Musk tries to blame paid protesters for his wild unpopularity, collapse of Tesla

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Really happy to have you here.

One quick thing before we get started.

I am coming to Maine, Portland, Maine.

I mentioned a few days ago that I'm doing a little book tour thing around the paperback release of my book Prequel.

The paperback comes out on May 6th.

I'm going to do just a handful of events.

We're sold out already in St.

Louis and in Miami, Florida, but there are two of these events that I'm doing, these live in-person events that I'm doing, where there are still some tickets right now.

Wednesday, May 7th in Boston, there are still some tickets.

That's a huge venue.

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some tickets there.

Also, Friday, May 9th in Long Island, New York, there are still some tickets, I am told.

But the new thing, the main thing I need to tell you is that we just added a whole new date and a whole new place.

Saturday, May 10th, I will be in Portland, Maine.

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Come see me.

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All right, that's it.

Business over.

Let's get to it.

So I think the protests are really starting to bug them.

I don't know if it's the number of protests or the number of people protesting or the fact that the protests really aren't going away and they keep seeming to grow.

I don't know if it's the tenor and good humor and peaceful nature of the protests that's bugging them, but

I think they are really getting bugged.

I think it is really getting under their skin.

And here's one way we can tell.

Let's say you're the head of a big car company and then something happens to your car company.

And it's not happening to all car companies.

It's not happening to the car sector, right?

In fact, it's not happening to any other car company at all.

It's only happening to your car company, and it's not good.

Headline, CNN,

Tesla profits plunge.

Headline, Washington Post, Tesla earnings plunge.

Headline, New York Times, Tesla's 71% drop in profit.

Headline, USA Today, Tesla profits fall 71%.

Headline, Wall Street Journal, Tesla profit sinks.

Headline, Reuters, Tesla sales skid.

If you are the head of a company that is having a day like that,

how do you spend that day?

How do you spend that day that that news breaks everywhere?

Because, I mean, headlines like that are bad enough, but you look at the details, it's even worse.

I mean, Tesla was expected to earn 41 cents per share.

They came in at 27 cents per share.

That's like not only below market expectations, it's really, really below market expectations.

The first quarter of last year, Tesla made $1.4 billion.

The first quarter of this year, we learned today,

you can drop the billion off of that.

They went from $1.4 billion in the first quarter of last year to $0.4 billion

this quarter.

And even that was less than it appears.

Tesla not only had that 71% drop in profit off of what they did did last year, the profit they did have

is not from selling cars.

Quote, Tesla would have actually lost hundreds of millions of dollars this quarter had it not earned $400 million in interest on cash and investments and had it not earned $595 million from selling credits to other car makers, which themselves failed to meet emissions regulations.

So yeah, it looks like they made $0.4 billion.

It looks like they made $400 million, but they would have been $600 million in the negative for this quarter.

They would have lost $600 million this quarter if they hadn't had cash and investments, interest payments, and credits that were paid to them from other car companies because of anti-climate change government programs.

That's what filled up their balance sheet.

Just a catastrophe.

And to add insult to injury, the CEO's favorite of all his vehicles, at least the one he really, really, really likes to talk about and show off as much as possible, that is turning out to itself be the biggest disaster of all.

Quote, the Cybertruck, Tesla's newest vehicle, which consumed a lot of the company's resources while it was being developed, is looking increasingly like a flop.

Sales of the

Cybertruck in the first quarter were down about 50% from the last quarter of last year.

And they weren't all that good in the last quarter of last year.

So if you're the guy who's head of this particular car company, today is just a disastrous day,

right?

And why is this only happening to your company?

Can we just put up those same headlines we just saw?

Can we just put up those headlines again?

Just put up that same list.

Yeah.

I mean, it's not a mystery, right?

The reason this disaster has befallen this particular car company, the reason this disaster has befallen your car company, the reason this is happening to you and no one else is specifically because of you.

Tesla profits sinks, hurt by backlash over Elon Musk's political role.

Tesla profits fall 71% amid backlash to Musk's role with the Trump administration.

I mean, it's not a like business world secret why this is happening.

This is happening because of the guy who's the head of the car company.

The company is repulsed.

by Elon Musk.

The company is repulsed by what the New York Times gently describes tonight as, quote, Mr.

Musk's support of far-right causes.

The country really does appear to be just repulsed by President Donald Trump installing Musk, his top campaign donor, in a secretive, totally opaque, newly created pseudo-agency in which his job appears to be to destroy as much of the U.S.

government as possible.

I mean,

What do we think of when we think of Elon Musk now?

We think of every fired park ranger, every line of old people and disabled people that's out the door at a totally beleaguered and no longer functional Social Security office.

We think of every cancer researcher whose study was defunded midstream.

We think of everybody who you know who's about to be handed over to the tender ministrations of a collection agency because of their student loans.

We think of every HIV and tuberculosis and severe malnutrition miracle treatment program that was working great and saving millions of lives, but that inexplicably was cut off with no warning

because of Elon Musk.

I mean, all of these things that have come to pass over these past 90 days, when we think about these things, when we're confronted with these headlines and with these disasters one after another, everybody thinks not just of President Donald Trump, but of his top campaign donor who he has installed to do this stuff inside the U.S.

government.

And so, yeah, President Trump's top campaign donor, his car company, just had a 71% plunge in profit year to year.

And they were lucky to have that.

So if you're Elon Musk,

if you're Elon Musk today on the day you get that kind of news,

what are you focused on, right?

What's top of mind?

What are you today bringing up in conversation that nobody's asked you about?

Turns out, he's really bothered by those protests.

Now, the protests that you'll see out there, they're very organized, they're paid for.

They're obviously not going to

admit that the reason that they're protesting is because they're receiving fraudulent money

or that they're the recipients of wasteful largesse,

but

they're going to think I come up with some other reason.

But that is the real reason for the protests.

The actual reason is

those receiving the waste and fraud wish to continue receiving it.

That is the real thing that's going on here, obviously.

Are you mad?

Are you bothered?

Just a little?

You seem mad.

In your mind,

Do you really think that like organically, naturally, everybody actually loves you and loves what you're doing?

And that all of this is people who do, in their heart of hearts, actually love you and love what you're doing.

It's just that they're all out there in the streets because they're being paid to pretend otherwise.

You think all of these people are people who love you who are being paid to say they don't love you?

Or, what did he say?

These are people who are receiving fraudulent money.

They're receiving the waste and fraud.

Really?

All of these people?

Really?

This was about 300 people in Cloquet, Minnesota,

yesterday, silently picketing outside the Cloquet Public Library yesterday evening as Republican Congressman Pete Stauber spoke inside.

Were all of these people paid to be there?

Or are all of these people in Cloquet, Minnesota all lazy fraudsters who don't want to give up how rich they're getting off all the fraud money that they're taking from the government.

Is that what these folks are doing there?

Is that who these folks are?

In a totally different part of that same state, three and a half hours away in Austin, Minnesota, people yesterday protested to try to protect Social Security from Donald Trump and yes, from Elon Musk.

People protested in Austin against potential Social Security cuts and Elon Musk's comments, calling the program a Ponzi scheme.

The rally was in response to prior actions of the Trump administration.

He has a tendency to, you know, shoot first and say, I'm sorry later.

They make a lot of mistakes that they try to walk back later.

They say that they didn't have access.

Doge has access to our data.

I don't want them playing around with my social security number.

Attendees also expressed concerns about SSA staffing cuts impacting service.

We've got chainsaw wielding billionaires who are actively taking apart vital pieces of our government.

We can't wait until it's too late.

We need to be proactive.

That was Austin, Minnesota yesterday.

This was Palm Springs, California.

This was people with disabilities and their families protesting against Trump and Musk's cuts to services for disabled people at the office of their Republican Congressman Ken Calvert.

Were these these people all paid to be there, Elon Musk?

These disabled people and their families are only protesting because they're enjoying so much fraud, because they're all criminals, they're all receiving fraudulent money, they want the waste and the fraud to continue?

Really?

Do you think so?

Is this stuff getting to you?

Is this stuff getting under your skin?

It seems like you're slightly delusional about what's going on here.

Do you want to see yesterday's protest yet again outside the Tesla dealership in Grand Rapids, Michigan?

Those people are dedicated.

Do you think they secretly love you, but they're being paid to pretend that they don't love you?

You want to see the big crowd of really exasperated people who turned up in Normal, Illinois yesterday outside the office of their Republican Congressman, Darren LaHood?

Are these people all fraudsters only there because they love waste so much, really?

This was Finley, Ohio, this weekend.

First protest at age 93.

Elon Musk, is there somebody paying her to be there?

Or is she only there because she loves waste and fraud?

Because why else would somebody be protesting against what you're doing?

Here's San Diego, California this weekend.

I fought another bully in 1945, a World War II veteran.

Is he a paid protester?

Does seeing this bug you?

Just keep you up?

Kirkland, Washington this weekend, my 401k's pronouns are was and were.

I don't know.

I don't really get the sense that these folks had to be paid to do this.

Do you?

Here's Boise on Saturday.

Big grin.

Fur around and find out.

Here's Eugene, Oregon on Saturday.

Another big grin.

I'm so angry.

I dropped the chiron there so you can read this.

I'm so angry, I stitched this just so I could stab something 4,000 times.

Big grin.

This was Raleigh, North Carolina on Saturday.

First they came for the immigrants and we said, not today, ay-hole.

This was Peoria, Peoria, Illinois.

Keep your tiny hands off our schools and our science.

This was Redwood City, California.

There will be hell to pay.

Elon Musk, you really think all these people are there because they were paid?

All of them?

They're all part of a criminal gang participating in a big fraud scheme, right?

And they just want to protect their waste and the fraud that's making them all so rich.

Really?

President's top campaign donor is bothered by your protests.

He said today, unasked, on this disastrous earnings call about the cratering of his car company, the stock price of which incidentally is the basis for basically all his wealth.

He said today on that call, volunteered,

that these protests, you know, they're all a hoax.

But he also had to reassure investors that he is going to scale back his involvement in the Trump administration in coming weeks.

And

we shall see.

But if he thinks the protests against him in the streets are some kind of artificial trick, some kind of paid hoax, and people don't really dislike him,

who's going to tell him about the polling?

Because separate and apart from the protests, the polling in many ways is even worse.

And it is bad for him and also for Trump.

And for Trump, it just keeps getting worse and worse and worse with each new poll.

For example, the new Reuters Ipsos poll that's out today.

Do you approve of the job Donald Trump is doing as president?

No, by an 11-point margin.

Do you approve of Donald Trump's performance on the economy?

No, by a 14-point margin.

Should Donald Trump withhold funding from universities he disagrees with?

No, by a 29-point margin.

Should President Trump take control of national museums and theaters?

No, by a 52-point margin.

Should Donald Trump obey court orders that he disagrees with?

Should President Trump obey court orders that he disagrees with?

Yes, he should obey those court orders.

83% of Americans say yes, he should.

Only 13% say no.

That is a 70-point margin.

That's Reuters Ipsos polling out today.

New polling out today also from CNBC.

Do you approve of the job Donald Trump is doing as president?

Nope, by a seven-point margin.

Do you approve of Donald Trump's handling of the economy?

Nope, by a 12-point margin.

Do you approve of Donald Trump's handling of tariffs?

Nope, by a 16-point margin.

Do you approve of Donald Trump's Trump's handling of inflation?

No, by a 23-point margin.

CNBC also asked, do you think we're going to have a recession in the next year?

Americans say yes, by an eight-point margin.

Then they ask the follow-up question, well, if we do have a recession in the next year, will you blame Trump for it?

Yes.

Yes, we will by a 20-point margin.

But also, look at this.

This is not just for Trump.

This is also for Musk.

This is also from today's CNBC poll.

Do you have a positive or negative view of the U.S.

auto industry as a whole?

Positive, plus 14.

Do you have a positive or negative view of General Motors?

GM?

Very positive.

Plus 23.

Do you have a positive or negative view of Tesla?

Negative, minus 20.

Wait, GM is plus 23.

Tesla is minus 20.

Do you have a positive or negative view of Elon Musk?

Negative, minus 20.

And this is a nice crosstab for a man who likes to think he's big with the kids.

Among young people age 18 to 34 in this CNBC poll, they say they are very positive on EVs, on electric vehicles in general.

Generally, young people are positive plus 19 on electric vehicles, but on Tesla, they are minus 23.

All the people in that poll must be paid.

They must be fraudsters who just love waste.

Who's going to tell him?

I think the protests are going to continue,

including in some places that I don't think Trump or Musk are expecting.

Incoming today for President Trump from one of the very, very reddest states in the country, and also from some institutions that he has started targeting that I think he thought would be easy pickings.

Some institutions he has recently targeted that I think he never thought would get it together to fight back against him as a group.

But both of those things started to take shape today.

We've got news on both of those ahead.

Big night.

Stay with us.

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It's defined by the work we do, the values we stand for, and the commitment we make to each other each and every day.

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President Trump announced late last night that he's planning on giving commencement addresses at two graduations this year.

One of them's West Point.

And that, of course, is a little bit of an awkward announcement right now, given NBC News is reporting today that those airstrike details that Trump's Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth texted to his wife and his brother and his personal lawyer and like 10 other people, those detailed down-to-the-minute plans for a forthcoming military operation in Yemen had been shared with him.

by a top general in CENTCOM who sent Pete Hegseth those details on a secure government system.

Hegseth then turned around and took those highly sensitive details about a forthcoming operation that he had just received on a secure government system, and he texted them to his wife and all these other people people using his personal phone and a commercial messaging app.

So if you are graduating from West Point this year, thinking about your soon-to-start military career, potentially doing, I don't know, dangerous missions under CENTCOM command,

President Trump coming to give your graduation speech while saying there's nothing wrong with a defense secretary doing stuff like that ahead of military operations in CENTCOM,

might make for an awkward graduation day.

But don't sleep on the other graduation

speech that he announced as well.

Don't sleep on Alabama as well.

Because I don't know if this got wide play today, but the response to Trump saying he was going to give the graduation address at the University of Alabama this year elicited quite the response from Alabama's college Democrats.

They said in response to the snooze, quote, we are shocked and disgusted.

to learn that our unpopular, divisive, and authoritarian president will be involved in commencement for the graduating class of 2025.

This insult will not go unanswered.

The last time the disgraced criminal visited campus, he was able to turn the Alabama, Georgia game, the biggest college football game on our campus in years, into a political sideshow.

We cannot allow this to happen with our commencement ceremonies.

For all his meddling in University of Alabama affairs, Trump lost our campus to former Vice President Kamala Harris last semester.

UA is not a fascist playground.

The Trump administration kidnapped one of our PhD students for no reason a few weeks ago and is holding him without bond at an ice black site in Louisiana.

There is no greater insult than this.

We simply don't want UA to be turned into a backdrop for MAGA propaganda.

UA College Democrats and its partners are actively mobilizing in response to last night's news.

We will have more updates in the next few days.

Alabama College Democrats saying this insult will not go unanswered.

As Harvard University sues the Trump administration to stop Trump targeting them, bringing a lawsuit against Trump in federal court that seems quite strong, today nearly 250 presidents of other colleges and universities signed a public statement that they called a call for constructive engagement.

Quote, as leaders of America's colleges, universities, and scholarly societies, we speak with one voice against the unprecedented government overreach and political interference now endangering American higher education.

We are open to constructive reform and do not oppose legitimate government oversight.

However, we must oppose undue government intrusion in the lives of those who learn, live, and work on our campuses.

We will always seek effective and fair financial practices, but we must reject the coercive use of public research funding.

American institutions of higher learning have in common the essential freedom to determine on academic grounds whom to admit and what is taught, how, and by whom.

Our colleges and universities share a commitment to serve as centers of open inquiry, where in their pursuit of truth, faculty, students, and staff are free to exchange ideas and opinions across a full range of viewpoints without fear of retribution, censorship,

or deportation.

Joining us now is Lynn Pascarella.

She is the president of the American Association of Colleges and Universities.

She's also the former president of a wonderful institution called Mount Holyoke College.

She's one of the 237 academic leaders and counting who has signed this statement against Trump's, quote, unprecedented overreach.

Ms.

Pascarella, thanks very much for joining us.

I really appreciate your time.

My pleasure.

So this statement is gaining some momentum.

Can I ask about the origins of this, the sort of strategic thinking that went behind trying to pull this together?

Yes, as of nine o'clock, we had 269 signatories.

And the impetus for this was to determine whether there was a will to engage in collective action at this moment of enormity for American higher education.

The strength of American higher education is our diversity of institutional types, from community colleges to research ones, HBCUs, small liberal arts colleges, faith-based institutions, and the widespread support that this statement has received demonstrates that despite the differences in our mission and the students we serve, there's a willingness to speak collectively and to act in solidarity to defend the core purposes of American higher education.

and those principles of academic freedom, shared governance, and institutional autonomy that are not only foundational to American higher education, but to our nation's historic mission of educating for democracy.

In recent days, we have been tracking a story here, sort of emerging story, in which some colleges and universities,

particularly like their faculty bodies, the faculty senates and so on, have been expressing a desire to form

sort of

formal

mutual defense compacts to defend universities collectively as Trump tries to individually sort of

pick them off.

And I feel like when you're talking about the collective action impulse behind this, it's getting at some of those same strategic imperatives.

Can you help us understand how that collective action principle might work in practice as Trump continues to go after one university after another, one

research funding stream after another?

How does universities and colleges banding together help each of them withstand those attacks better?

Well, we must work together against the threats and governmental overreach into every aspect of college and university operations.

It's not enough for an institution to defend itself.

When an institution is attacked like Harvard, Columbia, Johns Hopkins, we all need to defend.

those core purposes of higher education.

And the components of the statement that talk about the right of universities to determine who gets admitted, what is taught, how it is taught, and by whom, are not something we came up with.

They are enshrined in Supreme Court decisions, the 1957 case in Sweezy versus New Hampshire.

Ten years later, the Keishian versus Board of Regents case, in which the justices ruled that academic freedom is of transcendent value, not only to the integrity and strength of higher education, but to national security and to democracy itself.

And so now, more than ever, each of us has to act with moral courage so that as someone on our

call yesterday as we gathered 193 presidents in talking about next steps said, so that no one has to be a hero, we each have to make sure that we are defending our fundamental principles every single day.

What are things that members of the public, regular citizens, or indeed elected officials can do to help shore up universities and colleges to help them fight

these attacks from the Trump administration to try to defend academic freedom.

We're very eager to partner with business, industry, K through 12, and citizens in our communities.

We need to now more than ever demonstrate that we are anchor institutions in our communities.

We are not only the primary drivers for socioeconomic advancement for individuals, but economic catalysts for our communities and our nation.

And so we need to show that our success is inextricably linked to the psychological, social, educational, economic well-being of those in the communities in which we're located and those we seek to serve.

We must ask our communities, what do you need from us?

as opposed to telling people what we're good at.

And that will go a long way in restoring public trust in the promise of American higher education.

Dr.

Lynn Pascarella, President of the American Association of Colleges and Universities, which spearheaded this letter.

Again, now 269

college and university presidents and leaders standing up collectively to say that what the Trump administration is doing is wrong and damaging.

Really appreciate you helping us understand it tonight.

Stay in touch.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

All right.

We'll be right back.

Stay with us.

Saturday, October 11th from New York City.

It's MSNBC Live 25.

Join your favorite MSNBC hosts, Rachel Maddow, Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski, Nicole Wallace, Ari Melber, Alicia Menendez, Simone Sanders-Townsend, Michael Steele, Chris Hayes, Jen Saki, Lawrence O'Donnell, Stephanie Ruhl, and more.

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I've told the Vice President of El Salvador that I may be the first senator, member of Congress to be in El Salvador, to come down to El Salvador, but I won't be the last.

Maryland's U.S.

Senator Chris Van Hollen, after returning from El Salvador just a few days ago, during that trip, he was able to meet with Kilmar Obrego Garcia, the man the administration sent to E Salvadoran prison because of what they called an administrative error.

They have since been refusing to get him back, despite courts essentially telling him that they must.

Senator Van Holland said when he was on that trip to El Salvador that other members of Congress would be coming behind him.

You saw him there say upon his return, I may be the first, but I won't be the last.

He has turned out to be right about that in more ways than one.

And this is interesting.

Yesterday, we saw four Democratic members of Congress, four up-and-coming young Democrats, Robert Garcia, Maxwell Frost, Maxine Dexter, and Yasimi Nansari, all themselves travel to El Salvador to demand answers about the people Trump has sent to that country to be held potentially forever in that Salvadoran prison.

But we're also seeing other Democratic members of Congress show up on this issue, bodily show up in other ways as well.

We've talked on this show about the case of a man named Mosset Madawi.

He's a legal permanent resident.

He's got a green card.

He was summoned to appear for his citizenship test to take the final step to becoming a citizen.

They then arrested him when he turned up for that test.

His friends had feared that something like that might happen to him.

Mr.

Madawi's friends in Vermont, they had made plans to respond in case he was taken.

That's why we have footage of them taking him.

They had lined up legal representation for him, made a communications plan.

They basically strategized about the best ways to support Mr.

Madawi if Trump's agents, in fact, came and got him, which they did.

Since his arrest, Vermonters have been protesting outside the immigration jail where he's being held.

And now Vermont's junior U.S.

Senator, Peter Welch, has showed up bodily to go meet with him.

He showed up at that immigration jail jail to meet with his constituent.

How is it you're staying so positive despite your circumstances?

Thank you for the visit.

It really means a lot and it reassures me of the support that I have

from you and from the Vermonters as well, my people, the people of Vermont.

I'm staying positive by

reassuring myself in the inevitability of justice and in the deep belief of democracy.

The reason Senator Peter Welch was able to visit his constituent, Mr.

Madawi, in Vermont, is because there was that swift reaction to Mr.

Madawi's arrest.

That allowed for very fast legal intervention in which a court was able to stop the Trump administration from taking him out of Vermont and shipping him to another state.

Most other people have not been as lucky.

Many of the other people who have been snatched off the street by Trump's agents have been shipped to other immigration prisons like the ones they've got set up in Louisiana.

That includes people like Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University student who had a green card.

He was in the U.S.

legally, but he was arrested by ICE and imprisoned and slated for deportation because he participated in campus protests.

Also in a Louisiana immigration prison is Romesa Ozeturk, the PhD student and Fulbright scholar who was snatched off the street in Massachusetts by massed agents who then stuffed her into an unmarked car.

They flew her to multiple immigration prisons and jails before sending her ultimately to Louisiana as well.

Well, today, yet another group of Democratic members of Congress and senators decided to bodily show up and try to do something about this.

They went to Louisiana to go meet with Mahmoud Khalil and Rumesa Ozturk, among others.

The lawmakers on that trip included U.S.

Senator Ed Markey, Congressman Benny Thompson, Congresswoman Ayanna Presley, Congressman Jim McGovern.

They were all led by Louisiana Congressman Troy Carter.

From our communications with these individuals, they're frightened.

They're concerned.

They want to go home.

They're happy to see that members of Congress are here to listen, to take good notes, to go back to Washington, to ensure that due process is granted, health care is provided, and fairness is the rule of day.

Joining us now from Louisiana is Democratic Congressman Troy Carter.

He sits on the Homeland Security Committee.

He led this delegation today to these immigration facilities.

Congressman Carter, thank you very much for being here tonight.

I really appreciate your time.

Thank you very much for having me.

Can you tell me more about this delegation that you led today?

What you were able to see, who you were able to meet with, what you learned.

We're very fortunate to have a bicameral delegation of members, along with the ranking member of the Homeland Security Committee, Betty Thompson, United States Senator Edward Markey,

Ayana Presley, and Jim McGovern, the three from Massachusetts.

Of course, the ranking member Thompson is from Mississippi.

We had an opportunity to visit both the facility in Gina and in Basil.

We had an opportunity to meet with Mahmoud Khalil, to sit with him for just about an hour.

and to talk about the concerns that he has,

to talk about the atrocities that he's dealing with.

He was very clear to share with us that his past, his present, and all of his work definitely is demonstrative of the fact that he is not anti-Semitic, that in fact, he was working for peace and advancing the causes of a two-state solution where Palestinians and those in Israel could get along and live separately in peace.

He also was very clear that he is absolutely against Hamas in any terrorist acts.

So the fact that he is being charged with these trumped up charges that our Secretary of State seems to have attempted to use him as a scapegoat, to use him as an example,

is ridiculous, unfair, and unconscionable.

Clearly, this individual's ability to exercise his First Amendment right, freedom of speech, is being challenged.

Listen, in America, just because we disagree with you, you may not like what a person says, you may find their comments to be opposite of your philosophies, but in America, we're protected by free speech.

And Mr.

Khalil clearly is a victim of

having his First Amendment denied and his fifth amendment of due process.

This has been a process where these individuals were not even told why they were arrested.

There was no warrant given for their arrests.

Same thing with Rumesa and with Wendy Brito.

Both of these, Wendy Brito from my home state of Louisiana,

is a mother of three, married to an American citizen.

She's been here for 17 years.

Her children are all American citizens.

She serves as a volunteer in the public school system.

She went for her routine checkup with ISIS and she never made it home.

Rumesa wrote an op-ed.

She did nothing else.

She wrote an op-ed that someone didn't like and was snatched, literally snatched from the street and taken to multiple facilities before ultimately landing in Louisiana.

We had an opportunity to visit with her to talk about her fears, to talk about her concerns, to look at the facilities where they're clearly, while they appear to be healthy,

there are a lot of challenges at these facilities that require immediate attention.

I'm proud that my members of Congress joined me today to not only shed light, but to also give hope that

they are not forgotten and that we're going to continue to fight for the rule of law and for the tenets of our Constitution that suggest that we're all free and that our freedom of speech should not be taken lightly.

What can you tell us about the conditions of confinement both at Basile and at Gina?

These facilities are really far from where

some of these people

were arrested and where they've lived.

I think part of the administration's thinking is that this is a far-flung area for most people and so it's kind of out of sight, out of mind.

Were you and your colleagues today able to discern anything about the conditions in which people are being held?

Well, there are multiple reasons why I think they're at this particular facility.

One, it is in Louisiana, where they will

have to be heard by the most conservative Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in Louisiana, Fifth Circuit Court, rather, which is one of the most conservative benches

in our country.

Number two is that this facility, unlike the other facilities across the country, have a 72 max day

hour stay, rather, 72 hours.

In Louisiana, the stay can go up to a week, a month, multiple months.

And so they are sent here in a facility that's very difficult to get to,

very challenging for any lawyers or advocates to be able to access or family members.

The facility itself appeared to be clean, in fact, suspiciously clean.

Like perhaps there was some sprucing up before we got there.

The other thing that was noted is that all of the detainees we spoke to indicated that it is very cold,

that they aren't allowed to have blankets.

The temperature is very uncomfortable for them.

Many of the women in the facility indicated that they were not given proper feminine products as regularly as needed, in some cases not even given toilet paper.

That is absolutely unacceptable.

They share with us that they are frightened.

Many of which have not been given dates of when their court hearing will be.

They're there.

Many said they don't know why they're there and were not able to

share with us

what the next steps are.

Some now have lawyers, although many of them said that they asked for lawyers for days before finally being granted an opportunity to speak to counsel.

Louisiana Congressman Troy Carter, thank you for leading this delegation and for talking to us about it tonight.

This is a really, really, really important part of this system that has not had enough eyes on it, particularly people doing the kind of oversight and reporting back that you are doing.

I expect that this will be the first of many such delegations, but thank you for helping us understand this first one today.

We really appreciate it, sir.

Thank you very much.

We're committed to staying on top of this, keep the lights on to protect freedom of speech.

Rather, it's with these four people who are well known, these names that you've heard, but there's so many others that we don't know their names.

We don't know their faces, but they likewise deserve the kind of attention to protect their freedom of speech, protect their civil liberties, whether it's walking down the street or on any college campus.

That's exactly right.

Thank you, sir.

Congressman Troy Carter from Louisiana.

We'll be right back.

Stay with us.

The news organization Reuters, I think, has not been getting enough credit for really good, really granular, dedicated, steady work that they've been doing, tracking the consequences of the huge cuts and the thousands of firings that Trump has made at the FDA, the Food and Drug Administration.

Here, for example, is one Reuters headline.

This one from April 3rd, quote, FDA suspends program to improve bird flu testing due to staff cuts.

The FDA pulling back a new program that would improve bird flu testing of milk, cheese, and pet food.

Suspending that new program due to the massive staff cuts at the agency.

Oh, good.

Here's another Reuters headline, April 17th.

US FDA suspends food safety quality checks after staff cuts.

Again, oh good.

This time they cut the quality control program that is quote designed to ensure consistency and accuracy across the agency's network of 170 labs that test food for pathogens and contaminants to prevent foodborne illness.

So first they cut the program that's designed to improve the testing for this new outbreak of bird flu.

Then they cut the program that makes sure we're testing accurately for all the old diseases and contaminants from which we get, you know, outbreaks of food poisoning.

All the stuff we'd like to keep out of our food supply.

Ready for the latest Reuters headline?

Too bad.

Here it is anyway.

US FDA suspends milk quality tests.

Amid workforce cuts.

The FDA is suspending a quality control program for the testing of fluid milk and other dairy products due to reduced capacity in its food safety and nutrition division, according to an internal email seen by Reuters.

Reduced capacity in its food safety and nutrition.

Why so much reduced capacity?

This is, I should mention, the same HHS where Robert F.

Kennedy Jr.

has already asked a raw milk producer with a history of fighting regulators and a history of his products being

subject to massive recalls.

RFK Jr.

has asked him to be an advisor to the FDA.

So, just in case you're feeling a little nudgy about the milk testing, we've got to get rid of that because of the

staff cuts, reduced capacity in our food safety divisions.

Who voted for this?

Who voted for this?

Watch this space.

All right, that's going to do it for me for now, but I will see you again tomorrow night.

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