Trump opposition finds its footing, from streets to courts to Congress

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Speaker 12 This is going to be a really good show. I'm glad you're here tonight.
Thanks for being here. So this was Washington, D.C.

Speaker 12 today, ahead of a big snowstorm that is rolling into Washington right now tonight.

Speaker 12 That is a snowstorm big enough that it's already canceled some of the action we thought we were going to be watching late into the wee hours tonight on Capitol Hill.

Speaker 12 But ahead of that storm, this was Washington today. Tons of people in the streets.
People turned out just outside the U.S.

Speaker 12 Capitol, Upper Senate Park, to protest, to support the civil service, support the people who work for the government, to protest our government being dismantled by President Trump and, of course, by his top campaign donor.

Speaker 13 This administration maintains that they're going to boost efficiency, but they are doing the most inefficient things imaginable. And I'm not just saying that quite literally.

Speaker 13 The most inefficient thing you could possibly do is take American taxpayer dollars and pay people not to work. They are afraid of you.

Speaker 13 Trump and Musk and the oligarchs they work for, they are scared of your power. But they are betting that you will be afraid of them.

Speaker 13 So afraid that you will accept a buyout or comply in advance with their assertion of absolute power. But we know a president is not a king unless we bow.

Speaker 13 A dictator is not a dictator unless we bow.

Speaker 13 Our knees, your knees, are not made for bowing to power-drunk neo-fascists.

Speaker 13 We bow only to God.

Speaker 13 To everybody else, we stand and speak truth to power.

Speaker 13 We stand tall.

Speaker 13 When they attack workers, we stand tall because whenever wannabe dictators have tried to take over throughout history, they always start with workers.

Speaker 13 Hear me now. They always start with government workers who are committed to a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.

Speaker 13 And they know as long as workers stay together and fight, haters can't win. No!

Speaker 12 Reverend William Barber, civil rights leader, also speaking there, Kenny Robertson, the National Vice President of the American Federation of Government Employees.

Speaker 12 But this is a big protest today in Washington, D.C.

Speaker 12 in support of federal civil servants, the people who work in the U.S.

Speaker 12 government, a support for them, and also a protest in defiance of what we're seeing from the Trump administration to try to effectively destroy as much as they can of the federal government.

Speaker 12 This follows an equally large and energetic protest yesterday, also in D.C.

Speaker 12 This one outside the headquarters of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, one of the agencies that Trump is trying to just unilaterally shut down, even though that legally does not appear to be within his power.

Speaker 12 This protest yesterday at the CFPB

Speaker 12 noted among other things, people at that protest noted that this agency, for example, is handling hundreds of consumer complaints about Tesla, the car company owned by Elon Musk.

Speaker 12 This is an agency that would be overseeing the new thing Elon Musk just announced about his social media company, which used to be called Twitter.

Speaker 12 He wants you now to be able to use that social media platform, not just for all your

Speaker 12 needs for posting about weird Nazi race science and threats against reporters or whatever.

Speaker 12 He now also wants you to be able to use that social media platform as the place where you do all your banking and keep all your money. Because yeah, trust him, what could possibly go wrong?

Speaker 12 He announced that just weeks ago before he went to war against the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which is the government agency that would be overseeing and regulating that genius use Twitter as a payment service idea, which Musk just announced.

Speaker 12 Now he's announced that he's killed that agency himself, effectively unilaterally, thanks to the power vested in him as the president's top campaign donor. That's not how the law works.

Speaker 12 He doesn't get a unilateral say in what government agencies we have in America.

Speaker 12 And these people doorstopping the CFPB's headquarters yesterday in Washington, including lots of elected officials and lots of people who weren't elected officials.

Speaker 12 That was all part of telling him that he does not necessarily get his way here. You see some of the signs here.
Hands off our CFPB. Elon is stealing your data.
Thanks, federal workers. Stay strong.

Speaker 12 CFPB protects Americans.

Speaker 12 This is a good one. Dogs against Doge.
Look at the eyes on that one. Oh,

Speaker 12 who's a good dog against Doge?

Speaker 12 That was Washington yesterday and today, outside of Washington. Check this out.
This was West Virginia today.

Speaker 12 Parkersburg, West Virginia. This is in the northwest part of the states, right near the Ohio state line.

Speaker 12 And a few days ago on Friday, ProPublica reported that this little city in West Virginia was about to be the next target of Elon Musk's flying wedge of government saboteurs.

Speaker 12 Elon Musk's little group has been so eager to get their hands on the super sensitive Treasury, U.S.

Speaker 12 Treasury payment system, which sends out, you know, your social security check, your veterans benefits, secret payments from our intelligence agencies to their secret assets and sources abroad.

Speaker 12 They were so eager to get their hands on that sensitive U.S. Treasury payment system.

Speaker 12 But once they did that, they realized there was another really sensitive payment system inside the Treasury Department, and it's called CARS, C-A-R-S, the Central Accounting Reporting System.

Speaker 12 It's based at the Bureau of Fiscal Service inside the U.S. Treasury, and they have their offices in Parkersburg, West Virginia.

Speaker 12 And ProPublica just reported a few days ago, Friday, that Trump was sending Musk's team physically out to Parkersburg, West Virginia to go mess with that system too.

Speaker 12 And so over the weekend, West Virginia organized.

Speaker 12 The ACLU of West Virginia, the Democratic Party of West Virginia, the Democratic Party of Wood County, which is where Parkersburg is, people who work at that Treasury Department office there, people who know people who work at that Treasury Department office there.

Speaker 12 They all sounded the alarm. They decided to all get together.
And then today was the day. The day those Doge guys were supposed to arrive in this little community in rural West Virginia.

Speaker 12 But look, there were like hundreds of people who turned out to say no. People who turned out with signs telling them and bullhorns telling them back off and not here.
You're not doing it here.

Speaker 12 Quoting Woody Guthrie there, all you fascists bound to lose and defend our public workers and hands off the treasury. No kings in America.
Doge is the real steel.

Speaker 12 Parkersburg, West Virginia, everybody, in the snow and the freezing rain and the wind today. West Virginia.

Speaker 12 We're also starting to see an upsurge of this kind of thing. You see the location here, the setting here?

Speaker 12 We're starting to see an upsurge in protests targeting Tesla dealerships, Tesla charging stations,

Speaker 12 just as sort of the corporate representation of Elon Musk since he owns Tesla.

Speaker 12 We talked last week about a seemingly impromptu protest at Tesla charging stations in the bitter cold up in Waterville, Maine. Well, now look, they're starting to happen all over.

Speaker 12 At a Tesla dealership showroom thing in Manhattan, sort of a big crowd turned out there with very good signage. Stop Musk's coup.
Elon Musk is not my president. This is a coup.

Speaker 12 Take away the keys from Elon.

Speaker 12 Don't buy swastika cars.

Speaker 12 Also look

Speaker 12 in California, in San Luis Obispo, at a Tesla dealership there. More of the same.
Stop the coup. Stop Musk.
Save our democracy.

Speaker 13 Follow the rule of law.

Speaker 12 This is a pretty good one. Bad Doge.

Speaker 12 I've been wondering if we should call, I mean, why do we say doge, right? Like, why are we playing along with the joke and their framing of it?

Speaker 12 Like, there's just as much of a case that we should be calling it doggy

Speaker 12 instead of doge. I don't know.
That's a pretty compelling case. Bad Doge.

Speaker 12 Another big protest at a Tesla site, this one in Ohio, in Columbus. There's a whole bunch of people there.

Speaker 12 O-H-I-O. Elon Musk has got to go.

Speaker 12 The OHIO chant is useful for any occasion and any cause, at any cause in Ohio.

Speaker 12 It works here. O-H-I-O, Elon Musk has got to go.
You could see the signs in Columbus as people turned out to protest against Elon Musk and his role in the Trump administration.

Speaker 12 Delete Musk, boycott plutocracy.

Speaker 12 This one, just the word Elon with a big F in front of it.

Speaker 12 That's pretty good. Elon hands hands-off private data, health info, and tax money.
That's another one.

Speaker 12 Not for nothing, but I will tell you, Forbes tonight reports that Elon Musk's personal wealth has dropped $42 billion this month. Really?

Speaker 12 As shares of Tesla have started to fall off a cliff.

Speaker 12 This follows earlier reporting that you might have heard here on this show about how Tesla sales all over the world, especially in Europe, are really dropping down by a lot, down like 40, 50, close to 60%.

Speaker 12 Tesla sales down by that much in the most important European markets. Tesla's stock price in February alone is down 19%,

Speaker 12 with one prominent analyst warning yesterday:

Speaker 12 the negative downturn in consumers' perception of Elon Musk could result in a headwind to sales for Tesla.

Speaker 12 Whereupon Tesla's stock dropped 3% in one day alone yesterday.

Speaker 12 And

Speaker 12 this is interesting in terms of thinking about the sort of practical and political import of that.

Speaker 12 Reporters at the Bulwark got their hands on a bunch of letters sent by Republican members of Congress to their constituents about Elon Musk.

Speaker 12 Now, why are Republican members of Congress writing to their constituents about Elon Musk? It's because their constituents

Speaker 12 have been complaining to their Republican members of Congress about Elon Musk, telling them this Musk business is sick and wrong, and what are you going to do about it?

Speaker 12 We can tell that is the tone of the communication about Elon Musk to the offices of Republican senators and members of Congress. We can tell that because of what we now see

Speaker 12 in these letters published by the bulwark of Republican members of Congress, what they are saying back to their constituent in their own letters, right?

Speaker 12 Letters that they probably do not want read out loud on national news.

Speaker 12 So let's do it, right? Okay. Senator John Curtis, Republican from Utah.
Dear redacted,

Speaker 12 thank you for reaching out to share your thoughts on the Department of Government Efficiency and Elon Musk's role in the new administration.

Speaker 12 It is important that Doge operates with appropriate oversight to maintain transparency, prevent conflicts of interest, and ensure its work remains focused on serving the American people.

Speaker 12 That's what Senator John Curtis, Republican of Utah, is telling his constituents. Well, is he actually working to ensure that in the Senate?

Speaker 12 Is he working to ensure they're maintaining transparency and preventing conflicts of interest? What are you doing about that, Senator? You're telling your constituents that's what you're working on.

Speaker 12 What are you actually doing? Are you willing to do it out loud to Elon Musk's face or just privately to a constituent and then you're not actually going to do it?

Speaker 12 Congressman Mike Flood, Republican of Nebraska. Here's another.
Thank you for reaching out to my office regarding Mr. Elon Musk's Musk's efforts in the Department of Government Efficiency.

Speaker 12 Please know you're not the only one who has expressed concern, and I want you to know I hear you.

Speaker 12 The Treasury Secretary told me to my face that Mr. Musk absolutely does not have full access to the federal payment system.

Speaker 12 Although this process is stressful, I want you to know that I take my responsibility under the Constitution very seriously. Article 1 of our U.S.

Speaker 12 Constitution gives members of Congress the power of the purse to decide and direct spending following a successfully passed budget signed by the president.

Speaker 12 I intend to protect Nebraskans, says Congressman Mike Flood. I intend to protect Nebraskans and appreciate the fact that you feel the same.

Speaker 12 He assures his constituent that he's writing to, quote, Secretary Bissett has confirmed to me that Mr. Musk has read-only access to the data containing the information about where U.S.

Speaker 12 government payments have been made.

Speaker 12 Congressman Mike Flood of Nebraska might want to check with the most recent court filing in the case that's trying to stop Musk from what he's doing at the Treasury.

Speaker 12 Because in the government's filings in that case today, they admit it isn't read-only access.

Speaker 12 It's full access. It's read and write access.
And oops,

Speaker 12 guess they told you wrong.

Speaker 12 You going to make that up to your constituent who you calmly assured that everything was fine because you got told to your face it was read-only access?

Speaker 12 You going to correct that?

Speaker 12 Here too is Congressman Daniel Webster, Republican of Florida, assuring his constituents along the same lines.

Speaker 12 Quote, my staff reached out to the White House to clarify the work Musk and the engineers on the Doge Task Force are doing. Members of the Doge team are being vetted.

Speaker 11 Oh, are they? Are they?

Speaker 12 Are they?

Speaker 12 Members of the Doge team are being vetted to ensure qualifications are met

Speaker 12 and then monitored by Treasury officials throughout their work. Treasury Secretary Scott Besant granted the Doge team access to the Treasury's payment system in a read-only capacity.

Speaker 12 Did he, though, Congressman? You're banking on that. You're telling this to your constituents, Congressman Daniel Webster.
But Here is the government's filing in the Treasury case today.

Speaker 12 Quote, on the morning of February 6th, so Thursday, it was discovered that Mr. Elez's database access to the Treasury payment system had been configured with read-write permissions.

Speaker 12 That's not read-only, it's read-write. It's the exact thing you've been telling your constituents they're not doing.
Turns out they're doing it.

Speaker 12 All these members of Congress are assuring their apparently quite angry, quite insistent constituents that none of that happened, definitely didn't happen. We got assurances.
It happened.

Speaker 12 Here's Republican Senator Deb Fisher writing to her constituents in Nebraska. Thank you for sharing your concerns with me.

Speaker 12 I understand that the Treasury Department's payment system contains extremely sensitive and confidential data.

Speaker 12 It is critical for the Treasury Department to maintain its strict procedures to ensure that this data is protected. And what does Senator Fisher think are those strict procedures?

Speaker 12 Well, as she assures her constituent, quote, they have access to read-only data from the department's payment system.

Speaker 12 But that's not true at the government's own admission.

Speaker 12 And Senator Deb Fisher is not only telling her constituents, hey, calm down here, calm down here, it's read-only. She's assuring her constituents that she is on this.
She is all over it.

Speaker 12 Quote, please be assured I will continue to closely monitor this situation in the days and weeks ahead.

Speaker 11 Will you?

Speaker 12 I don't know how closely Senator Deb Fisher is monitoring it, but what she's telling her constituents is happening

Speaker 12 to reassure them, to talk them down, tell them stop freaking out, is not actually what's happening.

Speaker 12 Do you going to send follow-up letters? Are you going to be closely monitoring this situation?

Speaker 12 Ensuring that the Treasury Department maintains its strict procedures because of this extremely sensitive and confidential data that you understand the importance of protecting, even if you don't understand that maybe you shouldn't believe them when they give you false assurances about what they're doing with it.

Speaker 12 Honestly, the most important thing here in this news might be that all these Republican senators and all these Republican members of Congress right now feel compelled to write these letters, to come up with some kind of explanation to their constituents for what Trump is doing.

Speaker 12 And they feel compelled to do that because their constituents are inundating them with complaints and concerns about it. Because that's what's happening right now in the United States of America.

Speaker 12 The people are not having it.

Speaker 12 This weekend, 1,500 people turned out for a single protest Trump and Musk meeting at a church in downtown Santa Barbara. The organizers figured they had plenty of space.

Speaker 12 They knew they could fit 450 people inside. They thought that would be plenty.

Speaker 12 Well, they filled up the 450 seats in the church, and then another thousand plus people showed up and filled the church church courtyard, and then they filled the surrounding sidewalks.

Speaker 12 In Columbus, Ohio, where I just showed you those images from the big protest at the Tesla dealer in Columbus, Ohio, they too had what they thought was going to be a normal indivisible meeting this weekend.

Speaker 12 They filled the church that they had booked for that meeting wall to wall, and then they stuffed the overflow as well. Columbus, Ohio.

Speaker 11 Stuff's happening,

Speaker 12 and the pushback is real, and it is in places you might not expect it.

Speaker 12 And as always, it is getting results. Can't win if you don't play.

Speaker 12 And sometimes the pushback gets big results, sometimes it gets small results, but it always gets something. Today, for example, the National Park Service has caved.

Speaker 12 They've had to partially pull back on their Trump hiring freeze.

Speaker 12 Democratic senators and Democratic members of Congress screamed bloody murder about the fact that the Park Service having this hiring freeze meant, among other things, that the country's national parks were not going to be able to open this summer.

Speaker 12 Because the hiring freeze meant that the Park Service wasn't going to be able to hire the thousands and thousands and thousands of seasonal workers they have to hire every year in order to freaking run the parks.

Speaker 12 Oops.

Speaker 12 Now, this is only a partial rollback of that hiring freeze for the national parks, but it is a rollback. And it is in response to the hue and cry and people screaming bloody murder about it.

Speaker 12 Today I should mention was also another totally solid day in terms of Trump being stopped and tripped up in the courts.

Speaker 12 Now I mentioned this Treasury case where we now have in black and white the Trump administration admitting in print that, yeah, they did give full read and write access to Elon Musk's little band of teen marauders when they accessed the most sensitive major payment system in the whole U.S.

Speaker 12 government at the U.S. Treasury.
Their Treasury payment system access has now been blocked by a federal court twice.

Speaker 12 The Trump administration, importantly, has appealed that and I can tell you tonight they have lost that appeal. Again, that's on access to the Treasury payment system.

Speaker 12 Today, a federal court also ordered the Trump administration to restore scientific data they took down off of websites at the CDC and the FDA.

Speaker 12 Also, on the resign or else emails that they've been sending threatening all federal employees, last night at midnight was supposed to be the new deadline for the Trump administration to

Speaker 12 force all these or threaten all these federal employees into resigning. That deadline was supposed to be last night.
There's a reason that deadline, like Friday's deadline, came and went.

Speaker 12 It's because the judge hearing that case has blocked that resign or else gambit again now.

Speaker 12 We reported here last night that the head of the Office of Special Counsel, not the one at the Justice Department, but the one that oversees whistleblower laws and protections in the executive branch, that official, the head of the Office of Special Counsel, had been fired by Trump, but the guy who was fired was challenging it in court.

Speaker 6 Well, today,

Speaker 12 that firing has been blocked in court thanks to a federal judge.

Speaker 12 Also, the rip-it-down to the studs cuts to NIH medical and scientific research funding, which I should note is set by law.

Speaker 12 It's not just a president's idea that he can change when he wakes up on the wrong side of the bed. Those cuts have now been blocked twice by federal courts.
How about USAID?

Speaker 12 The attempt to illegally shut down USAID as if, again, Trump can just do that with a whim, right? Let alone his top campaign contributor can do that with a whim?

Speaker 12 The effort to shut down USAID has now been blocked by the federal courts.

Speaker 12 And now today, a second lawsuit has been filed in federal court to force them to pay the USAID contractors who they have been refusing to pay.

Speaker 12 How about that overall federal funding halt that's been blocked by the courts as well?

Speaker 12 We've been reporting that the courts then had to rule against the Trump administration again after the Trump administration chose to defy the first order in that case.

Speaker 12 Well, now a federal appeals court has upheld those lower courts and told the Trump administration in no uncertain terms, they must restore that funding.

Speaker 12 They are not allowed to freeze that funding and they are not allowed to defy the courts when the courts tell them they can't do it.

Speaker 12 And you know again thinking practically

Speaker 12 because symbolic victories

Speaker 12 matter,

Speaker 12 symbols matter, but practical victories are better.

Speaker 12 And in terms of thinking about how all these things work together,

Speaker 12 just

Speaker 12 let's take a little bit of a a case study the department of education

Speaker 12 you might remember in terms of protests in washington you might remember last week very dramatic day at the headquarters of the department of education democratic members of congress and senators raced down to the department of education to stop the trump administration's plans to try to potentially close it down on the fly to get into all its sensitive computer systems weird supposedly like self-proclaimed security guards not wearing uniforms physically blocked members of Congress from getting in there.

Speaker 12 That was last week.

Speaker 12 Democratic members of Congress are now threatening that if Republicans go ahead with plans to try to unilaterally and illegally shut down the Education Department, Democrats in Congress will refuse to help Republicans do absolutely anything in Congress.

Speaker 12 And that might sound like a sort of wan threat. That might sound like no big deal.
But Republicans have such a tiny majority in the House, they need Democratic help to do pretty much anything.

Speaker 12 And yes, that includes needing Democratic votes, undoubtedly, to keep the government open and running at all past this time next month.

Speaker 12 If Democrats in the Senate are going to say no unanimous consent, no yes votes on any nominees, we're going to make you stay up all night and hold the floor for all these things.

Speaker 12 We're going to make everything go as slow as possible. We are going to grind this thing to a halt.
They're using the powers of the Senate to do that.

Speaker 12 Members of the House, Democrats in the House don't have the same toolkit that that Republican, excuse me, they don't have the same toolkit that Democrats have in the Senate, but they do have a toolkit.

Speaker 12 And with a margin as slim as it is in the House, with Republicans having such a tiny majority,

Speaker 12 They know they can't do anything without at least a few Democratic votes. Democrats are now saying, you want to shut down the Democrat, you want to shut down the Department of Education.

Speaker 12 You're not going to get any Democratic votes or any Democratic help for anything. We're going to bring this place to a halt.
And, you know, what does that mean at the Department of Education?

Speaker 12 Musk and his random team of JV hackers started to announce the cancellation of contracts at the Department of Education today. On what authority?

Speaker 12 Democratic members of Congress soundedly alarmed to the press that this was happening today.

Speaker 12 While that was happening today, a federal judge heard the lawsuit that will try to kick Doge and his Musk minions out of the Department of Education, the way the courts have told them to get out of all of these other agencies.

Speaker 12 And so you've got direct action, you've got legislation threats effectively, you've got threats in terms of the political system on Capitol Hill, you've got the press being alerted to what's going on.

Speaker 12 You've got Democrats doing everything they can, including no business as usual, to try to stop it.

Speaker 12 And no, I don't know if that will work to save the Department of Education, as now this lawsuit tries to stop Trump and Musk from what they're doing.

Speaker 12 But I do know that they've got public opinion against them on this too, right? What Trump and Musk are trying to do to the Education Department, they don't have the people with them on this.

Speaker 12 A huge majority of voters in this country, more than 60% of all registered voters in this country, want the Department of Education to not be eliminated.

Speaker 12 And so I know that The public is going to fight them on this. I know Democrats are fighting like heck for it.
I know that the courts are standing up against what they're doing here.

Speaker 12 And I know that people are in the streets in Washington and all over the country, even in places you wouldn't expect.

Speaker 12 Not just for protests, but turning out in huge numbers for organizing meetings to organize everything they can to stop what Trump is doing.

Speaker 12 And no, I do not know if it will work, but I do know

Speaker 12 that if you don't do it, they'll take all the ground they can.

Speaker 12 And I do know that if they are going to get stopped, it's going to take everything all at once. It's going to take public opinion.
It's going to take Democrats being smart.

Speaker 12 It's going to take organizing in the streets. It's going to take organizing in clever and unexpected ways.

Speaker 12 It's going to take people standing up and saying, no, we're not doing this. And I do know that from sea to shining sea, Americans are looking like they're willing to do that.

Speaker 12 Like they're willing to do what it takes to say no.

Speaker 12 Some of what is motivating this upsurge and this anger and this rejection of what they're doing, specifically related to Elon Musk, broke today in an important story in the New York Times.

Speaker 12 And that's what we're going to cover here next. Stay with us.

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Speaker 12 So last night we talked about a

Speaker 12 sort of worryingly long list of actions the new administration has taken that just happened to benefit the president's top campaign donor.

Speaker 12 Everything from cutting the competition for Elon Musk's EV charging stations to firing investigators who were looking into his refusal to reveal his contacts with foreign governments.

Speaker 12 Well, today the New York Times is out with new reporting that makes that list a whole lot longer and may help explain even more of some of the inexplicable firings and shutdowns that the administration seems to have prioritized in these first three weeks that they've been in power.

Speaker 12 For instance, we've talked here on the show about how Trump has hamstrung agencies that deal with workers' rights, including the National Labor Relations Board and the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission.

Speaker 12 Why did he go after those agencies? Well, he fired top officials at those agencies and didn't replace them. That makes it impossible for those agencies to do their job.

Speaker 12 Why did he do that? Why do we understand why that got a priority action from this administration?

Speaker 12 Well, I don't know, but the Times reports today that those agencies are handling two dozen workers' rights investigations and at least one big lawsuit alleging racial harassment at Elon Musk's companies.

Speaker 13 Ah,

Speaker 12 in similar fashion, Trump has also fired FEC commissioner Ellen Weintraub, Federal Elections Commission,

Speaker 12 effectively shuts down the FEC, which polices campaign finance violations. It may be helpful to know that that's the same FEC that was overseeing complaints from this last election about Elon Musk

Speaker 12 giving people million-dollar checks to, quote, encourage voter registration.

Speaker 12 A lottery that he held, even though it is illegal to pay people to register to vote.

Speaker 12 Last week, we brought you the story of Phyllis Fong, the inspector general for the Department of Agriculture. She was fired by Donald Trump.
You might remember her story.

Speaker 12 She, after she was fired, nevertheless showed up to work the next day anyway, saying my firing was illegal and so I'm going to work. They marched her out of the office, apparently.

Speaker 12 Well, it turns out in 2022, Phyllis Fong, quote, opened an investigation into Elon Musk's brain implant startup company, Neuralink, stemming from allegations that Musk's company had, quote, mistreated dozens of test monkeys.

Speaker 12 Mistreatment that Elon Musk himself denies.

Speaker 12 Why was it so important to fire the Inspector General of USDA as one of your first actions? Well, I don't know, but that's what she was doing to bother Elon Musk.

Speaker 12 Trump has also fired the head of the Office of Government Ethics. That is the agency tasked with investigating right now whether or not the Doge project is itself a conflict of interest for Elon Musk.

Speaker 12 Again, we don't know what is motivating or setting the priority list for this new administration in its first three weeks, but there is a lot of overlap between what the administration has done and what you might imagine is a wish list.

Speaker 12 for the president's top campaign donor who's been allowed to essentially have his way with the federal government, including a lot of elements of the federal government that were complicating his business life or cramping his style.

Speaker 12 Joining us now is Eric Lipton, investigative reporter at the New York Times, lead byline on that investigation into Elon Musk's companies and their interactions with these agencies that have been hamstrung and attacked by the administration.

Speaker 12 Mr. Lipton, I appreciate you being here.

Speaker 17 Thanks for having me.

Speaker 12 So I spotlighted some of the things that you reported today in the Times.

Speaker 12 Let me ask if I misconstrued any of those or if there are any other examples that you turned up that you feel like our audience should know about?

Speaker 17 What we did was we sort of examined the breadth of Elon Musk operations across the federal government.

Speaker 17 And there are, you know, there are so many pending investigations, lawsuits, inquiries, and we looked at how many of them have been disrupted.

Speaker 17 And we were quite surprised that how many cases we saw where You know, we don't know,

Speaker 17 we never saw any evidence of Musk explicitly reaching in and, you know, using his cloud or powers to stop any particular investigation.

Speaker 17 But what we saw was that again and again, agencies that are targeting his companies have now had significant disruptions. The inspector generals, the quorums are gone.

Speaker 17 They can't therefore process any potential new lawsuits or settlements. And

Speaker 17 it just shows you how

Speaker 17 Never before have we had a situation where someone has basically $13 billion worth of federal contracts over the last five years, 3.8 billion just in 2024, and at the same time has dozens of ongoing investigations that that same person would be given such incredible clout over the federal government.

Speaker 17 And that is a conflict of interest.

Speaker 17 And now we're seeing the implications of that, where there are more than dozens of investigations that have been potentially disrupted because of the broad disruption that's happening in the federal government.

Speaker 17 And that's something that we really felt we needed to drill down on and understand and identify as many cases as possible where these disruptions have occurred.

Speaker 17 And that's what we published in today's paper.

Speaker 12 Yeah, and I mean,

Speaker 12 I know I'm just sort of cheerleading for your reporting here, but the examples that you found and that you document are really blunt.

Speaker 12 I mean, you say that you didn't find examples of him reaching in and directing the end of an investigation, but like, take, for example, him wanting to expand Twitter X so that it also involves a payment system.

Speaker 12 That is something that would be regulated by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, by the CPFB. He announces that, or CFPB, he announces that a few weeks ago,

Speaker 12 then gets handed control of a big portion of the U.S. government, and then announces CFPB RIP.

Speaker 12 in effect claiming credit for personally killing that agency, which takes the agency off the board as a potential regulator for this thing he has just announced he wants to do with his business.

Speaker 12 I mean, I know that the,

Speaker 12 I know that some of there's a lot of acronyms here, and I know that financial conflicts of interest sound like a sort of esoteric thing, but this is like a cartoon Western level of

Speaker 12 cartoon Western explication in terms of the simplicity of how much his actions here have benefited his own business interests. I just feel like it's very, very, very clear.

Speaker 17 Yeah, I've really, I mean, I've been a reporter for three decades, more than three decades. I've never seen anything like this.
I've never seen such a blatant conflict of interest.

Speaker 17 He is one of the largest contractors for the federal government. Again, $15 billion

Speaker 17 in contracts just in the last decade. And the notion that an individual who could be, you know,

Speaker 17 running or founding or operating, you know, so many companies that have so many contracts with the federal government and at the same time, you know, deciding what the budgets of the federal agency should be or what regulatory powers they should have and and even you know what investigative and enforcement powers they should have and i mean the thing is that even before the election musk was very clear that he had intense frustration with the federal aviation administration with the securities and exchange commission he he wanted the the faa administrator fired he called the the sec uh political and he you know he was very pointed in the department of Interior, he was very frustrated with.

Speaker 17 He blamed all of these agencies for we're never going to get humans to Mars at this pace. And it was very clear that he wanted to have the ability

Speaker 17 to clash with these regulators and to rein them in. And now he has that power.
And now these same agencies are having their powers curtailed.

Speaker 17 Now, again, we don't have evidence that he has directly reached in, but there is a correlation that needed to be called out. And we've now called it out.

Speaker 12 Eric Lipton, investigative reporter for the New York Times, thank you for your reporting on this. Thanks for your clarity and for making time tonight to help us understand it, Eric.
I appreciate it.

Speaker 13 Thank you.

Speaker 12 It really is like, you know,

Speaker 12 if you were a bank robber and you also had the power to zero out the budget of the police department that was otherwise going to arrest you for robbing the bank.

Speaker 12 That's what this is. It's not complicated.
This is our life. We'll be right back.

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Speaker 12 In Stuttgart, Germany, today, former Fox News weekend host Pete Hegseth arrived at U.S. European Command headquarters for his first overseas trip as Defense Secretary.
There, he was greeted by U.S.

Speaker 12 military families loudly booing him.

Speaker 12 About two dozen people who live at the base gathered to protest Pete Hegseth and his new policies, including his crusade against racial diversity and his scapegoating transgender people and kicking them out of the military.

Speaker 12 Now,

Speaker 12 protests by military families against a defense secretary are extremely rare in any circumstances, but it's particularly impressive to attract a booing crowd of military families when you're not even three weeks into the job.

Speaker 12 Well done.

Speaker 12 Another member of the Trump administration is making his first trip abroad right now. That's J.D.
Vance, the vice president. He was in Paris today.

Speaker 12 He will next head to Munich, where more than 200,000 people turned out this weekend, one of the largest crowds Munich has ever seen,

Speaker 12 all protesting against that country's far-right nationalist party, the AFD, what Germans consider to be the inheritor of the Nazi Party's legacy in Germany, which nevertheless counts Donald Trump, J.D.

Speaker 12 Vance, and Elon Musk among its biggest fans and promoters.

Speaker 12 J.D. Vance will attend the Munich Security Conference.
He'll meet there with NATO allies and possibly with Ukraine's president.

Speaker 12 On Ukraine, there was reporting last week that we were going to get a big announcement in Munich this week.

Speaker 12 President Trump has a special representative for Russia and Ukraine, Keith Kellogg.

Speaker 12 Keith Kellogg was expected to present Trump's big plan at the Munich Security Conference, Trump's big plan to end the war in Ukraine. This big peace plan from Trump reportedly involves

Speaker 12 letting Russia win, letting Russia keep all the territory it has seized during its three-year-long invasion. And yeah, sure, that's one way to end the war.

Speaker 12 But now, despite that reporting last week that he was going to make the big announcement in Munich this week,

Speaker 12 Keith Kellogg says he's now not going to. Now not presenting anything at the Munich Security Conference.
Maybe he'll present something in coming weeks.

Speaker 12 You know, we'll see how it goes, but he's definitely not going to say anything in Munich.

Speaker 12 I don't know what happened there. Maybe somebody got Keith Kellogg to Google the word Munich.

Speaker 12 And what happens when you go there to announce that you've reached a deal for peace in our time?

Speaker 12 Because you've

Speaker 12 found a way to appease the fascistic and aggressive country that's invaded its neighbors. They promise they won't do any more.
Maybe he Googled Munich. I don't know.
Who can say?

Speaker 12 But have fun while you're there. Vice President J.D.
Vance, try not to let the hundreds of thousands of Germans protesting your right-wing friends get you down.

Speaker 12 Joining us now is Alexander Vinman. He's a retired United States Army Lieutenant Colonel.
He served on the National Security Council during the Trump administration.

Speaker 12 He was fired for testifying about Trump's conduct involving Ukraine, which led to his first impeachment.

Speaker 12 He is now the author of a forthcoming book called The Folly of Realism, How the West Deceived Itself About Russia and Betrayed Ukraine.

Speaker 12 Colonel Vinman, I'm really looking forward to the launch of this book. Thank you for getting me an advanced copy of it.
And thank you for being here with us tonight. I appreciate your time.
Thank you.

Speaker 7 Let me ask you. Thank you for the conversation.

Speaker 12 Yeah, thank you.

Speaker 12 Let me ask you about

Speaker 12 President Trump today announcing that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessant is going to go to

Speaker 12 Ukraine and he's going to discuss pathways to end the war. Vice President Vance may also be meeting with President Zelensky.

Speaker 12 We did have this reporting that Keith Kellogg was going to announce essentially that the U.S. plan is to let Russia win the war and keep all the territory that it has taken in this invasion.

Speaker 12 What are you expecting from the Trump administration on Ukraine?

Speaker 18 Not much, frankly. I think they came in there with lots of slogans about ending the war.

Speaker 18 It was supposed to end before President Trump was inaugurated. It didn't end on day one.
It's not going to end in the next months. Even if the U.S.
withdraws all support,

Speaker 18 By the way, it's putting significant pressure on Ukraine right now and starting to ease the pressure up on Russia, or at least telegraphing it. Well, that is not a means to end the war.

Speaker 18 There is no prospect that Ukraine will throw its hands up in the air and give up its territory, give up its sovereignty. The Europeans are there to back them up.

Speaker 18 The Ukrainians believe that they have the wherewithal to fight on for some time. And this narrative that the Russians are going to take all of Ukraine is just a false narrative.

Speaker 18 The Russians are under significant pressure. Their economy is brittle.
Their military is taking massive losses. It's a pipe dream.
And this idea that Keith Kellogg, J.D.

Speaker 18 Vance, or Marco Rubio are going to come up with a plan that caters to Russia is just a mistake. It's exactly what we did wrong.

Speaker 18 It's exactly what I highlight in my book across six administrations, catering to Russia instead of hardening our friends and allies like Ukraine.

Speaker 12 As hard-pressed as Ukraine is right now, three years into this war, defending its own territory from an aggressive, much larger neighbor that invaded them unprovoked and is taking its territory.

Speaker 12 Donald Trump today told

Speaker 12 or in recent days has just told Fox News that he has an additional way that he wants to press Ukraine.

Speaker 12 He wants them to hand over a half trillion dollars worth of rare earth minerals and if they don't the U.S. will cut off all support.

Speaker 12 You of course famously have witnessed Trump in transactional mode firsthand when it comes to Ukraine. What's your reaction to that news?

Speaker 18 This is maximum transactionalism. This is trying to get a deal out of every engagement without understanding the consequences of catering to Russia, of throwing Ukraine into the bus.

Speaker 18 This is actually not anything new. It's in certain ways quite similar to Greenland.

Speaker 18 We highlighted for Trump back in my tenure at the White House that the Chinese control the lion's share of rare earths.

Speaker 18 And Greenland was identified as a place that had rare earths, and therefore he seized on this idea of buying Greenland.

Speaker 18 In much the same way, I raised the same issue about Ukraine having $37 trillion worth of rare earths.

Speaker 18 The problem with this idea is that Bissett, the Treasury Secretary, is going there to shake down Ukraine for $500 billion

Speaker 18 to somehow recoup the costs of the aid that the U.S. has provided.
By the way, it's been closer to $100 billion and almost all of that's been spent in the U.S. on the U.S.
defense industrial complex.

Speaker 18 So I think it's a non-starter.

Speaker 18 On the other hand, there is potentially something that does cater to Trump's transactionalism, is a kind of a reformatting of America first that puts American security first.

Speaker 18 And in that manner, you could see that we double down on NATO, we double down on Ukraine and ending Russian aggression.

Speaker 18 And maybe there's a way to build economic partnerships where we do tap Ukraine as a partner with massive amounts of rare earths that could actually mutually beneficially supply us, build its economy.

Speaker 18 That kind of deal, maybe that kind of deal that also somehow compensates for security assistance, can maybe appeal to all parties here. This is a needs-must situation.

Speaker 18 Ukraine needs the resources either from the U.S. or from Europe.
And if that's the kind of deal that they strike, that may be reasonable.

Speaker 18 But shaking Ukraine down, much like in that first impeachment, is a non-starter. The Ukrainians are not going going to give in, and this is just not the way the world works.

Speaker 12 Yeah, and it's not the way an allyship is supposed to work either.

Speaker 12 You can do mutually beneficial deals and partnerships of the kinds that you're describing, but extortion is something else, extortion and threats. Colonel Alexander Rinman, thank you.

Speaker 12 The book is called The Folly of Realism. It comes out in two weeks.
I hope your publisher is sending you all over the country to talk about this with live audiences.

Speaker 12 You're a voice that we need back in the country right now. We need your example, sir.
And I'm happy to have you here tonight,

Speaker 12 ahead of this launch. Happy original.
Thank you. We'll be right back.

Speaker 12 As I mentioned at the top of the show, there's a big snowstorm rolling into Washington, D.C. tonight.

Speaker 12 A big enough deal that it has changed the political calendar in terms of what we are expecting out of Capitol Hill tonight and tomorrow.

Speaker 12 Because of this snowstorm, the Senate has pushed its final vote on the nomination of Tulsi Gabbard to be the director of national intelligence.

Speaker 12 Not to be an intern at the Office of National Intelligence, not to be a clerk or a junior trainee or somebody who just like works by the front door.

Speaker 12 No, she's actually nominated to be the director of national intelligence in America.

Speaker 12 Yeah.

Speaker 12 The vote was supposed to happen late tonight, just after midnight. It's now scheduled for 11 a.m.
tomorrow morning, provided God doesn't strike us all dead for even just considering this.

Speaker 12 Right after Gabbard's vote tomorrow, the Senate is expected to hold a procedural vote to advance the nomination of this guy to be

Speaker 12 the Secretary of Health and Human Services, a man who says Wi-Fi gives you, quote, leaky brain.

Speaker 12 This new schedule would set a final confirmation vote on Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
for Thursday morning around 7 a.m. You can watch coverage of both right here on MSNBC.

Speaker 17 I'll be right back.

Speaker 12 I told you this was going to be a good show.

Speaker 13 Admit it.

Speaker 12 Admitted it was. All right, I'll see you again tomorrow, every night this week at 9 p.m.
Eastern.

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 7 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.