Allies wary of Trump admin's incompetence after scandal over military plan group chat

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.

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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 13 Thanks, Junhome, as well for joining us this hour. You can't leave either.
I'm very happy to have you here.

Speaker 13 Have you met the new political leadership in this country?

Speaker 13 The people who may not have the title, may not have the like plate on the office door or whatever, but these are the people who are actually getting it done.

Speaker 13 We found them in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Speaker 14 I turned 65 on Sunday and I just made a decision. I woke up this morning and said, I got to do something.

Speaker 15 In Grand Rapids Wednesday afternoon, around two dozen people gathered in front of the Social Security Administration office on Knapp Street and East Belt Line.

Speaker 14 Trying to bring attention to what's going on and also supporting the people that are working in there, saying

Speaker 17 we appreciate you.

Speaker 15 The crowd, mostly retirees and social security recipients, they protested against recent moves by the Trump administration's Department of Government Efficiency, or DOE, many of them feeling that access to Social Security benefits and Medicare could be at risk.

Speaker 16 Well, I am a retiree.

Speaker 18 I worked for 50 years in

Speaker 16 all different trades of working, and

Speaker 16 I paid into my Social Security benefits all those years.

Speaker 15 Those protesting tell us they are against the Trump administration's moves to close dozens of SSA field offices across the country, along with eliminating over-the-phone ID verification starting at the end of this month, requiring people to verify their IDs online only or in person.

Speaker 14 Let's say you're elderly and you have no way of coming physically to an office that's still open or if you live in a rural area.

Speaker 14 I mean, it's just ridiculous.

Speaker 13 They're trying to make it so difficult for people to get their own money back.

Speaker 15 Those protesting also wanting to show support to federal employees, many saying they have been helped by staff at this very location.

Speaker 16 And I just want them to know we are here to support them for their jobs.

Speaker 13 The new political leadership of this country, the people actually getting it done. You saw them there in Grand Rapids, Michigan yesterday afternoon.

Speaker 13 We also found them on the side of the road in Reno, Nevada.

Speaker 20 About two dozen protesters gathered outside the Social Security office in Reno at noon.

Speaker 20 They carried signs critical of the Department of Government Efficiency or held signs which expressed their concern about the future of Social Security.

Speaker 20 Marilyn Show has depended upon Social Security for her disabled son and she says she soon wants to start collecting her benefits. Benefits she reminds everyone she paid for.

Speaker 19 It's an insurance that we've paid into this. We've paid into Social Security.

Speaker 19 I've worked since I've been 15 and so gutting it and making it, privatizing it, that is not the answer.

Speaker 18 Many, many seniors live paycheck to paycheck and our Social Security only comes in once a month.

Speaker 19 If they don't have that check,

Speaker 18 that money in their account, that means they don't get to pay their rent, they don't get to buy food, and they don't get to pay their utilities. There would be more people out in the street.

Speaker 20 Plenty of car horns honked as drivers passed by the protest. But as one woman told me today, better to shine a light than curse the darkness.

Speaker 13 The new political leadership of this country. That was the Reno, Nevada division.
These are the people who are actually getting it done, and they're everywhere.

Speaker 13 We also found them in Livonia, Michigan.

Speaker 22 A rally in Livonia Tuesday, bringing out dozens of seniors concerned about Social Security and Medicare.

Speaker 19 I'm terrified.

Speaker 13 My life would change drastically without Social Security, and that's our money. We put that in.
Nobody gave us that money. We loaned it to the government.

Speaker 23 Everything that is happening right now is impacting so many people.

Speaker 13 That's the new political leadership of this country showing up in Livonia, Michigan. We also found them in Nashville, Tennessee.

Speaker 17 Protesters are pushing back tonight against possible staffing cuts at the Nashville Social Security office. Thanks for joining us tonight at 10.
I'm Lauren Lowry.

Speaker 17 Dozens of people rallied outside the office today. Our Sharon Dankwa has a look at why they say cuts could directly affect them here in the mid-state.

Speaker 24 Today, we're gathered here not just as individuals, but as a community of people who understand the vital role that Social Security plays in so many lives.

Speaker 25 Resources provided in this building, Jennifer Brinkman says so many could be taking for granted.

Speaker 24 I know firsthand

Speaker 24 how essential these offices are,

Speaker 24 especially this office right here. When When my significant other Greg was diagnosed with cancer and could no longer work, we turned to this office for help.

Speaker 25 So when she heard the Department of Government Efficiency could cut Social Security staffing nationwide by 50%,

Speaker 25 she organized this rally.

Speaker 13 That was Nashville, Tennessee.

Speaker 13 You might remember last week we also found the new political leadership class in this country holding a political funeral for Social Security at the Social Security office in Gainesville, Georgia.

Speaker 13 They focused on their local Republican congressman there, whose name is Andrew Clyde. Clyde lies as Social Security dies.

Speaker 13 Clyde dozes while Social Security closes.

Speaker 13 We've also found the new political leadership of this country fanning out to town halls, in-person town halls, online town halls, teletown halls, anywhere and anyhow they can get themselves in front of elected republicans who are letting trump take social security apart

Speaker 19 so the question was about social security and what she's accusing me of is standing by while it is being dismantled by doge that is absolutely 100

Speaker 13 untrue

Speaker 13 absolutely 100

Speaker 13 untrue

Speaker 13 doge

Speaker 13 is not dismantling Social Security.

Speaker 26 I really want to know from you. Will you protect Social Security in its current form?

Speaker 13 Next question, what are your plans to cut Social Security?

Speaker 27 I want to be very, this is a very easy question for me to answer. Any changes to Social Security are not on the table, and I will not cut your Social Security.

Speaker 13 It is a promise between you and the federal government.

Speaker 28 Our next question is from Polly from a 288-zip code area. What What are you doing to ensure the protection of our Social Security benefits?

Speaker 13 Good question.

Speaker 13 Good question.

Speaker 13 This is regular Americans just pulling it together on their own to save Social Security. That woman in Grand Rapids, Michigan yesterday saying, I woke up this morning and said, I got to do something.

Speaker 13 And by afternoon, there she was.

Speaker 13 And Americans all over the country are waking up every day somewhere to having that same feeling. And that political leadership from regular Americans is now starting to push over the right dominoes.

Speaker 13 We are starting to see, for example, stirrings from big, powerful groups that at least used to have a lot of sway on issues like this, groups like AARP.

Speaker 29 AARP is fighting to protect your social security. You've worked hard and paid into Social Security with every paycheck your entire working life.

Speaker 29 But recently, we've heard from thousands of worried Americans. That's why we're asking for three assurances right now.
One, Social Security will make payments on time like it has for almost 90 years.

Speaker 29 Two, claims will be processed on time and not backlogged for months. Three, customer service will be a top priority.

Speaker 29 Getting rid of phone service and asking tens of millions of Americans to jump through new hoops or drive hours to a local office is deeply unacceptable.

Speaker 29 Join me in sending a loud and clear message to lawmakers. Social security must be protected.
Take action now at aarp.org slash pledge. Tell lawmakers it's your money.
You've earned it.

Speaker 13 Hear her say there at the beginning. Recently, we've heard from thousands of worried Americans.

Speaker 13 Hello, AARP. Honestly, by now, I thought you'd have like armored divisions outside the offices of every social security office in the country.

Speaker 13 I thought you would be blanketing the nation with super effective ads and hounding every member of the administration every day up to and including the president.

Speaker 13 It's kind of what I have come to expect from AARP.

Speaker 13 We are not seeing anything like that yet from AARP, but they are admitting that thousands of their own members are contacting them now, and they are showing signs of life.

Speaker 13 And when you combine that with the real political leadership that we are seeing from regular Americans who just wake up one morning and say, I've got to do something, and then they go do something.

Speaker 13 Well, you know what? It works. It has an impact.
It pushes over one domino that then pushes down another.

Speaker 13 For example, we had Trump's Social Security nominee have his desultory little confirmation hearing this week in the United States Senate.

Speaker 13 But at that hearing, you had Republican senators, Republicans asking, hey, wait, how many Social Security offices are you closing in my state?

Speaker 13 My constituents are telling me that Social Security service is collapsing. And look, I had my staff confirm it after Trump fired all these people at Social Security.

Speaker 13 Turns out it now takes hours to get through on the phone. And then even when you've waited on the phone for hours, you get cut off anyway.

Speaker 13 Hey, Social Security nominee from the Trump administration, what's going on here? You got that this week even from Republican senators.

Speaker 13 You have the top Republicans in the Senate who supposedly oversee Social Security, who until now have been totally silent as Trump has been firing thousands of people from the agency, as his top campaign donor has been given access to all the most sensitive systems at the agency, while he publicly calls it a Ponzi scheme that must be shut down as the service has started to palpably collapse.

Speaker 13 They have been silent. and have been doing nothing, but now you've got them having to admit to reporters and whining a little bit about it that maybe they should be in on some of this stuff.

Speaker 13 From NBC News, quote, Republican Senator Chuck Grassley, the chairman of a key Senate subcommittee on Social Security, said he had not been told ahead of time about the Trump administration's moves at the agency.

Speaker 13 Quote, no, I have not been, Grassley told NBC News. Asked if it would be helpful to his job if he were given a heads up, Grassley repeated, I have not been.
I have not been.

Speaker 13 Republican Senator Steve Daines, a Senate Finance Committee member, said in an interview that he, too, hasn't been in the loop for the Trump administration's changes. Quote, no, we haven't, he said.

Speaker 13 Quote, I haven't had any heads up.

Speaker 13 Senator Daines said that he would appreciate advance notice about the changes the administration makes to Social Security. He said, quote, I'd like to know about it.
Yeah.

Speaker 13 Well, that's something.

Speaker 13 I'd like to know about it.

Speaker 13 So those are the people in Washington, but it is the leaders of this country. I see you, plucky retirees in knitted hats on the side of the road in Reno.
I see you.

Speaker 13 After the real leaders of this country, after you guys took the wheel,

Speaker 13 it has started something.

Speaker 13 And so now, yes, if you are applying for Medicare or disability or SSI benefits, through Social Security, they're no longer planning to mandate that you have to go in person to your local Social Security office that they're probably closing anyway and or firing most of the staff.

Speaker 13 And no, they are no longer killing the 1-800 line altogether, which they had previously been planning on doing.

Speaker 13 And no, they are not forcing through this verify your identity in person change that they were going to force through as of Monday, which would have forced immediately millions of people, millions of older and disabled people to have to go to these offices in person.

Speaker 13 And they've apparently done no training for it at all.

Speaker 13 And oh, by the way, the new system they said they want to put in place doesn't exist but now they're not going to implement that on monday they need a little more time

Speaker 13 in no sense has social security been saved this fight is absolutely on but it is regular americans who have been fighting against trump all over the country

Speaker 13 Yes, in Washington, but honestly all over the country. And that's what's made the difference.

Speaker 13 It is working. It is making a difference.
And there is more to do, but it is working.

Speaker 13 And look, here's another view of America's political and moral leadership at work.

Speaker 13 This is the protest that sprung up spontaneously and basically instantly yesterday afternoon in Somerville, Massachusetts. Instantly, thousands of people gathered

Speaker 13 on no notice.

Speaker 13 In the immediate aftermath of a Tufts University student with a valid student visa, a Fulbright scholar PhD candidate with no criminal record, who'd had no notice from the government that they believed she had done anything wrong, she was nevertheless accosted and snatched off the street by a half dozen federal agents who were covering their faces, who then handcuffed her and stuffed her into an unmarked car.

Speaker 13 Donald Trump is now claiming the right to do this to anyone.

Speaker 13 He is making the truly authoritarian claim that if you express an opinion that Donald Trump doesn't like, this is what will happen to you.

Speaker 13 In this case, it was a student writing an op-ed criticizing the war in the Middle East. The Trump administration says that alone is the justification for revoking her student visa, which is insane.

Speaker 13 But even if signing an op-ed were grounds to revoke this young woman's visa, they could

Speaker 13 just tell her they were revoking her visa.

Speaker 13 Tell her that she therefore needs to leave the country. Instead, they didn't tell her anything.

Speaker 13 They just sent masked goons to jump her on the street and throw her in an unmarked car and take her away.

Speaker 13 And that will now be litigated.

Speaker 13 But the kids at Tufts University and the community there just erupted yesterday. Spontaneously, thousands of people turned out to respond in person.
That was yesterday.

Speaker 13 And then this is Somerville again tonight.

Speaker 21 Elements in the case of the Tufts University student who was suddenly detained by ICE agents near her home in Somerville.

Speaker 30 We now know why she was able to be transferred to a Louisiana detention center despite a court order to keep her here in Massachusetts. A court filing by the U.S.

Speaker 30 Attorney's Office says she had already been moved out of the state by the time that order was issued.

Speaker 30 NBC Ten's Jericho Tran joining us live from Somerville, where some of her supporters gathered tonight.

Speaker 13 Jericho?

Speaker 31 Well, there's hundreds here today, and I can tell you we are witnessing some very tense moments here outside of Somerville City Hall.

Speaker 31 There's a city council meeting that's going on right now, and you can see that these hundreds of protesters are trying to make their way inside. Police have stopped them.

Speaker 31 It looks like there's some sort of fire code violation. Once again, there are hundreds of people here.
It doesn't look like all of them will be able to fit inside of the building.

Speaker 31 Of course, all of this happening after Romesa Oz Turk's arrest here in Somerville.

Speaker 32 On Tuesday, federal agents arrested Tufts University student Romesa Oz Turk, just steps away from the university.

Speaker 32 Oz Turk now waits inside the South Louisiana Ice Processing Center, which houses immigrants waiting for legal proceedings or deportations.

Speaker 13 You see it on TV. When it gets home, it's a mile away from you.

Speaker 13 And the terror in her face, in her voice, it brings

Speaker 13 it's terrible.

Speaker 32 The PhD student and Fulbright scholar maintained a valid F1 visa status. Now that visa has been terminated.

Speaker 32 The Department of Homeland Security claims Azturk engaged in activities in support of Hamas, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio saying the graduate students' presence in the U.S.

Speaker 32 could have, quote, potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences and would compromise a compelling U.S. foreign policy interest.

Speaker 33 We revoked her visa.

Speaker 32 Oz Turk wrote an op-ed for the university's paper calling for Tufts to divest from companies directly tied to Israel.

Speaker 33 If you apply for a visa to enter the United States and be a student, and you tell us that the reason why you're coming to the United States is not just because you want to write op-eds, but because you want to participate in movements that are involved in doing things like vandalizing universities, harassing students, taking over buildings, creating a ruckus.

Speaker 33 We're not going to give you a visa.

Speaker 32 On Tuesday night, a U.S. District Court judge issued an order blocking the Trump administration from removing Oz Turk from the state of Massachusetts without 48 hours' notice.
The U.S.

Speaker 32 Attorney's Office suggests that Oz Turk may have been moved before the court's involvement, offering to provide a timeline of Oz Turk's arrest and transfer from Massachusetts.

Speaker 13 Our neighborhoods are not safe, right? The people around us aren't safe.

Speaker 31 And you can hear those chants live right now. They're asking police to let them in once again.
You can see them kind of barricading the doors.

Speaker 31 They have let some of these ralliers in, but it doesn't look like they're letting everybody in right now. This is one of several protests.
We were at a protest yesterday. We were at two of them today.

Speaker 31 This is one of them. That city council meeting here in Somerville is happening as we speak.
We'll have more on that for for you later.

Speaker 31 That's the very latest here in Somerville, Jericho, Tran, and BC10 Boston.

Speaker 13 That's happening tonight in Massachusetts.

Speaker 13 Also in Massachusetts at Harvard University, we've just got word that Trump has apparently also grabbed a Russian scientist, a young woman who works at Harvard Medical School.

Speaker 13 She had been forced to leave Russia because she spoke out and criticized Putin's invasion of Ukraine.

Speaker 13 Now Trump has had her arrested in the United States, has had her locked up in an ICE detention facility in Louisiana, and is threatening to ship her back to Russia.

Speaker 13 Again, a Harvard medical school scientist, a GoFundMe has been started to help her legal defense. At the University of Alabama, it is a mechanical engineering doctoral student who has been taken.

Speaker 13 He's Iranian. In this case, nobody seems to know why he has been taken.
They've reportedly got him in a county jail in Alabama right now. But again, we don't know why.

Speaker 13 College Democrats at the University of Alabama are protesting his arrest. There's also a GoFundMe that's been set up

Speaker 13 to help his legal defense as well.

Speaker 13 How does the American people like all of this?

Speaker 13 How does the American population feel about how things are turning out with Donald Trump being back in the White House, given that this is sort of the daily news now?

Speaker 13 New polling from Gallup just out today shows that there is no issue on which the American people like what Trump is doing. His disapproval ratings are higher than his approval ratings on everything.

Speaker 13 He is 18 points underwater on his handling of the economy. He is 19 points underwater on his relations with Russia.

Speaker 13 He's underwater on his handling of the federal budget, on energy policy, on foreign affairs, on the Ukraine war, on the environment, on even his relations with the dreaded news media.

Speaker 13 He is underwater on every single thing.

Speaker 13 New polling in the great state of Texas today shows that Trump's favorability rating in Texas has dropped 15 points since the election in November.

Speaker 13 He is now underwater, specifically in Texas and dropping like a stone.

Speaker 13 Today, Donald Trump polled the nomination of Congresswoman Elise Stefanik to be his new ambassador to the United Nations. So congratulations to the United Nations.

Speaker 13 But Trump admitted the reason why he pulled her nomination.

Speaker 13 He said the reason he pulled her nomination is because they don't want her to leave her seat in the House because the Republican majority is so thin.

Speaker 13 Now, if Elise Stefanik had left her seat in the House and become UN ambassador, which was the original plan,

Speaker 13 they would just hold an election to put somebody else in that seat, right?

Speaker 13 If another Republican was going to replace her in the House, of course, it wouldn't affect the size of their majority at all. But you want to know why they pulled that nomination today?

Speaker 13 They pulled that nomination today, clearly, because they were worried that another Republican would not replace Elise Stefanik, that if they had to hold an election for that seat, they were worried they were going to lose it and that a Democrat was going to flip that seat.

Speaker 13 Elise Stefanik won that seat in November by 24 points.

Speaker 13 24 points.

Speaker 13 Right now with what Trump is doing as president, right now with how the Republicans are performing with Trump as president, right now, 24 points is not a comfortable enough margin for Republicans, given how hard the country is swinging back against them.

Speaker 13 24 points in November looks like it might be a blue seat right about now.

Speaker 13 The real political leaders of this country are the people who are willing to get up in the morning and go do something.

Speaker 13 They're doing it.

Speaker 13 And in many ways, they are winning. Stay with us.

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Speaker 13 We just talked a little bit about what's going on in public polling right now in terms of how the American people are feeling about the Trump administration and President Trump this far into his second term.

Speaker 13 Here's a little bit more on a specific subject.

Speaker 13 YouGov asked Americans how serious a problem they think it is that a whole bunch of senior Trump administration officials shared military plans in a group chat on a commercial messaging app, which accidentally included a journalist, even though they didn't notice he was part of the chat.

Speaker 13 The proportion of Americans who say this is a, quote, very serious or somewhat serious problem is nearly three-quarters of respondents, 74% of the country.

Speaker 13 The percentage of people who say that's no big deal is only 13%.

Speaker 13 This scandal is a serious problem, even according to 60% of Republicans.

Speaker 13 On the long list of things that are dumb and bad and potentially illegal about sharing imminent military attack plans on a messaging app with a large group where you don't know who's even on there, there is the matter of Trump's national security advisor setting those group chat messages to disappear.

Speaker 13 You can do that on the Signal app, and some of the messages were set to disappear four weeks after they were sent, others were set to disappear after just one week, which might mean that some of them are already gone.

Speaker 13 The reason that's a problem is that there are real laws that get enforced about preserving federal records, which belong to the American people.

Speaker 13 The vice president and cabinet secretaries and the White House chief of staff discussing imminent military strikes definitely counts as a federal record, even if you do it in a chat app, and it therefore must be preserved.

Speaker 13 You can't set it to disappear. The government transparency group American Oversight filed a lawsuit on that part of this story.

Speaker 13 Today, in that case, a federal judge ordered multiple Trump cabinet officials that they must preserve those signal messages.

Speaker 13 Then there's the fact that at least one member of the group chat, Trump's real estate friend, who says he's now very, very personally close with Vladimir Putin, they have a really, really intense emotional, personal friendship.

Speaker 13 Steve Witkoff has now confirmed publicly, I think kind of despite himself, I think he sort of accidentally confirmed publicly that he participated in this group chat on his personal cell phone, not on a government-issued device.

Speaker 13 Now that matters because personal devices generally have much less robust cyber protections against things like spyware, which raises a whole new level of security concerns about this, separate and apart from what they were discussing here.

Speaker 13 If these guys are doing

Speaker 13 sensitive, potentially classified government business on their personal devices.

Speaker 13 If their personal devices have been compromised, then it doesn't matter like what the encryption level is of the app that they're using.

Speaker 13 If their personal devices have been compromised, it's possible that any sort of bad actor might have access to every single thing they type or see on their phone.

Speaker 13 Now we know that at least one of them was participating in this signal chat about imminent military attack plans on his personal phone. How many of the rest of you were doing that?

Speaker 13 What they were discussing, though, turns out to be the really big problem in terms of what specifically these guys were blurting out in this insecure group chat.

Speaker 13 After the operation they had been discussing, these airstrikes in Yemen, after that was over, Trump National Security Advisor Mike Waltz wrote this in the chat.

Speaker 13 He said, quote, the first target, their top missile guy, we had positive ID of him walking into his girlfriend's building, and it is now collapsed.

Speaker 13 Well, the Wall Street Journal reports today that that positive ID of the guy they were targeting, that was, according to the Wall Street Journal, sensitive intelligence from a human source in in Yemen, intelligence that had been provided to the United States by Israel.

Speaker 13 In other words, Israel had a source on the ground feeding them very specific information in real time, and Mike Waltz referenced that information in a way that effectively described the source in this group chat on a commercial app.

Speaker 13 According to one U.S. official, quote, Israeli officials complained privately to U.S.
officials that Waltz's texts became public.

Speaker 13 Quote, Israel's role in supplying information that helped track the militant highlights the sensitivity of some disclosures in the texts and raises questions about the Trump administration's contention that no classified information was shared on the signal chat.

Speaker 13 The identity of a person in Yemen who was supplying information in real time about the strikes would likely be carefully protected.

Speaker 13 Yeah, you think?

Speaker 13 I mean, these guys may not get it, but the American people seem to. I mean, three-quarters of Americans say this seems like a really serious problem.

Speaker 13 Anybody can see that this is not stuff you should be texting about with a large group, right? Or maybe texting about at all?

Speaker 13 I guess not these guys. Joining us now is one of the authors of this Wall Street Journal scoop.
Alexander Ward is a Wall Street Journal National Security reporter.

Speaker 13 He's author of the book, The Internationalists, The Fight to Restore American Foreign Policy After Trump. Mr.
Ward, thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate it.

Speaker 28 Yeah, thanks for having me.

Speaker 13 Let me just ask you if I got the basics right there about your reporting here. Mike Waltz didn't describe

Speaker 13 the name of the source, but he did describe with some specificity the type of information this source was able to provide. That's what Israeli officials are worried about.

Speaker 28 Right. So we should note that this information was provided in real time, right?

Speaker 28 And if you look at those texts on Signal, you saw that Pete Hegset, the defense secretary, was saying, you know, planes in the air, bombs are going to happen at this time.

Speaker 28 And then Waltz chimes in and goes, hey, we effectively have an assessment here. We've seen that one of these people we were tracking, one of this Houthi top missile man,

Speaker 28 went into his girlfriend's house and we've seen it destroyed. And this was a positive ID that they ID'd this person going into the building and it's unclear if ID'd afterwards.

Speaker 28 But point is that's real-time information, right? And that was provided by the Israelis to the U.S. And we should note the U.S.
has other ways to positively ID.

Speaker 28 Waltz does say in those texts, you know, there were multiple IDs. So it's not like it was wholly reliant on Israeli intelligence, but it's fair to say that Israeli intelligence provided to the U.S.

Speaker 28 informed,

Speaker 28 at a minimum, the text that Mike Waltz put into Signal, which of course, as you said, is a publicly available non-governmental app on what seemed to be unclassified networks.

Speaker 13 Now, everything that I know about spying, I basically learned from like Len Dayton novels. Like, I don't really, like, I don't know.
Who am I? I'm just a person who reads the news.

Speaker 13 Like, I have no expertise in this other than spy movies and spy novels.

Speaker 13 But it seems to me, like, when we talk about protecting sources and methods, this is kind of a like a like an almost an elementary school level case study because you can infer from that statement from Mike Waltz, which went to this large group in a commercial app, that

Speaker 13 somebody has a source on the ground in the capital of Yemen who can see that apartment building and who can also communicate to some intelligence service somewhere in the world what he or she is seeing at that building and what the physical consequences have been of the strike that are being described.

Speaker 13 I mean, that seems to me like for anybody in Sana'a who's trying to figure out who that source is or what they have to worry about in their network, they've now been essentially given a template to find that person.

Speaker 28 Yeah, at a minimum, there are now Houthi operatives who know that there could be a spy among them or within their networks more generally.

Speaker 28 Now, whether they learned that from our reporting or whether there was a way they could see that information from the, if the signal chat was spied on and really to the Houthis, I doubt that that was the case, to be honest, but who's to say?

Speaker 28 The point is we don't know, but the possibility exists because it was put on signal, which is the point here, right?

Speaker 28 These kinds of conversations should be happening in secure facilities in the Pentagon, in the Situation Room, or, you know, as government officials, high-level government officials are provided SCIFs or other kinds of communications tools in order to have these conversations at home or were, you know, if they have have to, they have to leave their families at home, go into their government buildings, go into the secure facility and have these kinds of conversations on weekends, late nights.

Speaker 28 It's not efficient or ideal, but it's how you protect these secrets. And so sure, it is more efficient to put this kind of stuff on signal.

Speaker 28 You can do that, but you do open yourself up to the possibility that that becomes public or is intercepted in some way by adversaries. Does that mean it's likely?

Speaker 28 I can't say that with any sense of certainty, but I can say it's definitely not 0%,

Speaker 28 right? And so this is the issue now is, of course, now it's out in public in our story. But at a minimum, one could assume that that intelligence went in there.

Speaker 28 And if it were to somehow, some way make it to the intended targets, they would go, ah, there is a spy among us.

Speaker 28 Right.

Speaker 13 Mr. Ward, briefly,

Speaker 13 one of the things that we hear about in intelligence reporting is that our allies with whom we share intelligence may be less likely to do so in the future if they feel that we in the United States are mishandling mishandling it or handling it in a way that is cavalier.

Speaker 13 Briefly, do you have any sense that

Speaker 13 that risk is essentially coming to fruition right now, either with Israel or other allies based on this scandal?

Speaker 28 Well, we have heard even before this, right, just because of President Trump's own views on the war in Ukraine and his talking to Russia, because of

Speaker 28 Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, and her views on Syria and Russia and others, there has just been some hesitation about sharing as much intelligence as before with the United States.

Speaker 28 You can imagine after this, now there'll be even more pots. Now, whether that actually leads to a slowdown of intelligence sharing, I don't know.

Speaker 28 I haven't seen any direct evidence at the moment, but I have heard from foreign officials who are already wary of providing as much intel, as much in-depth intel to the U.S. as before.

Speaker 28 And I can't imagine that this episode helps.

Speaker 13 Wow. Alexander Ward, National Security Reporter at the Wall Street Journal.
This is really, really interesting and important reporting. Thank you for helping us understand it.

Speaker 28 Thanks for having me. All right.

Speaker 13 More news ahead. Stay with us.

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Speaker 13 So this is a story we covered last night. It got a really big reaction.
The story is developing further today.

Speaker 13 So tonight we wanted to go back to it and also bring in a little expert perspective on what's going on here, just in part because we got such a strong reaction from you guys, from our viewers, when we covered this last night.

Speaker 13 Here's the headline we showed you last night. Quote, remedy supported by Kennedy leaves some some measles patients more ill.

Speaker 13 Parents in Gaines County, Texas, the center of a raging measles outbreak, have increasingly turned to supplements and unproven treatments to protect their children, many of whom are unvaccinated.

Speaker 13 One of those supplements is cod liver oil containing vitamin A, which Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Donald Trump's health secretary, has promoted in the media as a near-miraculous cure for measles.

Speaker 13 Physicians at Covenant Children's Hospital in Lubbock, Texas say they've now treated unvaccinated children who were given so much vitamin A that they had signs of liver damage.

Speaker 13 The nation's health secretary promoting vitamin A as a miracle cure for measles is a problem for a few reasons.

Speaker 13 Vitamin A, unlike

Speaker 13 some other vitamins, is not something that you can flush out of your body by peeing it out. Forgive me.
Vitamin A is a is a vitamin that doesn't get processed through your body that way.

Speaker 13 It stays in your body. It gets stored in your body fat.

Speaker 13 And high doses of it can damage your liver or worse, I mean, they can put you in a coma.

Speaker 13 Beyond that, the dangerousness of overdosing on vitamin A,

Speaker 13 it's also the case that vitamin A supplements just don't work to protect you from measles.

Speaker 13 I mean, if you don't have enough vitamin A and you catch the measles, then a doctor might give it to you for what they call supportive care.

Speaker 13 That happens mainly in countries where kids are malnourished. But here, less than 1% of the American population is deficient in vitamin A.

Speaker 13 So adding tons of extra vitamin A basically is only just harmful. Despite that, Robert F.

Speaker 13 Kennedy Jr., in his role as America's health and human services secretary, has repeatedly in the media promoted vitamin A and other supplements for treating the measles.

Speaker 13 while this measles outbreak is spreading across big parts of this country. And now, thanks to him, kids in West Texas are showing up at the hospital with signs of liver damage from taking vitamin A.

Speaker 13 This week, the communications director at the CDC, man named Kevin Griffith, said he resigned from the CDC in part because of this type of irresponsibility. In an op-ed for the Washington Post, Mr.

Speaker 13 Griffiths wrote this, quote, instead of seeking guidance about how to combat the measles outbreak in Texas and New Mexico from the world-leading epidemiologists and virologists he he oversees, Kennedy is listening to fringe voices who reinforce his personal beliefs.

Speaker 13 Kennedy has promoted unproven treatments for measles. He suggested distributing vitamin A, which does not prevent measles.

Speaker 13 Meanwhile, Griffith says, in my final weeks at the CDC, I watched as career infectious disease experts were tasked with spending precious hours searching medical literature in vain for data to support Kennedy's preferred treatments.

Speaker 13 Quote, all this misdirection is a waste of federal dollars that will do nothing to control the outbreak.

Speaker 13 It also could cost lives.

Speaker 13 President of the American Academy of Pediatrics is going to join us here on this live next.

Speaker 13 The measles outbreak that began in West Texas now includes more than 400 measles cases in multiple states.

Speaker 13 And as that outbreak continues to spread, kids in West Texas are now starting to show up in hospitals with signs of liver damage from taking too much vitamin A.

Speaker 13 Vitamin A neither cures nor prevents measles. It is vaccination that prevents measles.
But the Trump administration's health secretary, Robert F.

Speaker 13 Kennedy Jr., has been promoting vitamin A as a miraculous measles treatment.

Speaker 13 Sue Kressley is the president of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Speaker 13 She says in a statement, quote, in fact, relying on vitamin A instead instead of a vaccine is not only dangerous and ineffective, but it puts children at serious risk.

Speaker 13 Taking too much vitamin A can cause serious health problems, including liver damage. Joining us now is Dr.
Sue Kressley. She's president of the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Dr.

Speaker 13 Kressley, it is a real honor to have some time with you tonight. Thank you for being here.

Speaker 26 It's a pleasure to be here.

Speaker 13 Can you tell me about

Speaker 13 the dangerousness of vitamin A?

Speaker 13 I don't think we're used to thinking of vitamins as having any potential negative effects, but these reports from Texas about kids turning up in the hospital having taken way too much vitamin A and it being harmful to them are alarming.

Speaker 13 Can you just tell us medically what that means?

Speaker 26 Yeah, but first I'd like to say, Rachel, that the single most important message that your audience should hear, and I can't overemphasize this, is the only way out of this measles epidemic is through vaccination.

Speaker 26 And the measles vaccine is safe and effective.

Speaker 26 And I want to reiterate that there's a difference between preventing measles and the only way we can prevent measles is through vaccination and how we support patients and families and children who have measles.

Speaker 26 And that is supportive care. There is no cure for measles.
There is supportive care just like there is for other viruses and other viral illnesses.

Speaker 26 That includes taking appropriate dosing of medications like fever reducers.

Speaker 26 And so vitamin A in patients in the right dose in consultation with a healthcare provider can help mitigate in some patients the seriousness of the measles virus, but it will not prevent the measles virus.

Speaker 26 It will not prevent you from getting sick. And too much of any medication, and vitamin A is a medication, can be dangerous and make children and patients sick, as we're seeing in Texas now.

Speaker 13 And that's true whether or not people are finding supplements themselves, taking cod liver oil, otherwise trying to sort of gin up their own treatment regime based on things

Speaker 13 they're getting in the media. There isn't some safe way to administer the kinds of doses that the health secretary is talking about.

Speaker 26 No, it should be done in consultation with a trusted medical provider. So the appropriate dosing and it's weight-based dosing.

Speaker 26 And it's also important for your health care provider to understand any underlying illnesses, because that may impact whether vitamin A is actually appropriate for your care.

Speaker 13 Let's talk about vaccination.

Speaker 13 When you say it is a safe and effective vaccine, Secretary Kennedy has been among the loudest voices who has been assailing the measles vaccine, talking about it as dangerous and causing injuries and being implicated in all sorts of nefarious things.

Speaker 13 When you describe it as safe and effective, can you tell us a little bit about the track record of the measles vaccine, both in terms of how effective it is at preventing measles, but also how we know that it's safe and how long it's been used safely in the United States?

Speaker 26 So I don't have the exact year when measles vaccine came out, but I can tell you that I was in training and saw a measles outbreak in Philadelphia.

Speaker 26 And it's been around for a long time, and it has shown over studies over time that it is safe.

Speaker 26 We know that two doses of vaccine given at the appropriate intervals are 97% effective in preventing measles.

Speaker 26 Nothing is 100% effective, which is why we count on community immunity and as many people to get vaccinated as possible.

Speaker 26 And Rachel, I do believe that parents really deserve accurate, factual information that strengthens their confidence in vaccines from all of our leaders. And

Speaker 26 they don't need any undue anxiety or worry about distracting information. we should be strengthening their confidence so that we can get on top of this outbreak.

Speaker 13 Yeah, anytime there's a measles outbreak, it should be an all-hands-on-deck vaccination effort for everybody who is at risk.

Speaker 13 Dr. Sue Kressley, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, it is an honor to have you here on our show tonight.
Thank you for taking time, Doctor.

Speaker 26 Thank you for having me.

Speaker 13 We'll be right back. Stay with us.

Speaker 13 Remember when Lawrence said he was going away on vacation for a week and a day and I got all mad? It has been longer than a week and a day and he's still gone.

Speaker 13 But it turns out that's because he got an infection while he was away. So that's why we haven't seen him back yet.
He is fighting it off. He says he's going to be fine.

Speaker 13 I was texting with him about it just last night, but that is why we do not expect him back until next week. Don't worry, he's going to be fine.
It's just a thing.

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