Trump makes a gross miscalculation about the popularity of his cruelty to immigrants

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He is a junior in high school.

He plays the drums in the high school band.

He takes honors classes.

He gets good grades.

He's been in the local school system since kindergarten.

His family knows everybody in town and everybody knows him.

He and his family go to a local church.

He has a girlfriend.

He's popular.

He likes cars.

And he's really good at sports.

Even though he's a high school junior, he helps coach the girls volleyball team at his high school.

And he himself is on the varsity boys volleyball team.

And they're a good team and they work really hard.

They're the kind of high school volleyball team that doesn't just practice after school.

This weekend, for example, they had an early morning 7.45 a.m.

practice.

I played sports in high school and I was into it, but do you know the likelihood of me in high school being at a 7.45 a.m.

practice on a Saturday morning?

I mean, I was into it, but I was not that into it.

But this guy is

high school junior.

His name is Marcelo.

And this Saturday morning, he was on time on his way to that 7.45 a.m.

volleyball practice, Saturday morning.

He was carpooling with some of his teammates to that early morning practice.

But then they didn't turn up.

And his coaches thought, obvious answer, the guys must have, you know, overslept or something.

But then ultimately, one of the boys that morning got through to the coach, he texted him, and he told the coach, hey, they arrested Marcelo.

These kids were carpooling.

They were on the way to early morning volleyball practice Saturday morning, and Trump's immigration agents pulled them over and they arrested this kid, Marcelo.

Again, he is a high school junior.

They said they weren't after him.

They said they were looking for somebody else, but they took him.

This is a kid with no criminal record at all.

He is not known to have ever been in any kind of trouble at all.

Again, he is a high school junior honor student on the volleyball team and in the high school band.

They took him.

They've taken him to an immigration prison.

all alone.

They reportedly are trying to move him now to another immigration prison that is farther from home.

He does have a lawyer arguing for him to try to get him before a federal judge to try to get him out.

But that is who Trump's agents took on Saturday morning in Milford, Massachusetts.

Saturday morning, that's when they arrested him.

Sunday morning, it was graduation day at Milford High School.

And at the graduation ceremony in Milford,

Sunday morning, the valedictorian spoke and the class president spoke.

And then as soon as the ceremony was over, the whole school marched straight from the graduation ceremony over to the Milford town hall to go protest to try to get Marcelo back.

A Massachusetts town is shaken tonight after a high school junior was picked up by ice.

Good evening, everyone.

Thanks so much for joining us at 11.

I'm Sam Reed.

This comes just one day before the school's graduation.

According to the family and friends, Marcelo Gomes came to the U.S.

from Brazil with his family at a very young age.

The 19th Mike Cerullo was in Milford as a massive crowd called for his release.

A mix of emotions.

This is not acceptable.

Pouring out onto the streets of Milford.

We want him back.

Because he should be with us.

He's just one of us.

He's just another kid.

It's Graduation Day, a celebration of hard work and perseverance.

But for these students,

a sense of sadness, anger, and confusion hangs over as well.

I don't understand why they targeted Marcelo.

Friends and family say Marcelo is a junior at Milford High, taken by ice early Saturday morning on his way to volleyball practice.

His girlfriend spoke with him over the phone Saturday afternoon.

He said, like, they had put chains around his ankles and on his wrists.

I haven't spoken to him since then.

I don't know how he's doing.

This sea of people, some traveled from as far as Providence, is wrapping its arms around her and Marcelo's family.

Friends Friends say he grew up in Milford and is a key part of the community.

He lights up every room he walks into.

He loves God.

He loves volleyball.

He's an honors student in honors in AP classes.

His volleyball coach says he's a bright light.

We didn't know really how to react.

I don't think there's a playbook for this.

It's not a common thing to see kids in their graduation gowns at a protest, right?

But that's what happened this weekend yesterday morning.

Graduating seniors, tons of kids from all the schools in town, parents, teachers, the whole town basically turned out.

They held these signs that said, he belongs here and hands off our kids.

The local Democratic state senator, her name is Becca Rausch, she was there.

She spoke to the crowd.

The local Democratic Congressman Jake Auschenkloss was there.

That was Milford, Massachusetts this weekend.

You may remember from a couple of weeks ago that really, really chaotic scene that unfolded in Newark, New Jersey.

Do you remember at the gates of the immigration prison in Newark?

That was the pushing and shoving and this real chaos.

That's when they arrested the mayor of Newark, New Jersey before they later dropped charges against him.

They manhandled all those members of Congress.

Ultimately later, they arrested one of those members of Congress, La Monica MacIver.

Do you remember just the scenes of that, what that looked like, just the kinetic activity there, how chaotic and out of control that scene was, how the law enforcement guys just seemed totally out of their depth.

Law enforcement clearly did not know what they were doing, clearly just winging it.

They were obviously like scared and confused, many of them masked, very, very much overarmed, but they didn't clearly have any idea what to do.

And that made the whole scene like a thousand times more dangerous and chaotic than it ever should have been.

Those totally out of their depth federal agents at that shameful scene in Newark, those guys who really appeared to be panicked and completely untrained for what they were doing there, they are federal agents from an agency called HSI,

Homeland Security Investigations.

And

if you start looking, when you see scenes like this anywhere in the country right now, you will often see HSI

as the logo, if you see any logo at all, on the uniforms or on the patches of these agents.

Now, HSI is supposed to be like investigating smuggling rings.

They are not an agency that is trained for policing protests or doing crowd control or anything like that.

Nevertheless,

Trump has them doing that

over and over again, all over the country.

And when they do things like that, it keeps going horribly wrong because this federal agency is clearly totally untrained for this work and is clearly out of its depth.

And so guess who the geniuses were who so nimbly managed this operation at a popular Italian restaurant in the lovely Balboa Park neighborhood of San Diego this weekend.

Now, hi you guys, somebody apparently told these guys from HSI,

somebody apparently told these guys from Homeland Security Investigations that they were going to be invading Fallujah on Friday afternoon.

Right?

I mean, this is bananas.

This is a popular Italian restaurant in San Diego.

Just as they were opening for dinner on a beautiful Friday afternoon, multiple clown cars full of Trump's

HSI agents in full battle rattle with helmets and long guns and flak jackets and goggles and masks and the whole thing.

I mean, literally looking like they were going to rappel out of helicopters into the Tora Bora cave complex to fight al-Qaeda.

These guys dressed like this run into a neighborhood Italian restaurant

and reportedly handcuffed the entire crew working at the restaurant, everybody inside.

And then they arrested people who were like, you know, busboys and waiters and stuff.

And then, unsurprisingly, the whole neighborhood came out to say, what the heck are you doing?

Is this red dawn?

Are we being invaded, Wolverines?

This is what you're doing to save us from the terrible menace of like the nice waiter at our favorite local restaurant.

Trump's immigration agents

had no idea what to do.

Get out of here, Carol.

Cowards.

Cowards.

Cowards.

You should be embarrassed,

you should be so embarrassed.

Look at your face.

Shame!

Ultimately, these Trump immigration agents dressed up like soldiers.

They made this San Diego street corner look like they were in a war zone because they were so completely unprepared and untrained and flummoxed by all of the neighbors and passersby

understandably yelling at them and telling them to leave people alone.

They were so scared and so unprepared and so untrained for this completely predictable situation that they set off multiple, what appeared to be these flash bang smoke grenades.

against the random neighbors in San Diego, against the people on the street who were outraged by what they had done, who were demanding that they identify themselves for one one and that for two, they get out.

This kind of thing, seriously, this is not a sign of strength.

This is not a show of force.

This is a show of weakness and cluelessness.

These guys talked themselves into the idea that the country would be so excited.

to see them be really performatively cruel to immigrants, right?

They thought this would be a great political advantage for them.

We will perform feats of military-like strength, going after immigrants and humiliating them and debasing them and abusing them for public consumption, and that will build our political capital.

That's what they thought.

Turns out, everywhere they try it, everyone in America hates it.

Everyone hates what they're doing.

This weekend, the restaurant opened back up.

They said they were going to support their employees every way they could, and they're working on trying to get them back.

Local residents have now formed an organization to try to help.

The restaurant is dealing with just an outpouring of local support as they try to figure out what they're going to do.

One local GoFundMe was set up for the families of the people who were taken away.

They set the goal at that GoFundMe for raising $60,000 for the families.

I checked it an hour or so ago and it was already up over $88,000 raised.

The San Diego mayor is demanding answers.

The local Democratic Congressman Scott Peters is demanding answers as well.

This was Tallahassee, Florida on Friday.

A spontaneous reaction, basically hundreds of people protesting and saying no after they raided a construction site and arrested dozens of people the day before in Tallahassee.

This was Great Barrington, Massachusetts.

Local folks outraged and intervening and demanding answers as some random local guy was arrested while he was at work.

The

federal agents said they were looking for a dangerous drunk driver.

Locals say this local guy doesn't drive, doesn't have a car.

Trump's agents refusing to identify themselves, refusing to show their faces, getting screamed at

and having no answers

as local people in Great Barrington, Mass objected and screamed at them and demanded answers.

They had no idea what to say.

This was last week in San Francisco.

People, again, spontaneously protesting and turning up after Trump's agents showed up and started arresting people who had turned up for their court dates.

This was Phoenix last week in Arizona.

People protesting there as well,

essentially spontaneously turning out and protesting when Trump's agents turned up at the courthouse and started arresting people who had turned up for their court dates as well.

This has had a lot of attention in the print press.

The New York Times just did a big feature on a Trump-supporting town called Kennett, Missouri.

where the staff at John's Waffle and Pancake House are now wearing shirts that say, bring Carol home.

Hundreds of people have signed petitions locally.

The local Catholic Church is organizing prayer vigils and meal deliveries for the family of this local woman, Carol, who has been in Kennett, Missouri for 20 years.

Trump's agents just arrested her and took her away.

She's got three American-born kids in local schools.

Her name is Carol.

As I said, the locals recently proclaimed Carol Day in Kennett, Missouri.

They raised nearly $20,000 to support her family and try to get her home.

This was Cincinnati, Ohio this weekend, where Trump's agents arrested three men on Saturday at a Kroger's parking lot in East Price Hill.

And that was on Saturday, the arrests.

So then on Sunday, again, essentially spontaneously, people turned out to protest at the site of the arrests.

This was Tacoma, Washington this weekend at the big ice immigration prison there.

People came actually from all over Oregon and Washington to protest in Tacoma outside that ICE facility, protest against people people being imprisoned there seemingly indefinitely and without due process.

These were anti-Trump protesters this weekend in Irvine, California.

Love liberty, protect due process.

This was Charlotte, North Carolina this weekend.

Stand for democracy, stand with immigrants.

This was Lawrence, Kansas this weekend.

It was really, really hot in Lawrence, Kansas this weekend.

But downtown at this intersection in Lawrence, people turned out in big numbers protesting against Trump, lots of hunking and support.

This was Charleston, South Carolina this weekend.

People protesting against Trump at Brittlebank Park.

This was Scarborough, Maine this weekend protesting against Trump.

This was Golden Valley, Minnesota this weekend.

Doesn't matter that Elon Musk has now fled Washington.

The Tesla dealership in Golden Valley, Minnesota should probably get used to the fact that these protests there are going to keep going until this mess is over.

This was Paw Paw, Michigan, at Southwest Michigan this weekend.

People protesting against Trump, also raising money for the local food pantry, taking donations for the food pantry.

Last week, a neo-Nazi group called the Patriot Front paraded around Kansas City, Missouri.

This weekend, Kansas City, Missouri convened an anti-Nazi counter-protest to tell those guys where to go.

Today in Washington, the Reverend William Barber was arrested while praying at the U.S.

Capitol Rotunda again,

as he and others protested against the Trump Republican budget and specifically the plans to cut millions of people off of food assistance, of food stamps, and to cut millions of people off their health insurance.

They have passed a big, ugly, deadly budget bill.

And they don't want it talked about in in public.

Now every senator is going to have to decide whether they're going to vote for the we are all going to just die approach to politics.

It was the Reverend William Barber leading a Moral Mondays protest today in Washington.

And this is just one more to show you.

This is interesting.

If you were driving to O'Hare Airport in Chicago this weekend, you would have seen this on the overpass as you approached the airport.

Boycott ice deporter Avello Air.

And of course, Chicago, O'Hare is a gigantic airport, so a lot of people saw that.

But you kind of forget that there are little airports really all over the country.

And this weekend, Saturday this weekend, nearly 50 cities, people protested at all kinds of different airports against Avello Airlines, which is, in fact, flying deportation flights for Trump.

I, for example, was not aware that there is an airport in Salem, Oregon.

I guess I'd never really thought about it, but now I know there is because there was a protest there this weekend against Avello Airlines and another in Palm Beach, Florida, and another in Albany, New York, where it was just raining cats and dogs.

There was another one in Santa Rosa, California.

They were all over.

More Avello Airlines protests, calls to boycott Avello Airlines for profiting off Trump's deportation flights in Burbank, California, and Medford, Oregon, and in Houston, Texas, and in New Haven, Connecticut,

and Eugene, Oregon, and Rochester, New York, again, more than 40 cities.

I think there were something like four dozen cities in which there were protests against Avello Airlines and calls to boycott Avello Airlines for participating in Trump's deportation flights.

New York state legislators are now considering legislation that would effectively ban Avello from flying in or out of any airports in New York State, as long as they keep doing what they are doing for Trump's deportation flights.

So we do,

I mean,

we have limited insight, I think, into the political mindset that's at work, that's driven the Trump administration to do a lot of the things they're doing.

I mean, do we know what benefit they see in arresting the drummer from the Milford High School band, right?

The honor student high school junior on the volleyball team?

and locking him up?

Do we really understand what benefit they think that is to the United States of America?

Do we know what benefit Trump sees for the nation in arresting the beloved Johns Waffle and Pancake House waitress in Missouri?

Do we know what benefit Trump sees in sending full battlefield combat gear, clueless HSI agents with grenades into a neighborhood restaurant in San Diego?

Do we know what benefit they think these things are to the country?

For that matter, I mean, do we know why they think it's not a benefit to the country to have, I don't know, overnight meteorologist coverage in offices of the National Weather Service in the Midwest?

Do we know why they think that's a good thing to get rid of?

Right?

Why they think it's not a benefit to the country to have any more work on a vaccine for AIDS or any more notifications of E.

coli outbreaks?

Why they think it's a benefit to the country to not have anyone available to answer the phone at the Social Security Office?

Do we know why they are aiming deliberately to cut literally millions of Americans off of health insurance?

I mean, do we know why this is what they want for the country?

I mean, imagine if they'd actually run for office on the basis of these things they're doing in office.

Imagine if that's like what Trump rallies and Republican rallies had been like, right?

Hey, hey, vote for me, vote for us.

We'll bring back measles

and AIDS.

We're going to legalize machine guns.

And we're also, you know what we're going to do?

We're going to destroy the greatest universities in the world.

We are going to decimate cancer research.

America, you will never again have to worry about the bane of cancer research anymore.

Going to get rid of that.

We're ending that.

I mean, imagine if they had run on these things, but of course they didn't.

Trump didn't run on those things.

What he ran on

was, in part, promising to be really cruel to immigrants.

Right?

The cruelty to immigrants, we can't say they didn't warn us about.

Trump ran on that promise.

And I think that Trump thought, and all the people going in the Trump administration thought, therefore, that his cruelty to immigrants would be popular once he was in office, right?

That the more people he and his agents arrested, the more cruel they were to people who are in this country, who were not born here, the more the American people would like it and applaud for it and like him for doing it.

It turns out they were really, really wrong about that.

That political political calculation was incorrect.

I mean, from the Northeast in New England to the far southwest, to the Pacific Northwest, to Ohio, to Florida, to Arizona, to Texas, to Trump supporting rural Missouri, what they are doing in abusing immigrants

is they are arousing the ire of the American people with every single blundering step they take against these high school students and waitresses who they're trying to tell us are are the real monsters that we all need to be saved from.

They got the politics absolutely wrong here.

They got the heart of the American people absolutely wrong on this issue.

And now politically, everywhere, they are going to pay for it.

More to come.

Stay with us.

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So they nicknamed this thing the Bear.

It's a kind of plane military aircraft first designed in Russia in the 50s.

It was built to compete with the American B-52 bomber.

This Russian aircraft has a super long range.

It can fly transcontinental flights before it has to stop and refuel.

It can carry eight long-range missiles.

Russia has more than 100 of these big planes, and other planes like it.

At least they used to.

Because this was part of Russia's fleet of these planes as of yesterday.

On fire.

destroyed in drone attacks that were launched by Ukraine.

Now, in the Russia-Ukraine war, Russia has been hammering Ukraine with these bombers.

And this weekend, surprise, Ukraine decided that rather than continuing just to try to intercept as many missiles that these planes have fired from the sky, as many missiles as they could, rather than just trying to defend itself that way, Ukraine decided instead that they would take out the planes themselves on the ground inside Russia.

According to NBC News, Ukraine's security services smuggled more than 100 drones into Russia, in some cases well into Russia.

Then they hid them under the roofs of mobile wooden cabins.

It took months for them to do this to get them all in place, but then all at once, simultaneously with no warning, the cabin roofs were opened via remote control, and then the drones rose up out of the roofs of these cabins and flew off to Russian military airfields to do their thing.

Packed with explosives.

Ukraine says they destroyed planes across four different military sites in Russia, including in Siberia, at a site which is almost 3,000 miles away from Ukraine.

Of Russia's entire fleet of these large military bombers, Ukraine says they were able to destroy or severely damage about a third of them.

Now, Was Russia aware an attack like this was going to happen or that it could happen?

Clearly not.

They were unaware.

Did they have defenses in place to protect these planes at their air bases?

That turns out to be a funny story.

See anything that strikes you as odd in this screenshot?

This is a screenshot from one of the videos of the drone attacks that was put out by Ukraine's security services.

You see those round circles, little black fruit loops right there on the wings of those bomber planes?

Those are tires.

like tires you put on your car.

Apparently, this is a thing Russia has been doing for a while now.

This photo is from 2023, but you see they've got all the little tires stacked up on top of the plane.

This was apparently Russia's idea of

defense for their strategic aircraft on the ground at their own military bases.

One NATO official telling CNN, quote, we believe it's meant to protect against drones.

We don't know if this will have any effect.

Well, now we know.

Turns out stacking tires on your plane doesn't prevent drones from destroying those planes.

The whole thing is just astonishing.

And not just in a foreign policy way, but also in kind of an action movie sort of way.

It also has really serious implications for Russia and beyond Russia and the Ukraine war, because those big bombers that Ukraine just torched, Those are the kinds of planes that are not only equipped to carry

large-scale missiles, those are the kinds of planes that are also outfitted to carry nuclear warheads.

So if you're Russia, or if you're the United States, or if you're any country with nuclear weapons, your national security policies are based in part around the fact that you have this sort of impenetrable nuclear deterrent, right?

Why would anyone attack you if you could then retaliate by flying some long-range bomber anywhere on Earth and blowing your opponent off the map using your nuclear stockpile, right?

That's a sort of linchpin idea of being a nuclear deterrent country.

Well,

does Russia still have that same deterrent capability?

Ukraine just disabled a primary piece of Russia's nuclear arsenal with, you know, handheld-sized devices that look like they came from Radio Shack.

I mean, Russia now has to contend with the fact that their impenetrable nuclear deterrents may be not so impenetrable after all, even against a much smaller neighbor that they have been hammering militarily for years now.

That said, it's not only Russia that has to contend with what this means.

This has really important strategic consequences for every country that thinks of itself as having a nuclear deterrent along the same lines as Russia's.

For our country, this might be a really good time to have a robust, competent national security apparatus thinking about those kinds of implications and making smart, well-informed strategic decisions about how to react to them.

Wouldn't it be awesome if that's what we had here in our own country?

Joining us now is Nicole Wallace.

Before becoming my beloved colleague here at MSNBC, Nicole, of course, was White House Communications Director.

She knows how this kind of crisis should be handled, at least from a communications perspective.

She also has a brand new podcast.

It's called The Best People, where Nicole interviews some of the top minds and thinkers in the country about how to handle this moment we're living through right now.

She also talked to me on the podcast for some reason.

I'm not sure how I snuck in.

The podcast just launched today.

It's already number one on Apple Podcasts.

Nicole, my friend, congratulations.

And thanks for being here.

I know this is a really busy day for you.

Thank you so much for having me.

I've never used Mike's shot.

This is where my husband usually beats.

in so I'm sitting in his chair.

So thank you for having me.

I will say Mike sort of won most improved award.

Remember when he first started doing remote shots during COVID?

It always looked like he was being held hostage.

You know what I mean?

Like he really managed the like, I'm here against my will thing.

And gradually, I think you kind of dressed him up and gave him some stuff that made it look like he didn't need rescuing.

You know, I stayed out of it completely.

So he deserves all of the credit.

Very good.

Nicole, I wanted to talk to you about this Ukraine Jones story, just because, I mean, I feel like you're one of my friends who understands how my brain works on this sort of thing I think your brain works in sort of the same ways like it is an incredible war story about Ukraine's capability and their resilience and their

creativity and the way they have just done this you know like

David versus Goliath

they've accomplished things that nobody thought they could but it also does have international strategic implications for every country in the world that's kind of in Russia's position in terms of thinking about its own defenses, thinking about its own nuclear deterrence.

I wondered what your reaction was when you learned about that story this weekend.

Well, I mean, the idea that we're flying blind is so terrifying, but we only think of it in the context of flying blind vis-a-vis our adversaries.

And it's difficult in this context to even make clear which side is our adversary, right?

But I think we had a similar reaction to Trump's ambush of Zelensky in the Oval Office.

But one of the things that has taken a minute to reveal itself is just how blind we would be to how Ukraine would respond and how Ukraine would proceed.

And I think there are a lot of things that we have to reevaluate and change the conventional wisdom.

The idea that Ukraine is the underdog is still correct, but the idea that Ukraine will not score massive victories in this war and do massive damage to Russia that will also have implications to our national security was probably an erroneous assumption.

The idea that Trump aligned us with Russia is something that the world is still sifting through.

But the fact is we are flying blind.

And that is terrifying vis-a-vis Ukraine and Russia.

It's terrifying vis-a-vis China and the tariffs.

It's obvious that we have no idea what's happening inside China and their economy.

And we have no idea what's happening inside Ukraine and Russia and the war there.

And that is probably the larger, scarier national security piece of what Trump has accomplished in 130 days.

Yeah.

And, you know, it's interesting.

I feel like for me, this was a great, like, humbling reminder that as much as we focus on what's going wrong in our own government and what's going wrong in our own country because of this, you know, fundamentally incompetent and malicious government that we've got, the rest of the world is continuing not just to react, but to innovate and adjust and to move on without us.

And to have

somebody

as to have somebody in a country as powerful as ours realign us so that we're an ally of Russia and the rest of the world, now still allied with, the rest of the free world, now still allied with Ukraine, gets to adapt to that and gets to adjust to that and gets to build their own strength and capability with essentially seeing us as an adversary rather than an ally, let alone a protector.

I just feel like, God, the world is so unpredictable now with us absenting ourselves from our traditional leadership role.

And it makes me wonder, I think, I was thinking about this in your show because you're so good at finding the smart people, the best people, the people who have the most expertise to bring to bear in any given subject.

Do you feel like the sort of expert universe of American

know-how on national security issues is off the table forever because of the way our government's behaving?

Or do you think in future the United States can ever sort of regain any of our trusted position on issues like this?

Well, look, I heard from Sue Gordon tonight.

I mean, the national security DNA is so wired to protect America, right?

I mean, they are so hardwired to do everything in their power and to apply everything they know and all the relationships they have across our alliances in service of,

you know, protecting this country.

And so there's no way that they wouldn't return to those roles and those traditional

functions.

But what's so bat bleep crazy is that we even have to ask those questions.

And I was watching You're Open and it rightfully focuses on the technology.

I think when we look at, and I watched your A block with tears streaming down my face, it's more about what will we lose in the near term and what will we lose in terms of our standing in the world when you see a government so distance from its own people.

I mean, as you said on the immigration story, as is true on the tariff story, which I spent a lot of time on today, Trump is moving the country away from what the people want it to be.

And when you look at what Ukraine did, it didn't just score a massive military victory.

It displayed technological competence that is the envy of the world this morning.

So it's not just that we're on the wrong side.

It's not just that we're flying blind.

It's that we may have missed out on an unbelievable technological breakthrough that we, heaven forbid, might need someday.

Yes, that's exactly right.

Nicole, I just have to ask you, congratulations on being number one podcast, not just in the country, number one podcast in the world with your new podcast.

Is it fun?

Have you been enjoying it?

Is it, I mean, it's tons more work on top of, you know, you're doing two hours a day already.

Is it, have you been enjoying doing it?

Well, you, I mean, you podcast people make it look so easy.

And the whole I can do it in my sweatpants.

is a total headfake.

I mean, it is not easy because you can wear your sweatpants.

But what I love, and I think

you made this so clear and you were so generous with me, but there is a different conversation that you have when you're wearing your headphones and your sweatpants.

There is a real intimacy to it.

And I loved our conversation.

I was so happy that we got to put it up today.

And it's really fun.

I have a lot to learn.

I can't stand listening just to my voice.

So I want to go to podcast school now and learn how to get better at it.

But it's really fun.

I'm sure we can rig something up so that the voice you hear in your ears that is technically what you're saying is somebody else's voice that you like better.

I'm sure that that can be rigged up.

We can work on that for you.

Nicole Wallace, congratulations again on the best people.

Again, Nicole's new podcast is called The Best People.

It's number one, not just in the country, but in the whole world right now on Apple Podcasts.

It's up right now.

It's fantastic.

Nicole, you're amazing.

Thank you so much, my friend.

Good to see you.

All right, stay with us.

We'll be right back.

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So you've probably all seen the photos of President Trump's Trump's top campaign donor, Elon Musk, in the Oval Office on Friday with a big old shiner with his black eye.

He claimed to have gotten that by being punched by his five-year-old son.

Okay, maybe.

But with this Oval Office appearance ostensibly being his farewell after several months in Washington gutting the American government, everybody sort of had the same idea at the same time, right?

The metaphors practically wrote themselves.

You know, Musk has literal black eye and figurative black eye as he leaves.

May I suggest an even better metaphor for what Elon Musk did in these last few months in Washington?

Starting in March, we pretty closely covered the story of one little agency, an independent nonprofit called the U.S.

Institute of Peace.

Elon Musk's operatives at Doge literally forced their way into the Institute of Peace in an operation that reportedly involved the FBI, the D.C.

Metropolitan Police, the D.C.

U.S.

Attorney's Office, and a private security firm.

Musk and Doge literally used armed force to get into the headquarters of this little institute.

They then used that armed force to physically throw out the staff.

They then purported to fire all the staff, even though they legally don't have the power to do that.

The thing that has always made this story sort of weirder and wilder than you might expect is that this U.S.

Institute of Peace, it doesn't belong to the executive branch.

It's an independent nonprofit.

It was created by Congress over 40 years ago.

It's largely funded by its own private endowment.

The Institute owns its own building, its headquarters.

They control the land the building sits on.

And yet, Trump and his top campaign donor, Elon Musk, used force to not only take the building, but to also take the Institute's money, its endowment, which again was not the government's to take.

Once Elon Musk's people had forced their way into the building and forced out the employees, one Institute of Peace official told us, quote, they were very thorough in how they decimated us.

They wiped our IT system, canceled contracts, shredded documents, took down our website, including all of our 40 years of research and work we had done.

They seized not only our building, but also all of our funding, including our endowment funds.

Well, now, perhaps predictably, a federal judge has ruled that all of that, from the armed takeover of the building to the firing of the employees to the seizing all the Institute's assets, all of that was quite flagrantly illegal.

The judge called it a gross usurpation of power and a way of conducting government affairs that unnecessarily traumatized the committed leadership and employees of the U.S.

Institute of Peace, who deserved better.

The judge ordered the Trump administration to give everything back.

And so Musk and all his minions have been forced to give it all back.

And when the reinstated actual leaders of the U.S.

Institute of Peace returned to their building for the first time in over two months, just a few days ago,

what they found was water damage and rats and roaches, things they had never had before.

The acting director of the Institute of Peace told Judge Howell in a sworn statement that the Trump administration essentially abandoned the building as soon as they stole it, and that, quote, failure to maintain and secure the building resulted, among other things, in the rats and roaches.

And apparently,

whole juicy buds.

The Economist reports tonight that cleaners also found a whole bunch of marijuana that was apparently left behind by Doge staffers after they left the place.

So...

maximum destruction, leaving everything soiled and in disrepair and littered with drugs.

And now, because all of that was totally illegal, the folks at the U.S.

Institute of Peace will have to like repair everything and stand everything back up in order to even start to get back to where they were before this whole thing started.

It's just pure pointlessness and waste.

And may I suggest that, yes, the black guy was cute, but may I suggest that this is perhaps more on the nose as the legacy of what the Trump administration has done through Trump's top campaign donor, Elon Musk, as Elon Musk leaves Washington.

A building seized pointlessly, shut down pointlessly, left to be infested by vermin, all so its rightful owners can eventually come back and have to put it all back together again

for no reason at all.

I think that's a better metaphor.

I'm just going to say it.

I'm pleased that we're going to be joined this evening by the Outside General Counsel for the U.S.

Institute of of Peace.

The Institute finally had its staff reinstated, finally got back its building from Elon Musk and Doge,

only to find that after Musk and his team had essentially stolen the building, they just abandoned it for weeks, which means the returning staff had to contend, among other things, with the disrepair of how Doge left things, including graffiti and breakage and reportedly rats and roaches.

The Economist reporting tonight that among the things Doge left behind was apparently a bunch of marijuana.

Again, left left behind when Doge finally got out.

George Foote is outside general counsel for the U.S.

Institute of Peace.

Mr.

Foote, thank you very much for being here with us tonight.

Congratulations on getting your building back.

I'm sorry to hear about the state in which you are receiving it.

Thank you very much.

We're happy to be back and it's coming back.

Is the U.S.

Institute of Peace able to stand itself back up given

the extent to which Doge tried to destroy both the, not just the assets of the agency, but also its records.

It's a struggle.

The answer is yes.

It depends on the resources that we get in the coming months and years.

But the staff is motivated.

The management is in place.

The board's together.

The administrative staff, the security engineers are putting the place back in operation.

So it's coming back to life.

We're going to make it.

What about the Institute's employees?

The Trump administration purported to fire them.

It seemed illegal from the outset when they tried, but they insisted.

A federal judge now says that was illegal.

Does that mean that everybody gets to come back to work now?

Is everybody reinstated?

As a matter of law, yes.

The judge ruled that the firing of the board was illegal, that the firing, the appointment of a new president was illegal, and that everything they did was illegal.

So technically, nobody was ever fired.

There's a real world problem of the money that we thought we had and that we expected to have for the rest of the year.

And so

there's some tough reconstruction issues that the management has to deal with.

But yes, the court ruling was solid.

It ruled illegal everything that was done to the Institute.

And so everybody is about getting back to work.

And there was a town hall meeting a week and a half ago, and 250 of the 300 or so staff members were on that and looking for ways to get back to work.

They're motivated, they're driven, they're professionals, and they want to go back to work.

Mr.

Mr.

Foote, when we first started covering this story, I really hoped that this kind of interview would be the end of our coverage, that things were back, and that you'd been able to bounce back.

I'm happy to hear what you've had to say tonight.

Stay in touch with us.

We'd love to stay in touch as this continues to proceed.

Hope so.

Thank you.

George Foote is outside general counsel for the U.S.

Institute of Peace, which is back.

We'll be right back.

All right, that's going to do it for me tonight.

In the meantime, you can find me on Blue Sky

where I'm back to my obsessive postings.

I'm on bluesky at matto.msnbc.com.

You can find me there way too many hours of the day.

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