'Tech genius' image wears thin after series of errors calls DOGE competence into question

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 2 When it comes to delivering flowers for life's special occasions, trust the name that's been setting the standard for nearly 50 years, 1-800flowers.com.

Speaker 2 From breathtaking bouquets to one-of-a-kind arrangements, 1-800 Flowers is your authority on quality blooms. Always fresh, always stunning, always delivered with care.

Speaker 2 And right now, for a limited time, you can save up to 40% off your bouquet and make someone's day. Save up to 40% off today at 1-800flowers.com/slash SXM.
That's 1-800Flowers.com/slash SXM.

Speaker 3 Thanks, John, for joining us this hour. Appreciate it.
So, Richard Nixon was sworn in for his second term as president in January 1973.

Speaker 3 First elected in the 1968 election, then re-elected in the 1972 election. So, Inauguration Day,

Speaker 3 he was sworn in for what would, of course, famously become his disastrous second term in office

Speaker 3 in January, Saturday, January 20th, 1973.

Speaker 3 two days after that

Speaker 3 lbj died uh 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

Speaker 3 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

Speaker 3 Two days after LBJ's death.

Speaker 3 Very classy.

Speaker 4 This administration today,

Speaker 4 here and now declares unconditional war on poverty in America. Our chief weapons in a more pinpointed attack will be better schools and better health.

Speaker 4 and better homes and better training and better job opportunities to help more Americans, especially young Americans, escape from squalor

Speaker 4 and misery.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 And I'm oversimplifying, but essentially, all the things that Johnson wanted to do for Americans who were poor, for his his war on poverty,

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 That is, for example, where we got Head Start, the big preschool program. That's where we got AmeriCorps.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 And Nixon declared he wanted it dead.

Speaker 3 Now, in Nixon's first term in office, he had tried to kill that agency.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 But it wasn't enough. By the time Nixon was coming back for his second term, that agency that he hated so much, it still existed.

Speaker 3 And so this time, coming back for his second term, he just flat out said he was going to kill it off.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 It's interesting, though.

Speaker 3 Even that wasn't enough for Nixon.

Speaker 3 Because when he came back for his second term, again, like kind of famously, he was way more radical than he had been before.

Speaker 3 He was certainly less constrained and perhaps more thrilled and perhaps more drunk on his own power.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 But he also sent in yet another new guy

Speaker 3 who was even more of a wrecking ball than Donald Rumsfeld.

Speaker 3 A guy whose name was Howard Phillips. 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 Quote, Phillips immediately issued instructions to local anti-poverty groups to begin phasing out and planning for reductions in force.

Speaker 3 Nixon had requested that Congress kill it. Congress hadn't done anything about that yet.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 Here's how NBC Nightly News reported on it.

Speaker 5 The phase-out began at OEO's Washington headquarters in January. It's a job which Director Howard Phillips has pursued with enthusiasm.

Speaker 5 Since Phillips took over, many experienced employees have left, a number of projects canceled, and some anti-poverty activities turned over to other departments.

Speaker 5 Cleveland's OEO program centers around six multi-services in the city. They receive more than $2 million a year in federal money.

Speaker 5 The centers house more than 20 agencies funded by the Office of Economic Opportunity. Funds for services like this thrift shop run out at the end of June.

Speaker 5 But ever since the administration announced that OEO would be abandoned, morale has been low and people have been leaving.

Speaker 6 I think people feel very helpless. What can they possibly do

Speaker 6 when they have not been legitimately part of the

Speaker 6 decision-making process?

Speaker 6 And some of us have talked to our congressmen and

Speaker 6 our own legislators face the same kind of frustration.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 A 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 Those members of Congress were saying, yeah, we're frustrated too. We don't think they can do this.

Speaker 3 Sound familiar?

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 When Nixon pulled this caper and tried to unilaterally close this agency that he hated, which Republicans denounced as evil and Marxist and all the rest,

Speaker 3 it was a scandal.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 8 The changes he has brought about so far are sweeping in scope.

Speaker 8 Today in Washington, thousands of people gathered to protest the president's actions, a gathering of city mayors and of poor people's organizations. Gordon Graham covered that story.

Speaker 9 They came by the busload, more than 10,000 strong, to appeal to their senators and representatives, hoping the Congress might somehow save the inner-city anti-poverty programs the president has already begun to shut down.

Speaker 3 It wasn't just protests either.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 And it was sort of a battle royale,

Speaker 3 including the president's kill the agency henchmen, basically scoffing at the courts at one point, like whatever they said wouldn't matter anyway.

Speaker 5 Yesterday, a federal district judge in Washington told the Nixon administration that it could not legally dismantle the Office of Economic Opportunity, and the judge ordered the administration to stop doing it.

Speaker 5 The White House said today that the ruling is being studied and that the law will be obeyed.

Speaker 5 But the man who's doing the dismembering, Howard Phillips, says the ruling means only that he may have to work a little longer.

Speaker 5 And in his first reaction last night, he made clear he does not believe the court decision will save the agency.

Speaker 5 Unless the president changes his mind, there's going to be no money in the OEO budget after June 30 of this year. The employees union has been fighting the dismantlement.

Speaker 5 And today, still worried but a bit more optimistic, staffers went next door to a theater to hear their lawyer talk about Phillips' hardline reaction and the agents' future.

Speaker 5 It seems that your acting director was interviewed last evening on his way to a banquet in Boston.

Speaker 5 He says here, the worst thing that can happen is that I might have a little bit longer to administer this place.

Speaker 5 I do expect that we will complete our mission along the schedule that has been set forth.

Speaker 5 If he really means that he will complete his mission as it has been previously announced, he's either a prophet or in contempt.

Speaker 5 The employee's big hope is that Congress, with support from the courts, will now insist OEO be retained. Paul Duke, NBC News, Washington.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 There was all this bluster from Nixon's guy, Howard Phillips, saying he was going to defy the courts, right?

Speaker 3 Saying that the courts ruling here didn't matter. Don't worry, we're getting it anyway.

Speaker 3 But that, you know,

Speaker 3 despite that,

Speaker 3 despite the pressure that the Nixon administration tried to put on the people who were trying to keep this place alive,

Speaker 3 the backlash and the efforts by people who were standing up for this agency,

Speaker 3 in the end, it worked.

Speaker 3 They went to the courts. The courts said, yeah, what they're doing is illegal.
They can't do it. And the Office of Economic Opportunity stayed open.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 And what did Howard Phillips do? He soon resigned from that job in the Nixon administration.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 It is Ms. or Mrs.
and there is no Ms. and we must abolish Ms.

Speaker 3 Vote for me for president. He was also known for vehemently demanding that the Department of Education should be abolished.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 That's what became of Howard Phillips after his stint at the Office of Economic Opportunity. But you know, the The right really hated that agency.

Speaker 3 And this is also an important part of the story. Years later, they did succeed in killing that agency off.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 Congress had created it and funded it. So the only entity that can legally get rid of it is Congress.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 And so he tried to do that by sending in this henchman in there to declare it closed.

Speaker 3 But it was plainly illegal for him to do it that way. Had he just waited for Congress, he might have won the argument in Congress, got it shut down legally.

Speaker 3 Instead, the courts stopped him, and it took years and years and years for them to get it shut down the right way.

Speaker 3 Ryan LaRochelle is a political scientist at the University of Maine. He recently wrote about this incident for Time magazine.

Speaker 3 He said, quote, so far, Trump and Musk have followed Nixon's playbook and ignored his lack of success.

Speaker 3 So, I mean, in some ways, we have been here before, and so have they.

Speaker 3 But the law is still the law from 50 years ago and from hundreds of years ago

Speaker 3 and now. I mean, look at this.
This is from the New York Times in the middle of this scandal in April 1973.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 That principle is so fundamental that it is familiar to every student of constitutional law.

Speaker 3 That principle is so fundamental.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 By court order last night, he ordered that foreign aid must be restarted late last night.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 Then today, in a similar order, the Consumer Financial Protection Agency, the staff of that agency has brought the Trump administration to court.

Speaker 3 Now the Trump administration has been court ordered to stop its plans to destroy data, terminate employees, or take the agency's budget.

Speaker 3 These guys so hate that this is the law, but this is the law. And at least for now, we still have law.

Speaker 3 If there is a case to be made to shut down an agency, tell Congress you want them to shut it down.

Speaker 3 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?

Speaker 3 Your party controls both houses of Congress. What? You don't think they'll do what you want?

Speaker 3 You don't think you have sway over the Republican Party? You can make them do that?

Speaker 3 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, at this time they are openly saying that they don't think they need to obey the courts.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 Now, they're not conceding that they're in defiance of the court. They're still showing up and defending their actions.

Speaker 3 So at this point, they haven't raced all the way to the end of the game and just declared a dictatorship.

Speaker 3 But they are openly musing about how they think they ought to and how it's within their rights, including Vice President J.D.

Speaker 3 Vance putting his musings on this subject in print within the last few days. So that's different than just entertaining the idea that maybe we won't have law anymore.

Speaker 3 But the second way that things are different

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 It's not a flattering look, but he thought it was hilarious. He tried to say this t-shirt was a very funny joke that he's White House tech support.

Speaker 3 You know, for our generation of Howard Phillips's, our generation of the let's kill the U.S. government and we don't care if it's legal or not,

Speaker 3 Our guys have claimed the right to do what they're doing, not just because of their wild-eyed zeal against the US government and the U.S. system of governing.
They've claimed the right to do this.

Speaker 3 They've sort of claimed that their legitimacy comes from their tech savvy because they're so good with computers.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 They're so tech savvy, so competent, so good at what they're doing. How could we mere mortals possibly understand?

Speaker 3 404 Media today reported that on the website for

Speaker 3 Doge, I don't know, dodgy, 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.

Speaker 3 It appears that random members of the public have been able able to upload joke categories and database entries onto that website that show up as if they are official Doge.gov data.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 404 media reporting today today that people were posting things like, quote, these experts left their database open, rotor, and quote, this is a joke of a dot gov site.

Speaker 3 Remember, these are our high-tech

Speaker 3 overlords.

Speaker 3 At the Huffington Post today, they've got comment from an unnamed employee of the Defense Intelligence Agency.

Speaker 3 pointing out that among the data that Elon Musk's little group has posted online on their apparently totally insecure, half-baked website,

Speaker 3 is classified information about the National Reconnaissance Office, which is the federal agency that designs, builds, and maintains U.S. intelligence satellites.

Speaker 3 Quote, Doge just posted secret, no foreign, meaning no...

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 And that part of the government's guts. Because he's allowed to do that, I guess.
He said the scandal that he and his team had

Speaker 3 uncovered in social security data is that there are people in the social security database who are listed as being 150 years old.

Speaker 3 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.
But today, people started gingerly asking if perhaps Mr.

Speaker 3 Musk just didn't know that in an older version of the programming language that is used by the Social Security Administration,

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 Does he know that? Or does he really think those are records for 150-year-old people?

Speaker 3 Does he know what he's looking at when he's pawing through your social security records?

Speaker 3 Remember, 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.

Speaker 3 We're supposed to be intimidated here.

Speaker 3 That measles outbreak we told you about last night in West Texas, It has now doubled in size as of today. The CDC also has fired as many as 1,300 people today.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 And at the National Nuclear Security Administration today, which is responsible for keeping our nuclear

Speaker 3 nukes safe,

Speaker 3 they fired a significant portion of their staff today. hundreds of staff members.

Speaker 3 Yesterday we got word that Trump and Musk's little squad of genius web developers

Speaker 3 and software engineers,

Speaker 3 the folks who may have accidentally posted the classified information on their website and left open some sort of back door so that random members of the public can post stuff on it, that genius squad has now reportedly been sent into the IRS.

Speaker 3 So now that group is in there with your tax information.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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

Speaker 3 means

Speaker 3 real material harm is being done to our country.

Speaker 3 And it will take a long time to repair it when we finally get to start.

Speaker 3 But there is nothing high-tech about what they are doing. And there's nothing new about their intentions.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 More to come tonight. Stay with us.

Speaker 10 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 10 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 10 Donate today by visiting rescue.org/slash rebuild.

Speaker 11 With TikTok ads, our revenue went up $10 million year over year during back to school season. Penn Foster is online education.

Speaker 11 TikTok is great because the reach is incredible for finding a lot of different types of audiences on the platform. Creator content at scale allowed us to easily develop and distribute creator-led ads.

Speaker 11 Our return on ad spend for TikTok is 21% higher than the Nexbus channel.

Speaker 3 Start growing your business today. Head over to getstarted.tiktok.com/slash TikTok ads.

Speaker 7 Start your day with the MS Now daily newsletter. Sharp insights from voices you trust, standout moments from your favorite shows, and fresh perspectives from experts shaping the news.

Speaker 7 Sign up at MS.Now.

Speaker 3 We can talk all we want about values.

Speaker 7 Values are important.

Speaker 7 But you can't shoot values.

Speaker 7 You can't shoot flags.

Speaker 7 And you can't shoot strong speeches.

Speaker 12 You can't

Speaker 3 shoot with them? Or you can't shoot at them? You can't shoot.

Speaker 3 Are we sure he's not talking about like shots? You know what I mean?

Speaker 3 U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth at a meeting of the NATO defense ministers this week.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 But Secretary Hegseth began this trip trip

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 That would imply that the peace talks are

Speaker 3 have already happened and Ukraine already had to give everything up. Why would they talk?

Speaker 3 We mentioned last night that Secretary Hegseth 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.

Speaker 7 As it pertains to NATO membership not being realistic outcome for negotiations, that's something that was stated as part of my remarks here, as part of a coordination with how we're executing these ongoing negotiations.

Speaker 3 Can you say that again? Can we diagram that sentence? That's something that was stated as part of my remarks.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 It's not just our allies abroad who reacted negatively to Pete Hegseth's comments.

Speaker 3 After Hegseth made those comments, the Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Senator Roger Wicker, responded by saying, quote, I'd prefer we don't give away negotiating negotiating positions before we actually get started.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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,

Speaker 3 said the senator. Again, that is a member of Pete Hegseth's own political party boldly criticizing his performance on this trip.

Speaker 3 It's worth noting as Senator Wicker was making that unfavorable comparison to Mr. Carlson, Mr.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 Because yes, Russia was on the ropes. They were the real victim here.
They just had to invade.

Speaker 3 Meanwhile, today, Ukraine accused Russia's military of ramming a drone with a high-explosive warhead on it into the former Chernobyl nuclear site.

Speaker 3 The drone reportedly damaged the protective shield that is supposed to prevent radiation leaks from that famously radioactive site.

Speaker 3 Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says the damage was significant, but he says there are not currently signs of increased radiation.

Speaker 3 Amid all of this, the Vice President of the United States managed to make things even more confusing, confusing, making his own sort of rookie moves on his own first trip abroad.

Speaker 3 He told the Wall Street Journal that the U.S. would potentially take military action in the war in Ukraine.
As in U.S. troops in Ukraine?

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 Vice President Vance said that the Wall Street Journal had twisted his words. The Wall Street Journal does not appear to have conceded they've done any such thing.

Speaker 3 Joining us now from Munich, Germany is former Ambassador to Russia, Michael McFall, who has stayed up till 0 dark 30 to be with us tonight in the middle of the night.

Speaker 3 Sir, thank you so much for joining us. I really appreciate it.

Speaker 12 Always a pleasure to be on with you, Rachel.

Speaker 3 These remarks from Pete Hegseph at the outset here speaking with NATO leaders

Speaker 3 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

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 12 Well, first, it was just a rookie mistake is very generous. I've negotiated with the Russians before.
They're tough negotiators.

Speaker 12 And you don't just capitulate and give them what they want before you start the negotiations. And the Vice President could have clarified things today at the Munich Security Conference.

Speaker 12 He could have devoted his speech to saying what the United States position is, what the Trump administration official position is to try to clean it up.

Speaker 12 But instead, he gave a speech about how democracy is failing in Europe. He said that that was a bigger threat to Europe than Russia or China.

Speaker 12 And he said that in a room filled with generals and admirals and Ukrainian soldiers.

Speaker 12 And again, I don't need to tell you, Rachel, the irony of the vice president of the United States, who works works for President Trump, telling the Europeans that they're doing a bad job at democracy, given what we are going through right now and given what we went through four years ago,

Speaker 12 really was quite insulting for this audience. So it was just

Speaker 12 a great opportunity to say clearly what their position was, and instead he chose to lecture them about democracy.

Speaker 3 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

Speaker 3 is viewed by many Germans as

Speaker 3 the sort of unsettling inheritors of the legacy of the Nazi Party, frankly.

Speaker 3 What do you make of this decision? Is this a logistics decision or is this a loud message? And if so, how is it being heard?

Speaker 12 Definitely not a logistics decision

Speaker 12 problem. Anybody that the vice president wanted to meet with, he could.
But it underscores the other message of his speech. His speech was basically: adopt our interpretation of values, right?

Speaker 12 MAGA values.

Speaker 12 And again, these guys, there's a big contradiction. They talk about sovereignty all the time.
But when it comes to German sovereignty, they're perfectly willing to get involved.

Speaker 12 There's elections here in just a few days here in Germany.

Speaker 12 And it was not well received. I've been to this conference many, many times.
I cannot recall a speech that so many people were so insulted by.

Speaker 3 Mike, the

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 Those images are so chilling and so unsettling. Can I just ask your reaction to that? Ukraine claims this is a Russian military drone.
Russia is essentially disclaiming responsibility for it.

Speaker 3 How are you viewing this?

Speaker 12 Well, Rich, I spend most of my day today with Ukrainians, including soldiers.

Speaker 12 They're fighting and they fought courageously for three years. But when they hear our president say that he trusts Vladimir Putin and that he's going to do a deal with Vladimir Putin and then

Speaker 12 present it to the Ukrainian people and they experience what you are just showing your viewers, viewers,

Speaker 12 there's a lot of dissonance there. They don't trust Putin.

Speaker 12 Putin is their enemy and it makes them very nervous when the president of the United States, who they need and rely on to continue to fight against the Russians, are saying he trusts Putin.

Speaker 3 Former Ambassador to Russia, Michael McFall, joining us tonight live from Munich, where it is 3 freaking 30 in the morning.

Speaker 3 Ambassador McFall, I now owe you at some point, you can wake me up at 3.30 in the the morning for something. I owe you at least a beer when you get back.

Speaker 3 Thank you very much for being up at this time first. Thank you.
Thanks for having me.

Speaker 11 With TikTok ads, our revenue went up $10 million year over year during back to school season. Penn Foster is online education.

Speaker 11 TikTok is great because the reach is incredible for finding a lot of different types of audiences on the platform. Creator content at scale allowed us to easily develop and distribute creator-led ads.

Speaker 11 Our return on ad spend for TikTok is 21% higher than the Nexbest channel.

Speaker 3 Start growing your business today. Head over to getstarted.tiktok.com slash TikTok ads.

Speaker 7 MS Now presents season two of the Blueprint, hosted by Jen Saki.

Speaker 7 In each episode, she talks to leading Democrats about how they plan to win again, including Texas Congressman Greg Kassar, who chairs the Progressive Caucus, Congresswoman Sarah McBride of Delaware, the first openly trans person elected to Congress, and more who are helping to shape the future of the party.

Speaker 7 The Blueprint with Jen Saki, Season 2. All episodes available now.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 Last night, we reported that it was a six resignation day at DOJ. Trump-installed leaders at Maine Justice told SDNY, they told the acting U.S.

Speaker 3 attorney in the Southern District of New York, that she needed to dismiss corruption charges against New York's mayor, Eric Adams.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 The SDNY U.S. attorney refused to do it.
and she quit.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 So that's six high-profile resignations from the Justice Department as since yesterday.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 So as of this morning, seven principled resignations and the Eric Adams charges still weren't dropped.

Speaker 3 At which point, Trump's acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bovey, and this is true, confirmed by NBC News legal correspondent Lisa Rubin, Emil Bove 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 them they had one hour to decide which one of them was going to sign the motion calling for the charges to be dismissed.

Speaker 3 Emile 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,

Speaker 3 they could all be fired.

Speaker 3 Ultimately, one veteran career prosecutor who is apparently nearing retirement said he would volunteer to sign the motion, basically under duress, Not because he necessarily supported it, but because he was hoping to save all of his colleagues' jobs.

Speaker 3 And so tonight, Trump's Justice Department has filed this motion in federal court in New York tonight, United States of America v.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 And without prejudice is the legal language there that allows them to bring these charges back whenever they they want, whenever the mayor of America's largest city, you know, gets out of line and stops doing what Trump wants.

Speaker 3 But note that other phrase there, with leave of the court. That's important.

Speaker 3 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

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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,

Speaker 3 you're going to want to hear this.

Speaker 3 Lisa Rubin joins us to update us on that next.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 Attorneys for the Southern District of New York, we commend U.S. Attorney Daniel Sassoon on her decision to resign.

Speaker 3 Her commitment to integrity and the rule of law reflects the finest traditions of the Southern District, United States Attorney's Office, and the Department of Justice.

Speaker 3 The department's announced intent to investigate Ms.

Speaker 3 Sassoon and some of the career prosecutors whose 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.

Speaker 3 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, and Audrey Strauss.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 But charges don't just get dropped on their own automatically because the Justice Department says to. The judge overseeing the case now has to consider that request from the Justice Department.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 Have I explained any of this the wrong way around yet, or have I pretty much got it right?

Speaker 13 No, it's all been right and it's all terrifying, Rachel. Thank you for having me.

Speaker 3 What is the judge going to do here? I imagine that the judge doesn't have that much discretion about

Speaker 3 ultimately whether or not to drop the charges, but presumably there is some process that happens here next, right?

Speaker 13 There's not always a process, but if there are circumstances where the judge feels that he or she needs to get to the bottom of a Nali Prosequi motion, and that's what this is, this is a motion to dismiss after prosecution has already been brought, that judge has some latitude to call for hearings or other processes that allow them to understand what happened.

Speaker 13 The most recent example I can think of in the Southern District itself involves a case in 2020 and 2021 where after the defendant was convicted, it came out that the prosecutors had essentially buried a piece of evidence that would have been exculpatory for the defendant.

Speaker 13 And the judge in that case actually asked for affidavits and evidence from the U.S. Attorney's Office trying to understand how did this happen? Was this purposeful?

Speaker 13 Did this constitute prosecutorial misconduct?

Speaker 13 And while she determined that none of it was intentional, she did refer all of the attorneys who were involved to the Office of Professional Responsibility at the Department of Justice.

Speaker 13 Those are the sorts of things that are within the power of a judge facing a motion like this, Rachel.

Speaker 3 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?

Speaker 13 I think it's entirely within Judge Ho's discretion to decide who, what, when, how, and why.

Speaker 13 But I would expect knowing him, and I will, in full disclosure, Judge Ho is a law school classmate of mine, I expect that he'll move fairly expeditiously and ask everyone to come to the table.

Speaker 13 And he may even tell them in advance, these are the sort of questions I have around this request and around some of the communications that have gone back and forth.

Speaker 13 You know, you referred to the memo that Danielle Sassoon wrote when she was trying to explain to the Attorney General why she couldn't do this.

Speaker 13 That's a memo that many people have said to me that was written for a court.

Speaker 13 But there may be much more behind the scenes that Judge Ho wants to see, including correspondence or communications between the lawyers for Eric Adams and the Department of Justice that the New York Times reported on yesterday, essentially saying that the Department of Justice was feeding Eric Adams' lawyers.

Speaker 13 Hey, tell us more about how this is an impediment to your boss or your client, I'm sorry, doing his job.

Speaker 13 That might be the sort of thing that Judge Ho wants to understand to determine whether or not there was a quid pro quo here, Rachel.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 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, for a a long way from now.

Speaker 3 Lisa Rubin, MSNBC legal correspondent, work in triple time as always. Lisa, thank you so much.

Speaker 13 Thank you.

Speaker 3 We'll be right back.

Speaker 3 This week has been a year,

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 This was the scene outside the Stonewall Inn today in New York City.

Speaker 3 Hundreds of people showed up to protest 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.

Speaker 3 It's like telling Cooperstown they're no longer allowed to mention baseball anymore.

Speaker 3 This was a different part of New York City yesterday.

Speaker 3 About 400 protesters marching from one ICE office, Immigration and Customs Enforcement Office, to another to protest the Trump administration's immigration actions.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 today, federal workers and their supporters and regular members of the public protested outside the Health and Human Services Building as Robert F.

Speaker 3 Kennedy started his first full day of work as HHS secretary. They left valentines for Valentine's Day that were made with spoons,

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 Over this weekend, we're expecting additional protests this coming Monday, President's Day. A whole bunch of different groups are planning a national national day of protests on Monday.

Speaker 3 We expect that the main protest will be at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C.
at Upper Senate Park.

Speaker 3 But we're also expecting, once again, satellite protests at state capitals and city halls and town halls all across the country.

Speaker 3 Expecting a pretty major day of protest on Monday, this Monday, President's Day, in D.C. and around the country.
People are mad about what Trump and his administration are doing.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 14 Home to the Rachel Maddow Show, Morning Joe, the briefing with Jen Saki, and more voices you know and trust. MS Now is your source for news, opinion, and the world.

Speaker 14 Learn more at MS.now.