Making a mockery of Musk: Backlash against dismantling U.S. government focuses on hatchet man

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 Amazon has everything for everyone on your list. Like your husband who hauls out the 40-pound canister vacuum to address a single dropped popcorn kernel.

Speaker 2 He'll spend 12 minutes setting up, plugging in, and maneuvering. It's like using a fire hose to water a houseplant.
Get him a cordless vacuum.

Speaker 2 And with Amazon early holiday deals, you can save big on home electronics. Now Dustin can skip the project planning phase and go straight to tactical crumb elimination.

Speaker 3 Happy Monday night. One quick bit of housekeeping before we get into it tonight.

Speaker 3 I mentioned on the show last week that I've got the paperback version of my latest book coming out. Prequel is coming out in paperback the first week in May, which is very nice.

Speaker 3 The nicest thing about it is I get to go do some live events, get out in the country, meet people, talk about what's going on in the country, to talk about the book.

Speaker 3 Helpfully, the subtitle of prequel is An American Fight Against Fascism. So there's lots of overlap between the news and the book.

Speaker 3 But when I mentioned this last week, I described,

Speaker 3 I gave out the details for three of the planned stops on this little mini book tour I'm going to do. I mentioned Miami and St.
Louis, Missouri and Long Island, New York. Now, unfortunately,

Speaker 3 Miami and St. Louis sold out like instantly.
as soon as I mentioned it on the show. So lots of people who wanted tickets could not get them.
And I feel bad about that.

Speaker 3 I feel like it was my bad planning that we ran out of tickets. And so I'm sorry about that.
Miami and St. Louis both sold out, but we are making two changes as of tonight.

Speaker 3 First, as of tonight, they are apparently changing the configuration of the seats. that they are selling at the venue in Long Island.

Speaker 3 So even though Long Island was within like a handful of seats of being sold out, as of tonight, they have now opened up a huge new bunch of tickets for Long Island.

Speaker 3 So there's a bunch more tickets available available, Long Island, Friday, May 9th.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 we have also added a whole new event, Wednesday, May 7th, Boston, Massachusetts. And this one, specifically because we are trying to not sell out, this one is a gigantic venue.

Speaker 3 So I don't think there's any chance the Boston event will sell out. I feel really bad when people want to come and they can't.

Speaker 3 But if you want to come to that one, Wednesday, May 7th, Boston, Massachusetts, tickets on sale as of right now.

Speaker 3 So to get tickets and to get all the details, you can use your phone to scan that square link thing there on the screen.

Speaker 3 You just put on the camera on your phone and look at it and then it gives you a link and you click it. Or you can just go online to msnbc.com slash prequel.

Speaker 3 But again, the dates that still have tickets are Wednesday, May 7th in Boston, Friday, May 9th in Long Island, New York. Tickets available for both as of right now.
So

Speaker 3 that's it. That's the prequel paperback coming out first week of May.
All right, housekeeping done.

Speaker 3 Now, let's get to it. In Silicon Valley, in the Northern California towns of Palo Alto and Menlo Park and Redwood City, there is something going on with the crosswalks.

Speaker 3 And not like the part of the street that's blocked off where you walk across in the crosswalk, but actually at the pole on the corner, you know, when you want to cross with the light, you get to the crosswalk, you push the button on the pole to tell the system that you want to cross.

Speaker 3 Northern California is one of the places where when you push that button, an automated voice usually activates, right, telling you to wait until it is safe to walk.

Speaker 3 But in these at least three Silicon Valley towns as of this weekend,

Speaker 3 this is what started happening when you hit the crosswalk button. Instead of the normal automated voice telling you to wait until it was safe to walk,

Speaker 3 Instead, this other thing now happens. And I want to tell you, before you hear this, this is not the real voice of Elon Musk.

Speaker 3 Wait.

Speaker 4 Hi, this is Elon Musk. Welcome to Palo Alto, the home of Tesla Engineering.
You know, they say money can't buy happiness. And

Speaker 3 yeah, okay.

Speaker 3 Right?

Speaker 3 I'm so alone.

Speaker 3 Says at the end there, F-word, I'm so alone.

Speaker 3 That is obviously not the real voice of Elon Musk. It appears to be an AI-generated audio clone of Elon Musk's voice.

Speaker 3 People have apparently somehow hacked into the crosswalk systems in this handful of towns in Silicon Valley so that in these towns, when you push the crosswalk button, you get a message like that one, or one like this.

Speaker 4 Hi, I'm Elon. Can we be friends? Will you be my friend? I'll give you a cyber truck, I promise.

Speaker 4 Okay, look, you don't know the level of depravity I would stoop to just for a crumb of approval. I mean, let's be real.
It's not like I had any moral convictions to begin with, right?

Speaker 3 Again, that is not Elon Musk's actual voice. Somebody has apparently used AI to make these fake messages that sound like Elon Musk's voice.

Speaker 3 There's another one that says, hi, this is Elon Musk. I'd like to personally welcome you to Palo Alto.
You know people keep saying cancer is bad, but have you ever tried being a cancer?

Speaker 3 It's effing awesome.

Speaker 3 There's another with a fake A voice that sounds like President Trump, and the Musk voice starts talking about how he feels about Trump, and then the Trump voice interrupts and says, sweetie, come back to bed.

Speaker 3 That one's super creepy. There's also a couple of these things that feature not Elon Musk, but instead the fake voice of Mark Zuckerberg.

Speaker 3 Zuckerberg in these fake AI generated recordings, claiming credit for undermining democracy and making life miserable for trans people, and quote, cooking our grandparents' brains with AI slop.

Speaker 3 So there's been reporting on this from NBC7 in the Bay Area and the San Francisco Chronicle and Palo Alto online and also from The Verge.

Speaker 3 Everybody basically trying to figure out how this was done, how you hack into these crosswalk systems and who might have done it. I don't think anybody's trying to figure out why they did it.

Speaker 3 Motive seems pretty obvious. May I also introduce you

Speaker 3 to the free Tesla debadging station that was set up this weekend in Seattle, Washington. Now, there was an anti-Trump, anti-Elon Musk protest this weekend.

Speaker 3 At a Tesla dealership in Seattle, there's been a bunch of these in Seattle in recent weeks, of course. There were a bunch more all over the country this weekend and even today.

Speaker 3 We'll get to that in a second. But at the Seattle Tesla dealership anti-Trump, anti-Musk protest this weekend, they did something a little different.

Speaker 3 People also showed up there and set up what they called a free de-badging station for your Tesla, for people with, quote, Tesla regret.

Speaker 3 How do you take the badge, meaning like the emblem off your Tesla? Well, you use a heat gun or a hair dryer to warm it up, soften it up.

Speaker 3 Then you use some fishing line to basically kind of cut through the adhesive on the back of the emblem.

Speaker 3 Then after you've pulled it off, you use like Googon or rubbing alcohol, some other kind of solvent to take off the rest of the adhesive that's left behind. That's the hardest part.

Speaker 3 But then you don't anymore have Tesla.

Speaker 3 badges on your car.

Speaker 3 And in the case of this free Tesla de-badging clinic in Seattle this weekend, they also were apparently happy to stick on a replacement car emblem from a totally different car company if you, say, wanted to pretend that your Tesla is now an Audi or frankly any other brand of car that isn't, you know, associated with the authoritarian takeover and destruction of the United States government.

Speaker 3 We'll turn your Tesla into something that doesn't look like a Tesla. Free.

Speaker 3 And you see they've got that sign there in the upper right says Tesla regret and it's got a toll-free number and then a website.

Speaker 3 If you call the toll-free number associated with the free debadging Tesla regret effort, there actually is an answer at that line.

Speaker 3 It sounds like it's the kind of thing that you'd encounter if you called a toll-free number for a pharmaceutical product or for like medical advice or something, but it's actually a recording to help you handle your own Tesla regret syndrome.

Speaker 3 Tesla regret syndrome, TRS.

Speaker 5 TRS is a condition afflicting tens of thousands of Tesla owners.

Speaker 5 It's characterized by persistent feelings of deep discomfort when driving a Tesla you bought because you cared about the future, only to find that the CEO is a fascist megalomaniac out to destroy the U.S.

Speaker 5 government and sell it for parts, then enrich himself with contracts to do some of the same work.

Speaker 5 Please listen carefully to the following treatment options before making a selection.

Speaker 5 If you own a Tesla and aren't sure why you should sell, press 1.

Speaker 5 If you can't afford to sell your older Tesla, press two.

Speaker 5 If you are simply attached to your Tesla and don't want to sell, press three.

Speaker 5 If you own a Cybertruck, it's probably best for you to hang up now and deal with the latest recall.

Speaker 3 If you own a Cybertruck, it's probably best for you to hang up now and deal with the latest recall.

Speaker 3 The press one, press two, press three options, those are real. They actually

Speaker 3 connect you to, I mean, if you press one because you're not sure if you should sell your Tesla, you get a recording explaining that it will make a difference because if you sell your Tesla, because flooding the market with used Teslas will bring down the price of all Teslas.

Speaker 3 It will make them all lose value, even the new ones.

Speaker 3 If you press two because you want to sell your older Tesla, but you can't afford to, you get a recording saying, sometimes you're not in a place to sell your car. That's understandable.

Speaker 3 Do your best, though, to charge it home so Musk gets no money out of you. And please come to a peaceful Tesla takedown protest when you can.
We promise you won't be the only Tesla driver there.

Speaker 3 So that's if you press one or if you press two. If you press three,

Speaker 3 they say press three if you are simply attached to your Tesla and don't want to sell. This is the recording that you get.

Speaker 5 We're sorry. Doing the right thing is hard sometimes.
Sadly, we can't fix that.

Speaker 5 But we can tell you that people who choose to completely excise Tesla from their lives report feelings of calm, satisfaction, and even profound well-being, both because no one glares at them anymore when they get in and out of their cars, and because they feel connected to a broader effort to rescue our democracy.

Speaker 3 The Tesla Regret Syndrome hotline. So Seattle, Washington, really kicking it up a notch.

Speaker 3 as of this weekend by pairing their anti-Trump, anti-Musk protests outside Tesla dealerships now with free Tesla emblem removal for any Tesla car and a free hotline to call to get help with your Tesla regret syndrome.

Speaker 3 There were hundreds of people at an anti-Trump, anti-Musk protest at the Tesla dealership this weekend in Columbus, Ohio. There were hundreds more in Tucson, Arizona.
at the Tesla dealership there.

Speaker 3 There were scrappy anti-Tesla, anti-Trump, anti-Musk protests, including some in bad weather in Little Hadley, Massachusetts, at North North Phoenix in Arizona, at the Tesla dealership in Stanford, California, at the Stanford Mall,

Speaker 3 and this one at Grand Rapids, Michigan, which was just at lunchtime today.

Speaker 3 In Memphis, Tennessee, this weekend, there was a big protest against Trump and Musk, including a specific beef with Elon Musk in that city that's starting to get people really mobilized and really fired up in Memphis, Tennessee, in particular.

Speaker 3 Watch.

Speaker 6 Protesters in Memphis on Saturday say they're concerned about government leaders and their decisions and gathered together to take a stand.

Speaker 7 This is about connecting people, connecting the community.

Speaker 7 When I look around, I see, like I said, a lot of different age groups, but it's going to take more than that.

Speaker 7 It's going to take connecting with all people who feel as though their voices aren't being heard.

Speaker 6 People held signs saying protect your rights. Education is right for all.
Protect immigrants. and more.

Speaker 9 I would like to see us get back to the values that made us a great country, the ones that are outlined in our Constitution. I'd like to see us follow it.

Speaker 6 The hands-off movement hopes to remove leaders they believe are making harmful decisions, reverse the damage, and reclaim democracy.

Speaker 7 For here in Memphis, we've got a lot of issues with XAI, with Musks coming in and unilaterally making decisions that are dangerous to Memphians.

Speaker 6 People are hoping for a real change.

Speaker 10 I think this administration

Speaker 10 is so steeped in lies that people are beginning to believe those lies. And we've got to get back to a place where the truth actually matters.

Speaker 3 The reference there to damage being done in Memphis, Tennessee, in particular, is about another one of Elon Musk's companies that doesn't get as much attention, XAI, his artificial intelligence company, which is apparently running a supercomputer facility in Memphis that's getting a lot of people there upset.

Speaker 3 They are using gas-powered turbines to power that facility, turbines for which they reportedly do not have permits.

Speaker 3 And the resulting air pollution concerns there led not just to that protest this weekend that you saw in Memphis, but also to a packed town hall with the city's mayor who has essentially been defending the company and taking a lot of heat for it.

Speaker 3 Also another packed town hall with other local Memphis leaders who are definitely not defending Musk's company.

Speaker 3 And some of them are saying that they want XAI shut down in Memphis as a public health menace. So all of those concerns dovetailing in the great city of Memphis, Tennessee.

Speaker 3 But I mean, all across the country, the protests are not going away. There's more and more of these to cover every single week.

Speaker 3 Look at this one, this big one at Little Rock, Arkansas at the state capitol this weekend. This is Arkansas this weekend.
This was also another big one in Johnson City, Tennessee. A big turnout there.

Speaker 3 At the protest in Johnson City, Tennessee this weekend. They also did a food drive in conjunction with their protest, since Trump, of course, has cut support to food banks.

Speaker 3 This was Laguna Beach, California yesterday in Southern California.

Speaker 3 This was yesterday at the Wisconsin State Capitol, big crowd protesting cuts to the VA and services for veterans in Wisconsin. Same goes in little

Speaker 3 Menistique, Michigan, on the Upper Peninsula in Michigan. Michiganders there protesting the cuts to veterans care in Michigan.

Speaker 3 This was Medina, Ohio on Saturday, hundreds of people protesting in Medina.

Speaker 3 This was just an hour away outside the Geauga County Jail in Shardin, Ohio, where people protested against what Trump is doing to immigrants.

Speaker 3 This was a vigil and protest for immigrants and their families in little Elizabethtown, New York yesterday in the Adirondacks. This was a march in Tennessee at the state capitol today.

Speaker 3 People wearing mortar boards like it's graduation, standing up for immigrant kids and their families who are being targeted by Republicans in Tennessee state government, who are aping some of what Trump is doing at the federal level.

Speaker 3 This was today in Washington, D.C., people protesting against Trump shipping people from this country to that foreign dungeon in El Salvador with no legal process whatsoever.

Speaker 3 We're going to have more on that subject in a moment. This too was Washington, D.C.
today, federal workers protesting against Trump's massive and indiscriminate cuts to the U.S. government.

Speaker 3 And then of course there were the couple that you might have heard about even before I started talking tonight.

Speaker 3 The two massive, just massive anti-Trump rallies that were held by Senator Bernie Sanders and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Look at this.

Speaker 3 Last night in Salt Lake City, Utah, deep, deep red, Utah. They booked a 15,000-seat arena thinking, well, they'd be safe there, right? They'd be fine with a venue that size.
They'd never fill that up.

Speaker 3 Well, they ended up filling all 15,000 seats in that arena, another thousand people packed onto the floor. Then 4,000 more people on top of that crowded outside the arena when they couldn't get in.

Speaker 3 They turned out 20,000 people in Utah last night.

Speaker 3 And frankly, that 20,000 turnout in Utah last night was dwarfed by the size of the crowd that turned out to see Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez the night before in Los Angeles.

Speaker 3 Look at this. This is Saturday afternoon in LA.

Speaker 3 The crowd estimated at 36,000 people.

Speaker 3 Senator Sanders, of course, has spoken to some large crowds in his time as a very high-profile politician. He says he had never before spoken to a crowd of this size.

Speaker 3 36,000 people Saturday in the open air outside City Hall in Los Angeles for Senator Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Speaker 3 The vanguard of the uncompromising, unapologetic left wing of the Democratic Party, who, frankly, can rightfully take an I told you so lap around this country considering their years-long warnings of oligarchy and how letting the billionaires take over would be the end of American democracy.

Speaker 3 Yeah, man.

Speaker 3 You are here.

Speaker 3 And you know, if you are looking at that footage, And you're looking at all these fellow Americans protesting against the authoritarian takeover, against the destruction of the government, people trying to defend immigrants who are already fully into the secret police and abductions part of the authoritarian nightmare.

Speaker 3 You see your fellow Americans trying to shore up the remaining institutions we've got to not give in, to push back.

Speaker 3 You see people showing up at these events to show their fellow Americans who might be worried or angry or just unhappy with what Trump is doing, to show people that they're not alone.

Speaker 3 I mean,

Speaker 3 let's say you're one of this really, really tiny handful of friends in Henderson, Kentucky this weekend, who decided that even though there were only a few of them willing to do it, they were going to get out there on Highway 41 this weekend and they said they're going to be back there next weekend too, even if it's only this little handful of them

Speaker 3 who feel brave enough to do it.

Speaker 3 If you're looking at this footage and you're thinking about what all this protest means, large and small, and whether it changes anything, whether it moves the needle.

Speaker 3 I have just one more thing to show you

Speaker 3 because

Speaker 3 this was Saturday in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which is home, of course, to the most famous and prestigious university in the whole country, Harvard University.

Speaker 3 This was a stand-up Harvard rally that happened in terrible rain and sleet and cold in Cambridge, Massachusetts on Saturday afternoon. The theme was effectively courage, not capitulation.

Speaker 3 People are trying to shore up Harvard to tell them that they've got the gravitas and the weight and the wealth, that if they can't lead, who can?

Speaker 3 That they should not capitulate to Trump's threats, to Trump's demands to let him essentially take over and subjugate the universities.

Speaker 3 It has thus far been war on international students, war on academic freedom, war on campus free speech. It's been war on government research funding.
It's about to be war on university endowments.

Speaker 3 And so these people turned out on Saturday in the wind and the cold, one protest among a gazillion. But in this case, they were just telling Harvard, don't do it.
Don't capitulate. Stand up.

Speaker 3 This was Saturday.

Speaker 3 And tonight, here's the banner headline in the Boston Globe. Quote, Harvard refuses to comply with Trump's demands, says it won't, quote, allow itself to be taken over by the federal government.

Speaker 3 And they, of course, knew what that would mean. Here's the headline in the New York Times right now.
Headline, Trump administration will freeze $2 billion after Harvard refuses demands.

Speaker 3 Harvard University said today that it had rejected policy changes requested by the Trump administration, becoming the first university to directly refuse to comply with the administration's demands, setting up a showdown between the federal government and the nation's wealthiest university.

Speaker 3 The reaction from the Trump administration was swift on Monday night. Officials said they would freeze $2.2 billion in multi-year grants to Harvard, along with one $60 million contract.

Speaker 3 Other universities have pushed back against the administration's interference in higher education, but Harvard's response, which called the Trump administration's demands illegal, marked a major shift in tone for the nation's most influential school.

Speaker 3 You know, the law firms that Trump has been extorting,

Speaker 3 basically, threatening them and then telling them to pay up if they don't want more pain, right? The law firms that Trump has been extorting, according to new reporting in the Wall Street Journal,

Speaker 3 Trump has been making the law firms negotiate their protection racket extortion deals with Boris,

Speaker 3 with

Speaker 3 Boris Epstein, who does not work for the U.S. government.
He just works as a kind of personal fixer.

Speaker 3 I think of him as sort of a universal donor of menacing atmosphere to President Donald Trump and all things that surround him. Boris Epstein is under felony indictment in Arizona.

Speaker 3 He has pled not guilty. He did plead guilty to disorderly conduct in Arizona after he was accused of repeatedly groping women in an Arizona bar.
Mr.

Speaker 3 Epstein also denied allegations that he was selling administration jobs in this second Trump term in exchange for cash bribes.

Speaker 3 But now Trump has him, him of all people, personally working out the protection deals that he is extorting from the nation's great law firms, where they allow Trump to dictate their policies at the firm, and they agree effectively to pay Trump by giving free legal services to causes he chooses.

Speaker 3 And in return, apparently Boris promises these firms that the Trump administration is not going to hurt him anymore.

Speaker 3 He's having Boris do it.

Speaker 3 That's the kind of deal making we're talking about here. It is straight out of season one of The Sopranos.

Speaker 3 And much like the law firms, colleges have thus far been trying to negotiate their own deals, not that differently from what we're seeing from all the law firms.

Speaker 3 But Harvard tonight, Harvard, the big one, Harvard tonight says no. And they knew what it would mean and they said no and they said, we are going to fight.

Speaker 3 And I don't know what put the steel in their spine to do it.

Speaker 3 But saying no, saying no, we're going to fight was an option for everyone. Harvard has now taken that option,

Speaker 3 which means that fight at least is on.

Speaker 3 Sheryl Eiffel is here tonight. Martin O'Malley is here tonight.
So much to come. Stay with us.

Speaker 3 Okay, the tape is a little hard to hear, but if you listen closely, you can just make out what the president is saying as he enters the Oval Office today

Speaker 3 with the President of El Salvador.

Speaker 12 Supporting recovery efforts in places like Gaza and Ukraine, and responding within 72 hours of crisis. Donate today by visiting rescue.org/slash rebuild.

Speaker 13 At Marisa's, we're all about great jeans. You know, the ones that fit you just right? The ones that go from workdays to weekends and everywhere in between.

Speaker 15 The ones that simply make you feel good.

Speaker 13 Because you don't just wear jeans, you live in them. With 25 sizes, five links, and six denim brands, you've got options and fit experts in every store to make jean shopping easier.

Speaker 13 Find great jeans starting at 29.90 in stores and at marisas.com.

Speaker 16 Think advertising on TikTok isn't for your business?

Speaker 17 Think again. We've generated over a hundred thousand leads, which has converted into over 40,000 sales for our pet insurance policies.
My name is Trey Farrow. I am the CEO of Spot Pet Insurance.

Speaker 17 TikTok's Smart Plus AI-powered automation takes the guesswork out of targeting, bidding, and optimizing creative. If I can advertise on TikTok, you can too.

Speaker 16 Drive more leads and scale your business today only on TikTok. Head over to getstarted.tiktok.com/slash TikTok ads.

Speaker 18 You get it built about five more places. Yeah, that's fair.

Speaker 3 All right.

Speaker 3 Laughter all around. That was Donald Trump today talking to the president of El Salvador, a man who calls himself the world's coolest dictator.

Speaker 3 And you could hear there what sounded like Trump promising that he's about to send to a prison in El Salvador the quote, homegrowns,

Speaker 3 meaning U.S. citizens.
He says, home growns are next. You're going to need to build about five new places.

Speaker 3 The Trump administration has flown hundreds of non-U.S. citizens to this foreign prison in El Salvador already, including 10 more that they flew there this weekend.
Even though the U.S.

Speaker 3 government has sent these people to this prison, the Trump administration says they have no protection under U.S. law there, that

Speaker 3 this facility facility doesn't answer to U.S. courts.
The people sent there are just gone.

Speaker 3 They're sent into that prison maybe forever with no way to be heard, no way to contest whatever the designation was that got the U.S. government to send them there.
Certainly no way to get out ever.

Speaker 3 Are homegrowns really next? Would the American president send American citizens

Speaker 3 to indefinite, totally lawless, apparently permanent imprisonment in El Salvador as well? Is he open to that? Apparently, yes, he is.

Speaker 19 If it's a homegrown criminal, I have no problem. Now,

Speaker 19 we're studying the laws right now. Pam is studying.
If we can do that, that's good.

Speaker 3 If we can do that, that's good. Pam, meaning Pam Bondi, the Attorney General.

Speaker 3 So he wants to send American citizens to foreign prisons where U.S.

Speaker 3 legal protections don't apply at all, where people can be held for the rest of their lives without ever having a day in court or any sort of process.

Speaker 3 He says Attorney General Pam Bondi is, quote, studying the laws right now to see if he really could do it because he loved to do it.

Speaker 3 It was only last week on Thursday when the Supreme Court ruled unanimously 9 to 0 in favor of a man named Kilmar Abrego-Garcia. He's a legal resident.
He's a Maryland father.

Speaker 3 The Trump administration admits they sent him to that prison in El Salvador by mistake. The Supreme Court effectively ordered the Trump administration to facilitate this man's return to the U.S.

Speaker 3 from that El Salvadoran prison without explicitly defining what that would look like. The Trump administration has insisted that they can't return him and they don't intend to.

Speaker 3 They said that the man's fate is up to the president of El Salvador for some reason.

Speaker 3 Today in the Oval Office, it was a reporter who finally asked El Salvador's president if he would please return this man to the United States.

Speaker 3 The El Salvadoran president called the the question, quote, preposterous. Of course he wouldn't.

Speaker 3 So we have here a constitutional nightmare, a legal nightmare, obviously a moral nightmare. Cheryl Eiffel is the former president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.

Speaker 3 She has been sounding the alarm about this. She has argued that Trump will start testing constitutional limits by trying to deport U.S.

Speaker 3 citizens from American prisons to places like El Salvador, and that Americans, in order to stop that slippery slope where it is, must take on the challenge of caring about and standing up for U.S.

Speaker 3 prisoners.

Speaker 3 Quote, many of us have been working on how to legally head off this nightmare, but public outcry and support will be essential. Are you ready to march for the most despised members of our society?

Speaker 3 Will you call your representatives about those who are imprisoned?

Speaker 3 If you can't feel for them or their families, remember that this is just a stage in a plan that will land ultimately at our own doorsteps.

Speaker 3 Every one of us deemed inconvenient by this administration will be under threat. And every time Trump is successful, he grows more emboldened and more convinced that nothing can stop him.

Speaker 3 Joining us now is Sherilyn Eiffel. She's the Vernon E.
Jordan Jr. Distinguished Chair in Civil Rights at Howard Law School.
Ms. Eiffel, it's been too long.
Thank you so much for being here tonight.

Speaker 3 It's an honor to have you with us.

Speaker 15 Thank you, Rachel.

Speaker 3 You wrote this piece over the weekend, sort of sounding the alarm. He's talking about U.S.
citizens. He's talking about U.S.
citizens. This is a constitutional

Speaker 3 end.

Speaker 3 This is an end of constitutional protections in the United States in a really fundamental way.

Speaker 3 That was before today's Oval Office meeting, where the President very cheerfully confirmed that, oh, yes, he's talking about doing this to U.S. citizens, too.

Speaker 3 Is the President actually moving faster than you thought he might?

Speaker 3 Are you at least pleased that the American public have to see this this as clearly now as you have been?

Speaker 15 Yes, and I very much thank you for this conversation tonight, Rachel. I've been sounding the alarm because Trump has been saying it over and over.

Speaker 15 In fact, he started out when his family first met with the president of El Salvador a couple of months ago. And he said then that the president of El Salvador was interested in housing U.S.
prisoners.

Speaker 15 He said it again the other night as he was exiting or entering his plane, I don't remember which one it was, where he talked about this again.

Speaker 15 He said, you know, for our worst of the worst, people who knock old ladies over the head, people who push people in front of subway trains, or if you had a bad judge and a bad prosecutor who didn't do the case right because they only care about politics.

Speaker 15 He's been repeating this over and over again. He tweeted that he can't wait to see people who attack Teslas

Speaker 15 face incarceration in El Salvadoran prisons. And by now we know Trump a little bit.
We know that when he keeps saying something over and over again, he is not joking.

Speaker 15 We know that he is incapable of holding his cards close to his chest when they are having discussions about these things. And we've seen two new reports.
One was in Politico this weekend about plans.

Speaker 15 One is Stephen Miller's plan to do a mass denaturalization of naturalized U.S. citizens who are incarcerated.

Speaker 15 We saw, can you believe it, the name Eric Prince again, who apparently is involved in an effort to use private prisons in El Salvador and in other countries, with the U.S.

Speaker 15 perhaps entering into a treaty of cession, something I really think about when I think about maybe getting Alaska from Russia, a treaty of cession so that the U.S.

Speaker 15 would control the territory in that country and therefore there could be no claim that U.S. citizens were being moved off of U.S.
soil. It's crazy and diabolical, but it's real.

Speaker 3 When Attorney General General Pam Bondi does this studying, as the President said today, when she looks into the legality of this, which the President continually says he doesn't understand, doesn't really care about, wants to find out whether or not it's legal, it's being looked into, what is she going to find when she looks into U.S.

Speaker 3 case law and constitutional protections to find whether or not this is something that they could legally do?

Speaker 15 Well, it's a strange thing if she didn't find the Fifth Amendment that says every person in the United States, person, not citizen, is entitled to due process of law, cannot be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process, which should have stopped the deportation of Mr.

Speaker 15 Abregu Garcia and others who received no due process. I'm not sure what she's likely to find with this look.
I think there are two things to think about here.

Speaker 15 One is that, as almost everyone knows, there are nearly 2 million people incarcerated in the United States. Most of them are in state prisons, not in federal prison.

Speaker 15 The person who assaulted the old lady is most likely not in federal prison. There are about 200,000 people in our federal prisons.

Speaker 15 So I'm not sure the population that Trump is looking at, if it is the state prison population, that creates complications for him.

Speaker 15 And in any case, we have a constitution that prevents cruel and unusual punishment, sending

Speaker 15 folks here who are incarcerated to what has been identified as a torture prison, as a prison that the warden of Seacott in El Salvador said is the prison no one ever leaves.

Speaker 15 That is simply a violation of the constitutional rights of prisoners. Prisoners who are citizens of this country are United States citizens, and they have the rights of citizens.

Speaker 15 And so I don't have any faith that Pam Bondi will, in her research, will feel bound by that, but that is the state of the law, and that's why so many of us have been looking at this very closely and preparing.

Speaker 15 Because I think, as you alluded to earlier, Rachel, when the plane takes off, the plane takes off. That's what happened to Mr.
Abregu Garcia.

Speaker 15 This administration has made clear they're not interested in lifting a finger to get people back, even people who were wrongfully, well, they were all wrongfully shipped to El Salvador, but certainly this individual was, by concession, wrongfully sent to El Salvador.

Speaker 15 So it's very, very alarming, very, very frightening, and something we have to get out ahead of.

Speaker 3 Sherilyn Eiffel, Howard Law School professor and friend to this show for a very long time. Thank you for your time tonight.
We're going to stay very closely on this story.

Speaker 3 We'd love to have you back soon as it

Speaker 3 develops. Thanks.
Thank you, Rachel. Thanks.
All right. Much more news ahead here tonight.
Stay with us.

Speaker 16 Think advertising on TikTok isn't for your business? Think again.

Speaker 20 With TikTok ads, we went from 250,000 downloads to over a million downloads in less than a year. I'm Eve.
I'm Anam, and we're the co-founders of Alinia. Alinia Advaits is an investing ad for Jan Z.

Speaker 20 We run 50 new ads per week with three variations thanks to TikTok's Smart Plus campaigns. If you're not advertising on TikTok, you're missing out.

Speaker 16 Drive more app downloads only on TikTok. Head over to getstarted.tiktok.com slash TikTok ads.

Speaker 13 At Marisa's, we're all about great jeans. You know, the ones that fit you just right? The ones that simply make you feel good.
Because you don't just wear jeans, you live in them.

Speaker 13 Find great jeans starting at 29.90 in stores and at marisas.com.

Speaker 19 Start your day with the MS Now daily daily newsletter. Each morning, read sharp insights from the voices you trust.
Catch standout moments from your favorite shows.

Speaker 21 The second Trump administration has gone to unprecedented lengths to radically transform America.

Speaker 19 Stay up to speed on our latest podcasts and MS Now events and get fresh perspectives from experts shaping the news. It's everything you love about MS Now delivered to your inbox.
Sign up at MS.now.

Speaker 3 So he was a career staffer. He'd worked his way up through the ranks of the Social Security Administration.
He'd started at the very bottom,

Speaker 3 made it all the way up to the top of the agency. He'd been there more than 25 years.
He really knew the agency, really knew the program. He really knows the stakes for Americans.

Speaker 3 He also knows the rules. And he personally tried to push back on a new plan from the Trump administration.

Speaker 3 According to new reporting from the Washington Post, he told his Trump-installed superior at the Social Security Administration that what the administration was planning to do was, quote, illegal and cruel, and quote, risked declaring the wrong people dead.

Speaker 3 The Trump administration responded by

Speaker 3 having security physically escort him out of the building. They marched him out, put him on administrative leave.

Speaker 3 The plan this 25-year veteran career staffer was trying to stop at Social Security is something that we just started learning about last week.

Speaker 3 Social Security under Donald Trump is moving thousands of people to the agency's deaf master file, which means they're knowingly misclassifying living people as dead.

Speaker 3 Because when you're listed as dead by Social Security, you can lose basically everything almost instantly.

Speaker 3 Your health insurance, your home, your bank account, your job, your credit card, even your phone, everything.

Speaker 3 So these people are alive, but they are knowingly classifying them as dead to make it impossible for them to live in this country. They're imposing on them a kind of civil and financial death.

Speaker 3 Since we reported on that story last week, people in and around the Social Security Administration have been jumping up and down and shouting about this.

Speaker 3 Just this one Washington Post piece has 15 sources for this story. Current and former Social Security officials trying to tell the world what is happening and why this is so scary.

Speaker 3 The Post reviewed records showing that the Trump administration has already added more than 6,000 people to the death file.

Speaker 3 The White House quote told the Post that the roughly 6,000 immigrants they have done this to all have links to either terrorist activity or criminal records.

Speaker 3 Do they? The records the Post reviewed showed those more than 6,000 people included a 13-year-old, a 14-year-old, and two 16-year-olds, as well as one person in their 80s and a handful in their 70s.

Speaker 3 They're all terrorists, even the 13-year-old.

Speaker 3 All of those people now legally dead, according to Social Security, which means, again, no bank account, no job, no property, no credit card, nothing.

Speaker 3 One source warned the Washington Post that Yes, they're doing this to immigrants, but this is very clearly something that they could do to anyone.

Speaker 3 Quote, anybody granted the appropriate permissions within Social Security could mark someone as dead without having to prove their demise in any way.

Speaker 3 Employees' fear was partly that a bad actor who gained access to government credentials could label groups of living individuals as dead to target them for punishment.

Speaker 3 Some of those raising the alarm worried specifically that the Trump administration might try to use the database to go after people the president dislikes.

Speaker 3 Washington Post also has a single source telling them that within Social Security, the concern about this misuse of the deathmaster file is so high that the general counsel's office inside social security is quote preparing an opinion that will find the Trump administration's unprecedented use of the death database to be a violation of privacy law in other words to be illegal the opinion will take issue with the agency knowingly and falsely declaring that living people are dead Now, NBC News has not confirmed that reporting.

Speaker 3 Obviously, if the general counsel

Speaker 3 of the administration did that, that might be a big deal.

Speaker 3 But whether or not that happens, the level of alarm over what the Trump administration is doing with the Social Security administration right now is very clear.

Speaker 3 Former Biden Social Security Commissioner Martin O'Malley described what they're doing,

Speaker 3 having your name out of that death master file, as quote, tantamount to financial murder.

Speaker 3 Martin O'Malley joins us here. Lack next.
Stay with us.

Speaker 22 We are all in this together. Social Security is here to stay, and America's best days are still in front of us.

Speaker 3 Former Social Security Commissioner Martin O'Malley standing on top of a planter outside Social Security headquarters as part of the nationwide hands-off protest last weekend.

Speaker 3 O'Malley's been speaking at protests. He's been speaking to the press.
He's been trying to sound the alarm about how Trump is breaking the Social Security administration, which O'Malley used to run.

Speaker 3 He's now speaking about what appears to be the Trump administration's goal to weaponize Social Security, using it now to target immigrants, potentially to target the president's opponents, by messing with their Social Security data to declare individual living people dead.

Speaker 3 Declare them dead even though they're alive, which imposes a kind of civil and financial guillotine on anybody who gets targeted in this way.

Speaker 3 O'Malley has called it, quote, tantamount to financial murder. Joining us now is Martin O'Malley, former Commissioner of the Social Security Administration under President Biden.

Speaker 3 Commissioner O'Malley, it's really nice of you to be back with us tonight. Thank you.

Speaker 11 Thank you for your reporting on this. Really, really appreciate it.

Speaker 3 I find it hard to explain in

Speaker 3 non-sort of layman's language what it means for the government to declare you dead when you're alive. Can you help people understand the implications of this?

Speaker 11 Sure. There are many ramifications.
I mean,

Speaker 11 if you suddenly appear in the death master file, that's not only for Social Security.

Speaker 11 Social Security, by law and congressional statute, maintains that death master file, but all sorts of banking institutions, credit institutions, states. you know, departments of, you know, health,

Speaker 11 food stamps, Medicaid, they all ping off of that. So if they find out, if they're told that somebody's dead, they cut off those benefits.
So this has grave ramifications.

Speaker 11 And as you pointed out, Rachel, if they can do this to people who came to this country legally, they can do this to any of us.

Speaker 11 This is the first time we've ever seen this unlawful, criminal corruption of the data of the American people that's contained at Social Security, which, by the way, those employees protect and always have protected with a sacred vow.

Speaker 3 What do you think can be done to stop this?

Speaker 11 Well, there are many lawsuits.

Speaker 11 One of them just today,

Speaker 11 a former deputy at Social Security,

Speaker 11 filed another declaration just today outlining just how outrageous this is.

Speaker 11 So this will definitely be going to court. And there's a lot of lawyers out there who see that this program of Social Security is being deconstructed before our very eyes.

Speaker 11 In fact, I'm out here in Chicago. There will be a conference tomorrow of a new group of advocates and counselors and representatives for people with disability.

Speaker 11 And President Biden will be speaking there for the very first time

Speaker 11 after leaving office. And I can guarantee you, President Biden will be speaking very directly to this gutting of Social Security with a chainsaw.

Speaker 3 One of the things we've done a couple of interviews about here on the show is efforts

Speaker 3 by the Attorney General in the state of Arizona and now the state of Michigan to at least give people a place to report when they're having trouble with Social Security.

Speaker 3 It's an online form both for Arizona and Michigan residents at their Attorney General's office website where people can at least let the state know when they're having difficulty.

Speaker 3 Do you want more states to do that? Do you think that's helpful?

Speaker 11 Absolutely. Absolutely.
In fact,

Speaker 11 I think the Attorney Generals play a really important role right now.

Speaker 11 I think it's only a matter of time before one of them figures out how to file state kidnapping charges against those that are abducting people who are in this country legally and sending them to this new concentration camp that Donald Trump laughs about having created in El Salvador.

Speaker 11 Attorney Generals are going to play a critically important role in these days ahead fighting this fascist moment in American history.

Speaker 3 Martin O'Malley, former Commissioner of the Social Security Administration, former Maryland governor, sir, thank you very much for your time tonight. Love to have you back soon with you, Rachel.

Speaker 3 Thank you. We'll be right back.
Stay with us.

Speaker 3 All right, that's going to do it for me for now. See you again tomorrow and every night this week at 9 p.m.
Eastern.

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.