Sidelined Trump mostly 'decorative' as Musk remains busy wrecking the government, reaping rewards

Speaker 1 This episode is presented by Planned Parenthood Federation of America. This year, lawmakers have attacked our rights, stretched the truth, and taken away access to health care.

Speaker 1 Through it all, Planned Parenthood has been on the front lines, providing care, defending patients, fighting back.

Speaker 1 But the Trump administration and Congress passed a law to defund Planned Parenthood, putting care for 1.1 million patients at risk. Planned Parenthood isn't backing down.

Speaker 1 They're still here, protecting access to birth control, cancer screenings, abortion, and more. Visit plannedparenthood.org/slash defend and donate today.

Speaker 4 Now's the time to start your next adventure behind the wheel of an exciting new Toyota hybrid.

Speaker 5 With the largest lineup of hybrid, plug-in hybrid, and electrified vehicles to choose from, Toyota has the one for you.

Speaker 3 Every new Toyota hybrid comes with Toyota Care, two-year complementary scheduled maintenance, an exclusive hybrid battery warranty, and Toyota's legendary quality and reliability.

Speaker 11 Visit your local Toyota dealer today, Toyota.

Speaker 9 Let's go places. See your local Toyota dealer for hybrid battery warranty details.

Speaker 13 Happy Friday. There is so much to talk about tonight.
There is so much to cover.

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 But

Speaker 13 naturally, because it's me, I got to start with something weird. All right.

Speaker 13 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 favors for that campaign donor and his businesses and taking government action against his business rivals, et cetera.

Speaker 13 It was very easy to predict. It is a dynamic that is as old as time.
And so we're going to talk about some of that tonight.

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 He's taking that incredibly, incredibly controversial, destructive government role while he simultaneously is also running a bunch of companies,

Speaker 13 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 on

Speaker 13 in terms of, you know, storefronts and the nation's roads.

Speaker 13 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

Speaker 13 a quite unique opportunity for public feedback on his actions in the government.

Speaker 13 Did you know that the tailgate of a Tesla Cybertruck is a perfectly flat, light-colored, sharp-edged rectangle?

Speaker 13 Basically, it's a projector screen.

Speaker 13 If you have a projector and you shine the projector at the tailgate, it

Speaker 13 works really well, like it's a screen. 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.

Speaker 13 At night is crucial for the projector part of this, driving around at night looking for Tesla Cybertrucks.

Speaker 13 And then they project things on the tailgate, like this one: Tesla Cybertruck, the most recalled truck of 2020 in 2024

Speaker 13 projected on the back of that truck and there's 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 have millions of views already this one says no the price of eggs aren't falling but the price of

Speaker 13 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

Speaker 13 S box

Speaker 13 and the effer stole my social security number.

Speaker 13 This one says, figures the guy who made a truck shaped like a coffin gets pleasure out of killing Sudanese children.

Speaker 13 That presumably is about Musk's chest-pounding glee over, in his words, feeding USAID into a wood chipper, while USADAID, in fact, does provide aid to prevent starvation among millions of kids in Sudan.

Speaker 13 This one's just a playground taunt, honestly. Musk, this truck really is

Speaker 13 like you.

Speaker 13 And then it says,

Speaker 13 tons of hype, underwhelming in bed. Get it? It's a joke about the truck bed.

Speaker 9 I know. Yeah.

Speaker 13 Like I said, there's a bunch of these I should not show on TV.

Speaker 13 A bunch of them making like crude jokes about what this big truck is compensating for. References to

Speaker 13 Elon Musk's stiff-armed salute on Inauguration Day, which he says was not a Nazi salute.

Speaker 13 But then he followed that immediately with lots of jokes on his social media platform about how hilarious Nazis are.

Speaker 13 But again, this projection

Speaker 13 prank that's taking shape on TikTok. These videos only started appearing about a week ago, but they've already got millions of views.

Speaker 13 Rode and Track reports today that the comments on the videos are overwhelmingly supportive of the pranksters, quote, and many are begging for more videos.

Speaker 13 So that's happening. This was a protest today in Houston, Texas.
at one of the Tesla dealerships in that big city.

Speaker 13 It's one of a lot of protests we have seen at Tesla showrooms and Tesla dealerships, both in red states like Texas and and in blue states.

Speaker 13 This, for example, was Wednesday this week in San Francisco, Northern California.

Speaker 16 A message for Musk tonight: a protest outside a Tesla showroom in San Francisco.

Speaker 16 People frustrated and fearful of the future, ready to stop what they're calling the looting of public services to benefit the ultra-rich.

Speaker 13 It is part of a nationwide effort to push back and save services as layoffs and cuts continue in D.C. NBC Bayer's Gia Vang is in San Francisco.

Speaker 13 This corner of Vanessa and O'Farrell taken over by federal workers and allies. The location deliberate outside of a Tesla store.

Speaker 17 We have the power to break Tesla, which is where most of Elon Musk's wealth comes from. We have the power to undo it.
We have the power to not cooperate.

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 Protesters blocking traffic and shutting down the streets there.

Speaker 18 Some new video tonight as demonstrators march to the D.C. headquarters of Elon Musk's SpaceX, protesting what they call his takeover of government, calling it a direct attack on the American people.

Speaker 13 This is a look at the march towards SpaceX headquarters in D.C., about two blocks away from the Wilson Plaza in downtown. And these protesters are chanting right now, Elon Musk has got to go.

Speaker 13 Again, that's just over the last couple of days in Washington and in Texas and in Northern California.

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 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 LA and it's in a location that's just easy for a lot of people to get to.

Speaker 13 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, 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.

Speaker 13 government.

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 The vast bulk of his wealth is based on his shares in his car company, Tesla.

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 Overall, in the last year, globally, electric vehicle sales are up 25%,

Speaker 13 but Tesla sales are down 1%.

Speaker 13 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%

Speaker 13 of

Speaker 13 that drop in Tesla sales this year follows the last two years in which Tesla sales were up 38% and up 40%.

Speaker 13 And now this year they're minus one.

Speaker 13 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

Speaker 13 and what he's making the public think of him?

Speaker 13 I don't know. But

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 The personal dynamic in addition between this campaign donor and the president himself is is very unusual given that the president seems to have personally empowered this guy without actually giving him a government job.

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 The dynamic between them is weird in which the president is effectively sidelined while Elon Musk takes center stage.

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 I mean, that would be hard to take for even the least egotistical president. It remains to be seen how we'll play out with this one.

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 Now, NBC has not confirmed this, but CNN is reporting based on three law enforcement sources that the administration had the U.S.

Speaker 13 Marshals Service officially deputize members of Elon Musk's team of private bodyguards.

Speaker 13 And

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 Loaded weapons.

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 Musk's security detail rivaled only that of the president himself, the sources observed.

Speaker 13 But now,

Speaker 13 With this decision by the U.S. Marshal Service, now

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 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?

Speaker 13 Sure, that's not weird at all. That's definitely not like Monty Python crossed with Shakespeare at all.
What could possibly go wrong?

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 He has signed a grand total of one bill.

Speaker 13 He has taken an almost cartoonishly outsized interest in posing with big maps that say Gulf of America on them.

Speaker 13 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 the Gulf of Mexico, which is what it is, today in an interview when Trump was asked about that, he appeared sort of confused.

Speaker 13 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,

Speaker 13 even though he's the one who supposedly banned them.

Speaker 14 I mean,

Speaker 13 when President Trump isn't playing golf, he has taken multiple meetings about his golf investments.

Speaker 13 He has gone to the Super Bowl. He had somebody drive him around the track at the Daytona 500.
Wee!

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 He appears to be sort of decorative at this point, 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.

Speaker 13 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, meanwhile, here's just a partial list of the things that Elon Musk and his own companies have somehow reaped from the U.S.

Speaker 13 government while

Speaker 13 Trump was, you know, putting.

Speaker 13 Headline: Justice Department to drop discrimination case against Elon Musk's SpaceX.

Speaker 13 The Justice Department had filed the case against SpaceX in August 2023, accusing the company of violating federal law and its hiring practices.

Speaker 13 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

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 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 U.S. Doge Service.

Speaker 13 Check that one off his list.

Speaker 13 The National Highway Transportation Safety Administration investigation in 2023 led to a National Highway Transportation Safety Administration investigation in 2023 led to a recall of 2 million Tesla vehicles.

Speaker 13 The same agency disclosed in April that it had documented numerous deadly crashes involving Tesla autopilot.

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 Tesla, I should note, this year plans to put fully autonomous vehicles on the road this year.

Speaker 13 Yeah, and if you keep gutting the agency that regulates that sort of thing,

Speaker 13 who'll be there to stop them? Who will be able to stop them before the crosswalk?

Speaker 13 Here's another headline: Fate of Rivian's $6.6 billion federal loan now hangs in the balance.

Speaker 13 Fortune magazine helpfully nuts up the key point at the top of this one: quote: Georgia Governor Brian Kemp says he does not know whether the Trump administration will honor the contracts of the Biden administration.

Speaker 13 Quote, if the loan is canceled, Tesla CEO Elon Musk stands to benefit the most.

Speaker 13 Check Rivian off the list. Who needs that competitor?

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 Never mind that he took huge U.S. government subsidies to build Tesla and to build that charging network.

Speaker 13 Now, 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.

Speaker 13 Nice work if you can get it. Check that one off the list.

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 Musk had repeatedly demanded that that

Speaker 13 FAA chair should resign.

Speaker 13 He resigned on Inauguration Day. And aviation security has been awesome ever since, right?

Speaker 13 At the FDA, they have fired the people who were overseeing Elon Musk's Neuralink brain implant company.

Speaker 13 At the USDA, they fired the Inspector General who was investigating Neuralink for its animal experimentation.

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 The Labor Department has multiple open investigations of Tesla.

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 Also, at least one U.S.

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 government since, you know, wink wink apparently must controls that nail, right? It's nice work if you can get it.

Speaker 13 Remember when President Biden gave his farewell speech and he warned about oligarchy?

Speaker 14 Remember that?

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead.

Speaker 13 People lost their minds, right, when when President Biden said that, oh, that's so over the top.

Speaker 13 Well, now here we are.

Speaker 13 But people are pushing back.

Speaker 13 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?

Speaker 13 In the history of modern polling, no president has been more disapproved of than approved of this early on in a presidential term. But the polls, those same polls that show Trump in that

Speaker 13 historically bad approval position also show that Elon Musk is about three times as unpopular as Trump is.

Speaker 13 So people know what's going on.

Speaker 13 People are pushing back.

Speaker 13 And today was another one of those days when on all sorts of different fronts, we saw pushback working.

Speaker 13 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 it got a bunch of bad press.

Speaker 13 They surveyed public opinion, surveyed the pushback they were getting, and pulled back on what they were initially trying to do.

Speaker 13 Today, we saw that on a whole bunch of fronts, just in the past 48 hours. I mean, today CNN reported.
that the Defense Department was planning on marching as many as 50,000 employees out the door.

Speaker 13 CNN reported on that plan and on the fact that, um, you guys, that would be illegal.

Speaker 13 There are specific laws governing how and under what circumstances you can lay people off from the Defense Department.

Speaker 13 After that story came out,

Speaker 13 the Trump administration apparently had second thoughts. They hit pause on that idea.

Speaker 13 Quote, the pause comes after CNN reported that the mass terminations, which could affect over 50,000 employees, could run afoul of Title 10, Section 129A of the U.S. Code.

Speaker 13 Following that report, Pentagon lawyers began reviewing the legality of the planned terminations more closely.

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 The White House has also just caved on the 9-11 Survivors Fund and researched 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.

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 farmers, at least that first tranche of money will be allowed to go forward. We will see if the farmers ever actually get it.

Speaker 13 Last night, the Washington Post reported on an imminent White House announcement that they were going to eliminate the U.S. Post Office,

Speaker 13 which it should be noted is in the Constitution. Washington Post put this story on the front page.
Jacob Borisage sole byline on that exclusive report. And then

Speaker 13 once the story published, the White House climbed down,

Speaker 13 saying, oh, actually,

Speaker 13 it's just something that they are looking at.

Speaker 13 No executive order was planned after all.

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 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?

Speaker 13 The American people love the post office. It serves all of us.

Speaker 13 If we want anything for the post office, we just want it to have more staff and better funding.

Speaker 13 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,

Speaker 13 I mean, in the Constitution. 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.

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 So yeah, of course, Trump wants to abolish it.

Speaker 13 But the public does not want it. And when they talk about abolishing it, they get pushback and they are already getting shy on what they were otherwise planning.

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 Although there, again, the pushback is pushing them back. Today, they announced that,

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 It's so stupid

Speaker 13 that people have to scramble and fight and organize and yell to get these basic things restored. Yeah, why do you think there's lots of seasonal employees at the Park Service?

Speaker 13 When do people go on vacation to the national parks?

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 Oh, okay,

Speaker 13 you can have those back.

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 When these guys get pushed back, they cave.

Speaker 13 Because honestly, it is true. I mean, the price of eggs really isn't falling.

Speaker 13 But this junk sure is.

Speaker 13 We've got a lot to get to tonight. Stay with us.

Speaker 19 This message comes from the International Rescue Committee. Co-founded with help from Albert Einstein, the IRC has been providing humanitarian aid for more than 90 years.

Speaker 19 The IRC helps refugees whose lives are disrupted by conflict and disaster, supporting recovery efforts in places like Gaza and Ukraine, and responding within 72 hours of crisis.

Speaker 19 Donate today by visiting rescue.org/slash rebuild.

Speaker 4 Now's the time to start your next adventure behind the wheel of an exciting new Toyota hybrid.

Speaker 5 With the largest lineup of hybrid, plug-in, hybrid, and electrified vehicles to choose from, Toyota has the one for you.

Speaker 3 Every new Toyota hybrid comes with Toyota Care two-year complementary scheduled maintenance, an exclusive hybrid battery warranty, and Toyota's legendary quality and reliability.

Speaker 11 Visit your local Toyota dealer today, Toyota.

Speaker 9 Let's go places. See your local Toyota dealer for hybrid battery warranty details.

Speaker 20 MS Now presents the chart-topping original podcast, The Best People with Nicole Wallace. Each week, Nicole speaks with some of the people who inspire her the most.

Speaker 20 This week, she sits down with American historian Heather Cox Richardson.

Speaker 21 Where we are looks a great deal like the periods in our history when we have reclaimed democracy and built something more inclusive on the other side.

Speaker 20 The best people with Nicole Wallace. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 13 Today in Washington, DC, 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.

Speaker 13 Oh, but look, someone showed up to spoil it. Specifically, Specifically, two people showed up to spoil it.

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 This fight is not over.

Speaker 13 It's only begun.

Speaker 13 We will hold responsible to account and we will never stop fighting for the truth, for liberty, and for justice.

Speaker 13 And so, also, there's somebody screaming, Proud Boys.

Speaker 13 That is former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tario.

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 Sometimes it can be two women with a whistle and a bullhorn who will not give up.

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 We're also seeing more people show up at town halls to question their members of Congress.

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 14 Workers from the nuclear workers,

Speaker 14 the NNSA, our nuclear stockpile, and CNC workers working on the bird flu being fired by doge and then having to be rehired when someone realizes oh gosh we need those people

Speaker 14 why

Speaker 14 why it is a supposedly conservative party taking such a radical and extremist and sloppy approach to this

Speaker 14 you have to do more with less in order to survive

Speaker 14 i understand trying to do more with less that's reasonable what's not reasonable is taking this chainsaw approach which they obviously admit when they fired these people and then decided, oh, we fired the wrong people.

Speaker 14 We got to bring them back in. Why is this being jammed down the pipe so rushed and sloppily?

Speaker 13 Crowd 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 Beiss of Oklahoma.

Speaker 22 I'm a registered Republican voter, retired active army officer. How can you tell me that Doge,

Speaker 22 with some college whiz kids from a computer terminal in Washington, D.C.,

Speaker 22 without even getting out into the field, after about a week or maybe two,

Speaker 22 has determined that it's okay to cut veterans'

Speaker 22 benefits?

Speaker 23 I think a couple of things. Let me give you an example.
Did you know that the VA was in charge of

Speaker 23 payments for illegals for

Speaker 23 housing.

Speaker 23 Basically, the VA.

Speaker 22 I'd like for you to send that.

Speaker 22 Could you send me that reference so I could research that? Because no, I'm not aware of that. And I would tell you that that's a red herring, a false flag.

Speaker 22 If you're throwing that kind of political stuff up, trying to cut veterans' benefits, that's very alarming to me.

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 This was the scene in West Bend, Wisconsin, with Republican Congressman Scott Fitzgerald. Watch.

Speaker 13 When will you stand up to them and say that is enough?

Speaker 14 The end result of the fraud and abuse that has been discovered already is.

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 24 President Trump has issued a lot of executive orders. I think, by and large, this is moving very quickly compared to other administrations.

Speaker 24 And I think across the board, he's done some very good things.

Speaker 12 think

Speaker 24 he's gotten rid of birthright citizenship.

Speaker 13 Illegal as hell.

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 But you're also seeing Democrats who are largely

Speaker 13 of one line with their constituents, but they are getting pushed to fight harder.

Speaker 13 Congressman Paul Tonko is a Democrat from New York. He represents the area around Albany, New York.
This week, Congressman Tonko held a town hall.

Speaker 13 You might have seen this clip going around, but if you haven't seen it, you will want to. Watch this.

Speaker 14 I saw you on TV at NOAA. I saw you on TV at the Department of Education.

Speaker 14 What I'm saying is this.

Speaker 14 Somebody asked you what your red line was, and

Speaker 14 you said that the time is always right to go.

Speaker 14 Does that mean the red line has already been crossed?

Speaker 14 Because I think it has. If you ask us to show up, Congressman Tongo, we will show up.

Speaker 14 We've got the Civic Letter.

Speaker 14 We can't make a protocol. They're not playing by the means.

Speaker 14 When I send anybody to his prices like a sudden next to Maxine Waters, yes, I'm so proud that my representative is on the front line right there.

Speaker 14 But

Speaker 14 I thought about Jimmy Parker and I thought about John Lewis. And I know what John Lewis would have done, he would have gotten arrested that day.

Speaker 13 Nate then,

Speaker 14 Nathan, how long you

Speaker 14 will stand behind you. People

Speaker 13 The crowd goes wild.

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 All right, much more to get to tonight. We'll be right back.
Stay with us.

Speaker 4 Now's the time to start your next adventure behind the wheel of an exciting new Toyota hybrid.

Speaker 6 With the largest lineup of hybrid, plug-in hybrid, and electrified vehicles to choose from, Toyota has the one for you.

Speaker 3 Every new Toyota hybrid comes with Toyota Care two-year complimentary scheduled maintenance, an exclusive hybrid battery warranty, and Toyota's legendary quality and reliability.

Speaker 11 Visit your local Toyota dealer today, Toyota.

Speaker 9 Let's go places. See your local Toyota dealer for hybrid battery warranty details.

Speaker 20 MS Now presents the chart-topping original podcast, The Best People with Nicole Wallace. Each week, Nicole speaks with some of the people who inspire her the most.

Speaker 20 This week, she sits down with American historian Heather Cox Richardson.

Speaker 21 Where we are looks a great deal like the periods in our history when we have reclaimed democracy and built something more inclusive on the other side.

Speaker 20 The best people with Nicole Wallace. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 13 Trump administration has taken steps to fire thousands, potentially hundreds of thousands of people who work for the government.

Speaker 13 There doesn't seem to be much rhyme or reason as to how they are proceeding with these layoffs.

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 If you can generalize in any way about what they've done thus far, you can say that a lot of the people that they have fired are what are called probationary employees.

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 But for some people, it does mean they're in their first couple of years at their agency. It means they've chosen fairly recently to dedicate themselves to this kind of work.

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 She decided to go to a special STEM-focused high school, even though it meant a longer drive to and from school every day. She graduated from college with honors and a degree in biology.

Speaker 13 She spent a year working at the Nevada Department of Wildlife. She wrote a kids' book about the ecosystem of the Mojave Desert.
Last year, she got a job as a biologist at the U.S.

Speaker 13 Fish and Wildlife Service in Nevada.

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 23 Yeah, thank you for having me. It's definitely been a whirlwind of a week.

Speaker 13 I imagine that once things started to go haywire in Washington with the firings and the announcements about probationary employees and all of this stuff that you might have expected this was coming.

Speaker 13 Was it one of those situations where it was not a surprise, but still a shock?

Speaker 23 It definitely was still a shock.

Speaker 23 There had been a lot of different things happening within our work over the last few weeks. A lot of programs being cut down, meetings and trainings being canceled, budgets being diminished in

Speaker 23 some of our projects. So there was definitely a lot lot of talk about how things were changing.

Speaker 23 And

Speaker 23 some of us were very, very afraid of because some of us were very afraid for our jobs, especially all of us probationary employees, because

Speaker 23 at the beginning of February, or at the sorry, at the end of January, our departments had to give a list of probationary employees to the incoming administration.

Speaker 23 And at the time, they said that they weren't going to do anything with them. So we were all thinking that we were good.
But

Speaker 23 yeah. So

Speaker 23 the fear of being laid off definitely was in the air. Genuinely, I did not think that they were actually going to do it.

Speaker 23 So when I got that phone call from my supervisor, just giving me a heads up about everything, I was absolutely devastated.

Speaker 13 Let me give you a chance to respond to what was actually in the email that you got that fired you.

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 Just wanted to ask you to respond to that. 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

Speaker 13 your own piece to that.

Speaker 23 Yeah, it was

Speaker 23 honestly very bizarre to me that they sent out this map. Well, they sent out the email individually to each person, but it was the same cookie cutter email.
It didn't even address my name.

Speaker 23 It didn't address anyone's names. It just had this

Speaker 23 generic saying, and it just let us all know that we were let go. It was,

Speaker 23 yeah, reading it,

Speaker 23 I didn't even have any words to describe how I felt. And honestly, when I first got the email, I didn't even fully read through it.

Speaker 23 I just skimmed it because everyone had been talking about what was going on, and I did not have the bandwidth to read the entire thing at the time.

Speaker 23 I didn't fully read the letter until I think Tuesday.

Speaker 23 And when I got to that part that mentioned that we don't have the skills or the abilities to be ahead of the department,

Speaker 23 I was not very happy because it was just not a true statement.

Speaker 13 Casey Bourne, biologist, formerly formerly with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
And if things get righted in this country

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 And I'm sorry this has happened to you.

Speaker 14 Yeah.

Speaker 23 Thank you so much.

Speaker 13 All right. We got more to come here this Friday night.
Stay with us.

Speaker 13 This one landed like a bomb last night, courtesy of the Washington Post.

Speaker 13 Jacob Bogage, Headline, Trump expected to take control of USPS Fire Postal Board, officials say, 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.

Speaker 13 The board is planning to fight Trump's order,

Speaker 13 three sources told the Washington Post.

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 After the Post broke that exclusive story last night, the White House then denied that Trump was planning to issue any such executive order.

Speaker 13 Then today, when the Commerce Secretary Luttnick was being sworn in, Trump was asked about his plans for the 250-year-old agency whose existence is spelled out in the Constitution.

Speaker 13 He said that he and Secretary Letnick are, quote, looking at it.

Speaker 13 Joining us now is the reporter who broke this story, The Washington Post, Jacob Bogich. Mr.
Bogage, thank you for coming back.

Speaker 13 I had a feeling we'd be back talking to you soon as you've continued to break story after story in Washington. What's your understanding of the state of play around this Postal Service controversy?

Speaker 15 Well, thank you for having me, Rachel. It's good to be back.
And that was one heck of an intro.

Speaker 15 The state of play is in flux. Like you mentioned, we reported this story with anonymous but pretty ironclad sourcing.
The White House, after it published, denied it.

Speaker 15 And then President Trump today didn't just say that he and Secretary Luttnick were looking at it.

Speaker 15 He acknowledged that they were planning what he called some sort of merger between the Postal Service and the Commerce Department. So this is very much an active question in the White House.

Speaker 15 And at the Postal Service,

Speaker 15 people are really uncertain.

Speaker 15 That goes from rank and file letter carriers and postmasters who I've talked to today and have been texting with all through the night, really,

Speaker 15 from last night when I wrote that story to today, to folks in senior leadership who are wondering what it means to have a political mail service.

Speaker 13 Yeah.

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 And it did appear to back them off.

Speaker 13 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 might have been a little bit of that dynamic still at play, that they might not

Speaker 13 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?

Speaker 13 And then the public revelation of that momentum seems to have changed them to a different course?

Speaker 15 That's a difficult question to answer. I mean, yes and no, right? I mean, the story published last night

Speaker 15 and one of my sources immediately texted me, are we doing this again?

Speaker 15 This is somebody who had defended the Postal Service

Speaker 15 during the first Trump administration and was like, okay, let's take the playbook out again.

Speaker 15 And I've been talking with sources who are reviving

Speaker 15 that playbook again today.

Speaker 15 The legal questions around

Speaker 15 if the Trump administration can do this, and if so, how they can do this, are very thorny. I mean, like, I'm a postal policy geek and I don't know.

Speaker 15 And that's because it's an independent agency. It has to have a board.
If you don't have a board, you can't raise prices. You can't sell stuff off.
You can't make investments.

Speaker 15 Those are things. Those are powers that are not vested in the postmaster general.
And it's designed that way specifically to wall people's mail and communications.

Speaker 15 off from anyone political who could tinker with it.

Speaker 13 Yeah, the Postal Service belongs to the American people.

Speaker 13 It doesn't belong to any political faction, doesn't belong to the White House, certainly doesn't belong to any private company or private investor. Jacob Bogage,

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 15 Thanks. Good to see you.

Speaker 13 All right, we'll be right back.

Speaker 13 I told you this was going to be a packed show tonight. All right.
I will see you again on Monday and all next week at 9 p.m. Eastern here on MSNBC.

Speaker 13 In the meantime, you can find me on blue sky at matto.msnbc.com. If you're on blue sky, I love to hear from you there.
You can,

Speaker 13 you know, do the social media communication thing in a way that 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.

Speaker 4 Now's the time to start your next adventure behind the wheel of an exciting new Toyota hybrid.

Speaker 5 With the largest lineup of hybrid, plug-in hybrid, and electrified vehicles to choose from, Toyota has the one for you.

Speaker 3 Every new Toyota Hybrid comes with Toyota Care, two-year complementary scheduled maintenance, an exclusive hybrid battery warranty, and Toyota's legendary quality and reliability.

Speaker 11 Visit your local Toyota dealer today.

Speaker 9 Toyota, let's go places. See your local Toyota dealer for hybrid battery warranty details.