see, that's the sort of not fine print, but the kind of dim print there above the banner on the bottom. Is the Holy Spirit moving you to give a very special offering? By very special, they mean four digits at least.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
The trip was supposed to include the national security advisor Michael Waltz, but now it's unclear whether Mr. Waltz is going after the group tech scandal, which he apparently started. This trip to Greenland was also initially supposed to be just the vice president's wife and child, and not the vice president himself.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
But after Greenland's politicians of every stripe expressed outrage over this trip and its implied intimidation, and Greenlanders announced plans to hold anti-American demonstrations at the site she was expected to visit, including the airport she was due to fly into, now they're sending the vice president himself.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
And he and his wife are not only going, excuse me, and he and his wife will only be going to a U.S. military base and not to anywhere else in Greenland where the actual people of Greenland might be able to get within screaming distance of them because, again, oops. So, you know, in other words, these perfect two months just continuing on their perfect trajectory.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
Tammy Duckworth joins us here live next. Stay with us. Donald Trump's defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, isn't working out all that well. And it started right at the beginning. Right after he was sworn in, there was the midair collision of a passenger jet and an Army helicopter in Washington, D.C.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
Despite the strict and solemn rules of the Defense Department that say no information about deceased service members can be made public until 24 hours after the next of kin has been informed, Pete Hegseth nevertheless, blurted out to the public the ranks of the three helicopter crew members who had just been killed in the crash.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
Hegseth also blurted out that the crew members had been performing a training flight on a, quote, continuity of government mission. Mr. Hegseth, quote, was later told that he should not have publicly disclosed that it was a continuity of government mission, which involves U.S. officials and military forces practicing how the government would react in the event of an emergency.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
Just a couple of weeks later, Mr. Hegseth took his first big international trip as defense secretary, went to a big NATO meeting in Europe, and he began the trip by just totally flummoxing not only our allies, but also a lot of Washington.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
when he again just blurted out that any peace deal in the Russia-Ukraine war would have to include Ukraine giving up lots of its territory and abandoning its bid to join NATO. That caused major blowback for obvious reasons. He was just giving away Ukraine's major bargaining chips even before negotiations had started.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
And what they mean by this is, are you feeling the itch to send this US government employee, the head of the White House faith office, $1,000 or more? If so, congratulations, because that is how you get all this stuff.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
When that blowback made its way to him, Pete Hegseth sort of angrily asserted that he had basically been the victim of his own comments.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
That's something that was stated as part of my remarks here. I don't know who stated it, but it was part of my remarks. I did not state it. It was something that was stated by something inside my mouth in my remarks time. It's very offensive to me as well. Now we're all living through Pete Hegseth's latest and greatest.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
Nobody's texting war plans. I know exactly what I'm doing. I know what war plans look like. War plans, I see them all the time. I eat war plans for breakfast. I wouldn't know war plans. What do you mean? I wouldn't know if there were war... Meanwhile, headline, here are the attack plans that Trump's advisors shared on Signal.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic Magazine today releasing the entirety of the Signal message chain that he was somehow inexplicably added to in which top Trump administration officials... texted in detail about forthcoming airstrikes in Yemen.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
And despite Pete Hegseth and other officials in the chat saying there was no classified information and definitely no war plans, here is Pete Hegseth texting on a private messaging app to a group including a reporter, times and weapons and attack sequences about two hours before the first bombs exploded. Senator Tammy Duckworth, an Army helicopter pilot who lost both legs in combat.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
She now serves on the Senate Armed Services Committee. She had this to say today in response. This is an official statement released by her Senate office. I will warn you, it contains a thinly veiled swear. The statement says, quote, Pete Hegseth is a effing liar. This is so clearly classified info he recklessly leaked that could have gotten our pilots killed.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
including the special year of blessing and a long life and taking your sickness away for the low, low price of $1,000 payable by text or online or on the phone toll free or scan the QR code or send your check to a PO box in Orlando. She's got a government job. And hard sell, big money, pay me for miracles televangelism is as old as television.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
He needs to resign in disgrace immediately. Senator Tammy Duckworth joins us here next.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
This is Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, combat veteran, member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, today responding to Trump Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, claiming there was nothing wrong with sharing detailed information about upcoming airstrikes in a private messaging app to a group that inadvertently included a reporter. From Senator Duckworth, quote, Pete Hegseth is an effing liar.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
She didn't say effing. This is so clearly classified info he recklessly leaked that could have gotten our pilots killed. He needs to resign in disgrace immediately. Joining us now is Senator Tammy Duckworth of Illinois. Senator, thank you so much for being with us tonight. I appreciate you making the time.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
We first learned about this about midday on Monday. It's now Wednesday night. We have learned more over the last couple of days about what happened in this group text about these forthcoming strikes. This is a very strong reaction that you have had to it. It's not only profane, it's mad. You're angry here. Can you explain your reaction to it and why you think Secretary Hegseth should resign?
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
Let me ask you about the classified portion of this. Obviously, there's potential criminal liability here, whether or not this was classified information. But we've also had these blunt assertions from the president, from other White House officials, from Mr. Hegseth, saying that there was nothing that was classified or that could be construed as classified information. Thank you.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
In this case, YouTube evangelism is almost as old as YouTube. But when it's from the White House, when it is a person hired as a special government employee of the U.S. government, someone running an office in the White House while selling miracles on the side, well, that's a whole new day for governance.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
Thank you. I don't know. I don't know. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. I don't know. Thank you. Thank you very much.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
You know, when it comes to trying to achieve a long life and take sickness away, I will say it's nice to know that at least someone in the White House is working on those things, even if they are charging for them. You may be able to buy those things by sending $1,000 to the head of the White House faith office, but know when you're doing so that the U.S.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
government itself will no longer be working toward those aims in the material world. What I mean by that is today the Trump administration announced that it is cutting all funding immediately with no warning for the vaccination efforts that we have supported in poor countries for decades.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
Quote, the United States is planning to terminate more than a billion dollars in funding for life-saving vaccinations for millions of people each year in some of the world's poorest countries. The Vaccine Alliance says it was not given any warning about the termination of the funding. The program is estimated to have saved the lives of 19 million children since it was set up 25 years ago.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
The loss of U.S. support may mean 75 million children do not receive routine vaccinations in the next five years, with more than 1.2 million children dying as a result. This is vaccination for polio and mpox and measles and, and, and. And the United States government is cutting that off without warning because America first, right?
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
Because it is definitely in America's interest to make sure that preventable infectious diseases like measles and polio are rampant and unconstrained all over the world. Like it or not, we have taken a global leadership role in vaccinating against these plagues for decades.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
And so, us unilaterally pulling out with no warning immediately leaves no capacity for these things that anybody else can match. And so, like I said, polio, tuberculosis, measles, mpox, all of these things shall be expected to blossom immediately as a direct result of what Donald Trump is doing. I mean, obviously, we'll be fine here in America, right?
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
None of these things ever cross borders, right? So who cares? Here in America, how are we doing with our own out-of-control measles outbreak? Well, we're working on that too. Trump administration abruptly cuts billions of dollars from state health services. Trump administration, quote, has abruptly canceled more than $12 billion in federal grants to states.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
State health departments started receiving notices on Monday night that the funds were being terminated, again, without warning, quote, effective immediately. The notices said no additional activities can be conducted and no additional costs may be incurred as it relates to these funds.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
State health officials predicted that thousands of health department employees and contract workers could lose their jobs nationwide. Some predicted the loss of as much as 90% of staff from some infectious disease teams. For some, the effect was immediate.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
In Lubbock, Texas, public health officials have received orders to stop work supported by three grants that helped fund the response to the widening measles outbreak there, according to the city's director of public health. Stop work immediately, Lubbock, Texas. Lubbock, Texas, President Donald Trump is cutting you off effective immediately. What was the phrase?
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
No additional activities can be conducted. No additional costs may be incurred. So Lubbock, Texas, your work on the measles outbreak, that needs to stop right now, effective immediately because of Donald Trump. Remind me where Lubbock, Texas is in relation to this measles outbreak. Oh yeah. See the really big circle there?
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
Right there on the edge of the giant measles outbreak in Texas, Lubbock is right there at about 2 o'clock on that big circle of cases around Gaines County. Donald Trump just cut off their funds to try to stop the measles outbreak, which has now spread from Texas into New Mexico, into Oklahoma, and it appears possibly it has also spread into Kansas.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
If it's not spreading from Kansas, excuse me, if it's not spreading into Kansas from Texas, it looks like Kansas might have its own.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
But even as President Donald Trump, in his infinite wisdom, is cutting off funds to stop efforts against measles and tuberculosis and polio abroad and making state health departments here at home immediately fire as much as 90 percent of their infectious disease staff while we are dealing with exploding measles outbreaks here domestically.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
One thing, of course, we can still offer from our government is the hard-won expertise of the U.S. government, right?
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
We at least, even though Trump is cutting all of this funding with no warning, immediate cutoff, no advanced planning to account for any of this stuff, even with all of those funds being cut off, at least the United States government can still offer its wise counsel on how to contend with, you know, wildly contagious, deadly infectious diseases.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
Remedies supported by Kennedy leave some measles patients more ill.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
After the Trump administration's health secretary promoted vitamin A as a cure, parents in West Texas began giving their children high doses of vitamin A. Quote, Doctors in West Texas are seeing measles patients whose illnesses have been complicated by an alternative therapy endorsed by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Trump administration's health secretary.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
Parents in Gaines County, Texas, the center of a raging measles outbreak, have increasingly turned to supplements and unproven treatments to protect their children, many of whom are unvaccinated. One of those supplements is cod liver oil containing vitamin A, which Mr. Kennedy has promoted as a near miraculous cure for measles. Physicians at Covenant Children's Hospital in, yes, Lubbock, Texas.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
now say they have treated a handful of unvaccinated children who were given so much vitamin A that they have signs of liver damage. Quote, In fact, at high doses, vitamin A can cause liver damage. It can cause dry, peeling skin and hair loss, and in rare instances, seizures and coma.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
So far, doctors at West Texas hospitals have said they've seen patients with yellowed skin and high levels of liver enzymes in their blood work, both signs of a damaged liver. Health officials say the recent popularity of vitamin A use for measles can be traced back to a Fox News interview with Mr. Kennedy, in which he said he had heard of, quote,
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
almost miraculous and instantaneous recovery with treatments like cod liver oil, which he said was the safest application of vitamin A. In the weeks after the Fox News interview, drugstores in West Texas struggled to keep vitamin A and cod liver oil supplements on their shelves.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
And now, because Donald Trump's health secretary has said that's what you do for measles, parents are inadvertently poisoning their children and giving them liver damage. with this miraculous cure that the Health and Human Services Secretary went on TV and promoted as a miracle, despite, you know, science.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
The government of the United States of America under Donald Trump firing the infectious disease doctors and cutting off funding to fight, for example, specifically the measles epidemic. But now there's kids in Texas with liver damage because Donald Trump's health secretary got on the fox and said he found a miracle cure. And why wouldn't you trust him? He was handpicked by Donald Trump.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
That said, if you do want to take sickness away and live a long life, you can always just send $1,000 to the head of Donald Trump's White House faith office. She will take your check or cash or whatever. So tonight we're going to be joined by Tammy Duckworth, Democratic U.S. Senator from Illinois.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
We want to give you some very special gifts. This is the head of the White House Faith Office. She is a special government employee of the government of the United States of America. And she does have some very special gifts for you. but you're going to have to do your part too. Luckily, you can do your part, meaning you can send her money in a lot of different ways. You can send her money online.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
She is a veteran of the Iraq War who lost both legs when her helicopter was shot out of the sky in combat. Senator Duckworth is demanding the resignation of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth as the fallout continues to mount from the revelation that Pete Hegseth endangered American pilots.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
Pete Hegseth and Trump's national security advisor and his director of national intelligence and his CIA director and his secretary of state and his treasury secretary and his White House chief of staff and his advisor Stephen Miller and his vice president J.D. Vance and more.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
Apparently it was a cast of 18 senior officials all together who all joined a commercial messaging app group chat on which they circulated things like the name of a serving CIA officer supplied by CIA director John Ratcliffe and
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
Per Pete Hegseth, this handy TikTok of the exact battle plan describing when specific American-piloted planes and drones and then sea-based Tomahawk missiles would be used down to the minute for forthcoming strikes in Yemen. Pete Hegseth helpfully pointed out to the group that at 2.15 p.m., all caps, quote, this is when the first bombs will definitely drop.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
Remember their defense here that they did nothing wrong here is that there was nothing specific on this group text. No actual plans, definitely not down to the minute talking about when the actual bombs will drop.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
in this group text over signal that accidentally included a journalist, but no one noticed even after he took his name out of the chat when he realized these were actual senior government officials discussing apparently classified and definitely sensitive defense information. And being part of this kind of conversation is not something anyone should do.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
President Trump has not fired anyone for this debacle, which is astonishing. He did confess to NBC News in a new interview that he sees this as a, quote, glitch. A glitch. He said this scandal has been, quote, the only glitch in two months. This is kind of emerging as his take on this scandal. He told reporters yesterday, they've made a big deal out of this because we've had two perfect months.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
essentially saying that this scandal with all of his senior appointees, including his White House chief of staff, all discussing these forthcoming battle plans over signal in a group text that they didn't notice included a journalist. He thinks this is all a hoax. Now he's used the phrase witch hunt. This has all been ginned up as if it's something bad.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
They're trying to make it look bad because he's otherwise had two perfect months. This is the only thing that even looks bad. Everything else has been... And, you know, I will just say between you and me, you have been alive for these past two months and you have experienced what the first two months of this Trump term have been like.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
Do you think that Trump is right, that it's all been totally perfect? This has been the only glitch? I mean, just, you know, back of the envelope, scratch in here. It was a week or so after he was sworn in, January 29th, a jet carrying 64 people hit an army helicopter above the Potomac River outside Reagan National Airport in D.C. Everybody on both aircraft killed.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
You can send her money by phone. It's a toll-free number. You can send her money by text. You can send her money by scanning her QR code, or you can just stuff some money into the P.O. box. Lots of ways to give.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
The day before that collision, he had offered air traffic controllers all across the country a somewhat threatening buyout, trying to basically beg them to leave government service. Less than a week later, Trump reversed course. Oh, actually. Actually, no, maybe that's a bad idea. Air traffic controllers, please don't leave.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
That same week was when we started to get the headlines about the kids who Trump's top campaign donor, Elon Musk, had brought in to his new agency to work with him to destroy the federal government.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Two perfect months?!': Trump's rationalization of insecure group chat scandal backfires
Turns out one Doge staffer actually had to resign when it came out that he had a since-deleted social media account in which he had advocated for loud and proud racism and racial human breeding tactics through eugenics. They soon hired him back. Another Doge staffer had been previously fired from a cybersecurity firm for leaking company secrets,
The Rachel Maddow Show
As measles outbreak turns deadly, RFK Jr. gets the facts wrong
You know, at a time when our country is so divided, at a time when there is very little on which Americans agree at all, even in terms of just the basic facts of life, at a time when it seems like it is impossible to generalize at all about a thing being bad or a thing being good. Can we all agree? I hereby posit, can we all agree, that one thing that's bad is the bubonic plague?
The Rachel Maddow Show
As measles outbreak turns deadly, RFK Jr. gets the facts wrong
And that means he's in charge of taking care of this explosive measles outbreak in West Texas and New Mexico. Good call. Safe hands.
The Rachel Maddow Show
As measles outbreak turns deadly, RFK Jr. gets the facts wrong
Donald Trump has also handed over what appears to be control of most of the government to his top campaign donor, who at today's cabinet meeting was invited to stand up in his baseball hat and talk about whatever, whereupon he said something he thought would crack everybody up about the hemorrhagic fever known as Ebola.
The Rachel Maddow Show
As measles outbreak turns deadly, RFK Jr. gets the facts wrong
And you can still get it. You can still get it the same way people got it during the 1300s in the Black Death years. You get it by contact with rodents that are carrying this particular bacterium. It's not common for people to get bubonic plague anymore, but it does happen, particularly in a few specific spots in the world.
The Rachel Maddow Show
As measles outbreak turns deadly, RFK Jr. gets the facts wrong
He's expecting the other people in the room to, like, chip in and laugh, because it's funny that that was an accident. Those remarks from the president's top campaign donor on Ebola, when he said... that we fixed it, we reinstated Ebola. He said there was no interruption, put it right back in place.
The Rachel Maddow Show
As measles outbreak turns deadly, RFK Jr. gets the facts wrong
Those assertions from him today appear to be wrong, just like the false assertions that PEPFAR, the HIV treatment program, has been turned back on when it hasn't. The Ebola prevention efforts that Elon Musk was somehow allowed to turn off, he said today they were turned right back on with no interruption. Those efforts have not been turned back on.
The Rachel Maddow Show
As measles outbreak turns deadly, RFK Jr. gets the facts wrong
In the Washington Post tonight, quote, current and former USAID officials said that Musk was wrong. USAID's Ebola prevention efforts have been largely halted since Musk and his Doge allies moved last month to gut the Global Assistance Agency and freeze its outgoing payments. The teams and contractors that would be deployed to fight an Ebola outbreak have been dismantled.
The Rachel Maddow Show
As measles outbreak turns deadly, RFK Jr. gets the facts wrong
While the Trump administration did issue a waiver to allow USAID to respond to an Ebola outbreak in Uganda last month, partner organizations were not promptly paid for their work and USAID's own efforts were sharply curtailed.
The Rachel Maddow Show
As measles outbreak turns deadly, RFK Jr. gets the facts wrong
Quote, there have been no efforts to turn on anything in prevention of Ebola and other diseases, said Nnedi Buri, who served as a senior USAID official during the Biden administration and who oversaw USAID's response to health care outbreaks. Bury said her former USAID team of 60 people working on disease response had been cut, as of earlier this week, to about six staffers.
The Rachel Maddow Show
As measles outbreak turns deadly, RFK Jr. gets the facts wrong
Used to be 60, now it's six. Other current and former USAID officials speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal operations agreed with Bury's assessment. One current official said, quote, there was a waiver for Ebola, but USAID funds have never been back online. USAID has been frozen. Staff and money.
The Rachel Maddow Show
As measles outbreak turns deadly, RFK Jr. gets the facts wrong
That blithe and apparently false assertion about Ebola, oops, we accidentally turned it off, but then we turned it back on, it was no problem. That false assertion from Elon Musk also earned a sharp response from Dr. Craig Spencer. He's an emergency room physician whose name you might remember because he himself is a survivor of Ebola.
The Rachel Maddow Show
As measles outbreak turns deadly, RFK Jr. gets the facts wrong
The last time there was a multi-country outbreak of that disease. He said today that the Trump administration's actions, the actions that Musk was bragging about today, quote, hobbled or directly dismantled the response structures needed to end Ebola outbreaks abroad and protect us here in the U.S. That emergency room doctor and Ebola survivor joins us live here next. Stay with us.
The Rachel Maddow Show
As measles outbreak turns deadly, RFK Jr. gets the facts wrong
That's not true. Today, Donald Trump's top campaign donor claimed during a weird, like, filmed-for-TV cabinet meeting that although he had accidentally, in his role as Donald Trump's top campaign donor, ended all Ebola prevention efforts of the U.S.
The Rachel Maddow Show
As measles outbreak turns deadly, RFK Jr. gets the facts wrong
So over the last few years, for example, you might have occasionally seen, you know, alarming headlines like this one. A couple ate raw marmot believed to have health benefits. Then they died of the plague. Or this one, as bubonic plague kills another man in Mongolia, Russia starts mass vaccination against black death.
The Rachel Maddow Show
As measles outbreak turns deadly, RFK Jr. gets the facts wrong
government, after they realized that's what had happened, it was restarted—it was just a very brief interruption, and it all—or not even an interruption. It was very briefly stopped, but then restarted without— Without interruption, people actually work on these matters for the U.S. government and in this field say none of this is true.
The Rachel Maddow Show
As measles outbreak turns deadly, RFK Jr. gets the facts wrong
Public health experts, including current and former USAID officials, say that the Ebola prevention efforts were hobbled, that they've not been restarted. In 2014, you might remember there was an outbreak of Ebola in West Africa. Doctors from the United States went to countries like Guinea to go track cases and treat patients.
The Rachel Maddow Show
As measles outbreak turns deadly, RFK Jr. gets the facts wrong
A doctor named Craig Spencer was one of those doctors who responded to that outbreak, and he became the first person in New York City to test positive himself for Ebola in October 2014, after he was abroad treating Ebola patients in Guinea with Doctors Without Borders. Ebola has a really high mortality rate. It kills more than half the people it infects.
The Rachel Maddow Show
As measles outbreak turns deadly, RFK Jr. gets the facts wrong
In Dr. Spencer's case, he had 19 days in the hospital, but he survived. Today, he wrote this in response to Elon Musk's remarks about Ebola prevention being accidentally stopped but then started back up again with no interruption. He said, quote, on January 29th this year, Uganda reported an Ebola outbreak. Normally, the U.S. would have quickly sent one of our Ebola experts to help the response.
The Rachel Maddow Show
As measles outbreak turns deadly, RFK Jr. gets the facts wrong
But this time we didn't because we couldn't because this administration wouldn't let them go right when this outbreak was declared. Normally, the U.S. would have helped set up border screening and other measures on the ground. But this time, we didn't. Normally, we would have spoken with the WHO about helping end the outbreak.
The Rachel Maddow Show
As measles outbreak turns deadly, RFK Jr. gets the facts wrong
But this time, we didn't, because CDC staff weren't even allowed to talk to them. Joining us now is Dr. Craig Spencer. He's associate professor of health services policy and practice at Brown University School of Public Health. He's also the New York City emergency room doctor who survived Ebola after treating Ebola patients in Guinea with Doctors Without Borders nearly about a decade ago now.
The Rachel Maddow Show
As measles outbreak turns deadly, RFK Jr. gets the facts wrong
Dr. Spencer, I really appreciate you being here tonight. Thank you.
The Rachel Maddow Show
As measles outbreak turns deadly, RFK Jr. gets the facts wrong
So it's always good to see you because you had Ebola. And so anytime that I see you, I feel like I have hope that these sorts of things can be survived, these horrific diseases. I have to ask what your reaction was to seeing Elon Musk today bring up Ebola, unprompted, laugh about it, and then suggest that while he had accidentally cut off all U.S.
The Rachel Maddow Show
As measles outbreak turns deadly, RFK Jr. gets the facts wrong
government efforts to combat it, everything was fine now because it had all been restarted without interruption.
The Rachel Maddow Show
As measles outbreak turns deadly, RFK Jr. gets the facts wrong
Or this one from roughly around the same time, quote, Russia cracks down on marmot hunting after bubonic plague alert. And actually, I should mention, all those stories had to do with Mongolia, specifically with people getting bubonic plague because of contact with marmots In Mongolia, marmots are basically big squirrels. They look like groundhogs. They're very cute, but they're big squirrels.
The Rachel Maddow Show
As measles outbreak turns deadly, RFK Jr. gets the facts wrong
Craig, some of this drama is playing out right now as we speak in Washington. A federal judge ruled yesterday that the Trump administration had until midnight tonight to restart foreign aid funding that had been appropriated by Congress, that they were legally required to be releasing. And that those things needed to be those funds needed to be released.
The Rachel Maddow Show
As measles outbreak turns deadly, RFK Jr. gets the facts wrong
That process needed to be open by midnight tonight. It went to an appeals court this evening that said the judge's ruling stands and effectively that those billions of dollars should be released by midnight tonight. The Trump administration is taking it to the Supreme Court. They're also now saying that those funds are no longer under review, but that they are formally canceled.
The Rachel Maddow Show
As measles outbreak turns deadly, RFK Jr. gets the facts wrong
They will never be restarted. And they are. In other words, pulling out every possible stop up to and including a trip to the Supreme Court tonight to try to say that USAID is gone institutionally, effectively, so that whatever funding programs they want to say, whatever programs they want to be able to say they restarted, USAID won't be there to effectuate any of this stuff. Can you help us?
The Rachel Maddow Show
As measles outbreak turns deadly, RFK Jr. gets the facts wrong
our audience understand the difference between funding in the abstract and having an agency that actually effectuates the program that funding is for.
The Rachel Maddow Show
As measles outbreak turns deadly, RFK Jr. gets the facts wrong
Dr. Craig Spencer, a man who knows of what he speaks, Associate Professor of Health Services Policy and Practice at Brown University School of Public Health, a survivor himself of Ebola. Dr. Spencer, it is really good to see you. Thank you for your time today. Thank you, Rachel. All right. Much more news ahead. Stay with us.
The Rachel Maddow Show
As measles outbreak turns deadly, RFK Jr. gets the facts wrong
The state of Virginia has huge numbers of people who work for the federal government. More than 145,000 people in the state of Virginia work for the federal government. Virginia's economy also benefits more from federal contracts than any other state does. More than $100 billion a year in 2023. More than any other state in the country.
The Rachel Maddow Show
As measles outbreak turns deadly, RFK Jr. gets the facts wrong
In recent days, since the Trump administration started randomly firing huge numbers of people indiscriminately from the federal government, started cutting off federal funding that's been legally appropriated by Congress, we have been watching Virginia's Republican pro-Trump governor, Glenn Youngkin, tie himself up in knots.
The Rachel Maddow Show
As measles outbreak turns deadly, RFK Jr. gets the facts wrong
not clear, very clearly, not quite sure how to handle this matter, saying in one breath that he absolutely supports Trump and everything he's doing, that this is what voters asked for after all. And then in the next breath, trying to say that he has so much empathy for Virginians who may be experiencing, in his words, quote, some disruption.
The Rachel Maddow Show
As measles outbreak turns deadly, RFK Jr. gets the facts wrong
When we last left this saga, when the Doge Act started falling very heavily on federal workers in the state of Virginia, the governor's response was similar. You know, defend Trump, tell Virginians that he feels deep concern for them while still saying he supports Trump. The governor said he wanted it known that we understand and we're here to help.
The Rachel Maddow Show
As measles outbreak turns deadly, RFK Jr. gets the facts wrong
The state will have the ability to support federal workers through any job dislocation, he said. But the governor, quote, declined to provide details about what kind of help the state is prepared to offer. That's where we left the story last week. Well, we got some of these details now from Governor Youngkin.
The Rachel Maddow Show
As measles outbreak turns deadly, RFK Jr. gets the facts wrong
And sadly, they are among the rodent species that can carry the bubonic plague. In fact, in some marmot populations in some parts of Asia, bubonic plague is endemic. It's really widespread in the population of those animals.
The Rachel Maddow Show
As measles outbreak turns deadly, RFK Jr. gets the facts wrong
Governor Youngkin's plan to help federal workers who have been hurt by what Trump is doing is basically to tell those federal workers that they should call the unemployment office. Here's a headline, quote, Youngkin offers constituents insulting job fair as Musk purges Virginian federal workers.
The Rachel Maddow Show
As measles outbreak turns deadly, RFK Jr. gets the facts wrong
Governor Youngkin's version of we're here to help is basically a job board that he has posted online and a toolkit to help you apply for unemployment. And that purports to help you make decisions about trying to scramble to keep your health insurance somehow, even though you've been fired. Governor is also offering resume writing tips. Because don't worry, there's plenty of jobs.
The Rachel Maddow Show
As measles outbreak turns deadly, RFK Jr. gets the facts wrong
That is Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin's advice to the people of his state. No criticism at all of the potentially illegal mass firings of Virginia residents and the Trump administration effectively stealing money from Virginia contractors after Congress approved and agreed to spend that money. No criticism of that at all.
The Rachel Maddow Show
As measles outbreak turns deadly, RFK Jr. gets the facts wrong
Just a statement that he understands this sure is painful, but this is what you asked for. And by the way, you should call the unemployment office. Good luck getting through. Virginia Democrats in the legislature responded with this, quote, Glenn Youngkin's message of empathy. Update your resume. Virginians aren't looking for career tips.
The Rachel Maddow Show
As measles outbreak turns deadly, RFK Jr. gets the facts wrong
They are looking for a governor who will fight for their livelihoods. The thing about Virginia is that it is a very, very much a purple state. It's one that holds elections on off years. So this year, 2025, they're electing a whole new legislature and a new governor this fall.
The Rachel Maddow Show
As measles outbreak turns deadly, RFK Jr. gets the facts wrong
It means that Virginia's elections this year are going to be a unique bellwether for what voters think about how the country is going under Donald Trump. Governor Youngkin himself is term-limited, so he can't run again, but his Republican lieutenant governor is the likely Republican candidate for governor. That's her on the left.
The Rachel Maddow Show
As measles outbreak turns deadly, RFK Jr. gets the facts wrong
On the right, that's Democratic Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger, who is the likely candidate for the Democrats. A new poll out from Virginia's Roanoke College shows that the Republican lieutenant governor is losing to former Democratic Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger by 15 points. by 15 points. This is an early poll. It's got a margin of error of 4.7%, right? Take that as you will.
The Rachel Maddow Show
As measles outbreak turns deadly, RFK Jr. gets the facts wrong
So after incidents like these ones in 2019 and 2020 that occasioned those headlines that I just showed you, Mongolia had like a dozen suspected cases of bubonic plague and people had started dying.
The Rachel Maddow Show
As measles outbreak turns deadly, RFK Jr. gets the facts wrong
But this 15-point poll for Abigail Spanberger also follows a poll last month from Virginia Commonwealth University in which Spanberger was up by 10 points. That followed another one by Christopher Newport University that had Spanberger up by five points. Did I mention this is a purple state with an incumbent Republican governor and elections this year?
The Rachel Maddow Show
As measles outbreak turns deadly, RFK Jr. gets the facts wrong
An incumbent Republican governor whose lieutenant governor is running to succeed him. But the Democratic challenger for that governorship is now leading in the polls by 5, 10, 15 points.
The Rachel Maddow Show
As measles outbreak turns deadly, RFK Jr. gets the facts wrong
I think it has to help that Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin is absolutely flailing when it comes to any sort of response to what Trump is doing to wreak havoc for more than 100,000 people in that state whose lives have been turned upside down by Donald Trump and Elon Musk.
The Rachel Maddow Show
As measles outbreak turns deadly, RFK Jr. gets the facts wrong
Joining us now is former congresswoman, current contender to be the Democratic nominee for Virginia governor, Abigail Spanberger. Congresswoman Spanberger, it's really nice to see you. Thank you for joining us tonight. Thank you for having me. So that's a little bit of a surface look at some of what's been going on in your state.
The Rachel Maddow Show
As measles outbreak turns deadly, RFK Jr. gets the facts wrong
I've been watching Governor Youngkin closely because I know he's a facile politician. He's good with words. He's good at pivoting. He's sort of nimble. He seems absolutely flat on his back when it comes to how to talk to Virginians about what Trump is doing to people in your state. It seems from the outside that that's changing the political weather in Virginia. But I wanted to know how you saw it.
The Rachel Maddow Show
As measles outbreak turns deadly, RFK Jr. gets the facts wrong
And so in Mongolia, a few years ago, they banned the hunting of marmots to try to stop people from coming into contact with marmots, to try to stop a new tide of literally the worst thing on earth, which is bubonic plague. Because again, we all agree, right? That bubonic plague is bad. And that is why it's illegal to hunt marmots in Mongolia.
The Rachel Maddow Show
As measles outbreak turns deadly, RFK Jr. gets the facts wrong
The governor is not standing up by saying, you know, stop doing these things that are hurting people in this state. Stop doing things that are hurting the economy of this state. Stop doing things that are hurting these individuals in the type that you just described. But the other thing that's that's happening and this is a thing that I just I just don't know why.
The Rachel Maddow Show
As measles outbreak turns deadly, RFK Jr. gets the facts wrong
where this goes politically, is that you've got Governor Youngkin telling Virginians who are bringing him those same kinds of concerns, he's telling them, you voted for it. This is what you this is what we wanted as a country. This is essentially the good news about what we're getting from Donald Trump.
The Rachel Maddow Show
As measles outbreak turns deadly, RFK Jr. gets the facts wrong
Similarly, your likely Republican opponent in this governor's race, the lieutenant governor right now, has said Virginians will be all right. There's nothing to worry about here. We're all going to be all right. These cuts are no big deal. That, to me, seems like a message that you might be able to sell in the media.
The Rachel Maddow Show
As measles outbreak turns deadly, RFK Jr. gets the facts wrong
But so many people seem to me to be affected by this in Virginia specifically that that it seems to me they're going to have to change that message or people buying it.
The Rachel Maddow Show
As measles outbreak turns deadly, RFK Jr. gets the facts wrong
Former congresswoman and CIA veteran Abigail Spanberger, candidate for the Democratic nomination for governor in Virginia. As you mentioned, that race is this year. That is a 2025 governor's race. Representative Spanberger, I really appreciate your time. This situation in Virginia is going to be a really big cleaving into the state's economy and culture.
The Rachel Maddow Show
As measles outbreak turns deadly, RFK Jr. gets the facts wrong
Because just within the past few years, people have been catching bubonic plague, thanks to contact with marmots, and they have been dying from it. Those news articles I showed you, that was incidents documented, people getting bubonic plague because of contact with marmots in Mongolia. That was 2019, 2020. In 2022...
The Rachel Maddow Show
As measles outbreak turns deadly, RFK Jr. gets the facts wrong
We'd love to have you back to talk about it more as those effects become clear. Thanks for being with us tonight.
The Rachel Maddow Show
As measles outbreak turns deadly, RFK Jr. gets the facts wrong
All right, we'll be right back. Stay with us. OK, here's an update on a very, very, very high stakes legal drama that has been unfolding while we have been on the air tonight. Not a lawyer. Don't even play one on TV. But let me try to summarize what's just happened here. This is a big deal.
The Rachel Maddow Show
As measles outbreak turns deadly, RFK Jr. gets the facts wrong
Last night, you might remember, we reported on a dramatic courtroom showdown that happened in Washington in which a federal district court judge just raked a Trump administration lawyer over hot coals in court.
The Rachel Maddow Show
As measles outbreak turns deadly, RFK Jr. gets the facts wrong
demanding to know why the Trump administration had not complied with an earlier court order from that same judge that commanded the Trump administration to restart foreign aid funds that they had unilaterally cut off. The judge ruled from the bench yesterday, issued what's called a motion to enforce that told the Trump administration they really did not have a choice on this matter.
The Rachel Maddow Show
As measles outbreak turns deadly, RFK Jr. gets the facts wrong
That court order had to be respected. They had to restart that funding by midnight tonight. Well, today, the Trump administration went to the federal appeals court in Washington to try to have that ruling overturned. The appeals court said, no dice. We're letting that judge's order stand. You have to start those funds flowing by midnight.
The Rachel Maddow Show
As measles outbreak turns deadly, RFK Jr. gets the facts wrong
Well, since we have been on the air, the Trump administration went to the last court above that. They went to the U.S. Supreme Court to ask the Supreme Court to overturn the judge's ruling so they won't have to release these frozen funds. Well, now, just in the last few minutes, the United States Supreme Court has weighed in.
The Rachel Maddow Show
As measles outbreak turns deadly, RFK Jr. gets the facts wrong
The Trump administration rushed to the Supreme Court ahead of this midnight deadline. This hour, the Supreme Court has responded. The court ordered the lower court ruling, quote, stayed pending further order of the undersigned or of the court. So what this means is that they do not have to meet the midnight deadline to restart those funds.
The Rachel Maddow Show
As measles outbreak turns deadly, RFK Jr. gets the facts wrong
But the Supreme Court says they've only got until Friday at noon to start briefing them on what's going on here. And then the Supreme Court will make the final call. Watch this space. All right, that's going to do it for me for now, but I will see you again tomorrow and every night this week at 9 p.m. Eastern.
The Rachel Maddow Show
As measles outbreak turns deadly, RFK Jr. gets the facts wrong
Guess who went to Mongolia to do a hunting show about killing and eating Mongolian marmots? Yeah. Not the blonde son, the other one. He has a magazine and a social media company, I think it is, about hunting. And this video posted online by his company in 2022 is captioned by his company, quote, Don Trump Jr. eats a rat in Mongolia. Hey, that's not a rat. That's a marmot.
The Rachel Maddow Show
As measles outbreak turns deadly, RFK Jr. gets the facts wrong
Now, admit it, you thought I was going to say Nazis there, didn't you? I know, I know. But we're now at the point in U.S. politics where that can no longer be the go-to example for thing we all agree is bad. So I'm going to try to reset a new baseline for us here in 2025 in the United States of America.
The Rachel Maddow Show
As measles outbreak turns deadly, RFK Jr. gets the facts wrong
So this is a little bit gross. Fair warning. But here's me showing my work. Here goes. Here's me proving it.
The Rachel Maddow Show
As measles outbreak turns deadly, RFK Jr. gets the facts wrong
Is it a delicacy? I guess. I guess. I guess it's a delicacy. I guess. Did you do any reading? Do you understand what's going on here? What exactly you're doing here on film?
The Rachel Maddow Show
As measles outbreak turns deadly, RFK Jr. gets the facts wrong
But that's so cool. The reason it's contrabandy to hunt marmot in Mongolia, the reason that government made it illegal to hunt marmot and they tell you not to eat marmot meat or certainly to handle any raw marmot stuff is because, again, bubonic plague, which people keep getting and dying from exactly there with exactly those animals. in exactly those circumstances.
The Rachel Maddow Show
As measles outbreak turns deadly, RFK Jr. gets the facts wrong
Now, I raise this because while Mongolia and its adjacent geographic neighbors, like Russia, have had to take some food safety regulation steps to try to stop the bubonic plague from having a 21st century resurgence, the United States, similarly, for a long time now, has seen it as just a function of good government to do what we can to regulate food safety. That is a core function of the U.S.
The Rachel Maddow Show
As measles outbreak turns deadly, RFK Jr. gets the facts wrong
government. Last week, the person in charge of food safety for the U.S. government, the deputy commissioner of human foods, deputy commissioner for human foods at the U.S.
The Rachel Maddow Show
As measles outbreak turns deadly, RFK Jr. gets the facts wrong
Food and Drug Administration, that person resigned in protest of what the Trump administration was doing to his agency, stating that the widespread and what he described as, quote, indiscriminate firings of food safety staffers at the FDA showed, quote, disdain.
The Rachel Maddow Show
As measles outbreak turns deadly, RFK Jr. gets the facts wrong
for the people who do that work, disdain for the people with highly technical expertise, the professionals who do food safety work for the U.S. government. He said it would therefore be, quote, fruitless for me to continue in this role. So, the Trump administration initiated indiscriminate mass firings, according to the head of the Human Foods Program, the head of food safety for the U.S.
The Rachel Maddow Show
As measles outbreak turns deadly, RFK Jr. gets the facts wrong
Is there anyone out there who does not agree or who doesn't get that the bubonic plague is a bad thing? The bubonic plague has its own era in human history, the Black Death years. There was an eight-year period in the later part of the Middle Ages, in the 1300s, when bubonic plague ripped through Europe. It killed two-thirds of the entire human population of Europe in eight years.
The Rachel Maddow Show
As measles outbreak turns deadly, RFK Jr. gets the facts wrong
government. He says those indiscriminate mass firings decimated human food safety responsibilities within the U.S. government, and so the head of food safety for the U.S. government resigned in protest. And I tell you that part of the story as well, because the Trump administration has now chosen a new person to head up food safety for the American people.
The Rachel Maddow Show
As measles outbreak turns deadly, RFK Jr. gets the facts wrong
The guy who left in protest was a lifelong scientific expert in the field. The guy who the Trump administration brought in to replace him is not. He is a man who works at a law firm in Florida, not a scientist, but he is a hunting buddy of Donald Trump Jr., And I should say there's no indication that he participated in Donald Trump Jr. 's genius bubonic plague marmot meat eating adventure.
The Rachel Maddow Show
As measles outbreak turns deadly, RFK Jr. gets the facts wrong
But that's his hunting friend. This was first reported in Vanity Fair. The guy they've put in charge of food safety hunts turkeys with Don Jr., Don Jr., again, thinks that was a rat he ate in Mongolia. And why is that illegal anyway? But now Don Jr. 's hunting friends will be in charge of American food safety.
The Rachel Maddow Show
As measles outbreak turns deadly, RFK Jr. gets the facts wrong
Among the more than 1,000 people the Trump administration has indiscriminately fired from the FDA, yesterday and today we've started getting reports that, oops, once again, they've been scrambling to now try to unfire some of them, including the people they fired who work in food safety. Quote, barely a week after mass firings at the FDA, some staffers received unexpected news.
The Rachel Maddow Show
As measles outbreak turns deadly, RFK Jr. gets the facts wrong
Beginning Friday night, FDA employees overseeing medical devices, food ingredients and other key areas received calls and emails notifying them that their recent terminations had been, quote, rescinded effective immediately. FDA staffers who were reinstated said their immediate supervisors received no explanation or advance notice on the decisions.
The Rachel Maddow Show
As measles outbreak turns deadly, RFK Jr. gets the facts wrong
Instead, staffers received calls or emails from the FDA's Office of Talent Solutions, informing them that their access to FDA computer systems and offices had been restored. The emails concluded, quote, Exclamation point. The exclamation point was part of the email. Quote, a week earlier, the same employees had received emails stating that they were, quote, not fit for continued employment.
The Rachel Maddow Show
As measles outbreak turns deadly, RFK Jr. gets the facts wrong
Feeling good about the stability here? Feeling good about being in safe hands with this administration? And the solid grounds on which they're making purely merit based decisions on firing and also on hiring. So anybody else you'd like, Mr. I think that was a rat I ate in Mongolia. Is anybody else you'd like to recommend for American safe food handling recommendations? Contrabandy. Cool.
The Rachel Maddow Show
As measles outbreak turns deadly, RFK Jr. gets the facts wrong
The FDA is currently handling a recall of frozen shakes that were sent to assisted living facilities and hospitals because there's listeria contamination. That listeria outbreak has sickened 38 people in 21 states. 12 people have died already. The FDA is handling that recall, that outbreak.
The Rachel Maddow Show
As measles outbreak turns deadly, RFK Jr. gets the facts wrong
The lives of potentially millions of people are on the line in the PEPFAR program, which the Trump administration also has just randomly cut off and then said they restarted it. But it is still not restarted. PEPFAR is the program that was started in the George W. Bush administration. It provides HIV treatment to literally millions of people around the world who are HIV positive.
The Rachel Maddow Show
As measles outbreak turns deadly, RFK Jr. gets the facts wrong
Stopping that program without warning in the middle of people's treatment courses, which is exactly what the Trump administration did, that means cutting HIV positive people off in the middle of their course of treatment, which not only puts them on a track to die, it also begs begs for the development of multidrug-resistant HIV. That can't be treated, even if you wanted to.
The Rachel Maddow Show
As measles outbreak turns deadly, RFK Jr. gets the facts wrong
The Trump administration cannot defend killing off this HIV treatment program, PEPFAR. So they keep saying, oh, PEPFAR isn't a problem. We've given it a waiver. It's restarted. We're not cutting this funding, actually. We might have initially cut it, but we're not cutting it anymore. The program is not restarted. The funds are not flowing. Treatment is not being administered.
The Rachel Maddow Show
As measles outbreak turns deadly, RFK Jr. gets the facts wrong
It killed 25 million people. Bubonic plague is an infectious disease that kills you quickly. You get it from a bacteria that is carried by rodents. They call it the black death because you get huge swollen lymph nodes and then you start turning black from gangrene. I mean, literally, it's the worst thing in the world. It's the worst plague to have ever afflicted humankind in all of human history.
The Rachel Maddow Show
As measles outbreak turns deadly, RFK Jr. gets the facts wrong
And protesters today who know that made a huge ruckus and got arrested in large numbers today in the House Cannon office building to show their outrage and to bring some attention to the fact that PEPFAR really is still not happening. The funds are still stopped.
The Rachel Maddow Show
As measles outbreak turns deadly, RFK Jr. gets the facts wrong
We're going to be watching the courts on that tonight and tomorrow because, as we reported this time last night, a federal judge in Washington set tonight at one minute to midnight as the deadline by which the Trump administration must restart the funding it cut off of this kind. The government is ordered to restart that funding by midnight tonight. We shall see.
The Rachel Maddow Show
As measles outbreak turns deadly, RFK Jr. gets the facts wrong
Today at a cabinet meeting, they appear to have convened sort of mostly just for the cameras at the White House. Attention turned to the exploding outbreak of measles that started in West Texas and has now spread at least into New Mexico. It's now at least 124 cases. A child has died, an unvaccinated school-aged child who was hospitalized as of last week in the Lubbock area.
The Rachel Maddow Show
As measles outbreak turns deadly, RFK Jr. gets the facts wrong
That child has now passed away. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. really is Donald Trump's idea of the best person in the whole country to lead the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which is responsible for dealing with this kind of crisis. Secretary Kennedy today attempted to give an update on the measles outbreak in front of the cameras, but almost every single thing he said about it was wrong.
The Rachel Maddow Show
As measles outbreak turns deadly, RFK Jr. gets the facts wrong
He said, quote, it's not unusual. We have measles outbreaks every year. Like, this is a normal thing. I should mention, for context, in all of last year, we had 285 measles cases in the United States. The year before that, for the whole year, in the whole country, we had 59 cases. 59 cases. 59 cases, the whole country, the whole year.
The Rachel Maddow Show
As measles outbreak turns deadly, RFK Jr. gets the facts wrong
This one outbreak is already 124 cases and growing explosively, and a child has died. This is the largest measles outbreak in Texas in at least 30 years. Inexplicably, in his string of untrue statements about this ongoing measles epidemic that he is now responsible for fixing, Secretary Kennedy also misstated the number of deaths.
The Rachel Maddow Show
As measles outbreak turns deadly, RFK Jr. gets the facts wrong
Local health authorities say it is not two people who have died. It is one person who has died, an unvaccinated school-aged child. Why he thinks it's two people who have died and not one, we don't know. Also, the people who are hospitalized are not being hospitalized for quarantine, as he described it, which makes it seem like they're fine. They're just being kept in a room, right?
The Rachel Maddow Show
As measles outbreak turns deadly, RFK Jr. gets the facts wrong
No, they've been hospitalized for respiratory distress and other serious and potential fatal symptoms of measles, which can kill you and which has already killed a child in this outbreak. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wrote a whole book about the measles in which he said that, quote, measles outbreaks have been fabricated to create fear.
The Rachel Maddow Show
As measles outbreak turns deadly, RFK Jr. gets the facts wrong
He wrote at the website of his anti-vaccine group that getting measles is actually good for you. He says it's good for your heart to get measles, reduces the risk of some cancers and heart disease and stuff. It's great. Donald Trump put him in charge of health and human services for the whole country.
The Rachel Maddow Show
U.S. under Trump backs off countering Russian sabotage campaign in Europe
Thanks to you at home for joining us this hour. Really happy to have you here. You know what tomorrow is? Tomorrow is Friday Eve, which means you're almost there. You're going to make it. Trust me. Do you know Roz Chast, the cartoonist? Roz Chast does cartoons for the New Yorker magazine, and she has forever. She's been doing that since the 1970s.
The Rachel Maddow Show
U.S. under Trump backs off countering Russian sabotage campaign in Europe
Justice Department as a private police force for the president's top campaign donor when he is on private property going after a private entity. They are threatening federal criminal investigation and prosecution if you don't comply.
The Rachel Maddow Show
U.S. under Trump backs off countering Russian sabotage campaign in Europe
And they're threatening to revoke contracts, revoke federal contracts of private armed security if private armed security doesn't join in the armed takeover of these private entities. And again, you may not care about the ins and outs of the U.S. Institute of Peace. You may not care about that one Citibank bank account, right?
The Rachel Maddow Show
U.S. under Trump backs off countering Russian sabotage campaign in Europe
But what they are doing here is not about the outcomes they are seeking. What they are doing here is all about the power they are trying to exert. They are showing you what they think they have the power to do to you. In court today, the U.S. Institute of Peace was unable to get a restraining order to try to stop the efforts to shut down their nonprofit, their organization.
The Rachel Maddow Show
U.S. under Trump backs off countering Russian sabotage campaign in Europe
But the judge hearing the case today in Washington expressed astonishment at what has just happened here, saying, quote, this conduct of using law enforcement, threatening criminal investigation, using armed law enforcement from three different agencies, probably terrorizing the employees and staff at the institute. When there are so many lawful ways to accomplish the goals, Why?
The Rachel Maddow Show
U.S. under Trump backs off countering Russian sabotage campaign in Europe
The judge said, quote, why those ways here? The judge just exclaimed in court today, quote, that's a lot of law enforcement at a charitable institution's building. The judge questioned explicitly whether there was a way to accomplish the Trump administration's goals through legal procedures and through Congress, quote, without using the force of guns and threats by Doge against American citizens.
The Rachel Maddow Show
U.S. under Trump backs off countering Russian sabotage campaign in Europe
There's a lot going on. There's a lot going on right now. I recognize this is a fast-moving news environment. USA Today is reporting this evening that Trump's going to issue an executive order tomorrow to shut down the U.S. Department of Education, something that roughly two-thirds of the American public is opposed to.
The Rachel Maddow Show
U.S. under Trump backs off countering Russian sabotage campaign in Europe
The overlap isn't between boring and fun, as it is in the original. The overlap that I keep in my head is between boring and scary. Boring stories, scary stories. And there's one particular story that lives right in that overlap that I think about every day. It is the story of Donald Trump's return to the presidency that keeps popping up for me right there.
The Rachel Maddow Show
U.S. under Trump backs off countering Russian sabotage campaign in Europe
Trump's Attorney General, Pam Bondi, went on TV tonight and threatened three different federal judges by name. Another federal judge today blocked the Trump administration's efforts to force trans women into men's federal prisons. Another federal judge blocked them from unilaterally killing off money that Congress had appropriated for teacher training.
The Rachel Maddow Show
U.S. under Trump backs off countering Russian sabotage campaign in Europe
In the insane case where Trump took three plane loads of people and shipped them to El Salvador with zero processing at all, just grabbed them off the street, forced them onto a plane, and shipped them to a prison in another country without any hearing or legal determination at all, now the Trump administration has been forced to admit that, quote, many of the people they did that to had no criminal record whatsoever.
The Rachel Maddow Show
U.S. under Trump backs off countering Russian sabotage campaign in Europe
But nevertheless, they're in prison now, indefinitely, in a foreign country, and we're not even allowed to know their names. We're not even allowed to know if any of them are, I don't know, U.S. citizens? There's a lot going on, and a lot of it is very hard-fought and full of drama.
The Rachel Maddow Show
U.S. under Trump backs off countering Russian sabotage campaign in Europe
But as much as we are watching all of those stories and those kinds of stories every day, we are also trying to keep our eyes on the sort of shadow stories in the boring corners. Because for now, that is where they are trying to seize truly breathtaking authoritarian power. Not in the future, but right now. And the courts for now are kind of, sort of, barely stopping it. For now. I'll stay on it.
The Rachel Maddow Show
U.S. under Trump backs off countering Russian sabotage campaign in Europe
Last summer, explosions at DHL cargo hubs. They were not accidents. They were not isolated incidents. They were part of what European and American officials described as an expanding campaign of Russian sabotage, including arson in the UK and the Czech Republic, attacks on pipelines and data cables in the Baltic, and tampering with water supplies in Sweden and Finland. Earlier last year, the U.S.
The Rachel Maddow Show
U.S. under Trump backs off countering Russian sabotage campaign in Europe
also helped Germany interrupt an alleged Russian plot to assassinate an executive at a German arms manufacturer, a German arms manufacturer that supplies arms to the Ukrainian military. Those cargo bombs on those DHL planes, even with all that other stuff, when the DHL planes started having bombs on board, U.S.
The Rachel Maddow Show
U.S. under Trump backs off countering Russian sabotage campaign in Europe
intelligence officials said they were a Russian test run to figure out how those devices could get aboard planes bound for the U.S. And as such, that was a frightening new escalation for American officials, the idea that that sabotage campaign could be coming here.
The Rachel Maddow Show
U.S. under Trump backs off countering Russian sabotage campaign in Europe
Months later, The New York Times reported that White House officials became, quote, increasingly alarmed by secretly obtained intelligence suggesting Moscow had a far larger plan in mind to bring the war in Ukraine to American shores. President Biden dispatched his national security advisor and the CIA director to send a series of warnings to Putin's top aides.
The Rachel Maddow Show
U.S. under Trump backs off countering Russian sabotage campaign in Europe
The core of the warning was that if the sabotage campaign led by Russia created mass casualties in the air or on the ground, the U.S. would hold Russia responsible. They didn't specify what that response would be, but they made it clear they would take the shadow war between Washington and Moscow to new levels. So that was last year.
The Rachel Maddow Show
U.S. under Trump backs off countering Russian sabotage campaign in Europe
It is unrelentingly boring and unrelentingly scary in equal measure. And I have thought about this story every day since it broke. And it is developing now. This is a story out of the federal prosecutor's office, the U.S. Attorney's Office in Washington, D.C.,
The Rachel Maddow Show
U.S. under Trump backs off countering Russian sabotage campaign in Europe
A new in-depth study of Russia's sabotage campaign finds that the number of Russian sabotage attacks in Europe nearly tripled between 2023 and last year, after quadrupling the year before that. Reporting on that, here's how the New York Times put it. Quote, anger at Russia's sabotage efforts has the potential to influence European reactions to the U.S.-led push for an end to the war in Ukraine.
The Rachel Maddow Show
U.S. under Trump backs off countering Russian sabotage campaign in Europe
Prime Minister Donald Tusk of Poland noted in a social media post on Monday that Lithuanian officials had confirmed his assessment that Russia was responsible for a series of fires in shopping centers in Warsaw and Vilnius. Mr. Tusk wrote, quote, good to know before negotiations. Such is the nature of this state.
The Rachel Maddow Show
U.S. under Trump backs off countering Russian sabotage campaign in Europe
The message to countries supporting Ukraine has been that Russia can impose costs and increase them. So we had this very big scare last year with not just this sabotage campaign rapidly escalating in Europe, but it appearing to start to target the United States. Yesterday, we get data that Russian sabotage attacks in Europe quadrupled one year and then tripled the year after that.
The Rachel Maddow Show
U.S. under Trump backs off countering Russian sabotage campaign in Europe
Well, now today we get this from Reuters. US suspends some efforts to counter Russian sabotage as Trump moves closer to Putin. Quote, several US national security agencies have halted work on a coordinated effort to counter Russian sabotage, disinformation and cyber attacks, easing pressure on Moscow as the Trump administration pushes Russia to end its war in Ukraine.
The Rachel Maddow Show
U.S. under Trump backs off countering Russian sabotage campaign in Europe
The effort involved at least seven national security agencies working with European allies to disrupt plots targeting Europe and the United States. Since Trump took office, much of the work has come to a standstill. Reuters cites 11 current and former officials here. I'll tell you that Reuters did ask the Kremlin what they think about this reporting.
The Rachel Maddow Show
U.S. under Trump backs off countering Russian sabotage campaign in Europe
Quote, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the Trump administration was trying to get rid of everything ineffective, corrupt, and implausible. Something he said was, quote, understandable. Joining us now is one of the reporters on that story, Reuters national security correspondent Erin Banco. Ms. Banco, thanks very much for being here and for getting this scoop.
The Rachel Maddow Show
U.S. under Trump backs off countering Russian sabotage campaign in Europe
I appreciate the chance to talk with you about it. Yeah, thanks for having me. Is the United States pulling back from anti-Russian sabotage efforts because they don't believe they're happening or because they believe that the efforts are ineffective? What's the rationale on the U.S. side for cutting back on these efforts?
The Rachel Maddow Show
U.S. under Trump backs off countering Russian sabotage campaign in Europe
If you have been following the news about the rule of law and the Justice Department under Donald Trump, you have noticed that a lot of bizarre stuff has been happening in that prosecutor's office. Ever since Donald Trump installed a guy there, who was it? January 6th. And now Trump has named him acting U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C. His name is Ed Martin.
The Rachel Maddow Show
U.S. under Trump backs off countering Russian sabotage campaign in Europe
The sabotage that Russia has been accused of, their efforts, mostly have been documented in Europe. There is this very worrying case on the record in terms of them targeting parcel bombs that were on planes, potentially to be bound for the United States. What do you understand about the balance of...
The Rachel Maddow Show
U.S. under Trump backs off countering Russian sabotage campaign in Europe
I guess the balance of how much heavy lifting was being done in this effort by European nations versus by the U.S. Presumably, the Europeans are going to still be trying to counter this stuff because they've been bearing more of the brunt of it. With the U.S. withdrawing, how much harder is their work going to be?
The Rachel Maddow Show
U.S. under Trump backs off countering Russian sabotage campaign in Europe
Reuters National Security Correspondent Erin Banco, thank you very much for this time. I know this is very difficult reporting in this sector of government operations. It's really valuable. Thank you for helping us understand it. Thanks for having me.
The Rachel Maddow Show
U.S. under Trump backs off countering Russian sabotage campaign in Europe
The Trump administration just, I mean, on day one with Pam Bondi at the Justice Department, they announced they're no longer enforcing the rules against foreign agents. They no longer are going to enforce efforts by Russians to evade sanctions. They announced at the Defense Department that they're standing down cyber command operations against Russia.
The Rachel Maddow Show
U.S. under Trump backs off countering Russian sabotage campaign in Europe
And for at least some of the time that Ed Martin has been there, he was attempting to practice law in Washington, D.C. as the acting U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., despite the fact that he was not a member of the bar in D.C. in good standing. In one case, he wrote to a judge on behalf of the Justice Department, telling the judge to drop the charges against a particular defendant.
The Rachel Maddow Show
U.S. under Trump backs off countering Russian sabotage campaign in Europe
And now we have this reporting from Reuters that they're no longer going to try to counter Russian sabotage efforts that have included assassination attempts and arson and package bombs targeting the United States originating in Europe. It's all pointing in one direction, right? All right. Much more to come tonight. Stay with us.
The Rachel Maddow Show
U.S. under Trump backs off countering Russian sabotage campaign in Europe
Tim Walz, the Democratic governor of Minnesota, the Democratic Party's vice presidential nominee in this past election, speaking in Iowa this past Friday night. Like a number of Democrats this year, Governor Tim Walz has been showing up for town halls in Republican districts, in districts where the Republican member of Congress hasn't been willing to do it.
The Rachel Maddow Show
U.S. under Trump backs off countering Russian sabotage campaign in Europe
So Friday night, that meant Tim Walz showing up in an Iowa district that includes Des Moines, where Republican Congressman Zach Nunn has yet to commit to doing an in-person town hall with his constituents. Tim Walz is not the only one putting the pressure on Congressman Nunn. Have a look at this ad.
The Rachel Maddow Show
U.S. under Trump backs off countering Russian sabotage campaign in Europe
This is a new ad that I think is really, really effective from the political group Vote Vets, and they are running it in Zach Nunn's Iowa district. Watch.
The Rachel Maddow Show
U.S. under Trump backs off countering Russian sabotage campaign in Europe
There's a lot of positions you don't want to be in as an American politician, but maybe top of that list is do not mess with veterans, right? VoteVets is running those ads in five Republican congressional districts, including Zach Nunn's district in Iowa, also in Nebraska, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and in Virginia.
The Rachel Maddow Show
U.S. under Trump backs off countering Russian sabotage campaign in Europe
Despite advice from their party that they should not hold town halls, there are a few Republican members of Congress who have been doing it, whether virtually or face to face. These Republican members of Congress have been met with hundreds and in one case, thousands of angry constituents who are demanding answers.
The Rachel Maddow Show
U.S. under Trump backs off countering Russian sabotage campaign in Europe
In so doing, Ed Martin did not mention that he personally was also the defense attorney for that individual defendant. So he's the lawyer on both sides of that case. You can't do that. Ed Martin is the guy who said he wanted to open a criminal investigation into Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer and apparently tried to do so.
The Rachel Maddow Show
U.S. under Trump backs off countering Russian sabotage campaign in Europe
25,000. Trying to run these events on the computer instead of in person has not necessarily limited the demand from voters. For weeks now, town hall after town hall, one question, one topic comes up again and again and again at every single one of these Q&A sessions. And it's one of those issues that, again, you just can't be on the wrong side of in American politics.
The Rachel Maddow Show
U.S. under Trump backs off countering Russian sabotage campaign in Europe
But Republicans are this year, thanks to Donald Trump and Elon Musk. Watch.
The Rachel Maddow Show
U.S. under Trump backs off countering Russian sabotage campaign in Europe
Social Security is a promise between you and the federal government. Congressman Mike Flood doing his best yesterday in Nebraska, and you could hear his constituents reacting. If his constituents are feeling a little insecure about Social Security, there's good reason for that.
The Rachel Maddow Show
U.S. under Trump backs off countering Russian sabotage campaign in Europe
In addition to Social Security firing thousands of people who work at that agency and announcing plans to shut down dozens of Social Security field offices, the agency now plans to put new requirements in place that will send millions more people to local offices in person, if they can find one, instead of being able to solve things with the administration over the phone. Thank you. Thank you.
The Rachel Maddow Show
U.S. under Trump backs off countering Russian sabotage campaign in Europe
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
The Rachel Maddow Show
U.S. under Trump backs off countering Russian sabotage campaign in Europe
Ed Martin is the guy who has sent off typo-ridden, bizarre, threatening letters to at least two other Democratic members of Congress, Congressman Robert Garcia and Congressman Eugene Vindman.
The Rachel Maddow Show
U.S. under Trump backs off countering Russian sabotage campaign in Europe
Ed Martin is the guy who has posted bizarre, like, pseudo-legal fan letters to Elon Musk on Twitter, like this one, where he scratched out the typewritten address and wrote in by hand, Dear Elon, Dear Elon, After your referral, as is my practice, I will begin an inquiry. In case you're wondering, no, that is not how prosecutors' offices are supposed to work.
The Rachel Maddow Show
U.S. under Trump backs off countering Russian sabotage campaign in Europe
Roz Chast also wrote a fantastic book that I read a decade ago that has stuck with me ever since. It's cartoons. It's written in her style and in her art form, which is cartoons, but it's a memoir. It's about her parents aging into their late 90s and all the crazy decisions or the lack of decisions that made their lives and her life as their daughter such a mess as they got really old.
The Rachel Maddow Show
U.S. under Trump backs off countering Russian sabotage campaign in Europe
Thank you.
The Rachel Maddow Show
U.S. under Trump backs off countering Russian sabotage campaign in Europe
Thank you.
The Rachel Maddow Show
U.S. under Trump backs off countering Russian sabotage campaign in Europe
But just catch the flavor here a little bit of this thing. Quote, please let me reiterate again. Reiterate again, really. Please let me reiterate again. If people are discovered to have broken the law or even... Acted simply unethically, we will investigate them and, all bold letters, we will chase them to the end of the earth to hold them accountable. We will not rest or cease in this.
The Rachel Maddow Show
U.S. under Trump backs off countering Russian sabotage campaign in Europe
Noon is above the law. Noon. That's actually what he wrote. Noon is above the law. Get me Noon. So things have been a little crazy at the top federal prosecutor's office in Washington, D.C., even separate and apart from them firing all the career prosecutors and all the other things they've done. Things have just been a little bit nuts at the top federal prosecutor's office in Washington, D.C.
The Rachel Maddow Show
U.S. under Trump backs off countering Russian sabotage campaign in Europe
under Donald Trump. Noon! Noon! But when it comes to the overlap of scary and boring, not fun and boring, hi Bob, but scary and boring, when it comes to that particular story out of this office, the thing that has happened at this one prosecutor's office that I think about every day is a story about them freezing a bank account, freezing a bunch of money in a Citibank account.
The Rachel Maddow Show
U.S. under Trump backs off countering Russian sabotage campaign in Europe
And I know each of those syllables is more boring than the last. It's like impossible to even hold onto it in your head for a moment. Freezing a Citibank account? Why do I care? You know, part of the reason you could tell this was a really big deal when it first emerged is because it led to the shock resignation of the top criminal division lawyer in that prosecutor's office.
The Rachel Maddow Show
U.S. under Trump backs off countering Russian sabotage campaign in Europe
She basically laid out when she resigned what had happened there. And in non-legalese, what it boiled down to is that Ed Martin, the Trump-appointed prosecutor, the guy who was at January 6th, who's now running that office, Martin appears to have ordered her to bring a criminal investigation when she said there was no evidence of a crime.
The Rachel Maddow Show
U.S. under Trump backs off countering Russian sabotage campaign in Europe
Ed Martin, head prosecutor at that office appointed by Trump, told her to bring a criminal investigation. She said, no, there's no crime. You can't open a criminal investigation without evidence of a crime. He insisted she resigned. She said publicly why she was resigning to her credit. Ed Martin then tried to get another prosecutor's office to do it. They refused on the same grounds.
The Rachel Maddow Show
U.S. under Trump backs off countering Russian sabotage campaign in Europe
Then Ed Martin himself said, okay, I'll do it. He has no background as a prosecutor, which is sometimes obvious in the way he behaves, even in court. In this case, he went to a judge saying, this is my criminal investigation for which I need a warrant to go seize that bank account. The judge said, no. The judge said, no, hey, there is no probable cause that any crime has been committed here.
The Rachel Maddow Show
U.S. under Trump backs off countering Russian sabotage campaign in Europe
No, you cannot have it. Nevertheless, somehow the FBI and then the Treasury Department were enlisted in this caper and they leaned on the bank. And the people whose funds were in that bank were denied their funds. They somehow pushed this through anyway. That's how they froze that bank account. And in itself, that sounds boring. But because of the way they did it,
The Rachel Maddow Show
U.S. under Trump backs off countering Russian sabotage campaign in Europe
This seemingly boring thing is also the opening chapter of a very scary dystopian novel in which the government is seizing your phone records, obtaining all of your text messages and your emails and your iCloud and maybe raiding your house and raiding your office. And they are taking or freezing the contents of your bank account when there is no probable cause that you have committed a crime.
The Rachel Maddow Show
U.S. under Trump backs off countering Russian sabotage campaign in Europe
It's this very serious book, but told through cartoons. It's really good. It has stuck with me for a decade. It also has the perfect title, which is Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant Today? Anyway, needless to say, I'm a big Roz Chast fan and I have been my whole adult life.
The Rachel Maddow Show
U.S. under Trump backs off countering Russian sabotage campaign in Europe
Because what there is is a federal prosecutor's office that will do that stuff anyway, even when their own career prosecutors and a judge tell them, there's no crime here, you can't do it. So like I said, this is, I recognize this seems like a boring story in terms of all the proper nouns involved here, right? But it is scary in terms of what this means. And I think about this case every day.
The Rachel Maddow Show
U.S. under Trump backs off countering Russian sabotage campaign in Europe
And now we have had two important developments here. First of all, number one, they are in trouble in court now because of this case. A federal court has just ruled that nothing here seems kosher.
The Rachel Maddow Show
U.S. under Trump backs off countering Russian sabotage campaign in Europe
There are serious due process concerns and questions of whether defendants' actions were arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, otherwise not in accordance with law, contrary to statute, or unsupported by substantial evidence. There are procedures that must be followed.
The Rachel Maddow Show
U.S. under Trump backs off countering Russian sabotage campaign in Europe
Defendants vaguely reference multiple ongoing investigations, but offer no specific information about such investigations, factual support for the decision, or an individualized explanation for each plaintiff. This is insufficient. Quote, So, the first thing. This one boring, scary story that I think about every single day is now finally getting turned back by the courts, at least for now.
The Rachel Maddow Show
U.S. under Trump backs off countering Russian sabotage campaign in Europe
Those funds are being reinstated into that bank account. And whether or not you care about that bank account being restored, whether or not you
The Rachel Maddow Show
U.S. under Trump backs off countering Russian sabotage campaign in Europe
What is important here is that this one quite bananas prosecutor's office, for the moment, they have been stopped from doing the one thing that they were trying to get away with that really does afford the possibility of Trump just opening the floodgates against Democrats, protesters, journalists, government officials, potentially judges.
The Rachel Maddow Show
U.S. under Trump backs off countering Russian sabotage campaign in Europe
They have finally been stopped, at least for the moment, from doing something that I think, if they were able to do this, might reasonably result in a lot of people actually fleeing this country in very short order. So they have been held up on that by federal court in Washington. But I said there were two things that have happened on this case. Here's the other thing.
The Rachel Maddow Show
U.S. under Trump backs off countering Russian sabotage campaign in Europe
I mentioned that there was a big sort of splashy resignation when this all came into the public eye. That prosecutor, the head of the criminal division, the U.S. Attorney's Office in D.C., career prosecutor, very well respected, not at all a partisan, right? Not somebody who they had it out for, who was seen as like some, you know... you know, one of Trump's targets, not a person like that at all.
The Rachel Maddow Show
U.S. under Trump backs off countering Russian sabotage campaign in Europe
And one of Roz Chast's cartoons that I keep thinking about all the time in this news environment that we are living in right now is this one. And she has done several cartoons on this theme of Venn diagrams, right? You got two circles and they overlap, and the overlap is usually where the joke is.
The Rachel Maddow Show
U.S. under Trump backs off countering Russian sabotage campaign in Europe
She resigned rather than play a part in this. She resigned rather than, frankly, gin up a criminal prosecution where she said there was no evidence of any crime. When she resigned and explained in a letter what had happened, A, we, the public, got to see what was happening. Wow, scary. But the other thing that happened is then her job became vacant and they replaced her in that job.
The Rachel Maddow Show
U.S. under Trump backs off countering Russian sabotage campaign in Europe
There is a new person who is now the head of the criminal division at the U.S. Attorney's Office in D.C. And now we know what the new person who they put in that job has been doing. And surprise, he is apparently doing exactly the kind of thing his predecessor refused to do and resigned over.
The Rachel Maddow Show
U.S. under Trump backs off countering Russian sabotage campaign in Europe
So we've been covering the story of this little agency, a nonprofit created by Congress during the Reagan era. It's called the U.S. Institute of Peace. They're a small agency. They operate independent of the U.S. government. Their building is not a U.S. government building. They own it and operate it themselves. U.S.
The Rachel Maddow Show
U.S. under Trump backs off countering Russian sabotage campaign in Europe
Institute of Peace, if you care, their basic remit is to try to stop conflicts around the world from metastasizing into wars. Non-controversial, non-big agency in Washington. Again, essentially an independent nonprofit created by Congress, but they are their own thing. They're outside the U.S. government. On Friday, Trump and his top campaign donor, Elon Musk, sent Musk's people over to the U.S.
The Rachel Maddow Show
U.S. under Trump backs off countering Russian sabotage campaign in Europe
Institute of Peace, USIP, to go try to shut them down. And the people at USIP refused to let them in. And this is somehow that went down. This is from the Washington Post, something we've been covering for the last few days. Friday, Doge agents showed up at the USIP door with two others who said they were FBI agents but did not further identify themselves.
The Rachel Maddow Show
U.S. under Trump backs off countering Russian sabotage campaign in Europe
Noting that the building was not the property of the U.S. government, but owned by USIP, a registered nonprofit, and that its personnel were not federal employees, the Institute's officials asked if Doge had a court order for admission. The Doge agents acknowledged that they did not have a court order, and on Friday, they withdrew.
The Rachel Maddow Show
U.S. under Trump backs off countering Russian sabotage campaign in Europe
Then this weekend, Sunday night, the longtime outside legal counsel for the Institute received a call from the head of the criminal division at the D.C. U.S. Attorney's Office, newly appointed Jonathan Hornock. Hornock said his office was investigating suspicions of criminality at USIP. Suspicions of criminality? What?
The Rachel Maddow Show
U.S. under Trump backs off countering Russian sabotage campaign in Europe
Hornock said Trump's newly appointed supposed directors of the Institute, including Marco Rubio and Pete Hegseth, would like to inspect the books and records of the Institute. Hornock said anyone who obstructs our efforts is subject to criminal investigation, according to one person familiar with the call.
The Rachel Maddow Show
U.S. under Trump backs off countering Russian sabotage campaign in Europe
But in this one, it's a Venn diagram, and on the left, the circle is labeled fun, and on the right, the circle is labeled boring. And in the Venn diagram, overlap between fun and boring... That's Bob. Hi, Bob! Who is fun and boring. I think about that all the time. The version of this that I keep in my head in this news environment, though there's a slight difference, though.
The Rachel Maddow Show
U.S. under Trump backs off countering Russian sabotage campaign in Europe
And again, no, in case you're wondering, no, this is not how prosecutors offices are supposed to work. And this is not how prosecutors are supposed to talk. This is not the kind of work that prosecutors are supposed to do or ever do. Not in this country. But they used force of arms to get what they want, threatened criminal prosecution and ultimately guns.
The Rachel Maddow Show
U.S. under Trump backs off countering Russian sabotage campaign in Europe
According to The Washington Post, a private security company that works at that building was called by Doge and told that they would lose all of their federal contracts as a company if they did not help Doge personnel break into this building. Under that threat, these contractors then did help Doge force their way into the building.
The Rachel Maddow Show
U.S. under Trump backs off countering Russian sabotage campaign in Europe
They forced their way in and then immediately went to the gun safe inside the building to get weapons. The Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Police were also enlisted to help force Doge into the building, including, reportedly, picking the lock on the office's internal door. Now, the D.C. police, why were they there?
The Rachel Maddow Show
U.S. under Trump backs off countering Russian sabotage campaign in Europe
They have now said in a statement that the reason they did what they did was, surprise, because they were directed to by Ed Martin. They said they got a call from Ed Martin at the Washington, D.C. U.S. Attorney's Office telling them to do it, and so they did it. So this is this bananas federal prosecutor's office in Washington, the U.S.
The Rachel Maddow Show
U.S. under Trump backs off countering Russian sabotage campaign in Europe
Attorney's Office in Washington, threatening federal criminal prosecution against private entities who don't do what Doge wants them to do. Doge has no authority over private entities. But Doge said they wanted in there, they wanted to break into that building and they wanted to get access to everything in that building.
The Rachel Maddow Show
U.S. under Trump backs off countering Russian sabotage campaign in Europe
So the federal prosecutor's office threatened criminal suspicion, criminal investigation and criminal prosecution of that private entity for saying no. What did that letter say again? Dear Elon, after your referral, as is my practice, I will begin an inquiry. They are apparently using this part of the U.S.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: To block Trump's agenda, help Republican politicians find their spines
Let's do something different. Want some inspiration? I know this is like not typically the way that we start things, but I don't know. Complain, go ahead. Send me your complaints. Governor J.B. Pritzker is the governor of Illinois. He gave his state of the state speech today. And I'm going to show you some of it. I'm sure you about three minutes of it.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: To block Trump's agenda, help Republican politicians find their spines
And he did just vote to confirm someone who says that his physician's knowledge about vaccines is ridiculous. Because, what, Kennedy's sure that Bill Cassidy's 18-year-old patient must have gotten the hepatitis B from compulsive homosexual behavior or contact with a really well-seasoned prostitute?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: To block Trump's agenda, help Republican politicians find their spines
Senator Bill Cassidy really did just vote to confirm someone who appears to have lied right to his face. under oath in the confirmation process on saying he wouldn't revisit the kids' vaccine schedule, something that Bill Cassidy has effectively worked on his whole life. So will Bill Cassidy get brave on this? can't afford to give up on that prospect as a country.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: To block Trump's agenda, help Republican politicians find their spines
I should also mention that right now in this country, separate and apart from confirmation of anybody to anything, we have an active and apparently exploding measles outbreak in West Texas, which has now apparently crossed the border into New Mexico, an outbreak that appears to have been caused by people not getting the measles vaccine, the MMR vaccine.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: To block Trump's agenda, help Republican politicians find their spines
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., our nation's new health secretary, says that taking that vaccine makes us the, quote, land of the cowed, home of the slave. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has advocated, I kid you not, not only against that vaccine in the abstract, he has advocated specifically that getting measles is good for you, that you should try to get measles.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: To block Trump's agenda, help Republican politicians find their spines
Quote, facts about measles you won't learn from MS Pharmapedia. I don't even know what that means. Number six, unlike Merck's vaccine, wild measles infection confers lifetime immunity from measles. Having measles in childhood, he says, quote, may also reduce the risk of atopic disease, heart disease, Hodgkin's and non-Hodgkin's lymphomas, and some other cancers. Got that? Get measles.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: To block Trump's agenda, help Republican politicians find their spines
Try to get measles. It's good for you. It keeps you from getting cancer. says podcast man.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: To block Trump's agenda, help Republican politicians find their spines
But if you're the chairman of the Senate Health Committee and you're a practicing physician and our country has a current measles outbreak that has already put at least 13 kids in the hospital as of tonight, you know, one of the things you could do is you could call podcast guy in for a hearing to ask him some questions. to get some testimony.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: To block Trump's agenda, help Republican politicians find their spines
After Senator Cassidy oversaw the confirmation of Bobby Kennedy for that job of health secretary, just to add insult and further injury to injury, Senator Bill Cassidy's own home state of Louisiana announced that they will no longer promote vaccines for Louisiana school kids.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: To block Trump's agenda, help Republican politicians find their spines
On the strength, presumably, of the endorsement for vaccine quackery that the confirmation of Bobby Kennedy implied, they will no longer promote vaccines for kids in Louisiana. Senator Bill Cassidy, that is your home state. Look what you have wrought. Look what you are doing to your own life's work. And I say that, Senator Cassidy, because you have a ton of power here.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: To block Trump's agenda, help Republican politicians find their spines
You are the chairman of the health committee in the Senate. You can call Robert F. Kennedy Jr. into the Senate and hold hearings and demand information and demand testimony. And in so doing, you have more power than anybody in this country to turn this thing around. And it is something on which you are an expert and on which you are emotionally committed and to which you have devoted your life.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: To block Trump's agenda, help Republican politicians find their spines
You think I'll do it? Here's one last point. While all this is happening domestically, the Trump administration, of course, has also moved radically and quickly to move our country in international affairs to the other side of the board. Since World War II, we—since the end of World War II, we have been allied with Europe and essentially allied against Russia.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: To block Trump's agenda, help Republican politicians find their spines
Now we are apparently allied with the dictatorship in Russia, and we're against Europe.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: To block Trump's agenda, help Republican politicians find their spines
And today, as part of this 180-degree realignment of the United States from the proverbial allied side of the democracies to the Axis side of the dictatorships, today, President Trump said that in the Russia-Ukraine war, not only are we switching sides, but we're switching sides because it's Ukraine who's the dictatorship, and it's Ukraine who started the war, which is Orwellian backwards speak, right?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: To block Trump's agenda, help Republican politicians find their spines
Ukraine got invaded. They didn't invade themselves. them. And it's one thing for me to tell you that here on MSNBC in the 9 p.m. Eastern show, but what do Republican senators think about that, who have power to turn the country around, at least more power than anybody else does? Republican Senator Mike Rounds of South Dakota asked about what Trump said today.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: To block Trump's agenda, help Republican politicians find their spines
He said, actually, quote, Zelensky was the duly elected president of Ukraine, saying, quote, I think that has been, excuse me, I think he has been a key component in the fact that they've been able to withstand the Russian attacks. Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, quote, I would like to see that in context because I would certainly never refer to President Zelensky as a dictator.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: To block Trump's agenda, help Republican politicians find their spines
Trust me, Senator, the context doesn't help. Republican Senator Tom Tillis of North Carolina says, quote, dictator is not a word that I would use to describe Zelensky. You could push back on that if you disagree. It might matter, given that your job is Republican United States Senator.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: To block Trump's agenda, help Republican politicians find their spines
You alone might actually have a limiting effect on what is happening to our country right now, along these lines in which you plainly disagree with what the president is doing. Have you considered using your power? Here was Republican Senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi. about what he thinks of our new closest ally, Vladimir Putin.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: To block Trump's agenda, help Republican politicians find their spines
But you see that there's a foundation here for real leverage to stop what Trump is doing, or at least to try to stop it. I mean, he talks there about what his conversation with Secretary Hegseth might have caused. I think to the extent that his subsequent statement after we spoke was somewhat of a walkback, that was a favorable development. Senator Wicker talked to Pete Hegseth.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: To block Trump's agenda, help Republican politicians find their spines
That made Pete Hegseth take back his assertion that Ukraine can never be part of NATO and Russia gets to keep all of the parts of Ukraine that it's already claimed. Why is that? Because Senator Wicker is not a commentator, right? Senator Wicker is the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, the Republican chairman of that committee.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: To block Trump's agenda, help Republican politicians find their spines
He has power to wield here to stop the administration from doing what it's doing, which he plainly thinks is wrong. He doesn't think Vladimir Putin should be getting a state visit in the United States of America. He thinks if Vladimir Putin steps foot in the United States of America, he should be arrested, incarcerated for the rest of his life, or potentially executed.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: To block Trump's agenda, help Republican politicians find their spines
Well, it's one thing to think that. It's another thing to say it. You can even say it on a podcast and it won't matter. But if you say it and you're the Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, it matters. And you can change the actions of this government. Republicans at this point have power to change what Trump is doing if they can find their spines.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: To block Trump's agenda, help Republican politicians find their spines
And it may be the whole country's job to help them find it any way we can. Shouldn't be that hard if they're interested in their own political future. A new Quinnipiac polling out today shows not only that Donald Trump has gone from above water to underwater in his overall approval rating already just 30 days in, but look specifically on the issue of Vladimir Putin.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: To block Trump's agenda, help Republican politicians find their spines
81%.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: To block Trump's agenda, help Republican politicians find their spines
It's a grand total of 9% that says the U.S. should trust him, just as Trump is jumping into his lap. If we still have a functioning political system, the fact that the country is wildly against him, right, that Republican elected officials on their areas of expertise are wildly opposed to what Trump is doing on this and other issues, this should matter.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: To block Trump's agenda, help Republican politicians find their spines
And it's up to the whole country, to all of us, right, to make sure that it matters. To that end, dozens of protests all across the country today. We've got more on that next. Stay with us. This was outside the home office of Republican Congressman Cliff Bentz in Oregon this week. His constituents left him little notes. They called them Cliff Notes. Get it? Because his name is Cliff.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: To block Trump's agenda, help Republican politicians find their spines
They stuck their Cliff Notes on a cardboard cutout of their congressman. They say things like, support federal workers, protect your people. The Constitution is worth fighting for. Also, we want a town hall. Don't hide out east. Well, today, Republican Congressman Cliff Bents of Oregon did hold a town hall in his home district.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: To block Trump's agenda, help Republican politicians find their spines
The Baker City Herald newspaper reporting that more than 200 people showed up, which is, quote, much larger than has been typical over the past decade when other members of Congress have held town halls. Now, for context here, this is not blue Oregon. This is a county that Donald Trump won by 73 percent. He got 73 percent of the vote there.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: To block Trump's agenda, help Republican politicians find their spines
And yet the local paper, the Baker City Herald reports, quote, audience members made it clear from their statements and from their reactions to both questions and Benz's answers that they do not support the administration. According to that reporting, the majority of questions today were about Trump's executive orders and about Elon Musk and about firing government workers.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: To block Trump's agenda, help Republican politicians find their spines
Today was also another national day of protests, big protests in Boston and in New York City and in Chicago and in Washington, D.C. People who work for the federal government and people who support them, their regular fellow Americans rallying to try to stop the gutting of federal programs.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: To block Trump's agenda, help Republican politicians find their spines
There were more than a dozen protests today, specifically for university faculty and researchers who work on health care. Healthcare researchers and faculty members. This was Center City, Philadelphia. Hundreds of faculty and researchers from UPenn and from Temple University and Drexel. It was the same thing at Rutgers University in New Jersey.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: To block Trump's agenda, help Republican politicians find their spines
And in Chicago, researchers and faculty from Northwestern and DePaul and the University of Chicago. In D.C., outside the Department of Health and Human Services, scientists protested. Scientists whose work is funded by the federal government. And, you know, a lot of these protests are happening in D.C. and in other big cities.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: To block Trump's agenda, help Republican politicians find their spines
But because of the kind of leverage that we've been talking about tonight and on previous shows, I do think it's really worth watching what's happening in local press around the country, too, how they're covering from a local perspective what's going on in the government right now. Take, for example, the Des Moines Register. Look at this headline from yesterday.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: To block Trump's agenda, help Republican politicians find their spines
Quote, Elon Musk's indiscriminate carnage brings needless misery to these Iowans. Here's the oil city news in Wyoming. Quote, Valentine's Day massacre, uncounted throng of Wyomingites fired by Trump administration. Also this headline out of Kansas City. Quote, Kansas City doesn't have enough jobs available for all the federal workers getting laid off. And quote, Trump jobs purge hits Michigan.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: To block Trump's agenda, help Republican politicians find their spines
Quote, why did the president fire you, mommy? We talked last night about how this has been playing in Virginia, where the Republican governor there is Glenn Youngkin.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: To block Trump's agenda, help Republican politicians find their spines
He has just been tying himself into a pretzel, trying both to defend what Trump is doing and say how much he supports Trump, while his state proportionally has more federal workers and federal contracts than anywhere else in the country. Youngkin promises help for federal workers, but defends Trump job cuts. It's impossible to do both of those things at once.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: To block Trump's agenda, help Republican politicians find their spines
And the local press in Virginia is well aware of that. They are not fooled. Local press in Virginia, based on what they've been running lately, seems to be totally aware of what Trump is doing and what damage it means for their state. This, for example, was the editorial page in the Virginia Pilot newspaper today.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: To block Trump's agenda, help Republican politicians find their spines
Quote, as a winter storm expected to bring substantial snowfall approaches, communities throughout the region are making preparations. largely thanks to the detailed forecasting done by the meteorologist at the National Weather Service. That's another invaluable service President Donald Trump and Elon Musk hope to dismantle.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: To block Trump's agenda, help Republican politicians find their spines
Purposeless destruction that would make the public less informed and drive up costs to families and businesses. Having accurate, timely forecasts helps power companies prepare for outages and manage demand, it empowers governments to plan for disruptions, and it helps families prepare themselves in their homes for the possibility of severe weather, a key component of public safety.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: To block Trump's agenda, help Republican politicians find their spines
We know to prepare for near-record snowfall this week because the experienced and devoted public servants at the National Weather Service told us to. If Trump and Musk have their way, it would be the last such warning. And again, don't take it from me. This is the editorial page in a local paper in Virginia, the Virginia pilot.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: To block Trump's agenda, help Republican politicians find their spines
In Virginia, where so many people work for federal agencies, including the National Weather Service,
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: To block Trump's agenda, help Republican politicians find their spines
The threat to the economy and the relative inaction of the Republican governor there have, A, made people mad, B, ruined a lot of lives already, and C, have also caused Democrats in the state of Virginia to step into the void left by these Republican politicians who can't bring themselves to respond because they're so afraid of offending Donald Trump, no matter what he does to their state.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: To block Trump's agenda, help Republican politicians find their spines
Democrats in the Virginia legislature have just formed an emergency committee to help address the devastating consequences of Trump's actions for the people of Virginia. They are stepping into the void. This is an election year in Virginia. The Virginia House Speaker joins us next. Stay with us. Quote, what are you doing to protect us?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: To block Trump's agenda, help Republican politicians find their spines
This comes from the nonprofit, nonpartisan, independent, and totally mighty Cardinal News, quote, serving Southwest and Southside Virginia. The Democratic Speaker of the House in Virginia told Cardinal News this week that earlier this month, a neighbor of his who works for the VA, works for the Veterans Administration, stopped him and asked him, quote, what are you doing to protect us?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: To block Trump's agenda, help Republican politicians find their spines
With the Trump administration carrying out mass indiscriminate firings of the federal government workforce, he says his neighbor told him, quote, y'all need to look into it now.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: To block Trump's agenda, help Republican politicians find their spines
Three days later, Virginia House Speaker Don Scott announced a new bipartisan emergency committee in the Virginia legislature to study the effect of the federal job cuts and to figure out how to help Virginia residents whose lives have been torn apart by the chaos and the crisis in Washington as the Trump administration dismantles much of the federal government.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: To block Trump's agenda, help Republican politicians find their spines
The state of Virginia has the second largest population of federal workers of any state. About one in every 60 people works for the federal government. The state economy also gets more money from federal contracts than any other state in the country, more than $100 billion last year alone.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: To block Trump's agenda, help Republican politicians find their spines
Speaker Scott tells Cardinal News that what he is trying to do in the legislature is, quote, "'Look at the facts, the hard data, the sobering, boring facts.'" He says, quote, "'Right now, they are taking a sledgehammer to everything.'" I don't want to be in a position where we are panicking. Joining us now is Virginia House of Delegates Speaker Don Scott.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: To block Trump's agenda, help Republican politicians find their spines
He is the first African-American speaker of the Virginia legislature's 400-year history. Speaker Scott, I really appreciate you being here with us tonight. Thank you.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: To block Trump's agenda, help Republican politicians find their spines
I can tell a little bit about the impact of what's happening in Washington on the good people of Virginia just by looking at the numbers, looking at the proportion of Virginians who have jobs with the federal government or who are contractors paid by the federal government, looking at the raw numbers in terms of how much of the state's economy is buoyed by federal contracts tied to the federal government.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: To block Trump's agenda, help Republican politicians find their spines
So I can see how vulnerable Virginia is particularly to this chaos. But what can you tell me about how it is resonating thus far, how it is affecting people on the ground in your state?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: To block Trump's agenda, help Republican politicians find their spines
Virginia House of Delegates Speaker Don Scott, thank you for your time tonight. We've been following this closely and we will continue to. You would think it would be an advantage to have a governor who's the same party as the president, who's so supposedly so close and so complimentary to the president. So far, it hasn't seemed to pay any dividends for Virginia at all.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: To block Trump's agenda, help Republican politicians find their spines
We'd love to stay in touch with you, sir, as we watch how this unfolds as your state. You're really at the tip of the spear here.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: To block Trump's agenda, help Republican politicians find their spines
Thank you, sir. We'll be right back. A little bit of breaking news for you here. If you are born in the United States, you are an American. That is not breaking news. That is something that is written in our Constitution and has been true for the duration of our republic. That said, when Donald Trump was sworn in for his second term 30 days ago, he signed an executive order that
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: To block Trump's agenda, help Republican politicians find their spines
proclaimed that to no longer be true. This, of course, was immediately challenged in court. And among the federal courts it was laughed out of was one in Washington state. Seattle-based federal judge that Trump's executive order could not go into effect. The judge passed an injunction against the executive order going into effect.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: To block Trump's agenda, help Republican politicians find their spines
The Justice Department—or, excuse me, the Trump administration then appealed that. They've appealed it to the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, which sits on the West Coast. And tonight, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit has just declined the Justice Department's request to get rid of that judge's injunction to let Trump's executive order go into effect.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: To block Trump's agenda, help Republican politicians find their spines
The reason this is important is because this sets up potentially a rocket ship, very quick trip to the United States Supreme Court. When Trump passed this executive order, he knew, he had to know, that it was blatantly unconstitutional. The point of passing it anyway, of signing it anyway, was to get the Supreme Court to rule
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: To block Trump's agenda, help Republican politicians find their spines
Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker today speaking 30 days into the second presidential term of Donald Trump, raising the alarm explicitly that you don't need much longer than that to destroy a democracy and cause a major problem for the world and for humanity in perpetuity.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: To block Trump's agenda, help Republican politicians find their spines
And I know this is a little bit of a weird thing to put at the top of a national newscast. But I just you know what? I think this is really something and I think you should watch it. This is from the end of his state of the state today. Check it out.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: To block Trump's agenda, help Republican politicians find their spines
to effectively change the Constitution, to make it so that if you're born in this country, you are no longer a citizen. With this ruling tonight from a three-judge panel in the Ninth Circuit, this would appeal to be teed up for a challenge directly to the U.S. Supreme Court, one of the first matters that Trump has provoked a conflict with U.S.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: To block Trump's agenda, help Republican politicians find their spines
law and constitutional understanding about that is going to the Supreme Court, this ruling just in moments ago from the Ninth Circuit. We'll keep you posted as we learn more. All right. That's going to do it for me tonight. I will see you again tomorrow and every night this week at 9 p.m. Eastern here on MSNBC. In the meantime, you can always find me on Blue Sky.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: To block Trump's agenda, help Republican politicians find their spines
If you don't have Blue Sky yet, why don't you try it? It might not make you want to die. I'm on Blue Sky at matto.msnbc.com. I find it to be a more constructive experience there than on other social media properties. That's just what I think. matto.msnbc.com.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: To block Trump's agenda, help Republican politicians find their spines
Another big state Democratic governor today, Kathy Hochul of New York, gave a shorter, more pugnacious version of kind of that same message today after Trump ordered the end to a popular congestion pricing program in New York City. And in so doing, he proclaimed himself the king.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: To block Trump's agenda, help Republican politicians find their spines
He posted online a picture of himself in a crown with the phrase, long live the king, under a message about his action toward New York City. Here was New York Governor Kathy Hochul's response.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: To block Trump's agenda, help Republican politicians find their spines
At one point in her remarks today, Governor Hochul pulled out this photo that Trump had posted online of himself today, showing himself in a crown as a king. She held up a printout of that and said, the next time you're stuck in traffic, think of this. She then took questions from the press.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: To block Trump's agenda, help Republican politicians find their spines
The bear has been poked. Let me give you one more. And this is from a piece posted at The Nation tonight by the founders of Indivisible. We've talked to these founders on this show before. We've focused a lot on their organizing activities. They're a big grassroots national organizing group that has seen a record number of new chapters form in these last four weeks.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: To block Trump's agenda, help Republican politicians find their spines
turning out people to make calls and show up at congressional and Senate offices to protest, to demand town halls from their elected representatives to attend those town halls, to pressure Democrats to fight harder and more quickly and more comprehensively against what Trump is doing, to try to persuade and shame Republicans into standing up against Trump at all.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: To block Trump's agenda, help Republican politicians find their spines
At The Nation, the Indivisible co-founders wrote today that Democratic members of Congress and senators should start pushing harder, specifically against the Republicans they serve with. Quote, "...break the norms around congressional collegiality. It's typically considered rude for one member of Congress to confront another in public, but these aren't typical times."
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Maddow: To block Trump's agenda, help Republican politicians find their spines
The complicity of congressional Republicans in the trashing of our democracy cries out for the kind of loud and frequent confrontation that will cause members of the Washington Post editorial board to clutch their pearls.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: To block Trump's agenda, help Republican politicians find their spines
For those Republicans who refuse to face their constituents, Democrats should travel to their districts or states in order to publicize the real costs of MAGA appeasement to working families in those places. Quote, get creative and give protesters and activists a morally righteous conflict to rally around.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: To block Trump's agenda, help Republican politicians find their spines
Every time one of us, a family member, a community organizer, a representative, a senator, takes a step forward in this fight, a thousand pairs of eyes watch and learn. Courage is contagious. Take that step and steel yourself with the knowledge that you are the defender of a 250-year experiment in self-governance, a real-life pluralistic democracy, imperfect as it is, striving to be more perfect.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: To block Trump's agenda, help Republican politicians find their spines
Our predecessors deposed a brain-addled king. They crushed the violent insurrectionists of a slave-holding confederacy. They forced the robber barons to contend with workers and unions. They kicked the Nazis' asses throughout Europe. They broke the back of the Southern segregationist political bloc. They fought back against the terrorizing forces at Stonewall.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: To block Trump's agenda, help Republican politicians find their spines
We have planted ourselves in stubborn opposition to monomaniacal fascists of one form or another for a quarter of a millennium. no entitled reality TV has been, backed by an addle-brained billionaire who cheats at video games, is going to roll over us now. Need some inspiration? 30 days into this new administration.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: To block Trump's agenda, help Republican politicians find their spines
The radical nature of what's going on is waking something up in the braver politicians among us and in the activists as well. It is thus far not waking anything up, at least that we can tell, among Republicans in high elected office. And while that might sound like the dumbest Captain Obvious observation in the world,
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: To block Trump's agenda, help Republican politicians find their spines
It's one that I'm going to keep making because it is really, really crucially important to the outcome of this lightning speed authoritarian collapse that Trump is trying to force in Washington. I mean, not any one thing is going to do everything, right? Democrats getting big and getting smart in opposition, like we're seeing from governors, and that's going to matter.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: To block Trump's agenda, help Republican politicians find their spines
Regular people broadly standing up and saying no and protesting and organizing and making it as hard as possible for him to keep doing what he's doing, that matters. The survival of the press so people know what he's doing, that matters.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: To block Trump's agenda, help Republican politicians find their spines
But the closest you're going to get to stopping it at the source, to stopping, for example, the destruction of the American legal system, to stopping the destruction of our health system and the basic services that keep people alive and that keep the country functioning, the hardest leverage that can be applied against him at the source is what hypothetically would come from Republicans.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: To block Trump's agenda, help Republican politicians find their spines
And I know, cynically, you may never expect to get that. But strategically, you cannot stop trying to get it because of its crucial importance. And I'm just going to give you one example here, just one case study. Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy. I always think of him as having kind of an unforgettable name, but a very memorable haircut.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: To block Trump's agenda, help Republican politicians find their spines
He always looked to me like an otherwise healthy person who has just been gently electrocuted. But Senator Bill Cassidy is a senator. He's also a physician. He's a gastroenterologist. He got into the Senate in a campaign in 2014 that largely focused on his role as a doctor.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: To block Trump's agenda, help Republican politicians find their spines
He was best known, including in that campaign, not just for being a good doctor for his individual patients, but for having championed in his home state of Louisiana, having championed a new free vaccination program for Louisiana school kids. Specifically, hepatitis B vaccination. And he frequently told this important, heartbreaking story about what he called his worst day as a doctor.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: To block Trump's agenda, help Republican politicians find their spines
Senator Bill Cassidy, as a doctor, had an 18-year-old patient who had contracted hepatitis B. And as an 18-year-old, her health crashed. He had to scramble to have her airlifted to Shreveport, Louisiana, to get an emergency liver transplant.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: To block Trump's agenda, help Republican politicians find their spines
He said in one interview with the Washington Post, quote, I was sitting there thinking, if we had vaccinated this girl with a $50 vaccine, we could have saved a $250,000 operation and a lifetime of $50,000 a year medical bills. And that was just one interview that he did about this case. But he's given a ton of interviews about this case. He talks about it all the time.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: To block Trump's agenda, help Republican politicians find their spines
He talked about it for years. He still talks about it. He relayed that story again in his opening statement in the confirmation hearings that he oversaw for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be Secretary of Health and Human Services. Senator Bill Cassidy is now chairman of the Health Committee in the Senate. And he explains his calling to public service
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: To block Trump's agenda, help Republican politicians find their spines
by telling that story of his personal experience with that patient, that tragedy of his young patient nearly losing her life for having not had a Hep B vaccination when she was little. That caused him to create a really important program that vaccinated tens of thousands of kids in his state.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: To block Trump's agenda, help Republican politicians find their spines
But that program and that revelation about the importance of that kind of public health effort, it's arguably the whole reason he is a senator at all. Hep B vaccination for kids is his origin story as a public servant. It is the one thing he most wants to be known for, and probably the thing he most is known for. At least so far.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: To block Trump's agenda, help Republican politicians find their spines
Because now he's the chair of the health committee in the second Trump term. And as the senator who chairs the health committee, he did just oversee the confirmation of Bobby Kennedy Jr. to be the nation's health secretary. And here's him on hep B vaccination and what a stupid idea it is.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: To block Trump's agenda, help Republican politicians find their spines
Compulsive homosexual behavior or going to a really well-seasoned prostitute. That's the only way you get hepatitis B. He intones on Joe Rogan's podcast, which is not at all true. And that's okay. You can believe stuff that's not true. You can say anything you want on a podcast, knock yourself out.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: To block Trump's agenda, help Republican politicians find their spines
But in a working political system, you probably don't then get confirmed as health secretary in the United States government. If the chairman of the health committee in the Senate that has to confirm you actually does know what he's talking about on this issue because he's a gastroenterologist who's devoted his life as a public servant to the cause of hep B vaccination saving young people's lives.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: To block Trump's agenda, help Republican politicians find their spines
Senator Bill Cassidy nevertheless ate up that pile and cast his vote for Bobby Kennedy to be health secretary in the United States. He said that he'd had conversations with Kennedy that assured him that Kennedy wasn't essentially as crazy on this issue of vaccines as he seemed. He also, though, in the confirmation process, got an explicit assurance from Kennedy that
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: To block Trump's agenda, help Republican politicians find their spines
that if he were confirmed as health secretary, he wouldn't try to change the vaccine schedule for American kids. Well, now Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been sworn in as health secretary, and in his first full day on the job, wouldn't you know it, he confirmed that he definitely is going to look into that vaccine schedule, saying, quote, nothing's going to be off limits.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: To block Trump's agenda, help Republican politicians find their spines
He said he wouldn't, but right away, he's doing it. Republican Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana hasn't been brave yet. He does not feel inspired by calls to man the barricades to stand up for democracy. Honestly, he just does not appear to be inspired along these lines like some other Americans may be. But he does chair the health committee in the United States Senate.
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Outrage and exposure halts Trump's plans for Social Security service cuts
Congressman John Larson represents Hartford, Connecticut. And he's an old guy, and I say that with affection. He's in his mid to late 70s. He's held this seat in Congress from Connecticut for more than 25 years. And he may look familiar to you. He may not. He's not one of the more famous longtime members of Congress.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Outrage and exposure halts Trump's plans for Social Security service cuts
Congressman Derek Van Orden, the Wisconsin Republican whose constituents are right now only getting in-person meetings with a congressman when a nearby Democratic congressman decides to host them. But that was him today on Facebook Live.
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Outrage and exposure halts Trump's plans for Social Security service cuts
We also recently covered California Congressman Kevin Kiley, who is also refusing to meet in person with his constituents after a group of his constituents protested at his office. several days ago and announced that the local indivisible group would hold their own town hall for him, whether or not he was going to show up and be there. Today, hey, what do you know?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Outrage and exposure halts Trump's plans for Social Security service cuts
Congressman Kiley's office announced that he will do an online-only town hall on Monday. We're expecting former Democratic Congressman Tom Malinowski to hold a town hall in the New Jersey congressional district that's represented by Republican Tom Kaine. That'll be tomorrow night. Tom Malinowski is doing that because Kaine is apparently too afraid to meet with his constituents in New Jersey.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Outrage and exposure halts Trump's plans for Social Security service cuts
So a Democratic former congressman will do it for him instead. We're expecting the same this weekend, Sunday, from California Democratic Congressman Ro Khanna. who says he's going to do three town halls in one day in three different Republican districts, Republican districts represented by California Republican Congressman David Valdeo, Young Kim and Ken Calvert.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Outrage and exposure halts Trump's plans for Social Security service cuts
These three Republican members of Congress from California will not meet with their own constituents right now. And so Democratic Congressman Ro Khanna will travel to each of those Republican districts and hold town halls for them. The mass firings that we talked about here on the show last night at the U.S. Department of Education, they went ahead today.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Outrage and exposure halts Trump's plans for Social Security service cuts
Last night and today, they fired 1,300 people who work at the U.S. Department of Education. They've now removed almost half of the staff from that agency, and they say they intend to fully shut down the U.S. Department of Education. This is a wildly unpopular thing to do. Two-thirds of Americans say they do not want the U.S. Department of Education to be shut down.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Outrage and exposure halts Trump's plans for Social Security service cuts
Trump and Republicans are going ahead with it anyway, apparently. Huh, I wonder why they don't want to do town halls. I wonder why they don't want to answer questions about what they're doing. Also, today, they are firing another 1,000 people who work at the National Weather Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Outrage and exposure halts Trump's plans for Social Security service cuts
This is the agency that gives us hurricane warnings, tornado warnings, Flood warnings. Tsunami warnings. They warn about avalanches. They provide navigation information to ships. They provide crucial, crucial information to the commercial fishing industry. This is who monitors geomagnetic storms that can affect the electrical grid from space.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Outrage and exposure halts Trump's plans for Social Security service cuts
This is the agency from which we get the weather forecast. With this new round of a thousand more people being fired from NOAA, Trump will have fired basically one out of every four people who works at that whole agency. Boy, that sounds like a popular thing, right?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Outrage and exposure halts Trump's plans for Social Security service cuts
Sure, if there's one thing Americans have surely felt is wasteful, it's having a weather forecast or a tornado warning when one's coming. What a luxury. That's so liberal. That's so liberal. Please. Tornado warnings. Snowflakes. This week, they have emptied out the whole National Security Division at the U.S. Department of Justice.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Outrage and exposure halts Trump's plans for Social Security service cuts
Today, we learned they have also emptied out and are maybe just ending the Public Integrity Unit at the Department of Justice, which is the unit that prosecutes public corruption. They're just getting rid of the prosecution of public corruption. Is this a popular thing? This and also what they're doing to the economy.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Outrage and exposure halts Trump's plans for Social Security service cuts
A new poll out today from CNN shows Donald Trump underwater by nine points overall in terms of his approval rating. He's only 50 days into this term. A big majority of the country, 56%, disapproves of Donald Trump's handling of the economy. 56% disapproval. That is the worst number he has ever had on that issue. Do you approve of the way Donald Trump is handling the economy? No. 56% say no.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Outrage and exposure halts Trump's plans for Social Security service cuts
Do you approve of Donald Trump's handling of healthcare? No. 56% of Americans say no. Do you approve of Donald Trump's handling of foreign affairs? No. 58% of Americans say no. Do you approve of Donald Trump's handling of tariffs? Tariffs, his signature issue. How's he doing on that? The answer is no. 61% of Americans say they do not approve of Donald Trump
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Outrage and exposure halts Trump's plans for Social Security service cuts
on his handling of that signature issue, the thing he most wants to be known for. Sixty-one percent say no. Do you like J.D. Vance, the vice president of the United States? No. Eleven points underwater. Do you like Elon Musk? No. God, no. Elon Musk is 18 points underwater. That's so far underwater, it's starting to get hot because you're getting close to the center of the earth.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Outrage and exposure halts Trump's plans for Social Security service cuts
The one question they got a really big yes for when it comes to Donald Trump, is this one from the CNN poll. Quote, overall, would you describe the views and policies of Donald Trump as too extreme? On that one, yes. Yes, a big yes. 59% of the country says yes, Donald Trump is too extreme. That is an 18-point gap over the number of people who say, oh no, Trump's mainstream, he's fine.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Outrage and exposure halts Trump's plans for Social Security service cuts
And that actually matches another new poll that's out today from Reuters, Ipsos. A large majority of the public saying that Trump's handling of the economy is, quote, too erratic. Fifty seven percent of Americans say his handling of the economy is erratic. The proportion of people who say that Trump's economic policies will raise prices and make the cost of living more expensive is 70%.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Outrage and exposure halts Trump's plans for Social Security service cuts
Now, that's not people who think generically that they think costs and prices are going to go up for some reason. 70% of Americans say Donald Trump personally is making costs and prices go up on purpose because of what he's doing with his economic policies or lack thereof. So there's a lot going on.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Outrage and exposure halts Trump's plans for Social Security service cuts
The American people are deeply annoyed about much of it, and they are pushing back in all sorts of ornery and increasingly creative ways. I see you, Congressman Larson. We see you. But for all the unpopular things that Trump is doing, there is one thing you might not have heard about that he is doing specifically in the Deep South. And it is... Almost unfathomable. It's just jaw-dropping.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Outrage and exposure halts Trump's plans for Social Security service cuts
And we here at MSNBC have sent one of our best there to see it up close, to bring you that story. And we've got that for you here next. You're going to want to see this. Stay with us. This is an elementary school. It's called the Fifth Ward Elementary School in Reserve, Louisiana. Fifth Ward Elementary was a predominantly black elementary school in this part of Louisiana.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Outrage and exposure halts Trump's plans for Social Security service cuts
I say was because last year the local school board voted to shut down that elementary school at the end of this school year. They voted to shut it down because that elementary school, look what it's right next to. It sits about a quarter mile away from a big petrochemical plant, one that the federal government said was putting people in the surrounding community at an unacceptable risk of cancer.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Outrage and exposure halts Trump's plans for Social Security service cuts
There's an 80-mile stretch along the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans that has earned the terrible nickname Cancer Alley.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Outrage and exposure halts Trump's plans for Social Security service cuts
It's earned that name because of more than 200 petrochemical facilities along that stretch of river where the EPA has repeatedly found that residents are exposed to more than 10 times the level of health risk from hazardous air pollutants than people living elsewhere in the state. That's according to a report from Human Rights Watch.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Outrage and exposure halts Trump's plans for Social Security service cuts
When Joe Biden was president, the Justice Department and the EPA decided they were going to take some action there. The Biden-era Justice Department and the EPA brought a landmark lawsuit against that big petrochemical plant, that one that's just down the road from that elementary school. It's called the Denka Performance Elastomer Plant. They make neoprene.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Outrage and exposure halts Trump's plans for Social Security service cuts
In its lawsuit, the Biden administration alleged that the Denka facility was releasing unsafe levels of a toxic carcinogenic chemical called chloroprene into the air.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Outrage and exposure halts Trump's plans for Social Security service cuts
It said in the lawsuit, quote, the increased cancer risk that the communities near the facility are currently being exposed to because of Denka's chloroprene emissions presents an imminent and substantial endangerment to public health and welfare. In the aggregate, the thousands of people breathing this air are incurring a significantly higher cancer risk than would be typically allowed.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Outrage and exposure halts Trump's plans for Social Security service cuts
They are being exposed to a much greater cancer risk from Denka's air pollution than the majority of U.S. residents face. That action was taken under the last president, Joe Biden. Now, new president, radically different story. Donald Trump's Justice Department has just announced that they are dropping the lawsuit against that chemical plant. And they say they are dropping it because... DEI. Huh?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Outrage and exposure halts Trump's plans for Social Security service cuts
Seriously, they said that dropping this case, quote, fulfills President Trump's day one executive order, ending radical and wasteful government DEI programs and preferencing. Because it's mostly black people who live nearby? Is that what you're saying? My colleague Alex Wagner traveled to southeast Louisiana this week to see the plant, to meet the people who live nearby.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Outrage and exposure halts Trump's plans for Social Security service cuts
I should say before I show you this next part that it is impossible for anyone to know what exactly caused any particular illness in this community. But what you're about to see reflects how things feel in the community of that plant. You'll also hear references to another chemical company, DuPont. That's because this facility used to be owned by DuPont.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Outrage and exposure halts Trump's plans for Social Security service cuts
MSNBC has reached out to Denka for comment. We've not heard back. Denka did stay in a statement published by the Washington Post that the dismissal of this lawsuit represents a long overdue and appropriate end to a case lacking scientific and legal merit from the start. The company said it, quote, remains committed to reducing chloroprene emissions at the plant.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Outrage and exposure halts Trump's plans for Social Security service cuts
But for members of that community, that kind of promise, as you might imagine, just isn't nearly enough.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Outrage and exposure halts Trump's plans for Social Security service cuts
Joining us now is Alex Wagner. Alex, this is incredible reporting and this is an amazing trip. Thanks for being here to talk about it.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Outrage and exposure halts Trump's plans for Social Security service cuts
That said, if you have seen news about him recently in the past few weeks, it was for a not good reason. There was worrying news about him just about a month ago now. He was speaking on the House floor, and he froze up. He stopped speaking suddenly and awkwardly, and then he seemed to really have a hard time starting up his speech again. He just froze. It was clearly some kind of medical incident.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Outrage and exposure halts Trump's plans for Social Security service cuts
Alex, can I just ask you, Alex, that when you're talking to these folks, did they see this coming from Trump? Obviously, this lawsuit was filed. The plant was on a very different trajectory under Joe Biden with that previous DOJ and EPA case. Did they see this coming? Did they have time to prepare for it?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Outrage and exposure halts Trump's plans for Social Security service cuts
It seems like they're starting to talk to you about what they're going to try to do to organize in response.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Outrage and exposure halts Trump's plans for Social Security service cuts
Wow. Incredibly important reporting, amazing and absolutely horrifying story. Alex Wagner, God bless you, my friend. I really appreciate you doing this. God bless you for doing this, Rachel. Thank you. All right. Thanks, Alex. We'll be right back. All right.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Outrage and exposure halts Trump's plans for Social Security service cuts
Tonight, we are awaiting a ruling from a federal judge that could result in thousands of federal workers who have just been fired getting their jobs back, at least temporarily. NBC News reports that after a hearing today in Maryland, the judge appears likely to reinstate those workers who were fired by the Trump administration. And he says that he would issue a ruling promptly.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Outrage and exposure halts Trump's plans for Social Security service cuts
Well, if the judge rules in that direction, this would be just the latest in a nearly unbroken losing streak in court when it comes to the many attempts by Donald Trump and his top campaign donor, Elon Musk, to fire huge swaths of federal workers indiscriminately.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Outrage and exposure halts Trump's plans for Social Security service cuts
These efforts to gut the federal government have been centered at a small government agency called the Office of Personnel Management, OPMs, supposedly like the HR office for the federal government.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Outrage and exposure halts Trump's plans for Social Security service cuts
At 12.01 p.m., one minute afternoon on Inauguration Day, literally within seconds of Donald Trump officially becoming president again, Elon Musk's Doge team were at OPM, getting themselves into that agency's computer systems, which contains the personal data of millions of federal employees. They locked everybody else out of that computer system.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Outrage and exposure halts Trump's plans for Social Security service cuts
They installed sofa beds so they could be there all the time. And it sounds like they were just peachy to have around. Three OPM officials told the Washington Post that, quote, morale plummeted as Doge agents clashed with senior career personnel. One official recalled a recent meeting in which a young Doge team member began screaming at senior developers and calling them, quote, idiots.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Outrage and exposure halts Trump's plans for Social Security service cuts
Elon Musk and his friendly band took over OPM first, apparently because they wanted to use it for their campaign to fire as much of the federal workforce as they possibly could. OPM was the entity that sent mass emails to federal workers urging them all to quit, essentially threatening them all that they needed to quit.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Outrage and exposure halts Trump's plans for Social Security service cuts
That was some of the email that said they should find higher productivity jobs rather than their low productivity jobs in the public sector. OPM ordered agencies to start firing people, but some workers were told they received termination notices in error. So, okay, no, no, no, come back. The same employees in some cases were later told, no, sorry, we did mean it, you actually are fired.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Outrage and exposure halts Trump's plans for Social Security service cuts
Those firings were quickly found to be likely against the law. This was the actual quote from the federal judge looking at that case, quote, OPM does not have any authority whatsoever under any statute in the history of the universe to fire employees at other government agencies. After that brushback from a federal judge, OPM then tried to say, actually, it had never ordered any of these firings.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Outrage and exposure halts Trump's plans for Social Security service cuts
They were just, you know, offering their suggestions. Famously, OPM also sent out Elon Musk's demand that every single federal employee had to send him an email listing five things they had done in the past week or they would be fired. After a couple days of confusion and panic, OPM then said, oh, of course, we meant for that email to be voluntary.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Outrage and exposure halts Trump's plans for Social Security service cuts
And then they said, actually, no, it's not voluntary. Justifying your job to Elon Musk is mandatory. Yeah. So luckily, there's real steady leadership and communication at the Office of Personnel Management, right? No questions at all about who's running the ship there and how good they are, making sure the American government workforce is only purely high productivity folks.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Outrage and exposure halts Trump's plans for Social Security service cuts
But we have some questions about that. We have some questions about that specifically at that office. And we've got those questions for you here next. Hold that thought.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Outrage and exposure halts Trump's plans for Social Security service cuts
Kept all the right people. We kept all the good people. So the people who got gone, they weren't right. They weren't good. Last night, after firing almost half the people who work at the Education Department, Education Secretary Linda McMahon went on Fox News to assure, don't worry, we kept all the good people, all the right people.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Outrage and exposure halts Trump's plans for Social Security service cuts
Today, Donald Trump said the thousands of workers being fired did no work at all. They never showed up to work. Quote, we are keeping the best people. Are you? Is it only the best people that you're keeping? I mean, they're firing thousands, tens of thousands. Looks like they want it to end up being hundreds of thousands of people from the federal government.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Outrage and exposure halts Trump's plans for Social Security service cuts
But they say it's no harm done because it's only the bad people who they're firing. All the people they're firing are bad or poor performers or they're lazy or they don't really exist or they don't show up or they have second jobs or they're all bad. All of them. They only want the good people, like them, the ones that came in with them. Those are the only people they want left in the government.
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Outrage and exposure halts Trump's plans for Social Security service cuts
How's that going? Headline, Trump official tasked with defending doge cuts posted fashion influencer videos from her office. This is real. This is an amazing story reported out today by our friends at CNN.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Outrage and exposure halts Trump's plans for Social Security service cuts
Quote, as the Office of Personal Management oversaw the layoffs of thousands of federal workers and pressed others to justify their positions, the agency's chief spokesperson repeatedly used her office for a side hustle. Aspiring Instagram fashion influencer.
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Outrage and exposure halts Trump's plans for Social Security service cuts
In at least a dozen videos filmed in her Office of Personnel Management office in the federal government, she modeled her outfit choices for the day while directing followers from her Instagram account to a website that could earn her commissions on clothing sales.
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Outrage and exposure halts Trump's plans for Social Security service cuts
On the same day, for example, that OPM sent a government-wide memo pressing federal officials to swiftly terminate poor performing employees, she posted a video blowing a kiss to the camera with the caption work look and the hashtag DC influencer. Her Instagram account linked to a site where viewers could buy the $475 purple skirt she wore in that video.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Outrage and exposure halts Trump's plans for Social Security service cuts
On the day 20 people on her communications team lost their jobs with the federal government, she posted this video, captioned, A Moment for Mixed Patterns. When the Elon Musk justify your job with five things email went out, she described it as, quote, a commitment to an efficient and accountable federal workforce. The same week, she posted on Instagram, quote, the businesswoman special.
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Outrage and exposure halts Trump's plans for Social Security service cuts
One former OPM communications staffer told CNN, quote, I saw it and I was like, are you kidding me? That's my office. The new Trump administration spokeswoman deleted her Instagram account minutes after CNN asked about it. She tells the New York Times today that she never made any money from the account. But that's how it's going now at the Office of Personnel Management under Donald Trump.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Outrage and exposure halts Trump's plans for Social Security service cuts
Honestly, kudos to CNN for this story. It's amazing. And again, tonight we are waiting on a court ruling that may find that all of these thousands of firings orchestrated largely by OPM were illegal or hashtag illegal. Watch this space. All right, that's going to do it for me for now. See you again tomorrow and every night this week at 9 p.m. Eastern.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Outrage and exposure halts Trump's plans for Social Security service cuts
That is veteran Democratic Congressman John Larson of Connecticut just ripping the bark off today about Social Security and what Republicans are really doing here. And indeed, as he was ripping that bark off in Congress, look at what the Washington Post was publishing just down the road. Um, quote, social security facing pressure from Doge weighs big cuts to phone service.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Outrage and exposure halts Trump's plans for Social Security service cuts
Agency considers ending phone program that is used by millions of elderly and disabled Americans. One gobsmacked Social Security Administration employee told The Post today that this radical change, this radical cut to services that they were moving on in the Trump administration, quote, would be the single largest service disruption in agency history ever.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Outrage and exposure halts Trump's plans for Social Security service cuts
The single largest service disruption in Social Security ever. Elon Musk's plan for Social Security was to, quote, end telephone service for claims processing, instead directing elderly and disabled people to the Internet and to in-person field offices. Quote, the agency's toll-free number is a mainstay for older customers who do not have online access or who have trouble navigating the Internet.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Outrage and exposure halts Trump's plans for Social Security service cuts
About 40% of the claims that get made to Social Security are made over the phone, using this phone line that Elon Musk now wants to kill. 40% of the claims at the agency.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Outrage and exposure halts Trump's plans for Social Security service cuts
It was definitely scary to see. He did not pass out or anything. He went to the Capitol physician. They ran some tests on him. His office says the conclusion was that they think basically he just had an adverse reaction to a new medication he had just started. The good news is by later that day, he was back at his office. He was having regular meetings and was apparently OK.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Outrage and exposure halts Trump's plans for Social Security service cuts
And naturally, this move to close the phone line and instead force old people and disabled people to go in-person to in-person field offices, naturally, that comes as Donald Trump is firing 7,000 people who work at Social Security and closing tons of the aforementioned field offices.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Outrage and exposure halts Trump's plans for Social Security service cuts
President Biden's Social Security Administrator, former Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley, ripped the bark off himself in his comments to The Post on this planned cut. Quote, it would certainly appear, he said, that they're trying to break the capacity of the agency to serve its customers.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Outrage and exposure halts Trump's plans for Social Security service cuts
And I suppose if they're trying to dismember the agency, liquidate its assets, sell pieces of it to their billionaire friends to run, they have to discredit the agency in the eyes of its customers. And they do that by breaking its ability to serve.
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Outrage and exposure halts Trump's plans for Social Security service cuts
The Post says, quote, the Doge-driven proposal to shift all claims processing online and to in-person offices has spurred pushback internally, employees said, and from outside experts for the same reasons, that it would be likely to imperil millions of Americans' ability to receive their earned benefits. This is what they're doing. This is what's going on. And so this is what happens today.
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Outrage and exposure halts Trump's plans for Social Security service cuts
Congressman John Larson, who I just showed you, screams his freaking head off in Congress about it this morning. Screams at them. And then at noon, the Washington Post publishes this horror movie script about their plan, indeed, to rip the guts out of Social Security, beyond firing everybody, which they're already doing, right?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Outrage and exposure halts Trump's plans for Social Security service cuts
Beyond closing the field offices, they're now making it so that old and disabled people literally cannot call anyone to find out what's going on. But then you know what happened? they caved. They decided not to do it. Don't let anybody tell you that pushback doesn't work. Don't let anybody tell you that yelling and making a fuss doesn't matter, or that journalism doesn't matter.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Outrage and exposure halts Trump's plans for Social Security service cuts
I mean, it doesn't always matter, but honestly, it's the only thing that ever does. Every single time you don't try, you lose. But sometimes when you try, you win. It's the reason it's worth trying. And so now this is the headline at the Washington Post as of 7 o'clock tonight. Quote, Social Security scraps far-reaching cuts to phone services after Post report.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Outrage and exposure halts Trump's plans for Social Security service cuts
Quote, the Social Security Administration late Wednesday abandoned plans it was considering to end phone service for millions of Americans filing retirement and disability claims after The Washington Post reported that Elon Musk's U.S. Doge service team was weighing the change.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Outrage and exposure halts Trump's plans for Social Security service cuts
The shift would have directed elderly and disabled people to rely on the Internet and in-person field offices to process their claims, curtailing a service that 73 million Americans have relied on for decades. for decades to access earned government benefits. They were going to do this. We did good journalism exposing that this is what they were planning on doing.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Outrage and exposure halts Trump's plans for Social Security service cuts
And the resulting eruption scared them and made them not do it. Pushback matters. Exposing what they are doing matters. demanding Republicans fill the chair, show up, invite the witnesses in, let us question people, demanding that Republicans actually answer for what Trump is doing, Republicans actually explain themselves, try to justify what it is he's doing.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Outrage and exposure halts Trump's plans for Social Security service cuts
But again, that health scare, that little point of alarm about Congressman John Larson, that was only just about a month ago. That said, here tonight, I'm happy to report that Congressman John Larson is definitely back and at full strength. He has been eating his proverbial Wheaties. He appears to be very hydrated, very energized. And may I suggest you get out of his way. Watch this.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Outrage and exposure halts Trump's plans for Social Security service cuts
It turns out those demands can have an effect, which is why you see people all over the country pushing everywhere to get answers out of these guys.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Outrage and exposure halts Trump's plans for Social Security service cuts
That's Republican Congressman Austin Scott of Georgia, who apparently has not held an in-person town hall in more than a decade. He's now refusing his constituents' request that he hold one. And so they're going to be holding one themselves in the parking lot of his district office on Monday, hoping that he shows up. That's in central Georgia.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Outrage and exposure halts Trump's plans for Social Security service cuts
As Republican members of Congress continue to refuse to meet with their constituents, you are seeing local news like that package and like this account in Green Bay, Wisconsin today, where Republican Congressman Tony Wheat is being criticized by his constituents for refusing to meet in person and for only taking what the constituents described as pro-Republican, carefully screened calls on a recent teletown hall that he held because he didn't want to hold one in person.
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Outrage and exposure halts Trump's plans for Social Security service cuts
Same thing unfolding in the local press in Colorado with Republican Congressman Jeff Hurd.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Outrage and exposure halts Trump's plans for Social Security service cuts
It's important for me to see folks face-to-face. Not that important. Not so important that I'm actually going to do it. Last night, we talked about this newly emerging dynamic where Democrats are holding town halls for the constituents of Republican members of Congress who won't.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Outrage and exposure halts Trump's plans for Social Security service cuts
Democratic Congressman Mark Pocan was here on this show last night to talk about holding an in-person town hall in Wisconsin near the district of Republican Congressman Derek Van Orden, who apparently won't meet with people in his district in person. But hey, what do you know?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Outrage and exposure halts Trump's plans for Social Security service cuts
After Mark Pocan did that this weekend, met with Congressman Derek Van Orden's constituents this past weekend, and then after he got a ton of local press coverage for having done that, after he was here last night to talk about having done that, wouldn't you know, hey, today, Republican Congressman Derek Van Orden did decide to hastily get on Facebook Live and call that a town hall today in the middle of the workday.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Outrage and exposure halts Trump's plans for Social Security service cuts
Maybe because it seemed to have been organized on quite short notice, it did not go great. I'll show you what I mean. See if you can follow his logic here.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Outrage and exposure halts Trump's plans for Social Security service cuts
So first of all, all these firings of people who have federal government jobs, that has nothing to do with Doge. It totally wasn't them. Also, there's a system that if you think somebody's been fired who shouldn't have been, and the system is that you should call Doge, right? You should get a hold of the Doge folks directly, he says. Go ahead. Or through us.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Outrage and exposure halts Trump's plans for Social Security service cuts
Congressman Van Orden says he can help you get in touch with the Doge folks directly because that's the redress system in case anybody has been fired from the federal government who shouldn't be. That's the system.
The Rachel Maddow Show
American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
Thanks to at home for joining us this hour. Really happy to have you here this Friday night. I love days like this. I love news days like this. There's so much to show you. Here's Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania today. People turned out to stand up for science. That was the name of the protest. To protest against the Trump administration's indiscriminate cuts to science in all ways.
The Rachel Maddow Show
American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
He was the defense counsel for that infant formula manufacturer. For what it's worth, the FDA tells us that Don Jr. 's hunting buddy will comply with an ethics agreement that includes specific recusals related to the baby food formula company.
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American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
But, you know, representing the baby formula company associated with a deadly bowel condition in premature infants is apparently what recommended him for Donald Trump to pick him among all other available choices. As the person who should be in charge of human food safety for the United States of America. And so now, tonight, there he is.
The Rachel Maddow Show
American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
You should also know that among the people who Donald Trump has fired from the Department of Homeland Security now was the person who managed the, quote, cyber century program. What is the cyber century program?
The Rachel Maddow Show
American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
This is the only orange Muppet I trust to tell me about science. A version of this sign we saw a few different places today. I love trans mice. All right. I know you didn't listen to Trump's speech to Congress this week. I saw the numbers. It was the least watched Trump state of the union or joint speech to Congress of all the ones he's given. So I know you didn't watch.
The Rachel Maddow Show
American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
It was described by CBS News today as the, quote, congressionally mandated program designed to continuously monitor and detect cyber breaches of the nation's power grid, pipelines and water system. installing sensors across critical infrastructure designed to detect insider threats and foreign adversaries like China, Russia, and Iran.
The Rachel Maddow Show
American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
Because, yeah, who wants us to be protecting our pipelines, our power grid, and our water systems from cyber attacks? Who wants that? Who wants to be protecting that stuff? Make America great again, am I right? Donald Trump just removed the leadership of that program.
The Rachel Maddow Show
American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
You should also know that Donald Trump has also just fired the government's foremost expert, the nation's, quote, national taxonomist of the specific pest that almost completely destroyed the Florida citrus industry just a few years ago in 2019.
The Rachel Maddow Show
American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
There is a guy in the US government who is the scientist in charge of making sure that pest doesn't again get into the United States to decimate Florida citrus trees. Just six years ago, that happened, and it reduced Florida's citrus industry to, quote, ghost groves. Some experts were writing off Florida citrus entirely. That was a multi-billion dollar crisis in 2019.
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American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
Donald Trump just fired the guy in charge of making sure it doesn't happen again. One of the world's leading scientists on that particular agricultural problem and pest.
The Rachel Maddow Show
American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
You should also know that amid all of this genius, very intelligent cutting of the United States government, the Department of Homeland Security has somehow this past week found $30,000 to air television ads, specifically in West Palm Beach, Florida, over last weekend, while Donald Trump was at his house in West Palm Beach, Florida.
The Rachel Maddow Show
American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
These are ads that explicitly thank Donald Trump for being so great. And the Department of Homeland Security is now spending your tax dollars to air those ads thanking Donald Trump. The ads are running in West Palm Beach while Donald Trump is weekending in West Palm Beach. Ads just telling him he's great and reminding him who the Homeland Security Secretary is, who thinks he's so great.
The Rachel Maddow Show
American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
They're doing that with $30,000 in tax funds. But sure, the guy who keeps the thrips and psyllids off the orange trees in Florida. No, Trump fired him because we can't afford him. Can't afford that. So, again, our attention spans are finite. We all only have so much bandwidth. Time is finite.
The Rachel Maddow Show
American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
But I will do everything I can to bring you all the news I can, especially if I think it's stuff that you might not be running into other places. People all over this country are pushing back against what Trump is doing.
The Rachel Maddow Show
American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
People are pushing back in numbers, big and small, in some big national organizing efforts like we saw today, in little local uproars like we saw today, in town halls, whether or not they can shame that Republican congressman into actually turning up. I absolutely believe that information is power. But so is getting up and doing something about it. Everybody's doing their part.
The Rachel Maddow Show
American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
So we've got lots to get to tonight. Stay with us.
The Rachel Maddow Show
American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
Today, we learned that the acting attorney general of these United States, Matthew Whitaker, is steeped in time travel and Bigfoot. He was on the paid advisory board of this company that was so all in on Bigfoot, they had a website selling Bigfoot paraphernalia and planned a celebrity event called You Have Been Squatched.
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American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
I invite you now to join me in viewing the best product the new Attorney General of the United States ever helped sell the world, the extra deep masculine toilet for the well-endowed.
The Rachel Maddow Show
American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
That is a thing that happened. We lived through it. In Trump's first term, he briefly and inexplicably named this guy Matt Whitaker to be acting attorney general of the United States, the masculine toilet, you've been squatched guy. Trump eventually claimed he didn't know Matthew Whitaker, never heard of him. That was after he had named him as attorney general.
The Rachel Maddow Show
American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
It was all a very weird, weird series of events. But whatever happened to that guy? Trump has named him to something else this time around. He has named him to be the new United States ambassador to NATO? Matt Whitaker has no experience being an ambassador or being any kind of diplomat or having anything to do with diplomacy in any way or anything related to foreign policy.
The Rachel Maddow Show
American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
But one of the things he said in his speech was that one of the terrible liberal things that his top campaign donor had discovered was happening in government was research to make mice transgender. And he said that in his speech, and all the Republicans gasped and laughed and jeered because that was so terrible. Actually, it's transgenic mice.
The Rachel Maddow Show
American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
He also has no military experience. So obviously he's the perfect choice to be our ambassador to the world's largest military alliance. At his confirmation hearing this week, Whitaker was asked about the Trump administration's commitment to NATO. Whitaker told senators that commitment will be, quote, ironclad. Ironclad. He said that on Tuesday.
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American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
On Thursday, Donald Trump himself characterized his commitment to NATO somewhat differently. Quote, Donald Trump has cast doubt on his willingness to defend Washington's NATO allies, saying he would not do so if they are not paying enough for their own defense. Trump telling reporters in the Oval Office, quote, it's common sense, right? If they don't pay, I'm not going to defend them.
The Rachel Maddow Show
American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
No, I'm not going to defend them. What's the opposite of ironclad? I mean, we all keep wondering if Donald Trump is going to pull the US out of NATO, but he kind of just did by word, if not by deed, right? The NATO commitment is a commitment to defend each other. It only works if your adversaries believe you're going to do it.
The Rachel Maddow Show
American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
If the American president is now just out there saying, I'm not going to defend those other countries. That's kind of the whole ballgame, whether or not we formally withdraw from NATO or not. The latest Reuters Ipsos polling shows that while Americans did approve of Trump on foreign policy by two points in January, 39 to 37, they now disapprove of Trump on foreign policy by 13 points, 50 to 37%.
The Rachel Maddow Show
American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
Trump is in lonely territory here. And that stark public opinion on this issue raises the question as to whether or not there's going to be some democratic limit, some democratic friction in terms of how far Trump can push U.S. foreign policy to essentially make the United States into a subsidiary of the Russian Federation, right? Trumpistan or Ameristan, if we're lucky.
The Rachel Maddow Show
American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
Just this week, Trump cut off military aid to Ukraine. It was an order so sudden. NBC News reports that planes carrying military equipment to Ukraine were literally turned around in midair. Trump also cut off intelligence sharing with Ukraine, which is way more consequential than it might sound.
The Rachel Maddow Show
American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
From the Associated Press, quote, the suspension of intelligence disrupts Ukraine's ability to track and target Russian troops, tanks, and ships. Ukraine's other allies lack the same resources to fill the gap. In other words, we're forcing Ukraine now to fight blind. Today, Simon Schuster at Time Magazine cites five senior Western and Ukrainian officials and military officers in reporting this.
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American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
Quote, the U.S. decision to suspend the flow of military intelligence to Ukraine this week has aided the Russian advance along a critical part of the front, weakening the negotiating position of President Zelensky and killing many Ukrainian soldiers in recent days. Now we've learned that Trump has even cut off Ukraine's access to commercial satellite imagery purchased by the U.S.
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American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
So not just military aid, not just U.S. intelligence, but also commercial satellite imagery. Quote, commanders and soldiers keep tabs on where enemy positions and depots are, making it easier to find vulnerabilities in troop movements. They help logistic soldiers plan vehicle routes with alternative corridors laid out if pathways are mined or destroyed.
The Rachel Maddow Show
American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
Washington Post says tonight, quote, the suspension was immediately felt by soldiers in the Ukrainian military, some of whom described the decision as treachery, not politics. This is serious stuff. And here in the U.S., we are starting to see it boomerang a little bit, starting to see the other side of that coin already. And then NBC News reporting this headline, quote,
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American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
As Trump pivots to Russia, allies weigh sharing less intel with the U.S. Some U.S. allies are considering scaling back the intelligence they share with Washington in response to the Trump administration's conciliatory approach to Russia. The allies are weighing the move because of concerns about safeguarding foreign assets whose identities could inadvertently be revealed.
The Rachel Maddow Show
American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
And transgenic mice are used in all kinds of laboratory research because mice are transgenic mice. when they have been genetically altered so you can study human illnesses and conditions in them even though they're mice. It is transgenic mice, you numbskulls. But sure, go ahead and shut down all the labs studying all the diseases, because what are you, five? This was Boston.
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American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
NBC News citing five sources with direct knowledge of the discussions, including two foreign officials.
The Rachel Maddow Show
American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
Quote, the allies, including Israel, Saudi Arabia, and members of the so-called Five Eyes spy alliance of us, the UK, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, are examining how to possibly revise current protocols for sharing intelligence to take the Trump administration's warming relations with Russia into account. These are our closest intelligence partners and have been for decades.
The Rachel Maddow Show
American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
And it's not a one-way street. We benefit from their intelligence too, right? But maybe not any longer. There are material consequences in Ukrainian lives and elsewise. There are consequences to switching sides, to not just giving up the title of the leader of the free world, but to actively switching sides so your country is now actively working against it. Joining us now is Mark Polymeropoulos.
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American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
He's a 26-year veteran of the CIA. He's also an MSNBC national security and intelligence analyst. Mr. Polymeropoulos, thank you so much for being here. I appreciate your time.
The Rachel Maddow Show
American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
So hearing me describe that reporting, let me just ask you if I'm getting any of that the wrong way around or putting too much or too little emphasis on any part of it as you see it in terms of the impact here.
The Rachel Maddow Show
American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
Given the nature of the fight right now between Ukraine and Russia, flipping the switch like this, not just stopping those planefuls of weapons, but also turning off the sharing of intelligence, turning off their access to commercial satellite data, material, it does seem like it's not just refusing to help. It feels like it is trying to rush Ukraine toward a catastrophic loss.
The Rachel Maddow Show
American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
I have read analysts say that with what we are now doing to them to effectively shove them toward defeat, that the question is existential for Ukraine. Basically, based on whether or not Europe can try to recreate some of what we were supplying, the removal of it essentially guarantees failure.
The Rachel Maddow Show
American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
Yeah. And if this Time magazine reporting, Simon Schuster, is correct, you may be able to measure the cost of what Trump's done here in hundreds of lives already among Ukrainian soldiers. Mark Polymeropoulos, former senior CIA officer, I really appreciate you joining us on this tough story tonight. Thank you. All right. We've got more news ahead tonight. Stay with us. All right.
The Rachel Maddow Show
American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
There were big crowds today in Boston as well. Stand up for science. Some signs in Boston. No science means no medicine, no tech, no progress, no future. Also this one, cut DNA, not the NIH. Genetics research and experimentation. Of course, because it's Boston, there's a Dunkin' Donuts sign. America runs on science.
The Rachel Maddow Show
American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
Let's start with the photo. This appears in The New York Times. It looks like it might be from a freight elevator, maybe from the sort of atmospherics here. But you can see the caption there. Workers from the Department of Government Efficiency, DOGE, preparing to enter the offices of the U.S. African Development Foundation after U.S. marshals opened the doors on Thursday afternoon.
The Rachel Maddow Show
American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
The New York Times and other places reporting on the kids from Doge being let into this tiny federal agency that they had previously tried unsuccessfully to get into. They tried on Wednesday to get in and the agency wouldn't let them in. They came back Thursday and they were let into the agency by U.S. marshals who opened the doors for them. Once inside, they reportedly changed the locks.
The Rachel Maddow Show
American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
So presumably behind those locked doors, they could go about the business of trying to dismantle that agency and fire everyone in it. Same basic story from The Washington Post, reporting that the Doge kids showed up, quote, with five U.S. marshals.
The Rachel Maddow Show
American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
The Post reporting that the people who work at that agency, they were warned by colleagues who were having lunch nearby who saw the Doge kids coming, warned that the Doge guys were on the way with U.S. Marshals. The staffers then used the stairs, not the elevator, to get out of the building. They slipped out that way.
The Rachel Maddow Show
American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
They left their belongings behind, quote, to avoid a confrontation with Doge and the U.S. Marshals. So this is a very dramatic story, right, about a tiny agency created by Congress. Legally, only Congress has the authority to shut them down. Trump is trying to shut them down anyway, trying to use this Doge entity that is under the control of his top campaign donor to do it, maybe.
The Rachel Maddow Show
American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
They don't explain themselves much, but it seems like that's what they're doing. At this tiny agency, the staffers there tried to hold the line and keep operating as an agency by essentially keeping the doors closed. while the Doge guys tried to muscle their way in, pounded on the door and said, let us in. Here's what I want to know, though.
The Rachel Maddow Show
American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
When those Doge kids came back the second day, they came back on Thursday, and according to all the press reports, U.S. Marshals let them in the building. Was it U.S. Marshals? I mean, who is that in the elevator with the Doge kids, really? We have reason to question whether the men reported as U.S. Marshals, now in multiple press accounts, are actually U.S. Marshals in the usual sense.
The Rachel Maddow Show
American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
We asked the Department of Justice about it, since the Marshals are part of DOJ. DOJ told us, quote, we are not making a statement at this time. We do request that you please verify with your sources to ensure your reporting would be accurate. We absolutely are trying. It would help a lot if you guys would answer the question. are those U.S. Marshals.
The Rachel Maddow Show
American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
That said, while that sort of unsettling detail remains outstanding, while we literally cannot tell who it is that's showing up, apparently armed, to let Doge staffers into locked doors that legally they may not be allowed to be in, While that remains unsettled, this question of who is the armed escort for what Doge is trying to do
The Rachel Maddow Show
American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
The Justice Department appears to be conducting another one of their Friday night purges of career officials. Firings at Maine Justice in Washington, D.C. tonight and at the U.S. Attorney's Office in Manhattan. Two prosecutors from the corruption case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams were placed on administrative leave tonight.
The Rachel Maddow Show
American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
Reporting from NBC News indicates that in Manhattan, those prosecutors were walked out of the building by U.S. Marshals. Joining us now is Ryan Riley, NBC News justice reporter. Ryan, thanks very much for being here. I appreciate it.
The Rachel Maddow Show
American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
This is a question that ultimately will have a simple answer. While it remains outstanding, I will admit to being a little unnerved. Doge is involved in actions that a lot of people in government agencies say are not legal.
The Rachel Maddow Show
American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
This small agency that they tried very hard to get into and ultimately succeeded in getting into today said that they did not have the authority to come inside their offices, that Congress was the only entity that could dissolve this agency or fire its members. Nevertheless, Doge was able to summon some sort of muscle
The Rachel Maddow Show
American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
In Madison, Wisconsin, local public radio there put the turnout at what they described as more than a thousand at the Stand Up for Science protest at the Wisconsin State Capitol. Wisconsin Democratic Party Chairman Ben Wickler said he was there and he thought the crowd was even larger than that. He also singled out his favorite sign in Madison, which was, quote, no science, no cheese.
The Rachel Maddow Show
American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
some sort of force to force them into that building physically, despite the fact that the agency told them, no, they couldn't come in. Do you have any sense of who that muscle was or how we could find out?
The Rachel Maddow Show
American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
You can see some of the signs here. fight for science, defend the NIH, defunding research is a recession plan. That's actually quite true. Here's a good one. Quote, budget cuts create all kinds of trouble. I had to look that up. Alkynes, A-L-K-Y-N-E-S, alkynes are organic molecules made of the functional group carbon-carbon triple bonds. They are unsaturated hydrocarbons.
The Rachel Maddow Show
American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
Yeah, a chaotic situation in terms of the firings, a chaotic situation in terms of, obviously, some of the ethics and the ethical and legal issues happening, but also impossible to get straight answers as to the use of force inside the U.S. government, one part of the government against another. This is very unsettling stuff. And I know you're on it, Ryan.
The Rachel Maddow Show
American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
I know that if anybody's going to be able to figure it out, you will. Ryan Reilly, NBC News justice reporter. Thanks for working so hard on these stories. It's such a tough time, Ryan. Appreciate it. Thanks so much. We'll be right back. You know, sometimes people say you can't make it up. This is one of those. You can't make it up. In fact, I tried to make this up at one point.
The Rachel Maddow Show
American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
It wasn't this good. This is incredible. All right. This is Paul Tibbetts. He retired from the United States military. He's a brigadier general. He was a pilot in the United States Air Force during World War II. Here's another shot of him poking his head out of his plane window. And that plane, it had a name. You see it painted there in black, Enola Gay.
The Rachel Maddow Show
American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
It's Wisconsin. Really, really big crowd turned out in New York City at Washington Square Park to protest against Trump's cuts to science. Look at that. Cold day, cold, windy day today in New York City. Nine out of 10 preventable diseases prefer the GOP. Every disaster movie begins with a politician ignoring science. See the one on the left there?
The Rachel Maddow Show
American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
General Tibbetts actually named the plane himself. He named it after his mom, whose name was Enola Gay. And that plane is probably the most famous plane in American military history because Paul Tibbetts piloted the Enola Gay when it, of course, dropped the world's first atomic bomb on Hiroshima. These days, the Enola Gay is on permanent display at the Air and Space Museum in Chantilly, Virginia.
The Rachel Maddow Show
American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
The Enola Gay, a piece of bold-faced American history. Today, the Associated Press published this database. It's basically a list that was compiled by the Trump administration of more than 26,000 photographs and websites that are on file with the U.S. Department of Defense.
The Rachel Maddow Show
American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
And the reason the AP published this database is because according to their reporting, the Trump administration plans to wholesale delete all the 26,000 photos and websites that are listed in this Pentagon database. All 26,000 things here. The Trump administration wants all of these things scrubbed from the internet entirely.
The Rachel Maddow Show
American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
And included in that database, marked for deletion by Donald Trump, is this photo of Paul Tibbetts and the Enola Gay. This photo from the United States Air Force website. And that's curious, right? I mean, it is the most famous plane in modern history. Why would the Defense Department want to scrub that photo from the internet?
The Rachel Maddow Show
American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
It's not like deleting this photo is going to make people forget that we dropped that nuclear bomb on Japan. The tens of thousands of Department of Defense website images have been flagged for removal due to having content that highlighted diversity, equity, or inclusion. They searched the whole Defense Department website for the word gay and then ordered all the gay to be deleted. I'm serious.
The Rachel Maddow Show
American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
That's what happened. And, I mean, substantively, it's confusing. This is like the straightest thing I've ever seen, right? It's a giant metal machine from the 1940s. But maybe because he named it after his mom, does that mean he's sensitive? Does that make it kind of gay? Also, you know, you delete the photo of the gay plane, but then what? Do you have to also destroy the actual plane?
The Rachel Maddow Show
American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
Set it on fire, drop a bomb on it, although, uh-oh, using a bomb to destroy the plane that dropped the first atomic bomb, that might be seen as kind of poetic, and that is definitely gay. I should mention, it's not only the photo of the gay plane. This is Sergeant Major A.C. Gay. His photo has also been flagged to be deleted by the Defense Department, because his name is gay.
The Rachel Maddow Show
American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
It's like that time that right-wing website in the mid-2000s decided they were going to change all the mentions of gay and all their news stories to be homosexual instead. You might remember we talked about this a few weeks ago. The American sprinter Tyson Gay was in the news, and on this right-wing website, they changed all their stories about Tyson Gay to be instead about Tyson Homosexual.
The Rachel Maddow Show
American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
Tyson Homosexual easily won his semifinal for the 100 meters at the U.S. Olympic track and field trials. Except now it's not some fringy conservative website. It is the U.S. Defense Department. We should send somebody to Chantilly to go check on poor Enola homosexual. See if she's doing okay. Your tax dollars at work, everybody. Making America gay. Making America gay. Never mind.
The Rachel Maddow Show
American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
We'll be right back. All right, that's going to do it for me for now. I will see you again Monday and every night next week at 9 p.m. Eastern here on MSNBC.
The Rachel Maddow Show
American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
It was a cold, miserable Chicago winter day today in the Windy City, but people turned out in big numbers in Chicago as well to protest. In addition to all the scientists and supporters and regular people who showed up, they also got some high-level representation from their members of Congress, including Senator Dick Durbin and Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky.
The Rachel Maddow Show
American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
In Atlanta, there were big crowds in Atlanta at Liberty Plaza. Atlanta, of course, is home to the CDC, which Trump has whacked with big cuts and huge numbers of firings. People turned out in the South, in Little Rock, Arkansas, on the state Capitol steps. Stand up for science. People turned out in Lansing, Michigan. The sign supporting the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The Rachel Maddow Show
American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
We love NOAA. So stop firing the darn meteorologists and the people who run the freaking weather radar. People turned out in St. Louis, Missouri, which is a good science sign. Time to react with the steaming beaker.
The Rachel Maddow Show
American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
Raleigh, North Carolina, part of what they love to call the research triangle, but here are researchers and scientists and their supporters and regular folks having to come out in Raleigh, North Carolina today, protesting against Donald Trump's massive cuts to scientific research. The biggest protest today was in Washington, D.C.
The Rachel Maddow Show
American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
Literally thousands of people turned out to stand up for science and protest against Trump today. Really big turnout in Washington. Signs there include these. Science is not a liberal conspiracy. Fund science, save lives. Doge doesn't pass peer review. Also this one, very simply, cancer is not a partisan issue. This is a nice subtle one. Hello, Health and Human Services Secretary.
The Rachel Maddow Show
American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
Quote, science prevents brain worms. Stand up for science protests happened all over the country today. And this was a big national organizing effort that was led by a small cadre of people just directly affected by these cuts. Graduate students and doctoral candidates and young scientists called this march today in Washington.
The Rachel Maddow Show
American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
And then soon dozens of satellite marches sprung up all around the country. And you saw the evidence of that there. In addition to sort of nationally organized protests like that, we're also increasingly seeing just essentially local and independent protests pop up. Protests coming together in individual cities. Like this big protest yesterday in Trenton, New Jersey.
The Rachel Maddow Show
American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
People with disabilities and their families and just angry, worried members of the public turning out in Trenton yesterday protesting against the cuts that Trump is planning to Medicaid. Medicaid, among other things, is the primary health insurer for people with disabilities of all ages and all income levels. Medicaid covers tens of millions of people in this country.
The Rachel Maddow Show
American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
It covers more than 40% of all births in this country. People turned out in Trenton, New Jersey yesterday to say don't cut Medicaid. Along the same lines, just an independent single city protest, there was this protest of worried, angry local folks in Nashville, Tennessee. Came out yesterday to protest, to defend Social Security, just right outside their local Social Security office in Nashville.
The Rachel Maddow Show
American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
And budget cuts create all kinds of trouble. Here's another good one in Pittsburgh. Got polio? No? Thanks, science. And you see where it says it's a Berg thing and the Salk vaccine there, the University of Pittsburgh is where Jonas Salk developed the polio vaccine. Across the state of Pennsylvania, outside City Hall in Philadelphia, look at this. This was the, I mean, this is impressive.
The Rachel Maddow Show
American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
I was in Nashville, Tennessee yesterday, some local coverage of that local protest standing up for Social Security. We've also been looking today at local news reports about brand new little grassroots groups springing up in places like central Minnesota. They're going to be protesting tomorrow in St. Cloud.
The Rachel Maddow Show
American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
Another one expected from a coalition of small local groups in Muskegon, Michigan, this weekend. Republicans are now trying to solve a line that it is only paid protesters, professional, full-time protesters funded by shadowy globalists who are the people who are criticizing what Trump is doing.
The Rachel Maddow Show
American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
They are trying to say that none of these protests are real Americans and any criticism of Trump is somehow inauthentic. That is just, I mean, I understand why they might want to say that for political effect. It is absolutely belied by what we are seeing every single day all over the country.
The Rachel Maddow Show
American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
It's honestly hard to keep track of the numbers of different ways and different places and different groups that are standing up and saying no. Protests are happening all over the country all the time. People are also pushing hard to get their Republican members of Congress to meet with them, to answer their constituents' questions about whether they agree with what Trump is doing.
The Rachel Maddow Show
American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
Constituents are sometimes going to comedic lengths to try to get their members of Congress to agree to speak to them.
The Rachel Maddow Show
American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
He shows up for his constituents in other ways, just not when they're there in Escanaba in his district and they want to talk to him. Congressman Jack Bergman has apparently been too afraid to hold a town hall with his own constituents for the past eight years. But they want to talk to him. He represents a district in northern Michigan next door in Wisconsin.
The Rachel Maddow Show
American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
Tomorrow at 11 a.m., Democratic Congressman Mark Pocan is going to hold a town hall in his Wisconsin district. And he is a Democrat. So he represents a Democratic district. But he is holding this town hall tomorrow way over in the corner of his district, as close as he can get to the neighboring congressional district that's represented by a Republican. by Republican Derek Van Orden.
The Rachel Maddow Show
American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
Mark Pocan, the Democrat, put out a press release today saying, quote, the town hall will be held less than 10 miles from the border of Wisconsin's third congressional district, represented by Republican Derek Van Orden. Congressman Pocan has invited constituents from both his district and the neighboring third district to hear from a member of Congress.
The Rachel Maddow Show
American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
With the implication being that they're certainly not going to hear from their own. Mark Pocan later said online, quote, we've officially invited Derek Van Orden to join us this Saturday at our town hall in Belmont. We are hearing he hasn't had an open public town hall, so we thought he could observe ours so that he could replicate in his district. Looking forward to him sharing his views.
The Rachel Maddow Show
American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
So there's a lot to keep track of, obviously. There's so much that seems just indefensible or inexplicable from the Trump administration. It can be hard to keep up with it just on a day-to-day basis. Late tonight, for example, there's news from local offices of the National Weather Service.
The Rachel Maddow Show
American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
that in Albany, New York, and in the state of Maine, the weather service is no longer able to launch its weather balloons, which is a standard part of how they do weather forecasting. You put weather balloons up there to get sensitive atmospheric readings.
The Rachel Maddow Show
American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
This was the stand up for science crowd outside Philly City Hall today. That's a big, look at that. That's a really big protest. Some good signs at the Philly protest as well. Your policy, defund the NIH, has been rejected by peer review. This is a good one. I feel like this one is special for Susan's birthday today. She loves Beaker from the Muppets. Susan, this happened in Philly today.
The Rachel Maddow Show
American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
on temperature and wind data and dew point and relative humidity and barometric pressure, all of the stuff that you need to be able to make accurate weather forecasts. A couple of weeks ago, we had heard out of Alaska that they didn't have enough staff at their weather service offices to put up their weather balloons in Alaska.
The Rachel Maddow Show
American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
Now tonight, we're learning that that is also true in Albany, New York. and in Maine. Cuts to the Weather Service, cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are going to hit Americans right at home, right away, as already we can't do some of the forecasting things we would normally be doing on an average Friday night in March.
The Rachel Maddow Show
American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
Tonight, this hour, we're going to be talking about some of the really big ticket items that we're seeing going on, stuff that you have probably seen at least headlines about elsewhere. Our military and intelligence cutoff of Ukraine, basically making the overt and knowing decision to hand feed the Ukrainian people into the Russian army.
The Rachel Maddow Show
American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
We've got new news on that tonight, particularly on the boomerang effect that is coming back at us on the intelligence side. I think you're really going to want to hear about that. It's an interesting story. We've also got news tonight on more mass firings at the U.S.
The Rachel Maddow Show
American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
Department of Justice, where they really do appear to just be grabbing the building by the ankles, turning it upside down and shaking out all the nonpartisan career people who work at the U.S. Justice Department so they can replace them all with Trump operatives.
The Rachel Maddow Show
American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
We'll have more tonight on both those stories, including an unsettling story that we are really trying to chase down about which apparently armed agents are playing a physical role in some of the things they are trying to do by force in Washington when it seems like they can't do them by law. That story, again, disturbing, something that we are still chasing, and that story is coming up.
The Rachel Maddow Show
American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
But I will also tell you, It is Friday night, and at the end of this sixth week of the Trump administration, You know, it's clear you can't cover everything every day. And I get that and I'm at peace with that. But I do feel like there's value in just trying to cover the field as much as possible. Right.
The Rachel Maddow Show
American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
Trying to cover the pushback and the protests, especially when they're coming from places you wouldn't expect or from places the national media isn't always looking. So really trying to do that. I'm also just going to keep trying to. tell you some of the crazier or dumber things that are happening, even if they aren't getting a ton of attention elsewhere. And again, you can't cover everything.
The Rachel Maddow Show
American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
You've got to make decisions. But some of the stuff that I feel like I need to prioritize on the show is just stuff you might not be hearing from other news outlets. For example, I think it's worth all of us knowing that the Donald Trump Jr. hunting buddy who they put in charge of food safety at the FDA once they started firing all the regular science people who work at food safety at the FDA.
The Rachel Maddow Show
American scientists take to the streets to protest Trump's cuts
The Donald Trump Jr. hunting buddy who they put in charge of human food safety for our country is a man who apparently has no scientific background at all, but he does hunt with Don Jr. and he did serve as a defense lawyer for an infant formula manufacturer whose product was associated with an quote, elevated risk of a deadly bowel condition in premature infants.
The Rachel Maddow Show
The ridiculous real story behind the tariff plan that turned Donald Trump into a global disaster
Thank you at home for joining us this hour. All right, so first green shoots of spring, sun finally pushing its way through the clouds. It was a beautiful, sunny, even warm day in Manhattan, which is part of why the ski masks were so surprising. I'm going to say a word here that I don't usually say, let alone on TV, and that's because it's the name of the group, so do not hold it against me.
The Rachel Maddow Show
The ridiculous real story behind the tariff plan that turned Donald Trump into a global disaster
After today, the Dow is down 14.9% from its most recent high. The NASDAQ is now a bear market off 20%. 22.7% from its recent high. Anything more than 20% is considered a bear market. The magnificent seven stocks, which include Nvidia, Apple, and Amazon, collectively lost $1.55 trillion in market capitalization this week. That is a record. Apple alone saw $443.5 billion in market value evaporate.
The Rachel Maddow Show
The ridiculous real story behind the tariff plan that turned Donald Trump into a global disaster
in an encouraging way, trying to tell us to act now before what has happened to them in their country happens to us here in ours.
The Rachel Maddow Show
The ridiculous real story behind the tariff plan that turned Donald Trump into a global disaster
I mean, it is hard to get your head around how much damage this one man can cause. I think it's even harder to get your head around simultaneously the fact that he can do damage of this magnitude with such a teeny, tiny, teeny, teeny, tiny amount of thought. You'd think it would take like a grand plan and some big brains to figure out how to destroy the economy of the richest nation on earth.
The Rachel Maddow Show
The ridiculous real story behind the tariff plan that turned Donald Trump into a global disaster
But that's not how it's working out. Turns out it doesn't take a big idea or a lot of big brains working together. I know that this may be something that you remember, but just in case it's not, I'm just going to put this back on the front page here just for a second. Because do you remember where Trump got the tariff thing from in the first place?
The Rachel Maddow Show
The ridiculous real story behind the tariff plan that turned Donald Trump into a global disaster
Do you remember when and why and how we started talking about tariffs in the first place? It was in his first campaign for president. Trump didn't really have any formal economic advisers. So he told his son-in-law, Jared, to find him an economic advisor.
The Rachel Maddow Show
The ridiculous real story behind the tariff plan that turned Donald Trump into a global disaster
Trump reportedly gave Jared some vague ideas of what his thoughts were on economic issues, you know, something, something, make me look tough, China bad, something, something. Jared then decided to find his father-in-law a financial advisor for his presidential campaign by going on the Amazon.com website and starting to browse books.
The Rachel Maddow Show
The ridiculous real story behind the tariff plan that turned Donald Trump into a global disaster
Not like reading the books, because you can't do that on the Amazon website. He was just looking at the covers, looking at the titles. And he found a book title that he thought was so cool. The title was Death by China. Oh my God, that's so cool. That's so awesome. And that apparently was it. Quote from Vanity Fair. Trump gave Jared a summary of his views and then asked him to do some research.
The Rachel Maddow Show
The ridiculous real story behind the tariff plan that turned Donald Trump into a global disaster
Kushner simply went on Amazon, where he was struck by the title of one book, Death by China, co-authored by a man named Peter Navarro. Jared then cold-called Navarro, a well-known trade deficit hawk who agreed to join the team as an economic advisor. Navarro was a major advocate for an aggressive pro-tariff policy.
The Rachel Maddow Show
The ridiculous real story behind the tariff plan that turned Donald Trump into a global disaster
Where did Peter Navarro get his idea that tariffs would be a good policy for America? What was his, like, backup for that conviction? Well, he did have backup from a real expert. who he cited in at least a half dozen of his books, including the one that Jared found on Amazon that fateful day. In all of his books, Peter Navarro has cited an economics expert to justify his views.
The Rachel Maddow Show
The ridiculous real story behind the tariff plan that turned Donald Trump into a global disaster
And the economics expert he cites is somebody named Ron Vera, V-A-R-A, Ron Vera. When Trump won the presidency and entered the White House, this Ron Vera started circulating a memo around Washington in support of Trump using tariffs in trade policy. According to the New York Times, the memo had been, quote, sent from an email address purportedly belonging to Ron Vera.
The Rachel Maddow Show
The ridiculous real story behind the tariff plan that turned Donald Trump into a global disaster
At one point, Ron Vera wrote in the memo that Trump could, quote, ride the tariffs to victory. Problem is, Ron Vera doesn't exist. He never has. The economics expert that Peter Navarro has long cited to explain why he's so gung-ho on tariffs, this person, Ron Vera, is a made-up person. He is a fictional person.
The Rachel Maddow Show
The ridiculous real story behind the tariff plan that turned Donald Trump into a global disaster
Peter Navarro invented Ron Vera as his expert source so he could quote this expert source over and over and over again in his crackpot books. Who is Ron Vera? Ron Vera is an anagram of Navarro, which is his last name. I mean, my name anagrams to Macho Wadler, but I don't see myself trying to talk you into doing what Macho Wadler wants, right?
The Rachel Maddow Show
The ridiculous real story behind the tariff plan that turned Donald Trump into a global disaster
Wake up, America. You can see the signs they're holding there, including this one on the left here that says, nothing special. One member of the group, Masha Alyokhina, explained, I think, what they mean by that nothing special sign.
The Rachel Maddow Show
The ridiculous real story behind the tariff plan that turned Donald Trump into a global disaster
But that really is how the Trump administration crafted its tariff policy. That's where Trump came up with the tariff idea. circulating a fake memo from a fake person with a fake email address in order to make it look like this was a serious issue being debated by real experts.
The Rachel Maddow Show
The ridiculous real story behind the tariff plan that turned Donald Trump into a global disaster
That is the intellectual basis on which Donald Trump today wiped $6 trillion of wealth out of existence and crashed America's markets and brought America and the world to the brink of a self-inflicted, on-purpose, global Great Depression along the lines of what we had in 2008 and what the pandemic inflicted upon us in 2020. This time, the global disaster is Donald Trump's big brain.
The Rachel Maddow Show
The ridiculous real story behind the tariff plan that turned Donald Trump into a global disaster
And Donald Trump may think it's all going to work out. The American people are awake and well aware that this is not going to work out. New Reuters Ipsos polling, to which I would like to bring your attention. Do you approve or disapprove of Donald Trump's handling of his job as president? Disapprove by a 10-point margin.
The Rachel Maddow Show
The ridiculous real story behind the tariff plan that turned Donald Trump into a global disaster
Do you approve or disapprove of how Donald Trump is handling the economy specifically? Disapprove by a 15-point margin. Do you approve or disapprove of how Donald Trump is handling the issue of international trade? Disapprove by an 18-point margin. Do you approve or disapprove of how Donald Trump is handling the issue of your cost of living? Disapprove by a 27-point margin.
The Rachel Maddow Show
The ridiculous real story behind the tariff plan that turned Donald Trump into a global disaster
Is the Trump administration competent or incompetent at running the federal government? Incompetent by a 20-point margin. Is the Trump administration competent or incompetent at rolling out new economic policies? Incompetent by a 25-point margin. Is the Trump administration competent or incompetent at downsizing government without affecting vital services? Incompetent by a 25-point margin.
The Rachel Maddow Show
The ridiculous real story behind the tariff plan that turned Donald Trump into a global disaster
That's before the markets did what they've done in the last two days. The American people get it. They get it. They are awake. They are not giving up. And tomorrow, a lot of them are going to show it. Senator Mark Kelly is here tonight. Ezra Levin from Indivisible is here tonight. Stay with us. So they are soldiers from Lithuania. There's some others from Germany as well.
The Rachel Maddow Show
The ridiculous real story behind the tariff plan that turned Donald Trump into a global disaster
But look what they have tucked into their pockets. They have little American flags just below the flag of their own countries sewn onto their sleeves.
The Rachel Maddow Show
The ridiculous real story behind the tariff plan that turned Donald Trump into a global disaster
In the capital city of Lithuania yesterday, thousands of soldiers and dignitaries and also just ordinary people lined up in the streets to pay their respects and to honor four American soldiers who died in Lithuania this past week during a training exercise. The ceremony was attended by the president of Lithuania who gave a speech on the occasion.
The Rachel Maddow Show
The ridiculous real story behind the tariff plan that turned Donald Trump into a global disaster
He said that for Lithuanians, serving your country is not just a duty but an emotion. And you could really see that among the people who gathered. Lithuanian citizens were moved to tears, moved to genuine grief. But again, this was a ceremony for Americans, for American soldiers.
The Rachel Maddow Show
The ridiculous real story behind the tariff plan that turned Donald Trump into a global disaster
Officials arranged for an archbishop to bless the motorcade before it drove to the airport to start the process of returning those remains, returning those soldiers to the U.S. In our country, of course, it is a sacred tradition that when members of the armed services die in the line of duty overseas, their remains come home to the US in what's called a dignified transfer.
The Rachel Maddow Show
The ridiculous real story behind the tariff plan that turned Donald Trump into a global disaster
Their remains are flown home specifically to Dover Air Base with American flags draped over the coffins. It's a very somber, very important, very serious, very specific ceremony. And a dignified transfer is often attended by the president of the United States as a sign of respect from the commander-in-chief.
The Rachel Maddow Show
The ridiculous real story behind the tariff plan that turned Donald Trump into a global disaster
After that very moving send-off from Lithuania and from the government and the people of Lithuania, The White House announced here in the United States that when those four young fallen American soldiers landed back home here in the US, President Donald Trump would not attend the dignified transfer.
The Rachel Maddow Show
The ridiculous real story behind the tariff plan that turned Donald Trump into a global disaster
I don't think there's something special with Russia or Russian people. A totalitarian state can appear anywhere if people are silent. And so that's why they came here. They're persecuted and they've been imprisoned and they are now hunted by their own country.
The Rachel Maddow Show
The ridiculous real story behind the tariff plan that turned Donald Trump into a global disaster
He would not be waiting at Dover to pay respects to the service members who died, even as Lithuania's president made sure he was there to see them off. Donald Trump has decided instead that he's going to Florida to watch a golf tournament and to go to a golf dinner. tonight. Given his previous comments, I guess you could say this is consistent with his apparent level of investment. on this issue.
The Rachel Maddow Show
The ridiculous real story behind the tariff plan that turned Donald Trump into a global disaster
I gotta tell you, we do not play a lot of tape of Donald Trump talking on this show. That's not a hard and fast rule, but kind of a rule of thumb on this show is that we try to cover what the president does rather than just what he says. He gets plenty of coverage for what he says. I prefer to focus on actions rather than his words. In this case, though, I'm gonna make a little bit of an exception.
The Rachel Maddow Show
The ridiculous real story behind the tariff plan that turned Donald Trump into a global disaster
I think what he said here is its own kind of action. I just want you to see it. It's very brief. This is how Donald Trump, President of the United States, responded when he was asked about the service members in Lithuania after they first went missing.
The Rachel Maddow Show
The ridiculous real story behind the tariff plan that turned Donald Trump into a global disaster
Hmm? Nope. Hmm. What was it again that the Lithuanian president said about service? He said, for us, it is more than a duty. It is an emotion. For Donald Trump, it was, huh? No, haven't heard anything about it. Next question.
The Rachel Maddow Show
The ridiculous real story behind the tariff plan that turned Donald Trump into a global disaster
This, of course, all happens as Donald Trump has inexplicably fired the top two officials at the National Security Agency, the NSA, including the leader of the NSA is also the leader of Cyber Command, so that means he's also fired the head of Cyber Command. He also has fired six different people from the National Security Council.
The Rachel Maddow Show
The ridiculous real story behind the tariff plan that turned Donald Trump into a global disaster
all reportedly on the basis of allegations made by a far-right conspiracy theorist. She is a 9-11 conspiracy theorist and also claims that multiple school shootings in our country were staged and weren't real. On her recommendation, he has fired a half-dozen people from the National Security Council and the head of the NSA.
The Rachel Maddow Show
The ridiculous real story behind the tariff plan that turned Donald Trump into a global disaster
A dictatorship where it is illegal to use the word war to describe a war, where it is illegal for even one person to hold a protest alone or to hold up a protest sign even if it has no words on it. But here they are in our country trying to sound an alarm to tell us to move fast because your country doesn't come back when you lose it to a dictatorship.
The Rachel Maddow Show
The ridiculous real story behind the tariff plan that turned Donald Trump into a global disaster
Joining us now is Senator Mark Kelly, Democrat from Arizona, member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Senate is in the middle of marathon votes right now. He has kindly made time to join us from the Capitol Rotunda. Senator Kelly, I really appreciate you being here tonight. Thank you.
The Rachel Maddow Show
The ridiculous real story behind the tariff plan that turned Donald Trump into a global disaster
I wanted to ask your reaction to President Trump's decision to skip the dignified transfer. I mean, presidents don't always go to these ceremonies, let's be clear. Presidents in every administration have missed some of these. Donald Trump went to very few of these in his first term. Tonight, he's at a golf dinner in Florida.
The Rachel Maddow Show
The ridiculous real story behind the tariff plan that turned Donald Trump into a global disaster
The president reportedly fired six people off the National Security Council, and the director of the NSA and director of Cyber Command, as well as the deputy director of NSA, or she at least has been moved to another position. He was reportedly advised by a right-wing conspiracy theorist
The Rachel Maddow Show
The ridiculous real story behind the tariff plan that turned Donald Trump into a global disaster
To do this, she seems to have come in alone with her own theories about why all these people should go, and the president acted on those theories and fired them. What do you think we should know about the impact of those firings and what you think about the means by which they were carried out?
The Rachel Maddow Show
The ridiculous real story behind the tariff plan that turned Donald Trump into a global disaster
Senator, we've had two remarkable days in the stock markets since President Trump announced his new tariff policy a couple of days ago. And it's historic simply in terms of the sort of size of the cataclysm in the markets.
The Rachel Maddow Show
The ridiculous real story behind the tariff plan that turned Donald Trump into a global disaster
There is fear and trepidation and something approaching panic in business communities of all sizes, coast to coast, as American businesses try to figure out how they're going to contend with the new reality or whatever this new horizon is in terms of these tariffs.
The Rachel Maddow Show
The ridiculous real story behind the tariff plan that turned Donald Trump into a global disaster
What do you think the impact will be in Washington to the disaster in the markets and the freakout in every state in the union as the American people contend with what this means for businesses and what it means for the price of living in this country?
The Rachel Maddow Show
The ridiculous real story behind the tariff plan that turned Donald Trump into a global disaster
You see, the big sign they were holding there, the one that said freedom of speech and this other one, which kind of stuck with me, don't give up. It's kind of an unsettling thing. After everything they have been through, they're trying to encourage us.
The Rachel Maddow Show
The ridiculous real story behind the tariff plan that turned Donald Trump into a global disaster
Yeah. I just keep thinking about six trillion dollars and how much of an NIH that could fund, you know, what that could do for Social Security, what that could do. How many park rangers we'd be talking about? It's just.
The Rachel Maddow Show
The ridiculous real story behind the tariff plan that turned Donald Trump into a global disaster
Senator Mark Kelly, I know tonight is a work night for you and all your fellow senators in the Capitol. Thank you so much for squeezing in some time for us to talk. Thank you.
The Rachel Maddow Show
The ridiculous real story behind the tariff plan that turned Donald Trump into a global disaster
All right. Much more to come here tonight. Stay with us. It's Friday night. Feels like it, right? That said, may I suggest that you go to bed kind of early, hydrate, eat your Wheaties in the morning, maybe put off the Friday night cocktail to make it a Saturday night cocktail this week, if at all. I'm only saying that because tomorrow is going to be very busy. Saturday is going to be very busy.
The Rachel Maddow Show
The ridiculous real story behind the tariff plan that turned Donald Trump into a global disaster
I said at the top of the show there are more than 1,200 protests planned for tomorrow in all 50 states. I stand corrected. It is more than 1,300 protests planned in all 50 states. It's expected to be the largest single day of protest since Donald Trump took office. Joining us now is Ezra Levin. He's co-founder of Indivisible, which is one of the groups that is promoting these events tomorrow.
The Rachel Maddow Show
The ridiculous real story behind the tariff plan that turned Donald Trump into a global disaster
Ezra, thanks very much for joining us tonight. You were here just a couple of three weeks ago talking about the earliest idea for April 5th being sort of a hub for events all over the country and in Washington. How has the organizing gone? What has the response been compared to what you expected?
The Rachel Maddow Show
The ridiculous real story behind the tariff plan that turned Donald Trump into a global disaster
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The Rachel Maddow Show
The ridiculous real story behind the tariff plan that turned Donald Trump into a global disaster
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The Rachel Maddow Show
The ridiculous real story behind the tariff plan that turned Donald Trump into a global disaster
Don't give up even in the difficult conditions. Have a hope inside. Have belief. It's really jarring, right, to hear that from Russian dissidents, that they're the ones encouraging us. Like I said, it's unsettling to see it. But I also feel like, you know what? The American people right now understand the assignment. feel like right now we are so far from giving up.
The Rachel Maddow Show
The ridiculous real story behind the tariff plan that turned Donald Trump into a global disaster
But this is the Russian punk band and protest group Pussy Riot in New York City this week.
The Rachel Maddow Show
The ridiculous real story behind the tariff plan that turned Donald Trump into a global disaster
We are whatever the opposite is of giving up. I mean, we are expecting a massive day of protest tomorrow in this country. I want to show you this from TikTok. This is the sort of hype video for the protests tomorrow that has been circulating online, particularly on TikTok.
The Rachel Maddow Show
The ridiculous real story behind the tariff plan that turned Donald Trump into a global disaster
And it's funny because you'll see here, it's the kind of hook line here is that it's literally about we're done watching the news. We're stopping watching the news. We're going out tomorrow to protest instead. I recognize it's a little ironic for me to be showing you this on the news. But still, I have no ego about these things. And I think you should see it. Watch.
The Rachel Maddow Show
The ridiculous real story behind the tariff plan that turned Donald Trump into a global disaster
One movement, every state protesting dictators. That is from the 50-51 movement, which started these protests against what Trump was doing very early on in the second Trump term. Remember 50-51 comes from them organizing 50 protests in 50 state capitals all on one day. That's what 50-51 stands for.
The Rachel Maddow Show
The ridiculous real story behind the tariff plan that turned Donald Trump into a global disaster
But it's them and Indivisible and basically everybody else jumping in together tomorrow in support of these protests. Tomorrow is expected to be the largest day of protests that the country has yet seen since Trump has been back in office. And it looks like it's going to be a really big day.
The Rachel Maddow Show
The ridiculous real story behind the tariff plan that turned Donald Trump into a global disaster
If the number of protests planned actually does happen, and the number of people who have said they're going to show up, show up, then we are easily looking at hundreds of thousands of Americans who are going to be taking part in nonviolent Trump, anti-Trump protests tomorrow. More than 1,200 separate protests are planned tomorrow in all 50 states.
The Rachel Maddow Show
The ridiculous real story behind the tariff plan that turned Donald Trump into a global disaster
We're expecting a large gathering in Washington, D.C., but I think maybe every state capital is also going to have a protest, different federal buildings in multiple states, congressional offices, post offices, city centers. Again, we won't know exactly the scale of the protests or their exact character until they happen.
The Rachel Maddow Show
The ridiculous real story behind the tariff plan that turned Donald Trump into a global disaster
We know the White House has canceled all the garden tours they had planned for tomorrow at the White House. They've moved them from tomorrow, Saturday, to Sunday instead because they are expecting large anti-Trump crowds in Washington. So the garden tours are moved, you guys. All week long, people have been sending us here at the Rachel Maddow Show images of their preparations for tomorrow.
The Rachel Maddow Show
The ridiculous real story behind the tariff plan that turned Donald Trump into a global disaster
Like these pictures that we got from a group of ladies. They're just a friend group in New Jersey. They say their average group, the average age in their group is 90. But they've been making their signs, getting ready for tomorrow. Hands off Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid. Also, dump Trump. You see the one on the table there in the back? See his little legs sticking out of the trash can?
The Rachel Maddow Show
The ridiculous real story behind the tariff plan that turned Donald Trump into a global disaster
Any chance anybody here was an art teacher? Even before tomorrow's protests, which again, we're expecting to be widespread and large, we've seen a lot of protests just in the past few days. We had students protesting yesterday at Columbia University, protesting against Trump arresting and imprisoning student leader Mahmoud Khalil.
The Rachel Maddow Show
The ridiculous real story behind the tariff plan that turned Donald Trump into a global disaster
We're members of Pussy Riot, a Russian protest group. We've been imprisoned in Russia. We've been persecuted. We're on the federal wanted list in our country. Pussy Riot are a punk band and a protest group that have been jailed in Russia and beaten up and hounded all over the globe now by Russian President Vladimir Putin. They have been chased out of that country.
The Rachel Maddow Show
The ridiculous real story behind the tariff plan that turned Donald Trump into a global disaster
We had students protesting yesterday in Tempe, Arizona, after Arizona State said it learned that eight students on their campus have also had their student visas mysteriously revoked by Trump. We had students yesterday protesting at the UC Berkeley campus against Trump shutting down the U.S. Department of Education. And I know what you're thinking. Hey, hey, Matto, dog bites man.
The Rachel Maddow Show
The ridiculous real story behind the tariff plan that turned Donald Trump into a global disaster
Wow, a protest at Berkeley. What a surprise. But you know what? It really is everywhere if you look for it. Let me show you. I mean, there's Berkeley, yes. But Donald Trump Jr., he spoke at an event in Birmingham, Alabama last night. And the protests were there, too, in deep red Alabama.
The Rachel Maddow Show
The ridiculous real story behind the tariff plan that turned Donald Trump into a global disaster
Again, these aren't part of the big protests that are planned for everywhere tomorrow. This is just what it looks like on a Thursday in Alabama these days. I mean, this was Alabama.
The Rachel Maddow Show
The ridiculous real story behind the tariff plan that turned Donald Trump into a global disaster
On any given day in America now, you might have a very confrontational protest like this one last night in Salinas, California, where someone decided to hold an event celebrating January 6th convicts, including, reportedly, some who were convicted of assaulting police officers.
The Rachel Maddow Show
The ridiculous real story behind the tariff plan that turned Donald Trump into a global disaster
According to local news, multiple venues in Salinas, California, told this group no, but one neighborhood venue did agree to host the event. Thereafter, all the neighbors came out to show them what they thought of a commemorative January 6th event. It was, to say the least, not a friendly welcome. But you know, at the same time, here also was Buffalo, New York.
The Rachel Maddow Show
The ridiculous real story behind the tariff plan that turned Donald Trump into a global disaster
Americans turning out with Canadian flags and We Love Canada signs, protesting against Trump's various attacks and threats against Canada and the tariffs against Canada. Basically, the American people trying to tell the Canadian people that, hey, it's not us. It's not us. It's this guy, this president, but we do not agree with him.
The Rachel Maddow Show
The ridiculous real story behind the tariff plan that turned Donald Trump into a global disaster
And we do not want the kind of divide between our country that he insists on. Today, this was the federal courthouse in Greenbelt, Maryland. People showing up while a federal court hearing was underway on the case of a Maryland father who the Trump administration admitted this week, they admitted that they accidentally sent him to a prison in El Salvador.
The Rachel Maddow Show
The ridiculous real story behind the tariff plan that turned Donald Trump into a global disaster
even though they didn't mean to send him there. This man is now being held in El Salvador, in that prison, indefinitely, and the Trump administration is trying to tell the courts that even though they admit it was a mistake to send him there, they have no intention of getting him back or even trying to get him out of that prison.
The Rachel Maddow Show
The ridiculous real story behind the tariff plan that turned Donald Trump into a global disaster
In the face of that absurdity, these Maryland residents today turned up at the courthouse. to support him and his family while the hearing was underway. You see the signs, bring Kilmar Garcia home, free our neighbor Kilmar Garcia, kids need their dads. And this one, which is right to the point, all this is sick.
The Rachel Maddow Show
The ridiculous real story behind the tariff plan that turned Donald Trump into a global disaster
at the conclusion of that court hearing today, the judge hearing the case, ordered the Trump administration that they must retrieve that man. They must get him out of that prison in El Salvador and bring him back to the United States by 11.59 p.m. on Monday night. Go do it. Today, of course, you saw what happened in the markets. The Dow dropped more than... 2,000 points today. Not a typo.
The Rachel Maddow Show
The ridiculous real story behind the tariff plan that turned Donald Trump into a global disaster
As such, they remain one of the last remaining visible, uncompromising and alive elements of the Russian resistance to Putin. Putin, of course, has managed to just kill off so many others who dared to oppose him. But this week, members of that Russian group came here, came to America, to New York City to scream at us, to literally scream at us
The Rachel Maddow Show
The ridiculous real story behind the tariff plan that turned Donald Trump into a global disaster
Dow plunges 2,200 points. Yesterday and today are the first time ever that the Dow has dropped 1,500 points or more on two consecutive days. 1,600 points yesterday, 2,200 points today. The S&P 500 dropped 10% in two days. It dropped 6% today alone.
The Rachel Maddow Show
The ridiculous real story behind the tariff plan that turned Donald Trump into a global disaster
Just for context, I mean, whether or not you watch the markets, whether or not you have any money in the markets or retirement account or whatever, just to get a sense of the scale here. I'll give you two metrics here to get a sense of the scale. The first one is the circuit breakers. Do you know about this? The markets have circuit breakers that kick in when things go off a cliff.
The Rachel Maddow Show
The ridiculous real story behind the tariff plan that turned Donald Trump into a global disaster
That's a mixed metaphor, but I think you know what I mean. They call them trading curbs, and they're these shutoffs that kick in automatically and basically stop the market. They stop people from trading for 15 minutes when things have gone unbelievably wrong.
The Rachel Maddow Show
The ridiculous real story behind the tariff plan that turned Donald Trump into a global disaster
And where those circuit breakers kick in, like the threshold of how bad it has to be before the circuit breakers kick in, is when the S&P drops 7% from the previous day's close. Today, the S&P dropped 6%. Had we got to 7%, we would have hit the circuit breaker. They would have turned the lights out on the market to try to save us from ourselves.
The Rachel Maddow Show
The ridiculous real story behind the tariff plan that turned Donald Trump into a global disaster
That's one way to understand the severity of what's happened here. And here's another. Look at this. This is the VIX index, V-I-X. Unlike the stock market graphs where you can tell things are bad when they go down, with the VIX, it's the volatility index, it goes up when things are terrible. It's like the economic crisis meter. And you can see there are just a few big peaks there over time.
The Rachel Maddow Show
The ridiculous real story behind the tariff plan that turned Donald Trump into a global disaster
The first huge peak, that's 2008. That was the global financial disaster of 2008. The worst financial catastrophe since the Great Depression. That's the first big peak. The next big peak is March 2020. That's the equally huge global disaster, right? When the COVID pandemic overran the world, killed millions of people, and basically shut off economic activity like there had been a power outage.
The Rachel Maddow Show
The ridiculous real story behind the tariff plan that turned Donald Trump into a global disaster
So those are the first two big peaks there. But now look, new peak. That's now. That's now. That one not caused by the biggest financial catastrophe since the Great Depression or a global pandemic that's killing millions of people. That one caused simply by Donald Trump being president. Again, with his great ideas.
The Rachel Maddow Show
The ridiculous real story behind the tariff plan that turned Donald Trump into a global disaster
And the scale of what he's doing, the scale of the destruction that he has wrought is a little bit hard to get your head around. I mean, like, you can see the headline writers scrambling to try to find the right words tonight. I mean, here's the Wall Street Journal front page right now. U.S. stocks plunge deeper, capping worst week since 2020, which again was the pandemic.
The Rachel Maddow Show
The ridiculous real story behind the tariff plan that turned Donald Trump into a global disaster
Trump's tariffs set off two-day sell-off as recessionary fears mount more than $6 trillion dollars erased from market. This has been the lead analysis piece on CNBC.com all day. Trump's tariffs are biggest policy mistake in 95 years. This is the lead editorial today at the Financial Times. America's astonishing act of self-harm.
The Rachel Maddow Show
The ridiculous real story behind the tariff plan that turned Donald Trump into a global disaster
I thought the picture of Trump there actually kind of puts a nice punctuation mark on that. Look what we've done to ourselves. Hi. But this is the lead, quote, if it endures Donald Trump's decision on April 2nd, 2025 to enact sweeping tariffs on U.S. trade partners will go down as one of the greatest acts of self-harm in American economic history.
The Rachel Maddow Show
The ridiculous real story behind the tariff plan that turned Donald Trump into a global disaster
His actions will wreak untold damage on households, businesses, and financial markets across the world, upending a global economic order that America benefited from and helped to create. Elsewhere in the FT today, they described Trump's actions as, quote, strangely self-sabotaging, quote, economic lunacy that might seem better explained by psychologists than economists.
The Rachel Maddow Show
The ridiculous real story behind the tariff plan that turned Donald Trump into a global disaster
Larry Summers, former Treasury Secretary, says, quote, this is to economics what creationism is to biology, what astrology is to astronomy, what RFK thought is to vaccine science. The Wall Street Journal summarizes tonight, quote, the Dow Jones Industrial Average became the last of the three major financial indices to enter a correction, defined as a decline of 10% or more from a closing peak.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'This is shameful': Trump sows animosity and mistrust abroad, degrading Americans in the process
Thanks to you at home for joining us this hour. Wow, a lot happened today and even more has happened tonight. Every Friday it's like this, but here we go. Ready? Tonight, a federal judge in New York has just blocked Trump from shutting down the Voice of America and firing its staff.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'This is shameful': Trump sows animosity and mistrust abroad, degrading Americans in the process
Joining us now is Rufus Gifford. He's America's former ambassador to Denmark. Ambassador Gifford, thank you so much for joining us. I hope you don't mind that we stole that from what you posted online. I thought a lot more people needed to see it.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'This is shameful': Trump sows animosity and mistrust abroad, degrading Americans in the process
Well, I feel like a lot of our discussion about this crazy scenario we find ourselves in has been about the—how Trump's fixation on Greenland, you know, where did it come from, where did he get this idea, how non-viable this idea seems, how any potential path toward him getting what he wants—
The Rachel Maddow Show
'This is shameful': Trump sows animosity and mistrust abroad, degrading Americans in the process
Like, for example, what he has done by sending hundreds of men who aren't from El Salvador to a prison in El Salvador. There is a separate court order that is blocking Trump from sending anybody else to that El Salvador prison the way that he did those several hundred men. It remains to be seen if the courts will also order Trump to return those men. from El Salvador.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'This is shameful': Trump sows animosity and mistrust abroad, degrading Americans in the process
Seems like it would be impossible for him to get the catastrophic consequences of a potential war with Denmark, with a NATO ally, if that's what he felt like he needed to do. And that is indeed what he's threatened to get it. But I feel like what we haven't talked about is what these threats from him have already done.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'This is shameful': Trump sows animosity and mistrust abroad, degrading Americans in the process
to our alliances, to our standing in the world, and to what we are able to accomplish in the world as the United States of America. And I feel like you're really the first person who I've heard talk about that in really granular terms, in terms of what damage has already been done. Do you think that's the more appropriate ground for the national conversation we're having about this?
The Rachel Maddow Show
'This is shameful': Trump sows animosity and mistrust abroad, degrading Americans in the process
But just in case Trump had designs on sending people to yet another random country to which the deportees had no connection, a federal judge tonight in Massachusetts has blocked him from doing that. Want more? There's more. Today, also, a federal judge has blocked Trump from shutting down the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'This is shameful': Trump sows animosity and mistrust abroad, degrading Americans in the process
As an ambassador and in the kind of diplomatic roles that you've played, you've seen America try to persuade people to do things with us that they might not otherwise want to do. You've seen us try to dissuade countries from doing things that they did want to do, which we felt weren't in our interest.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'This is shameful': Trump sows animosity and mistrust abroad, degrading Americans in the process
And you've seen all the different ways that America, you know, uses its power, all of its various forms of power to try to get what we want in the world. We are now, like just this week,
The Rachel Maddow Show
'This is shameful': Trump sows animosity and mistrust abroad, degrading Americans in the process
facing a world in which Canada says that we are no longer a valued and trusted trading partner, in which Europe says not only are we no longer a partner in defense, but they so distrust us that they may want to divest themselves of U.S. weapons systems because they're not sure that they can safely count on even U.S. weapons with a U.S. government that is so hostile to European interests.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'This is shameful': Trump sows animosity and mistrust abroad, degrading Americans in the process
They may need to build up European defenses in a way that has never been contemplated since the end of World War II, specifically to treat America essentially as an adversary, not just as the absence of an ally. In a world where we stand alone or where we stand, I guess, with Russia and El Salvador, and that's the extent of our alliances in the
The Rachel Maddow Show
'This is shameful': Trump sows animosity and mistrust abroad, degrading Americans in the process
What are the kinds of things that Americans have counted on us being able to do that we will no longer be able to do?
The Rachel Maddow Show
'This is shameful': Trump sows animosity and mistrust abroad, degrading Americans in the process
Trump had tried to fire most of the people who worked there and then told the remaining people who were still there that they were not allowed to do any work. And then he shut down the physical headquarters of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. But now a federal judge has issued an injunction blocking Trump from doing any of that.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'This is shameful': Trump sows animosity and mistrust abroad, degrading Americans in the process
Yeah. The American people haven't necessarily changed our minds here. It's just that our government is going through a revolution. Rufus Gifford, former ambassador to Denmark, I really appreciate you making time to be here tonight, sir. Thank you.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'This is shameful': Trump sows animosity and mistrust abroad, degrading Americans in the process
Alright, more news ahead tonight. Stay with us. Last night, we showed you this spontaneous big protest that sprung up in Somerville, Massachusetts. Almost instantly, like 2,000 people gathered near Tufts University the same day that a Tufts student was snatched off the street by a half-dozen federal agents who were covering their faces.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'This is shameful': Trump sows animosity and mistrust abroad, degrading Americans in the process
They grabbed her and handcuffed her and stuffed her into an unmarked car. As of today, that spot on that Somerville street where she was grabbed by federal agents has become sort of a shrine to her and to what happened there. The tree there where they grabbed her is now adorned with flowers and ribbons. There's a sign on it that says, ICE kidnapped our neighbor.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'This is shameful': Trump sows animosity and mistrust abroad, degrading Americans in the process
We now know that this young woman was moved to an immigration facility, a prison, effectively, in Louisiana, despite a judge's order that she was not to be removed from the state of Massachusetts without notifying the court. She's in Louisiana anyway. Today, a federal judge ordered that Trump is not allowed to deport this young woman.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'This is shameful': Trump sows animosity and mistrust abroad, degrading Americans in the process
While the judge reviews her case and reviews her arrest, the judge ordering that she, quote, shall not be removed from the United States until further order of this court. We also got confirmation today that this student, her name is Ramesa Osterk, she was never even notified that her visa had been revoked by the Trump administration.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'This is shameful': Trump sows animosity and mistrust abroad, degrading Americans in the process
Boston Globe reports today the Trump administration revoked the visa of a Tufts graduate student on March 21st, but never notified her before masked immigration and customs enforcement agents swarmed her on a Somerville sidewalk Tuesday and took her into custody. Just think about that for a second. Think about that. I mean, it's one thing for them to have revoked this woman's visa.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'This is shameful': Trump sows animosity and mistrust abroad, degrading Americans in the process
I mean, it has its own First Amendment issues, right, among other things, to put it mildly. The U.S. government is not supposed to be able to revoke someone's visa because they wrote an op-ed the president disagrees with or they went to a protest. That is one part of this fight. But it's one thing to revoke her visa. It is another thing to not tell her you have done so. Right.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'This is shameful': Trump sows animosity and mistrust abroad, degrading Americans in the process
Because then the first time she finds out that she no longer has a valid visa is when she is physically grabbed on the street, thrown into a car, put on a plane, thrown across the country and stuffed into a prison. Right.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'This is shameful': Trump sows animosity and mistrust abroad, degrading Americans in the process
She has, as of tonight, ordered Donald Trump to instruct the government to reinstate the employees of the CFPB and to preserve the agency's contracts and their data. CFPB employees, I should tell you, they have been showing up in person, packing the court hearings every day this case has been in court. Well, now the judge says those CFPB employees are likely to win this case on the merits.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'This is shameful': Trump sows animosity and mistrust abroad, degrading Americans in the process
If you notify somebody that you have revoked their visa, they then have the opportunity not only to potentially fight it, I guess, but they also have the opportunity to leave the country without being imprisoned, right?
The Rachel Maddow Show
'This is shameful': Trump sows animosity and mistrust abroad, degrading Americans in the process
But if you just take their visa away and never tell them the way they're doing this, somebody in her situation, the visa holder who's had her visa revoked, she has no way to avoid going to prison. There's nothing she can do to avoid being imprisoned. Why do it this way? This is all going to be litigated.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'This is shameful': Trump sows animosity and mistrust abroad, degrading Americans in the process
Rumeza Ozturk's legal team, I should tell you, now includes three lawyers from the ACLU who have joined her case. And, you know, it's worth noting that to the extent these immigration cases are getting into court, the Trump administration is losing, losing, losing, losing.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'This is shameful': Trump sows animosity and mistrust abroad, degrading Americans in the process
Today in New Jersey, people gathered outside the courthouse in Newark in support of Mahmoud Khalil, another grad student the Trump administration is trying to deport after snatching him from, I believe, student housing at Columbia. The courts have so far blocked Khalil's deportation. His lawyers are asking a federal judge in New Jersey to free him from the prison that he is sitting in in Louisiana.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'This is shameful': Trump sows animosity and mistrust abroad, degrading Americans in the process
In Virginia today, a judge did order the release of a Venezuelan couple who were arrested by immigration authorities this month. They have legal authorization to live and work in the United States, but they were nevertheless arrested and have been put in prison by the Trump administration. The judge in Virginia today called their arrests quote baseless and unlawful.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'This is shameful': Trump sows animosity and mistrust abroad, degrading Americans in the process
The couple had already been arrested once and ordered released by a judge. Then the Trump administration arrested them again. Both times it was in front of the couple's young children. In the court hearing today, the judge, quote, rebuked government officials for claiming in court that the couple posed a public threat. The judge ordered both of them released straight from the courthouse.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'This is shameful': Trump sows animosity and mistrust abroad, degrading Americans in the process
Trump tried to do this two weeks ago, but tonight a judge ordered Trump that he cannot, quote, terminate, reduce in force, place on leave, or furlough the journalists and staff and engineers at Voice of America. The judge called what Trump is doing here, quote, a classic case of arbitrary and capricious decision-making. Trump also tried to shut down another part of the U.S.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'This is shameful': Trump sows animosity and mistrust abroad, degrading Americans in the process
The judge said to a Trump administration lawyer, quote, there is no reason why they are being held. If this was a criminal case, I would throw you out of my chambers. In a court filing in this case, an assistant director of an ice field office in Washington described the woman in this couple as an affiliate of a gang and later described her as a senior member of a gang.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'This is shameful': Trump sows animosity and mistrust abroad, degrading Americans in the process
The judge practically crumpled up that filing and threw it in the trash, saying, quote, this is a terrible, terrible affidavit, described the claims in the affidavit as, quote, pure hearsay, assumptions and, quote, putting words in people's mouths. And did I mention she told the Trump administration lawyer that she was inclined to throw him out of the place?
The Rachel Maddow Show
'This is shameful': Trump sows animosity and mistrust abroad, degrading Americans in the process
Like I said, the Trump administration keeps losing on this stuff in court, including this ruling tonight, which says they cannot deport people to some third country where they're not a citizen without due process under law. Like, for example, the way they sent hundreds of men to prison in El Salvador without any notice, let alone a hearing.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'This is shameful': Trump sows animosity and mistrust abroad, degrading Americans in the process
as they keep losing all of these cases in court over and over and over again, and frankly, probably because they keep losing all of these cases in court, the Trump administration is trying to make it difficult, if not impossible, for lawyers to fight them in court, trying to make it impossible for lawyers to do their jobs, you know, giving people access to the remedies afforded by the U.S.
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'This is shameful': Trump sows animosity and mistrust abroad, degrading Americans in the process
Constitution in our judicial system. As Trump moves to try to intimidate and block the legal profession from doing its role to protect the Constitution and people who are in this country, it has very quickly sort of become in do-or-die time for the U.S. legal profession in terms of standing up for itself and standing up to his intimidation.
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'This is shameful': Trump sows animosity and mistrust abroad, degrading Americans in the process
A mixed record thus far, but a very, very urgent calling for the legal profession right now. We've got more on that ahead. Stay with us. This was a scene in New York City earlier this week. Protesters with signs reading, Paul Weiss, Cowards of the Year, and Paul Weiss, Profiles in Cowardice. Paul Weiss, What Will You Tell Your Children? Paul Weiss is not a man. Paul, Weiss is a law firm.
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'This is shameful': Trump sows animosity and mistrust abroad, degrading Americans in the process
And so, as of now, they should consider themselves back on the job. But wait, there's more. On Trump's week one botched and incoherent order to cut off all federal spending, all federal grants, now a federal appeals court has upheld the lower court rulings that shut him down on that.
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'This is shameful': Trump sows animosity and mistrust abroad, degrading Americans in the process
And two weeks ago, after President Trump issued an executive order terminating federal contracts with Paul Weiss and suspending security clearances for the firm's lawyers... Paul Weiss caved.
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'This is shameful': Trump sows animosity and mistrust abroad, degrading Americans in the process
The firm went to the White House and signed some sort of deal with Trump, made some sort of deal with Trump that includes them giving tens of millions of dollars in free legal work to causes that Trump supports.
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'This is shameful': Trump sows animosity and mistrust abroad, degrading Americans in the process
As I mentioned at the top of the show, Trump has been picking on law firms one by one, threatening them, trying to scare the legal profession into not challenging him in court and not representing people he's targeting.
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'This is shameful': Trump sows animosity and mistrust abroad, degrading Americans in the process
And even as rich, highbrow firms like Paul Weiss and now Skadden Arps have gone to Trump and offered him tens of millions of dollars in free legal services for his chosen causes to try to save themselves while he attacks the legal profession and the independence of the judicial system.
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'This is shameful': Trump sows animosity and mistrust abroad, degrading Americans in the process
These two firms, I believe, ruining their reputations and likely ending their businesses in the process of doing this. Turns out the rest of the legal profession is wiser. The rest of the legal profession is realizing it's time to fight. The first firm to fight back was Perkins Coie. Now today, two more. And at least thus far, they're winning.
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'This is shameful': Trump sows animosity and mistrust abroad, degrading Americans in the process
Today, Jenner and Block and WilmerHale both sued Trump after he signed executive orders that also targeted them. Tonight, in two separate courtrooms, two separate judges sided with the firms and blocked Trump's actions against them, at least for now. I mean, what Trump is doing here is not just going after individual law firms like they were random businesses, right?
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'This is shameful': Trump sows animosity and mistrust abroad, degrading Americans in the process
He's attacking the whole legal profession. He's attacking the ability for any one of us, any entity, to have legal representation against the government without that legal representation, fearing retribution themselves. Trump is attacking the rule of law by attacking the machinery of the law. So much depends on how the lawyers at the center of this attack choose to respond.
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'This is shameful': Trump sows animosity and mistrust abroad, degrading Americans in the process
And experts who see this sort of autocratic breakthrough and the effort to try to change fundamentally the legal system in this way say that the timing on the fight back really matters. It's basically now or never. This is from Scott Cummings, professor of legal ethics at UCLA Law School. He studied the decline of legal systems in autocracies.
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'This is shameful': Trump sows animosity and mistrust abroad, degrading Americans in the process
Professor Cummings says this, quote, in the U.S., the window for action is closing. And when it does, there will no longer be opportunities for meaningful action against the lawyers in charge of this radical democratic takedown. Once this happens, as it has in other autocracies, the bar will be captured by the regime and levers of influence will be eradicated.
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'This is shameful': Trump sows animosity and mistrust abroad, degrading Americans in the process
The clear lesson from these regimes is that a wait-and-see approach does not work, and attempts at appeasement end up facilitating autocratic consolidation. Ultimately, democracies die when people lose hope that change is possible. We must not succumb to this pessimism. Joining us now is Scott Cummings, professor of legal ethics at UCLA's law school.
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'This is shameful': Trump sows animosity and mistrust abroad, degrading Americans in the process
Professor, it's a pleasure to have you with us tonight. Thanks for being here.
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'This is shameful': Trump sows animosity and mistrust abroad, degrading Americans in the process
So you wrote this week that what Trump is doing is something that follows an autocratic legal playbook that's been used over and over again and in country after country around the world. Can you help us understand what that playbook entails and what are the steps?
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'This is shameful': Trump sows animosity and mistrust abroad, degrading Americans in the process
on Trump's ham-handed White House proclamation that all so-called probationary employees had to be fired from multiple agencies. That's the one they soon realized was so blatantly illegal, they tried to take it back and pretend that it had just been a suggestion all along. Well, now a federal appeals court has upheld yet another of the lower court rulings that shut Trump down on that one as well.
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'This is shameful': Trump sows animosity and mistrust abroad, degrading Americans in the process
I don't know. Thank you.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'This is shameful': Trump sows animosity and mistrust abroad, degrading Americans in the process
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I don't know. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you.
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'This is shameful': Trump sows animosity and mistrust abroad, degrading Americans in the process
Oh, do you want more? Do you want more? Because there's more. Just before we got on the air tonight, we got a late night ruling from yet another federal judge who has issued yet another ruling blocking Trump, this time on one of his authoritarian fantasy executive orders by which he targeted a major mainstream U.S. law firm.
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'This is shameful': Trump sows animosity and mistrust abroad, degrading Americans in the process
Trump started issuing these one-by-one executive orders going after law firms, basically to try to scare the legal profession into not bringing cases against him in court, into not representing people or entities who Trump is targeting.
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'This is shameful': Trump sows animosity and mistrust abroad, degrading Americans in the process
He's been trying to intimidate the legal profession and individual law firms one by one so that he can get his way without having court challenges to things that he does that are illegal. Two major U.S.
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'This is shameful': Trump sows animosity and mistrust abroad, degrading Americans in the process
law firms, I think, have effectively destroyed themselves, have destroyed their own reputations and made themselves, I think, basically indelibly infamous by going to Trump, going to the White House and begging Trump to not target them, promising to do tens of millions of free legal work for his chosen causes.
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'This is shameful': Trump sows animosity and mistrust abroad, degrading Americans in the process
The firms Skadden Arps and Paul Weiss are the two firms that have chosen to do that, have chosen that attempt. to get out of Trump's opprobrium, right? I think Skadden Arps and Paul Weiss have destroyed their reputations by doing that. I think probably they thereby have destroyed their own businesses.
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'This is shameful': Trump sows animosity and mistrust abroad, degrading Americans in the process
By doing that, if that's what they chose to do, in contrast, you've got firms like Jenner and Block, who went straight to court and said, actually, no, we're not gonna beg, we're gonna go fight this, and we're gonna fight this like you can't believe, because you know what we're good at? Fighting illegal stuff in court.
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'This is shameful': Trump sows animosity and mistrust abroad, degrading Americans in the process
Well, tonight a judge has ruled in favor of Jenner and Block and blocked Trump's executive order against them. The judge in that case said Trump's attack on the firm violates the first, fifth, and sixth amendments of the U.S. Constitution. I said there are two firms tonight that we are watching because they chose to fight.
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'This is shameful': Trump sows animosity and mistrust abroad, degrading Americans in the process
Unlike Paul Weiss, unlike Skadden Arps, Jenner and Block and WilmerHale chose to fight. Jenner and Block got that order tonight. blocking Trump's executive order. The second firm, WilmerHale, the judge hearing their case tonight said in court that he wasn't going to rule from the bench, but he also said in open court that he was inclined to issue an order against Trump in their case as well.
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'This is shameful': Trump sows animosity and mistrust abroad, degrading Americans in the process
I will tell you, we had a reporter in the courtroom for that. Our reporter notes that the courtroom for this hearing this evening was packed with lawyers from WilmerHale, all there in person to stand behind their firm's decision to fight. And now it looks like they're going to win, too. Just moments ago, just before we got on the air, we got this written ruling from that judge.
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'This is shameful': Trump sows animosity and mistrust abroad, degrading Americans in the process
And just like with Jenner and Block in the WilmerHale case, the judge is also blocking Trump's executive action against the firm in part. So both firms that fought against Trump's executive orders here won tonight in court. You don't always win when you fight, but you always lose every time you don't. So happy Friday. Donald Trump is having a terrible day. Have you ever heard of Peebles, Ohio?
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'This is shameful': Trump sows animosity and mistrust abroad, degrading Americans in the process
agency for global media, Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty. Plaintiffs also sued to block Trump from shutting down those entities. Yesterday, after those plaintiffs had initial success in court in their case, Trump actually reversed that decision and let Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty stay open and stay funded. pushback works.
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'This is shameful': Trump sows animosity and mistrust abroad, degrading Americans in the process
It's P-E-E-B-L-E-S. Peebles, Ohio. It's in Appalachia. It's a village. It's a town of about 1,700 people. In that little town of 1,700 people in deep, deep red Adams County, Ohio, look at this. They're out protesting Trump on the street now. Their congressman is Republican David Taylor. You can see the sign there. MIA missing in action.
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'This is shameful': Trump sows animosity and mistrust abroad, degrading Americans in the process
Congressman David Taylor, your constituents would like a word with you. In Fort Bend County, Texas, they've also got a Republican congressman there, Troy Nels. Troy Nels will also not meet with his constituents back home. So last night in Fort Bend County, Democrats Beto O'Rourke and Tim Walz held their own town hall in Troy Nels' district in Texas. Something like 2,000 people showed up.
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'This is shameful': Trump sows animosity and mistrust abroad, degrading Americans in the process
You won't show up and meet with your constituents? Well, the Democrats will do it for you then. In Grand Rapids, Michigan, last night, Democratic Congresswoman Hillary Skuldin had more than 1,000 people show up at her own town hall at a local high school.
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'This is shameful': Trump sows animosity and mistrust abroad, degrading Americans in the process
A day after announcing with glee that he is firing thousands of people from the Department of Health and Human Services, and as we are still getting in reports about kids turning up with liver damage in Texas because their parents have inadvertently poisoned them by following quack health advice from Trump's health secretary, Bobby Kennedy Jr., Kennedy today turned up in Martinsburg, West Virginia, for an event with that state's Republican governor.
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'This is shameful': Trump sows animosity and mistrust abroad, degrading Americans in the process
Even in Martinsburg, West Virginia, the locals were there to greet him. See the sign there? With Governor Morrissey and RFK, measles and polio are here to stay. Hands off our democracy. Today at the Department of Education in Washington, D.C., this was the scene as employees that Trump has fired from the Education Department were allowed to collect their things and leave.
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'This is shameful': Trump sows animosity and mistrust abroad, degrading Americans in the process
People turned out on the street outside the Education Department headquarters to thank them for their work, to cheer for them. Trump's efforts to shut down the Education Department and fire all its employees are being challenged in court. He has asserted that he is closing the Education Department. But you know what? The Department of Education was not created by Donald Trump.
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'This is shameful': Trump sows animosity and mistrust abroad, degrading Americans in the process
It was created by the United States Congress and is funded by Congress. And so it is Congress, not Donald Trump. that will have the last word on whether or not the education department is in fact shut down. But as he wages war against the education department in this country, people are turning out to support the people who work there.
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'This is shameful': Trump sows animosity and mistrust abroad, degrading Americans in the process
Trump's top campaign donor, Elon Musk, found himself in legal jeopardy today, or at least apparent legal jeopardy, when he tried to pull another one of his stunts in which he effectively sort of pays voters. The Wisconsin attorney general immediately went to court and said, under Wisconsin state law, it does not matter if you are Donald Trump's top campaign donor, Elon Musk.
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'This is shameful': Trump sows animosity and mistrust abroad, degrading Americans in the process
It is still illegal to offer people money for voting. Elon Musk quickly deleted his tweet from earlier today, saying that he was going to come to Wisconsin with million-dollar checks. He tried to recast the whole million-dollar check scheme as something totally different than what he had initially announced.
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'This is shameful': Trump sows animosity and mistrust abroad, degrading Americans in the process
ahead of Elon Musk's planned campaign trip to Wisconsin to try to boost the pro-Trump judge. They're trying to get onto the state Supreme Court there. This plane has meanwhile been flying all over the state, towing a banner that says, go home, Elon, vote Susan. Susan is Susan Crawford, the judge who is running against the Musk MAGA candidate in Wisconsin.
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'This is shameful': Trump sows animosity and mistrust abroad, degrading Americans in the process
We have been closely watching the case of the Tufts University Fulbright Scholar, who was snatched off the street by masked officers. A bunch of things are happening in that case, and we are going to have a full update on that for you in just a moment. But I can tell you right now that a judge overseeing that case has just ordered that Trump is not allowed to deport that young woman.
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'This is shameful': Trump sows animosity and mistrust abroad, degrading Americans in the process
That race is Tuesday, but early voting has already started in the Wisconsin state Supreme Court race. Donald Trump's continuing and now escalating tariff gambit sent inflation metrics up today. It also sent his gambit on tariffs also sent the markets off a cliff. The Dow dropped more than 700 points today. The S&P 500 dropped nearly 2%. The Nasdaq drop was closer to 3%.
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'This is shameful': Trump sows animosity and mistrust abroad, degrading Americans in the process
Well done on the whole tariffs thing. And of course, today was the day that Donald Trump sent his vice president, cute coat, to Greenland. Now, this was supposed to be initially a kind of extended soft power charm offensive visit by the vice president's very charming wife.
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'This is shameful': Trump sows animosity and mistrust abroad, degrading Americans in the process
But that led to embarrassing headlines about American officials being unable to find a single Greenland resident who was willing to speak with her on her visit. No business agreed to host her on her visit. Even the dog sled race that she said she wanted to attend made clear that she had not been invited and they did not plan to host her at the event. Residents of Greenland are so disgusted.
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'This is shameful': Trump sows animosity and mistrust abroad, degrading Americans in the process
by the Trump administration's insistence that the U.S. is somehow going to get their country, somehow going to take Greenland, that there were plans for protests of Usha Vance's visit, from her landing at the airport, on the roads from the airport to the Capitol, and along the Capitol's streets. And so they decided, hey, maybe let's not do that.
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'This is shameful': Trump sows animosity and mistrust abroad, degrading Americans in the process
In the end, instead, they decided to pare the visit way back. They decided to send her husband, the vice president, with her. And they sent the Vances only, only to a U.S. airbase that is literally a thousand miles from the Capitol where the protests were expected.
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'This is shameful': Trump sows animosity and mistrust abroad, degrading Americans in the process
As the New York Times put it, they sent them to this airbase, quote, where distance from any population center and high fences assured there would be no visible dissent. Greenland is part of Denmark. If Donald Trump and J.D.
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'This is shameful': Trump sows animosity and mistrust abroad, degrading Americans in the process
Vance are going to take Greenland somehow, which they keep insisting, the most obvious route to doing that would be a war with Denmark, I guess, which is part of NATO and is ostensibly our ally both individually and as part of NATO. But to that point, our alliance with them. I want you to watch this. This is a man named Rufus Gifford. He was chief of protocol in the Biden administration.
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'This is shameful': Trump sows animosity and mistrust abroad, degrading Americans in the process
He was also America's ambassador to Denmark under President Obama. And I just want you to watch his reaction to what Trump and Vance are doing here with this stunt, with this threat, which they are now escalating. Watch.
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'This is shameful': Trump sows animosity and mistrust abroad, degrading Americans in the process
The courts have blocked him from sending her out of the country. Again, we will have More on that to come. Plenty of new detail on that case to bring you tonight. In a separate case, yet another federal judge has just issued a restraining order that blocks Trump from sending people to random third countries that they're not from.
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Media reports prompt Trump to end plan to brief Musk on secret potential war plans for China
Happy Friday, really happy to have you here. There is a pattern in the news cycle when Donald Trump is president. It was true in the first term, apparently it's going to be true in the second term too. And I don't want to read too much into what we know about him as a human, but it would appear that he is a guy who stays up late and sleeps late.
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Media reports prompt Trump to end plan to brief Musk on secret potential war plans for China
He told them there are times when there are rocky moments, a little bit of stormy weather, but I'm here to tell you the future is bright and exciting. He also told them... that they should feel good about these reassurances from him and definitely not sell their stock the way his executives and board members have been.
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Media reports prompt Trump to end plan to brief Musk on secret potential war plans for China
They should really feel good about his assurances about the future because he has such a good track record of his predictions coming true. He explained this to his employees last night. which occasions, I feel like it's only fair, just a reminder of what his predictions have actually been like over time. This, for example, was Elon Musk speaking in 2017.
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Media reports prompt Trump to end plan to brief Musk on secret potential war plans for China
That appears to be happening in this second term as well. All that said, it means it's particularly good to have you here this Friday night and every Friday night, because by Friday night, stuff is generally going great guns, and tonight is no exception. So we got a lot to get to tonight. A big story on Social Security that I really think is very important and really want to talk with you about.
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Media reports prompt Trump to end plan to brief Musk on secret potential war plans for China
Amazing. Imagine if you were in the audience of that event looking back now in 2025 and realizing that you might have been one of the people who applauded that. Did you buy stock too? Yeah, I love the part where he's like, November, maybe December. Like he thinks it's, speaking in 2017, he's like, by November, might be December, but then we'll have it.
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Media reports prompt Trump to end plan to brief Musk on secret potential war plans for China
This was in the following year in 2018 saying, yeah, actually rescheduled. Now it's going to happen by 2019.
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Media reports prompt Trump to end plan to brief Musk on secret potential war plans for China
So that was him in 2019 saying, no, no, no. I was saying it would all be done by 2019. This was him in 2019 saying, no, no, maybe it'll be done by 2020. But by then it's not going to be your own car. By then it's going to be taxis. The taxis are going to be driving themselves by 2020.
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Media reports prompt Trump to end plan to brief Musk on secret potential war plans for China
Autonomous robo taxis for Tesla next year by 2020. Luckily, by the time none of these things came to pass, when he said they would come to pass, none of us cared because as of then, meaning as of now, we're all living on Mars.
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Media reports prompt Trump to end plan to brief Musk on secret potential war plans for China
Again, like he's just doing the math right there. You see him squint. We're going to be, how long will it take to? 2024, we're going to be shooting people off to Mars and they'll get there by 2025. Confident. Here it is, 2025. Mars isn't nearly as hot as I thought it would be.
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Media reports prompt Trump to end plan to brief Musk on secret potential war plans for China
These are the kinds of predictions that he has used to stoke the hype around himself and his companies year after year after year after year. It's a running joke, right, his predictions. But the faith in Elon Musk and in all the things that he can see coming true in the future, has driven him to the position that he's in now with our US government.
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Media reports prompt Trump to end plan to brief Musk on secret potential war plans for China
Meanwhile, in his actual businesses, Tesla stock has lost over 50% of its value in the past three months. Edmunds.com just reported that more people are trading in their Teslas than ever before. The share of Teslas among all cars they're seeing being traded in is 300% higher right now than it was this time last year.
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Media reports prompt Trump to end plan to brief Musk on secret potential war plans for China
When JPMorgan radically slashed their forecast for Tesla sales this quarter, their analysts said this week, quote, "...we struggle to think of anything analogous in the history of the automotive industry in which a brand has lost so much value so quickly."
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Media reports prompt Trump to end plan to brief Musk on secret potential war plans for China
And that was before we found out that they were recalling nearly all Cybertrucks on the road for the eighth time, this time for the risk of pieces of the body coming loose and flying off in traffic. And weirdly, that kind of thing shouldn't have to factor into news about the government of the United States, but these are strange times. and fired-up times.
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Media reports prompt Trump to end plan to brief Musk on secret potential war plans for China
Members of Congress have been on recess this week. Many of them left D.C. to spend time in their home districts, which means that many of them have been holding town halls at home to talk to their constituents. Many of their constituents are confused and scared and mad about what's been going on with Elon Musk and Donald Trump in Washington. We've been covering them on the show all week.
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Media reports prompt Trump to end plan to brief Musk on secret potential war plans for China
But we got a bunch of updates to do on stuff that has been developing over the course of the day. First of all, a big update on a story that broke last night while we were on the air. It broke while I was talking to Tim Walls on the air. We got a live reaction from him here on it during the show.
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Media reports prompt Trump to end plan to brief Musk on secret potential war plans for China
We've been covering things like this on the show since the very beginning of the Trump administration. Just this week, though, there have been so many, we haven't been able to show you all of them. Here's just a snapshot. This was Golden, Colorado on Wednesday. Totally full house, absolutely packed auditorium.
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Media reports prompt Trump to end plan to brief Musk on secret potential war plans for China
This is a town hall hosted by Democratic Congresswoman Brittany Pedersen and Democratic Senator Michael Bennet. They got an absolute earful from their constituents, basically asking them to fight harder. Particularly Senator Michael Bennett got an earful from people telling him to stand up more strongly against Musk and Trump.
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Media reports prompt Trump to end plan to brief Musk on secret potential war plans for China
People were very angry with him for voting to confirm some members of Trump's cabinet. Watch this.
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Media reports prompt Trump to end plan to brief Musk on secret potential war plans for China
Step up or step aside. Constituents furious with Senator Michael Bennett for having done anything other than stand up to Trump, particularly voting for some of his cabinet nominees. This is Poughkeepsie, New York. Wednesday this week, full house, around 800 people showing up to Democratic Congressman Pat Ryan's town hall. Look at that room.
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Media reports prompt Trump to end plan to brief Musk on secret potential war plans for China
Another full room in Frederick, Maryland this week to hear from Democratic members of Congress, Jamie Raskin and April McClain Delaney. So many people showed up in Frederick, Maryland. They had to turn people away because there wasn't enough room and they didn't have an overflow set up.
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Media reports prompt Trump to end plan to brief Musk on secret potential war plans for China
In Concord, California last night, Democratic Congressman Mark DeSaulnier spoke to a packed crowd inside a high school gym. You know, and it's not just Democrats holding town halls, and it's not just Democrats showing up to them.
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Media reports prompt Trump to end plan to brief Musk on secret potential war plans for China
Here's some local news coverage from Salt Lake City, Utah, last night from a town hall held by two Republican members of Congress, Congresswoman Celeste Malloy and Congressman Mike Kennedy. Watch.
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Media reports prompt Trump to end plan to brief Musk on secret potential war plans for China
This was the New York Times report, this insane story late last night that the Trump administration was planning this morning, Friday morning, to give Trump's top campaign donor the U.S. military's detailed, highly classified operational plans that we as a country would follow if we ever went to war with China.
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Media reports prompt Trump to end plan to brief Musk on secret potential war plans for China
Again, those are Republicans there, including the one saying it's careening 100 miles an hour into an authoritarian wall. This was Dowagic, I think that's how you say it, Dowagic, excuse me, Dowagic, Michigan last night, which ended up kind of like a game of where's Waldo.
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Media reports prompt Trump to end plan to brief Musk on secret potential war plans for China
Had he been here, he would have received an earful. There was another no-show in Fairbanks, Alaska this week. Voters inviting their Republican Senator Dan Sullivan to a town hall when he didn't accept their invitation. Nearly 200 Alaskans showed up anyway. They actually needed that overflow room. Again, this is for a town hall where the senator was not in attendance.
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Media reports prompt Trump to end plan to brief Musk on secret potential war plans for China
They addressed their questions to his cardboard cutout, which they propped up at the front of the room. This was Nevada City, California, a cardboard cutout of Republican Congressman Kevin Kiley. You might remember earlier this week, he held a town hall on the phone. That's all he's been willing to do. His constituents practically melted the phone lines. More than 25,000 people called in.
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Media reports prompt Trump to end plan to brief Musk on secret potential war plans for China
But look at this. Even after that, more than 700 people showed up to this last night to talk to the cardboard version of their congressman. More than 700 people, even though Congressman Kiley was not there in person, which his constituents are not going to let him forget. You saw signs like this. Look at this sign. Kevin Kiley is ghosting us. We see right through you.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Media reports prompt Trump to end plan to brief Musk on secret potential war plans for China
We had to blur this a little bit because the cute little ghost is making a rude gesture. You can imagine. I didn't even know they had fingers. In Hermantown, Minnesota this weekend, they tried a different tactic. Instead of holding one of their empty chair town halls, instead of trying to get their congressman to go to them, they went to him.
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Media reports prompt Trump to end plan to brief Musk on secret potential war plans for China
Republican Congressman Pete Stauber's constituents in Michigan showing up outside his office in the cold to protest.
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Media reports prompt Trump to end plan to brief Musk on secret potential war plans for China
Again, this is just a snapshot of what's been happening this week. I got to tell you, tonight in Denver, Colorado, Senator Bernie Sanders and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, they just wrapped up an absolutely, look at this, absolutely enormous outdoor rally in Denver. Look at this. This is tonight in Denver, Colorado, more than 34,000 people turning out in Denver Civic Center Park.
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Media reports prompt Trump to end plan to brief Musk on secret potential war plans for China
Now, Elon Musk, the president's top campaign donor, is of course deeply involved with the Chinese government. He has multi-billion dollar outstanding loans with China. He, not that long ago, wrote a pro-China essay for the Chinese government's censorship agency. The majority of Tesla cars now are manufactured in China.
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Media reports prompt Trump to end plan to brief Musk on secret potential war plans for China
That's the largest, but events large and small, protesting what's going on with Trump and trying to encourage Democrats to stand up against him. It's been going on all over the country this week, especially with members of Congress home for recess. It would take me all night to show you everything. Been trying to do at least some of it every night.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Media reports prompt Trump to end plan to brief Musk on secret potential war plans for China
Lucky for you, though, there's going to be a big focus tonight on the last word right after this hour here on MSNBC about the pushback we're seeing with protests in town halls. The great Ali Velshi is in tonight on the last word. He's going to be talking with Democratic Congressman Ro Khanna. who's been hosting town halls in Republican-held districts all across California.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Media reports prompt Trump to end plan to brief Musk on secret potential war plans for China
They're going to have a big focus on this tonight at 10 p.m. Eastern. You're going to want to stick around for that. We got lots more to get to tonight. Stay with us. My whole adult life, we have thought of attacking Social Security as the third rail of American politics. You touch it, and it is a guaranteed political death.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Media reports prompt Trump to end plan to brief Musk on secret potential war plans for China
Well, we are now witnessing the strongest test we've ever had of that aphorism, as Donald Trump grabs that third rail firmly and unmistakably. Trump has announced plans to fire thousands of people who work at the Social Security Administration, more than 12% of its staff. He has released plans to shut down dozens of local Social Security offices across the country.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Media reports prompt Trump to end plan to brief Musk on secret potential war plans for China
Simultaneously, Trump is also making changes that will force millions more people to have to go to Social Security offices in person rather than dealing with the agency over the phone, as they can now. That means millions more elderly people and people with disabilities will be forced to somehow make their way
The Rachel Maddow Show
Media reports prompt Trump to end plan to brief Musk on secret potential war plans for China
physically to a Social Security office in person if they can find one, because they're closing lots of offices, because they will need to get help in person from a Social Security staffer, provided they can find one who hasn't been fired.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Media reports prompt Trump to end plan to brief Musk on secret potential war plans for China
The Trump administration also wants to give Elon Musk's group of Doge staffers access to Social Security's database of incredibly sensitive personal information. As we covered here on the show last night, for now, a judge has blocked Doge from getting that information.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Media reports prompt Trump to end plan to brief Musk on secret potential war plans for China
Today, Trump's acting director of Social Security responded to that ruling by throwing a tantrum and saying if that ruling stands, he will shut down the Social Security administration altogether. And you don't have to be among the 70-plus million Americans who currently receive Social Security to be mad about any of that. Right. Making grandma wait in new lines is not nice. Right.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Media reports prompt Trump to end plan to brief Musk on secret potential war plans for China
Making people like check themselves out of a hospital or the nursing home to somehow make their way to a far away office that hasn't been shut to wait for hours to do something they used to be able to do on the phone. It's not nice. Right. Pitching a fit and saying you'll just shut down the whole administration is not nice. It ought to be obvious. Right. Nobody needs to spell that out for you.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Media reports prompt Trump to end plan to brief Musk on secret potential war plans for China
Unless you're Donald Trump's commerce secretary. I don't know if you saw this today. I feel like in any other moment, this would have been wallpaper all over the American media. But this statement today from Donald Trump's commerce secretary about what Trump is doing to social security, this tape is such a political disaster.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Media reports prompt Trump to end plan to brief Musk on secret potential war plans for China
I feel like I almost have to close my eyes because I can't bear to watch it. Just here you go. Check it out.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Media reports prompt Trump to end plan to brief Musk on secret potential war plans for China
That is where he has his largest factory, and he built that factory with direct involvement from the Chinese government. So, yeah, I mean, in case it's not super obvious what the problem would be here in him getting our war plans for going to war with China, the New York Times last night in this shocking report that they were going to read him in on those very highly classified plans said,
The Rachel Maddow Show
Media reports prompt Trump to end plan to brief Musk on secret potential war plans for China
Howard Lutnick, Wall Street titan, Trump cabinet member, saying that his mother-in-law wouldn't call and complain. She'd just wait until next month, see if her check came then. Anybody complaining about not getting a check is obviously a criminal. How does that comport with what you understand of the reality of getting a Social Security check?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Media reports prompt Trump to end plan to brief Musk on secret potential war plans for China
And who in your life, you know, gets a Social Security check? Mr. Lutnick went on to say that anybody like Elon Musk, who had been inside a payment system like PayPal, quote, knows the easiest way to find the fraudster is to stop payments and listen, because whoever screams is the one stealing. This is not like a random podcaster dude.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Media reports prompt Trump to end plan to brief Musk on secret potential war plans for China
This is cabinet official in the Trump administration while they are devastating Social Security. Maybe it gets easier if you hear it again. One more time.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Media reports prompt Trump to end plan to brief Musk on secret potential war plans for China
Because whoever screams is the one stealing. He's talking about social security checks to elderly and disabled people. Stop the payments and listen. Whoever screams, that's the one stealing. Try seeing that through the eyes of people, even just people in the news. Maybe you can't imagine real human beings that you've met, right?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Media reports prompt Trump to end plan to brief Musk on secret potential war plans for China
But try seeing it through the eyes of people in the news whose Social Security checks have, for one reason or another, been cut off and who are not the mother-in-law of the Commerce Secretary for Donald Trump. For instance, take Ned Johnson of Seattle. You might have seen his story going around this week after it was written up in the Seattle Times.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Media reports prompt Trump to end plan to brief Musk on secret potential war plans for China
Ned Johnson was very mistakenly declared deceased by the Social Security Administration. It was just a mistake. He is not dead. There's the headline in the Seattle Times. Here's a, quote, dead person on Social Security in Seattle with plenty to say. After this mistaken classification, the bank then deducted $5,201 in Social Security deposits from his family bank account.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Media reports prompt Trump to end plan to brief Musk on secret potential war plans for China
Mr. Johnson is 82 years old. He spent nearly three weeks on the phone, followed by four hours in person before he could straighten it out. And even though he himself could handle the interruption in his Social Security check, Mr. Johnson said he understood what could be at stake for other people.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Media reports prompt Trump to end plan to brief Musk on secret potential war plans for China
He said, quote, when I was in that line, I was thinking that if I was living solely off Social Security, I could be close to dumpster diving about now. Or consider James McCaffrey of Oklahoma City. His benefits were also cut off by mistake. And even though he, too, financially could handle the interruption, he says he understood that for other people, this would be a severe crisis.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Media reports prompt Trump to end plan to brief Musk on secret potential war plans for China
They kind of spelled it out in even more simple terms than you might expect from a regular newspaper on a regular story. They spelled it out basically in crayon. They made it so painfully simple, what was wrong with this plan, that maybe the White House even couldn't fail to understand it. This is what the Times said, quote, And here's where they switch to crayon.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Media reports prompt Trump to end plan to brief Musk on secret potential war plans for China
it ought to be obvious, right? The right way to approach the needs and expectations and earned, earned income, earned of millions of retired and disabled people, right? They have good reason now to be worried about their checks, not least because, you know, the administration is hacking away at government on a daily basis. No one should need to spell out for you, right?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Media reports prompt Trump to end plan to brief Musk on secret potential war plans for China
At least what you ought to say and not to say. But here's Howard Letnick saying, these people don't really need that money. Thank you.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Media reports prompt Trump to end plan to brief Musk on secret potential war plans for China
You'll notice there aren't a lot of morning events that happened at the White House while he's president.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Media reports prompt Trump to end plan to brief Musk on secret potential war plans for China
Thank you. Thank you.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Media reports prompt Trump to end plan to brief Musk on secret potential war plans for China
Thank you. Thank you.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Media reports prompt Trump to end plan to brief Musk on secret potential war plans for China
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Media reports prompt Trump to end plan to brief Musk on secret potential war plans for China
If a foreign country was to learn how the US planned to fight a war against them, that country could reinforce its defenses and address its weaknesses, making US war plans far less likely to succeed against that foreign adversary. If you have a war plan with a foreign country, don't show that plan to the foreign country just in case you ever have to go to war with them!
The Rachel Maddow Show
Media reports prompt Trump to end plan to brief Musk on secret potential war plans for China
given that, as far as he's concerned, the government is basically just him, the fact that he's a late night, late sleeper guy in the first term, and it appears now in the second term again, creates a news cadence in which often there isn't really anything new in national politics or in national news coming out of Washington in the morning papers that wasn't there from the night before because in the morning,
The Rachel Maddow Show
Media reports prompt Trump to end plan to brief Musk on secret potential war plans for China
Because it'll mean your war plan won't work. Get it? Do you guys get it? You want me to say it more slowly? I mean, the Times might as well have put it in all caps on a single page with a picture menu, right? Elon Musk is arguably more thoroughly and uncritically in bed with the Chinese government than any other business person who calls him or herself an American.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Media reports prompt Trump to end plan to brief Musk on secret potential war plans for China
But as of last night, according to the New York Times, Donald Trump was planning on giving him America's most detailed military plans on how exactly we would wage war against China if we ever had to, despite his deep involvement with the Chinese government. That Times report came out last night while we were on the air. By this morning, nope.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Media reports prompt Trump to end plan to brief Musk on secret potential war plans for China
Wall Street Journal headline, Trump says Elon Musk won't get briefing on Pentagon's China war plans. Yeah, quick reversal on that. And I think there are two things to see in that reversal. Number one, hey, journalism, neat. When journalists find out something is happening in the government and that thing is plainly indefensible, sometimes that makes the government stop trying to do that thing.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Media reports prompt Trump to end plan to brief Musk on secret potential war plans for China
That's why it's a good thing to have journalism. So we the people can find out about bad things and maybe that stops some of those bad things in their tracks. But secondly, given his track record, I don't tend to believe things the president says just because he says them. But in this case, I'm a little bit tempted to believe him.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Media reports prompt Trump to end plan to brief Musk on secret potential war plans for China
or at least to consider the possibility that he might have been telling the truth when he told reporters this morning, or today, that he didn't know this so-called briefing on the China war plans for Elon Musk was happening. He didn't know about it. He just heard about it in the New York Times.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Media reports prompt Trump to end plan to brief Musk on secret potential war plans for China
He told reporters today that once he heard about it because of the Times reporting, he, quote, contacted White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to ask them, hey, what's this brief thing that you guys are doing for Elon? Now, is he telling the truth there? I don't know, but pick your poison.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Media reports prompt Trump to end plan to brief Musk on secret potential war plans for China
Either the president ordered the Pentagon to give away the most highly sensitive and valuable national security secrets we most desperately want to keep away from China. He either ordered that we give away those secrets to his top campaign donor, who is very close to the Chinese government, or the president did not order that, which means his top campaign donor arranged that for himself.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Media reports prompt Trump to end plan to brief Musk on secret potential war plans for China
and almost got it, and would have gotten it until the New York Times spilled the beans, which stopped it. Either way, do you feel like our national security is in steady hands? Did you vote for Donald Trump because he was going to be tough on China? How we doing?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Media reports prompt Trump to end plan to brief Musk on secret potential war plans for China
Today was another bad day in court for the Trump administration, specifically on their effort to try to kick all transgender service members out of the U.S. military. The federal judge overseeing a challenge to that ban in Washington today just tore the bark off the Trump administration lawyer who's been trying to defend what Trump is doing there.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Media reports prompt Trump to end plan to brief Musk on secret potential war plans for China
That judge today ordered that the plaintiff service members who've been put on administrative leave by Trump The judge ordered today that they must all be taken off administrative leave and reinstated by 5 p.m. Eastern time tonight.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Media reports prompt Trump to end plan to brief Musk on secret potential war plans for China
The judge also in court, in open court, just excoriated the Trump administration lawyer effectively for lying about what the Defense Department has been doing in this case. The judge said, quote, The court is not going to be gaslit. The Secretary of Defense called it a transgender ban.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Media reports prompt Trump to end plan to brief Musk on secret potential war plans for China
This idea that you can just come in here and pretend, or have us pretend, that what's happening is not actually what's happening is totally unacceptable. Everyone knows what this ban is intended to do. Everyone knows. The judge said, again, this is all in open court.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Media reports prompt Trump to end plan to brief Musk on secret potential war plans for China
The judge said, quote, I am not going to abide by government officials saying one thing to the public, saying what they really mean to the public and coming in here to the court and telling me something different like I'm an idiot. I am not an idiot. So that happened today.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Media reports prompt Trump to end plan to brief Musk on secret potential war plans for China
Also, we've now, just in the last few days, seen some of our closest friends and allies issue travel warnings, advising their citizens to think twice about traveling to the United States because of new risks associated with traveling here. These are travel warnings against coming to the United States.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Media reports prompt Trump to end plan to brief Musk on secret potential war plans for China
The king is snoozling. So nothing happens early in the day. But then he ultimately wakes up and starts lumbering around and wrecking stuff. And so we have this news cadence when Trump is president, where the news starts to pick up each day just in the mid-afternoon. And then by nighttime, it's going fully nuts. That was what was true in the first term.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Media reports prompt Trump to end plan to brief Musk on secret potential war plans for China
that are being issued for citizens of Germany and Finland and Denmark and the UK by the governments of those countries. We are no longer seen as a safe place to travel because of the arbitrary and unpredictable and in some cases just bizarre behavior of the Trump administration toward people who are here legally visiting from other countries.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Media reports prompt Trump to end plan to brief Musk on secret potential war plans for China
Today also we got news that the National Weather Service has announced that in yet more locations, Trump's draconian and indiscriminate and as yet indiscriminate like undefended, like inexplicable cuts to the National Weather Service mean that we no longer are going to be able to launch weather balloons in multiple locations.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Media reports prompt Trump to end plan to brief Musk on secret potential war plans for China
Weather balloons are how we collect the data that is the backbone of our daily weather forecasts. In multiple sites all over the country, they launch these weather balloons twice a day, and those balloons feed atmospheric data into the mathematical models that predict how the weather is going to develop, which is how we get weather forecasts.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Media reports prompt Trump to end plan to brief Musk on secret potential war plans for China
We had previously reported on them having to cut weather balloon launches in Maine and in Alaska and in Albany, New York. Now, because of Trump's additional firings in the National Weather Service, they are having to cut weather balloon launches to one per day rather than two per day in Nebraska, South Dakota, Colorado, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Wyoming.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Media reports prompt Trump to end plan to brief Musk on secret potential war plans for China
And because of Trump's cuts to the Weather Service, They are now cutting weather balloon launches entirely. They are down to zero per day, specifically in Omaha, Nebraska, and in Rapid City, South Dakota. But hey, it's not like there's ever any weather in those places, right? So that will probably be fine indefinitely.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Media reports prompt Trump to end plan to brief Musk on secret potential war plans for China
The cuts to the National Forest Service are such now that Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski has resorted to posting Facebook videos of herself outside the Mendenhall Glacier Visitor Center just outside Juneau.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Media reports prompt Trump to end plan to brief Musk on secret potential war plans for China
Senator Murkowski in this video posted to Facebook basically pleading for understanding over the fact that every single employee who operates that visitor center in Juneau, every single employee except for one, has just been terminated by Donald Trump. She says the first Alaska cruise ship of the season is due to arrive in Juneau in less than a month.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Media reports prompt Trump to end plan to brief Musk on secret potential war plans for China
This visitor center is one of the most visited places for the thousands of people who come to Juneau on these types of ships. But now Trump has fired every single person who works at that visitor center for the Forest Service except for one. So, sorry, Alaska. Donald Trump has also just ordered an immediate halt to shipments of vegetables and poultry to U.S.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Media reports prompt Trump to end plan to brief Musk on secret potential war plans for China
food banks, particularly in rural areas. No warning. He has just... cut them off from millions of dollars worth of produce and poultry. These are USDA shipments to U.S. food banks. Trump has now ordered the shutdown of the Institute of Museum and Library Services, which, among other things, means that Trump is cutting off technology support for libraries, including their internet connections.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Media reports prompt Trump to end plan to brief Musk on secret potential war plans for China
Trump has cut off summer reading programs for kids at libraries. He has just cut the funding for, say, interlibrary loans. He has just cut the funding that lets your local library provide you free access to old newspapers and other historic records, which millions of Americans use for basic research on things like real estate or genealogy research on their own families.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Media reports prompt Trump to end plan to brief Musk on secret potential war plans for China
It seems to be following that same cadence in the second term. And just as the news follows those rhythms over the course of the day while Trump is president, it also sort of holds as well for the week. In general, what we experienced in Trump's first term was that stuff goes more nuts on Fridays than it does on Mondays, because I guess he gets momentum or whatever.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Media reports prompt Trump to end plan to brief Musk on secret potential war plans for China
Trump has ordered an end to the funding for all of those things. Trump has also ordered, as of yesterday, the shutting down of the U.S. Education Department. In so doing, today he announced that the millions of people who have federally supported student loans will now have those loans handled by the Small Business Administration instead.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Media reports prompt Trump to end plan to brief Musk on secret potential war plans for China
Shutting down the education department so the Small Business Administration will now handle federal student loans. The Small Business Administration doesn't do anything like that. They never have. They don't have the capacity for it. These are millions of individual student borrowers they will now be responsible for. They do not have the capacity to do it.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Media reports prompt Trump to end plan to brief Musk on secret potential war plans for China
And on the same day that he announced they would be now handling millions of individual federal student loans, he also announced that the Small Business Administration will now fire more than 40% of the people who do work at that agency just as they are getting this huge new workload.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Media reports prompt Trump to end plan to brief Musk on secret potential war plans for China
And on top of all that, there's also big news today, which I mentioned, just almost unbelievable news about what Trump is doing to Social Security and what his administration thinks that will do to people who get Social Security benefits. We've got that coming up for you tonight. You are definitely going to want to see it. It involves a Trump cabinet official on tape saying something that...
The Rachel Maddow Show
Media reports prompt Trump to end plan to brief Musk on secret potential war plans for China
shouldn't exist in American politics, but it happens. And we've got that for you coming up tonight. But before we get to that, there's one other piece of this that honestly shouldn't be at all part of reporting about what's going on in the U.S. government. But hey, these are crazy times, so needs must. I mentioned at the top, right at the top, this bizarre story about President Trump's
The Rachel Maddow Show
Media reports prompt Trump to end plan to brief Musk on secret potential war plans for China
top campaign donor, Elon Musk, somehow reportedly being slated for the kind of high-level war plans briefing that no campaign donor should ever be invited to. On the eve of that planned briefing last night, Elon Musk apparently found time to convene an all-hands meeting for employees of his car company, Tesla. They called this all-hands meeting for every employee of the company. For 9 p.m.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Media reports prompt Trump to end plan to brief Musk on secret potential war plans for China
last night, they scheduled it as a livestream event on Twitter, which is owned by Mr. Musk. The livestream promptly crashed and shut down for about half an hour. They eventually apparently got it restarted, whereupon Mr. Musk...
The Rachel Maddow Show
Media reports prompt Trump to end plan to brief Musk on secret potential war plans for China
got online with his employees at his car company and he begged his employees to not sell their stock in Tesla, which many Tesla executives and board members have recently done. He told his employees that things were about to become immeasurably better, unimaginably better. Quote, what's the most exciting future that you could possibly imagine?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Media reports prompt Trump to end plan to brief Musk on secret potential war plans for China
Quote, a future of abundance for all, where you could literally just have anything you want. Elon Musk explained to his employees that these unimaginably good times are right around the corner. He told Tesla employees, literally, quote, hang on to your stock.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
Happy Friday. There is so much to talk about tonight. There is so much to cover. When we had our news meeting this afternoon, we had enough news in the like things we could put on the show column to do 17 shows. But naturally, because it's me, I've got to start with something weird. All right.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
Now that he's done that and he's the biggest game in town, the Trump administration is pulling up the ladder so nobody else can compete with him. Nice work if you can get it. Check that one off the list.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
The FAA chairman who grounded Musk's Starship rocket program after it catastrophically disintegrated on a botched launch and sprayed debris all over the Caribbean and caused the diversion of dozens of flights. Musk had repeatedly demanded that that FAA chair should resign. He resigned on Inauguration Day. And aviation security has been awesome ever since, right?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
At the FDA, they have fired the people who were overseeing Elon Musk's Neuralink brain implant company. At the USDA, they fired the inspector general who was investigating Neuralink for its animal experimentation.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
At the Defense Department, they fired the inspector general investigating Elon Musk over his alleged refusal to detail his contacts and ties with foreign governments, including our foreign adversaries. The Labor Department has multiple open investigations of Tesla.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
Trump's nominee for labor secretary would not commit either way at her confirmation hearing on whether she would allow Elon Musk and his Doge team to have access to those investigations of him at the Labor Department or to any other investigations involving his business rivals. Also, at least one U.S.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
government agency, the National Transportation Safety Board, has announced that it will only henceforth communicate with the public through Elon Musk's privately held social media company.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
The Wall Street Journal reports this week that executives at his social media company have been calling up advertising firms and at least implicitly threatening them that if they don't give money to Elon Musk by advertising on that social media platform, those companies might find themselves in regulatory trouble with the U.S.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
government, since, you know, wink, wink, apparently Musk controls that now, right? It's nice work if you can get it. Remember when President Biden gave his farewell speech and he warned about oligarchy? Remember that?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
He said, today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power, and influence that threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms, and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead. People lost their minds, right, when President Biden said that. Oh, that's so over the top. Well, now here we are. But people are pushing back.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
That dynamic, the fact that he is taking this government role, this incredibly controversial and destructive government role, while he is also the CEO and largest shareholder of Tesla, the car company, that has turned out to provide a quite unique opportunity for public feedback on his actions in the government.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
The latest round of opinion polling shows that even though Trump is underwater in his approval, which is astonishingly bad for a president this early in his presidency, right? In the history of modern polling, no president has been more disapproved of than approved of this early on in a presidential term. But those same polls that show Trump in that historically bad approval position
The Rachel Maddow Show
Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
also show that Elon Musk is about three times as unpopular as Trump is. So people know what's going on. People are pushing back. And today was another one of those days when on all sorts of different fronts, we saw pushback working.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
We saw them, you know, trying to do something, but they found it difficult or awkward or indefensible, or somebody pointed out that it was illegal or got a bunch of bad press. They surveyed public opinion, surveyed the pushback they were getting, and pulled back on what they were initially trying to do. Today, we saw that on a whole bunch of fronts, just in the past 48 hours.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
I mean, today, CNN reported that the Defense Department was planning on marching as many as 50,000 employees out the door. CNN reported on that plan and on the fact that, um, you guys, that would be illegal. There are specific laws governing how and under what circumstances you can lay people off from the Defense Department.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
After that story came out, the Trump administration apparently had second thoughts. They hit pause on that idea. Following that report, Pentagon lawyers began reviewing the legality of the planned terminations more closely. So they hit pause on the plan to walk as many as 50,000 people out the door. Now they're saying they may fire 5,000 people next week, not 50,000, but we'll see.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
The White House has also just caved on the 9-11 Survivors Fund and research on the long-term health problems that have afflicted the American heroes who ran into the freaking burning wreckage to try to save people after the 9-11 attack.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
After widespread press coverage and a hue and cry against those cuts, oops, today they started telling Republican members of Congress that they are not going to be cutting that after all. After a hue and cry over them cutting funding for school buses, they've started telling senators that that school bus funding is at least being partially restored as well.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
After a hue and cry over millions of dollars in payments to farmers being stopped, they just announced that at least the first tranche of money that President Biden had secured for U.S. farmers, at least that first tranche of money will be allowed to go forward. We will see if the farmers ever actually get it.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
Last night, the Washington Post reported on an imminent White House announcement that they were going to eliminate the U.S. Post Office, which, it should be noted, is in the Constitution. Washington Post put this story on the front page. Jacob Borosage sold byline on that exclusive report. And then once the story published, the White House climbed down.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
saying, oh, actually, it's just something that they are looking at. No executive order was planned after all. Trump himself was then asked about it today, and he said confusing things about maybe it will be a merger, and maybe it will stay the post office, and nobody really knows what he means.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
Did you know that the tailgate of a Tesla Cybertruck is a perfectly flat, light colored, sharp edged rectangle? Basically, it's a projector screen. If you have a projector and you shine the projector at the tailgate, it works really well, like it's a screen.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
But the Washington Post reporting last night is that they were planning on just doing this by fiat, by executive order, and now they're not. So we shall see. Trump has always had it out for the post office. He went after it multiple times in his first term in office, you will recall. But you know what? The American people love the post office. Serves all of us.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
If we want anything for the post office, we just want it to have more staff and better funding. We just want them to be better resourced because we love them and we depend on them and they're integral to who we are as a country. The post office is in the Constitution.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
Just that alone, we tend to be jealously protective of things that are in black and white in the Constitution as a foundational part of our constitutional republic. But even so, more than 70% of the public has a positive view of the U.S. post office. And that number is the same among Democrats and Republicans. So, yeah, of course, Trump wants to abolish it. But the public does not want it.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
And when they talk about abolishing it, they get pushback and they are already getting shy on what they were otherwise planning. The only government agency that is more beloved among the American public is the National Park Service. which Trump and Musk have already taken a chainsaw to as well. Although there again, the pushback is pushing them back.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
Today, they announced that, okay, yes, after all, they will allow the hiring of people for the thousands of seasonal jobs without which the national parks cannot open in the summer for people to go there on vacation. Duh. It's so stupid. that people have to scramble and fight and organize and yell to get these basic things restored.
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Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
Yeah, why do you think there's lots of seasonal employees at the park service? When do people go on vacation to the national parks? How are people going to use the national parks if there are no seasonal employees to unlock the gates and clean the toilets? Oh, seasonal employees. Oh, okay, you can have those back.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
It's so stupid that the public has to organize and yell to get these basic things restored. But when the public organizes and yells, these things get restored. When these guys get pushback, they cave. Because honestly, it is true. I mean, the price of eggs really isn't falling. But this junk sure is. We've got a lot to get to tonight. Stay with us.
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Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
Today in Washington, D.C., a group of Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, two pro-Trump paramilitary groups, gathered outside the Capitol to celebrate the January 6th pardons and to announce a new lawsuit slash cryptocurrency fundraising scheme. Oh, but look, someone showed up to spoil it. Specifically, two people showed up to spoil it.
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Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
Road and Track Magazine today highlights a new effort that's been taking shape on TikTok this week, in which people are apparently driving around at night, at night is crucial for the projector part of this, driving around at night looking for Tesla Cybertrucks. And then they project things on the tailgate, like this one, Tesla Cybertruck, the most recalled truck in 2024.
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Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
Two women showed up on their own, one with a whistle and one with a bullhorn. And they just decided that the two of them, they were not going to let the Proud Boys get through it.
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Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
That is former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio at the end of this event today. He was actually arrested and taken away by Capitol Police for allegedly assaulting one of those women as she tried to record him with her phone. Protest comes in all shapes and sizes. It can sometimes be a huge crowd of people in front of, you know, SpaceX headquarters or the CFPB.
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Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
Sometimes it can be two women with a whistle and a bullhorn who will not give up. Today in Asheville, North Carolina, people showed up to protest the Trump administration's firing of federal workers. They got a big crowd in Asheville at the federal courthouse there. We're also seeing more people show up at town halls to question their members of Congress.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
Last night, we showed you part of a town hall that was held in Roswell, Georgia, by Republican Congressman Rich McCormick. I want you to see a little bit more from that. Watch this.
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Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
Proud goes wild. So that was Roswell, Georgia, last night. This was a teletown hall, telephone town hall. Also last night, this was Republican Congresswoman Stephanie Bice of Oklahoma.
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Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
A registered Republican voter, retired active Army officer. That is the kind of reaction these members are facing, even from Republican voters in Republican districts. This was the scene in West Bend, Wisconsin, with Republican Congressman Scott Fitzgerald.
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Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
That is a congressman coming to terms with his constituents. West Bend, Wisconsin. About an hour away in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, another Republican congressman, Glenn Grothman, also getting an earful.
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Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
projected on the back of that truck. And there's a bunch of these that are way too crude for me to show on television, but they are circulating widely on TikTok. Some of them have millions of views already. This one says, no, the price of eggs aren't falling, but the price of this piece of junk sure is. And then the K falls off the junk. This one says, hey, don't hate me. Musk sold me this S-Box.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
That's illegal as hell. We are seeing this kind of thing all across the country. And it is interesting. It is Republicans having to face this from their constituents. But you're also seeing Democrats who are largely independent. of one mind with their constituents, but they are getting pushed to fight harder. Congressman Paul Tonko is a Democrat from New York.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
He represents the area around Albany, New York. This week, Congressman Tonko held a town hall. You might have seen this clip going around, but if you haven't seen it, you will want to. Watch this.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
I will get arrested with you. Message that Democratic congressman is basically fight harder. We're seeing this all over the country for Democrats and Republicans. All right. Much more to get to tonight. We'll be right back. Stay with us. The Trump administration has taken steps to fire thousands, potentially hundreds of thousands of people who work for the government.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
When the new president decided to hand over a big part of running the government to his largest campaign donor, that meant, inevitably, that the United States government would soon start doing lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of work. favors for that campaign donor and his businesses and taking government action against his business rivals, etc. It was very easy to predict.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
There doesn't seem to be much rhyme or reason as to how they are proceeding with these layoffs. There's been a lot of cases in which they fired people and then said, oops, we didn't mean to, and they tried to bring them back. You can generalize in any way about what they've done thus far.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
You can say that a lot of the people that they have fired are what are called probationary employees, and that's a classification that can be misleading. For a lot of people, it just means they have changed jobs within the government. Either they've moved laterally or they've been promoted. But for some people, it does mean they're in their first couple of years at their agency.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
It means they've chosen fairly recently to dedicate themselves to this kind of work. And in most cases, it's because they really care about it. For example, take Casey Bourne. In middle school, she decided she wanted to work in wildlife conservation. She decided to go to a special STEM-focused high school, even though it meant a longer drive to and from school every day.
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Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
She graduated from college with honors and a degree in biology. She spent a year working at the Nevada Department of Wildlife. She wrote a kid's book about the ecosystem of the Mojave Desert. Last year, she got a job as a biologist at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Nevada.
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Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
But because she had not been in it, in this job, for two full years, Casey Bourne was considered to be a probationary employee, and probationary employees are the easiest to fire. And so last week, along with more than 400 other U.S. Fish and Wildlife employees in the same classification, they fired her. Not because of anything she'd done wrong, but just because they could.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
Joining us now is Casey Bourne, former biologist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Ms. Bourne, thank you so much for being with us tonight. I really appreciate it. I know it's a difficult time.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
I imagine that once things started to go haywire in Washington with the firings and the announcements about probationary employees and all of the stuff that you might have expected this was coming, was it one of those situations where it was not a surprise but still a shock?
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Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
And the effer stole my social security number. This one says, figures the guy who made a truck shaped like a coffin gets pleasure out of killing Sudanese children. That presumably is about Musk's chest-pounding glee over, in his words, feeding USAID into a wood chipper, while USAID, in fact, does provide aid to prevent starvation among millions of kids in Sudan.
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Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
Let me give you a chance to respond to what was actually in the email that you got that fired you. The Trump administration, in this letter, they said they were firing you because, quote, the department has determined your knowledge, skills, and abilities do not meet the department's current needs. I just wanted to ask you to respond to that.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
It's obviously a form letter they sent to everyone, but you're a human being. It's dramatically changing your life. And I want to give you a chance to say your own piece to that.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
Casey Bourne, biologist, formerly with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. And if things get righted in this country in the future, maybe you will be again with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service if any of this stuff gets undone. We really can't wait to see what you do next. Stay in touch with us. And I'm sorry this has happened to you. Yeah, thank you so much. All right.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
We got more to come here this Friday night. Stay with us. This one landed like a bomb last night, courtesy of the Washington Post's Jacob Bogage. Headline, Trump expected to take control of USPS, fire postal board, officials say.
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Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
Quote, Trump is expected to issue an executive order as soon as this week to fire the members of the Postal Service's governing board and place the agency under the control of the Commerce Department and Secretary Howard Letnick. The board is planning to fight Trump's order, three sources told the Washington Post.
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Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
In an emergency meeting Thursday, the board retained outside counsel and gave instructions to sue the White House if the president were to remove members of the board or attempted to alter the agency's independent status. After the Post broke that exclusive story last night, the White House then denied that Trump was planning to issue any such executive order.
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Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
Then today, when the Commerce Secretary, Letnick, was being sworn in, Trump was asked about his plans for the 250-year-old agency whose existence is spelled out in the Constitution. He said that he and Secretary Letnick are, quote, looking at it. Joining us now is the reporter who broke this story, The Washington Post, Jacob Bogage. Mr. Bogage, thank you for coming back.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
I had a feeling we'd be back talking to you soon as you continue to break story after story in Washington. What's your understanding of the state of play around this Postal Service controversy?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
Yeah. You know, I remember during the first Trump term, when Trump was taking aim at the Postal Service, and there was like a grassroots, legit bottom-up uprising around the country, even in the worst of COVID. with people standing up for postal workers and people standing up for the Postal Service and saying hands off. And it did appear to back them off.
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Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
This one's just a playground taunt, honestly. Musk, this truck really is like you. And then it says, tons of hype, underwhelming in bed. Get it? It's a joke about the truck bed. I know. Yeah. Like I said, there's a bunch of these I should not show on TV. A bunch of them making, like, crude jokes about what this big truck is compensating for.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
My sense, given the approval ratings, the public approval ratings for the Postal Service, that recent experience of having to stand up for it against Trump trying to take it down, that the response to your reporting
The Rachel Maddow Show
Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
might have been a little bit of that dynamic still at play, that they might not understand the political dragon that they are sort of letting out of the gate here if they try to do this. Is it your sense that there was momentum to do a thing and then the public revelation of that momentum seems to have changed them to a different course?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
Yeah. The Postal Service belongs to the American people. It doesn't belong to any political faction. It doesn't belong to the White House. It certainly doesn't belong to any private company or private investor. Jacob Bogage, this is going to be a big one moving ahead. I'm sure we'll be talking to you about it again. Congratulations on your reporting thus far.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
All right. We'll be right back. I told you this was going to be a packed show tonight. All right, I'll see you again on Monday and all next week at 9 p.m. Eastern here on MSNBC. In the meantime, you can find me on bluesky at matto.msnbc.com. If you're on Blue Sky, I love to hear from you there.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
You can, you know, do the social media communication thing in a way, then I will see you and you can let me know about things and I will let you know about things. It's fun. It's convivial. I recommend it.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
References to Elon Musk's stiff-armed salute on Inauguration Day, which he says was not a Nazi salute, but then he followed that immediately with lots of jokes on his social media platform about how hilarious Nazis are. But again, this projection... prank. That's taking shape on TikTok. These videos only started appearing about a week ago, but they've already got millions of views.
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Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
Road and Track reports today that the comments on the videos are overwhelmingly supportive of the pranksters, quote, and many are begging for more videos. That's happening. This was a protest today in Houston, Texas, at one of the Tesla dealerships in that big city.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
It's one of a lot of protests we have seen at Tesla showrooms and Tesla dealerships, both in red states like Texas and in blue states. This, for example, was Wednesday this week in San Francisco, Northern California.
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Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
The same day as that protest in San Francisco, there was a really big protest outside the Washington, D.C. headquarters of SpaceX, of Elon Musk's space exploration company. Protesters blocking traffic and shutting down the streets there.
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Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
And that's just over the last couple of days in Washington and in Texas and in Northern California. But the world headquarters of Musk's SpaceX company is in Hawthorne, California, which is in Los Angeles, actually right near the airport, right near LAX.
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Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
Next weekend, March 1st, there is expected to be what looks like it might be a large scale protest at that SpaceX World Headquarters building in Los Angeles. Given that that's in L.A. and it's in a location that's just easy for a lot of people to get to. And honestly, given that they're giving people a week in advance heads up that they are going to do that protest on March 1st.
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Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
It is a dynamic that is as old as time, and so we're going to talk about some of that tonight. But in addition to that donor being invited into the government and then the government starting to do things for the donor and his businesses, turns out it also cuts in the opposite direction as well in terms of what the public gets to say about this arrangement.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
I'm guessing that that might end up being the largest scale demonstration yet targeting the president's top campaign donor, targeting Musk and whatever it is he thinks he's doing to the U.S. government. That one protester who we saw there in California explaining in that clip from local news, explaining that most of Elon Musk's net worth is tied up in his car company, that is correct.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
The vast bulk of his wealth is based on his shares in his car company, Tesla. Tesla shares have dropped 20% in value since Inauguration Day. Tesla sales in Europe have taken huge hits recently, down 40 or 50% or more in the largest markets in Europe. Overall, in the last year, globally, electric vehicle sales are up 25%, but Tesla sales are down 1%.
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Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
And down 1% may not seem like that big a deal, even as the overall market for that type of vehicle is going up. But consider that that minus 1% of that drop in Tesla sales this year follows the last two years in which Tesla sales were up 38% and up 40%. And now this year, they're minus 1%.
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Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
Now, how does that kind of thing affect his ultimate role in what he's doing to our government and what he thinks of his public image and what he's making the public think of him? I don't know. But I think the most reasonable thing to expect is that it's going to be unpredictable because I think there's a lot of weird variables at play here.
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Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
I mean, obviously, this is a personal crusade of his to destroy as much of the Constitutional Republic as he can without any regard at all for him having any legitimate government authority or following any laws.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
The personal dynamic, in addition, between this campaign donor and the president himself is very unusual, given that the president seems to have personally empowered this guy without actually giving him a government job. So the personal dynamic between them is all that Elon Musk has to stand on in terms of what he is doing to our government.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
The dynamic between them is weird, in which the president is... effectively sidelined while Elon Musk takes center stage. The president, in contrast, appears to be weak and sort of beside the point, while his campaign donor regularly upstages him and talks over him both in interviews and in the Oval Office. I mean, that would be hard to take for even the least egotistical president.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
It remains to be seen how we'll play out with this one. Along those lines, I have to say, this is also very strange, late-breaking news. I'm not quite sure what to do with this at all, but you should know. CNN was first to report today that the Trump administration has made an unusual decision with regard to Elon Musk's phalanx of private personal bodyguards.
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Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
Now, NBC has not confirmed this, but CNN is reporting, based on three law enforcement sources... that the administration had the U.S. Marshals Service officially deputize members of Elon Musk's team of private bodyguards.
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Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
And that may sound like kind of a bureaucratic designation, but one practical consequence of that is that the Marshals Service may now allow Musk's team of personal bodyguards to carry weapons on federal property. Loaded weapons.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
Because if you think about it, what we've got now, thanks to Donald Trump essentially ceding his presidency to his top campaign donor, what we've got now is somebody who really does appear to be mostly running the government, somebody who's definitely destroying big parts of the government, but he's doing those things.
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Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
CNN reports, quote, some people close to Trump's White House have been taken aback by the scale of security that has surrounded Elon Musk since he became a regular presence in Trump's orbit last year. Musk's security detail rivaled only that of the president himself, the sources observed. But now, with this decision by the U.S.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
Marshals Service, now Trump and Musk, when they're in the same place, like in the White House or on other federal property, they're both going to be surrounded by equally huge phalanxes of armed guards. One set of them, the Secret Service, presumably loyal to Trump, and the other set, also armed but private and loyal to Musk. But everybody's going to have their weapons.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
Sure, that's not weird at all. That's definitely not like Monty Python crossed with Shakespeare at all. What could possibly go wrong? Donald Trump has thus far spent 10 of his 31 full days in office at one of his golf clubs. 10 of the 31 days. Donald Trump has not taken a foreign trip since he's been back in the White House. He has signed a grand total of one bill.
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Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
He has taken an almost cartoonishly outsized interest in posing with big maps that say Gulf of America on them. And although the White House then picked a fight with the Associated Press, trying to force the AP to use that terminology rather than use Gulf of Mexico, which is what it is, today in an interview when Trump was asked about that, He appeared sort of confused.
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Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
He didn't seem to even understand that his White House had banned the Associated Press. In fact, saying in an interview today that they could come back whenever they want, even though he's the one who supposedly banned them. I mean, when President Trump isn't playing golf, he has taken multiple meetings about his golf investments. He has gone to the Super Bowl.
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Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
He had somebody drive him around the track at the Daytona 500. Whee! They literally had him drive around the track. I mean, I'm just going to go out on a limb here and say he is not the busiest man in the world. He appears to be sort of decorative at this point.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
While the person who's really working double time to make the government actually do things appears to be his top campaign donor, who is getting all the attention and all the credit. And while Trump is, you know, playing race cars and golf and enjoying the worst approval ratings of any new president in the history of polling, and they are getting worse with every passing day.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
He's taking that incredibly, incredibly controversial, destructive government role while he simultaneously is also running a bunch of companies. including the big one that accounts for most of his fortune, a company that is very much a public-facing company, not just in the stock market, but also in terms of storefronts and the nation's roads.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
Meanwhile, here's just a partial list of the things that Elon Musk and his own companies have somehow reaped from the U.S. government while Trump was You know, putting. Headline, Justice Department to drop discrimination case against Elon Musk's SpaceX. The Justice Department had filed the case against SpaceX in August 2023, accusing the company of violating federal law and its hiring practices.
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Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
Yesterday, quote, the Justice Department said it intended to file a notice of dismissal with prejudice, which means prosecutors would not be able to file these charges again. The motion did not say why the case was being dropped. So check that one off his list. Headline, Doge employee cuts fall heavily on agency that regulates Musk's Tesla.
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Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
A small government team regulating the sort of autonomous cars that Elon Musk says represent the future of Tesla, his car company, is getting cut nearly in half by the Musk-led US Doge service. Check that one off his list. The National Highway Transportation Safety Administration investigation in 2023 led to a recall of 2 million Tesla vehicles.
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Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
The same agency disclosed in April that it had documented numerous deadly crashes involving Tesla Autopilot. Now, thanks to Elon Musk's doge, that same agency, the NHTSA, is losing about 10% of its workforce. Check that one off the list. Tesla, I should note, this year plans to put fully autonomous vehicles on the road this year.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
Yeah, and if you keep gutting the agency that regulates that sort of thing, who will be there to stop them? Who will be able to stop them before the crosswalk? Here's another headline. Fate of Rivian's $6.6 billion federal loan now hangs in the balance. Fortune magazine helpfully nuts up the key point at the top of this one.
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Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
Quote, Georgia Governor Brian Kemp says he does not know whether the Trump administration will honor the contracts of the Biden administration. Quote, if the loan is canceled, Tesla CEO Elon Musk stands to benefit the most. Check Rivian off the list. Who needs that competitor?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards
This comes after the Trump administration already cut off federal funds for the National Electric Vehicle Charging Network, which leaves Elon Musk's Tesla unchallenged as the largest charging network in the country. Never mind that he took huge U.S. government subsidies to build Tesla and to build that charging network.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump reportedly keen on law at root of disgraceful chapter in American history
Thanks to At Home for joining us this hour. Happy Friday night. Really, really happy to have you here. I've got a story we're going to lead with tonight that I don't think you've heard anywhere else. We are going to start tonight in Haddon Township, New Jersey. H-A-D-D-O-N. Haddon Township. It's pretty close to Camden. It's also pretty close to Philly. But it's a very, very New Jersey place.
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Trump reportedly keen on law at root of disgraceful chapter in American history
and cheered loudly by everybody else in the room after he shouted at the Republican congressman, you don't get to take away our rights. When Republican Congressman Andy Harris showed up in Cambridge, Maryland last night to give a speech, he was greeted with this big 3D milk carton as if he's a missing kid on the milk carton.
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Trump reportedly keen on law at root of disgraceful chapter in American history
Also greeted with a lot of outraged constituents from his own district in Maryland, people demanding that he meet with them, that he do a town hall, something to answer for what Trump and Republicans are doing to dismantle the federal government. This was the protest in Bay City, Michigan today, as local people turned out to greet Vice President J.D.
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Trump reportedly keen on law at root of disgraceful chapter in American history
Vance when he showed up in town to do a speech at a local plastics factory. The fact that he was at a plastics factory explains signs like this one. Wrap Vance in plastic. Ship to Russia. This was a protest outside the Tesla dealership in West Bloomfield, Michigan yesterday. This was Navy Captain and U.S. Senator Mark Kelly today in Washington explaining that today he is selling his Tesla.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump reportedly keen on law at root of disgraceful chapter in American history
Pushback looks different everywhere. It involves all kinds of people in all kinds of places and it takes all kinds of forms. Can't win if you don't play. We've got big Justice Department news tonight. We've got truly unsettling news tonight about a volcano. And the volcano isn't the worst of it.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump reportedly keen on law at root of disgraceful chapter in American history
We've got news about a big protest, a big national protest being called for Saturday, April 5th in Washington, D.C. We'll have details on that ahead of you tonight from one of the organizers. We've got a lot to get to tonight. Stay with us. One of Donald Trump's first acts upon being sworn in as president for a second term was to appoint a new US attorney in Washington, D.C. His name is Ed Martin.
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Trump reportedly keen on law at root of disgraceful chapter in American history
It quickly became clear what made Ed Martin so appealing to Trump for this term. Ed Martin was at the US Capitol on January 6th. He said it was great, said it was like Mardi Gras. He later served as a defense lawyer for several Trump supporters who were charged with attacking police officers during the attack on the Capitol that day. Once Trump named him U.S.
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Trump reportedly keen on law at root of disgraceful chapter in American history
attorney in Washington, the top federal prosecutor in Washington, D.C., Mr. Martin immediately set about demoting and firing federal prosecutors who had worked on January 6th cases. He also, honestly, tried to indict Chuck Schumer, the top Democrat in the Senate, an effort so outlandish he apparently couldn't even get Trump Justice Department officials to sign off on it.
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Trump reportedly keen on law at root of disgraceful chapter in American history
Ed Martin also tried to get one top prosecutor in his office to order a bank to freeze billions of dollars that had been dispersed by the Biden administration in a federal grant. That prosecutor resigned rather than follow that order from Ed Martin.
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Trump reportedly keen on law at root of disgraceful chapter in American history
She resigned because she said there was no crime, there was no legal justification for opening a criminal investigation and thereby freezing those funds. She said he was essentially telling her to fake a criminal investigation and she wouldn't do it.
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Trump reportedly keen on law at root of disgraceful chapter in American history
Ed Martin, after she resigned, then personally signed and submitted a seizure warrant for the funds in that bank account because he couldn't find anybody else willing to sign it. The judge he submitted that warrant to rejected it because, again, no evidence of any crime.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump reportedly keen on law at root of disgraceful chapter in American history
This week, Congressman Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland, asked the Justice Department's inspector general to open an inquiry into the behavior of Mr. Martin as U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C. Raskin's letter outlined all the things Martin has done that he says could potentially deserve investigation by the inspector general. The list runs to nine pages, single-spaced, in small type.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump reportedly keen on law at root of disgraceful chapter in American history
Ed Martin hasn't even been running that office for two months. Democrats in the Senate have also asked for an investigation of Ed Martin from the D.C. bar. And in a development that's surely totally unrelated, I should mention that Ed Martin and Trump's attorney general, Pam Bondi, are reportedly now moving to try to take control of the D.C. bar themselves.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump reportedly keen on law at root of disgraceful chapter in American history
They're doing it very stealthily by having Ed Martin's deputy and Pam Bondi's brother run for leadership roles to take over the D.C. bar. Good luck with that. I'm sure nobody will notice. Is it the Bondi as in Bondi? Yeah, same last name.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump reportedly keen on law at root of disgraceful chapter in American history
You might think that developments like this might create a real sense of turmoil hunkering down, maybe, or at least a lot of renewed hard work at the Justice Department. Well, let's look at what Attorney General Pam Bondi has been up to in the midst of this mess.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump reportedly keen on law at root of disgraceful chapter in American history
You might recall that last week, Trump signed an executive order to punish a particular law firm because that law firm has done work for Democrats. Among other things, Trump's executive order would block anyone from that law firm from entering federal courthouses. which might make it difficult to be a lawyer in Washington, D.C. I'm just saying. The law firm naturally sued.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump reportedly keen on law at root of disgraceful chapter in American history
And because the case was so important to Trump and potentially because it was difficult to find any career prosecutors who really wanted to defend it, Attorney General Pam Bondi sent her own chief of staff, the attorney general's chief of staff, to argue the case himself personally in federal court. bring it in like the biggest guns they got.
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Trump reportedly keen on law at root of disgraceful chapter in American history
And her chief of staff just got blown out of court by the judge. The Trump administration lost that with an exclamation point. The judge said Trump's order sent a chill down her spine. She said the whole legal profession was, quote, watching in horror what Trump was trying to do and what the attorney general's chief of staff was trying and very much failing to defend in court.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump reportedly keen on law at root of disgraceful chapter in American history
Pam Bondi and Trump's Justice Department are also apparently trying to launch an investigation into the otherwise totally normal process of funding shelters for migrants in New York City. I say they are trying to launch an investigation there because they seem to be having trouble with some of the fundamentals, like spelling.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump reportedly keen on law at root of disgraceful chapter in American history
We're going to stick with them no matter how long this takes. So that was starting a couple weeks ago, these protests in Haddon Township, New Jersey, over the mom from the beloved local Jersey kebab shop being arrested by the Trump administration. It turns out that was just the start.
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Trump reportedly keen on law at root of disgraceful chapter in American history
At least one of the subpoenas they sent out has folks in New York scratching their heads because it went to something called the Hotel Chandler. Hotel Chandler does not host immigrants. At all?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump reportedly keen on law at root of disgraceful chapter in American history
It's not clear what's going on there with the Hotel Chandler, but a CBS News report does note that, quote, a source familiar with the shelter system pointed out that another hotel with a similar name, the Candler, is in fact a hotel where they house migrants.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump reportedly keen on law at root of disgraceful chapter in American history
Asked about the situation with the Chandler and the Candler, a spokesman for the Department of Justice said, quote, we will decline to comment on an ongoing investigation. Also, Pam, do you? But don't worry about it. When it comes to the really important stuff, Pam Bondi is on it. This went out from her office this week. All caps. Memorandum for all department employees from the attorney general.
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Trump reportedly keen on law at root of disgraceful chapter in American history
Subject, ending procurement of paper straws. Quote, in accordance with President Trump's direction. The Department of Justice—she's talking about the U.S. Department of Justice—shall take appropriate action to eliminate the procurement of paper straws and ensure that paper straws are no longer provided within department buildings.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump reportedly keen on law at root of disgraceful chapter in American history
Department components shall take appropriate action to identify and eliminate any portion of policy or guidance documents designed to disfavor plastic straws. Oh, you guys, the Justice Department's long nightmare is over.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump reportedly keen on law at root of disgraceful chapter in American history
Today, Pam Bondi took time out of her busy schedule of vanquishing plastic straw discrimination to welcome the president to the Justice Department, making sure to point out to him the most important decor, the picture of him, after which Trump gave a long, long, discursive, rambling, angry speech to Justice Department employees that included basically handing them a handy list of enemies he'd like them to look into.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump reportedly keen on law at root of disgraceful chapter in American history
Ed Martin at the D.C. U.S. Attorney's Office, he seems to already have his own enemies list. I mentioned that Ed Martin tried to indict Democratic Senate Leader Chuck Schumer. Chuck Schumer is one of only several people, including several elected officials, all Democrats, who Martin appears to be targeting for investigation.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump reportedly keen on law at root of disgraceful chapter in American history
He's also sent a letter to Democratic Congressman Robert Garcia because Robert Garcia criticized Elon Musk, so that got him a threatening letter from the U.S. Attorney's Office. Democratic Congressman Eugene Vindman this week also revealed that he has received a threatening letter from Ed Martin, this one asking about his personal finances.
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Trump reportedly keen on law at root of disgraceful chapter in American history
Eugene Vindman and his twin brother, Alexander Vindman, have long been targets of Donald Trump's rage and invective for their roles in bringing to light the events that led to Trump's first impeachment. This is the letter that D.C. U.S. Attorney Ed Martin sent to Congressman Vindman. It starts, quote, Dear Eugene... Do you always write your business just dear?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump reportedly keen on law at root of disgraceful chapter in American history
Quote, I have received requests for clarification of your personal financial disclosures over the past year. I look forward to your cooperation with my letter of inquiry after requests. Thank you in advance for your assistance with this. Please respond by day, month, date 2025. That is literally what the letter says. Day, month, date 2025. Only the best people.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump reportedly keen on law at root of disgraceful chapter in American history
Washington Post now reports that Ed Martin has sent about 20 of these kinds of threatening letters to public officials and public figures of various kinds. We only know about this one to Congressman Vindman because he decided to go public with it, saying Trump is trying to, quote, intimidate and silence public servants like me, and it's not going to work. Congressman Vindman joins us next.
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Trump reportedly keen on law at root of disgraceful chapter in American history
Stay with us. Democratic Congressman Eugene Vindman represents the 7th District in the Commonwealth of Virginia. This week, we learned that he is one of the lucky recipients of what a non-lawyer might call a nasty gram and what a lawyer might call a threat from Donald Trump's hand-picked U.S. attorney, top federal prosecutor in Washington, D.C.
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Trump reportedly keen on law at root of disgraceful chapter in American history
Congressman Vindman is one of at least three serving Democratic members of Congress who has received a typo-ridden... legally incoherent, frankly bizarre, threatening letter like this from Ed Martin in the U.S. Attorney's Office. The Washington Post reports that this letter to Eugene Vindman is one of about 20 such letters that U.S. Attorney Ed Martin is believed to have sent.
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Trump reportedly keen on law at root of disgraceful chapter in American history
Congressman Eugene Vindman, thank you so much for being with us here tonight. I really appreciate you making the time.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump reportedly keen on law at root of disgraceful chapter in American history
Well, you know, I wonder, actually, who has received them and how many really have gone out. I was very surprised, after you went public with this this week, to see The Washington Post reporting that sources familiar with the matter say that he sent out about 20 of these. We know he's done it to Chuck Schumer in the Senate. We know he's done it to Congressman Robert Garcia and to you in the House.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump reportedly keen on law at root of disgraceful chapter in American history
I don't know who the other 17 are. I don't know if people are going to go public with them. I also wonder if he's just so poorly executed these threats that maybe he sent them to wrong addresses. I mean, the letter that he sent to you looks like it was written in crayon. I have to ask how you reacted to it when you first opened it up and saw what it was.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump reportedly keen on law at root of disgraceful chapter in American history
When you say that you've had calls following up on this, are these calls from the U.S. Attorney's Office in Washington? Who's calling you and what are they demanding or what are they asking of you?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump reportedly keen on law at root of disgraceful chapter in American history
I think Americans of all stripes are concerned about the dynamic that you're talking about, using the power of the criminal law, using things like the power of the IRS, using powers of the government writ large to go after the kinds of enemies list that President Trump, frankly, rattled through at what was supposed to be a policy speech today at the U.S.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump reportedly keen on law at root of disgraceful chapter in American history
Justice Department before it dissolved into an airing of grievances and what appeared to be directives to Justice Department personnel in the room that they should go after individually named people and organizations who the president rattled off from the podium today. A lot of Americans, I think, are concerned about where this is now and how much worse it could get. Do you think that Congress—
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump reportedly keen on law at root of disgraceful chapter in American history
has a specific role, has a list of things that can be done to try to push back and curtail the way they see the government as their weapon against their enemies.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump reportedly keen on law at root of disgraceful chapter in American history
Virginia Congressman Eugene Vindman, a man who's proven over and over again that he can't be intimidated. Thank you so much for your time tonight, sir. I know that you're not intimidated by this. I know that you're saying it won't work, but I'm still sorry that this happened to you. Keep us surprised, sir. It's nice to have you here.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump reportedly keen on law at root of disgraceful chapter in American history
All right. More news ahead tonight. Stay with us.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump reportedly keen on law at root of disgraceful chapter in American history
And I mean that in the best possible way. We have been watching one particular community story unfold in Haddon Township, New Jersey, over the course of the last couple of weeks. And I want you to see this story and what's happened here over the last couple of weeks, because I think it tells you something about where we are at right now as a people and as a country.
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Trump reportedly keen on law at root of disgraceful chapter in American history
1992, a volcano erupted in Alaska. It's called Mount Spur, S-P-U-R-R. It erupted just like 80 miles outside Anchorage, Alaska. It's the kind of thing you remember if you were there or if you even saw news footage of it. That eruption of Mount Spur, it covered Anchorage, largest city in Alaska, with this choking gray volcanic silt.
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Trump reportedly keen on law at root of disgraceful chapter in American history
Anchorage Daily News reported at the time, quote, Anchorage wheezes to a halt in clouds of ash. The city was engulfed in a darkness that could be felt and tasted. Planes were grounded. Local shops were overwhelmed with people trying to buy air filters or masks. One local resident told the paper, this stuff burns my throat. That was the last time Mount Spur erupted just outside Anchorage.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump reportedly keen on law at root of disgraceful chapter in American history
It was 1992. Mount Spur is obviously very much still there, and it is still active, and lately it's been really active. New earthquakes and new emissions of volcanic gas at Mount Spur in Alaska. This footage from March 7th, the reason we have this flyover footage is because somebody is keeping a very close eye on Mount Spur.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump reportedly keen on law at root of disgraceful chapter in American history
Again, this is this is Haddon Township, New Jersey. And I'm telling you, that wasn't the end of it either. Watch this.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump reportedly keen on law at root of disgraceful chapter in American history
The scientists of the Alaska Volcano Observatory, in conjunction with the U.S. Geological Survey, they are on the case, watching and monitoring Mount Spur. This week, Wednesday, the Alaska Volcano Observatory warned that another eruption is imminent. That another Mount Spur eruption is, quote, likely within weeks or months. Likely. Helps to be prepared, though, right? Helps to know ahead of time.
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Trump reportedly keen on law at root of disgraceful chapter in American history
Donald Trump is getting rid of the Alaska Volcano Observatory. Now. The Trump administration's so-called Department of Government Efficiency has listed the volcano observatory's lease for cancellation.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump reportedly keen on law at root of disgraceful chapter in American history
Quote, as Mount Spur trembles toward a possible eruption, the Alaska Volcano Observatory's longtime home, Grace Hall at Alaska Pacific University, remains on a Department of Government Efficiency list of federal leases to be terminated. The lease is up for cancellation in August, and Donald Trump, in his infinite wisdom, is apparently set to cancel it.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump reportedly keen on law at root of disgraceful chapter in American history
Because surely that is the right way to contend with potentially disastrous volcanic eruptions near the largest city in one of America's 50 states. Just stop looking! It'll be fine! Meanwhile, a broad swath of the United States is bracing for severe weather right now, with a high risk of tornadoes putting nearly 50 million Americans in potential danger tonight and tomorrow.
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Trump reportedly keen on law at root of disgraceful chapter in American history
The National Weather Service in Birmingham, Alabama, is warning residents, I kid you not, to, quote, wear a helmet. and to make sure your kids are wearing something with your contact information on it in case they get separated from you. Quote, this will be a very scary situation for many.
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Trump reportedly keen on law at root of disgraceful chapter in American history
We have a flooding threat, very large hail threat, severe damaging wind threat, and the potential for long track tornadoes. This is from the National Weather Service in Birmingham, Alabama. Quote, please don't panic, but be ready, be prepared. Again, these warnings to alert people and prepare them, these are coming from the National Weather Service.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump reportedly keen on law at root of disgraceful chapter in American history
which is part of an agency where Doge is reportedly planning another round of more than a thousand firings. Austerity. Efficiency. This is what it looks like in practice. For weeks now, we have seen protest after protest all across the country as Americans have pushed back against this Strategy.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump reportedly keen on law at root of disgraceful chapter in American history
Pushed back against what Donald Trump and his top campaign donor have been doing to the United States and to the federal government. Demonstrations all over the country. Now the activist group Indivisible is planning for a big one. But they want to be a big central demonstration where everybody shows up in the same place.
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Trump reportedly keen on law at root of disgraceful chapter in American history
Saturday, April 5th, Indivisible is announcing what they're calling Hands Off, a nationwide mobilization to stop the most brazen power grab in modern history. Joining us now is Ezra Levin, co-executive director of Indivisible. Ezra, thank you for being with us tonight. I appreciate it.
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Trump reportedly keen on law at root of disgraceful chapter in American history
It's been a couple of weeks since we checked in. Tell me how Indivisible has been operating over these past few weeks. I know the president and Republican members of Congress have started to talk about you as if you are some sort of, like, foreign terrorist threat or something. We know that you've got their attention. How have things been from Indivisible's perspective?
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Trump reportedly keen on law at root of disgraceful chapter in American history
What's the plan for April 5th, and how is that different from the other kinds of actions that you guys have been taking part in?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump reportedly keen on law at root of disgraceful chapter in American history
You're seeing all different, I mean, we've been trying to track it on this show, trying all different kinds of protests from all different kinds of people in all different kinds of places. Again, this call on April 5th for everybody to do something together all in that day. Ezra Levin, co-executive director of Indivisible, thanks for your time tonight. I know you're a very busy man.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump reportedly keen on law at root of disgraceful chapter in American history
We'll be right back. Stay with us. All right, that's going to do it for me on this fine Friday night. I will see you again Monday and every night next week at 9 p.m. Eastern. In the meantime, you can find me on Blue Sky. I enjoy Blue Sky very much. I do not enjoy any other social media platforms at this point at all.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump reportedly keen on law at root of disgraceful chapter in American history
But Blue Sky is different, and I don't have any connection to them at all other than the fact that I'm a happy user there. But if you're down on social media, give Blue Sky a try. I'm there at matto.msnbc.com.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump reportedly keen on law at root of disgraceful chapter in American history
Pushback. It looks different everywhere. It involves all kinds of people in all kinds of places, and it takes all kinds of forms. Don't let anybody tell you that pushback doesn't matter, that it doesn't work.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump reportedly keen on law at root of disgraceful chapter in American history
She wants to return to Jersey Kebab immediately. It's all footage and coverage from NBC 10 News in Philadelphia. One community, as her son put it, putting a protective chamber around this one local family. Getting together.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump reportedly keen on law at root of disgraceful chapter in American history
meeting in person, writing letters, rousting their local officials and getting them to make some noise about it, getting them to hold a press conference about it, getting local media to cover it, people showing up in person, protesting in person. And they just kept doing thing after thing after thing, and it worked. At least for now.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump reportedly keen on law at root of disgraceful chapter in American history
For that family, it's obviously the most important thing in the world. But for this town, it also showed this town that all those things, showing up and writing letters and roasting your elected officials and holding press conferences and getting the local media involved and protesting, showing up in person, it works. It matters. Haddon Township, New Jersey this week.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump reportedly keen on law at root of disgraceful chapter in American history
In 1942, there was a Boy Scout troop in Cody, Wyoming. And if you've ever been in Boy Scouts or if you've ever had a kid or, in my case, a brother in Boy Scouts, you might know that the big day on the calendar is, say with me now, Boy Scout Jamboree.
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Trump reportedly keen on law at root of disgraceful chapter in American history
In 1942 in Wyoming, a Boy Scout troop put out a call to all the nearby Boy Scout troops in all the nearby towns that they should get together to do the Boy Scout Jamboree that year, which is like crazy. merit badge stuff and tying knots and digging ditches and making campfires, pitching tents and camping out. It's all that stuff.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump reportedly keen on law at root of disgraceful chapter in American history
But in 1942 in Wyoming, when this one troop put out the call for the jamboree, the other Boy Scout troops in the area did not respond or they said no. Only one local Boy Scout troop in Cody, Wyoming, said yes, they would do it.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump reportedly keen on law at root of disgraceful chapter in American history
The reason everybody else said no or they didn't bother to answer is because the Boy Scout troop that put out the call for the Jamboree was the one inside Heart Mountain, behind the barbed wire at the internment camp at Heart Mountain, Wyoming. It's basically a concentration camp where Japanese Americans had been forcibly relocated by the U.S. government at the start of World War II.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump reportedly keen on law at root of disgraceful chapter in American history
You know, guard towers, barbed wire, soldiers with guns policing the perimeter, the whole thing. But that one Boy Scout troop from Cody, that's the one local troop that agreed to come to Heart Mountain to do a scout jamboree with the other Boy Scout troop there of Japanese-American boys. And they did all the jamboree stuff. They did the merit badge stuff. They tied knots. They set up tents.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump reportedly keen on law at root of disgraceful chapter in American history
And they matched boys up from the two different troops. There were two particularly rambunctious soldiers sort of, you might call them rowdy boys, one from each troop. A kid from Cody whose name was Alan and a kid from Heart Mountain who was named Norman. And those two particularly rowdy kids, they ended up putting them together. They camped together in the same tent.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump reportedly keen on law at root of disgraceful chapter in American history
And they very quickly came up with a scheme together. Because, see, there was this other kid from the Cody troop who Alan really didn't like. He said he was a bully. He really didn't like that kid. And so he enlisted his new tentmate, this kid from Heart Mountain, Norman, he enlisted him in a plan. They thought that rain was going to be coming that night when they were camping out in their tent.
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Trump reportedly keen on law at root of disgraceful chapter in American history
And so the two of them, Alan and Norman, who had just met, They very carefully dug a moat around their own tent with a channel that led off the moat and downhill. And the channel was aimed right at the tent of the kid who was the bully. And then in the middle of the night, sure enough, the rain came down, the moat filled up, and then the channel off the moat worked.
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Trump reportedly keen on law at root of disgraceful chapter in American history
And that downstream tent got inundated with all the rainwater from Alan and Norman's moat, and the bully's tent collapsed. And Alan and Norman collapsed in gleeful laughter at the prank they had pulled. And having pulled that off, Alan and Norman became lifelong friends. That was a very unusual Boy Scout jamboree at Heart Mountain internment camp in 1942.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump reportedly keen on law at root of disgraceful chapter in American history
More than 40 years later, in 1988, that little kid Alan from Cody was now Republican U.S. Senator Alan Simpson of Wyoming. And that little kid Norman from Heart Mountain, he was now Democratic Congressman Norm Mineta.
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Trump reportedly keen on law at root of disgraceful chapter in American history
And together, in 1988, they convened bipartisan hearings on the legally, strategically, and morally disastrous decisions that led to 120,000 Japanese Americans, some of them citizens, some of them not, being forced out of their homes and forcibly relocated into prison camps.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump reportedly keen on law at root of disgraceful chapter in American history
Alan Simpson and Norm Mineta drafted the 1988 Civil Liberties Act, which was signed into law by a president named Ronald Reagan. And that said that the internment of Japanese Americans in this country, which had been done under a law that dated back to the 1700s, a rarely used legal authority, was
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump reportedly keen on law at root of disgraceful chapter in American history
That law signed by Ronald Reagan in 1988, the Civil Liberties Act, said that the internment of Japanese Americans had been based on racial prejudice and war hysteria and a failure of political leadership. 1988 Civil Liberties Act formally apologized on behalf of the United States of America to Japanese Americans for what we had done to them.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump reportedly keen on law at root of disgraceful chapter in American history
And it paid them reparations just to try to make it right. The legal grounds for interning Japanese Americans in World War II was something called the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. That was only the third time it had ever been used in American history. It had been used in the War of 1812. It had been used in World War I. And it had been used for Japanese internment in World War II.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump reportedly keen on law at root of disgraceful chapter in American history
Last night, we started to see headlines like this one at the Wall Street Journal. Quote, Trump to invoke seldom used wartime law from 1798. Or this one from CBS News. Professor says Trump's plan to invoke Alien Enemies Act of 1798 sidesteps immigration laws. And then inevitably, because of the history of that law, we started to see last night headlines like this.
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Trump reportedly keen on law at root of disgraceful chapter in American history
from the ABC affiliate in San Diego in this case, Japanese Americans react to Trump's plan to invoke Alien Enemies Act. And then this morning, we got the news that Senator Alan Simpson of Wyoming died today in Cody, Wyoming, where he was from. He was 93 years old. President Donald Trump gave a speech today at the U.S. Justice Department, which itself is a rare thing for a president to do.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump reportedly keen on law at root of disgraceful chapter in American history
In that speech, he was expected, White House sources had made clear to lots of reporters that President Trump was expected to announce at that speech that he is going to invoke the Japanese internment law. He is going to invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which again, has only ever been used three times before in our country and always in wartime.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump reportedly keen on law at root of disgraceful chapter in American history
And the last time we used it, men like Norman Netta and Alan Simpson and fricking Ronald Reagan ended up moving the nation to apologize for it, to call it a stain on our national honor, and not only to formally apologize, but to pay reparations for what we have done. Trump wants to do it again, according to multiple White House sources in speaking with multiple reporters at multiple news agencies.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump reportedly keen on law at root of disgraceful chapter in American history
That said, Trump didn't announce it at the Justice Department at his speech today. And he might have meant to. Who knows? His speech went completely off the rails. He started giving what sounded like orders to Justice Department officials in the room that they should go after a government watchdog group crew that has brought lawsuits against his administration.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump reportedly keen on law at root of disgraceful chapter in American history
The Justice Department should act against them somehow and for something. He started to say that the Justice Department should go after CNN and should go after MSNBC and should go after a whole big list of people he sees as his enemies. So his speech, who knows how much of that was written and how much of it was just him being moved in the moment.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump reportedly keen on law at root of disgraceful chapter in American history
He got so wound up about telling the Justice Department individually to go after his enemies today that maybe he forgot the part about let's rerun Japanese internment. But presumably that's coming. I'm assuming that it'll come in some midnight or 4 a.m. announcement or some misspelled all-capital letters truth social post or something. We'll see.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump reportedly keen on law at root of disgraceful chapter in American history
Today there was a big protest in Washington by and for U.S. veterans as Trump moves to fire 83,000 people who work at the VA serving our veterans. It was actually a really big turnout today in Washington for that veterans protest. Thousands of people turned out on the National Mall for that.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump reportedly keen on law at root of disgraceful chapter in American history
They chose today for this protest March 14th, 314, as a reference to Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which is where it says that you're disqualified from holding office in this country if you have engaged in insurrection against this country. And there were more protests by veterans and by people supporting veterans, not just in D.C. today, but in St.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump reportedly keen on law at root of disgraceful chapter in American history
Louis, Missouri, at the VA Medical Center there, and in Madison, Wisconsin, at the state capitol there, and in Concord, New Hampshire, at the state capitol there, and in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and in Bismarck, North Dakota, and at the Arkansas state capitol, and at the airport rotary in Hyannis, Massachusetts today.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump reportedly keen on law at root of disgraceful chapter in American history
and at the Massachusetts State Capitol in Boston and in Tallahassee, Florida, and at the Ohio State House in Columbus, Ohio. Veterans protest today all over this country. At a very difficult town hall for Republican Congressman Chuck Edwards in North Carolina last night, one man identifying himself as a veteran was thrown out of the room at the congressman's insistence
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Tech genius' image wears thin after series of errors calls DOGE competence into question
Thanks, Juneholm, for joining us this hour. Appreciate it. So Richard Nixon was sworn in for his second term as president in January 1973. First elected in the 1968 election, then reelected in the 1972 election. So Inauguration Day, he was sworn in for what would, of course, famously become his disastrous second term in office in January. Saturday, January 20th, 1973.
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'Tech genius' image wears thin after series of errors calls DOGE competence into question
For his War on Poverty that he announced in 1964, President Lyndon Johnson asked Congress to create a new thing. He asked them to create something called the Office of Economic Opportunity.
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'Tech genius' image wears thin after series of errors calls DOGE competence into question
He tried to say this T-shirt was a very funny joke that he's White House tech support. You know, for our generation of Howard Phillipses, our generation of the let's kill the U.S. government and we don't care if it's legal or not, our guys have claimed the right to do what they're doing, not just because of their wild-eyed zeal against the U.S. government and the U.S. system of governing.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Tech genius' image wears thin after series of errors calls DOGE competence into question
They have claimed the right to do this. They've sort of claimed that their legitimacy comes from their tech savvy. Because they're so good with computers. So we're all supposed to get out of their way or we're supposed to be intimidated or at least confused by what exactly they're doing because, wow, it's such a high level, right? It's so high tech.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Tech genius' image wears thin after series of errors calls DOGE competence into question
They're so tech savvy, so competent, so good at what they're doing. How could we mere mortals possibly understand? 404 Media today reported that on the website for Doge...
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Tech genius' image wears thin after series of errors calls DOGE competence into question
I don't know, doggy, dodgy, doge, I don't know, whatever we're supposed to call it, on their own website that Elon Musk's agency-destroying group has set up for themselves, it appears that random members of the public have been able to upload joke categories and database entries onto that website that show up as if they are official doge.gov data.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Tech genius' image wears thin after series of errors calls DOGE competence into question
And people can add random stuff to this website, not because there's like a post your public comment here section, but because apparently when Doge designed this website for itself, they didn't know how or they forgot to make the website secure so other people couldn't post random stuff on it.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Tech genius' image wears thin after series of errors calls DOGE competence into question
404 Media reporting today that people were posting things like, quote, these experts left their database open, and quote, this is a joke of a .gov site. Remember, these are our high-tech overlords.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Tech genius' image wears thin after series of errors calls DOGE competence into question
And I'm oversimplifying, but essentially all the things that Johnson wanted to do for Americans who were poor for his War on Poverty, the health care you do with Medicaid and Medicare, but everything else you would do through this new Office of Economic Opportunity. And it did a lot. That is, for example, where we got Head Start, the big preschool program. That's where we got AmeriCorps.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Tech genius' image wears thin after series of errors calls DOGE competence into question
At the Huffington Post today, they've got comment from an unnamed employee of the Defense Intelligence Agency pointing out that among the data that Elon Musk's little group has posted online on their apparently totally insecure, half-baked website is classified information. about the National Reconnaissance Office, which is the federal agency that designs, builds, and maintains U.S.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Tech genius' image wears thin after series of errors calls DOGE competence into question
intelligence satellites. Quote, Doge just posted secret, no foreign, meaning nobody who's not a U.S. national is supposed to see it, no foreign info on their website. Currently, people are scrambling to check if their info has been accessed.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Tech genius' image wears thin after series of errors calls DOGE competence into question
This comes on the heels of Elon Musk telling reporters in the Oval Office that we should all be shocked, shocked, the American people should be shocked by the scandalous discovery he and his high-tech team made while apparently pawing through social security records and data. And that part of the government's guts? Because he's allowed to do that, I guess.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Tech genius' image wears thin after series of errors calls DOGE competence into question
He said the scandal that he and his team had uncovered in social security data is that there are people in the social security database who are listed as being 150 years old. And we don't know exactly what Mr. Musk was talking about because he's seeing stuff that I think he's not allowed to see and neither are we.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Tech genius' image wears thin after series of errors calls DOGE competence into question
But today people started gingerly asking if perhaps Mr. Musk just didn't know that in an older version of the programming language that is used by the Social Security Administration, when you didn't have a date to enter in a particular field, It would code it as 150 years ago. It would code it as 1875.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Tech genius' image wears thin after series of errors calls DOGE competence into question
The year 1875 is essentially an error message to let you know that there isn't a real date in that record, and so you should treat that as an error and find out what went wrong. Does he know that, or does he really think those are records for 150-year-old people? Does he know what he's looking at when he's pawing through your Social Security records?
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Tech genius' image wears thin after series of errors calls DOGE competence into question
Remember, it's their technical prowess and know-how that's supposed to impress us and make us think this is somehow different than when a far-right, power-mad, doomed president tried to do this exact same thing in 1973. We're supposed to be intimidated here. That measles outbreak we told you about last night in West Texas, it has now doubled in size as of today.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Tech genius' image wears thin after series of errors calls DOGE competence into question
The CDC also has fired as many as 1,300 people today. The intelligence staff at the Department of Energy sent its staff an urgent warning about how to respond to Elon Musk's team seeking access to sensitive classified materials about nuclear weapons.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Tech genius' image wears thin after series of errors calls DOGE competence into question
And at the National Nuclear Security Administration today, which is responsible for keeping our nukes safe, they fired a significant portion of their staff today, hundreds of staff members. Yesterday, we got word that Trump and Musk's little squad of genius web developers and software engineers
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Tech genius' image wears thin after series of errors calls DOGE competence into question
the folks who may have accidentally posted the classified information on their website and left open some sort of backdoor so that random members of the public can post stuff on it. That genius squad has now reportedly been sent into the IRS. So now that group is in there with your tax information.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Tech genius' image wears thin after series of errors calls DOGE competence into question
While tonight we get word that at the IRS, just ahead of tax filing season, they are about to fire thousands, maybe 9,000 people who actually work there to handle your taxes. The combination of the smash and grab by the supposedly high-tech team and the mass firing of people who actually do know what they're doing means real material harm is being done to our country.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Tech genius' image wears thin after series of errors calls DOGE competence into question
We got lots of programs serving Native Americans, for example. So Lyndon Johnson made that, the Office of Economic Opportunity. It was really his baby from his war on poverty. And Nixon declared he wanted it dead. Now, in Nixon's first term in office, he had tried to kill that agency.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Tech genius' image wears thin after series of errors calls DOGE competence into question
And it will take a long time to repair it when we finally get to start. But there is nothing high tech about what they are doing. And there's nothing new about their intentions. There's also nothing new about the old, very foundational law that made this kind of operation illegal 50 years ago and makes it equally illegal now. More to come tonight. Stay with us.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Tech genius' image wears thin after series of errors calls DOGE competence into question
U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth at a meeting of the NATO defense ministers this week. I think that was supposed to sound tough. Came off a little more like something your least favorite uncle posts on Facebook next to a picture of an assault rifle and, like, nine empty beer cans.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Tech genius' image wears thin after series of errors calls DOGE competence into question
But Secretary Hegseth began this trip by bewildering not just our allies, but also a lot of people in Washington when he inexplicably blurted out that any peace deal in the Russia-Ukraine war would have to include Ukraine giving up its territory and abandoning its bid to join NATO. That would imply that the peace talks have already happened and Ukraine already had to give everything up.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Tech genius' image wears thin after series of errors calls DOGE competence into question
Why would they talk? We mentioned last night that Secretary Hegsath has now tried to walk those comments back. But I think it is worth you hearing exactly how he started his remarks when he was trying to take back what he said the other day.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Tech genius' image wears thin after series of errors calls DOGE competence into question
It's like he asked ChatGPT to come up with the most passive voice way to say, you know what, I need to take back that dumb thing I said. It's not just our allies abroad who reacted negatively to Pete Hegseth's comments.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Tech genius' image wears thin after series of errors calls DOGE competence into question
After Hegseth made those comments, the Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Senator Roger Wicker, responded by saying, quote, I prefer we don't give away negotiating positions before we actually get started.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Tech genius' image wears thin after series of errors calls DOGE competence into question
After Hegseth then tried to take it back, walk back what he'd said and say he didn't really mean it, Senator Wicker then responded again, saying, quote, he made a rookie mistake. I don't know who wrote the speech. It's the kind of thing Tucker Carlson could have written. And, quote, Carlson is a fool. said the senator.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Tech genius' image wears thin after series of errors calls DOGE competence into question
He had installed a young zealot, a 36-year-old named Donald Rumsfeld, to go run that office with express instructions from the president to run it into the ground. And young Donald Rumsfeld, I think, did wreck as much as he could. He cut off parts of the agency and put them in other parts of the government. But it wasn't enough.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Tech genius' image wears thin after series of errors calls DOGE competence into question
Again, that is a member of Pete Hegseth's own political party boldly criticizing his performance on this trip.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Tech genius' image wears thin after series of errors calls DOGE competence into question
It's worth noting, as Senator Wicker was making that unfavorable comparison to Mr. Carlson, Mr. Carlson himself was posting a new interview with Hungary's authoritarian leader, Viktor Orban, an interview where, as Politico puts it, quote, Orban repeated Kremlin talking points that Russia invaded Ukraine in a bid to stop it from joining NATO. Because yes, Russia was on the ropes.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Tech genius' image wears thin after series of errors calls DOGE competence into question
They were the real victim here. They just had to invade. Meanwhile today, Ukraine accused Russia's military of ramming a drone with a high-explosive warhead on it into the former Chernobyl nuclear site. The drone reportedly damaged the protective shield that is supposed to prevent radiation leaks from that famously radioactive site.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Tech genius' image wears thin after series of errors calls DOGE competence into question
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says the damage was significant, but he says there are not currently signs of increased radiation. I mean, all of this, the vice president of the United States managed to make things even more confusing, making his own sort of rookie moves on his own first trip abroad. He told the Wall Street Journal that the U.S.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Tech genius' image wears thin after series of errors calls DOGE competence into question
would potentially take military action in the war in Ukraine. As in U.S. troops in Ukraine? Everybody in this administration seems to be taking the approach that they should just say whatever pops into their head and try cleaning it up later. Vice President Vance said that the Wall Street Journal had twisted his words.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Tech genius' image wears thin after series of errors calls DOGE competence into question
The Wall Street Journal does not appear to have conceded they've done any such thing. Joining us now from Munich, Germany, is former Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, who has stayed up till oh dark 30 to be with us tonight in the middle of the night. Sir, thank you so much for joining us. I really appreciate it.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Tech genius' image wears thin after series of errors calls DOGE competence into question
These remarks from Pete Hegseth at the outset here speaking with NATO leaders were obviously not just damaging but embarrassing, and he then tried to take them back. We're in sort of a different situation with remarks that have since been made there by Vice President Vance. I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit about Vice President Vance's speech there and how it was received.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Tech genius' image wears thin after series of errors calls DOGE competence into question
By the time Nixon was coming back for his second term, that agency that he hated so much, it still existed. And so this time, coming back for his second term, he just flat out said he was going to kill it off. He did have the decency to wait until two days after LBJ died, but then he told Congress he wanted them to zero it out of the budget. Kill it. It's interesting, though.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Tech genius' image wears thin after series of errors calls DOGE competence into question
I also understand that Vice President Vance made the decision in Germany at this meeting to not meet with the German chancellor and instead to meet with the leaders of Germany's far-right party, AFD, which is viewed by many Germans as the sort of unsettling inheritors of the legacy of the Nazi party, frankly. What do you make of this decision?
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Tech genius' image wears thin after series of errors calls DOGE competence into question
Is this a logistics decision or is this a loud message? And if so, how is it being heard?
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Tech genius' image wears thin after series of errors calls DOGE competence into question
Mike, the news out of Ukraine today, this video that we've seen of this drone with what appears to be a high explosive warhead on it, smashing into the containment dome, the sort of sarcophagus that covers the highly radioactive Chernobyl nuclear disaster site. Those images are so chilling and so unsettling. Can I just ask your reaction to that? Ukraine claims this is a Russian military drone.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Tech genius' image wears thin after series of errors calls DOGE competence into question
Russia is essentially disclaiming responsibility for it. How are you viewing this?
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Tech genius' image wears thin after series of errors calls DOGE competence into question
Former Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul joining us tonight live from Munich, where it is 3.30 in the morning. Ambassador McFaul, I now owe you at some point. You can wake me up at 3.30 in the morning for something. I owe you at least a beer when you get back. Thank you very much for being up at this time for us. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Stay with us.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Tech genius' image wears thin after series of errors calls DOGE competence into question
We have new developments tonight in the fast-moving, dramatic story of mass resignations at the U.S. Justice Department over a matter of principle. Last night, we reported that it was a sixth resignation day at DOJ. Trump-installed leaders at Maine Justice told SDNY, they told the acting U.S.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Tech genius' image wears thin after series of errors calls DOGE competence into question
attorney in the Southern District of New York, that she needed to dismiss corruption charges against New York's mayor, Eric Adams. It appeared to be some sort of frankly, repellent deal to get the mayor's support and assistance with Trump's mass deportation efforts in exchange for these charges against him going away. The SDNY U.S. attorney refused to do it, and she quit.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Tech genius' image wears thin after series of errors calls DOGE competence into question
Because SDNY wouldn't do it, Trump's appointees at Maine Justice then ordered prosecutors at Maine Justice in Washington that they should do it instead. But that didn't work out as planned either. two, then three, then four, then five more prosecutors at Maine Justice quit, rather than put their names on the effort to drop these charges against Eric Adams.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Tech genius' image wears thin after series of errors calls DOGE competence into question
Even that wasn't enough for Nixon. Because when he came back for his second term, again, like kind of famously, he was way more radical than he had been before. He was certainly less constrained and perhaps more thrilled and perhaps more drunk on his own power.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Tech genius' image wears thin after series of errors calls DOGE competence into question
So that's six high-profile resignations from the Justice Department since yesterday. And now a seventh. The lead prosecutor in that corruption case against Eric Adams also quit today, sending a resignation letter that feels like it would burn your fingers if you touch it.
The Rachel Maddow Show
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It included this line, which you may now cross-stitch on all the pillows in the world and pass them down to your kids and grandkids. Quote, I expect you will eventually find someone who is enough of a fool or enough of a coward to file your motion. But it was never going to be me. So as of this morning, seven principled resignations and the Eric Adams charges still weren't dropped.
The Rachel Maddow Show
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At which point, Trump's acting deputy attorney general, Emil Bovee, and this is true, confirmed by NBC News legal correspondent Lisa Rubin, Emil Bovee convened all the prosecutors in the Justice Department's public integrity section, like two dozen or so prosecutors, convened them all together in the same place and told them they had one hour to decide which one of them was going to sign the motion calling for the charges to be dismissed.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Tech genius' image wears thin after series of errors calls DOGE competence into question
Emil Bove apparently made clear that promotions were in the offing for anybody who'd be willing to sign this motion. And if you weren't willing to sign, well, they could all be fired. Ultimately, one veteran career prosecutor, who is apparently nearing retirement, said he would volunteer to sign the motion, basically under duress.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Tech genius' image wears thin after series of errors calls DOGE competence into question
Not because he necessarily supported it, but because he was hoping to save all of his colleagues' jobs. And so tonight, Trump's Justice Department has filed this motion in federal court in New York tonight.
The Rachel Maddow Show
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United States of America v. Eric Adams defendant, quote, the United States respectfully submits this motion seeking dismissal without prejudice of the charges in this case with leave of the court. And without prejudice is the legal language there that allows them to bring these charges back whenever they want.
The Rachel Maddow Show
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Whenever the mayor of America's largest city, you know, gets out of line and stops doing what Trump wants. But note that other phrase there, with leave of the court. That's important. This filing tonight, as hard as it was for Trump's Justice Department to get it done, it doesn't just end the case. Because the Justice Department can't just...
The Rachel Maddow Show
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unilaterally say charges are dismissed after they've already brought charges in court. This is a matter in court being overseen by a federal judge now. And the federal judge in the case has to sign off on dropping these charges. And that might be a whole new thing too. The details of that, you're going to want to hear this. Lisa Rubin joins us to update us on that next.
The Rachel Maddow Show
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New statement just out tonight from seven former U.S. attorneys from SDNY, Southern District of New York, these Democrats and Republicans. Quote, "...as former U.S. attorneys for the Southern District of New York, we commend U.S. Attorney Daniel Sassoon on her decision to resign.
The Rachel Maddow Show
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And so this time, when he wanted to destroy that part of the government, that agency in the government, yes, he told Congress that he wanted them to abolish the agency. He told them that. But he also sent in yet another new guy who was even more of a wrecking ball than Donald Rumsfeld. A guy whose name was Howard Phillips.
The Rachel Maddow Show
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Her commitment to integrity in the rule of law reflects the finest traditions of the Southern District, United States Attorney's Office, and the Department of Justice." The department's announced intent to investigate Ms.
The Rachel Maddow Show
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Sassoon and some of the career prosecutors who served alongside her is a stark departure from those traditions, and that should concern everyone committed to the pursuit of justice without fear or favor. And it is signed by seven former U.S. attorneys from SDNY, Robert Fisk, John S. Martin, Mary Jo White, James Comey, David Kelly, Jeffrey Berman, Audrey Strauss.
The Rachel Maddow Show
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After seven different prosecutors, including Sassoon, resigned rather than accede to the demand to drop the corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams, that request to the court to drop the charges, it has now finally been made. But charges don't just get dropped on their own automatically because the Justice Department says to.
The Rachel Maddow Show
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The judge overseeing the case now has to consider that request from the Justice Department. What is that likely to entail? Is this saga ongoing? Joining us now is Lisa Rubin, MSNBC legal correspondent. Lisa, your reporting on this has just been invaluable. Have I explained any of this the wrong way around yet, or have I pretty much got it right?
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Tech genius' image wears thin after series of errors calls DOGE competence into question
What is the judge going to do here? I imagine that the judge doesn't have that much discretion about ultimately whether or not to drop the charges, but presumably there is some process that happens here next, right?
The Rachel Maddow Show
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What should we expect in terms of timing, in terms of the response time from Judge Ho and when he might, if he is going to hold substantive proceedings in terms of figuring out what happened here, what caused this huge uproar in the Justice Department? What would you expect in terms of when that might happen and when those proceedings might happen?
The Rachel Maddow Show
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He was so much of a zealot, he made Donald Rumsfeld look like a hippie in comparison. But this guy Phillips was sent down to this agency by Richard Nixon. And when he showed up there, he effectively just announced right away that that agency was dead. Wrap up, go home, it's over, we're not doing this anymore.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Tech genius' image wears thin after series of errors calls DOGE competence into question
Yeah. I mean, we'll see what the judge decides to do here, but there's a very real possibility that this saga is not over and that this, at the very outset of the Trump Justice Department, may be something that haunts them seriously for a long way from now. Lisa Rubin, MSNBC legal correspondent, working triple time as always. Lisa, thank you so much.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Tech genius' image wears thin after series of errors calls DOGE competence into question
We'll be right back. This week has been a year. But you know what? All across the country, people have been showing up in person, making their opposition to Trump's actions and agenda known. This was the scene outside the Stonewall Inn today in New York City.
The Rachel Maddow Show
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Hundreds of people showed up to protest the Trump administration removing all mention of trans people from the Stonewall National Memorial site, which, after all, commemorates a riot by trans people. It's like telling Cooperstown they're no longer allowed to mention baseball anymore. This was a different part of New York City yesterday.
The Rachel Maddow Show
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About 400 protesters marching from one ICE office, Immigration and Customs Enforcement Office, to another to protest the Trump administration's immigration actions. Around the same time, all the way across the country, protesters gathered outside a Tesla dealership in Seattle to protest Elon Musk's gutting of the federal government as the president's top campaign donor.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Tech genius' image wears thin after series of errors calls DOGE competence into question
Today in Boston, Massachusetts, look at this, hundreds of people marched on Boston Common to protest against both Trump and, again, his top campaign donor, Elon Musk. In D.C. today, federal workers and their supporters and regular members of the public protested outside the Health and Human Services building as Robert F. Kennedy started his first full day of work as HHS secretary.
The Rachel Maddow Show
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They left valentines for Valentine's Day that were made with spoons, Which is a sort of adorable way to say get lost in response to the Trump administration's resign or else fork in the road emails. Hey, fork you, we're not doing it. Here's some spoons instead. Over this weekend, we're expecting additional protests.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Tech genius' image wears thin after series of errors calls DOGE competence into question
This coming Monday, President's Day, a whole bunch of different groups are planning a national day of protests on Monday. We expect that the main protest will be at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., at Upper Senate Park. But we're also expecting, once again, satellite protests at state capitals and city halls and town halls all across the country.
The Rachel Maddow Show
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Expecting a pretty major day of protests on Monday, this Monday, President's Day. in DC and around the country. People are mad about what Trump and his administration are doing. They are being loud about it. All right, that's going to do it for me for now. I will see you again here Monday night and all next week at 9 p.m. Eastern.
The Rachel Maddow Show
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Quote, Phillips immediately issued instructions to local anti-poverty groups to begin phasing out and planning for reductions in force. Nixon had requested that Congress kill it. Congress hadn't done anything about that yet. In the meantime, he decided he was so impatient he wanted to kill it anyway. He sent this guy to just go announce that it was dead. It's a big scandal at the time.
The Rachel Maddow Show
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Here's how NBC Nightly News reported on it.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Tech genius' image wears thin after series of errors calls DOGE competence into question
Two days after that, LBJ died. The Nixon inauguration was on Saturday, and then on Monday, two days later, former Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson passed away, had a heart attack. And then two days after that, Nixon proclaimed that in the immediate aftermath of LBJ's death, he, Richard Nixon, was going to kill one of LBJ's most beloved projects. two days after LBJ's death. Very classy.
The Rachel Maddow Show
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People have been left out of the decision-making process. We've talked to our congressmen, our own legislators, and they feel the same way. They've been left out of it, too. The federal agency unilaterally shut down by just a guy who was sent there by the president, a pugnacious guy who declared he was there to shut the place down. The staff was purged.
The Rachel Maddow Show
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Ongoing funding that had been approved by Congress and therefore by law was just abruptly cut off. People were calling their members of Congress in frustration. Those members of Congress were saying, yeah, we're frustrated, too. We don't think they can do this. Sound familiar?
The Rachel Maddow Show
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There is nothing new under the sun when it comes to the fever dreams of the American far right and what they want to do to the government and what they think they can do to the government if only the president is brave enough to not be constrained by those darn laws.
The Rachel Maddow Show
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When Nixon pulled this caper and tried to unilaterally close this agency that he hated, which, you know, Republicans denounced as evil and Marxist and all the rest, it was a scandal. People thought it was a worrying thing, not only in process, but in terms of the impact that it would have. And people banded together to save that agency.
The Rachel Maddow Show
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It wasn't just protests either. The little programs all over the country that were funded by that agency, they got together with, among other folks, the unions who represented the people who worked there, and they went to court to stop Nixon and to stop this unelected henchman Nixon had sent who declared once he got in the door that he was there to kill that agency.
The Rachel Maddow Show
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And it was sort of a battle royale, including the president's kill the agency henchmen basically scoffing at the courts at one point, like whatever they said wouldn't matter anyway.
The Rachel Maddow Show
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If Howard Phillips says he'll still accomplish his mission of killing this agency, quote, he's either a prophet or in contempt, as in, in contempt of court, because the courts just said he can't kill this agency. There was all this bluster from Nixon's guy, Howard Phillips, saying he was going to defy the courts, right? Saying that the court's ruling here didn't matter.
The Rachel Maddow Show
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Don't worry, we're getting it anyway. But, you know, despite that, despite the pressure that the Nixon administration tried to put on the people who were trying to keep this place alive, right? The backlash and the efforts by people who were standing up for this agency, in the end, it worked. They went to the courts. The courts said, yeah, what they're doing is illegal. They can't do it.
The Rachel Maddow Show
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And the Office of Economic Opportunity stayed open thanks to the protests, thanks to the defiance, thanks to the public scandal, thanks to the press coverage, and yes, thanks to that court order. And what did Howard Phillips do? He soon resigned from that job in the Nixon administration.
The Rachel Maddow Show
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For what it's worth, just in case you're interested, sidebar, Howard Phillips went on to an illustrious career as a crank, perennial, far-right, third-party presidential candidate for which he's mostly remembered today for his furious denunciations of the term Ms., It is Miss or Mrs. And there is no Ms. And we must abolish Ms. Vote for me for president.
The Rachel Maddow Show
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He was also known for vehemently demanding that the Department of Education should be abolished. He said this was something so important that American political leaders should be prepared to give their lives. They should be prepared to die in order to abolish the Department of Education. That's what became of Howard Phillips after his stint at the Office of Economic Opportunity.
The Rachel Maddow Show
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But, you know, the right really hated that agency. And this is also an important part of the story. Years later, they did succeed in killing that agency off. But they did it legally. They had Congress vote to get rid of it, and it was still controversial and people still wanted to keep it, but they had a vote in Congress and got rid of it.
The Rachel Maddow Show
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Congress had created it and funded it, so the only entity that can legally get rid of it is Congress. You know, Nixon had said that's how he wanted to do it, but he got impatient and decided he should just be able to kill it on his own say-so, and so he tried to do that by sending in this henchman in there to declare it closed. But it was plainly illegal for him to do it that way.
The Rachel Maddow Show
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Had he just waited for Congress, he might have won the argument in Congress, got it shut down legally. Instead, the courts stopped him, and it took years and years and years for them to get it shut down the right way. Ryan LaRochelle is a political scientist at the University of Maine. He recently wrote about this incident for Time Magazine.
The Rachel Maddow Show
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He said, quote, so far, Trump and Musk have followed Nixon's playbook and ignored his lack of success. So, I mean, in some ways we have been here before and so have they. But the law is still the law from 50 years ago and from hundreds of years ago and now. I mean, look at this. This is from the New York Times in the middle of this scandal in April 1973.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Tech genius' image wears thin after series of errors calls DOGE competence into question
Quote, unless and until Congress decides otherwise, it is the duty of the president and his subordinates to administer every program in good faith and in accord with the legislated purposes. That principle is so fundamental that it is familiar to every student of constitutional law. That principle is so fundamental.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Tech genius' image wears thin after series of errors calls DOGE competence into question
Last night, just after we got off the air, a federal judge in Washington ordered the immediate reinstatement of the foreign aid that was in place when Trump took office because Congress had appropriated it because that's how we make decisions about what is funded in this country. By court order last night, he ordered that foreign aid must be restarted. Late last night.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Tech genius' image wears thin after series of errors calls DOGE competence into question
Earlier yesterday, a different federal judge told the Trump administration that they are also not allowed to put the whole staff of USAID on leave, even though they really want to. USAID is funded by congressional appropriations and Congress makes those decisions in our system of government. And so a federal judge blocked that mass firing at USAID yesterday as well.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Tech genius' image wears thin after series of errors calls DOGE competence into question
Then today, in a similar order, the Consumer Financial Protection Agency, the staff of that agency has brought the Trump administration to court. Now the Trump administration has been court-ordered to stop its plans to destroy data, terminate employees, or take the agency's budget. These guys so hate that this is the law. But this is the law! And at least for now, we still have law!
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Tech genius' image wears thin after series of errors calls DOGE competence into question
If there is a case to be made to shut down an agency, tell Congress you want them to shut it down and then have them debate it and vote on it and pass a bill to shut down that agency. That's how you can do it legally. Why are you so afraid of even trying to do it legally? Your party controls both houses of Congress. What, you don't think they'll do what you want?
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Tech genius' image wears thin after series of errors calls DOGE competence into question
The two things that are different since the Nixon debacle along these same lines 50 years ago. Two things that are different are number one, that this time they are openly saying that they don't think they need to obey the courts.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Tech genius' image wears thin after series of errors calls DOGE competence into question
In some instances, they are de facto defying the courts already by not complying with court orders that have come in against them already, court orders telling them to reverse some of what they've done. Now, they're not conceding that they're in defiance of the court. They're still showing up and defending their actions.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Tech genius' image wears thin after series of errors calls DOGE competence into question
So at this point, they haven't raced all the way to the end of the game and just declared a dictatorship. But they are openly musing about how they think they ought to and how it's within their rights, including Vice President J.D. Vance putting his musings on this subject in print within the last few days. So that's different. I'm just entertaining the idea that maybe we won't have law anymore.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Tech genius' image wears thin after series of errors calls DOGE competence into question
But the second way that things are different is by the tech gloss on what they're doing. And I say it's a gloss because they're really trying to make us think of what they're doing in these terms. You might have seen Elon Musk making a speech at a big international conference this week in which he wore a T-shirt that said tech support. It's not a flattering look, but he thought it was hilarious.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Who's that good for?': Maddow connects the dots on Donald Trump's behavior toward Russia
Thanks to you at home for joining us this hour. Senator Cory Booker is here with us tonight live. I'm really looking forward to speaking with him. Former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul is here with us live. We've got eyes on potentially some developing court proceedings live tonight. It's just a really busy Friday night. There's a lot to get to. I am really glad you are here.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Who's that good for?': Maddow connects the dots on Donald Trump's behavior toward Russia
Who cheered the loudest for that? Russia welcomes USAID cuts, calls agency machine for interfering. It was fantastic news for someone. No one was seen to benefit more or to be more loudly cheering it on than Vladimir Putin.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Who's that good for?': Maddow connects the dots on Donald Trump's behavior toward Russia
And that was before the specific news confirmed today that among the projects Trump is explicitly and specifically turning off right now, this week, is the program by which the U.S. helps Ukraine keep its electric grid up and running. even though Russia has repeatedly targeted that electric grid throughout the war.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Who's that good for?': Maddow connects the dots on Donald Trump's behavior toward Russia
Because Russia's idea of how it wants to win the unprovoked war it declared on our ally is to make the civilian population, including kids and the elderly and hospital patients and everyone, their best idea for how to prosecute that war is to cause them to freeze to death by bombing the electric grid in February. So more than any other evident targeting, they have targeted
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Who's that good for?': Maddow connects the dots on Donald Trump's behavior toward Russia
The electric grid that serves the civilian population in Ukraine. It is the United States that has helped Ukraine masterfully keep the power grid up despite those repeated onslaughts by Russia. Until this week when Trump just cut it off. Which is good news for someone, right? President dressed up the defense secretary.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Who's that good for?': Maddow connects the dots on Donald Trump's behavior toward Russia
He handpicked off the cast of the Fox & Friends weekend show, put him in a bright blue suit, and sent him to Europe, where he volunteered unasked that Ukraine can't be expected to keep all of its own territory. He said that would be, quote, unrealistic. It would be, quote, unrealistic to not let Russia take parts of Ukraine. He then volunteered unasked that Ukraine will not be allowed to join NATO.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Who's that good for?': Maddow connects the dots on Donald Trump's behavior toward Russia
Now we've got pro-Trump Republican senators saying, yeah, not just Ukraine won't be allowed in NATO, we ought to get out of NATO too, which of course would collapse NATO. Who would that most benefit? For whom would that be really, really good news? Donald Trump says, let's let Russia back into the G7. Donald Trump is reportedly preparing right now for his own big in-person summit. Vladimir Putin.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Who's that good for?': Maddow connects the dots on Donald Trump's behavior toward Russia
Donald Trump already started high-level meetings between the Russian and U.S. governments, including an inexplicable three-and-a-half-hour meeting specifically between the president's real estate friend and Vladimir Putin himself. Steve Witkoff came back from that meeting and how'd that go? Went pretty well for someone.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Who's that good for?': Maddow connects the dots on Donald Trump's behavior toward Russia
Headline, parroting Putin and Trump, Witkoff says Russia was provoked into invading Ukraine. Headline, Trump envoy can't name a single concession Russia will make in peace deal. What does it seem like is going on here? Imagine if a foreign adversary, imagine if the Putin government somehow could just do a thought experiment.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Who's that good for?': Maddow connects the dots on Donald Trump's behavior toward Russia
Imagine they could somehow exert control or influence over the government of the United States. What do you think the Putin government would have the U.S. government do if he could control it? What kind of headlines would you expect to see about the operations of our government under that kind of a scenario?
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Who's that good for?': Maddow connects the dots on Donald Trump's behavior toward Russia
And what would you expect the news out of the Oval Office and the White House to look like on a day like today? At the start of this made-for-TV debacle at the White House today, where the President and Vice President J.D. Vance screamed at our ally Vladimir Zelensky and berated him with Russian government talking points,
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Who's that good for?': Maddow connects the dots on Donald Trump's behavior toward Russia
When this happened today in Washington, there's a couple things that stuck out to me. First of all, at the very start of this photo op, they had all the press in the room, Trump was asked right at the outset when he last spoke with Vladimir Putin. He said, quote, a couple of days ago, which was news because the U.S.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Who's that good for?': Maddow connects the dots on Donald Trump's behavior toward Russia
government had said nothing about Donald Trump speaking with Vladimir Putin a couple of days ago. So that's new. He used to say, I'm not allowed to talk about that. Now he's admitting that he talks to Putin all the time, even when the U.S. government doesn't release any information about those calls like they do with all other foreign leaders.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Who's that good for?': Maddow connects the dots on Donald Trump's behavior toward Russia
Second was the truly bizarre revelation that Russian state-controlled media, for some reason, was in the Oval Office today when this scene happened with Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Who's that good for?': Maddow connects the dots on Donald Trump's behavior toward Russia
Now, to be clear, the Trump White House will not allow the Associated Press or Reuters into the Oval Office to cover White House events anymore, but somehow TASS Media, Kremlin-controlled Russian state media, somehow made their way into the Oval Office for this berating of the Ukrainian president today, and Russian state media was in the Oval Office somehow live-streaming from the event.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Who's that good for?': Maddow connects the dots on Donald Trump's behavior toward Russia
Afterwards, look at this bizarre statement from the White House attributed to an unnamed White House official. Quote, Tass was not on the approved list of media for today's pool. As soon as it came to the attention of press office staff that he was in the Oval, he was escorted out by the press secretary. He is not on the approved list for the press conference. It's not on the approved list.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Who's that good for?': Maddow connects the dots on Donald Trump's behavior toward Russia
I have no idea how he got in there. to livestream for Kremlin-controlled state media the president and vice president of the United States screaming at Ukraine's president and berating him with Russian talking points. We don't know how the Kremlin guy got in here. It was weird. He just wandered in. I mean, people do. It's a free country. People do just wander into the Oval Office.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Who's that good for?': Maddow connects the dots on Donald Trump's behavior toward Russia
A very radical thing is happening in our country. It is not only radical in the sense that it is a large directional change, right? Switching sides in a war, now standing against our allies of the last 80 years, now siding with Russia instead. I mean, no longer siding with the free world, now siding with the authoritarian governments of the world.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Who's that good for?': Maddow connects the dots on Donald Trump's behavior toward Russia
It's not just radical in that it is a 180 degree directional change. It is also radical in the sense that it is really radically unpopular with the American people. I mean, you can see that in the polling. Quinnipiac poll this month. Should the U.S. trust Vladimir Putin? Yes, 9%. No, 81%. Here's another one. The Economist-Yukov poll out this month.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Who's that good for?': Maddow connects the dots on Donald Trump's behavior toward Russia
Do you have a favorable or unfavorable view of Vladimir Putin? The American public say favorable, 11%. Unfavorable, 78%. The American people are not clamoring for us to ally ourselves with Vladimir Putin. Right? You can see it very clearly in the polling. And it begs the question, well, okay, who wants this? Who voted for this? Why are we doing this?
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Who's that good for?': Maddow connects the dots on Donald Trump's behavior toward Russia
If the American people don't want this, why are we doing it? Who says we should do this? Who's making us do this? And why? And for whose benefit? You can see the same dynamic in the bewildered and outraged questions that Americans are asking their Republican members of Congress at these town halls, which Republicans are now realizing they better not do any more of.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Who's that good for?': Maddow connects the dots on Donald Trump's behavior toward Russia
They're asking their Republican senators and their Republican members of Congress, what the heck is going on? What is going on here? But let's be clear. I mean, what's going on here is pretty obvious. At this point. Because this is all really good news for somebody. It's not the American people for whom it's good. It's not our allies for whom it's good.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Who's that good for?': Maddow connects the dots on Donald Trump's behavior toward Russia
And this is nothing that anyone campaigned on. And it is nothing that anyone has any political mandate for at all. And so why are we doing it? And what are we going to do about it? That's what we have to decide. And that's next.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Who's that good for?': Maddow connects the dots on Donald Trump's behavior toward Russia
That's a member of Ukraine's parliament, Inna Sovtsyn, reacting tonight to the bizarre Oval Office spectacle today in which Donald Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance... screamed Russian talking points at Ukraine's president on camera. Joining us now is Michael McFaul, former U.S. Ambassador to Russia. Ambassador McFaul, it's really nice of you to make time to be here with us tonight. Thank you.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Who's that good for?': Maddow connects the dots on Donald Trump's behavior toward Russia
So today I think felt to many people like putting a final piece of punctuation on it. This is a full realignment of American foreign policy overall. Under Donald Trump, the United States will abandon an allied democracy. We will support the autocrat. We will support Vladimir Putin instead. Do you see it that way? And can you help us understand the broader implications of what we saw today?
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Who's that good for?': Maddow connects the dots on Donald Trump's behavior toward Russia
Matthew. Matthew. There's a Matthew here somewhere. Matthew, please tell me you want to talk about like potholes or prostitution. Pot legalization. Anything about this Putin stuff. This stuff is making me very pink. I do not want to talk about this stuff. Let's talk about something else. Republican Congressman Rich McCormick in Georgia. Same problem.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Who's that good for?': Maddow connects the dots on Donald Trump's behavior toward Russia
I know that you have been following the actual negotiations to end the war in Ukraine closely. I also understand you spoke with members of President Zelensky's delegation since the Oval Office meeting today. What are they telling you? What is your sense about the best path forward and what options they have now?
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Who's that good for?': Maddow connects the dots on Donald Trump's behavior toward Russia
Yeah, I think whatever Americans voted for, I don't think people voted to make the United States a subsidiary diplomatic entity to Vladimir Putin, which is the way that Trump is operating here. You mentioned the rest of Europe rallying to Zelensky.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Who's that good for?': Maddow connects the dots on Donald Trump's behavior toward Russia
One of the things that we saw today were leaders of democracies from all over Europe publicly thanking Zelensky today, standing with him in solidarity after his meeting with Trump. You talk about whether or not the United States is any longer associated with the free world, whether we are the leader of the free world. If we're not, is it becoming clear who is?
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Who's that good for?': Maddow connects the dots on Donald Trump's behavior toward Russia
Michael McFaul, former U.S. ambassador to Russia. I do appreciate you being here. I know that there's a lot of demand for your time on a night like this, after a shock like this. It's an honor to have you here tonight, sir. Thank you.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Who's that good for?': Maddow connects the dots on Donald Trump's behavior toward Russia
All right. We've got much more ahead here tonight, including, I'm really happy to say, a live visit with Senator Cory Booker coming up. Stay with us.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Who's that good for?': Maddow connects the dots on Donald Trump's behavior toward Russia
Republican U.S. Senators Lindsey Graham and Roger Wicker praising Ukraine and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky condemning Russia, saying Ukraine is an ideal ally, that they are entitled to the promises the world made them. Those were not clips from two or three years ago. Senator Graham and Senator Wicker said those things exactly two weeks ago
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Who's that good for?': Maddow connects the dots on Donald Trump's behavior toward Russia
That said, to be fair, we are in a news environment where two weeks can feel like an eternity. So how about something not even two weeks ago? How about something even more recent? How about something from this morning? Here's those same two senators greeting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and sitting down with him for a meeting ahead of his trip to the White House today.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Who's that good for?': Maddow connects the dots on Donald Trump's behavior toward Russia
You can hear Senator Wicker, the chair of the Armed Services Committee, you can hear him in this next clip.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Who's that good for?': Maddow connects the dots on Donald Trump's behavior toward Russia
We're here today as a show of support. We are so encouraged you are here. We are delighted that I mention the show of support. After that meeting, Senator Lindsey Graham posted his own video about how excited he was to be supporting Ukraine today. They were all so excited today.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Who's that good for?': Maddow connects the dots on Donald Trump's behavior toward Russia
And I will be honest, I'm feeling a little fired up tonight. What's that phrase? I'm feeling... I feel like I'm loaded for bear, right? So I'm just going to do this. I don't care. I don't care. Let's just do it. Let's just start right in with something that Republicans really, really, really do not want to talk about.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Who's that good for?': Maddow connects the dots on Donald Trump's behavior toward Russia
Senator Wicker posted this picture of himself proudly shaking hands with President Zelensky, calling the meeting a huge step forward in securing mutual prosperity and peace for Americans and Ukrainians. This was today. And you know what happened next. President Donald Trump and J.D.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Who's that good for?': Maddow connects the dots on Donald Trump's behavior toward Russia
Vance screaming at President Zelensky in the Oval Office, hammering him with Russian talking points as the cameras rolled and rolled and rolled and rolled. After that display, Senator Graham, who again just this morning was so excited to show his support for Ukraine and President Zelensky, just hours after that, he called a press conference to demand that Volodymyr Zelensky must resign.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Who's that good for?': Maddow connects the dots on Donald Trump's behavior toward Russia
Senator Wicker, profile in Courage, appears to have just quietly deleted his post from this morning, praising Volodymyr Zelensky and showing himself shaking his hand. Courage, Senator Wicker. We reached out to Senator Wicker's office tonight to ask what happened there. Haven't heard back. Friends like these. Democratic Senator Cory Booker joins us live next.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Who's that good for?': Maddow connects the dots on Donald Trump's behavior toward Russia
This is part of how Senator Cory Booker responded today after the debacle at the White House. Quote, Donald Trump and J.D. Vance didn't show strength today. They showed weakness. They belittled a giant and showed just how small they are.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Who's that good for?': Maddow connects the dots on Donald Trump's behavior toward Russia
A weary warrior was before them, a beleaguered man who has lost thousands of his friends and comrades to the unjust and illegal aggression of an authoritarian leader. They showed no grace, no magnanimity of spirit, no diplomatic acumen. They were small bullies with big titles, and they disrespected the history and legacy of the nation they lead.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Who's that good for?': Maddow connects the dots on Donald Trump's behavior toward Russia
Today, Donald Trump acted more like Russia's Putin than America's president. Joining us now is Senator Cory Booker, Democrat of New Jersey. He's a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Senator Booker, I'm really glad you could be here tonight. Thanks for making time.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Who's that good for?': Maddow connects the dots on Donald Trump's behavior toward Russia
What concerns you the most about that?
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Who's that good for?': Maddow connects the dots on Donald Trump's behavior toward Russia
For Americans who don't necessarily think about foreign policy that much, who don't think about America's role in the world, or if they do, don't think it affects their regular lives very much, what concerns you the most about us apparently abandoning our global stance of the entire modern history of our country and instead lining up with Russia and turning against our democratic allies?
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Who's that good for?': Maddow connects the dots on Donald Trump's behavior toward Russia
On that point, we have seen, for example, Senator Roger Wicker speak pointedly about Vladimir Putin and speak pointedly in defense of Ukraine. We saw him meet this morning with Volodymyr Zelensky and post a tweet of him shaking his hand and talking about how much he supports him, saying how much he was there to support him. He just quietly took that down.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Who's that good for?': Maddow connects the dots on Donald Trump's behavior toward Russia
after what happened today in the Oval Office. We saw Lindsey Graham go from meeting with Zelensky this morning and praising him and talking about his support for him to demanding his resignation as soon as Vance and Trump put on that display today.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Who's that good for?': Maddow connects the dots on Donald Trump's behavior toward Russia
We saw Marco Rubio, who is, until recently, was until recently considered to be sort of a real politic Republican on foreign policy issues in the United States Senate. He sat there inert in the Oval Office today, saying nothing. looking green, and then put out a boilerplate North Korea-style tweet of praise for Donald Trump as soon as it was done.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Who's that good for?': Maddow connects the dots on Donald Trump's behavior toward Russia
What do you make about hope for Republicans showing any sort of resistance here? Is there any?
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Who's that good for?': Maddow connects the dots on Donald Trump's behavior toward Russia
New Jersey U.S. Senator Cory Booker. Senator, I really appreciate you making time to be here tonight. It is, as you say, a very difficult day. Thank you.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Who's that good for?': Maddow connects the dots on Donald Trump's behavior toward Russia
We'll be right back. All right, that's going to do it for me for now, but I will see you again on Monday and all next week. In the meantime, you can find me on Blue Sky. Do you have Blue Sky yet? You should try it. I'm on bluesky at matto.msnbc.com.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Who's that good for?': Maddow connects the dots on Donald Trump's behavior toward Russia
You guys, I will turn this town hall right around. I'm putting my microphone down. This keeps happening to Republican members of Congress in their Republican districts and to Republican senators in their red states. Republican Congressman Mike Kennedy in Utah. Republican Congressman Kevin Hearn in Oklahoma. Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski in Alaska.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Who's that good for?': Maddow connects the dots on Donald Trump's behavior toward Russia
And part of the way you can tell they don't want to talk about it is because when they get asked about it, they turn pink, they stammer, they stomp their feet and put the microphone down. They do not want to talk about this at all. Republican Congressman Scott Fitzgerald of Wisconsin, for example, does not want to talk about this at all.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Who's that good for?': Maddow connects the dots on Donald Trump's behavior toward Russia
This radical switch. Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, in a town hall with her constituents last week, she says, we're all scratching our heads at how quickly the conversation in the White House has now gone from being supportive of Zelensky to now being supportive of Putin instead. Scratching our heads. Republicans are having a hard time with this. They try to move on to the next question.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Who's that good for?': Maddow connects the dots on Donald Trump's behavior toward Russia
They express annoyance with their own constituents for asking about it. They get brusque and short in their answers. Or, like Senator Lisa Murkowski, they just purport to be really perplexed, really confused, really scratching my head. They have a hard time with this. All the Republicans do, especially the guy at the top.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Who's that good for?': Maddow connects the dots on Donald Trump's behavior toward Russia
I don't talk about. I don't talk about that.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Who's that good for?': Maddow connects the dots on Donald Trump's behavior toward Russia
Why don't you talk about it? I don't ever say about, why not? What does that mean? I mean, that was right before the election. But it continued after the election. And people get so mad when I play this tape. People get very angry with me when I play this tape. But, you know, honestly, bring it on. Makes me appreciate it all the more because clearly, at least it strikes a nerve. Watch.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Who's that good for?': Maddow connects the dots on Donald Trump's behavior toward Russia
Have you talked to President Putin?
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Who's that good for?': Maddow connects the dots on Donald Trump's behavior toward Russia
So you've already spoken to Vladimir Putin? I don't want to say that. I don't want to say. I don't want to say. I can't say. Why can't you say? Why can't you say? What precludes you from saying? Listen, it's Friday night. Let's just do this. Let's just cut to the chase here. Let's do a little look-see at the landscape to see why exactly it is so hard for Republicans to deal with this topic.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Who's that good for?': Maddow connects the dots on Donald Trump's behavior toward Russia
What exactly is so hard for Republicans to talk about? What exactly is it that we are doing up to and including switching sides in a war? But it's not limited to that. And it's all things that don't seem like good news for the United States that makes them particularly hard to talk about.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Who's that good for?': Maddow connects the dots on Donald Trump's behavior toward Russia
But nevertheless, with Donald Trump back in the White House, we keep doing these things relentlessly and urgently, and they all cut in the same direction. And it's really hard for Republicans to explain because of what it obviously means. It's clear why they do not want to talk about this stuff, and it gets all the more clear when you just line this stuff up. Let me show you what I mean.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Who's that good for?': Maddow connects the dots on Donald Trump's behavior toward Russia
Here's one. Donald Trump's handpicked Attorney General. She gets sworn in to lead the U.S. Justice Department. On her first day on the job, what is the first thing she does? Headline, U.S. Cuts Task Forces on Foreign Influence and Russian Sanctions. Quote, in a memo sent to staff Wednesday, U.S.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Who's that good for?': Maddow connects the dots on Donald Trump's behavior toward Russia
Attorney General Pam Bondi revealed she had disbanded the Foreign Influence Task Force, a unit dedicated to investigating violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Who's that good for?': Maddow connects the dots on Donald Trump's behavior toward Russia
Bondi did not elaborate, but figures on the Republican Party's conspiratorial far right have accused the government of abusing Farah to unfairly target political operatives, like Paul Manafort, Trump's 2016 campaign chair, who was indicted in a probe into Russian influence in that year's U.S. election. Also on Wednesday, the day of her swearing-in, Bondi disbanded Task Force KleptoCapture.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Who's that good for?': Maddow connects the dots on Donald Trump's behavior toward Russia
An initiative started in 2022 to enforce sanctions against Russia. Who's all that good for? Shutting down the Foreign Influence Task Force, shutting down enforcement of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, and getting rid of the task force that enforces sanctions against Russia. Who are all those things good for? Why'd we do those things? And so urgently, her first day on the job,
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Who's that good for?': Maddow connects the dots on Donald Trump's behavior toward Russia
Here's another one which happened that same day, quote, in a little notice directive on her first day in office, Attorney General Pam Bondi ordered a halt to a years-old federal law enforcement effort to combat secret influence campaigns by China, Russia, and other adversaries that try to curry favor and sow chaos in American politics.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Who's that good for?': Maddow connects the dots on Donald Trump's behavior toward Russia
Buried on the fourth page of one of 14 policy memos Bondi issued Wednesday, the order disbands the FBI's Foreign Influence Task Force. Last year, Justice Department prosecutors and FBI agents exposed an alleged scheme in which Russia-backed media funneled $10 million to a conservative U.S. media company that hired prominent right-wing influencers. Here's how the New York Times bannered that one.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Who's that good for?': Maddow connects the dots on Donald Trump's behavior toward Russia
bluntly, quote, Trump dismantles government fight against foreign influence operations. Dozens of employees who had been working to fight foreign interference in U.S. elections have been reassigned or forced out. That includes not only the FBI, but also CISA, the Cybersecurity Division at Homeland Security, which we soon learned...
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Who's that good for?': Maddow connects the dots on Donald Trump's behavior toward Russia
the president's top campaign donor had installed a 19-year-old operative who reportedly personally operates websites in Russia and who has been associated with multiple criminal cyber hacking gangs. That's who the president's top campaign donor installed at CISA, giving him full access to systems and data at the U.S. government's cybersecurity agency.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Who's that good for?': Maddow connects the dots on Donald Trump's behavior toward Russia
a 19-year-old kid with ties to Russia and cybercrime. Who's that good for? How do you explain to your constituents who that's good for and why we are doing that as a country? And what else? What else is hard to explain to ye olde constituents when it comes to that radical switch in the U.S. government that Lisa Murkowski described? How about this headline?
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Who's that good for?': Maddow connects the dots on Donald Trump's behavior toward Russia
CIA plans largest mass firing in nearly 50 years. Well, that's good for someone. Who's that good for? That came right after this. Oh, Trump's new handpicked CIA director sent a list of CIA employees to the White House in an unclassified email.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Who's that good for?': Maddow connects the dots on Donald Trump's behavior toward Russia
Quote, current officials confirm that the CIA had sent the names of employees to the Office of Personnel Management, complying with an executive order signed by President Trump. Senator Mark Warner, top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, wrote that the sharing of the officers' names was a, quote, disastrous national security development.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Who's that good for?': Maddow connects the dots on Donald Trump's behavior toward Russia
One former agency officer called the reporting of the names in an unclassified email a, quote, counterintelligence disaster. Ah, yes, a disaster for the United States, and for U.S. intelligence in particular. But very good news for someone. Hey, speaking of things that ought to be classified... Headline! How Trump's security clearances order could make the U.S. vulnerable.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Who's that good for?': Maddow connects the dots on Donald Trump's behavior toward Russia
The plan to give temporary security clearances without background checks opens the door to breaches and espionage, experts say. Giving out security clearances without background checks that look for things like, you know, criminal entanglements, lots of debt, anything that they could blackmail you over, or any contacts with foreign governments.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Who's that good for?': Maddow connects the dots on Donald Trump's behavior toward Russia
To make sure that you're not, you know, secretly working for... We're not doing the background checks anymore. Trump just has ordered that the classified material be made available to whoever he says with no checks. That doesn't seem like good news for the United States. But again, it's good news for someone. How about when they decided that the first agency they would destroy would be USAID?
The Rachel Maddow Show
How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
So last night here on the show, we talked about some worrying new hiring numbers, which seemed just like a bad indicator of where the economy appears to be heading very quickly. Now that Donald Trump has taken office again, those numbers from ADP, the payroll company, showed private sector employers hiring less than half the number of people they did last month.
The Rachel Maddow Show
How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
He's now the former head of the Office of Special Counsel. Mr. Dellinger, it's really nice to meet you. Thank you for being here. Thank you for having me. I'm sorry that this was your last day. Yeah, I'd rather be at work. Yeah. Well, tell me about your job. Tell me what your job was.
The Rachel Maddow Show
How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
If you really want to compare apples to apples, the last time we got February numbers this bad, it was actually February 2009 when Wall Street had collapsed and we were plunging into not just a national but an international Great Recession. That's the last time firing numbers looked like this. That said, these are just indicators, and maybe they are wrong. Maybe these are outliers.
The Rachel Maddow Show
How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
That job, for obvious reasons, when you think about checks and balances, is an independent job, one in which Congress created the job. Yes. Fifty years ago, Congress created the job and created it in such a way that the president couldn't come in and say, I don't like what this guy is doing, protecting these whistleblowers, get him out.
The Rachel Maddow Show
How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
I want my own guy in there, specifically the design of the job. Right.
The Rachel Maddow Show
How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
When the president, February 7th, told you that you were fired, had you been expecting it? Did you already have a plan in place for what you would do in that moment?
The Rachel Maddow Show
How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
You fought for a solid month since that happened. One trip, your case took one trip to the Supreme Court already. Back down to lower courts, you got an adverse appeals court ruling yesterday, which led to your decision to effectively stop your fight.
The Rachel Maddow Show
How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
Did you feel like you had no choice in terms of stopping it, that there might be additional harm done to the things that you care about and that you were trying to protect if you stuck with it and kept fighting?
The Rachel Maddow Show
How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
You talk about not wanting to be on the sidelines for the duration of that kind of a fight, waiting for something to get up to and through the United States Supreme Court. What does not being on the sidelines mean? What do you plan to do now? Today's day one out of government service.
The Rachel Maddow Show
How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
Well, don't hold on to it for too long. I mean, you do. You have seen you have seen things, the skills that got you this job in the first place and that you allowed you to perform those duties for the past year. But also what you have seen about what it means to fight. It's part of the reason I wanted to talk to you tonight, because you embody an example here of what it is to stand up.
The Rachel Maddow Show
How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
and put your name as the plaintiff on that suit against the government to stand up for the way the American people ought to be treated. We very rarely ask individual human beings to say, I, the named plaintiff, am here to stand up for the people against the government that is mistreating them. And it takes something. A, it takes resources. You had help in filing the suit.
The Rachel Maddow Show
How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
They dual-hatted the VA secretary and your job.
The Rachel Maddow Show
How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
We expect the official government monthly jobs report tomorrow morning. It's actually not expected to be bad, in part because a lot of the firings since Trump has been president have happened so recently that they may not be reflected in government figures yet.
The Rachel Maddow Show
How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
I have been not thinking about it in that poetic a term, but I have been thinking about the peculiar and insidious evil of arbitrary action. When you got those 5,000 plus employees at USDA their jobs back, Part of the reason you got them their jobs back is because they were fired for arbitrary reasons. Right. And we've seen that everywhere. Right.
The Rachel Maddow Show
How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
We've seen that from, you know, you see CDC employees get fired one day, rehired the next day, fired the next day, rehired the next day. And it's arbitrary action. They're being told it's performance. It's clearly not. And there's something that's just dumb about that. But there's also something.
The Rachel Maddow Show
How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
I think really insidious, because when the government behaves arbitrarily like that, it's telling you there's no refuge for you in the law and there's no refuge for you in order. We will act. There will be no law and order for you. We'll use the law against you whenever we can. But there's no refuge for you there. There's nothing that you can turn to to ask for fairness.
The Rachel Maddow Show
How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
And the arbitrary and misspelled and dumb and instantly retracted and reinstated and untrackable and anonymous nature of what they're doing, I feel like gives it some of its authoritarian nature. sort of cadence and feel?
The Rachel Maddow Show
How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
But we shall see, weirdly and worryingly, because the president and his commerce secretary have both started to make noises about messing with the numbers themselves, potentially changing the way the government's official economic statistics are actually compiled. presumably so they won't show bad news that looks bad for Trump.
The Rachel Maddow Show
How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
Let me ask you one last question here about the law, and it is about something that happened today. There was no cabinet meeting on the president's schedule today, but he nevertheless sort of announced after the fact that there had been a cabinet meeting and there started to emerge some some reporting about what happened.
The Rachel Maddow Show
How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
The president reportedly or at least says now that what he told his agency heads, his cabinet officials today, is that Elon Musk can no longer order firings, that the agencies must do it themselves. And Elon Musk is only there to advise. This obviously cuts against what Elon Musk has been doing.
The Rachel Maddow Show
How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
There was also a strange moment in the State of the Union where the president described Elon Musk as the head of Doge, and then immediately court filings were updated to reflect that because the government had sworn to federal courts that he wasn't the head of Doge.
The Rachel Maddow Show
How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
This overall idea of firing all the probationary employees, of Elon Musk's anonymous group coming in and ordering shutdowns of agencies and firings of whole categories of people, do you think it is running into a legal cul-de-sac? Are we getting to the point where the law is going to start to trip up these efforts in a more wholesale way?
The Rachel Maddow Show
How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
Hampton Dellinger, as of today, the former head of the Office of Special Counsel and somebody whose story is going to be told for a very long time because of what you did and because of its effects. I know you have some wounds to lick and you need probably some rest, but don't go too far. The country needs you.
The Rachel Maddow Show
How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
Thank you. Good luck. Thanks. We'll be right back. This is a man named Justin Sun, S-U-N. He is 34 years old. And about two years ago, in 2023, he and a bunch of celebrities got named in a big, serious cryptocurrency case that was brought by the SEC. The Securities and Exchange Commission said Justin Sun and this list of celebrities had engaged in fraud and in violations of securities law.
The Rachel Maddow Show
How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
So that was March 2023. The SEC said that Justin Sun had engaged in this fraud specifically by manipulating trading activity around two different crypto tokens. Now, Justin Sun's company vehemently denied the charges. A spokesperson said the SEC's civil complaint is just the latest example of actions it has taken against well-known players in the blockchain and crypto space.
The Rachel Maddow Show
How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
We believe the complaint lacks merit. But that was that was a couple of years ago, March 2023, the SEC bringing that civil case against cryptocurrency entrepreneur, young Justin Sun. And he roundly denied the claims. But then last year, right after the election, the charges against him are still pending.
The Rachel Maddow Show
How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
That is a whole new thing to worry about, whether they're going to try to cook the books on economic numbers like the jobs numbers coming out tomorrow. I don't think anybody expects them to spike the job numbers or pervert them somehow tomorrow. But we will have to wait and see what we get. Last night, we also talked about President Trump's new gift to America's veterans.
The Rachel Maddow Show
How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
Justin Sun ended up in the news again because he got involved in a really big way with another crypto thing, specifically Trump's crypto thing. Bloomberg reported last week that since the election in November, Justin Sun has invested seventy five million dollars into the Trump coin. into the Donald Trump cryptocurrency.
The Rachel Maddow Show
How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
Bloomberg calculated that means he put about $56 million right into the Trump family coffers. Bloomberg made that calculation as part of reporting that the SEC had halted its investigation into Justin's son on those other matters. Quote, from the court filing, the parties submit that it is in each of their interests to stay this matter while they consider a potential resolution.
The Rachel Maddow Show
How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
which is great news for Justin Sun, I'm sure. And I should say, I'm by no means a crypto expert. I'm not going to give you a lecture on blockchain or meme coins or any of that. I just, A, I don't know, and B, I don't care.
The Rachel Maddow Show
How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
But I do think it's worth looking at this crypto thing a little bit, only because it is a deeply, deeply old-fashioned, simple scam at this point, which points right to the White House. News from the White House tonight really gives us no choice. You have to look at it. Hopefully, the broad strokes of crypto trading are not complicated.
The Rachel Maddow Show
How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
It's like when there was the Beanie Baby craze in the late 90s. People started buying these stuffed animals, right? Beanie Babies, kind of inherently not worth much, but people were speculating on them, right? It was a Beanie Baby trading bubble. Other than maybe some emotional value if you had one as a child, Beanie Babies didn't have much inherent value.
The Rachel Maddow Show
How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
But it was worth buying up a bunch of them because there was speculation on the premise that as collectibles... Maybe one day your Beanie Babies collection could be worth a lot of money. Cryptocurrencies operate on the same idea. They have no inherent value at all. The only value they have is if you have some reason to believe that somebody else might want to buy them from you in the future.
The Rachel Maddow Show
How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
That's it. And what that means in very practical terms is that convincing other people that your crypto is popular and in demand, convincing people that your crypto thing is going to have value in the future, it's going to be collectible as Beanie Babies, that is key to actually making money.
The Rachel Maddow Show
How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
One of the things the SEC alleged a couple of years ago in 2023 was that Justin Sun had orchestrated a scheme to pay celebrities to tout his cryptocurrencies without disclosing that he had paid them to do so. So in other words, he was creating the impression of of hype and organic enthusiasm around his product when that hype didn't naturally exist.
The Rachel Maddow Show
How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
That was the allegation, which again, Justin Sun has denied. And now the SEC has halted the case right after he gave more than $50 million to the Trump family. The idea of hype in cryptocurrency is that people should buy in soon, right? Get in on the ground floor while it's cheap because it's about to go way up in value because there's so much interest in it.
The Rachel Maddow Show
How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
You get it on the ground floor now, you'll make a bundle. It's the whole hype. It's the whole scam. And when I mentioned that the news tonight leaves us not too much, not much choice, but to talk about this stuff right now, this is what I mean.
The Rachel Maddow Show
How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
The White House just posted this video tonight of Donald Trump signing an executive order establishing a digital Fort Knox, as someone says to the president off camera. Trump apparently signing this executive order, creating what they're describing as a federal government cryptocurrency reserve. Now, imagine the Beanie Babies again for a second. Imagine Trump had just announced that the U.S.
The Rachel Maddow Show
How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
The announcement that he's going to fire 80,000 people who work at the VA serving our veterans and providing them health care. Oh, you shouldn't have. Really? 80,000 people fired from the VA specifically? We learned about that last night. Today, NBC News has new reporting on what else Trump is planning to do to veterans.
The Rachel Maddow Show
How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
government was going to buy up tons of Beanie Babies. We were going to establish a federal government reserve of billions of Beanie Babies. What do you think would happen to the value of Beanie Babies? Right? Oh, it turns out there's a huge guaranteed buyer for these things. They're buying billions of them.
The Rachel Maddow Show
How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
I should mention that when when Trump first brought up this idea, this this cryptocurrency National Reserve thing on Sunday, he name checked five specific cryptocurrencies that would be going into this government reserve. And Trump's own cryptocurrency company, his own project, bought $20 million of those currencies, of two of those currencies, this week.
The Rachel Maddow Show
How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
Ahead of what we now know will be a White House summit on crypto tomorrow. If the whole idea here is that you hype something by making it appear that there is a market, that there's demand, that there's lots and lots of buyers for specific crypto... And people who get in on the ground floor and own it, boy, that value is going to go up.
The Rachel Maddow Show
How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
Well, it would seem that President Trump and his family and the White House specifically are now playing that game. Clearly, there is a lot more to ask and a lot more to know. But hold that thought.
The Rachel Maddow Show
How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
How much do you think he knows about what he's doing? President Donald Trump tonight in the Oval Office signing an executive order establishing a strategic Bitcoin reserve and digital asset stockpile, a digital Fort Knox for digital gold. My questions extend beyond whether or not the president understands what he's doing.
The Rachel Maddow Show
How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
My questions extend to who is going to make money off this and who is going to lose money off this. And what does it mean to have the U.S. government working in this field in this way? Joining us now is New York Times reporter who has been covering whatever it was Trump did tonight since it was just something the crypto industry hoped he would do on his first day in office.
The Rachel Maddow Show
How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
David Yaffe Bellamy is a reporter for The New York Times. David, thank you very much for being here. Thanks for having me. This strikes me because the president is personally invested in cryptocurrency and because we've never before had the federal government involved in holding cryptocurrency.
The Rachel Maddow Show
How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
And because he has surrounded himself with people who are fighting all government regulation on cryptocurrency. This strikes me as the stickiest hot lava pit of scandal I have ever seen any animal try to escape from. That said, I do not understand cryptocurrency very well. Are my instincts unfounded here? How do you see this?
The Rachel Maddow Show
How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
Well, you can do that by buying the Trump coins from which he and his family financially benefit. You can literally just buy as much of that as you want. There's no disclosure requirements in terms of saying who you are or being a foreigner or anything like that. And the money just goes to Trump. So it's an open funnel to bribe the president if you are so inclined. What...
The Rachel Maddow Show
How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
You know, if you voted to make America great again, did you know that would mean, for example, that Donald Trump would be cutting off the funding specifically to sterilize medical instruments in VA hospitals? The terminated contracts list includes contracts for a practice crucial to preventing infection in hospitals. The sterilization of medical devices and instruments needed during surgery.
The Rachel Maddow Show
How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
What new dynamic is introduced into either that process or the broader process of enriching the president or unenriching the American people by having the government hold a reserve of cryptocurrencies?
The Rachel Maddow Show
How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
In terms of the volatility of this world, I mean, you've reported on the SEC, as you put it, backing away from the push during President Biden's administration to regulate cryptocurrency in some of the same ways that stocks and bonds are regulated, essentially to treat them as a speculative instrument that can be used by wise investors, but can also be used by wise scam artists to separate dupes from their money.
The Rachel Maddow Show
How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
How far along did President Biden get down that road, and how much of that is being reversed by Trump?
The Rachel Maddow Show
How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
For people who are listening to this interview right now and they're thinking, I got feelings about this crypto thing, but I've never quite felt like I understood it. Now that this is something that the government is treating in a very different way than they ever had before, what would you say to people who feel like they don't understand it, but they're worried that this is...
The Rachel Maddow Show
How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
Which is why it might make sense as it spreads out for it to become more regulated and more safe. So there's less opportunity for people to get scammed. Instead, it's just getting bigger with less rules. David Yaffe-Bellini from The New York Times. Thank you for helping me understand. I really appreciate it. Thanks for having me. Thanks. All right. We'll be right back.
The Rachel Maddow Show
How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
Well, hey, turns out tonight Elon Musk blew something up and disrupted the lives of thousands of Americans. For the second time in less than two months, a rocket launched by Elon Musk's company SpaceX exploded and rained potentially dangerous debris down over a wide area of Earth, causing real chaos for planes and airline passengers. This was the most recent test of SpaceX's Starship rocket.
The Rachel Maddow Show
How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
Musk says he wants to use Starship to one day take people to Mars. This one lifted off around 6.30 p.m. Eastern from the southern tip of Texas. In a statement, SpaceX said that, quote, during Starship's ascent burn, the vehicle experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly.
The Rachel Maddow Show
How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
Rapid unscheduled disassembly is kind of Elon Musk's specialty these days, especially in a way that really messes with other people through no fault of their own. As debris rained down tonight from Elon Musk's failed rocket, multiple airports in Florida, including Miami and Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach and Orlando, were all brought to a complete halt overnight.
The Rachel Maddow Show
How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
The list of contracts on the chopping block has not been made public and the VA declined to provide it. But VA employees have identified 200 of the remaining scheduled contract cancellations to NBC News. That list includes, for example, contracts covering sterility certification for VA hospital pharmacy operations. Also, follow up care for cancer patients at the VA.
The Rachel Maddow Show
How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
Ground stop at all of those airports, even departures as far north as the Philadelphia airport, were significantly delayed. As I mentioned, this is the second time this has happened in recent weeks. SpaceX's last test of the Starship rocket suffered a similar fate in mid-January.
The Rachel Maddow Show
How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
which was half the number economists had been expecting them to hire in February. That was very bad news. Now we've got new numbers, not on the number of hirings, but the number of firings. And those numbers are way worse. Quote, layoffs across the United States soar to highest level since 2020. What was going on in 2020? Employers cut more than 170,000 jobs last month.
The Rachel Maddow Show
How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
When that happened, the FAA grounded Starship and has since been overseeing SpaceX's investigation of what went wrong, even though that investigation is still underway. Last week, the FAA nevertheless cleared SpaceX to launch another one, even though the investigation into why the last one blew up wasn't complete. Why'd they clear it? I don't know.
The Rachel Maddow Show
How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
But of course, in between those two flights, Donald Trump was sworn in as president. He installed Elon Musk, his top campaign donor, as kind of his co-president. Musk's Doge austerity operation fired hundreds of people at the FAA. And the FAA reportedly decided to suddenly start using Starlink satellite terminals made by Musk's company.
The Rachel Maddow Show
How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
Speaking of Elon Musk lighting up the night sky, I should also mention that this electronic billboard just went up in Times Square today in Manhattan. Fire Elon Musk. He fired 6,000 veterans. He wants to cut Medicare. Who is running the White House? Fire Elon Musk. That billboard, courtesy of the pro-democracy organization Common Cause and its Fire Musk campaign,
The Rachel Maddow Show
How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
I mean, it is worth wondering, at least, how much more rapid, unscheduled disassembly our country is going to be able to take. All right, that's going to do it for me for now. I'll see you again tomorrow.
The Rachel Maddow Show
How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
Also, accreditation for stroke centers. Also, the certification of VA pharmacies for making compounded medicines, which of course are commonly used, among other things, in cancer care. Another contract scheduled for cancellation supports the National Center for PTSD, which is a VA entity that is the world's leading research and educational center on post-traumatic stress disorder.
The Rachel Maddow Show
How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
They're cutting that. NBC reports that initially, as of just a few days ago, Trump had even tried to cut X-rays and MRIs from VA health facilities. You know, if you run MRI or X-ray machines in any hospital, in any health care facility in the United States, those are things that have radiation elements to them, right? Because of that, because radiation can be dangerous,
The Rachel Maddow Show
How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission requires that a medical physicist has to come in and ensure that these machines are putting out the right amount of radiation. They're not going to hurt either the patients who are being scanned or the people who are running these machines. But Trump zeroed out funding to do that. Zeroed out funding for the medical physicists that check the X-ray and MRI machines.
The Rachel Maddow Show
How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
If they went ahead with that, if they got rid of the medical physicists who checked those machines, that would have resulted in every VA facility in the country losing its ability to operate its X-ray and MRI machines, losing any ability to do medical radiology at all.
The Rachel Maddow Show
How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
And since you can't run a hospital without a radiology department, that one contract decision by Trump would, by law, have shut down every single VA hospital in this country. So they announced that one, the getting rid of the medical physicists last week. That was the plan. Now that piece of it has been at least rescinded.
The Rachel Maddow Show
How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
But yeah, they really are still planning on cutting off funding to sterilize the instruments that they use for surgery. Because nothing's too good for our veterans, right? Or for our seniors. If you want to get disability payments through Social Security, you may need to do a hearing to establish your level of disability.
The Rachel Maddow Show
How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
Trump just cut off the funding that pays for medical experts to testify at disability hearings. After thousands of people were fired by Trump at the Social Security Administration, the Washington Post reports today, quote, delays in reviews of disability claims and hearings before administrative law judges are already starting, quote, wait times for basic phone service at Social Security.
The Rachel Maddow Show
How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
Those wait times have grown in some cases to hours, hours long wait times when you're calling Social Security for help right now. We're also seeing record wait times at the entrances to America's national parks like this more than one mile long line outside Big Bend National Park in Texas on President's Day weekend.
The Rachel Maddow Show
How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
This happened right after Trump fired roughly a thousand employees from the National Park Service just last month. Today, the New York Times reports that the Park Service just got in new data that actually shows some great news about last year. Last year, America's national parks had more visitors than ever before in U.S. history, which is great for last year.
The Rachel Maddow Show
How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
But they also obtained an internal Trump administration memo from this week saying they will not be publicizing this news about record attendance at America's national parks because, well, that's an awkward thing to brag about while you're firing all the people that work there because supposedly they're not needed.
The Rachel Maddow Show
How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
The National Parks Conservation Association telling The Times today, quote, the National Park Service just reported the highest visitation in its history as the administration conducts massive firings and threatens to close visitor centers. and public safety facilities. America's national parks are really popular. Firing the people who work at the parks is not popular.
The Rachel Maddow Show
How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
So they're trying just not to talk about those two things in the same sentence. But none of the stuff that they're doing is popular. I mean, The Wall Street Journal now reports that that Trump has an executive order that was ready to go as soon as today to shut down the U.S. Department of Education. Shutting down the U.S. Department of Education is wildly unpopular among the American people.
The Rachel Maddow Show
How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
The latest Reuters Ipsos poll asked specifically, should the U.S. close down the Department of Education? Thirty two percent said yes. Sixty six percent said no. By a more than two to one margin, Americans say don't shut down the education department. Do Americans feel strongly about that? Yes, they do.
The Rachel Maddow Show
How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
That is a 245 percent increase from the number of layoffs in January. 245 percent increase. It's also the highest monthly number of layoffs since the height of the covid pandemic in Trump's first term in July 2020. Now, that said, to be fair, there can be a seasonal component to layoffs and to employment numbers.
The Rachel Maddow Show
How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
Americans who strongly oppose shutting down the education department outnumber Americans who strongly like the idea by a 30-point margin. A lot of what they are doing is very unpopular right now. So much so that Aaron Blake at the Washington Post today nutted some of it up under the headline, the many unpopular things Trump is doing right now. And the numbers, I mean, speak for themselves.
The Rachel Maddow Show
How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
Laying off large numbers of American workers, a huge majority of the country is against that. 58% of the country is against that. Dismantling USAID, which provides foreign aid, another big majority against that. 58% against in one poll, 59% in another. How about trying to take the Panama Canal somehow? No. The American people say no to that in huge numbers. 65% opposed.
The Rachel Maddow Show
How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
Freezing funds for public health agencies? 67% opposed. Renaming the Gulf of Mexico for some reason? No. 70% of Americans oppose that. How about pardoning the January 6th defendants who attacked the Capitol for Trump? The American people are against that by an almost unimaginable margin. Numbers like this don't exist in polling.
The Rachel Maddow Show
How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
Eighty three percent of Americans are opposed to the fact that Trump did that. And ultimately, this matters, you know, I mean, pulling genius economic moves that send the markets and other economic indicators into freefall. Trying to pull off genius ideas like cutting off the funding specifically to sterilize medical instruments for when veterans get surgery.
The Rachel Maddow Show
How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
trying on all these other things that are so radically unpopular, it matters, right? It creates an inhospitable political and democratic environment for them to try to continue these things. It does enforce some political and public opinion discipline on them for trying this stuff.
The Rachel Maddow Show
How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
It's what leads to the street corner protests and the state capitol protests and the town halls that Republican members of Congress are now too scared to continue. All of these things matter. They all create democratic friction. But these things don't necessarily stop them in their tracks.
The Rachel Maddow Show
How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
What has been stopping them most directly is the courts and brave individual people in the government who have been willing to take Trump to court over what he has been doing.
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How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
Today, Trump's attempt to fire the National Labor Relations Board out of existence was shut down by a federal judge in Washington, D.C., who struck down the firing of a member of that board and wrote this in the judge's ruling. Quote, the president does not have the authority to terminate members of the National Labor Relations Board at will.
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How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
His attempt to fire the plaintiff from her position on the board was a blatant violation of the law. At issue in this case is the president's insistence that he has the authority to fire whomever he wants within the executive branch, overriding any congressionally mandated law in his way.
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How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
The framers, anticipating such a power grab—this is the judge's ruling—the framers, anticipating such a power grab— Vested in Article 3, the judiciary, not Article 2, the executive branch under the president, the power to interpret the law, including resolving conflicts about congressional checks on presidential authority.
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How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
The president's interpretation of the scope of his constitutional power, or more aptly, the judge writes, his aspiration is, quote, flat wrong. Judge Beryl Howell writes in her ruling, quote, an American president is not a king, not even an elected one. And his power to remove federal officers and honest civil servants like the plaintiff is not absolute.
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How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
A president who touts an image of himself as a king or a dictator, perhaps as his vision of effective leadership, fundamentally misapprehends the role under Article 2 of the U.S. Constitution.
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How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
Generally, hiring and firing numbers tend to look different in the summer months than they do in the winter months, for example. So if you're really trying to get an honest grasp on how bad this outlook is economically, as Trump's policies are taking hold, consider specifically that these are February numbers that we just got.
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How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
In addition to that ruling today telling Trump that he cannot fire the National Labor Relations Board, Trump also lost today in federal court in Rhode Island when a judge ruled that he must restart federal funding appropriated by Congress that Trump unilaterally cut off to 22 different states.
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How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
Yet another judge tonight blocked Trump from firing the head of a tiny agency that does development grants specifically in Africa. After staff members of that agency refused to allow Doge staffers to access their offices yesterday, those Doge staffers came back today with some kind of security with them. We believe armed security.
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How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
We are still trying to figure out who the muscle was that they brought with them. We are seeking that actively right now, trying to figure that out. But by bringing some sort of armed force with them, these kids from Doge forced, physically forced their way into this agency. That said, tonight, a judge blocked them from removing the head of that agency from his job.
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How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
Of all of these fights, the biggest material victory thus far in all of these fights against what appear to be these illegal mass firings and these efforts to unilaterally close down and turn off parts of the government, the materially most consequential one of all of them is one that was obtained because of one man whose name is Hampton Dellinger.
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How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
Trump tried to fire him in the first week in February. Mr. Dellinger fought it immediately. He fought it long enough and hard enough that while he was able to retain his post, thanks to a judge's order, still under fire from Trump. He succeeded in enlisting the Merit Systems Protection Board to reverse thousands of baseless firings of so-called probationary employees.
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How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
Among the direct results of what Hampton Dellinger did are more than 5,000 people at USDA who yesterday were told they must be reinstated to their jobs.
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How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
Hampton Dellinger today himself announced that he is ending his one man fight to stay at his post at the Office of Special Counsel, which looks after whistleblower rights, which looks after the rights of government employees to not be fired for corrupt or improper reasons. He left that job today after an appeals court ruling basically made clear that he must. But take him as a case study here.
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How one man took on Trump's improper firings and saved the jobs of thousands of people
Because his one man, one month fight to not go quietly saved the jobs of thousands of people who were improperly fired by Trump. And that fight set the bar and set the tone for what it means to refuse to go quietly and to make as much good trouble as you can every single day that you can for as long as you can. Joining us now for his first interview since ending this fight is Hampton Dellinger.
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Needless economic pain from Trump not even worth it if his tariff gambit works: economist
Rachel has the night off, but she will be back tomorrow. I promise you that. And we're going to begin tonight with how the day began, and that is with the opening bell. As you know, every morning, Wall Street trading officially begins when someone rings the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange in Lower Manhattan. We've all seen the images. It's quite important, quite symbolic.
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Needless economic pain from Trump not even worth it if his tariff gambit works: economist
Betsy Stevenson, former chief economist of the U.S. Department of Labor, thank you so much for helping us sift through all of the noise today. Greatly appreciate it. We're going to have much more ahead up here next.
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Needless economic pain from Trump not even worth it if his tariff gambit works: economist
We're going to look at, in writing, the proof of the kind of retribution those in the government seeking Trump's favor are actually willing to exact on Americans in this country and what others are doing to fight back. Stay with us. So by day 73 of this administration, the Trump administration, you know, the twin themes of retribution and chaos have become the new normal.
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Needless economic pain from Trump not even worth it if his tariff gambit works: economist
The Dow dropped nearly 1,700 points, its worst single session since June of 2020, nearly five years ago. The NASDAQ dropped nearly 6%, its biggest decline since, again, March of 2020. The S&P 500 dropped about 5%. And look, I should note that the New York Stock Exchange also has a tradition of letting another company ring the closing bell to mark the end of the trading day.
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Needless economic pain from Trump not even worth it if his tariff gambit works: economist
But there are still some actions that are so petty and so vindictive that they actually managed to stand out in all of this. For example, just about a month ago, the Social Security Administration did something incredibly strange. All of a sudden, out of the blue, the agency stopped letting new parents in the state of Maine get Social Security numbers for their kids at the hospital.
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Needless economic pain from Trump not even worth it if his tariff gambit works: economist
They also stopped letting funeral homes file death records electronically. Everything would now have to be done in person at a Social Security office in that state. Again, this was all done just in one state, the state of Maine. And of course, the changes, as you know, would cost more. It would certainly take a little bit more time.
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Needless economic pain from Trump not even worth it if his tariff gambit works: economist
And it meant that the parents of newborn babies who are already dealing with lots of important things by bringing a new life into this world, well, they would have to now risk getting sick by going in person to crowded Social Security offices and possibly spending hours in line to get their paperwork. The question is, why did the Social Security Department make that change?
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Needless economic pain from Trump not even worth it if his tariff gambit works: economist
Why did it only apply to the state of Maine out of all the states? Well, it turns out that it may have been because of this.
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Needless economic pain from Trump not even worth it if his tariff gambit works: economist
Well, back in February, Trump signed an executive order aimed at banning trans athletes from competing in school sports. The governor of Maine, Janet Mills, who you saw in that clip, she refused to comply, saying that was an issue for Maine's state legislator to decide, not the president of the United States. And you know what happened. Trump was furious.
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Needless economic pain from Trump not even worth it if his tariff gambit works: economist
So now Democrats on the House Oversight Committee are alleging that that clash that you just saw there, that threat by Trump and Maine's Democratic governor, Janet Mills, is the reason that Maine was singled out by Social Security.
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Needless economic pain from Trump not even worth it if his tariff gambit works: economist
Emails obtained by the committee show that just a week after Trump's clash with Mills, the acting commissioner of Social Security, Lee Dudek, directed his staff to cancel the contracts immediately. that allowed Maine to process social security number and death records electronically, writing, quote, no money will go from the public trust to a petulant child.
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Needless economic pain from Trump not even worth it if his tariff gambit works: economist
Now, because of public outcry, the changes to social security in Maine only ended up lasting about two days before the agency reversed course. But amazingly, The acting commissioner of Social Security, Lee Dudek, has now been shy, has not been shy, I should say, about how the original changes were actually meant to be that retribution.
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Needless economic pain from Trump not even worth it if his tariff gambit works: economist
In fact, he told The New York Times, quote, I was ticked at the governor of Maine for not being real cordial to the president. Obviously, making social services worse for citizens of one state as political retribution is a huge scandal on its own, and it should be a huge scandal. Multiple members of Congress are already calling for the acting commissioner to resign over this.
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Needless economic pain from Trump not even worth it if his tariff gambit works: economist
But the open question here is, did he actually freelance this retribution? Did Dudek do this on his own or was anyone above him at the White House involved in this action against the state of Maine? Joining us now is Representative Shelley Pingree of Maine, one of the members of Congress now calling for the acting commissioner to resign. Representative Pingree, thank you so much.
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Needless economic pain from Trump not even worth it if his tariff gambit works: economist
for being with us tonight. So quite a shocking development. And before we get to that, I do want to start though with some news out of the Department of Agriculture, which announced that it was actually freezing some of the funding it provides to schools in Maine in response to alleged Title IX violations about trans athletes.
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Needless economic pain from Trump not even worth it if his tariff gambit works: economist
And today, that honor went to a company called Fiserv. The Fiserv CEO rang that closing bell, just happens to be Donald Trump's choice to run Social Security. So Trump's own allies, believe it or not, got to bookend this historic self-inflicted freefall of a day on Wall Street. They are now the face of this historic day. Their reaction to what Trump has just done went well beyond the U.S. markets.
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Needless economic pain from Trump not even worth it if his tariff gambit works: economist
The department claimed that it was only freezing administrative funding and not touching funds for child nutrition. I understand your office actually has some news on that front this evening. What can you tell us?
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Needless economic pain from Trump not even worth it if his tariff gambit works: economist
Yeah, it certainly sounds like it. And they've certainly put Maine in the crosshairs, all from that interaction that we highlighted earlier on. But help us broaden the aperture here for a moment. Other than the Social Security and the Department of Agriculture, in your opinion, how else has the Trump administration been targeting the state of Maine?
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Needless economic pain from Trump not even worth it if his tariff gambit works: economist
I'm curious as to how your Republican colleagues are responding to the state of Maine, the actual Republicans in the state of Maine.
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Needless economic pain from Trump not even worth it if his tariff gambit works: economist
How are they responding to being targeted by the president of the United States, by the Social Security Administration, by seeing some of the funding that you just outlined, you know, being on the chopping block simply for the governor of that state to say she is going to follow the law?
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Needless economic pain from Trump not even worth it if his tariff gambit works: economist
Yeah, he is one of the most thin-skinned presidents we have seen in this country. Shelley Pingree, congresswoman from the great state of Maine, thank you so much for joining us. I greatly appreciate it. Thank you for your time. Thank you so much. Up next here tonight, today was another bad day for Trump.
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Needless economic pain from Trump not even worth it if his tariff gambit works: economist
Lawyers in court, we're going to talk live with the lawyer who argued against the administration and some of its most draconian policies. We'll explain when we come right back. Lawyers were in court today for the Tufts University student who was grabbed off the street by immigration officers last week.
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Needless economic pain from Trump not even worth it if his tariff gambit works: economist
Turkish grad student Rumeysa Ozturk's attorneys today asked a judge to order her returned to Massachusetts from Louisiana, where she is now being detained. Ms. Osterk's university is also throwing its support behind her. In fact, Tufts president writes in a declaration to the court that the university has no reason to believe that Ms.
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Needless economic pain from Trump not even worth it if his tariff gambit works: economist
Just take a listen to how some of our closest allies reacted over the course of the day as this news broke.
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Needless economic pain from Trump not even worth it if his tariff gambit works: economist
Osterk did anything to warrant her detention and that her arrest is sowing fear in the campus community. In that declaration, the president says, quote, based on everything we know and have shared here, the university seeks relief from so that Ms. Osterk is released without delay so that she can return to complete her studies and finish her degree at Tufts University.
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Needless economic pain from Trump not even worth it if his tariff gambit works: economist
And one of the things that was particularly unsettling about Rumeysa Osterk's arrest is that she was never actually told that her student visa had been revoked. The very first time that she had learned about it was when masked immigration officers surrounded her on the street.
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Needless economic pain from Trump not even worth it if his tariff gambit works: economist
Well, it turns out that revoking student visas without telling anybody appears to be the rule, not the exception for this Trump administration. After a student at Minnesota State Mankato was detained by ICE, staff at the university decided to check the status of the rest of their international students in an online federal database.
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Needless economic pain from Trump not even worth it if his tariff gambit works: economist
And they discovered, to their surprise, that five more students had had their visas revoked. This is happening all over the country. It's not just in that state, Minnesota. It's in Colorado. It's in Arizona, Ohio, North Carolina. Universities are actually discovering that their international students have had their visas revoked and no one, none of them have been notified.
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Needless economic pain from Trump not even worth it if his tariff gambit works: economist
Meanwhile, in a federal court in Washington today, the Trump administration was yet again on the hot seat over its deportation of hundreds of Venezuelans to a prison in El Salvador. Last month, you may recall Donald Trump claimed that a wartime law from the 1700s somehow gave him the power to deport and imprison them with no notice, no hearings, no due process.
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Needless economic pain from Trump not even worth it if his tariff gambit works: economist
When a federal judge learned that planes carrying those men were in the air, he actually ordered them to turn around and bring the men back to the United States until the judge could determine whether the Trump administration was actually acting lawfully. You know what happened. Those planes, they landed in El Salvador. They did not turn around.
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Needless economic pain from Trump not even worth it if his tariff gambit works: economist
And those men, one of whom the Trump administration now admits was deported in error, are now locked in a brutal prison there. Today's court hearing was for that judge to determine whether the Trump administration willfully violated his order to turn those planes around. And it did not appear to go well for the government.
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Needless economic pain from Trump not even worth it if his tariff gambit works: economist
The judge said to the Trump administration lawyer, quote, there is a fair likelihood that the government acted in bad faith throughout that day. And if you really believed everything you did that day was legal and could survive a court challenge, I can't believe you ever would have operated in the way that you did.
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Needless economic pain from Trump not even worth it if his tariff gambit works: economist
And the judge spent much of today's hearing trying to determine which Trump administration official, literally by name, which official by name knew about his order to turn the planes around. Because the judge makes sense.
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Needless economic pain from Trump not even worth it if his tariff gambit works: economist
That judge wants those names so that he knows exactly who to hold in contempt if he determines that they did in fact defy his order to turn those planes around back to the United States. Joining me now is Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU Immigrants Rights Project. He was the lawyer on the other side in that courtroom today arguing against the Trump administration.
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Needless economic pain from Trump not even worth it if his tariff gambit works: economist
Mr. Gelernt, it's great to see you again. Thank you so much for joining us. Help us understand what happened in today's hearing. What was the judge trying to get from the Trump administration and why was it so important? And did he ultimately get it?
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Needless economic pain from Trump not even worth it if his tariff gambit works: economist
What is the argument that the government is presenting as to why they have not produced the name of these officials? Do you do you expect that the government will ultimately reveal the names of who gave that flight the green light to take off from U.S. soil? Or if the order came out after the plane had taken off, not to turn back around and just ignore that order?
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Needless economic pain from Trump not even worth it if his tariff gambit works: economist
I mean, do you expect the judge to haul Trump administration officials in to testify?
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Needless economic pain from Trump not even worth it if his tariff gambit works: economist
The Stock Exchange does have this long tradition of letting a different company ring the opening bell each day. And in some ways, it is a way of celebrating some kind of milestone that the company has just hit or a company that may have been going public.
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Needless economic pain from Trump not even worth it if his tariff gambit works: economist
Yeah, and of course, as others have noted, if that is the case, this would put us on the precipice of a constitutional crisis where the administration is ignoring a court order. But talk to me about what the administration has now done. They have admitted that one person on those flights was deported and imprisoned in El Salvador in error.
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Needless economic pain from Trump not even worth it if his tariff gambit works: economist
They are now saying he has no recourse to contest his situation or return to the United States. That has to be mind-boggling. blowing for anyone who is watching this to think, how is that even possible? Somebody who was wrongfully sent out of this country has no legal recourse.
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Needless economic pain from Trump not even worth it if his tariff gambit works: economist
This is not the act of a friend. America's most important trading partners are allies. They clearly feel betrayed by Trump's actions and this decision. These tariffs have struck a nerve all across the globe. And importantly, this new Trump trade war has also struck a nerve here at home, surprisingly, even among Republicans.
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Needless economic pain from Trump not even worth it if his tariff gambit works: economist
The Rachel Maddow Show
Needless economic pain from Trump not even worth it if his tariff gambit works: economist
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Needless economic pain from Trump not even worth it if his tariff gambit works: economist
Yesterday, as Trump was announcing these new tariffs, the Senate was voting on a measure introduced by Democrat Tim Kaine to end Trump's tariffs on Canada. For the first time in Trump's second term, four Republicans actually broke with their party to pass that bill and push back against Donald Trump.
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Needless economic pain from Trump not even worth it if his tariff gambit works: economist
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Needless economic pain from Trump not even worth it if his tariff gambit works: economist
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Needless economic pain from Trump not even worth it if his tariff gambit works: economist
And that was yesterday. So Republicans making the case that tariffs abroad will lead to higher prices and will actually hurt Americans and the American economy here at home. Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Rand Paul, former Republican leader Mitch McConnell, they actually voted with Democrats to pass that bill to end Trump's tariffs on Canada. And the bill would still have to pass in the House.
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Needless economic pain from Trump not even worth it if his tariff gambit works: economist
But of course, over there, Speaker Mike Johnson has already gone out of his way to make sure that Democrats cannot bring it up for a vote. We can say, though, that the pressure is beginning to mount. Today, Democratic Congressman Gregory Meek said that he will introduce a resolution to try and force Mike Johnson to hold a vote on that no tariffs on Canada bill.
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Needless economic pain from Trump not even worth it if his tariff gambit works: economist
Also today, Republican Senator Chuck Grassley joined with Democratic Senator Maria Cantwell, introducing a bill that would give Congress the power to actually stop any and all of Trump's tariffs to give Congress the final say on all tariff decisions. There is finally some momentum in Congress to try and take back some, albeit small, power from Donald Trump.
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Needless economic pain from Trump not even worth it if his tariff gambit works: economist
And certainly at least when it comes to these tariffs that have wrecked the markets as we saw play out today. How will Trump respond to that pressure? Will these breakaway Republicans actually stand their ground? What will happen to our economy while we wait to see how all of this plays out? We're going to talk to an economist and answer all these questions in just a moment.
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Needless economic pain from Trump not even worth it if his tariff gambit works: economist
And today, because the news guides do have a sense of humor, the company with the distinct honor of actually ringing the opening bell today out of all days to officially start trading was the pro-Trump conservative media outlet Newsmax. Newsmax CEO Chris Ruddy did the honors surrounded by several of President Trump's longtime associates. People, you know, people like Rudy Giuliani.
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Needless economic pain from Trump not even worth it if his tariff gambit works: economist
But first, joining us here on set. NBC News White House correspondent Vaughn Hilliard. Vaughn, great to see you here in New York. Take us inside the administration on a day like today. What are you hearing from your sources? What has the reaction been as the president's bombshell news of the tariffs sends markets into a free fall? We're hearing some layoffs from some companies already.
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Needless economic pain from Trump not even worth it if his tariff gambit works: economist
And we're seeing his administration try to spin this by saying, look, a little bit of pain, but it's going to pay off in the long run.
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Needless economic pain from Trump not even worth it if his tariff gambit works: economist
So I want to drill down on that for a moment, which is what is the end goal here with these tariffs? What is the president's stated end goal? What is perhaps happening behind the scenes? It seems to me as an outside observer, there is mixed messaging, right? On one hand, they want to negotiate with these countries.
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Needless economic pain from Trump not even worth it if his tariff gambit works: economist
And at the same time, they're saying, hey, hey, we don't want any of these countries to make rash decisions. We want them to be rational and not to escalate. And it's hard to watch this in real time as we just played some of the reactions from world leaders to say, OK, They're not going to react in the same manner that we have.
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Needless economic pain from Trump not even worth it if his tariff gambit works: economist
So it kind of begs the question, what is the end goal for Trump with these tariffs? Is it to force these countries to negotiate? Is it to bring manufacturing back into the US?
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Needless economic pain from Trump not even worth it if his tariff gambit works: economist
So you bring up a really important point as to who was with the president. We kind of know from previous years of reporting on him, he always kind of takes the impression of whoever was last in the room with him. We outlined that there are some Republicans, certainly in Congress, in the Senate, who have now broken rank with him on this issue for growing number, perhaps. But.
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Needless economic pain from Trump not even worth it if his tariff gambit works: economist
You see him there in the front. Trump's former labor secretary. Remember that guy, Alex Acosta? He was there as well. A little bit further back, though. And they all clapped and they cheered as it happens every morning. They rang tiny little bells as they officially kicked off. What we now know was an especially terrible day on Wall Street. Yeah, there's no sugarcoating it.
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Needless economic pain from Trump not even worth it if his tariff gambit works: economist
It does make you wonder, were there any attempts? Do you know of any attempts by Republicans to get to the president before this announcement about the tariffs and say, hold on, slow your roll? I know you've been talking about it. You've been promising Liberation Day. But let's just kind of game this out and play this out over the next 24 hours.
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Needless economic pain from Trump not even worth it if his tariff gambit works: economist
Do we know whether there was any attempts to dissuade him from the train wreck that we saw play out today?
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Needless economic pain from Trump not even worth it if his tariff gambit works: economist
Von Hilliard, it's great to see you. I am sure it is going to be a long couple of days as this continues to unfold. Really appreciate your reporting. And tonight, joining us now, Betsy Stevenson, the former chief economist of the United States Department of Labor under President Obama. Betsy, it's great to have you on the show with the perspective and insight of an economist.
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Needless economic pain from Trump not even worth it if his tariff gambit works: economist
Talk to me about what you think these tariffs will actually mean for viewers at home. We touched on this a little bit with Vaughn right now. But for ordinary Americans, explain to us how this will actually impact them, both in the short term and in the long term.
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Needless economic pain from Trump not even worth it if his tariff gambit works: economist
This was the worst day on Wall Street since the early days of the COVID pandemic. Traders and world leaders, and yes, ordinary Americans, people with jobs and 401ks, reacted to the tariffs that have been imposed by President Trump just yesterday by pretty much freaking out. It was a massive sell-off.
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Needless economic pain from Trump not even worth it if his tariff gambit works: economist
So let me. If I if I were to say like this conversation was happening with Republicans and certainly the administration has been making this argument, they say short term pain for long term gain. They make the argument that by creating these tariffs, we're going to see an increase in manufacturing here in the United States. What is the validity of that argument?
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Needless economic pain from Trump not even worth it if his tariff gambit works: economist
And is there any truth to increasing these tariffs will somehow compel American companies, whether it's pharmaceutical companies or automobile manufacturers, to suddenly overnight get these plants up and running, create jobs and produce goods that are going to be cheaper than what is coming in from overseas?
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Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
Thanks to you at home as well for joining us this hour. You can't leave either. I'm very happy to have you here. Have you met the new political leadership in this country? The people who may not have the title, may not have the like plate on the office door or whatever, but these are the people who are actually getting it done. We found them in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
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Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
That's happening tonight in Massachusetts. Also in Massachusetts at Harvard University, we've just got word that Trump has apparently also grabbed a Russian scientist, a young woman who works at Harvard Medical School. She had been forced to leave Russia because she spoke out and criticized Putin's invasion of Ukraine. Now Trump has had her arrested in the United States.
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Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
has had her locked up in an ICE detention facility in Louisiana and is threatening to ship her back to Russia. Again, a Harvard Medical School scientist, a GoFundMe, has been started to help her legal defense. At the University of Alabama, it is a mechanical engineering doctoral student who has been taken. He's Iranian. In this case, nobody seems to know why he has been taken.
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Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
They've reportedly got him in a county jail in Alabama right now. But again, we don't know why. College Democrats at the University of Alabama are protesting his arrest. There's also a GoFundMe that's been set up to help his legal defense as well. How does the American people like all of this?
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Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
How does the American population feel about how things are turning out with Donald Trump being back in the White House, given that this is sort of the daily news now? New polling from Gallup just out today shows that there is no issue on which the American people like what Trump is doing. His disapproval ratings are higher than his approval ratings on everything.
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Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
He is 18 points underwater on his handling of the economy. He is 19 points underwater on his relations with Russia. He's underwater on his handling of the federal budget, on energy policy, on foreign affairs, on the Ukraine war, on the environment. on even his relations with the dreaded news media. He is underwater on every single thing.
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Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
new political leadership of this country, the people actually getting it done. You saw them there in Grand Rapids, Michigan, yesterday afternoon. We also found them on the side of the road in Reno, Nevada.
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Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
New polling in the great state of Texas today shows that Trump's favorability rating in Texas has dropped 15 points since the election in November. He is now underwater specifically in Texas and dropping like a stone. Today, Donald Trump pulled the nomination of Congresswoman Elise Stefanik to be his new ambassador to the United Nations. So congratulations to the United Nations.
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Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
But Trump admitted the reason why he pulled her nomination. He said the reason he pulled her nomination is because they don't want her to leave her seat in the House because the Republican majority is so thin. Now, if Elise Stefanik had left her seat in the House and become UN ambassador, which was the original plan, They would just hold an election to put somebody else in that seat, right?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
If another Republican was going to replace her in the House, of course it wouldn't affect the size of their majority at all. But you want to know why they pulled that nomination today? They pulled that nomination today, clearly, because they were worried that another Republican would not replace Elise Stefanik.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
That if they had to hold an election for that seat, they were worried they were going to lose it and that a Democrat was going to flip that seat. Elise Stefanik won that seat in November by 24 points. 24 points.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
Right now, with what Trump is doing as president, right now, with how the Republicans are performing with Trump as president, right now, 24 points is not a comfortable enough margin for Republicans, given how hard the country is swinging back against them. 24 points in November looks like it might be a blue seat right about now.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
The real political leaders of this country are the people who are willing to get up in the morning and go do something. They're doing it. And in many ways, they are winning. Stay with us. We just talked a little bit about what's going on in public polling right now in terms of how the American people are feeling about the Trump administration and President Trump this far into his second term.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
Here's a little bit more on a specific subject. YouGov asked Americans how serious a problem they think it is that a whole bunch of senior Trump administration officials shared military plans in a group chat on a commercial messaging app, which accidentally included a journalist, even though they didn't notice he was part of the chat.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
The proportion of Americans who say this is a, quote, very serious or somewhat serious problem is nearly three-quarters of respondents, 74% of the country. The percentage of people who say that's no big deal is only 13%. This scandal is a serious problem, even according to 60% of Republicans.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
On the long list of things that are dumb and bad and potentially illegal about sharing imminent military attack plans on a messaging app with a large group where you don't know who's even on there, there is the matter of Trump's national security advisor setting those group chat messages to disappear. You can do that on the Signal app.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
And some of the messages were set to disappear four weeks after they were sent. Others were set to disappear after just one week, which might mean that some of them are already gone. The reason that's a problem is that there are real laws that get enforced about preserving federal records, which belong to the American people.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
The vice president and cabinet secretaries and the White House chief of staff discussing imminent military strikes definitely counts as a federal record, even if you do it in a chat app, and it therefore must be preserved. You can't set it to disappear. The government transparency group American Oversight filed a lawsuit on that part of this story.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
Today, in that case, a federal judge ordered multiple Trump cabinet officials that they must preserve those signal messages. Then there's the fact that at least one member of the group chat, Trump's real estate friend, who says he's now very, very personally close with Vladimir Putin. They have a really, really intense emotional, personal friendship.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
Steve Witkoff has now confirmed publicly, I think kind of despite himself, I think he sort of accidentally confirmed publicly that he participated in this group chat on his personal cell phone, not on a government-issued device.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
Now, that matters because personal devices generally have much less robust cyber protections against things like spyware, which raises a whole new level of security concerns about this, separate and apart from what they were discussing here. If these guys are doing sensitive, potentially classified government business on their personal devices,
The Rachel Maddow Show
Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
If their personal devices have been compromised, then it doesn't matter what the encryption level is of the app that they're using. If their personal devices have been compromised, it's possible that any sort of bad actor might have access to every single thing they type or see on their phone.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
Now, we know that at least one of them was participating in this signal chat about imminent military attack plans on his personal phone. How many of the rest of you were doing that? What they were discussing, though, turns out to be the really big problem in terms of what specifically these guys were blurting out in this insecure group chat.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
After the operation they had been discussing, these airstrikes in Yemen, after that was over, Trump National Security Advisor Mike Waltz wrote this in the chat. He said, quote, the first target, their top missile guy, we had positive ID of him walking into his girlfriend's building, and it is now collapsed.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
Well, the Wall Street Journal reports today that that positive ID of the guy they were targeting, that was, according to the Wall Street Journal, sensitive intelligence from a human source in Yemen, intelligence that had been provided to the United States by Israel.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
In other words, Israel had a source on the ground feeding them very specific information in real time, and Mike Waltz referenced that information in a way that effectively described the source in this group chat on a commercial app. According to one US official, quote, Israeli officials complained privately to US officials that Waltz's texts became public.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
Quote, Israel's role in supplying information that helped track the militant highlights the sensitivity of some disclosures in the texts and raises questions about the Trump administration's contention that no classified information was shared on the signal chat. The identity of a person in Yemen who was supplying information in real time about the strikes would likely be carefully protected.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
Yeah, you think? I mean, these guys may not get it, but the American people seem to. I mean, three quarters of Americans say, this seems like a really serious problem. Anybody can see that this is not stuff you should be texting about with a large group, right? Or maybe texting about at all. I guess not these guys.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
Joining us now is one of the authors of this Wall Street Journal scoop, Alexander Ward. He's a Wall Street Journal national security reporter. He's author of the book, The Internationalists, The Fight to Restore American Foreign Policy After Trump. Mr. Ward, thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate it.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
Let me just ask you if I got the basics right there about your reporting here. Mike Waltz didn't describe, like, the name of the source, but he did describe with some specificity the type of information this source was able to provide. That's what Israeli officials are worried about?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
Now, everything that I know about spying, I basically learned from, like, Len Dayton novels. Like, I don't really—like, I don't know. Who am I? I'm just a person who reads the news. Like, I have no expertise in this other than spy movies and spy novels.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
But it seems to me, like, when we talk about protecting sources and methods, this is kind of like almost an elementary school-level case study, because you can infer from that statement from Mike Waltz, which went to this large group in a commercial app, that Somebody has a source on the ground in the capital of Yemen who can see that
The Rachel Maddow Show
Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
apartment building and who can also communicate to some intelligence service somewhere in the world what he or she is seeing at that building and what the physical consequences have been of the strike that are being described.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
I mean, that seems to me like for anybody in Sana'a who's trying to figure out who that source is or what they have to worry about in their network, they've now been essentially given a template to find that person.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
Mr. Ward, briefly, one of the things that we hear about in intelligence reporting is that our allies with whom we share intelligence may be less likely to do so in the future if they feel that we in the United States are mishandling it or handling it in a way that is cavalier.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
Briefly, do you have any sense that that risk is essentially coming to fruition right now, either with Israel or other allies based on this scandal?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
Alexander Ward, national security reporter at The Wall Street Journal. This is really, really interesting and important reporting. Thank you for helping us understand it. Thanks for having me. All right. More news ahead. Stay with us. So this is a story we covered last night. Got a really big reaction. The story is developing further today.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
So tonight we wanted to go back to it and also bring in a little expert perspective on what's going on here, just in part because we got such a strong reaction from you guys, from our viewers, when we covered this last night. Here's the headline we showed you last night. Quote, Remedies supported by Kennedy leave some measles patients more ill.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
Parents in Gaines County, Texas, the center of a raging measles outbreak, have increasingly turned to supplements and unproven treatments to protect their children, many of whom are unvaccinated. One of those supplements is cod liver oil containing vitamin A, which Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Donald Trump's health secretary, has promoted in the media as a near miraculous cure for measles.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
Physicians at Covenant Children's Hospital in Lubbock, Texas, say they've now treated unvaccinated children who were given so much vitamin A that they had signs of liver damage. The nation's health secretary promoting vitamin A as a miracle cure for measles is a problem for a few reasons. Vitamin A, unlike some other vitamins, is not something that you can flush out of your body by peeing it out.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
Thank you.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
beyond the dangerousness of overdosing on vitamin A, it's also the case that vitamin A supplements just don't work to protect you from measles. I mean, if you don't have enough vitamin A and you catch the measles, then a doctor might give it to you for what they call supportive care. That happens mainly in countries where kids are malnourished.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
the new political leadership of this country. That was the Reno, Nevada division. These are the people who are actually getting it done, and they're everywhere. We also found them in Livonia, Michigan.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
But here, less than 1% of the American population is deficient in vitamin A. So adding tons of extra vitamin A just harmful. Despite that, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., in his role as America's Health and Human Services Secretary, has repeatedly in the media promoted vitamin A and other supplements for treating the measles, while this measles outbreak is spreading across big parts of this country.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
And now, thanks to him, kids in West Texas are showing up at the hospital with signs of liver damage from taking vitamin A. This week, the communications director at the CDC, a man named Kevin Griffiths, said he resigned from the CDC in part because of this type of irresponsibility.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
In an op-ed for The Washington Post, Mr. Griffiths wrote this, quote, "'Instead of seeking guidance about how to combat the measles outbreak in Texas and New Mexico from the world-leading epidemiologists and virologists he oversees, Kennedy is listening to fringe voices who reinforce his personal beliefs.'" Kennedy has promoted unproven treatments for measles.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
He suggested distributing vitamin A, which does not prevent measles. Meanwhile, Griffith says, in my final weeks at the CDC, I watched as career infectious disease experts were tasked with spending precious hours searching medical literature in vain for data to support Kennedy's preferred treatments.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
Quote, all this misdirection is a waste of federal dollars that will do nothing to control the outbreak. It also could cost lives. President of the American Academy of Pediatrics is going to join us here on this live. Next. The measles outbreak that began in West Texas now includes more than 400 measles cases in multiple states.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
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The Rachel Maddow Show
Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
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The Rachel Maddow Show
Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
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The Rachel Maddow Show
Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
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The Rachel Maddow Show
Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
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The Rachel Maddow Show
Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
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The Rachel Maddow Show
Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
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The Rachel Maddow Show
Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
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The Rachel Maddow Show
Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
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The Rachel Maddow Show
Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
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The Rachel Maddow Show
Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
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The Rachel Maddow Show
Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
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The Rachel Maddow Show
Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
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The Rachel Maddow Show
Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
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The Rachel Maddow Show
Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
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The Rachel Maddow Show
Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
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The Rachel Maddow Show
Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
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The Rachel Maddow Show
Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
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The Rachel Maddow Show
Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
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The Rachel Maddow Show
Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
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The Rachel Maddow Show
Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
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The Rachel Maddow Show
Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
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The Rachel Maddow Show
Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
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The Rachel Maddow Show
Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
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The Rachel Maddow Show
Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
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The Rachel Maddow Show
Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
The Rachel Maddow Show
Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
That's the new political leadership of this country showing up in Livonia, Michigan. We also found them in Nashville, Tennessee.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
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The Rachel Maddow Show
Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
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The Rachel Maddow Show
Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
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The Rachel Maddow Show
Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
That was Nashville, Tennessee. You might remember last week, we also found the new political leadership class in this country holding a political funeral for Social Security at the Social Security office in Gainesville, Georgia. They focused on their local Republican congressman there, whose name is Andrew Clyde. Clyde lies as Social Security dies. Clyde dozes while Social Security closes.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
We've also found the new political leadership of this country fanning out to town halls, in-person town halls, online town halls, teletown halls, anywhere and anyhow they can get themselves in front of elected Republicans who are letting Trump take Social Security apart.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
Good question. Good question. This is regular Americans just pulling it together on their own to save Social Security. That woman in Grand Rapids, Michigan, yesterday saying, I woke up this morning and said, I got to do something. And by afternoon, there she was. And Americans all over the country are waking up every day somewhere having that same feeling.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
And that political leadership from regular Americans is now starting to push over the right dominoes. We are starting to see, for example, stirrings from big, powerful groups that at least used to have a lot of sway on issues like this, groups like AARP.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
Let's hear her say there at the beginning. Recently, we've heard from thousands of worried Americans. Hello, AARP. Honestly, by now, I thought you'd have like armored divisions outside the offices of every Social Security office in the country.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
I thought you would be blanketing the nation with super effective ads and hounding every member of the administration every day up to and including the president. It's kind of what I... have come to expect from AARP. We are not seeing anything like that yet from AARP. But they are admitting that thousands of their own members are contacting them now. And they are showing signs of life.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
And when you combine that with the real political leadership that we are seeing from regular Americans who just wake up one morning and say, I've got to do something, and then they go do something, well, you know what? It works. It has an impact. It pushes over one domino that then pushes down another.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
For example, we had Trump's Social Security nominee have his desultory little confirmation hearing this week in the United States Senate. But at that hearing, you had Republican senators—Republicans— asking, hey, wait, how many Social Security offices are you closing in my state? My constituents are telling me that Social Security service is collapsing.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
And look, I had my staff confirm it after Trump fired all these people at Social Security. Turns out it now takes... hours to get through on the phone. And then even when you've waited on the phone for hours, you get cut off anyway. Hey, Social Security nominee from the Trump administration, what's going on here? You got that this week even from Republican senators.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
You have the top Republicans in the Senate who supposedly oversees Social Security, who until now have been totally silent as Trump has been firing thousands of people from the agency, as his top campaign donor has been given access to all the most sensitive systems at the agency, while he publicly calls it a Ponzi scheme that must be shut down.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
As the service has started to palpably collapse, they have been silent. and have been doing nothing, but now you've got them having to admit to reporters and whining a little bit about it that maybe they should be in on some of this stuff.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
For NBC News, quote, Republican Senator Chuck Grassley, the chairman of a key Senate subcommittee on Social Security, said he had not been told ahead of time about the Trump administration's moves at the agency. Quote, no, I have not been, Grassley told NBC News. Asked if it would be helpful to his job if he were given a heads up, Grassley repeated, quote, I have not been. I have not been.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
Republican Senator Steve Daines, a Senate Finance Committee member, said in an interview that he, too, hasn't been in the loop for the Trump administration's changes. Quote, no, we haven't. He said, quote, I haven't had any heads up. Senator Daines said that he would appreciate advance notice about the changes the administration makes to Social Security. He said, quote, I'd like to know about it.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
Yeah. Well, that's something. I'd like to know about it. So those are the people in Washington, but it is the leaders of this country. I see you, plucky retirees in knitted hats on the side of the road in Reno. I see you. After the real leaders of this country, after you guys took the wheel, it has started something.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
And so now, yes, if you are applying for Medicare or disability or SSI benefits through Social Security, they're no longer planning to mandate that you have to go in person to your local Social Security office, that they're probably closing anyway and or firing most of the staff. And no, they are no longer killing the 1-800 line altogether, which they had previously been planning on doing.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
And no, they are not forcing through this verify-your-identity-in-person change that they were going to force through as of Monday, which would have forced immediately millions of people, millions of older and disabled people, to have to go to these offices in person. And they've apparently done no training for it at all.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
And oh, by the way, the new system they said they want to put in place doesn't exist. But now they're not going to implement that on Monday. They need a little more time. In no sense has Social Security been saved. This fight is absolutely on. But it is regular Americans who have been fighting against Trump all over the country. Yes, in Washington, but honestly, all over the country.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
And that's what's made the difference. It is working. It is making a difference. And there is more to do, but it is working. And look, here's another view of America's political and moral leadership at work. This is the protest that sprung up spontaneously and basically instantly yesterday afternoon in Somerville, Massachusetts. Instantly, thousands of people gathered
The Rachel Maddow Show
Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
On no notice, in the immediate aftermath of a Tufts University student with a valid student visa, a Fulbright Scholar PhD candidate with no criminal record, who had no notice from the government that they believed she had done anything wrong, she was nevertheless accosted and snatched off the street by a half-dozen federal agents who were covering their faces, who then handcuffed her and stuffed her into an unmarked car.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
Donald Trump is now claiming the right to do this to anyone. He is making the truly authoritarian claim that if you express an opinion that Donald Trump doesn't like, this is what will happen to you. In this case, it was a student writing an op-ed criticizing the war in the Middle East. The Trump administration says that alone is the justification for revoking her student visa, which is insane.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
But even if signing an op-ed were grounds to revoke this young woman's visa, they could just tell her they were revoking her visa, tell her that she therefore needs to leave the country. Instead, they didn't tell her anything. They just sent masked goons to jump her on the street and throw her in an unmarked car and take her away. And that will now be litigated.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat
But the kids at Tufts University and the community there just erupted yesterday. Spontaneously, thousands of people turned out to respond in person. That was yesterday. And then this is Somerville again tonight.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts
At the end of last night's show, you might remember we were counting down to a midnight deadline that had been given to the Trump administration by a federal judge. A judge had ordered the Trump administration to restart funding on foreign aid. Now, this is a judge who had previously ordered the Trump administration to restart that funding, and they had not.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts
It would be devastating to the tens of millions of people who get Medicaid in this country. It would be devastating to state budgets in every state in this country. The expected cuts to Medicaid specifically led to this protest yesterday in Wisconsin.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts
And the Supreme Court at the very last second steps in and says, no, no, no, Trump administration, you don't have to release that funding by midnight after all. And we want briefing on this by noon on Friday. So we'll see what happens by noon on Friday, by tomorrow noon at the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts
Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin never misses an opportunity to share how much he respects his constituents. Has no basis in truth or fact. Yeah, these dummies with their disabled children rallying at his office. He doesn't see the need to respond. They don't know anything.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts
You might have seen the headline in The Washington Post yesterday about how the, quote, resistance is beginning to, quote, wake in earnest. Post highlighted, among other things, the fact that Senator Bernie Sanders just held a couple of town hall events in two red states, in Iowa, where he went to Iowa City, and in Nebraska, where he held an event in Omaha.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts
You can see from some of the local news coverage and the footage we've been able to get that these events were successful. sort of stuffed to the gills and beyond. In Omaha, the organizers of that town hall event with Senator Sanders said they had an inkling that the response was going to be pretty big, so they arranged for a really big venue for his event.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts
They planned for 1,000 people to show up. They got a venue that seated 1,000 people. On the night of the event, though, the actual turnout was between 3,500 and 4,000 people in Nebraska. in February to go to a meeting with Bernie Sanders. In Iowa City, his talk there was at noontime. The Des Moines Register reports that thousands of people turned up in Iowa City.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts
They started lining up at 7.30 a.m. for an event that wouldn't start until noon. Des Moines Register reports that lines to get in stretched multiple city blocks, and they had to set up a whole separate overflow event. in Iowa in February to go to a noontime meeting with Bernie Sanders. And this is not just a Bernie Sanders phenomenon.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts
This, for example, was the no special occasion regular organizing meeting last night for the Indivisible chapter in Collingswood, New Jersey. They, again, had guessed that there might be an unusually large amount of interest given everything that's going on. So they booked a hall that could hold a huge number of people for just a regular organizing meeting on a Wednesday night.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts
But because of the Supreme Court's intervention, that USAID funding did not start flowing last night at midnight. And this confrontation and this series of events raises like a whole Niagara Falls of issues and consequences. I mean, first of all, and most importantly, it's the substance of it, right? I mean, what's that funding for?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts
They booked a hall that could hold 450 people, but they filled that 450 seat room and then another 200 people showed up and could not get in. And they decided they would just meet in the parking lot instead.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts
You might have also seen recent headlines just over the past few days about how Republican members of Congress are being advised now to please stop holding town halls with their constituents because they aren't enjoying the national and local news coverage that those things are engendering. Look at this out of Midlothian, Virginia.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts
This gives you some sense of why Republicans might not want to be anywhere near their constituents right now, not when this is what it's like for them, even in Republican congressional districts.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts
The congressman repeatedly did not address our specific questions, nor did he show up in person to face that from his constituents in his Republican district last night. That report from WAVY in Virginia from last night.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts
One of the things that does keep cropping up at these town halls and also at protests that we're seeing all over the country is just rage and expressions of disgust at the president putting his top campaign donor in charge of destroying the government.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts
That has also led increasingly to protests that specifically target that campaign donor, Elon Musk, like this one a few days ago in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, on the street outside the Tesla dealer in that town. Pretty considerable turnout outside that Tesla dealership in Cherry Hill.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts
Well, among other things, it's for the magnificently successful world-renowned U.S. AIDS treatment programs that have been interrupted. That puts tens of millions of lives— at risk. With that funding not flowing, those programs aren't restarting.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts
There was another protest targeting Elon Musk specifically at the SpaceX and Starlink offices in Redmond, Washington. This was yesterday. They seem to have had a pretty good turnout there up in Redmond, Washington. It'll also be interesting to see what kind of turnout there is this Saturday, March 1st, in Hawthorne, California, which is right near LAX, right near the airport in LA.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts
They're telling people to dress up like Elon Musk for the protest at that SpaceX headquarters building on Saturday. So, if nothing else, it should be funny. They specifically went out of their way to say, if you do dress up like Mr. Musk for the protest, please do not choose to express your opinion of him by dressing up as a Nazi. They do not want anybody there in Nazi Elon Musk outfits.
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Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts
Thank you. Thank you. Please, no. That protest at SpaceX global headquarters in L.A., again, expected Saturday. As the concerns and objections to Elon Musk now are starting to extend not just to what he's doing to the rest of the government, but what he's doing for himself as he's taking apart the government.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts
The Washington Post is now following on reporting that initiated with Bloomberg News and other outlets that Musk has now apparently just somehow engineered the overriding of an existing FAA contract with Verizon to instead install his own company in its place, to instead install Starlink at the FAA. They're just doing that. Is that legal?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts
Aren't there rules for, like, contracts and conflicts of interest and stuff? as we get to that part of the definition of oligarchy already right away. One of the more unnerving things that Mr. Musk has developed an interest in in recent days appears to be the American judicial system.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts
Now, on top of everything else he is doing in his capacity as the president's top donor, Musk has also started railing publicly that American judges and the judiciary are the real problem in this country, and that therefore we need to start, in his words, firing judges. because courts should not be allowed to stop him and to stop Donald Trump from doing whatever they want.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts
Naturally, Republican members of Congress are obliging. They've started filing impeachment proceedings against multiple federal judges who've had the temerity to rule against Trump. And this seems sort of at the same time to be just the natural evolution of where these guys have always been heading. But it also seems to be the single brightest bright line we have as a country.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts
when it comes to figuring out whether the authoritarian takeover they are attempting will be stopped or whether it will go all the way. Americans from sea to shining sea are turning out in huge and increasing numbers to say they are not down with this. They do not want any of this.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts
And amid this fight and amid this drama and amid the American people being so palpably mad about what they are doing, the single most important line that just cannot be crossed ever is to have a president defying the law and defying the courts, because that is the end. And on that, Senator Dick Durbin joins us next. Stay with us.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts
The new work that is not being done because that funding hasn't restarted includes little things like, I don't know, work on the previously unknown brand new hemorrhagic fever that has just broken out in Congo. It killed three little kids in Congo over the course of three days. And then immediately within like 10 more days, the death toll was 53.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts
During a confirmation hearing yesterday, something happened that I don't think has ever happened before. Multiple nominees for senior justice department jobs said during their confirmation hearings out loud that they're not sure that presidents have to obey rulings from the courts. Not always.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts
That's a little bit frustrating. You may recognize one of those nominees, the guy with the raspy voice. He's named John Sauer. He is the lawyer who told a federal appeals court that Donald Trump would be within his rights to order a team of Navy SEALs to assassinate his political opponents, that Donald Trump could not be prosecuted for giving such an order.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts
Mr. Sauer is now up for the job of solicitor general, which is the person who represents the United States government before the Supreme Court.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts
The unnerving refusal by him and other Trump Justice Department nominees yesterday to say that the president must always obey the federal courts, that prompted a stern and somewhat unexpected admonition from one Republican senator from John Kennedy of Louisiana.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts
Joining us now is Illinois Senator Dick Durbin. He is the second highest ranking Democrat in the Senate. He's the ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Senator Durbin, it's a rare pleasure to be able to have you here on the show tonight. Thank you so much for making time.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts
I know that you have had a strong reaction to those nominees playing with the idea that Donald Trump doesn't have to obey court orders. In an interview today, you called it breathtaking. You said it raises serious existential constitutional questions. We've got to step back and have an honest discussion about this. Why do you feel so strongly about that?
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Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts
What can you explain to our viewers about the seriousness of this issue that you've now come across in these confirmation hearings?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts
And now it's in at least two different locations in Congo, and they don't know what it is or how it spreads. It is a disease they have never seen before. It does seem to have an alarmingly high death rate, something like a 12% death rate, which
The Rachel Maddow Show
Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts
He had then brought Trump administration lawyers back into his courtroom this week and said, it doesn't seem like you're complying with my earlier order. Can you tell me what steps are being taken to comply with my order? The Trump administration lawyer then responded by basically going, how many, how many, how many, how many, how many, how many?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts
It does get to the heart of our democracy. It is the closest thing that we have to an existential question, I think, in terms of our republic. To see the wholesale destruction of the federal government, which I think they're trying to do, to see them appearing to ignore laws when it comes to doing what they're trying to do to the U.S. government is... is a bad thing, as far as I'm concerned.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts
Disobeying the law seems to be bad. But the prospect that when a court corrects that, when a court declares it to be illegal and orders them to change course, that they will not do it. We are just in a territory that's like where the roadrunner runs off the end of the cliff, and then there's nothing there, and it just drops.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts
I have to ask you, because I think you do very clearly see the seriousness of this, What sort of contingency plans elected Democrats have for further sounding the alarm and for trying to correct course and pull that roadrunner back onto the cliff if they go as far as they're signaling they might?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts
For a hemorrhagic fever, an infectious disease is a massive death rate, and even scarier than that, those it kills, it seems to kill within 48 hours, right? This is bad. An outbreak spreading fast of a previously undiscovered, unknown hemorrhagic fever that is already killing humans by the dozens.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts
Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, senior Democrat in the Senate. Sir, thank you for your time tonight. I do really appreciate you being here. Thanks, Rachel. All right. Much more news ahead here tonight. Stay with us. Do not let anyone tell you that pushback does not matter. Look at this. This was the headline Tuesday night at the Washington Post.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts
Doge to cancel government contracts that help veterans, records show. Quote, the 875 contracts on the chopping block help cover medical services, fund cancer programs, recruit doctors, and provide burial services to veterans, according to internal VA documents. Also, a contract to, quote, safely dispose of chemical waste. Yeah, who needs that? Look, the word waste is right there. Let's cut that.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts
So this is the VA. This is Healthcare for American Military Veterans. Here's Donald Trump announcing proudly as president, right? We're slashing funding for cancer care for American military veterans. Also, burial services. Literally, burial services for veterans. And hey, just toss that chemical waste out back behind the shed. It'll be fine. But put that back up there.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts
Under pressure, VA halts contract cancellations in major reversal. After one night and one day of shock and outrage at what Trump was doing, hey, turns out they decided to reverse it. Not going to do it. Don't let anybody tell you that pushback doesn't work. That said, it's not like they're leaving veterans alone. The Trump administration fired 1,000 people who work at the VA two weeks ago.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts
This week, they fired 1,400 more people who work at the VA. Leo Shane, reporting at the Military Times, quote, but, quote, did not provide any specifics of the types of assignments that were eliminated. One VA official telling NBC News, quote, it's leading to paralysis and nothing is getting done.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts
The official described absolute chaos at the agency, with even Trump political appointees afraid to misstep and incur a backlash from either the White House or the public. As bad as this already is, though, heads up that the kinds of cuts we've seen thus far might be an order of magnitude smaller than the cuts that Trump has coming next.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts
The American Prospect was first to report that the Social Security Administration is preparing to slash fully 50 percent of its workers. That would mean filing nearly 30,000 people who work on getting people their Social Security checks. Social Security Administration has already lost thousands of employees in the last decade. They want to cut 30,000 people now.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts
That's the kind of thing that United States global health programs would be all over, usually, to identify this thing, to contain it, to treat people and keep them alive, to stop this thing from spreading, among other things, to make sure that it does not come here to the United States. But we're not doing the foreign aid funding anymore.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts
That kind of a mass firing called a reduction in force is reportedly being planned all across federal agencies. But slashing jobs and programs for veterans in particular is not something the Trump administration is going to be able to do quietly with no pushback. That's obvious. Military Times says Leo Shane was on a call with lawmakers this afternoon about federal workers being fired.
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Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts
He posted this quote from Virginia Senator Tim Kaine, quote, I think Donald Trump in six weeks has already achieved the record of having fired more veterans than any president in the history of the United States. That is not a distinction, he says, quote, that is a disgrace. Joining us now is Leo Shane. He's deputy editor at Military Times. Mr. Shane, Leo, it's nice to see you.
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Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts
Thank you very much for being back.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts
What's your understanding of how this 24-hour reversal went down at the VA? They announced all these cuts and then they took it all back. What happened?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts
I mean, burial services for veterans, cancer care in terms of veterans' health care, disposal of hazardous waste and medical waste from VA facilities. I mean, this is the kind of stuff. I mean, are they making a substantive case that these are legitimately things that veterans should not have?
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Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts
Or is the idea that some of these things were a mistake and they didn't notice they were such core services?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts
Stopping USAID means stopping efforts to combat things like that. It also means, you know... stopping America's traditional and leading and totally irreplaceable work to help and contain the damage when not just hemorrhagic fevers break out, like Ebola in Uganda and Marburg in Tanzania, both of which are happening right now, but also to stop things like tuberculosis and malaria.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts
And they fired more than 2,000 people who work there already. Leo, I have to ask you tonight about a late-breaking legal development. Tonight, there's been this ruling from a federal judge in California that the memos from the Trump administration, from OPM directing the firing of employees, probationary employees, that was illegal advice.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts
And the judge tonight has ordered that OPM should communicate this to the Defense Department right now, ahead of planned mass firings tomorrow. Do you have any sense of what impact this ruling might have on planned mass firings at the Defense Department or at the VA?
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Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts
Well, I may be calling you during business hours tomorrow, Leo, to try to get a handle on what happens here and that as we try to put some specifics on this evolving story. Leo Shane, Deputy Editor at Military Times. Thank you, as always, for your time tonight, Leo.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts
We'll be tracking all of it. I appreciate it. Indeed. I know you will. We're grateful for it. This is at the Iowa State Capitol this week. Big crowds rallying to support trans people and their rights, as the Trump administration and Republicans everywhere accelerate their efforts to, frankly, persecute and take rights away from trans people.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts
Tonight in Iowa, after this show of force in support of the Iowa trans community, tonight Iowa Republicans nevertheless passed a radical bill to rescind state civil rights protections for transgender people in Iowa. The vote was largely along party lines, except for five Republicans who sided with the Democrats in voting no. Iowa's Republican governors expected to sign the bill into law.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts
It will roll back protections that have been in place in Iowa for 18 years. The Des Moines Register notes tonight that while businesses in Iowa generally supported, vocally and actively supported the LGBT rights bill that became law in the state in 2007, major employers and business groups in Iowa have stayed silent on the anti-trans bill that's now on its way to the governor's desk.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts
One advocate for LGBT rights tells the paper, quote, I think these groups have abdicated their responsibility to Iowans. And I think they're being penny wise and pound foolish with their own workforce. are watching tonight for continued reaction in Iowa and around the country. Watch this space. All right, that's going to do it for me for now.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts
Heads up that the new episode of Alex Wagner's podcast, Trumpland, just came out. It's really good. She's looking in this episode at the Trump administration's strengthening ties to Russia and Russian authoritarianism as Ukrainians in the U.S. mark the third anniversary of Russia invading Ukraine. If you want to listen to the podcast, it's great.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts
Just scan that little circular code on your screen with your phone and it'll take you right to it. It's easy.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts
But domestically, here in this country, this confrontation, this drama with the Supreme Court getting involved means that we are about to have the U.S. Supreme Court meaningfully weigh in on this sledgehammer that Trump and his top campaign donor have taken to the U.S. government thus far, with no seeming regard for either the law or the Constitution.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts
So we will see, probably for the first time, how the Supreme Court is oriented toward this radical change that has happened over the last five and a half weeks in our country. And honestly, this is also important because of the way this came up. That midnight deadline we were looking at last night was set so firmly and so urgently by the federal judge who was hearing this case.
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Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts
because he had to do it by motion to enforce. He had to do a motion to enforce because Trump really was ignoring that court's previous orders. Right?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts
And so when we look to see how the Supreme court handles this tomorrow at noon, we're going to be looking to see how the Supreme court handles that very scary issue, how this Supreme court is going to treat the prospect of this president, this administration, uh, potentially ignoring the courts.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts
They have been joking about this and making, you know, macho sounding bluffs about this for a long time now, particularly from the vice president, J.D. Vance. How is the Supreme Court going to deal with it now that it's real?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts
Do they try to give him what he wants from the courts so that Trump doesn't break that glass, doesn't, you know, smash through the brightest bright line that we have and effectively end the republic? Do they appease him because they, oh, he's so scary, we better not make him defy a court order, we better make sure all court orders go his way?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts
The judge at that point—we got the transcript, actually. The judge at that point said, quote, Hey, I guess I'm not sure why I can't get a straight answer from you on this. Hey, After that just humiliation of the Trump administration's lawyer unable to explain why the Trump administration was defying this lawful order, that judge issued what's called a motion to enforce.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts
Or do they make clear to him that his powers as president actually don't allow him to defy the courts? to tell him that he's not always going to get what he wants from the courts. And when the courts tell him something he doesn't like, he has to obey the courts anyway. Do they tell him that if he does try to defy the courts, he is effectively declaring war on the United States of America?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts
We'll see. We don't know how the U.S. Supreme Court is going to handle this. And we don't know how directly they're going to get at this key issue. But this case moves to them tomorrow at noon Eastern time. So eyes wide open on that and take it with all the seriousness it deserves.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts
We've got the top Senate Democrat on the Judiciary Committee here tonight to talk about what happened yesterday in the Senate when Trump nominees for senior Justice Department positions— told him and other members of the Judiciary Committee that they weren't sure that Trump should always obey court rulings. That happened in the Senate yesterday.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts
The leading Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee is going to be here talking with us about it in just a moment, ahead of tomorrow's Supreme Court actions on this case. It's a very chilling subject. It's one I take very seriously. It is absolutely the endgame discussion for us as a republic. It is as serious as it gets. Meanwhile, this is what it looked like in Washington, D.C.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts
today as workers from that agency, from USAID, were each given a grand total of 15 minutes by the Trump administration to come into USAID headquarters and retrieve their belongings from their offices. While they were doing that, people showed up in big numbers to support them and clap for them and to say thank you.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts
That was Washington, D.C. today, as people showed up to support and thank USAID workers, who the Trump administration is trying to fire as they try to shut down that agency, even though they pretty clearly are just legally not allowed to do that. People turning out to protest, but also support the people who are at the sharp end of this stick.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts
One of the tools the Trump administration has been using to try to destroy USAID and to disassemble so many other agencies is wholesale firing, en masse firing everybody who's considered a probationary employee. And you've heard that term over this last couple of weeks when they have been using this as the basis for firing people.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts
Being a probationary employee, it usually means you're in your first year or two on the job. It can also mean that you've transferred into a new job or you've been promoted within the last year or two. Probationary makes it sound like you've been in trouble, right? And you're like, you're on probation, we're watching you because you did something wrong. It's not that at all.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts
It is a meaningless category in terms of the importance of the work that's being done by that employee, their skill level, their performance, their value to the government and to their agency. But nevertheless, the Trump administration has ordered mass firings of people based purely on that classification just because they thought it would be easy to get away with that, legally speaking.
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Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts
Turns out, not so fast.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts
Tonight, a federal judge on the West Coast, a federal judge in California, has just ruled that the Trump administration's instructions to agencies about indiscriminately firing all these people, thousands and thousands of probationary employees thus far, a judge just ruled tonight that the instruction from the Trump administration to all the agencies about firing these people is, quote, illegal and, quote, should be stopped, rescinded.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts
Federal Judge William Alsop said from the bench in his ruling tonight, quote, the Office of Personnel Management does not have any authority whatsoever under any statute in the history of the universe to hire and fire employees within another agency. He said, quote, it can hire its own employees. Yes, can fire them. But it cannot order or direct some other agency to do so. Judge Alsop.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts
And he set this midnight deadline for midnight last night by which the Trump administration had to do what he said, had to restart that aid funding. So that's what we were talking about last night at the top of the show. And then just as we were going off the air at the end of the show last night, the Trump administration ran to the U.S. Supreme Court.
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Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts
further ordered tonight from the bench that the rescinding of the Trump administration directive to fire probationary employees, he ordered that the rescinding of that directive should be conveyed tonight to the Pentagon, to the U.S. Defense Department. And I think that's because tomorrow is the day on which the Pentagon was otherwise expected to march more than 5,000 fired employees out the door.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts
Well, again, the judge said the Defense Department needs to be informed of my ruling tonight, not tomorrow, tonight. So whether or not they still try to fire those 5,000 plus employees tomorrow at Defense Department, it may not happen because of this judge's order. We shall see.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts
We don't think that this order from this judge tonight means that all the other probationary employees who have already been fired are going to be reinstated. We don't think that's the implication of this ruling. But we're going to have to wait to see his written order in this case, which we expect tomorrow. Again, he ruled from the bench tonight.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts
He ordered that his ruling from the bench be conveyed to the Pentagon. But we expect his written ruling tomorrow. Today, NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which, among other things, gives us, you know, the weather forecast, they sent out notices today that they are indiscriminately firing hundreds of employees from that agency.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts
The Trump administration also today announced plans to close hundreds of help centers, places people can go to get free help and advice on their taxes. Oh, good. These are the so-called taxpayer assistance centers. They're going to close 110 of those all around the country. Yeah, can't possibly have taxpayer assistance.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts
That announcement comes as the IRS was told to fire more than 6,000 people this past week, just as tax filing season is getting underway. We're also going to be talking tonight with a reporter on VA issues tonight. Trump has just fired more than 2,000 people from the VA, from the agency that serves our nation's veterans, including people who work to support the Veterans Crisis Line.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts
Yeah, there's a lot of fraud, waste, and abuse there, huh? Gotta cut that. Trump also cut funding for veterans' cancer care. Seriously? And for veterans' cemeteries. Seriously. before good journalism about those cuts and a resulting huge outcry yesterday forced them to reinstate some of those things. But they did try to cut them. We'll have more on that coming up tonight.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts
But these cuts that I'm talking about, the impact of these cuts that I'm talking about, the legal fight over these cuts, but also the pushback against these cuts and what they're doing, it's not at all a Washington story by now. It really is by now everywhere.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts
And just before we went off the air, just before the end of last night's show, the Trump administration obtained an order from the Supreme Court saving them from that midnight deadline. Right. So they're less than three hours away from that deadline.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts
Department of Education cuts, the potential elimination of the Department of Education is one of sort of two categories of actions the Trump administration and Republicans in Washington are taking that have potentially catastrophic effects, not just on the people who are served by those agencies or the people who work there.
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Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts
But also on the states, if the federal education department disappears, which NBC News reports is their plan to just eliminate that department and everything it does, if they kill the federal education department and if they go ahead with these massive Medicaid cuts that are slated in the budget that Republicans have just started to pass in Washington, both of those things are going to just be nuclear bombs on the state budgets of just about every state in the country.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts
Those folks in Michigan on Tuesday, including the woman who's just lost her job because of Department of Education cuts, they were protesting, among other things, what Trump is doing to Social Security. They protested outside the Social Security Administration building.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Even Republicans object as Trump DOJ nominees are disturbingly noncommittal on obeying courts
Reporters this week, including Dave Dayen at the American Prospect, have warned that Trump's cuts at the Social Security Administration might be fully 50 percent of the workforce at Social Security. Meanwhile, the expected cuts to Medicaid, which, again, would be devastating not just to the people who work to administer that.
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Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
Thanks to you at home for joining us this hour. Are you ready for this one? These geniuses. You know, if you are gonna have somebody who consolidates the whole 250-year-old tripartite system of checks and balances that we got from the founding fathers in this country, if you're gonna have someone who says, You know, there are parts of the Constitution that must be terminated.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
Another big protest at UC Berkeley today, also to stand up for education against the assault on it by Donald Trump and his administration. There were also protests at high schools and at middle schools today, really all across the country.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
That was Maryland, the shots from those last protests there. Elsewhere in Maryland today, in Silver Spring, people protested to defend NOAA and the National Weather Service at their headquarters building as Trump continues to fire people by the hundreds and now the thousands at NOAA, decimating that agency.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
While he was skulking around the halls of the Kennedy Center on Monday, President Trump on Monday announced, surprise, that the very next day he would be releasing all files related to the investigation of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963. All files on this subject with no redactions would be released the next day on Tuesday.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
Outside an appearance by Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis and Trump's so-called border czar Tom Homan today, people protested in the street against Trump's anti-immigrant policies and arrests. This was in Sarasota, Florida. All over the country today, there were protests to stand up for the U.S.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
post office, which Donald Trump and his top campaign donor, Elon Musk, say they plan to privatize. These protests today in Washington, D.C., and Tampa, Florida, Jacksonville, Florida, in Los Angeles, where Congresswoman Maxine Waters showed up and joined the protesters.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
In Charlotte, North Carolina, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, they had a big turnout for their protests there to defend the post office today. Same with the one in St. Louis, Missouri. They were chanting, U.S. mail not for sale. There was a big protest to defend the post office today in New York City.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
And there were a bunch of these protests in Texas as well, including this one in San Antonio and this from Dallas-Fort Worth.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
Members of Congress are on recess this week, which means many of them are back home in their home districts. And that means they're angry and worried and weirded out constituents are demanding to talk with them about what's going on in Washington and around the country. We're going to be speaking tonight with Minnesota Democratic Governor Tim Walz. He's here live.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
He's been busy, among other things, holding. town halls in the congressional districts of Republican members of Congress who won't do it themselves. That continues to be a theme. In Boardman, Ohio, constituents of Republican Congressman Michael Rooley held a protest yesterday demanding that he meet up with them and that he stand up to Trump.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
In Western New York, constituents of Republican Congressman Nick Langworthy held a town hall with an empty chair representing their congressman, since they say he won't hold any in-person town halls with them himself. Same thing when it comes to Republican Congresswoman Elise Stefanik. Her constituents held an empty chair town hall for her as well in Rome, New York.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
We saw the same thing in the great state of Maine, where there was quite big turnout yesterday at a town hall for, but not with, Republican Senator Susan Collins. She did not attend, but lots of her constituents did. The organizers did put a big, blow-up, mounted, flattering photo of her headshot at the front of the room. to which they addressed their questions and their anger.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
In Chandler, Arizona, Republican Congressman Andy Biggs held an event that apparently was held for Republicans only. So Andy Biggs' constituents who aren't Republicans or who otherwise couldn't get into that event, they protested outside. Republicans have been having town halls like this one by Congressman Pat Fallon in Bonham, Texas, yesterday.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
We are seeing more and more that they are having police remove people from the town hall if those people shout at the member of Congress, basically. In the case of Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley, nobody was taken out by police, but he did have to endure the indignity of his constituents in very close proximity to him, just laughing right in his face.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
And so, because he said so, and what else is government other than just whatever Donald Trump says, because he said so, the National Archives on Tuesday, in fact, posted online over 60,000 pages of government documents on this subject. So he says it on Monday, they posted this stuff on Tuesday. Now, It's Friday Eve now, right? It's Thursday night.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
Chuck Grassley and some of his constituents in Iowa last night. I have just one more of these to show you. This was Laramie, Wyoming, last night, Republican Congresswoman Harriet Hageman.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
That's in Wyoming. It's amazing how Republicans think they can assuage the American people by saying, hey, I trust Donald Trump on this, don't you? Yeah, and do we all get fresh new Social Security numbers, too? Or is that only if we're in the JFK assassination conspiracy theory stuff? Are those the only people who get fresh ones?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
The Associated Press has now published a list of the Social Security field offices that Trump is closing. We're going to get to that and much more with Minnesota Governor Tim Walz. We've got him here live. We've got an update for you. You're also going to want to see on this other case where the Trump administration didn't just lose, they just got obliterated in court today.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
A lawyer representing one of the people involved in that case is here with us live tonight as well. We've got a lot to get to tonight. Stay with us. Lots to come. So one of the most dramatic stories, one of the most dramatic crises of this new presidency came into public view for the first time this weekend, Saturday.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
There was an emergency court hearing that was called to ask a judge to turn around three airplanes, airplanes that were taken off right then while the hearing was underway. The Trump administration said people on those planes were Venezuelan gang members. That's what they said. But there had been no process, no proceeding at all that determined if that was true. Trump said they were, that was it.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
And the Trump administration said they therefore would be treated as alien enemies of the United States.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
So with zero legal process at all, just on Trump's say-so, these hundreds of people, who knows who they are, many of them picked up off the street, were put on planes and sent to a prison in another country where the nation of El Salvador promised to lock them up for at least a year doing hard labor.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
Well, the judge said, until we can figure out whether you are legally allowed to do this, I order you to turn those planes around, bring those people back. Hours later, as you now know, those planes landed in El Salvador despite the judge's order. And the people on those planes from the Trump administration still hasn't identified. They're now in a huge Salvadoran prison.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
And that country's president is saying he's going to keep them there as long as the Trump administration pays him for it. Since last weekend, the federal judge in this case has been trying to determine if the Trump administration deliberately flouted his orders, and if so, what the consequences should be.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
The judge gave them a list of very simple questions to answer, like what time did the planes take off, when did they land, how many people were on the planes. The Trump administration has basically been playing Mad Libs to avoid answering those questions. They've claimed that the judge's order didn't count because he spoke it from the bench and only later issued a written order.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
For all the conspiracy theories and drama that we as a country have built up around the JFK assassination in the past 60-plus years, ask yourself this. Over the last couple of days, have you, like, heard anything in the news? Have you seen any big headlines about the amazing revelations in these documents?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
That's not how the law works. They have claimed that once the plans reached international waters, Donald Trump acquired super special powers over the planes that the judge could not overrule. What did you homeschool law school? What are you talking about?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
Yesterday, before a court ordered deadline, they suddenly said they might invoke something called the state secrets privilege, which is basically the government saying you're not allowed to know. Just trust us. The judge grudgingly gave them another day, another 24 hours to try again. Here's how the judge today reacted to what the Trump administration told him today.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
He said, quote, the government again evaded its obligations. The judge says all the Trump administration gave him was a statement from an immigration officer in Texas who says they need much more time to respond to the judge's demands.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
Because, quote, I understand that cabinet secretaries are currently actively considering whether to invoke the state secret's privilege over the other facts requested by the court's order. Despite those magic words, the judge was not impressed. He wrote, quote, this is woefully insufficient.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
The government cannot proffer a regional ICE official to attest to cabinet-level discussions about the state secrets privilege. The judge orders that by 10 a.m. Eastern tomorrow, the Trump administration, quote, shall submit a sworn declaration by a person with direct involvement in these cabinet-level discussions regarding invocation of the state secrets privilege.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
You say you can't tell me anything because Trump's cabinet is discussing whether this is state secrets. Well, you can't just assert that randomly from Texas, Junior. You have to actually prove to me that those discussions are happening with a sworn declaration from, I guess, members of Trump's cabinet by tomorrow morning.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
And I know this feels a little bit like legal wrangling, but the stakes here are almost unimaginably high. I mean, obviously, there's a lot of discussion about, you know, what happens if the White House starts ignoring court orders? Short answer, death of the republic.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
But also, the stakes are so high here because the Trump administration is claiming it has the right to grab anyone it wants and ship them anywhere it wants with no court hearing, no deportation order, without even a warrant. Anybody, just on Trump's say-so, you're gone out of the country, disappeared indefinitely. And this is not me exaggerating for dramatic effect.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
This is exactly what the Trump administration is saying it has the power to do, even as it engages in this legal shell game with the information the court wants. Their primary argument is the court has no right to ask any questions at all. Donald Trump, on his own say-so, with no legal process at all, can simply exile people out of this country and put them in foreign prisons indefinitely.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
They say, quote, this this case is not even justiciable. That's not a word that non-lawyers should know how to pronounce. And so I don't. But it means they're saying this isn't even subject to the power of the courts. Trump claims that he has unreviewable power. And the president gets to decide who counts as an alien enemy over whom he has unreviewable power. Here's the New York Times today.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
Quote, Trump administration lawyers have determined that an 18th century wartime law the president has invoked to deport suspected members of a Venezuelan gang allows federal agents to enter homes without a warrant. They're claiming the right, right?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
Have you seen news stories about how, wow, these new documents finally shed new light on the assassination or that some previously unknown fact about it has been revealed and this changes everything? Have you seen any news stories like that? No, no, no, you have not. And that is because the documents that genius Donald Trump insisted on Monday had to be released on Tuesday.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
What they're claiming the right to do is if somebody in the executive branch, somebody in ICE, some random border patrol officer looks at you and says, gang, then they don't need a warrant, they can go into your house, they can arrest you, forcibly detain you, and they can disappear you out of the country.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
This is from a declaration filed in court by a woman who fears her brother has been deported to that Salvadoran prison. She says her brother has never been part of a gang and that he has no criminal record.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
Quote, I last spoke to him on March 14th, 2025, and believe he was removed to El Salvador shortly after that because I have not heard from him since then and I can no longer find him on the ICE detainee locator. If he were detained anywhere in the U.S., I know he would contact me because we spoke almost daily while he was previously detained.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
If he were back in Venezuela, I would hear from him as well. I'm extremely concerned about the health and safety of my little brother. From a declaration filed by an attorney for a young man, she says, fled Venezuela for his safety. Quote, on Friday, March 14th, 2025, one of the attorneys assigned to his case called the detention facility where he was thought to be to try to schedule a legal call.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
He was told by the facility that his client was no longer there. He asked where his client was and was told by the facility employee that he did not know. Here's immigration lawyer Lindsay Teslowski. Quote, our client worked in the arts in Venezuela. He is LGBTQ. His tattoos are benign. But ICE submitted photos of his tattoos as evidence he is a gang member.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
His attorney planned to present evidence he is not. But he never got the chance because our client has been disappeared. Joining us now is Lindsay Teslowski. She's president of Immigrant Defenders Law Center. Ms. Teslowski, thank you so much for being here. I appreciate it.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
So this is unusual and correct me if I am wrong. I know that you have not previously identified your client when speaking to the press or when speaking publicly, but I understand that you want to share his first name and some photos with our viewers tonight. Is that correct?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
Do you know if he has any legal recourse at all? Do you have any means of contacting him? Or do you have any means of trying to track one down if you don't have one now?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
Those documents were almost entirely documents that had been previously released to the public under President Joe Biden when he released a bunch of them under previous under other presidents who had released other stuff. Almost all of this stuff had previously been released anyway. But this was a little different, right?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
Yeah, the blunt and unsupported assertion that all of these people must have been terrible gang members. And then the photos of your client there, I think, speak many thousands of words. Lindsay Teslowski, president of the Immigrant Defenders Law Center, representing this young man. Thank you for your time. I know that this is a developing story. I hope it is a legally developing story.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
And I hope you'll keep us apprised. Thanks for being with us tonight.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
All right. Governor Tim Walz joins us live here next. Stay with us. One of the fanciest rooms in the White House is the East Room. It's the largest reception room. It has these big swanky chandeliers. At least four different presidents' daughters got married in the East Room. When a president dies in office, they lie in state in the East Room.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
The East Room is supposed to be a venue for really big, really important events. Today, this is what the East Room of the White House looked like.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
It was rows of children seated at tiny desks in front of a big audience, all gathered around the president as he signed an executive order to abolish the Department of Education because they wanted to remind everybody exactly how cute and adorable school kids are when they're at their desks while they are eliminating government support for schools.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
Just about a week ago, Quinnipiac found that the proportion of Americans who oppose closing the Department of Education is 60%. The proportion of Americans who support the idea of closing the education department is just 33%. That's roughly, I don't know, two to one against.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
But maybe Trump figures if he kills the education department, nobody will be able to read polls like that anyway, let alone calculate the ratio. I should note here that Trump doesn't have the power to unilaterally close a federal department without Congress, but he's doing his best, hacking away at it piece by piece. One of those pieces is the National Center for Education Statistics.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
That's the part of our government responsible for measuring academic performance in American schools. They're getting rid of that as part of getting rid of the education department. It's kind of genius if you think about it. If you kill the Department of Education, that will have a likely negative impact on school performance.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
Because Donald Trump, genius, insisted that the documents he was ordering to be released, these documents would have to be unredacted. He made that explicit in his order, totally unredacted, nothing crossed out. And so on his orders, they released all of these documents that had been previously released, except this time they had nothing crossed out, nothing redacted.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
But if you kill the thing that measures school performance, it's like it didn't even happen, right? Joining us now is Minnesota's Governor Tim Walz. He was the first former teacher in 50 years to be part of a major party presidential ticket. And he's recently been barnstorming Republican congressional districts to highlight the unpopularity of Trump's agenda.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
Governor Walz, it's a pleasure to have you here tonight. Thank you.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
What's your reaction to closing the education department today?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
If you're going to have somebody who calls himself a king and who says elections don't count unless he wins them, if you're going to have an overthrow of the Constitutional Republic in favor of all power consolidated in one man who says term limits don't apply to him and Congress and the courts don't constrain him and all the rest of it, if you're going to do it,
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
When you're doing these town halls, and I know you've done a number of them already and you have plans to do more, mostly going to places where Republican members of Congress won't hold in-person town halls themselves. Are you hearing about the Department of Education? Are you hearing about Social Security?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
What are the kinds of concerns that people are voicing to you when they have the chance to talk to you about this stuff?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
And it turns out, you know what had been redacted the other times they had released these documents? You know what had been under those black boxes and previous releases of these same documents? You know what was under the Sharpie scratchouts on all these pages?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
Governor, since we've been on the air tonight, a story has broken in the New York Times, and it has broken since I have been on the air, and so I'm not fully read in on this. But I know that you've at least seen the headline, and I want to ask you just for your reaction to this. It's a pretty shocking story. The headline is, Musk, meaning Elon Musk, set to get access to top-secret U.S.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
plan for potential war with China. The lead is this, the Pentagon is scheduled tomorrow, Friday, to brief Elon Musk on the U.S. military's plan for any war that might break out with China. One official confirming to the Times that Musk is to be at the Pentagon on Friday, but offering no details.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
Mr. Musk, of course, has extensive financial interests in China, and so this, I think, is raising lots of alarm bells for a lot of different people. The Pentagon's war plans, known in military jargon as O-plans or operational plans, are among the military's most closely guarded secrets. If a foreign country was to learn how the U.S.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
planned to fight a war against them, it could reinforce its defenses and address its weaknesses, making the plans far less likely to succeed. The top secret briefing for the China war plan has 20 to 30 slides that lay out how the U.S. would fight such a conflict. It covers various options on what Chinese targets the U.S. could hit over what time period.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
Turns out what had been redacted was the social security numbers and birthdates of tons and tons of random people who worked for the government around the time that the Kennedy assassination was being investigated. So that is what he has ordered released. That's the big revelation from Donald Trump. Headline, White House seeks to contain damage from personal data in Kennedy files.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
And these would be the options that would be presented to Mr. Trump for decisions. For some reason, they have decided to show Elon Musk this level of detail about a potential war with China while he operates the largest Tesla, largest car factory, I believe, in China and has immense financial interest in that country and contacts with that country's government that he has not disclosed to the U.S.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
as part of maintaining his security clearance. I just got to get your reaction to that, sir.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, sir, thank you for making time to be here tonight. I appreciate it.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
We'll be right back. Stay with us. All right, that's going to do it for me for now. I will see you again tomorrow.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
Headline, social security numbers and other private information unmasked in JFK files. These geniuses, these big brains. Among the people who Donald Trump has just doxxed by publishing his full and unredacted social security number for no reason at all is his own lawyer, Joe DeGeneva, who worked for the Trump campaign and who represented Trump on some of the weirdest Russia and Ukraine stuff.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
In the Washington Post, quote, former Trump campaign lawyer Joseph DeGeneva, age 80, whose private information was included in the release, said, quote, it's absolutely outrageous. It's sloppy, unprofessional. DeGeneva continued, quote, it's like a first grade elementary level rule of security to redact things like that. First time in my life I've ever knowingly agreed with Joseph DeGeneva.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
But that's just the start.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
The Washington Post further discovered that Donald Trump, in his infinite wisdom, has just published the full, accurate, and complete, quote, social security numbers, birthplaces, and birthdates of not just random people, including his own lawyer, but, quote, more than 100 staff members of the Senate Church Committee and more than 100 social security numbers of staff members of the House Select Committee on Assassinations, which investigated the killing of John F. Kennedy.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
Now, awkwardly for Trump in terms of what he has wrought here, and awkwardly for the rest of us because of the grammar involved, the Post also has to sort of gingerly note that many of these staff members of the assassinations committee are themselves still alive. Right? I mean, just because they were on the assassinations committee doesn't mean they're not still alive and kicking. Right?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
And now Donald Trump has ordered all of them to be very thoroughly doxxed. which among other things appears to be quite illegal. Both the Washington Post and the New York Times spoke with experts who told them that this very well looks illegal. What Trump just did here appears to pretty bluntly violate U.S. privacy law.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
At least one person who had his or her social security number published by Trump has started discussing bringing a lawsuit against the government for having done this. Probably pretty good grounds to do that. It's also helpful to keep in mind who exactly we're talking about here. Right.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
If you are going to abolish the American form of government in favor of an autocratic and unopposed rule by one man, he better be good at it. Am I right? You know, he better be compas mentis. On the ball. If you're going to, like, overthrow 250 years of who we are as a country to instead just be like, let's say you.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
If these people were Senate staff members and House Select Committee staff members in the 1960s and 70s on committees that were doing intelligence investigations and the investigation of the Kennedy assassination and the investigation of the investigation. I mean, people doing that kind of work in government in the 60s and 70s.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
Well, a lot of those people stayed in government or in public service, and that was one step in what turned into a very impressive career in public service, right? A lot of these people ended up later on in their life with very impressive, very important jobs. The people who Trump just doxxed include this list. I mean, this is from the Washington Post again.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
Quote, many whose social security numbers were exposed had become high-ranking officials in Washington. They include a former assistant secretary of state, former US ambassador, researchers in the intelligence world, state department workers, and prominent lawyers. The Post was first to report that this is what Trump did.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
The New York Times adds this tonight, quote, White House officials acknowledged today that it was only after the papers were made public that they began combing through them for exposed details. Only after they were made public.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
So Trump was bumbling around in the halls of the Kennedy Center, being a genius, when he announced, when he blurted out Monday, apparently with no planning anywhere else in the government, when he just blurted out that the Kennedy assassination records will be released tomorrow. Because he said it, and that's how the government works now, they then released...
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
the documents the next day, Tuesday, and then, quote, on Wednesday, the day after that, that's when the White House ordered that the pages be combed for exposed social security numbers, which, of course, had all already been published by the hundreds. Now, after that ready, fire, aim routine, they're now trying to fix it.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
The White House has now, quote, directed the Social Security Administration to issue new Social Security numbers to the affected people in an extraordinary response to mitigate the potential harm of the disclosures. They will also be offered free credit monitoring.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
So, yeah, good luck, ambassadors and assistant secretaries of state and high end Washington lawyers, including some who worked for Trump. Good luck in your 70s and 80s. Now, working with the hugely diminished and unbelievably chaotic Social Security administration to restart in your 70s and 80s.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
everything in your official and financial life with your brand new social security number that Donald Trump is having to issue you today as an old person as if you were a brand new baby. And he has to do that because Donald Trump just published your full name, your birthday, your place of birth, and your unredacted social security number on a government website because what?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
Who's going to tell him no? Who's going to tell him that's not a good idea? And that actually is the most amazing part of all of this, because it does not actually appear to have been a mistake. It's not like they didn't see it coming, and so they were surprised when it happened.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
Look at this from The Times reporting tonight, quote, "...administration officials knew before the documents went out that releasing them without redactions would expose some personal information." They knew before the documents went out, but they did it anyway because he's the king.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
And what, you're going to tell him the genius brain fart he had about Kennedy while he was walking around the Kennedy Center is somehow not the world's greatest and well-thought-out idea? Who around him is going to be like, um, sir, um? It's not how the government works in an autocratic system, right?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
Like, if we're just going to have it be that one dude, you just hope that dude is... with it, right? Or instead, you could have what we have. On Monday this week, President Donald Trump went to the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., where he has recently fired the entire board and appointed himself as the new chairman.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
Asked about the debacle, the White House press secretary gave reporters this statement, quote, President Trump delivered on his promise of maximum transparency. Yes, yes, yes he did. And the maximum transparency here is like if jeans came in clear and nobody had underwear anymore. Yes, it's maximum transparency. I'm not sure that's good.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
He definitely delivered, yeah, and who were you or anyone else to question the inherent genius of every impulsive blurt of the 70-whatever-year-old god-king who rules without restraint and without any checks and balances and without anyone anywhere near him who ever suggests the word no, let alone pronounces it? Geniuses.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
Anyway, that's how conscientious they are about the sensitive, personally identifiable information of a lot of really influential people, including one of Trump's own Fox News-ready lawyers. And if they're that conscientious about those folks personally identifying information, guess how conscientious they are about yours. Today, a U.S.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
federal judge in Maryland ordered Trump to get Elon Musk's so-called Doge effort out of the Social Security Administration. Because, yeah, turns out, guess what they were doing in there? This is from the judge's ruling issued today at 2.12 p.m. Eastern time. Quote, the Doge team is essentially engaged in a phishing expedition at Social Security based on little more than suspicion.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
It has launched a search for the proverbial needle in the haystack without any concrete knowledge that the needle is actually in the haystack.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
Quote, to facilitate the expedition, members of the Social Security Doge team obtained unbridled access to the personal and private data of millions of Americans, including but not limited to Social Security numbers, medical records, mental health records, hospitalization records, driver's license numbers, bank and credit card information, tax information, income history, work history, birth and marriage certificates, and home and work addresses.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
And yet, the, quote, so-called experts on the Doge team never identified or articulated even a single reason for which the Doge team needs unlimited access to Social Security's entire record systems, thereby exposing personal, confidential, sensitive and private information that millions of Americans entrusted to their government.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
Indeed, the judge continues, the government has not even attempted to explain why a more tailored, measured, titrated approach is not suitable to the task. Instead, the government simply repeats its incantation of a need to modernize the system. Its method of doing so is tantamount to hitting a fly with a sledgehammer. So this is the judge's ruling today.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
The judge ordered that as of right now, Doge is hereby kicked out of all Social Security systems that contain any personally identifiable information. Doge is not allowed to retain any such information. They, quote, obtained, derived, copied or exposed from any Social Security system. They're required to delete information.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
all personally identifiable information they obtained, directly or indirectly, from any social security system, going back to inauguration day on January 20th. They must remove any software they installed on any social security system, and they cannot change any social security systems or alter any software code in anything at that agency. So ordered as of today.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
While skulking around that national cultural treasure on Monday, where he now personally intends to choose awardees, so get ready for a lot of, you know, kid rock and children's choirs who sing songs about the greatness of Donald Trump—
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
And this is another one of those circumstances, which we're kind of getting used to, in which the court's remedy is heartening. Oh, it seems good that they're stopped from doing all those things. But the reason it was needed is the opposite of heartening. Right?
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
I mean, what Trump gave Musk and the Doge kids at Social Security, look at that list again of what the judge has just told us they had access to. Quote,
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
non, this is non-anonymized, specific, personal and private data of millions of Americans, including but not limited to our social security numbers, our medical records, our mental health records, our hospitalization records, our driver's license numbers, our bank information, our credit card information, our tax information, our income history, our work history, our birth certificates, our marriage certificates, and our home and work addresses.
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump admin shows folly of blind obedience to someone who doesn't know what they're doing
That's what they were amassing on us at Social Security. And none of us had anything to do with shooting JFK. Or even looking into it. This was the steps of the Colorado State Capitol today. As Donald Trump signed an executive order to abolish the U.S. Department of Education, all across Colorado, demonstrations held today to stand up for education.
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
The data is in. It's been a month officially as of today for this new presidential term. And what the data says sort of broadly, bottom line, is that the country kind of hates this guy. I shouldn't say hate. It's not the right word. It's not a nice word. Maybe it's can't stand him. Um, or maybe I shouldn't characterize it at all. Uh, we'll just, I'll show you the numbers.
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
But when you do it, you need to effectuate it quickly, which is what we are experiencing now and why the last month has been so insane. Because they are trying to go as far as they can, as fast as they can, because they know this moment is the time when they will be able to move the furthest, provided they can get there fast.
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
the extent to which what they're doing can be slowed, the extent to which things can just be made more difficult for them, more annoying and uncomfortable for them, then the less far they'll be able to go.
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
And the thing that slows them down, if we are being real, the thing that slows them down and makes things more difficult for them and more annoying and uncomfortable for them is resistance to what they're doing. Resistance of all kinds. And their own party, the Republican Party, is not the only thing that matters, but it is crucial.
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
It's crucial on the negative side because Republicans do have their own political power to stop things or complain or ask questions or take action, particularly in Congress. They could do something if they wanted to.
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
But also on the positive side, because when Republicans do enable them and nod along or even encourage them, well, then they are encouraged not only to go as fast as they like, but to go even farther than they might have planned. And so Republicans are not the end-all, be-all in terms of what is going to happen to our country, but they are in a crucial and important position.
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
And so, yeah, when we get a data dump like we got today with all these national polls that have been released in the last day or two, when most Americans who are opposed to this administration see numbers like these ones that just came out, I mean, what this says to you, if you're in that boat, it tells you you're not alone. The rest of the country sees what's going on, too.
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
They think essentially like you do about this guy. They are against not only him in general, they're against all his folks and they're against everything he's trying to do. And if you are opposed to this administration, that may give you some courage, right? That may certainly change your feeling. You're not alone.
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
So that means he was coming in at minus one. And like I said, that was something we haven't seen with any other president. And to me, actually, it was shocking enough that I didn't think it would stand. I thought that would be sort of an outlier. But now look at this. Gallup just did its follow-up poll, now one month into Trump being back in office, and his numbers have gotten worse.
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
Maybe that'll make it more likely that you'll go to that town hall, that you'll call your member of Congress or your senator. Maybe you'll go to that protest. Maybe you'll join an indivisible group. Maybe you'll do something you haven't already done because this buoys you a little bit. But on the other side, when Republicans see these same numbers,
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
It may not make them feel good, but it may change the math for them. It may change their own raw political calculation of whether they are going to ever swallow hard and say something, or maybe even do something. Whether they might actually use their power to say no, at least on one thing. No, on this I'm not going along.
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
We've got a story for you tonight on one Republican senator who got an absolute earful from her constituents last night, who appears from reports of that town hall, appears to have found herself agreeing with what her constituents were telling her about how much damage Trump was doing to her state.
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
That Republican senator, having spent last night that way, she got up this morning, went to work in Washington and cast a vote against him. Right? That dynamic is real. He is unpopular. He is historically unpopular. He is the least popular president in the history of modern polling at this point in his presidency. The country does not like him. They do not like what he is doing.
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
They do not like the people that he is putting in place. The more he talks about specific things he wants you to associate with him, the more the American public hates those things specifically. The more the country shows that, the better chance that Democrats will get stronger and faster and more bold in their opposition, and the better chance that Republicans might start to join them.
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
It is that simple. There is no magic bullet. There's no shortcut in standing up for democracy. When you're standing up for democracy, you know what's in your toolkit? Oh, look, democracy. That's it. This is how it works. And the hardest part of it is to—the hardest part of it to build, the hardest part of it to get on your side is public opinion, right?
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
But on this guy, we're only one month in and public opinion is definitely already there on this guy in a way that no president has ever seen before. And that is really good for people who are opposed to him and people who are trying to construct a regime of opposition to him that includes all comers. Right. Public opinion is against him. That is irreplaceable. and necessary and huge.
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
And public opinion being against him, mark my words, is only going to get worse for him. Because, again, it's simple. Look at what he's doing. Just look at these headlines from the past 48 hours. Headline, Trump team plans deep cuts at office that funds recovery from big disasters.
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
The Trump administration plans to all but eliminate the office that oversees America's recovery from the largest disasters, raising questions about how the United States will rebuild from hurricanes, wildfires, and other calamities. The administration plans to cut the staff of that office by 84%. Headline, Trump administration cancels federal contract for 9-11 research.
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
Headline, Trump administration cuts 9-11 survivors fund. Republicans join Democrats in rebuke. Headline, long lines and canceled rentals. Firings bring chaos to national parks. Quote, at Yosemite on Friday, the Trump administration fired the only locksmith on staff. He was the sole employee with the keys and institutional knowledge needed to rescue visitors from locked restrooms.
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
He's not minus one anymore. Now he's minus six, which makes him, at this point in his term, not only the most disliked and unpopular president in 70-plus years of Gallup polling, Gallup says it actually puts him 15 points below the average polling for presidents. Again, over the last 72 years in which they have been doing this polling.
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
The wait to enter Arizona's Grand Canyon National Park this past weekend was twice as long as usual after the administration let go four employees who worked at the south entrance, where roughly 90% of the park's nearly 5 million annual visitors passed through. at Gettysburg National Military Park in Pennsylvania.
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
Last week's widespread layoffs gutted the team that manages reservations for renting historic farmhouses. Visitors received notifications that their reservations have been canceled indefinitely. Here's a popular one. Deep cuts to the Center for Alzheimer's and Related Dementias at the National Institutes of Health. This is a research center that is actually named for a Republican senator.
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
Its full name is the Roy Blunt Center for Alzheimer's and Related Dementias. Donald Trump is gutting that. That's going to be a really popular cut, because obviously that's a lot of waste, right? Research to try to cure Alzheimer's? Who wants that? Well done, President Trump, getting rid of all that waste. What do people with Alzheimer's contribute anyway, right? Who cares?
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
Have you ever had any trouble getting in touch with the IRS when you needed to? Have you ever needed, or like getting something from the IRS website or like calling into their call center, using their chat bot or anything? Have you ever needed help from the IRS? Needed a form? Maybe you needed some instructions on how to file something. Have you ever called into one of those helplines?
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
Because it is tax season now. And today the IRS fired nearly 7,000 people who work at the IRS. So this year, over these next few weeks, if you have any problems, any glitches, any delays, any trouble getting through, thank you, Donald Trump. Headline, FAA fires hundreds of workers, sparking concerns about air safety. Americans have been clamoring for that.
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
Headline, Trump dismantled government fight against foreign influence operations. Oh, good. They just sent out notice. The government just sent out notice tonight that telehealth appointments aren't going to be covered anymore on Medicare. Oh, good. Everybody's clamoring for that.
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
Already, this kind of thing, the way they're running the government is creating what Politico.com tonight calls private Republican panic over the fact that Republicans in Congress are being, quote, inundated with calls from frantic constituents. Yes, I bet they are. And that is set to get worse, not better for them, unless they can get him to stop at least some of what he's doing.
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
He started off a month ago historically unpopular. Now, one month in, his poll numbers are even worse. And just bear with me a second. Just take a quick look at what—just a sampling of what local news coverage is like right now in our country. And tell me if you think, from looking at local news, you think the public is going to start liking him any better, given what he is doing.
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
At this point, in a presidential term, one month in, the average is 15 points higher than where Trump is right now. Nobody has ever started off a presidential term this poorly in the eyes of the American people. I mean, all presidents are above water at this point in their presidencies, right out of the gate. Trump's the only one.
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
It's your neighbors. That's what local news looks like, a little slice of it just today. I really think that they are trying to make it so the laws of politics no longer apply because we no longer have politics, right? So the public hating what they're doing will no longer matter because they don't intend to ever have to answer to the public ever again.
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
I think that is ultimately what they are aiming at. But that's what they're aiming at. It doesn't mean we're there yet. And right now, in our time today, the unpopularity of what they're doing really does create real political pressure at the source to stop him, to at least slow him down. And on that, we've got much more to come tonight. Stay with us. Do your job.
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
They're shouting at the end there. Do your job. Republican Congressman Rich McCormick hosted a town hall tonight in Georgia. People lined up tonight outside Roswell City Hall in Georgia for a chance to ask this congressman about the federal spending cuts and the mass firings of federal employees and other things the Trump administration's doing.
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
In another clip that was posted by Greg Blustein at the Atlanta Journal-Journal Constitution, you can hear one woman reminding Congressman McCormick that it is Congress— Congress that is supposed to control the budget.
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
Again, that was Roswell, Georgia tonight. Congressman Rich McCormick, a Republican of Georgia, getting a very hard time from his constituents.
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
So one of the latest scenes of questions and pushback on what Trump's been doing his first month in office earlier today in Oregon, people packed a room in the Pendleton, Oregon Convention Center for a town hall with Oregon Republican Congressman Cliff Bence. Congressman Bence tried to defend Trump's cuts.
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
It may be for the best. Rain of booze. Nobody in that room thinks it's going to be for the best, Senator. I mean, Congressman, excuse me, Congressman Cliff Bentz of Oregon. I was today in Oregon last night in Alaska. This is interesting. Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski faced questions from her constituents in a big teletown hall.
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
Trump was underwater with the American public from day one, and since then he's been sinking like a cinder block in an ocean trench. I did not know to expect that. And, you know, to be fair, part of the reason I'd expected that that Gallup number might go up and not down is because Gallup's not the only game in town.
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
And Senator Murkowski in that teletown hall, according to accounts of how that went, said really appeared to take her constituents' side as they expressed their grave opposition to what Trump is doing. She reportedly told her constituents on this town hall that Trump's efforts to hold back funding that's already been appropriated by Congress, quote, cannot be allowed to stand.
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
She said, quote, if we in Congress allow that, we effectively cede some of our authority. She said, quote, we have to stand up. The we has to be more than just me. And this is where it becomes more of a challenge. We have to stand up. Today, in the United States Senate, after that call with her constituents last night, Lisa Murkowski was in fact part of a very small we.
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
She was one of two Republicans, along with Susan Collins, who joined every Democrat in voting against Kash Patel to be director of the FBI. Now, bottom line, they needed four Republican no's to stop him. They got two. Two is not none. Joining us now is Senator Cory Booker, Democrat of New Jersey, who's at the Senate tonight as a vote-a-rama is underway on a budget bill.
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
Senator Booker, it's really nice of you to step out to talk to us tonight. Thanks for being here.
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
First of all, can you tell us what's going on in the Senate right now and what you see as potential outcomes, both of tonight's kinetic activity, but also ultimately this bill?
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
Senator, I feel like one of the things that has started to happen in the last few days is that this White House and the president's top campaign donor, who has a large role in the government now, they seem to keep grab and hold of a series of third rails.
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
So, Elon Musk is talking about Social Security as a scam, and it is full of, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars of waste, and it's a program that essentially needs to be destroyed because it's so corrupt. The president endorsed the House Republicans plan that has huge cuts to Medicaid, which tens of millions of Americans depend on for their health care.
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
There were other national well-regarded quality polls that came out right at the start of Trump's term that did show him in positive territory, not big positive territory, but still positive. Like, for example, the Quinnipiac poll. which came out in late January, right after Trump was sworn in, it showed Trump doing okay. I mean, not great, but in that poll, he was above water. He was plus three.
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
Today, the White House said that President Trump is open to, yes, taking a whack at Medicare, cutting Medicare. We just had reporting tonight from The Washington Post, and this is a different order of magnitude, but they're talking about dissolving the leadership of the Postal Service. and the absorbing the postal service into the administration somehow, meaning getting rid of the post office.
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
All of these things, for different reasons, are third rails in American politics because they're foundational to what Americans get from our government. What do you make of their willingness to grab so many things that have felled lesser politicians than these guys?
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
New Jersey Senator Cory Booker tonight, hard at work and will be there overnight. In his words, making the Republicans squirm as they fight over this budget bill. Sir, thanks for stepping out for a moment to talk with us. Good luck tonight. Thank you.
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
All right. More news ahead tonight. Stay with us. For 26 years, the state of Missouri was represented in Congress partly by Republican Roy Blunt. He started as a congressman, served in House Republican leadership for years. Then he became a senator.
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
Among everything else Roy Blunt did in Congress, he was a persistent advocate for Alzheimer's research, specifically funding it at the NIH, National Institute of Health. And so when Senator Blunt announced in 2022 that he was retiring from public service, the NIH decided they were going to dedicate their very important Alzheimer's Research Center to him.
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
But now though, again, one month in that same poll, Quinnipiac, oh, it's flipped. He has gone from plus three in his first week in office to minus four now. That is a quick turnaround for a poll that initially looked OK for him less than a month ago. It looked OK for him. Now it looks terrible for him. Why is that? Well, it's because Trump's been doing stuff.
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
They call it the Roy Blunt Center for Alzheimer's and Related Dementias Research. At the dedication ceremony in 2022, Senator Blunt talked about the importance of the NIH, the importance of Alzheimer's research funding specifically. A bunch of other Republicans from Congress showed up at that event as well to talk about how important it was to fund that specific program.
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
Here, for example, was Republican Congressman Tom Cole, who is still a member of Congress today.
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
It's a very special thing, Congressman Cole making the point that funding Alzheimer's research, funding that Alzheimer's center at NIH, isn't just a good thing to do in the abstract. It also, in the long run, saves the government money. You can probably guess where this is headed.
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
The New Republic now reports that the Trump administration has slashed funding to that Republican beloved Alzheimer's center. Michael Gracious, a neurologist at Stanford University, tells the New Republic, quote, the center has developed infrastructure and a brain trust that is really unmatched in the world in terms of its advances in Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
Weakening it will set Alzheimer's and Parkinson's research back substantially. I should tell you, we reached out to Congressman Tom Cole's office to see if he had any reaction to these reported cuts to this very special thing that he's so publicly supported. He hasn't gotten back to us yet. We hope he will.
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
But, you know, if you're looking for a poster child for something this administration is doing that has no evident support from anyone, that will cause grave harm. And that can be expected to have not just public opposition and expert opposition, but specifically Republican opposition, too. I think today, at least, you've got your winner. More ahead.
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
Michael Gracious is the founding director of the Stanford Center for Memory Disorders, and he's the principal investigator of a lab at Stanford that's focused on the genetics of Alzheimer's disease. We've just learned that Trump's cuts are now targeting the Roy Blunt Center for Alzheimer's and Related Dementias Research at the NIH.
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
Joining us now is Stanford University neurologist Michael Gracious. Dr. Gracious, thank you very much for joining us tonight.
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
Everybody's got a decision to make every day about what to cover. I'm shocked both by the attack on Alzheimer's research, but also because I would expect the political support on this to be bulletproof. What do you make of these cuts?
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
And what the data shows is that almost every single thing he has done is soundly and clearly and in some cases wildly unpopular with the American people. Again, just look at that Quinnipiac poll that shows Trump underwater right now. More Americans disapproving of him than approving of him, right? He was plus three right after he got sworn in. Now he's minus four.
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
Is it fair to say that this hub, this center at NIH, getting cut and getting targeted in this way, is going to have an impact not just on what is done at NIH, but what is done around the world? The intramural-extramural distinction that you're making, I'm not sure, is one that our viewers necessarily understand, unless you can explain it quickly.
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
I think people are wondering if this is just one center that's going offline or if this is going to set us back as a country.
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
Wow, that is stark. Thank you for helping us understand it. Stanford University neurologist Michael Gratius, thank you for your work and thank you for your clarity tonight. I appreciate it.
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
I'll be right back. Okay, I got to go, but I got one last thing. The new episode of Alex Wagner's podcast, Trumpland, just dropped today. This episode is called The War on Yolk. It's about how the avian flu, the bird flu, is messing with everybody from farmers to consumers to everybody who has to do anything with eggs. It's really, really good, and I recommend that you should listen.
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
Anyway, it just came out. You can use that scannable code on your screen there to get it. All right, I'll see you again tomorrow.
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
I will say we probably should have seen this coming. I didn't necessarily believe that it was coming this far, this fast, but you know, right out of the gate, Gallup did polling, um, just after the inauguration. They did their first poll on public opinion of Trump in this second term, starting immediately after the inauguration.
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
You can see in the internals of that poll a little bit about what's driving that. Do you approve of Trump's handling of foreign policy? No. Do you approve of Trump's handling of trade? No. Do you approve of Trump's handling of the federal workforce? No. Do you approve of Trump's handling of the Russia Ukraine conflict? No. Do you approve of Trump's handling of the Israel Hamas conflict?
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
No, no, no, no, no, no. Do you approve of Trump's handling of the economy? No. No, the American public does not approve of his handling of the economy. And stick a pin in that one because that one's interesting for a number of reasons, and we will come back to that. But you take a look at the broad areas of responsibility a U.S. president has.
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
And on all these broad points, the American public just says, no, Donald Trump, we do not like the way you are handling any of these issues. And then when you drill down, not just to—you drill down from the broad categories of things—
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
to instead the stuff he wants you to focus on, the very specific things he's done, his signature specific issues and his signature gambits thus far since he's been in office, the stuff that he thinks makes him look great, well, those things are even worse than the broad categories. On those things, the stuff he's doing is catastrophically unpopular. I mean, look at this.
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
This is from the same poll. Do you like Donald Trump's genius idea for Gaza? By a 40-point margin, the American people are against Trump on that. How about DEI, which they've tried to turn into a slur? Do you think policies focused on increasing diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workplace are a good thing? The American people say, yes, actually. Yes, actually, we do think that's a good thing.
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
By a 15-point margin, Americans are for that. How about tariffs? Donald Trump's favorite thing, right? Do you think Donald Trump's tariffs will help the U.S. economy or hurt it? By an 11-point margin, the American people say his tariffs will hurt the American economy, not help. about Vladimir Putin, right? This is one of the most important things that Trump has done since being back in office.
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
You know, Trump's sitting there in the Oval Office telling reporters, yes, I trust Vladimir Putin, as he throws out 70 plus years of our post-World War II alliances and decides that now we're going to be allied against Europe and with Russia, all because he trusts Putin so much.
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
Well, Quinnipiac polled on that specifically, quote, do you think the United States should trust Russian President Vladimir Putin or not? 81% of the American public says not, not. But Trump does. The same national polling shows the American public do not approve of Elon Musk. Individually, Elon Musk's approval is minus 12%. but everybody else in his government is underwater.
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
The American public has apparently seen enough already to be against, to be disapproving, more than approving, of not just Elon Musk by a mile, but Trump as well, and also J.D. Vance is underwater. And Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the brain worm podcast guy who's now U.S. health secretary. And Tulsi Gabbard, who really is the director of national intelligence, believe it or not.
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
Literally, they had their first poll in the field the first full day Trump was in office, the day after he was sworn in. That is the definition of the honeymoon period, right? That's when you are at your high watermark in terms of what people are expecting from you and hoping for from you. But in that first Gallup poll of this presidential term, sort of shockingly, Trump was already underwater.
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
And Kash Patel, who was confirmed today as FBI director. All of them are underwater in the new polling. The American public does not like any of them. Not a single one of them is above water. Nobody who they polled on is above water in the Trump administration. And it's not just Quinnipiac. Look at the polling on Elon Musk in the new CNN poll that's out today.
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
By a two to one margin, Elon Musk having this prominent role in the administration is seen by the American people as a bad thing. Two to one against his prominent role in the administration. In the new Washington Post poll, which we're going to talk about in a second, they've got an Elon Musk question as well.
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
Are you concerned about Elon Musk in his government role gaining access to your personal data and information? The American people say, yes, yes, we are concerned about that, by a 29-point margin. Elon Musk being somehow empowered to shut down federal government programs, is that a good thing or a bad thing? By a two-to-one margin, the American people think that is a bad thing.
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
In today's CNN poll, overall, Donald Trump is underwater by five points. In the new poll from Pew Research, Donald Trump is underwater by four points. In the new poll from Reuters, Donald Trump is underwater by seven points. In the new poll from The Washington Post and Ipsos that's out today, they've got Trump underwater by eight points. All of this absolutely historically unprecedented.
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
No president has ever come out of the gate with numbers like this ever before. And it is across the board. But on that Washington Post one, look at this. Look deeper into that. They've got a minus eight. Look, the proportion of Americans who are strongly for him is 27%. The proportion of Americans who are strongly against him is 37%. So yes, your perception, your anecdotal perception is correct.
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
He does have a small, fervent base of support, but the base of fervent opposition to him is much larger, like 10 points larger.
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
The same poll also asked, do you want the next Congress, the Congress that's going to be elected next year in the midterms, do you want that Congress to be controlled by the Democrats to act as a check on Trump, or do you want it to be controlled by the Republicans to support Trump's agenda?
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
By a 13-point margin, the country says, Democrats, please, we would prefer the Democrats to be in charge in the next Congress. In the Washington Post polling, do you support Trump banning transgender people from the military? No, by 11 points. Do you support Trump laying off large numbers of federal workers? No, by 19 points. Do you support Trump shutting down USAID? No, by 21 points.
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
Do you support Trump pardoning people convicted of violent crimes related to the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021? Do you support Trump's pardon of people convicted of violent crimes on J6? What do you think the number is going to be on that one? The answer obviously is no. The American people do not support that. But the proportion of Americans who say that is 83%.
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
That was his first major act upon taking office as president. 83% of the public disagrees with it. That's a bad plan in politics. Trump started off this term in office with less of the public approving of him than any other president has ever measured in modern polling. Since then, everything he has done has made the public dislike him even more strongly.
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
And the things he went out of his way to do first, and the things he crows the loudest about, are the things the American public likes the least. So the stuff that he's decided to make the biggest deal out of, to like hitch his wagon to, to make his presidency all about because he thinks the public loves it, the public hates that stuff the most. And, you know, I mentioned the economy.
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
In his first week in office, more Americans disapproved of him than approved of him. I mean, only by one point, but still, that's unheard of. That's a more than unusual thing in presidential polling.
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
I said stick a pin in that. There's something interesting there. Whether or not you think the economy is the most important thing in the country, whether that is what, you know, floats your boat. We have learned the hard way, right, about the distance between what Americans think about the economy and how the economy is actually doing. I understand. I understand.
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
So I understand there's a lot of feelings about polling about the economy and what that means for politics. But in Donald Trump's history as a political figure, one thing he has been able to bank on is a perception, reality-based or not, that he knows what he's doing when it comes to the economy. This is the whole billionaire vibe, right?
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
Oh, he seems so rich, so therefore he must be good with money. It's never felt to me like somebody who buys golden toilets is the obvious choice for a good steward of money. But what do I know? That said, look at what's going on with Trump and specifically the perception of whether he knows what he's doing or not on the economy.
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
I mentioned in the Quinnipiac poll when Americans were asked, do you approve of Trump's handling of the economy? The answer was no. He's minus four on the economy. Americans disapprove of Trump's handling of the economy. CNN specifically asks, has Trump done enough to reduce the price of everyday goods? 62% of the public says no.
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
Even among Republican-leaning voters, specifically, a majority of Republican-leaning voters say Trump is not doing a good job on bringing prices down. In the Washington Post, do you approve or disapprove of Trump's handling of the economy? Disapprove. He's minus eight. That is the worst number he has had on the economy in that poll since the first year of his first term in office in 2017.
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
Look, in the Reuters poll, the number of voters who approve of the job he's doing on the economy is only 39 percent. That's lower than they have ever recorded for him in that poll, including all of his first term. Asked specifically if people approve of his handling of prices, of the issue of inflation, the Reuters number is even worse, 32 percent approval. That's an absolutely disastrous number.
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
Gallup, in fact, said at the time that in the 70-plus years they have been doing presidential polling, Donald Trump is the only president for whom his approval ratings were underwater right at the start of his term in office, meaning more people disliked him than liked him. So in that first week Gallup poll, Trump was underwater, 47 approving, 48% disapproving.
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
for somebody who has done everything he can to try to make American politics all about prices and inflation. And again, you may not think that prices or voters' perception of the economy or voters' feelings about the president's handling of the economy are the most important things in the world. That may or may not be what drives your own feelings and motivations when it comes to politics.
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
But you know what those things do? they keep every politician who has to run for reelection up at night, all night, every night. Because perceptions on the economy and general approval slash disapproval numbers, those are the closest things we've got to something that is determinative to political careers in American politics. And I can hear you through the TV. I can't see you through the TV.
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
I could lie and say that I can't. But I can get the vibe from here. I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, yeah, Meadow, sure. Sure, okay, that's all well and good, provided we're ever going to have another election. I know. I know, I know. It is physically impossible to outflank me when it comes to pessimism as to what the Trump movement has in mind for our country.
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
I am right there with you on that. But you know what? I am not thinking here about 2026. I'm not even thinking about the off-year elections in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race in April or in Virginia in November. I'm not even thinking about that. I am thinking about right now in Washington, D.C., and about how much farther they're going to be able to go
The Rachel Maddow Show
From policy to personnel, Trump scores historically low poll numbers
with what does feel like an attempt to blitzkrieg right through the law to abolish the Constitutional Republic and impose a new form of government in which they don't intend to abide opposition of any kind or to ever leave power. That is what I think is going on. And, you know, you can plan that for years. You can even plan that for generations.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
Fireworks day today in the news. There's so much to get to. Most importantly, I think, thousands of people fired by Donald Trump are getting their jobs back today because of the first round of proverbial fireworks that went off in a California federal courthouse. And I just, just, just got the transcript of what happened there. Trying all day to get it. Finally got it.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
A Q&A handout was given to IRS employees. It included this question, how should I store my laptop and accessories at the end of the day if I don't have a permanent desk? The answer, quote, employees should secure their laptops and equipment in secure locations, such as via cable lock to a designated storage area, locker, or permanent furniture fixture. This is what they're telling IRS to do.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
Buy a cable lock, like for your bike, and then like lock your laptop to a credenza. Or maybe you can find a really heavy potted plant. See if you can find a pillar. And then you can lock your laptop to that. All your stuff. You just lock your stuff to that. Hopefully everything's got like hooks.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
That's how Donald Trump is running the IRS, the agency that collects all the funds that run the federal government. That's how he's running the agency that is supposed to process hundreds of millions of tax returns that are due in one month. Do you think you're going to get your refund this year?
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
We are keeping a close eye tonight on what is going on at the IRS, even with all the probationary employees ordered reinstated today. The Washington Post broke the news today that Trump intends now to fire another 18,000 people from the IRS. He wants them gone by May 15th. There also appears to be a lot of concern about one particular firing that just happened there.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
They just fired the top lawyer at the IRS. That is reportedly ringing some major alarm bells by people who know how that agency works. So we will be keeping eyes on the IRS. Markets tanked again today on purpose because of Donald Trump. The S&P 500 is now down more than 10 percent in less than a month. 10 percent in less than a month.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
Both the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq are now in what they call correction territory. And that sounds good, but it's not. The Dow dropped another 500, another 500 points today. Today, the Trump administration, oops, had to pull another high-profile nominee. This time, it was the vaccine conspiracy theorist Dave Weldon, whom Trump had nominated to run the CDC.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
They pulled his confirmation this morning, just before his confirmation hearing, which was scheduled for this morning. They pulled it at the last minute because Dave Weldon apparently does not have the votes to get through the United States Senate and get confirmed. Or at least I think so. That's what he tried to explain himself
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
in a bizarre, misspelled, and typo-ridden letter he released after they pulled his name, in which he repeatedly praised Bobby Kennedy Jr., but misspelled Bobby, because that's a hard one. The Trump administration today—oops— also apparently well and truly decided that it might have been a mistake to try to send random immigrants to Guantanamo as if they were al-Qaeda.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
As of today, they have now officially emptied the makeshift prison they were trying to set up at Guantanamo, which Trump said was going to hold 30,000 immigrants. It now holds zero.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
Today, this was the lobby of Trump Tower in Manhattan as Jewish protesters said, quote, not in our name and engaged in mass peaceful civil disobedience in protest of Trump ordering the deportation of a Columbia University student named Mahmoud Khalil. They ordered his deportation. They are trying to revoke his green card specifically because he was involved in protests against the war in Gaza.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
You can see their signs today in the lobby of Trump Tower. Come for one, face us all. Fight Nazis, not students. Jews say do not comply. Dozens of people were arrested in that act of civil disobedience today by Jewish activist groups. Today, NBC News reports that Donald Trump has given the order to the U.S. Defense Department to prepare an invasion plan for Panama.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
to prepare an invasion plan for the United States to send U.S. troops to Panama to invade that country to seize the Panama Canal by force. He has given the order to the Defense Department to prepare that plan. And you know what? I'm sure the American people are going to love that. Everybody's going to sign right up to follow, you know, Corporal Vance into an invasion of Panama.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
Trump today continued to insist that Canada must become the 51st state in the United States. He says that is the only way out of the tariff insanity he is currently using to butcher the economies of both our countries. That's the way out, he says. Canada has to become the 51st state or he's going to keep doing what he's doing.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
In the Oval Office today, Trump insisted in front of the head of NATO that the United States is going to annex Greenland. He said today he thought, quote, that would happen. The prime minister of Greenland responded by saying that he is convening the leaders of all Greenland's political parties to, quote, tighten our rejection of Trump. In Denmark, the reaction was clear as a bell.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
That's not the way it works in the U.S. District Court, the judge says. Quote, I'm going to talk to the government about that in a minute. I had expected to have an evidentiary hearing today in which these people would testify. And if they wanted to get your people on the stand, I was going to make that happen too. It would be fair. But instead, we have been frustrated in that.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
The head of the defense committee in the Danish parliament said tonight in response, quote, it would mean war. He said, quote, it would mean war between two NATO countries. Which, of course, would be the end of NATO, among other things. But the end of NATO, for the record, is the thing that Vladimir Putin wants more than anything.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
It's the thing that Donald Trump could give him that would really mean the most to him. It's Putin's reason for living. Vladimir Putin today, quite predictably, rejected the supposed ceasefire deal that the United States presented to Russia on the Ukraine war. Wow, who could have seen that coming?
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
Trump will respond, obviously, by giving Putin more things he might want, to which Putin will keep saying no. That's just today's news, some of today's news on Donald Trump. Does this sound like a populist, popular leader doing things that the people like and that the people want? I mean, just on the, like, the Russia thing, new Quinnipiac polling out today.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
Which country comes closer to sharing the values of the United States, Ukraine or Russia? The American people say Ukraine, 65%. Russia, 9%. Same poll. Is Donald Trump not tough enough on Russia? Correct. Donald Trump is not tough enough on Russia, says more than 60% of the American people. Here's a straight-up clear view. Do you have a favorable or unfavorable view of Vladimir Putin?
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
The proportion of Americans who have a favorable view of Vladimir Putin is 7%. The proportion of Americans who have an unfavorable view of Vladimir Putin is 81%. And where would you put Donald Trump in that mix?
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
The US economy and the US government and all of America's international relationships are being set on fire by a leader who is being opposed in the courts for his illegal actions and who is being opposed in the streets by a public that is increasingly horrified by what he is doing. There is not going to be an easy way out of this, but there is going to have to be some kind of way out of this.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
This is a collision course from 10 different directions. Congressman Mike Levin joins us straight ahead. Stay with us. Hamilton, Montana, about 5,000 people live there altogether. It's home to the Rocky Mountain Laboratories, which is part of the National Institutes of Health. It's home to a lot of U.S. Forest Service workers. It's an absolutely beautiful part of the country.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
Last night, Hamilton City Council held a meeting, and they actually had to move it from where they usually meet to the local middle school because so many people showed up to talk to the local city council.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
The judge then says to the lawyer for the plaintiff's quote, I'd like to hear your views on what relief should be issued today. T-O-D-A-Y. Today. The lawyer. Thank you, Your Honor. We are aligned in wanting that to happen as well. He spelled out T-O-D-A-Y.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
This council has been diligently trying to find answers, including bringing townspeople together, moving the meeting to the middle school so everybody could fit. And that report was from local KPAX. That was Hamilton, Montana last night. Tonight in New Jersey, former Democratic Congressman
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
Tom Malinowski has been holding a town hall in person in his old district, which is now represented by a Republican. Constituents in that district have spent weeks asking Republican Congressman Tom Kaine to meet with them. Tom Kaine has been refusing to do so. And so the guy who used to represent that district, the Democrat Tom Malinowski, had stepped in tonight to do it himself.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
It's ongoing in New Jersey tonight. Tomorrow afternoon, Minnesota's Democratic Governor Tim Walz, the Democratic vice presidential nominee this past year, he's going to Iowa. He's going to hold a town hall in Des Moines in a red but very competitive congressional district. Same thing on Saturday. Governor Wallace is going to Nebraska. He's going to be holding a town hall in Omaha.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
Again, a red but very competitive congressional district. Republicans are not holding town halls in places like this, and so Democrats are coming in and doing it for them. Governor Wallace will do more of these town halls in Republican districts in Wisconsin, in Ohio, in his home state of Minnesota.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
California Congressman Ro Khanna, a Democrat, is planning town halls in three different Republican districts next weekend. It would not be fair to say that no Republicans in Congress are willing to go against their party's advice and hold tone hells in person. They are occasionally still happening.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
And so then they have a conversation, the judge and the lawyer for the plaintiffs, the lawyer who's suing the Trump administration on behalf of the fired employees. And they talk about what the fired employees who are suing the Trump administration, what they're seeking from the judge today, the kind of relief they want.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
For example, North Carolina tonight, Republican Congressman Chuck Edwards has been answering questions and facing the music from his constituents in Asheville.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
Well, at least they like that answer. Republican Congressman Chuck Edwards getting an earful from his constituents in North Carolina tonight, and good on him for doing that. For the most part, when Republicans are willing to do town halls at all, they're only willing to do teletown halls, you know, virtual ones.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
Last night, we thought we had found a forthcoming one in California, a Republican who was willing to hold an in-person town hall. Turns out that was actually me totally screwing up. and calling Democratic California Congressman Mike Levin a Republican. 100% my error. And I apologize for that. He is holding a town hall. He is a Democrat. He also holds lots of town halls.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
His next one is this weekend for his constituents in San Juan Capistrano. Congressman Levin joins us next. Stay with us. We are expecting a vote tomorrow afternoon on a continuing resolution, essentially to keep the government funded and avoid a shutdown that would otherwise happen tomorrow night at midnight.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
This evening, Democratic Senate Leader Chuck Schumer set off a proverbial Roman candle inside a phone booth.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
when he announced that he will vote for the continuing resolution to keep the government funded, this after a furious day of lobbying Democratic senators for them to vote no, to let the Republicans shut down the government if they weren't going to work with Democrats to do anything substantively to change course.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
They say they want a list of everybody who's been fired that haven't been able to get that or even an enumeration from the government of how many people have been fired. They also want people to be reinstated if they have been fired illegally. So they go through all those details. Then it's time for the Trump administration lawyer to make his side of the case.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
On the Appropriations Committee in the House sits Congressman Mike Levin, a Democrat of California. Congressman Levin, I am very sorry to say, last night I referred to as a Republican on this show. That was totally on me. But Congressman Levin, I want to tell you that you have a lot of constituents who watch this show and who are very, very, very prompt in letting people know how wrong they are.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
when they do wrong stuff on television. I am very sorry about that. It was nice to meet thousands of your constituents last night online. And it is really nice to have you here.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
Well, as I said, they're very online and they're very prompt, and I owe it to them. Let me ask you about the news today in the House. You're on the Appropriations Committee in the House. House Democrats voted no on this continuing resolution. There was a big lobbying effort to get Senate Democrats to vote no on this as well.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
The Senate Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer, tonight said he's going to vote yes to keep the government funded, essentially with no concessions from the Republicans at all. What's your reaction to that?
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
What are you hearing from your constituents? I know you sent out a survey to your constituents over the last few days asking if they've been directly affected by the massive cuts to the federal workforce and the way that the federal government is essentially being hacked down like a sapling in Washington.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
What are you hearing back so far in terms of the effects in your district, but also what your constituents want you to do?
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
And he starts explaining to the judge that all these fired workers, the only reason they were fired is because nobody wanted them. Nobody told anybody to fire anything. There was no instructions to fire people. These are just unwanted workers. If anybody wanted them back, they surely would have been rehired by now, right? At which point the judge interjects.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
I want to ask about something you referenced in terms of the court orders that we are seeing. We're now starting to see really, really consequential orders, particularly from federal courts, ordering the reinstatement of fired workers. We had a really big ruling today in a federal court in California, in Northern California.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
We've just in the last few minutes had word of another really, really important ruling along those same lines from a federal court in Maryland. We're going to have details on that. In just a moment, we're just making sure that we're crossing all our T's and dotting all our I's on that.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
But we're also seeing from the president's top campaign donor, Elon Musk, from a lot of people around the president, we're seeing efforts to undercut the judiciary, efforts to say that individual judges are illegitimate or shouldn't be allowed to rule on certain cases, that judges ought to be fired, they ought to be impeached if they have ruled against Trump even on procedural matters.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
I wonder what you think about the balance of what courts are doing to constrain what's happening at the administration level, but also the attacks on the courts that we're seeing in response to that expression of authority.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
Yeah, I think that Senator Schumer has set something off tonight in Democratic politics. The reaction to him saying that he's going to vote for that CR, I'm not sure he knew to expect. As you point out, that vote's going to be tomorrow afternoon. There's a lot of time between now and then. We'll see if those Senate Democrats can be shifted. Congressman Mike Levin, Democrat of California.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
The judge, quote, Well, maybe that's why we need an injunction that tells them to rehire them. You will not bring the people in here to be cross-examined. You are afraid to do so because you know cross-examination would reveal the truth. Trump administration lawyer tries to interject. Respectfully, the judge continues. This is the U.S. District Court.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
I really appreciate you being here, sir.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
Thank you.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
I really want to share this with you. All right, so let me set the scene. Trump administration has sent a lawyer to defend them in this case in federal court in Northern California. But they are refusing to send any officials from the Trump administration to testify in this case, to explain what they have done and to be questioned about it.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
I'm forgiven. Thank you. I owe you a drink at least.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
I will. I will do. All right. Thank you, sir.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
As I mentioned, we got a key update on that latest court ruling that just happened in the last few minutes. That's next. Stay with us. All right, update.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
As we reported at the top of the show, federal judge in California today issued a blistering ruling from the bench in which he ordered the Trump administration to rehire thousands of people they had fired from the federal government at USDA, Defense Department, Energy Department, Department of the Interior, the Treasury, and the VA. Well, I got two updates for you.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
Because tonight, just as we were coming on the air, the plaintiffs in that case, the California federal case, the plaintiffs are the union representing government workers. Plaintiffs went back to that same judge in California and essentially said, thank you for this ruling today, Your Honor. Can you please make it so it applies to even more agencies?
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
They have now formally asked the judge to expand that order today to also order the reinstatement of fired employees at the Commerce Department, Education Department, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, the Justice Department, Department of Transportation, the EPA, NASA, the National Science Foundation, and the Small Business Administration. Update one.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
Here's update two. Just minutes after those plaintiffs asked the California federal judge to expand his ruling and order even more agencies to rehire even more people, A second federal judge across the country in Maryland issued a ruling, an entirely separate case, ordering the federal government also to rehire thousands of fired federal employees.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
This federal judge in Maryland tonight has just ordered that thousands of fired probationary employees must now be reinstated at, ready for the list? Department of Agriculture.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
Department of Commerce, Department of Defense, Department of Education, Department of Energy, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, Department of the Interior, Department of Labor, Department of Transportation, the Treasury Department, VA, USAID, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the EPA, the FDIC, the General Services Administration, the Office of Personnel Management, the Small Business Administration, and the National Archives and Records Administration.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
All of them. Reinstate all of your fired probationary employees. And if it seems like there's overlap between the list in those two cases, you are correct. As of tonight, just in today's news, we've got overlapping federal rulings ordering the immediate reinstatement of thousands of employees at multiple federal agencies.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
I'll tell you, the Maryland judge writes in this new order that's just out tonight, quote, the law is clear that when dismissing an employee due to unsatisfactory performance, the employer must honestly be dissatisfied with the probationer's conduct or performance after giving him a fair trial on the job.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
Again, two federal judges tonight with equally sweeping rulings, both in the same direction, both telling Trump, when you fired those people, you had no right. Give them back their jobs. Watch this space. All right, that's going to do it for me tonight. I feel like I sat down here about three seconds ago and the hour is up.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
Whenever you submit declarations, those people should be submitted to cross-examination, just like the plaintiff's side should be. And then we get at the truth of whether your story is actually true. I tend to doubt it. I tend to doubt that you are telling me the truth whenever we hear all the evidence eventually.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
But I'll see you again nine o'clock tomorrow and every night this week, 9 p.m. Eastern.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
Why can't you bring your people in to be cross-examined or to be deposed at their convenience? I said two hours for Mr. Ezell. Mr. Ezell is the acting head of OPM. I said two hours for Mr. Ezell, a deposition at his convenience. And you withdrew his declaration rather than do that? Come on, that's a sham. The judge says, quote, go ahead. I'm, I'm, it upsets me. I want you to know that.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
I have been practicing or serving in this court for over 50 years, and I know how we get at the truth. And you're not helping me get at the truth. You're giving me press releases, sham documents. All right, he says, quote, I'm getting mad at you, and I shouldn't. The judge then decided in this hearing today that he wasn't going to wait to give a written ruling. He decided, you know what?
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
I've heard enough. He decided he was going to rule from the bench today. T-O-D-A-Y. Today. So he started with this. The judge. Quote.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
On February 13th, 2025, a briefing paper from Human Resources Management at the Forest Service says this, quote, "...all, that's spelled A-L-L, all federal agencies, including the Department of Agriculture, were notified on February 12th by the Office of Personnel Management to terminate all employees who have not completed their probationary or trial period.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
That then led to the termination of a lot of people," the judge says. But one in particular I will give as an example. Leandra Bailey was a physical science information specialist in Albuquerque. In September of last year, she'd received a performance review in which she was, quote, fully successful in every category. Not just some, but every category.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
On February 13th, she was terminated using the OPM template letter. Because in addition to directing these terminations, OPM gave a proposed letter, and the letter said, I'm reading from it, Memorandum for Leandra Bailey, February 13th, from the Director of Human Source Management at the U.S. Forest Service. This is just one sentence.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
Quote, The agency finds, based on your performance, that you have not demonstrated that your further employment at the agency would be in the public interest. Close quote. And then the judge says this despite the fact that her most recent review was fully successful in every category.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
The judge says, now, how could it be, you might ask, that the agency could find that based on her performance when her performance had been stellar? The reason OPM wanted to put this based on performance was at least in part, in my judgment, a gimmick. Because the law always allows you to fire somebody for performance.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
And the judge says this, now, what I'm about to say is not the legal basis for what I'm going to order today, but I just want to say it. He says, quote, it is a sad day when our government would fire some good employee and say it was based on performance when they know good and well that's a lie. Excellent in all, fully, what was the phrase? I don't want to misstate it.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
Quote, fully successful in every category, yet they terminate her based on her performance. That should not have been done in our country. It was a sham in order to avoid statutory requirements. It also happens to be that whenever you fire somebody based on performance, then they can't get unemployment insurance. So that makes it even worse, doesn't it?
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
So the basis of this case is that the Trump White House, the Office of Personnel Management and the Trump White House told federal agencies last month, essentially, to fire tens of thousands of people who work for the government, potentially hundreds of thousands of people.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
And then it makes it even worse because the next employer is going to say, well, have you ever been terminated based on performance? They're going to have to say yes to thousands of people. It is illustrative of the manipulation that was going on by OPM to try to orchestrate this government-wide termination of probationary employees.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
Quote, the court finds that OPM did direct all the agencies to terminate probationary employees. The court rejects the government's attempt to use these press releases and to read between the lines to say that the agency heads made their own decision with no direction from OPM. The relief that's going to be granted is as follows. First, the temporary restraining order will be extended.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
The VA shall immediately offer reinstatement to any and all probationary employees terminated on or about February 13th or 14th. This order finds that all such terminations were directed by defendant OPM and were unlawful because OPM had no authority to do so.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
Further, the VA shall cease any and all use of the template termination notice provided by OPM, and shall immediately advise all probationary employees terminated that the notice and termination have been found to be unlawful by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. The VA shall cease any termination of probationary employees at the direction of OPM,
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
To repeat, this order holds that OPM has no authority whatsoever to direct, order, or require in any way that any agency fire any employee.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
Now, given the arguments and the facts in this case, namely that defendants have attempted to recast these directives as mere guidance, my order today, quote, "...further prohibits defendants from giving guidance as to whether any employee should be terminated."
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
any termination of agencies' employees must be made by the agencies themselves, if made at all, and they must be made in conformity with the Civil Service Reform Act and the Reduction in Force Act and any other constitutional or statutory legal requirement. He says, quote, in seven calendar days, relief defendant, VA,
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
The VA shall submit a list of all probationary employees terminated on or about February 13th and 14th with an explanation as to each of what has been done to comply with this order. Then the judge says this. Now, this order so far has only mentioned the VA, the Veterans Administration.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
And then after the Trump White House, the Office of Personnel Management, told the agencies to fire all those people, then all those people got fired. And it really does not seem like that was legal. It has never seemed like that was legal, that the White House would have the authority to make those kinds of mass firings. But again, they won't send anybody to testify about what exactly they did.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
But the same relief is extended, and I'm not going to repeat it, but I'm extending the same relief to the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Defense, the Department of Energy, the Department of the Interior, the Department of Treasury. And so it's the VA plus all those other agencies. He says, and this is without prejudice to extending the relief later to other agencies.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
The judge then closes with this. I will try to get out a short memorandum opinion that elaborates on this order, but this is the order, and it counts effective immediately. Please don't say, oh, I'm waiting for the written order. This is the order from the bench. And then the judge then closes with this admonition to the Trump administration lawyer.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
Quote, if you want to appeal to the court of appeals, God bless you. I want you to because I'm tired of seeing you stonewall on trying to get at the truth. And that is how thousands of people who work in our government, who Donald Trump and his top campaign donor tried to fire, that is how thousands of Americans got their jobs back today.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
At the VA, at USDA, at the Defense Department, at the Department of Energy, at the Department of Interior, which includes the National Park Service, at the Treasury Department, which of course includes the IRS, Court ruling also means that the Office of Personnel Management, which they've been using as like the central office for all this stuff that Doge has been doing, right?
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
The Office of Personnel Management at the White House can no longer tell anyone anything about anybody who should be fired for any reason from any part of the U.S. government. This is the order. You know, after getting reamed out like that and losing so resoundingly in court, I mean, they didn't just have what they've done already reversed by a judge.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
It wasn't just that thousands of people got their jobs back today. It was not only that this judge told the agency, don't you even try to do anything like that ever again. Oh, and by the way, what you've been telling this court appears not to be true, and you'll be under oath before this court.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
If you want to keep telling porky pies to a federal judge, you'll do it in person and bear the consequences. I mean, after a government agency gets sliced and diced and julienned like that, like the OPM did today in court in this case. You would, under normal circumstances, expect the agency in question to put out a statement in response, like through their spokesperson.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
That said, in this case, the spokesperson for this particular agency, the Trump administration's spokesperson at OPM, didn't put out a statement today. You know she is probably busy.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
Yesterday, we learned from CNN that inside her office at OPM, the OPM spokesperson has been very busy posting dozens of fashion influencer videos inside her government office, in which she blows kisses and twirls and shows off all her different looks.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
And then she posts links where you can go buy the amazing fashion that she's wearing to her job in the office where she works as the spokesperson for OPM. That is the spokesperson at the agency that has been firing thousands of park rangers and scientists and nuclear security experts. Because obviously those people don't deserve their jobs, unlike hashtag her and the Trump folks, right?
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
Who definitely know what they're doing and who definitely deserve their jobs because they're doing such a good job at them. That story about the OPM spokesperson broke yesterday. Apparently she still has her job today because, well, why shouldn't she? Meanwhile, here's how the Trump administration is doing with its management of the federal government, just in today's news.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
So this is from the transcript. So the lawyer who is suing the Trump administration says this. Your Honor, quote, I tend to agree with you on that. And the government, I believe, has tried to frustrate the judge's ability to get at the truth of what happened here, and then set forth sham declarations to a sham declaration. They withdrew it, then substituted another.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
This is from the Washington Post. Quote, "'Last week, amid the scramble inside federal agencies to meet Trump's return-to-office mandate, one CDC employee received links to a new government-wide initiative promising to connect those who need workspace with those who have extra seats.'"
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
When the CDC employee entered her home address to find nearby offices, she was surprised to receive suggestions for a closed Subway sandwich shop and a self-storage facility. Another member of her CDC team was directed to a post office. So they work at the CDC. They were told to report for work.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
The Trump administration told them to report for work at a post office or a closed Subway sandwich shop or a mini storage. CDC employees. Sure. Try it. See how it goes.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
Another worker from a federal scientific agency was asked by an administrator to fill out a similar space request form, part of a Trump administration rollout of such services, including one they're calling Space Match, aimed at connecting federal employees with offices where they could work.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
When the federal scientific agency worker entered her information, the two closest offices to which she was recommended— did not seem to be federal offices at all. Quote, one appeared to be a building in an industrial zone that appeared to host support groups for people dealing with alcohol or debt problems. The other appeared to be a private home in a four-unit building.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
So this is a person who has a job at a federal scientific agency. Donald Trump has a new high-tech tool, a fancy new website that is assigned to this person, a new place to work. And the new place to work, this person has a choice, can either be a rehab or the house of someone who this person doesn't know. Space match. I bet it has an X in it somewhere. Space match.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A sham': Federal judge blasts Trump admin on improper firings of federal workers; orders rehiring
These guys are so tech savvy, right? They're so efficient. You know, taxes are due in a month. Taxes are due April 15th. This week, Donald Trump, in his infinite wisdom, told people who work at the IRS that they should show up to work at buildings for which there are no desks for them. Quote, they have people in conference rooms, cafeterias, and even some closets.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
It is one of those days. We are watching so many different stories and there's so much to report on tonight. On the day that they swore in a new U.S. health secretary who has spent his whole adult life railing against vaccines, we now have word of a new outbreak of measles in the United States. In Texas, at least 22 children infected and two adults.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
It has been and continues to be my honor to serve as a prosecutor in the Southern District of New York. Very truly yours, Danielle R. Sassoon, U.S. Attorney, Southern District of New York. The hero is silent, but everybody can see it there.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
Apparently, Pam Bondi declined to meet with Danielle Sassoon because today Emil Bove sent a new letter to Danielle Sassoon saying, quote, your resignation is accepted. He also says that assistant prosecutors on the case are to be put on administrative leave immediately. And he says the Mayor Adams case is going to be transferred to the Justice Department in D.C.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
because of her, quote, insubordination at SDNY. But again, this did not go the way they intended. Once they transferred the case to Maine Justice, they ran into more problems when the top two officials overseeing the public integrity unit at Maine Justice also promptly resigned. They said, we're not doing it either.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
We did, though, today get the swearing in of new health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has said that who said, you know, as he was getting ready to take the helm of America's health system, he said publicly that we should take an eight year long break as a nation from any work at all on infectious diseases. Right. So there's that.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
They said, we also will not go to court to ask the court to drop these charges against Mayor Adams. The top two people in the department said that at Maine Justice, and then three more people in that department resigned as well. So as of tonight, the Justice Department is down six prosecutors total, and the charges against Eric Adams still have not been dropped.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
And this all happens at a time... I mean, what a day, right? But I said, like, New York is at the heart of all these things going on? This all happened today with SDNY. Within 24 hours of what Pam Bondi did yesterday, on camera... live at a press event when she did something shocking and bizarre and ultimately quite factually wrong.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
You know, maybe a new DOJ, but nothing else you said there was true. They did not file any criminal charges against New York Governor Kathy Hochul or Letitia James or any of the other people they mentioned. They did not file a criminal charge. Why did she announce they were filing charges? Do you know what charges means?
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
Here was the statement in response from Governor Hochul, quote, Earlier today, Attorney General Pam Bondi marched in front of the TV cameras for a dramatic media briefing to announce she was filing charges against New York State related to our immigration laws. Hours later, when legal papers were shared with reporters, we learned this was smoke and mirrors.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
DOJ was filing a routine civil action about a law passed in 2019 that's been upheld by the courts time and again. We expect Pam Bondi's worthless, publicity-driven lawsuit to be a total failure, just like all the others. Let me be clear, New York is not backing down. And the state of New York really does appear to be girded for this fight and very confident in their position.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
Attorney General Letitia James has already filed numerous lawsuits against the Trump administration for their actions since Trump was sworn in. She's already won some initial rulings blocking some of the administration's most out there actions. So we're seeing the announcement of charges. They didn't mean charges and a strong pushback from the governor.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
We are seeing the New York state attorney general file case after case after case against the administration to stop them what they're doing, stop them from what they're doing. And so far, a very good track record with those cases, at least getting initial rulings from the courts to stop the Trump administration in its tracks. There's one other thing to watch here, though.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
which is that the aggression toward New York and other Democratic-led states is not only coming from the federal government. It's also coming from state Republicans who I think are clearly sort of feeling emboldened by what they're seeing in Washington from the Trump administration.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
You may, for example, have seen the news recently that a state grand jury in Louisiana indicted a New York doctor, indicted a New York doctor for providing abortion pills to a woman in Louisiana. This is the first time criminal charges have been filed against a doctor for sending pills into a state with an abortion ban.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
Well, today, the state of Louisiana sent New York Governor Kathy Hochul an extradition request for that New York doctor. saying, you need to ship that doctor to us in Louisiana. New York has a shield law specifically enacted to protect abortion providers from exactly this kind of attempted prosecution by Republican-controlled states.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
And Governor Hochul received that extradition request, and she immediately got in front of the camera to say exactly what she was going to do with it. Watch this.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
I should tell you tomorrow we're expecting a fairly large scale protest starting at 8 a.m. Eastern at the headquarters of the Health and Human Services Department in Washington as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. starts his first full day on the job. So keep an eye on that in tomorrow's headlines.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
The fight right now is happening on multiple fronts in multiple places all day, every day. Few places are in the middle of this fight, as is the great state of New York. And joining us now live is Governor Kathy Hochul of New York. Governor, I really appreciate you making time to be here. Thank you. Tell us about this decision that you made when you received this extradition order from Louisiana.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
How should people in this country expect this case to move forward? How do you expect the Louisiana governor to respond?
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
Today, there were disruptive protests at the confirmation hearing for Trump's education secretary nominee, Linda McMahon. She does not have much of a background in education. She did run a pro wrestling company.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
I feel like I've been both anticipating this for a long time because you signed that shield law, because you knew this was coming, but I also feel very unsettled by the fact that it's on us. I really don't know how this is going to resolve. I presume that...
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
You're expecting this to end up in federal court, potentially with the United States Supreme Court deciding the strength of your shield law versus the strength of Louisiana or potentially Texas's ability to take action against this New York doctor despite the shield. Is that where you think this is going?
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
Protesters at her confirmation hearing today used wrestling slogans to interrupt her testimony and shout about the Trump administration's evident plans to get rid of the whole Department of Education.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
New York is also leading the way with a number of other Democratic-led states in challenging some of the initial actions of the Trump administration. Day one, challenging the effort to take away birthright citizenship, challenging the access by Elon Musk and his sort of kids to get into the Treasury payment system, among a number of other lawsuits.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
New York is taking on, with other states, the burden of litigation to try to stop them. Do you see that as essentially the major clash in this country, the best legal footing the Democrats have in terms of trying to stop them in the courts?
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
Under sharp questioning from Democratic senators today, Linda McMahon said at one point that she did not know if it should be legal or if it is legal, in her view, for a school in America to offer a class on black history.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
Let me ask you about this drama involving Mayor Eric Adams and the corruption charges against him. What we've just seen with the resignation of the U.S. attorney, the Trump-appointed acting U.S. attorney, the removal of line prosecutors on that case, the demand from Maine Justice to drop that case, the refusal from SDNY to do it, then the resignation of Maine Justice—
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
officials who had the case dumped on them and they wouldn't take it either. This is just an incredible drama in terms of federal law enforcement right now.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
But you are in a very unusual position, a singular position with regard to this case, which is that thanks to the New York state constitution and New York city law, you are the only person who has the power to effectively fire Mayor Eric Adams and remove him from this position, which might conceivably moot this whole fight. How are you thinking about that now?
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
You could have done it at any point until now, but now given this crisis that's emerged in federal law enforcement around this case, are you feeling differently about that responsibility?
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
She said today at her confirmation hearing that she was, quote, not quite certain whether teaching a black history class or taking a black history class might be illegal now in her eyes. today at a school in Belgium that the U.S. military operates for families of U.S. service members serving abroad.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
But you are consulting with other leaders, consulting with your advisors, and looking anew at this matter, given the recent developments. Of course I am. Governor Kathy Hochul of New York, the woman very much at the center of multiple storms right now. Thank you so much for coming and talking to us.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
It's nice and calm in here. I think I'm safe. No one's going to arrest me in here. We'll close the doors, please. All right. We'll be right back. Thank you very much. Last night, we reported on this fiscal year 2025 procurement prospectus from the U.S. State Department. It is dated December 2024 during the Biden administration. This is after the November election, but before Trump was sworn in.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
And we reported on this last night because the single most expensive line item And the whole prospectus for the State Department's prospective purchases in 2025 was a $400 million line item for, quote, armored Tesla production units. $400 million worth of armored Teslas. Tell me more, edgelord of government efficiency. Yeah.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
Last night, as we and numerous other news organizations reported on Elon Musk's company, Tesla, being in line for what appeared to be a gigantic payout from the U.S. State Department during our show. In fact, that line item was changed on the State Department website so that it no longer says Tesla. And they took away the part that says Tesla. They changed it.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
So it now says armored electric vehicles. Now, the State Department prospectus did not reflect a contract to Tesla for $400 million. Rather, this was a prospectus showing that the government, the State Department, was interested in making this kind of a purchase for that kind of a price tag. And that, of course, would be a huge deal for Tesla.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
That would be a really big deal if the State Department went ahead with that plan.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
It's like an important thing to know about what Tesla had been expecting they might be in line for from the government in fiscal year 2025, particularly while the CEO of Tesla is at this very moment moonlighting at a weird quasi-governmental job in which he is cutting huge swaths of spending and the personnel that makes up what we call the U.S. government.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
Measles, of course, is an illness that can be prevented by If you are vaccinated against it. But the Texas Department of State Health Services says none of the 24 people infected in Texas have been vaccinated. Now, nine of them have been hospitalized. And Texas is saying that they expect this outbreak to grow. Measles, of course, can kill you.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
But the State Department told us today that this procurement is now on hold and that as of now, they have no plans to issue it. They did take down the reference to Tesla once we reported on it last night. The State Department also told us that it had been a mistake that the entry in the prospectus included the brand name Tesla. As we learn more about this, we'll let you know more.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
The New York Times reports that teachers scrambled to remove, quote, Harriet Tubman posters, origami paper cranes, and depictions of rainbows in the classroom. That was ahead of an expected visit from the wife of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who was traveling with her husband on his thus far disastrous first trip abroad in his new job as the head of the Pentagon.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
But, you know, on this subject of things the government spends money on, here's one that they're trying to ring the bell on today that you also ought to know about.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
In 2017, when Donald Trump was in his first term, his first year as president, the research and development part of the Pentagon, the agency DARPA, announced that they wanted to develop some new technology for the military to try to protect against an increasingly common kind of attack.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
They posted it on their website in 2017 that they were seeking to develop new technology to counter what they described as social engineering attacks, attacks that are designed to trick or manipulate humans into doing something they're not supposed to do.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
So think like phishing attacks that are designed to get you to click on a link, because when you click on that link, that opens up your phone or your computer to an attacker.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
This also includes attacks that are designed to trick people into giving up passwords or tricking or inducing members of the military to inadvertently give up sensitive information that foreign adversaries want to use against us. All these social engineering attacks.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
DARPA in 2017 posted online publicly that they wanted to develop new technology to fight those kinds of attacks, to, quote, identify, disrupt and investigate those kinds of social engineering attacks. In particular, they wanted to develop technology that could figure out the source of these attacks in order to help the U.S. military and the U.S. government shut them down. It's interesting, right?
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
It's the kind of stuff that DARPA does. One company that got a $9 million contract from DARPA to do this work is called Thomson Reuters Special Services. They are a company that does cybersecurity and other data defense work. Big company, experienced company. But apparently because that is the name of that company, Thomson Reuters Special Services,
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
Last night, the president's top campaign campaign donor, Elon Musk, decided to announce that this was a gigantic news media scandal. Quote, Reuters was paid millions of dollars by the U.S. government for large scale social deception. That is literally what it says on the purchase order. They're a total scam. Quote, just wow.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
This is like discovering that somebody's studying cancer and being like, they're giving you cancer. Look, it says right there, cancer. Thomson Reuters Special Services and Reuters, the news agency, are owned by the same parent company, but they are totally separate legal entities and they operate totally independently of one another.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
Thomson Reuters Special Services, the firm that got this Defense Department contract, they're a cyber and data security firm. But here's Elon Musk talking about Reuters like it's the news agency that has this gig. Reuters, the news agency, I should note, yesterday posted this news article about Elon Musk. Headline, Musk's doge cuts based more on political ideology than real cost savings so far.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
In response to somebody sending him that article online, Elon Musk posted online, quote, I wonder how much money Reuters is getting from the government. Let's find out. And in response to that from Elon Musk, somebody online then posted about this whole different Reuters company that got a Defense Department contract from Trump in Trump's first term.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
And now Elon Musk is trying to sell it to his followers as an example of a news organization being paid by the government to do something terrible. And this is the part where I should mention that the Reuters news agency last year won a Pulitzer Prize for its reporting over Elon Musk's heated denials on the many splendid details of Elon Musk's growing business empire.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
According to The Times tonight, quote, teachers were worried that the poster, the origami cranes and the rainbows would be seen as signs of black, Japanese or gay culture. And therefore what? Contraband. So the teachers took them down. Pete Hegseth's wife did not come visit that classroom anyway. But still, Mr. Hegseth on his first overseas trip has been a bit of a dud.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
Among the Reuters reporting last year on Elon Musk. Reuters headline, at SpaceX, worker injuries soar in Elon Musk's rush to Mars. Reuters headline, US regulators rejected Elon Musk's bid to test brain chips in humans, citing safety risks. Reuters headline, Tesla blamed drivers for failures of parts it long knew were defective.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
Reuters headline, Tesla created secret team to suppress thousands of driving range complaints. Reuters headline, Tesla workers shared sensitive images recorded by customer cars. Reuters headline, Tesla launched its own car insurance. These drivers say it's a lemon.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
I wonder why Elon Musk is very exercised about finding some way to say that Reuters is embroiled in some kind of scandal that he's discovered. President Trump himself this morning echoed Elon Musk's claims about the wrong Reuters company having a government contract, a government contract, which is not a scandal and has never been a secret. And it's not the same company.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
But they're nevertheless trying to make it seem like a terrible scandal. So just keep your wits about you, right? Heads up about all this stuff, all this waste and abuse shouting that they're doing. Take it with all the grains of salt you can pile onto a Cybertruck before it breaks down.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
That was a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing today that was interrupted, as you saw, by protesters who were demanding that the Trump administration restore the critical and lifesaving AIDS treatment program, PEPFAR. When I say lifesaving, I mean, like, tens of millions of lives saved.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
They wanted the PEPFAR program restored because the PEPFAR program really has been shut down as part of the Trump administration's assault on all things USAID and foreign aid. Now, that last voice you heard there was the Republican committee chairman, Brian Mast, who thought he really stuck it to those protesters, saying, I guess these guys don't watch the news.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
PEPFAR was one of the many programs where actually the funding has been restored. You know, the Trump administration has did claim to have exempted PEPFAR from their massive cuts to foreign aid. They claim to have exempted multiple programs that disperse what they they called, quote, life saving aid. But on the ground, those claims and 50 cents will get you 50 cents.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
This is what The New York Times reports as of last night. Quote, some waivers have been issued to programs that fall under the definition of life saving aid. But the payment system that USAID relies on to disperse financial assistance has been inaccessible for weeks.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
That means even programs that did receive waivers have struggled to continue, according to multiple employees of USAID and the partner organizations that rely on the funding they distribute. quote, in reality, virtually all of the HIV prevention funding remains frozen, according to two USAID employees and several aid groups. But don't worry, Republicans say it's all OK. They say PEPFAR is fine.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
PEPFAR is not fine. And it's not just something that's happening around PEPFAR. This was the scene today outside of the Department of Veterans Affairs. Protesters and members of Congress and senators showed up outside VA headquarters today in Washington to fight back against the Trump administration's hiring freeze, which...
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
Again, they keep saying isn't affecting the VA and veterans health care, but it absolutely is. Once again, the Trump administration is claiming that they made an exception to their hiring freeze for doctors and nurses who work in veterans health care. But once again, I'll sell you that for zero dollars and expect. change. Here's The Washington Post reporting on that hiring freeze last night.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
Quote, a backlog of unfilled positions is building, even in critical agencies such as the VA, where badly needed doctors and nurses have been blocked from final approval to start work, even though they're supposed to be exempt from the hiring freeze Trump ordered. They're doing stuff that is devastating to the people they purport to care about.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
Headline, Hegseth stumbles out of the gate. Headline, Hegseth softens stance. Quote, the clarification appeared designed to address the backlash in Washington and in Europe ignited by his remarks. Pete Hegseth having essentially told the world that Ukraine was giving needed to give away all of its leverage in any potential peace negotiations with Russia ahead of those peace negotiations starting.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
And then when they're called out on it, they say, oh, we won't do that then. But the distance between their claims that they have reversed these decisions and what's actually happening on the ground is a big distance and is a distance that includes life and death consequences, not just for people around the world, but for American veterans here at home. More on this story next.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
Democratic members of Congress and senators protesting outside the VA headquarters in Washington today, trying to defend the VA from what the Trump administration is doing to it. That was this morning, that protest. And now tonight, since we have been on the air just a few minutes ago, the VA has just sent out an announcement that it is cutting more than 1,000 employees from the VA.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
Joining us now is Leo Shane. He's deputy editor at the Military Times. Leo, thanks very much for joining us. I appreciate you being here. No, anytime. Let me ask your reaction to this news that's just broken, that they're cutting 1,000 employees out of VA.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
Leo, one of the things that I want to talk to you about was the sort of distance between what the administration is telling us and what reporting is telling us is actually the impact of the treatment of the VA thus far. So very early on, after Trump was sworn in, we got news that they had changed their mind on the hiring freeze as it applied to VA.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
And people coming in to work in VA health care jobs, doctors, nurses, counselors, and others, they had previously been told the hiring freeze would apply to them, but then that They had changed their mind.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
We're now having open source reporting telling us that whatever they said about their caving and changing their mind on that, people who are new hires into the VA health system aren't able to take up their jobs. Does that comport with your understanding of what's happening?
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
In addition to that chaos, there's also been a lot of concern in a lot of government agencies thus far about access of the Elon Musk quasi-governmental effort in which they're accessing even sensitive and in some cases apparently even classified resources. records and information, not just about the functioning of agencies, but individual personnel and citizens' records as well.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
Obviously, the VA handles an incredible amount of very sensitive information about millions of American veterans and their health care. Have you heard any concerns or any reaction among the veterans' community about the idea of Elon Musk and his guys getting access to people's sensitive medical and other veterans' records?
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
Not only did all of Europe freak out, but a lot of the United States freaked out, too, including the Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. So. Oops, did I mess that up? On Fox and Friends weekend, we just do another take. Now, here we go. This is like just a day that ends in Y with these guys. This is what it's going to be like from here on out.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
Leo Shane, deputy editor at the Military Times. Leo, I read absolutely everything you publish. I think your work, as always, is just invaluable. And long may you wave. Stay on this beat forever, my friend. The country really needs you.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
Thank you, Leo Shane. All right. And thank you for joining us tonight. I told you it was going to be a big, it's been a big day. It's been a big show. It's, I feel like it's all still going on, but I'll see you again tomorrow, 9 p.m. Eastern here on MSNBC. In the meantime, you can find me at Blue Sky. If you have Blue Sky, check me out there at matto.msnbc.com.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
But tonight, I've got to tell you, we have the governor of New York here with us live. And I have to tell you that the most dramatic news in this day of very dramatic news has definitely come out of New York today in a few different ways. First, let's start with what's just happened at SDNY, Southern District of New York, the federal prosecutor's office there.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
The New York Times was first to report on these developments today. And here's how they led their initial report. Quote, Manhattan's U.S. attorney on Thursday resigned rather than obey an order from a top Justice Department official to drop the corruption case against New York City's Mayor Eric Adams.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
Then, when DOJ officials transferred the case to the public integrity section at Maine Justice in Washington, which oversees corruption cases, the two men who led that unit at Maine Justice, quote, also resigned.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
NBC News' Ryan Reilly reports tonight that three additional officials in the public integrity section at Maine Justice also resigned after meeting the same top Justice Department official, who is Trump appointee and Trump defense counsel, acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove. So if you're wondering what kind of day it's been thus far at the U.S.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
Department of Justice, it's a six-resignation kind of day thus far. But just just to get the import here, just back up for a second. The mayor of New York City is Eric Adams. He's a Democrat. He's elected in 2021. The people of New York who elected Adams largely on his his tough on crime platform would soon learn that federal prosecutors at SDNY in the U.S.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
attorney's office for the Southern District of New York, federal prosecutors started investigating him in 2021, even before he took office. because they were looking into what appeared to be serious irregularities in his campaign fundraising.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
Measles was all but eradicated in our country by the year 2000. But now in this era of rampant conspiracy theories and lies about vaccines promoted by influential people, this county in Texas where this measles outbreak is occurring, Gaines County, Texas, it has one of the lowest childhood vaccination rates in that state.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
Within a couple of years, the FBI was searching the homes and offices of the mayor's fundraising chief and his top staffers, and this past September, Eric Adams became the first sitting mayor of New York City to ever be charged with federal crimes.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
He was indicted on a whole raft of charges involving allegedly fraudulent campaign contributions, also a rip-snorting alleged bribery scheme in which he allegedly took campaign funds and gifts and luxury travel from agents of the government of Turkey. in exchange for doing favors for the government of Turkey. And obviously, this was a huge deal, right?
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
First New York City mayor to get hit with federal charges. It's the mayor of the nation's largest city under indictment. But the charges themselves were, like, pretty straightforward corruption charges. You know, local politician charged with accepting money he's not legally allowed to accept. And in some cases, he's charged with allegedly doing official favors in exchange for that money.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
It's kind of a bread and butter public corruption charge. This is the kind of thing that U.S. attorneys office all over the country investigate and prosecute all the time. Prosecutors in SDNY indicted Eric Adams in September. Mayor Adams vowed to stay in office, vowed to fight the charges. He was given a trial date of this spring, April of this year, to have his day in court.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
But then Donald Trump was sworn in as president. And this week, Donald Trump's Justice Department ordered the federal prosecutors and SDNY to drop their case against Adams to drop the charges. Not because they said they had some new evidence vindicating Adams, but because, according to the new Trump appointees at Maine Justice, the mayor was the victim of a political persecution.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
See, the Biden administration had been out to get him. The Biden administration was out to get the Democratic mayor of the big blue city of New York because something, something, Democrats, something, something. But here is something to note about the way they ordered the charges dropped against Mayor Adams. And I don't think this has gotten enough attention.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
In the memo from Donald Trump's personal lawyer, who's the acting deputy attorney general, Emil Bove, the Southern District prosecutors were told by him that they needed to dismiss the charges immediately. without prejudice, which is a legal term that means the charges could be brought later, could be brought back again at a later time.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
The charges against Eric Adams, quote, shall be reviewed by the confirmed U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York following the November 2025 mayoral election based on consideration of all relevant factors. So we're putting these charges on ice for now. So Eric Adams can run his reelection campaign without technically being under indictment. And then we'll see how we feel.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
And maybe we'll bring the charges back based on consideration of all the relevant factors. Talk about having leverage over somebody, right? We're taking the charges away for now, but we could put them back depending on all relevant factors. prompted this headline from Josh Marshall at his news site TPM, quote, Donald Trump is now the mayor of New York. Quote, think what this means.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
Adams isn't off the hook. He's essentially been given 10 months to perform for his freedom, to perform for Donald Trump. And what might the Trump administration want from the mayor of America's largest city? Well, from the Justice Department memo ordering SDNY to drop the charges, quote, Oh, I see. Sure, sure, sure enough. Got it.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
The CDC also today belatedly published new data that shows human beings, specifically veterinarians, are getting bird flu now, apparently from contact not with birds, but with infected cattle. A multi-species outbreak now. This is data the CDC had and had ready to publish three weeks ago. It was supposed to be published then.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
And sure enough, today, Eric Adams met with Donald Trump's point man on mass deportations. And Mayor Adams promptly announced that he's going to start allowing federal immigration agents into the city's biggest jail complex, even though there is a city law explicitly against that. Interesting how much he wants to please Donald Trump right now. Right. I wonder why that is.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
But here's why today was a six-resignation day at the U.S. Justice Department. Because even though the acting deputy attorney general, Trump's personal lawyer, Emile Bove, ordered that the charges against Eric Adams had to be dropped, he ordered those charges to be dropped on Monday.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
We've been sort of watching all week, wondering what's going to happen, because here's Thursday, and as of this morning, those charges still had not been dropped. He ordered them dropped on Monday. What's going on? Well, the reason they hadn't been dropped is because SDNY said, no, we're not going to do it. The acting U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York said, talk to the hand.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
Now, this was somebody specifically chosen by Trump to fill this role until they got their own nominee confirmed. She is a registered Republican. She's a prosecutor with what The New York Times calls bulletproof conservative credentials. She's in the Federalist Society. She clerked for Scalia. But when she was ordered by Maine Justice to drop the charges against Mayor Adams, this acting U.S.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
attorney, her name is Danielle Sassoon, She wrote this remarkable memo to Pam Bondi, Trump's newly confirmed attorney general. She said, quote, I deem it necessary to the faithful discharge of my duties to raise the concerns expressed in this letter with you and to request an opportunity to meet to discuss them further.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
The reasons advanced by the acting deputy attorney general, Mr. Bove, for dismissing the indictment. are not ones I can in good faith defend as in the public interest and as consistent with the principles of impartiality and fairness that guide my decision-making. Mr. Bove proposes dismissing the charges against Adams in return for his assistance in enforcing federal immigration laws.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
Analogizing to the prisoner exchange in which the U.S. freed notorious Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout in return for an American prisoner in Russia. Such an exchange with Adams violates common sense beliefs in the equal administration of justice, the justice manual and the rules of professional conduct.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
Adams has argued in substance and Mr. Bove appears prepared to concede that the mayor should receive leniency for federal crimes solely because he occupies an important public position and can use that position to assist in the administration's policy priorities.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
In your words, and she's quoting Pam Bondi to herself here, quote, DOJ will not tolerate abuses of the criminal justice process, coercive behavior or other forms of misconduct. Danielle Sassoon says then, quote, dismissal of the indictment for no other reason than to influence Adams's mayoral decision making would be all three.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
Rather than be rewarded, Adams's advocacy should be called out for what it is, an improper offer of immigration enforcement assistance in exchange for a dismissal of his case. Although Mr. Bovee disclaimed any intention to exchange leniency in this case for Adams's assistance in enforcing federal law, That is the nature of the bargain laid bare in Mr. Bove's memo.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
That is especially so given Mr. Bove's comparison to the Victor Bout prisoner exchange, which was quite expressly a quid pro quo, but one carried out by the White House and not by the prosecutors in charge of Bout's case. Ms. Sassoon notes in a footnote here, and this is like actually maybe the most explosive thing in the entire thing. This is a footnote. She says, quote,
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
So among other things, people who work with cattle could start taking steps to protect themselves. But the Trump administration shut down scientific publications from the government, including the CDC. So we did not get this crucial and worrying news until today.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
Mr. Bove admonished a member of my team who took notes during that meeting and directed the collection of those notes at the meeting's conclusion. And finally, there's this quote. As you know, our office is prepared to seek a superseding indictment from a new grand jury under my leadership.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
We've proposed a superseding indictment that would add an obstruction conspiracy count based on evidence that Mayor Adams destroyed and instructed others to destroy evidence and provide false information to the FBI. And that would add further factual allegations regarding his participation in a fraudulent straw donor scheme. So she's like, no, we're not dropping this evidence.
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'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
Also, you want to talk about this quid pro quo thing and check my footnote in terms of your behavior here. But also, we have another indictment of Eric Adams coming soon. So it's not like just existing charges that are going to be put on ice. You're going to have to put the upcoming charges on ice as well.
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'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
Danielle Sassoon ends the letter with this quote, because the law does not support a dismissal. And because I'm confident that Adams has committed the crimes with which he's charged, I cannot agree to seek a dismissal driven by improper considerations. I understand my duty as a prosecutor to mean enforcing the law impartially.
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'A six resignation kind of day' at DOJ following Trump's sketchy deal with NYC mayor Eric Adams
And that includes prosecuting a validly returned indictment, regardless of whether its dismissal would be politically advantageous to the defendant or to those who appointed me. In the event you are unwilling to meet or to reconsider the directive in light of the problems raised by Beauvais' memo, I'm prepared to offer my resignation.
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'The time is now to stand up!': Eric Holder sounds alarm on Trump's war on the rule of law
We do have Obama administration Attorney General Eric Holder here tonight. I have been trying to get him to do an interview here on the show for a gazillion years, but he is here tonight. And boy, what a night for it. I'm really, really, really looking forward to that conversation. I hope you are as well. That is coming up in just a moment. This was Springfield, Massachusetts today.
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'The time is now to stand up!': Eric Holder sounds alarm on Trump's war on the rule of law
It helps prove the point that the administration is losing all of these cases because they keep doing things that are really blatantly illegal, right? And if you lose the case in court or you lose that day's proceeding in court because you told the judge the truth, well, that's cause for firing in Donald Trump's Justice Department. So what are you supposed to do?
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'The time is now to stand up!': Eric Holder sounds alarm on Trump's war on the rule of law
I mean, honestly, the answer is obvious, right? Ethically, you can see, whether or not you're a lawyer, right? You can see what you would do and what you should do if you were a lawyer in this case. You just do the right thing, right? You zealously represent your client, yes, but you always tell the truth. If you do that as a Trump administration lawyer, you will get fired for it.
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'The time is now to stand up!': Eric Holder sounds alarm on Trump's war on the rule of law
And so now we're seeing people get fired for it and their supervisors get fired too. And all the Justice Department lawyers who are seeing that pattern emerge are sitting there thinking, do I want to lie to a judge and therefore be exiled from the legal profession? Or do I want to not lie to a judge and get fired from the Trump administration? Those are my choices. What else can I do?
The Rachel Maddow Show
'The time is now to stand up!': Eric Holder sounds alarm on Trump's war on the rule of law
And so they're all quitting. We are now seeing this untenable situation reach its natural mathematical conclusion in a pretty dramatic way. The Washington Post is now reporting that at least half of the frontline lawyers in the Solicitor General's office are either preparing to leave or have announced their departures already. What's the Solicitor General's office?
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'The time is now to stand up!': Eric Holder sounds alarm on Trump's war on the rule of law
That's the office that specifically argues cases for the administration in front of the Supreme Court. A majority of their lawyers have now quit or are quitting. Quote, many of the lawyers leaving the office are uncomfortable or turned off by directives from Justice Department leaders.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'The time is now to stand up!': Eric Holder sounds alarm on Trump's war on the rule of law
Again, the reporting here is that at least half of the lawyers whose job it is to defend Donald Trump at the Supreme Court, a majority of the office that has that responsibility has now quit or is about to quit. That seems like a bad sign. Right? Seems like a bad sign in terms of what this administration is up to. I mentioned that we have Eric Holder, former Attorney General, here tonight.
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'The time is now to stand up!': Eric Holder sounds alarm on Trump's war on the rule of law
benefiting the richest people in the country for huge Medicaid cuts, taking healthcare benefits away from more than 70 million regular Americans. People turned out today in Washington to protest that.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'The time is now to stand up!': Eric Holder sounds alarm on Trump's war on the rule of law
We're going to talk to him about this. And there's one other thing going on here that is... It's the reason we called him. It's the thing I really feel like we all need to hear from him about. And it's this new executive order that Trump has just signed. We don't pay attention to all of them because... Effectively, his executive orders aren't law, right?
The Rachel Maddow Show
'The time is now to stand up!': Eric Holder sounds alarm on Trump's war on the rule of law
His executive orders are basically just like long tweets with calligraphy that he puts on a big menu board and signs after he's told what's in them. Like his executive orders don't have force of law, but they are orders from the president. And he has just signed an executive order that orders the U.S.
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'The time is now to stand up!': Eric Holder sounds alarm on Trump's war on the rule of law
Justice Department to investigate two people, to investigate two officials from his first presidential term, people who Trump has decided are his enemies, Chris Krebs from CISA, the Department of Homeland Security's cybersecurity agency, and Miles Taylor, who worked in the White House and wrote a book about Trump's dangerous authoritarian inclinations.
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'The time is now to stand up!': Eric Holder sounds alarm on Trump's war on the rule of law
Now, as if he is trying a little too hard to prove Miles Taylor's point about that, Trump has just signed this executive order that's not just him, you know, yelling, lock him up into a microphone at a rally. It's him as president actually ordering his Justice Department to open investigations into these individual people at his direction.
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'The time is now to stand up!': Eric Holder sounds alarm on Trump's war on the rule of law
Former Congresswoman Liz Cheney's response was on point and succinct. She said, quote, in a special mix of incompetence and evil, Trump has combined his disastrous implementation of 1930s tariff policies with Stalin-esque targeting of political adversaries. She says, speaking the truth is only a crime in countries ruled by tyrants.
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'The time is now to stand up!': Eric Holder sounds alarm on Trump's war on the rule of law
This was Bloomington, Indiana today, where students and Bloomington community members turned up and protested after the Trump administration started stripping visas from kids at that school, kids studying at Indiana University, forcing them to abandon their studies and flee the country under threat of being arrested and imprisoned.
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'The time is now to stand up!': Eric Holder sounds alarm on Trump's war on the rule of law
Legendary conservative judge Michael Ludig responded today by calling the demand, quote, the president's most constitutionally corrupt executive order to date. He says that this is occurring in the United States of America is shameful.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'The time is now to stand up!': Eric Holder sounds alarm on Trump's war on the rule of law
It is a travesty of justice that Mr. Krebs and Mr. Taylor and the nation's law firms and legal profession are being forced to defend themselves against the president of the United States and his palpably unconstitutional conduct. The president obviously thinks the Supreme Court will ultimately side with him. It is just as obvious that it will not.
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'The time is now to stand up!': Eric Holder sounds alarm on Trump's war on the rule of law
Judge Ludig says, quote, "...but the innocent American citizens targeted with these unconstitutional executive orders should not have to wait one day longer for vindication of their constitutional rights. Their professional lives and livelihoods will be destroyed before such time as the Supreme Court rules. That is exactly what the president is counting on.
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'The time is now to stand up!': Eric Holder sounds alarm on Trump's war on the rule of law
That's why he continues to issue executive orders in defiance of the rulings of the federal courts." Judge Ludig says, quote, both Mr. Krebs and Mr. Taylor should immediately bring lawsuits in the federal district court in Washington, D.C. against the president, the attorney general and the director of the FBI for vindictive slash malicious prosecution.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'The time is now to stand up!': Eric Holder sounds alarm on Trump's war on the rule of law
They should be prepared to litigate all the way to the Supreme Court before the two men are actually prosecuted. Judge Ludig says, quote, in my view, the lower federal courts should summarily strike down this executive order and quash the president's ordered investigation of these two honorable American citizens. The Supreme Court of the United States thereafter should summarily affirm.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'The time is now to stand up!': Eric Holder sounds alarm on Trump's war on the rule of law
He concludes with this. We all know what's going on here at this point. The president is not going to stop until he is stopped once and for all by the federal courts. So this is this is one of the red lines, right? The president ordering the Justice Department to target individuals that he doesn't like. That is one of the red lines we have been expecting him to cross. And here it is.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'The time is now to stand up!': Eric Holder sounds alarm on Trump's war on the rule of law
This is like this is like Tyranny 101. This is intro to tyranny. This is no longer an advanced class where you have to, like, read the subtleties. This is very elementary stuff. Once the tyrant starts directing his prosecutors to open investigations into his named enemies because he named them as enemies, you're there. So what's going to be the response?
The Rachel Maddow Show
'The time is now to stand up!': Eric Holder sounds alarm on Trump's war on the rule of law
If we've still got the antibodies to defend ourselves as a democracy, if our civil society is still working, if our legal profession is still on the job, what we ought to see here in response to this, in response to what will be not just these two guys being targeted, it'll be a dozen, it'll be a hundred, it'll be a thousand of these if Trump likes how this one goes and he hasn't stopped from doing it.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'The time is now to stand up!': Eric Holder sounds alarm on Trump's war on the rule of law
What we ought to see here, if our democracy is still kicking, What we ought to see here is a battalion of the highest end lawyers in the country flooding in to provide Chris Krebs and Miles Taylor with free legal representation and with the kind of no holds barred, super aggressive legal fight that Judge Ludig is describing today. Are we going to see it?
The Rachel Maddow Show
'The time is now to stand up!': Eric Holder sounds alarm on Trump's war on the rule of law
as the biggest, poshest, most powerful law firms in the country, even tonight, continue to suck up to Trump and promise to do him favors in exchange for him no longer criticizing them or threatening them? Do we still have the juice as a country? Are we still kicking? Legal profession, you still there?
The Rachel Maddow Show
'The time is now to stand up!': Eric Holder sounds alarm on Trump's war on the rule of law
We saw the same at UC San Diego, protests there today in response to Trump revoking student visas from students at UCSD as well. We saw the same in Minnesota, people coming out and protesting against students at the University of Minnesota at Mankato, where at least one student has already been seized, been grabbed by Trump's agents
The Rachel Maddow Show
'The time is now to stand up!': Eric Holder sounds alarm on Trump's war on the rule of law
Are all the pretty words America's most prominent lawyers are famous for about the rule of law and no fear or favor, are all those just pretty words? Are we going to see them show up? Because time's up. It is now. Everything you were supposedly preparing for, it's here. Eric Holder joins us next. A couple months ago, Donald Trump's handpicked U.S.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'The time is now to stand up!': Eric Holder sounds alarm on Trump's war on the rule of law
attorney in Washington, D.C., posted a message on social media addressed to a law firm, a law firm called Covington & Burling. Bizarrely, the message said, save your receipts. We'll be in touch soon.
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'The time is now to stand up!': Eric Holder sounds alarm on Trump's war on the rule of law
Not long after, President Trump signed an executive order targeting that law firm, calling for their federal contracts to be ended, even though Covington & Burling doesn't appear to have any federal contracts.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'The time is now to stand up!': Eric Holder sounds alarm on Trump's war on the rule of law
It was all because Covington and Burling had represented Jack Smith, a special counsel who investigated and prosecuted Trump before he returned to office and thereby made all his federal charges go away. It's also the firm, incidentally, where former Attorney General Eric Holder is senior counsel.
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'The time is now to stand up!': Eric Holder sounds alarm on Trump's war on the rule of law
But that first shot at Covington and Burling would be the first of just many law firms Trump would go on to target in recent weeks. It's continued even through tonight as he's announcing more deals with more law firms who he says have come to him essentially as seeking appeasement from him.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'The time is now to stand up!': Eric Holder sounds alarm on Trump's war on the rule of law
happens amid what feels like a multi-front assault on what's commonly thought of as the rule of law, but we're getting real familiar with all the specifics of it as Trump takes aim at them one after another after another. Joining us now for the interview tonight is former Attorney General of the United States, Eric Holder. Mr. Attorney General, it's really nice to see you.
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'The time is now to stand up!': Eric Holder sounds alarm on Trump's war on the rule of law
Thank you very much for being here.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'The time is now to stand up!': Eric Holder sounds alarm on Trump's war on the rule of law
So I have a million things I want to talk to you about, as you might expect. I first want to get your reaction tonight to what we've seen from the Supreme Court. There's this young man from Maryland, a father who was arrested by the Trump administration. They sent him to a prison in El Salvador. They say it was in error, but also they have no intention of getting him back.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'The time is now to stand up!': Eric Holder sounds alarm on Trump's war on the rule of law
The Supreme Court appears to have ruled tonight that they must bring him back, but also they The ruling is sort of hard to parse. I don't know if you've had a chance to look at it yet or what your reaction is to it, but I'd love to hear it.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'The time is now to stand up!': Eric Holder sounds alarm on Trump's war on the rule of law
and more University of Minnesota students are now under the same threat.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'The time is now to stand up!': Eric Holder sounds alarm on Trump's war on the rule of law
I want to ask you to reflect a little bit on what we're seeing in terms of the treatment of immigrants right now. I feel like, you know, I'm not a lawyer. I'm a person who pays attention to the news and reports the news as best as I can. But I feel like my sort of moral...
The Rachel Maddow Show
'The time is now to stand up!': Eric Holder sounds alarm on Trump's war on the rule of law
tuning fork, I guess it is, is resonating so hard I can hardly stand it in terms of the way that immigrants are being treated in one policy decision after another that all seem to rely on this basic sense that When it comes to the treatment of immigrants, there's really no law that constrains what the administration can do.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'The time is now to stand up!': Eric Holder sounds alarm on Trump's war on the rule of law
And so you're seeing student visas revoked, which they have the right to do, but you're seeing students not notified of that. And the first time they find out about it is when they're snatched off the street, thrown into an unmarked car, and put into a prison, when they had no idea they'd done anything wrong. Tonight, we're seeing some of the fallout from this El Salvador decision to put people
The Rachel Maddow Show
'The time is now to stand up!': Eric Holder sounds alarm on Trump's war on the rule of law
who've had no legal process whatsoever in a foreign prison with no recourse to American justice or even to answer to the non-charges against them. We're seeing reporting from The New York Times tonight that people who registered and are in this country officially and essentially with the permission of the U.S.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'The time is now to stand up!': Eric Holder sounds alarm on Trump's war on the rule of law
government under the CBP1 app, they're having their Social Security numbers revoked, which instantly makes them— makes them not only liable to arrest and deportation, but also makes it impossible for them to continue to live in this country in any legal sense. All of this just feels like they believe no law constrains them when it comes to people who aren't U.S. citizens.
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'The time is now to stand up!': Eric Holder sounds alarm on Trump's war on the rule of law
And there's more that I could add to that universe. But what is your reflection on that in terms of us as a country and how the administration is treating these people among us?
The Rachel Maddow Show
'The time is now to stand up!': Eric Holder sounds alarm on Trump's war on the rule of law
Do you believe that the lawyers in this country, particularly the private sector lawyers of big firms, are doing enough to stand up for the people who are at the sharp end of the stick with this administration? And I do mean the people who have been treated the worst.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'The time is now to stand up!': Eric Holder sounds alarm on Trump's war on the rule of law
I mean immigrants, and I mean the trans community, and I mean other people who have just had rights stripped from them even more aggressively than the rest of the country is experiencing. I feel like we're not seeing a rush to the barricades on behalf of the legal community in the way that we did in the first Trump administration.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'The time is now to stand up!': Eric Holder sounds alarm on Trump's war on the rule of law
And I think that's because the legal community, big law in particular, is afraid of Trump and is trying to appease him rather than confront him. I wonder if you share that view.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'The time is now to stand up!': Eric Holder sounds alarm on Trump's war on the rule of law
University of Minnesota at Mankato. This was Connecticut yesterday. New Haven, Connecticut. There's a small airport there called Tweed Airport, and protests sprung up at the airport. Now, that's because there's an airline that operates out of New Haven Airport, a small carrier called Avelo Airlines, A-V-E-L-O. You see it there painted on the side of the plane.
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'The time is now to stand up!': Eric Holder sounds alarm on Trump's war on the rule of law
I hear the urgency in your voice there. I also believe that those who have made the weak decision thus far should know that it isn't a decision forever, and they can turn around. They can recognize that they were wrong and turn that around. Mr. Attorney General, if you wouldn't mind holding on for one more moment, I have a lot more to ask you. Can you stick with us? Sure.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'The time is now to stand up!': Eric Holder sounds alarm on Trump's war on the rule of law
All right, we'll be right back with more with former Attorney General Eric Holder. Stay with us. Joining us once again is former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder. Mr. Attorney General, thank you so much for being here again.
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'The time is now to stand up!': Eric Holder sounds alarm on Trump's war on the rule of law
Last night, President Trump ordered the Justice Department, in a bizarre executive order, he ordered DOJ to investigate two named people who served in his administration during his first term in office. Each of them had criticized or contradicted him publicly. Thank you very much.
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'The time is now to stand up!': Eric Holder sounds alarm on Trump's war on the rule of law
Avelo Airlines has signed a contract with the Trump administration with ICE. to fly people out of the country on Trump's deportation flights. And they are doing that.
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'The time is now to stand up!': Eric Holder sounds alarm on Trump's war on the rule of law
The Rachel Maddow Show
'The time is now to stand up!': Eric Holder sounds alarm on Trump's war on the rule of law
They've announced that they've signed that contract with ICE to do Trump's deportation flights while they're still trying to market themselves to the public as a nice airline you might want to fly for your own vacation or business travel or whatever. You can see why that might not turn out to be a feasible combination.
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'The time is now to stand up!': Eric Holder sounds alarm on Trump's war on the rule of law
Thank you.
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'The time is now to stand up!': Eric Holder sounds alarm on Trump's war on the rule of law
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'The time is now to stand up!': Eric Holder sounds alarm on Trump's war on the rule of law
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . , that,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, and e
The Rachel Maddow Show
'The time is now to stand up!': Eric Holder sounds alarm on Trump's war on the rule of law
Today, also in New York City, we saw a big protest at City Hall over disgraced Mayor Eric Adams' decision to put Trump's immigration agents at New York's Rikers Island. Immigrants are New York. You see the signs there. Eric Adams wants due process for himself and his friends, but torture at Rikers for regular New Yorkers. On that point of due process, we've had a flurry of news today.
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'The time is now to stand up!': Eric Holder sounds alarm on Trump's war on the rule of law
And I gotta tell you, each piece of this news in a normal administration would earn like a week or a month's worth of sort of jaw-dropping headlines and scandal. But when you're in the middle of an attempted authoritarian revolution, For us, these things just come one after the other after the other. And today has been a little bit nuts. Let's start at the United States Supreme Court.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'The time is now to stand up!': Eric Holder sounds alarm on Trump's war on the rule of law
Even though there has been a ruling here, I would consider this still a developing story. And I'll explain why. Tonight, the Supreme Court has intervened in the case of a Maryland father who the Trump administration admits it accidentally, oops, sent him to a foreign prison in El Salvador, even though they had no right to do it.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'The time is now to stand up!': Eric Holder sounds alarm on Trump's war on the rule of law
In court, the Trump administration has admitted he was not supposed to be sent to that foreign prison. Well, they have also maintained in court that, oh, well, that's too bad. He's now effectively stuck in that prison maybe forever because the U.S. has no power to get him back, even though they sent him there mistakenly.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'The time is now to stand up!': Eric Holder sounds alarm on Trump's war on the rule of law
Now, a federal judge in Maryland ordered several days ago that that could not stand for obvious reasons, that Trump had to go and get him. The Trump administration had to go and get him and bring him back.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'The time is now to stand up!': Eric Holder sounds alarm on Trump's war on the rule of law
The judge, you might remember, gave the Trump administration a deadline of Monday night this week, this past week, this past Monday, Monday night at midnight was when they had to have that guy back in the United States. After that judge's order, the Trump administration succeeded in getting the Supreme Court to hit pause on that order until they themselves could weigh in.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'The time is now to stand up!': Eric Holder sounds alarm on Trump's war on the rule of law
Well, in this ruling tonight, the Supreme Court has weighed in and they have ordered that this man from Maryland, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, they have ordered that he has to be returned to the United States, maybe? I say maybe, and I say this is still a developing story. I'm just gonna show you and tell you exactly what the Supreme Court said. And you tell me if you can figure it out.
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'The time is now to stand up!': Eric Holder sounds alarm on Trump's war on the rule of law
This is an unsigned order that was issued on behalf of a unanimous Supreme Court And it first says that that Monday night deadline, that deadline that the Maryland judge had set for earlier this week, saying that guy had to be brought back by 1159 p.m. on Monday night, the Supreme Court first says that obviously that deadline is no longer binding because that deadline has passed.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'The time is now to stand up!': Eric Holder sounds alarm on Trump's war on the rule of law
So that part of the judge's order cannot be seen as still being in effect. OK, I get that. But then they say, aside from that deadline, quote, the rest of the district court's order remains in effect. Well, the rest of the judge's order was to bring the guy back, right?
The Rachel Maddow Show
'The time is now to stand up!': Eric Holder sounds alarm on Trump's war on the rule of law
I mean, at this point in the ruling, it seems like the Supreme Court is saying, Kilmar Abrego-Garcia needs to be brought back to this country from El Salvador, right? I mean, that was the judge's order. By 11.59 p.m. on Monday, bring the guy back. They're saying, we're not going to do the 11.59 p.m. on Monday part. But yeah, the rest of the order still stands.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'The time is now to stand up!': Eric Holder sounds alarm on Trump's war on the rule of law
Sounds like the Supreme Court is ordering that they need to bring the guy back. But then, even in this very, very short order, the Supreme Court makes a very squishy case of it. I mean, look for yourself. This is the exact language. I mean, the rest of the district court's order remains in effect, but requires clarification on remand.
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'The time is now to stand up!': Eric Holder sounds alarm on Trump's war on the rule of law
When they say remand, they mean when we sent it back to that lower court. The ruling says the lower court judge's order properly requires the Trump administration to, quote, facilitate Mr. Abrego Garcia's release from custody in El Salvador and to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador.
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'The time is now to stand up!': Eric Holder sounds alarm on Trump's war on the rule of law
But the intended scope of the term effectuate in the district court's order is unclear, and it may exceed the district court's authority. Huh? The district court should clarify its directive with due regard for the deference owed to the executive branch in the conduct of foreign affairs.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'The time is now to stand up!': Eric Holder sounds alarm on Trump's war on the rule of law
For its part, the government should be prepared to share what it can concerning the steps it has taken and the prospect of further steps. The administration should be prepared to share what they can? What is this, group therapy? Do you feel you can share? Do you want the talking pillow? Are we going to have a tissue issue? Do you want me to? The government should be prepared to share what it can.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'The time is now to stand up!': Eric Holder sounds alarm on Trump's war on the rule of law
It would appear that the United States Supreme Court is ordering that the Trump administration cannot randomly take literally anyone off the street and send them to a foreign hellhole prison, potentially for the rest of their life, without giving that person a chance to argue against it in court. But the Supreme Court also appears to be quite afraid to just say so.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'The time is now to stand up!': Eric Holder sounds alarm on Trump's war on the rule of law
And so they've given us this squish opinion that is being variously interpreted by various news organizations depend on which lawyers are advising them on how to phrase this thing. Because they can't just come out and say it. Now, there is a signed statement accompanying this unsigned ruling, specifically from Justice Sonia Sotomayor.
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'The time is now to stand up!': Eric Holder sounds alarm on Trump's war on the rule of law
And in her very plain language, she appears to be trying to clarify that the court is saying, yeah, this kid does have to come back. This guy does have to be brought back. This is just her statement that accompanies the ruling. It's not the ruling itself. But she appears to be trying to clarify.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'The time is now to stand up!': Eric Holder sounds alarm on Trump's war on the rule of law
Justice Sotomayor says, in part, in her statement accompanying the ruling, quote, I agree with the court's order that the proper remedy is to provide Mr. Abrego Garcia with all the process to which he would have been entitled had he not been unlawfully removed to El Salvador. all the process to which he would have been entitled had they not just shipped him off.
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'The time is now to stand up!': Eric Holder sounds alarm on Trump's war on the rule of law
She says, quote, that means the government must comply with its obligation to provide Mr. Obrego-Garcia with due process of law, including notice, meaning advance notice, and an opportunity to be heard in any future proceedings. An opportunity to be heard in future proceedings.
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'The time is now to stand up!': Eric Holder sounds alarm on Trump's war on the rule of law
I guess, means they need to bring this guy back from El Salvador so they can produce him to the federal court in Maryland for those future proceedings? Yes, I guess, maybe? So they do have to bring him back? For their part, the lawyers for Mr. Abrego-Garcia are saying this ruling settles it.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'The time is now to stand up!': Eric Holder sounds alarm on Trump's war on the rule of law
They released a statement in response to the Supreme Court's actions tonight saying, quote, "'The rule of law won today. Time to bring him home.'" And it may be. But we will have to see what happens now.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'The time is now to stand up!': Eric Holder sounds alarm on Trump's war on the rule of law
With the original judge in Maryland, to whom this case is being remanded, we'll have to see if Trump still tries to keep this guy locked up indefinitely, again, potentially permanently, in another country, even though Trump has had to admit that the administration never even meant to send him to that other country, nor were they even able to contend that they had any legal justification for doing it.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'The time is now to stand up!': Eric Holder sounds alarm on Trump's war on the rule of law
I mean, this is... This is like Kafka mixed with Bozo the Clown. I mean, when this case was in court in Maryland this past Friday, the lawyer for the Trump administration who was trying to defend what the administration was doing basically had to turn himself inside out in the courtroom and try to make himself disappear in order to try to make this make sense. Because...
The Rachel Maddow Show
'The time is now to stand up!': Eric Holder sounds alarm on Trump's war on the rule of law
It became very clear in that courtroom there was no way for that lawyer to be both rational and truthful to the court, which he was obliged to be, but also to defend what the Trump administration is doing. I'll just give you one little piece of it. You'll see what I mean. This is from the transcript of that hearing. The judge. Well, on what basis is he held in the El Salvadoran prison?
The Rachel Maddow Show
'The time is now to stand up!': Eric Holder sounds alarm on Trump's war on the rule of law
What basis is he held? Why is he there, of all places? Trump administration lawyer. This is where I'm going to respond in a frustrating way, Your Honor. I don't know. The judge. You don't know? Trump administration lawyer. I don't know. That information has not been given to me. I don't know. The judge.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'The time is now to stand up!': Eric Holder sounds alarm on Trump's war on the rule of law
OK, well, then again, for everyone here, that means there's no evidence that there's a basis to hold him in that country. So so we got that straight. But let me ask you this, she says. So there's not some other legal authority to hold him. Trump administration lawyer. I don't know. The judge, can we talk about then, just very practically, why can't the United States get Mr. Abrego Garcia back?
The Rachel Maddow Show
'The time is now to stand up!': Eric Holder sounds alarm on Trump's war on the rule of law
Trump administration lawyer, your honor, I will say, for the court's awareness, that when this case landed on my desk, the first thing I did was ask my clients that very question. I have not received, to date, an answer that I find satisfactory. The judge, okay, well, I do appreciate your candor. So the Trump administration has put its own lawyer between a rock and a hard place here, right?
The Rachel Maddow Show
'The time is now to stand up!': Eric Holder sounds alarm on Trump's war on the rule of law
This lawyer is trying his best to answer the judge's questions truthfully while also following the directions of his client, Donald Trump. An impossibility. That court proceeding was on Friday. By Saturday, that lawyer was gone. put on indefinite administrative leave from the Justice Department, as was his supervisor. Attorney General Pam Bondi explained the situation with this statement.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'The time is now to stand up!': Eric Holder sounds alarm on Trump's war on the rule of law
She said, quote, At my direction, every Department of Justice attorney is required to zealously advocate on behalf of the United States. Any attorney who fails to abide by this direction will face consequences. And that is this case. That's the Maryland case of this Maryland father who they accidentally sent to El Salvador.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'The time is now to stand up!': Eric Holder sounds alarm on Trump's war on the rule of law
That's this one case that has now gone up to the Supreme Court tonight and been put on puree by a unanimous but apparently terrified Supreme Court, which is desperately trying to spin something out of this that doesn't sound like it's saying no to Donald Trump. But this pattern, this kind of thing, in court has been happening again and again and again.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'The time is now to stand up!': Eric Holder sounds alarm on Trump's war on the rule of law
And it's starting to have a really interesting consequence. For weeks now, we have seen this pattern emerging. You've got lawyers representing the Trump administration who are being forced, effectively, to present arguments that either aren't truthful or don't make sense in court. And when they try to pull that off in open court, they face questioning from judges.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'The time is now to stand up!': Eric Holder sounds alarm on Trump's war on the rule of law
And the judges immediately suss out that what the lawyers are trying to defend is indefensible or obviously untrue. And so, again and again and again, you're seeing Trump administration lawyers basically being thumbtacked to the back wall of the courtroom by one judge after another. And it has produced these incredible headlines. Headline. Is that really how you think this all works?
The Rachel Maddow Show
'The time is now to stand up!': Eric Holder sounds alarm on Trump's war on the rule of law
That was Springfield, Massachusetts, just today. This was Washington, D.C., today. As the Republicans did today, managed to pass their budget plan through the House. They tried last night, couldn't do it, pulled it at the last minute. But then they got it through today. It will trade huge tax cuts.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'The time is now to stand up!': Eric Holder sounds alarm on Trump's war on the rule of law
Outraged judge repeatedly mocks DOJ lawyers, tears into them for being unprepared. Headline, judge in Alien Enemies Act case chides DOJ lawyer over refusal to answer key questions. Headline, judge snaps at Trump administration lawyers for gaslighting. And again, this is just an untenable situation these lawyers are being put in, right? You have to be truthful to a judge.
The Rachel Maddow Show
'The time is now to stand up!': Eric Holder sounds alarm on Trump's war on the rule of law
You have to be truthful to the court as a lawyer who's standing there in front of the judge. But being truthful in this administration is seen as a betrayal of Donald Trump. So what are these lawyers supposed to do, right? You literally cannot lie to a judge and stay a lawyer. But telling the truth to a judge in so many of these cases, not only is it not going to win you the case,