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

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.

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Speaker 5 With the largest lineup of hybrid, plug-in hybrid, and electrified vehicles to choose from, Toyota has the one for you.

Speaker 3 Every new Toyota hybrid comes with Toyota Care, two-year complementary scheduled maintenance, an exclusive hybrid battery warranty, and Toyota's legendary quality and reliability.

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Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 And he's really good at sports.

Speaker 12 Even though he's a high school junior, he helps coach the girls' girls volleyball team at his high school. And he himself is on the varsity boys volleyball team.

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 This weekend, for example, they had an early morning 7.45 a.m. practice.

Speaker 12 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?

Speaker 9 I mean, I was into it, but I was not that into it.

Speaker 12 But this guy is

Speaker 12 high school junior. His name is Marcelo.

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 But then they didn't turn up.

Speaker 12 And his coaches thought, obvious answer, the guys must have overslept or something.

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 He is not known to have ever been in any kind of trouble at all. Again, he is a high school junior honors student on the volleyball team and in the high school band.

Speaker 12 They took him.

Speaker 12 They've taken him to an immigration prison all alone.

Speaker 12 They reportedly are trying to move him now to another immigration prison that is farther from home.

Speaker 12 He does have a lawyer arguing for him to try to get him before a federal judge to try to get him out.

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 And at the graduation ceremony in Milford,

Speaker 12 Sunday morning, the valedictorian spoke and the class president spoke.

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 The night team's Mike Cerullo was in Milford as a massive crowd called for his release.

Speaker 14 A mix of emotions. This is not acceptable.
Pouring out onto the streets of Milford.

Speaker 15 We want him back because he should be with us. He's just one of us.
He's just another kid.

Speaker 14 It's Graduation Day, a celebration of hard work and perseverance. But for these students,

Speaker 14 a sense of sadness, anger, and confusion hangs over as well.

Speaker 16 I don't understand why they targeted Marcelo.

Speaker 14 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.

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 14 This sea of people, some traveled from as far as Providence, is wrapping its arms around her and Marcelo's family. Friends say he grew up in Milford and is a key part of the community.

Speaker 15 He lights up every room he walks into.

Speaker 13 He loves God.

Speaker 16 He loves volleyball.

Speaker 17 He's an honors student in honors in AP classes.

Speaker 14 His volleyball coach says he's a bright light.

Speaker 17 We didn't know really how to react.

Speaker 17 I don't think there's a playbook for this.

Speaker 12 It's not a common thing to see kids in their graduation gowns at a protest, right?

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 The local Democratic Congressman Jake Oschenkloss was there.

Speaker 12 That was Milford, Massachusetts this weekend.

Speaker 12 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?

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 They manhandled all those members of Congress. Ultimately later, they arrested one of those members of Congress, La Monica MacIver.

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 Law enforcement clearly did not know what they were doing, clearly just winging it.

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 And that made the whole scene like a thousand times more dangerous and chaotic than it ever should have been.

Speaker 12 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,

Speaker 12 Homeland Security Investigations.

Speaker 12 And

Speaker 12 if you start looking, when you see scenes like this anywhere in the country right now, you will often see HSI

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 They are not an agency that is trained for policing protests or doing crowd control or anything like that. Nevertheless,

Speaker 12 Trump has them doing that

Speaker 9 over and over again, all over the country.

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 Now, hi you guys, somebody apparently told these guys from HSI,

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 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

Speaker 12 HSI agents in full battle rattle with helmets and long guns and flak jackets and goggles and masks and the whole thing.

Speaker 12 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

Speaker 12 and reportedly handcuffed the entire crew working at the restaurant, everybody inside.

Speaker 12 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?

Speaker 12 Are we being invaded, Wolverines?

Speaker 12 This is what you're doing to save us from the terrible menace of like the nice waiter at our favorite local restaurant?

Speaker 12 Trump's immigration agents had no idea what to do.

Speaker 18 Get out of here, cowards, cowards,

Speaker 18 cowards.

Speaker 9 You should be embarrassed. you should be so embarrassed.

Speaker 9 Look at your face,

Speaker 9 look at your face.

Speaker 9 Shame

Speaker 9 shade,

Speaker 12 Ultimately, these Trump immigration agents dressed up like soldiers.

Speaker 12 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,

Speaker 12 understandably, yelling at them and telling them to leave people alone.

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 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 and that for two, they get out.

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 These guys talked themselves into the idea that the country would be so excited. to see them be really performatively cruel to immigrants, right?

Speaker 12 They thought this would be a great political advantage for them.

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 That's what they thought. Turns out everywhere they try it, everyone in America hates it.
Everyone hates what they're doing.

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 I checked it an hour or so ago and it was already up over $88,000 raised.

Speaker 12 The San Diego mayor is demanding answers. The local Democratic Congressman Scott Peters is demanding answers as well.

Speaker 12 This was Tallahassee, Florida on Friday.

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 They had no idea what to say.

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 This was Phoenix last week in Arizona. People protesting there as well,

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 This has had a lot of attention in the print press.

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 Hundreds of people have signed petitions locally.

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 They raised nearly $20,000 to support her family and try to get her home.

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 So on that on Sunday, again, essentially spontaneously, people turned out to protest at the site of the arrests.

Speaker 12 This was Tacoma, Washington this weekend at the big ice immigration prison there.

Speaker 12 People came actually from all over Oregon and Washington to protest in Tacoma outside that ice facility, protest against people being imprisoned there there seemingly indefinitely and without due process.

Speaker 12 These were anti-Trump protesters this weekend in Irvine, California. Love liberty, protect due process.

Speaker 12 This was Charlotte, North Carolina this weekend. Stand for democracy, stand with immigrants.

Speaker 12 This was Lawrence, Kansas this weekend. It was really, really hot in Lawrence, Kansas this weekend.

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 People protesting against Trump at Brittlebank Park. This was Scarborough, Maine this weekend protesting against Trump.
This was Golden Valley, Minnesota this weekend.

Speaker 12 Doesn't matter that Elon Musk has now fled Washington.

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 This was Paw Paw, Michigan, in Southwest Michigan, this weekend. People protesting against Trump, also raising money for the local food pantry, taking donations for the food pantry.

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 Today in Washington, the Reverend William Barber was arrested while praying at the U.S.

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 19 They have passed a big, ugly, deadly budget bill.

Speaker 19 And they don't want it talked about 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.

Speaker 12 It was the Reverend William Barber leading a Moral Mondays protest today in Washington.

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 Boycott ice deporter Avello Air.

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 I, for example, was not aware that there is an airport in Salem, Oregon.

Speaker 12 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 Avello Airlines, and another in Palm Beach, Florida, and another in Albany, New York, where it was just raining cats and dogs.

Speaker 12 There was another one in Santa Rosa, California. They were all over.

Speaker 12 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,

Speaker 12 and Eugene, Oregon, and Rochester, New York, again, more than 40 cities.

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 So we do,

Speaker 9 I mean,

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 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?

Speaker 12 Do we really understand what benefit they think that is to the United States of America?

Speaker 12 Do we know what benefit Trump sees for the nation in arresting the beloved Johns Waffle and Pancake House waitress in Missouri?

Speaker 12 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?

Speaker 12 Do we know what benefit they think these things are to the country?

Speaker 12 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?

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 9 coli outbreaks?

Speaker 12 Why they think it's a benefit to the country to not have anyone available to answer the phone at the Social Security office?

Speaker 12 Do we know why they are aiming deliberately to cut literally millions of Americans off of health insurance?

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 Imagine if that's like what Trump rallies, Republican rallies had been like, right? Hey, hey, vote for me, vote for us. We'll bring back measles

Speaker 12 and AIDS.

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 America, you will never again have to worry about the bane of cancer research anymore. Going to get rid of that.

Speaker 9 We're ending that.

Speaker 12 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

Speaker 12 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 it.

Speaker 9 Trump ran on that promise.

Speaker 12 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?

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 It turns out they were really, really wrong about that.

Speaker 12 That political calculation was incorrect.

Speaker 12 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

Speaker 12 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 the real monsters that we all need to be saved from.

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 More to come. Stay with us.

Speaker 20 This message comes from the International Rescue Committee. Co-founded with help from Albert Einstein, the IRC has been providing humanitarian aid for more than 90 years.

Speaker 20 The IRC helps refugees whose lives are disrupted by conflict and disaster, supporting recovery efforts in places like Gaza and Ukraine, and responding within 72 hours of crisis.

Speaker 20 Donate today by visiting rescue.org slash rebuild.

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 4 Now's the time to start your next adventure behind the wheel of an exciting new Toyota hybrid.

Speaker 5 With the largest lineup of hybrid, plug-in hybrid, and electrified vehicles to choose from, Toyota has the one for you.

Speaker 3 Every new Toyota Hybrid comes with Toyota Care, two-year complementary scheduled maintenance, an exclusive hybrid battery warranty, and Toyota's legendary quality and reliability.

Speaker 9 Visit your local Toyota dealer today.

Speaker 11 Toyota, let's go places.

Speaker 10 See your local Toyota dealer for hybrid battery warranty details.

Speaker 12 So they nickname 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.

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 Russia has more than 100 of these big planes and other planes like it.

Speaker 12 At least they used to.

Speaker 12 Because this was part of Russia's fleet of these planes as of yesterday.

Speaker 12 On fire.

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 Now, was Russia aware an attack like this was going to happen or that it could happen?

Speaker 9 Clearly not.

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 You see those round circles, little black fruit loops? right there on the wings of those bomber planes

Speaker 12 those are tires

Speaker 12 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?

Speaker 12 This was apparently Russia's idea of

Speaker 12 defense

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 We don't know if this will will have any effect.

Speaker 12 Well, now we know. Turns out stacking tires on your plane doesn't prevent drones from destroying those planes.

Speaker 12 The whole thing is just astonishing.

Speaker 12 And not just in a foreign policy way, but also in kind of an action movie sort of way.

Speaker 12 It also has really serious implications.

Speaker 12 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

Speaker 12 large-scale missiles, those are the kinds of planes that are also outfitted to carry nuclear warheads.

Speaker 12 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?

Speaker 12 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?

Speaker 12 That's a sort of linchpin idea of being a nuclear deterrent country.

Speaker 12 Well,

Speaker 12 does Russia still have that same deterrent capability?

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 That said, it's not only Russia that has to contend with what this means.

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 For our country,

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 Wouldn't it be awesome if that's what we had here in our own country?

Speaker 12 Joining us now is Nicole Wallace. Before becoming my beloved colleague here at MSNBC, Nicole, of course, was White House Communications Director.

Speaker 12 She knows how this kind of crisis should be handled, at least from a communications perspective. She also has a brand new podcast.

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 And thanks for being here. I know this is a really busy day for you.

Speaker 12 Thank you so much for having me.

Speaker 21 I've never used Mike's shot.

Speaker 21 This is where my husband usually in. So I'm sitting in his chair.
So thank you for having me.

Speaker 12 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?

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 21 You know, I stayed out of it completely. So he deserves all of the credit.

Speaker 9 Very good.

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 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

Speaker 12 creativity and the way they have just done this, you know, like

Speaker 12 David versus Goliath.

Speaker 12 They've accomplished things that nobody thought they could.

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 I wondered what your reaction was when you learned about that story this weekend.

Speaker 21 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.

Speaker 21 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.

Speaker 21 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.

Speaker 21 And I think there are a lot of things that we have to reevaluate and change the conventional wisdom.

Speaker 21 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.

Speaker 21 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.

Speaker 21 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.

Speaker 21 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.

Speaker 12 Yeah. And, you know, it's interesting.

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 And to have

Speaker 12 somebody

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 I just feel like, God, the world is so unpredictable now with us absenting ourselves from our traditional leadership role.

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 Do you feel like the sort of expert universe of American

Speaker 12 know-how on national security issues is off the table forever because of the way our government's behaving?

Speaker 12 Or do you think in future the United States can ever sort of regain any of our trusted position on issues like this?

Speaker 21 Well, look, I heard from Sue Gordon tonight. I mean, the national security DNA is so wired to protect America, right?

Speaker 21 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.

Speaker 21 And so there's no way that they wouldn't return to those roles and those traditional

Speaker 21 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.

Speaker 21 I think when we look at, and I watched your A-blog with tears streaming down my face, it's more about what will we lose in the near term?

Speaker 21 And what will we lose in terms of our standing in the world when you see a government so distance from its own people.

Speaker 21 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.

Speaker 21 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.

Speaker 21 So it's not just that we're on the wrong side. It's not just that we're flying blind.

Speaker 21 It's that we may have missed out on an unbelievable technological breakthrough that we, heaven forbid, might need someday.

Speaker 12 Yes, that's exactly right.

Speaker 12 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?

Speaker 12 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?

Speaker 21 Well, you, I mean, you podcast people make it look so easy. And the whole, I can do it in my sweatpants thing is a total headfake.
I mean, it is not easy because you can wear your sweatpants.

Speaker 21 But what I love, and I think

Speaker 21 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.

Speaker 21 And I loved our conversation. I was so happy that we got to put it up today.

Speaker 21 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.

Speaker 21 but it's really fun.

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 We can work on that for you.

Speaker 12 Nicole Wallace, congratulations again on the best people. Again, Nicole's new podcast is called The Best People.

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 All right, stay with us. We'll be right back.

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Speaker 12 So you've probably all seen the photos of President Trump's top campaign donor, Elon Musk, in the Oval Office on Friday with a big old shiner with his black eye.

Speaker 12 He claimed to have gotten that by being punched by his five-year-old son.

Speaker 9 Okay, maybe.

Speaker 12 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?

Speaker 12 The metaphors practically wrote themselves. You know, Musk has literal black eye and figurative black eye as he leaves.

Speaker 12 May I suggest an even better metaphor for what Elon Musk did in these last few months in Washington?

Speaker 12 Starting in March, we pretty closely covered the story of one little agency, an independent nonprofit called the U.S. Institute of Peace.

Speaker 12 Elon Musk's operatives at Doge literally forced their way into the Institute of Peace in an operation that reportedly involved the FBI, the DC Metropolitan Police, the DC U.S.

Speaker 12 Attorney's Office, and a private security firm. Musk and Doge literally used armed force to get into the headquarters of this little institute.

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 They control the land the building sits on.

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 They seized not only our building, but also all of our funding, including our endowment funds.

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 Institute of Peace, who deserved better. The judge ordered the Trump administration to give everything

Speaker 12 back.

Speaker 12 And so Musk and all his minions have been forced to give it all back.

Speaker 12 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,

Speaker 12 what they found was water damage. and rats and roaches, things they had never had before.

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 And apparently,

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 It's just pure pointlessness and waste.

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 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

Speaker 12 for no reason at all.

Speaker 12 I think that's a better metaphor. I'm just going to say it.

Speaker 12 I'm pleased that we're going to be joined this evening by the outside general counsel for the U.S. Institute of Peace.

Speaker 12 The Institute finally had its staff reinstated, finally got back its building from Elon Musk and Doge,

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 The Economist reporting tonight that among the things Doge left behind was apparently a bunch of marijuana. Again, left behind when Doge finally got out.

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 I'm sorry to hear about the state in which you are receiving it.

Speaker 24 Thank you very much. We're happy to be back and it's coming back.

Speaker 12 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?

Speaker 24 It's a struggle.

Speaker 24 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.

Speaker 24 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.

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 Does that mean that everybody gets to come back to work now?

Speaker 12 Is everybody reinstated?

Speaker 24 As a matter of law, yes.

Speaker 24 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.

Speaker 24 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

Speaker 24 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.

Speaker 24 And so everybody is about getting back to work.

Speaker 24 And there was a town hall meeting a week and a half ago, and 250 of the three or 100 or so staff members were on that and looking for ways to get back to work.

Speaker 24 They're motivated, they're driven, they're professionals, and they want to go back to work.

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 9 Hope so. Thank you.

Speaker 12 George Foote is outside general counsel for the U.S. Institute of Peace, which is back.

Speaker 12 We'll be right back.

Speaker 12 All right, that's going to do it for me tonight. In the meantime, you can find me on Blue Sky

Speaker 12 where I'm back to my obsessive postings.

Speaker 12 I'm on blue sky at matto.msnbc.com. You can find me there way too many hours of the day.

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