Maddow: For a would-be strongman, Trump is profoundly weak

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Speaker 15 Did you know that the United States produces 13 million barrels of crude oil every day, enough to fill 800 Olympic swimming pools?

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Speaker 16 Really happy to have you here. First things first, I have an announcement to make.
On next week's show, this time next week, next Monday, September 22nd,

Speaker 16 Kamala Harris is going to be here. This is going to be her first full-scale news interview since the 2024 election.
She will be here live on set with me for the show.

Speaker 16 I have roughly 400,000 things I want to ask her about,

Speaker 16 but I will get my chance. We're going to have that sit down one-on-one one week from tonight right here, 9 p.m.
Eastern on MSNBC. That's next Monday, September 22nd.
I am very excited about that.

Speaker 16 In the 10 months, 10 months or so that have transpired since the 2024 election, it feels like we've had about 10 years worth of news, of course.

Speaker 16 But in thinking about talking to Kamala Harris next week, I realized that

Speaker 16 there's a lot on the record from her campaign and from her time in public life that is kind of helpful right now, especially helpful to the point that

Speaker 16 we shouldn't kid ourselves that anything that Trump has done

Speaker 16 is surprising. We shouldn't kid ourselves that the way he has behaved in office in this second term is a surprise.

Speaker 16 I mean, Clearly, looking back at Kamala Harris's campaign against him, looking basically to anybody who has been paying attention anytime in the last, I don't know, few years.

Speaker 16 It was not that hard to see it coming.

Speaker 17 Donald Trump has told us his priorities for a second term. He has an enemies list of people he intends to prosecute.

Speaker 17 He says that one of his highest priorities is to set free the violent extremists who insulted those law enforcement officers on January 6th.

Speaker 17 Donald Trump intends to use the United States military against American citizens.

Speaker 16 Pretty much nailed it, right?

Speaker 16 That was a week before the 2024 election. Kamala Harris speaking at the ellipse outside the White House.

Speaker 16 And since Trump has been back in office, of course, he has freed the people who attacked the Capitol and assaulted police officers on January 6th.

Speaker 16 He has set up his Justice Department and his FBI and as much of the rest of the government as he can to go after his enemies list. He really does have the U.S.
military deploying in U.S.

Speaker 16 cities against the American people. Nailed it.
Saw it coming. Clear-eyed.
That is, in fact, what we got.

Speaker 16 So

Speaker 16 I feel like it's just a helpful grounding thing to recognize and be cognizant of the fact that what Trump wants to do, what he's after, what he's going to try to get away with, we should think of that as basically a fixed variable.

Speaker 16 It's a knowable thing. It is knowable now, not only because he frequently says what he wants to do, but also because we lived through what he tried to do in his first term.

Speaker 16 But also, as Kamala Harris said during the campaign, we know his type, right?

Speaker 16 We know what guys like him want to do and what they try to do and how they behave. We know that would-be strongman leaders all over the world all do the the same things.

Speaker 16 And so, you know, the headlines today, the headlines any day, every day, they all look like they're ripped from a textbook anywhere in the world about how strongman leaders try to operate once they get into office.

Speaker 16 Like just today, just for, just take today, for an example, you've got self-enrichment, New York Times headline, quote, anatomy of two giant deals.

Speaker 16 The UAE got computer chips, the Trump team got crypto riches. Quote, a lucrative transaction involving involving the Trump family cryptocurrency firm and a U.S.
agreement, U.S.

Speaker 16 government agreement giving the Emiratis access to valuable AI computer chips.

Speaker 16 What this is about is the fact that the U.S. government

Speaker 16 has not allowed UAE, United Arab Emirates, to get really, really high-end AI computer chips. for national security reasons.

Speaker 16 It's because UAE is so close with China, the idea is if these super high-end AI computer chips ended up in China, because UAE gave them to China, that could help China vault past us in terms of their military capabilities.

Speaker 16 So that was the policy. That was the reason why the UAE was not able to get really high-end AI computer chips.
But then

Speaker 16 a member of the Emirati ruling family who was trying to get that policy changed apparently hit on the idea that maybe his country could do an otherwise totally pointless $2 billion crypto transaction using Trump's family crypto company, which would then put millions of dollars in the pockets of the Trump family.

Speaker 16 And once they made that deal, wouldn't you know it, now UAE is getting those chips. National security be damned.

Speaker 16 The White House and Trump's crypto company are, of course, denying there's any link, but the timing sure is coincidental.

Speaker 16 And that sort of thing is

Speaker 16 its textbook, right? Also the the enemies thing, right? The enemies list thing. It's its textbook.
Today there's headlines in the news about a new lawsuit brought by Maureen Comey.

Speaker 16 The reason her last name is familiar is she's the daughter of Trump enemies list headliner James Comey, the former FBI director.

Speaker 16 James Comey's daughter has filed this new lawsuit, which makes a pretty compelling case that she was, in fact, fired from her job at the Justice Department because and only because she is James Comey's daughter, and James Comey is on the enemies list.

Speaker 16 And you know, hey, once you've got an enemies list, no reason to keep it short. Another headline today, quote, White House plans broad crackdown on liberal groups.

Speaker 16 They're saying now they will use the horrific murder of pro-Trump activist Charlie Kirk last week as a justification for some undefined whole of government attack on what they always describe very vaguely as the left in this country.

Speaker 16 Whatever else you think about what Trump is trying to do in office, there is no drama, right? There's no uncertainty. There's no ambiguity about the agenda, right?

Speaker 16 It is the textbook agenda of every right-wing strongman everywhere, right? They all do the same thing.

Speaker 16 They tell people there is an enemy. an enemy within that demands emergency measures, right? There's an enemy within that's nefarious and is responsible for all the terrible things.

Speaker 16 And so therefore we must have emergency powers and toughness and we must take off the gloves and break the rules, right?

Speaker 16 That's textbook stuff.

Speaker 16 Then you use your control of government to take over or intimidate every source of power and authority in the country, whether or not it has anything to do with the presidency, right?

Speaker 16 This means crucially the media, but also science and the arts and education and business and the professions.

Speaker 16 Any source of authority or potential opposition or truth telling about the bad behavior of the dear leader, that must be shut down.

Speaker 16 He must consolidate power to include those institutions, even though they are outside of government.

Speaker 16 Then next, use your control of government and those institutions to enrich yourself and your family and your allies.

Speaker 16 And then you get rid of the professionals and the experts within government and law enforcement and the military so there is less friction from those institutions when you want to use those institutions to punish punish and intimidate your opposition and your critics and ultimately to allow you to stay in power indefinitely.

Speaker 16 And lastly, not all of them do this, but all of them want to. If you can, align yourself with other strongmen leaders around the world.

Speaker 16 So all the dictatorships start helping each other out and they do their best to undermine and work against the democracies.

Speaker 16 This is the same boring, straight-up playbook they all

Speaker 16 play from. They all do the same thing.
Pick an enemy, say it's an emergency.

Speaker 16 Consolidate power not only over the whole government, but over every other part of civil society and public life from which people might criticize you or oppose you or even just credibly report on what you're doing.

Speaker 16 Enrich yourself and your allies. Use control of the state to make sure no one can ever remove you from power and make common cause with some of the other strongmen who rule in this same way.

Speaker 16 They all do these same five things.

Speaker 16 And that is, of course, exactly what we are seeing now from Trump and from the Trump administration. And it's, you know, it's ripped from the headlines every day.

Speaker 16 I mean, just on that last point, joining the club, right? Making common cause with other strongmen leaders against the democracies of the world.

Speaker 16 Just on that point, we've had a remarkable series of headlines over the past few days and today, right?

Speaker 16 We, of course, are part of NATO. If anybody threatens any of the other NATO countries, we're supposed to respond as if our own country has been threatened.

Speaker 16 NATO's the reason we haven't had a World War III.

Speaker 16 After World War I and World War II happened in quick secession, we haven't had a World War III because we had NATO, of which we are a charter member and an animating force, at least we were until now.

Speaker 16 Because now, Russian dictator Vladimir Putin is so sure that that's no longer true, that we're no longer really part of NATO.

Speaker 16 He's so sure that President Donald Trump will act to help him and not NATO, that Putin sent Russian drones into Poland, a NATO country, last week. Trump responded by saying, oh,

Speaker 16 could have been a mistake. Could have been a mistake.
He did nothing in response. Then this weekend, of course, Putin kept going.
This time he sent Russian drones into Romania, another NATO country.

Speaker 16 And again, no response from Trump.

Speaker 16 Now, late today, Poland says it intercepted another drone flying over government buildings in the capital city of Warsaw.

Speaker 16 Because why would Putin stop?

Speaker 16 Russia and its close ally, the dictatorship in Belarus, they've just started huge military exercises right next to Poland, in Belarus, which gives them a great reason to mass a huge number of troops and tons of military equipment, essentially on the Polish border, on the NATO border.

Speaker 16 Trump responded to that provocation by

Speaker 16 lifting sanctions on Belarus's national airline, announcing that we may be reopening our embassy in Belarus, and sending friendly U.S.

Speaker 16 military observers to watch these military exercises, as if these guys are our allies and not the NATO country right next door that these war games are meant to menace.

Speaker 16 Trump hasn't just reportedly blocked Ukraine from using long-range missiles against Russia in its war with Russia. Trump has also just cut military aid to other countries that border Russia.

Speaker 16 And the credulous U.S. press keeps covering Trump's verbal statements about Russia and Putin as if they mean something.
Ooh, Trump suggests he may be annoyed with Putin.

Speaker 16 Oh, Trump says he may be souring on Putin. Oh, Trump may someday be changing his mind to turn against Putin.
Really?

Speaker 16 Watch what he does,

Speaker 16 not what he says. Trump is not just effectively ending NATO right now by refusing to respond to these threats to our NATO allies, even as they ask for our help.

Speaker 16 Trump is now allying us with the world's dictatorships, with his mentor Putin first among them.

Speaker 16 I mean, but like I said,

Speaker 16 there's no surprise about what he's doing, right? There's no open questions here. There's no black box, there's no mystery about his intentions or what type of leader he is.

Speaker 16 He's doing the same things they all do.

Speaker 16 Again, blame an enemy, give yourself emergency powers, consolidate power, enrich yourself, never give up power, and join the club with other strongmen if you can. They all do the exact same thing.

Speaker 16 And Trump has always told us that these are the things that he would do. There is no mystery about what he wants or how he is trying to get it.

Speaker 16 Where there is mystery and where there is drama, where the history of this moment will be told

Speaker 16 is in two things.

Speaker 16 The two open questions we've got are, how are we going to respond as a country?

Speaker 16 We know what he's doing and how he's trying to do it. How are we going to respond as a a country, meaning how far are we going to let him go?

Speaker 16 That story still being written today, every day in your personal life.

Speaker 16 But number two,

Speaker 16 how skilled is he going to be at trying to pull this all off? How skilled is he going to be or not?

Speaker 16 And again, just in today's headlines, there's plenty of news on that front as well. Because whatever you think of his intentions,

Speaker 16 his skill level is low.

Speaker 16 I mean, to the extent that what he's trying to do depends on him using his control over the government to do the things he wants to do, right?

Speaker 16 The operations of his government and to a certain extent his political operation

Speaker 16 continue every day to be kind of a clown show.

Speaker 16 I mean, for a would-be strongman, for a man who wants to seem like a Putin type, right? Like one of these strongmen that he so admires all over the world.

Speaker 16 For a would-be strongman, there really is profound weakness here.

Speaker 16 Take the Lisa Cook debacle as an example.

Speaker 16 Trump has asserted that he needs unprecedented control over every lever of the US economy, even levers over the U.S. economy that were explicitly designed from Jump.

Speaker 16 to be independent of any president's influence. He wants not only control over raising revenues through taxes, which is something only Congress is supposed to do.

Speaker 16 He wants control over what the government spends, which is something that Congress is supposed to be able to do.

Speaker 16 He wants control over the central bank, which is something that is explicitly designed to not be controlled by the U.S. president.

Speaker 16 Now, should Trump have expanded control over more elements of the US economy? Should he have unprecedented control over levers of the US economy?

Speaker 16 Well, how has he done with the stuff that he does control already? I don't know.

Speaker 16 Under him, we've had job growth suddenly slow to a 16-year low, excluding the pandemic, which happened in his first term.

Speaker 16 Under him, long-term unemployment is now, per the Washington Post today, quote, at a post-pandemic high and a level typically only seen during periods of economic turmoil.

Speaker 16 Thanks to Trump's second-term policies, health insurance premiums are about to spike to their biggest jump in at least five years.

Speaker 16 There are 24 million Americans on Affordable Care Act plans, and above and beyond the spike in health care premiums that everybody's about to see.

Speaker 16 If you're on the Affordable Care Act, this next year, your health insurance costs are expected to rise by more than 75%.

Speaker 16 That's affecting 24 million Americans. Health care costs up more than 75% in a year.
That's because of Trump's policies. How's he doing in your personal economy?

Speaker 16 Donald Trump has done such a hit job on the economy that he is now putting his name on the signs at a bunch of infrastructure projects that were passed and funded by Joe Biden

Speaker 16 in Biden's legislation that Trump was fanatically and vocally opposed to.

Speaker 16 Inflation is up, the labor market is down, health prices are about to go through the roof, and so Trump is taking credit, literally putting his name on Joe Biden's economic projects in the hopes that maybe he'll at least get credit for that stuff, because that stuff seems like it's working.

Speaker 16 So yeah, a guy with that record. Should this man get even more control over the U.S.
economy? Should he also take the reins of the Federal Reserve Bank that is legally independent from him?

Speaker 16 I think that's a reasonable question.

Speaker 16 But the way he's tried to get that control, the way he's tried to get control of the Federal Reserve is by making wild accusations against Lisa Cook, against a woman who is on the board of governors of the Fed, who Trump has decided he's going to try to remove her from her post and thereby grasp the reins of the Fed and control it himself.

Speaker 16 And how has he gone after Lisa Cook? He has accused her of mortgage fraud. And then he had his DOJ open a criminal investigation into her for this supposed terrible mortgage fraud.

Speaker 16 And as bizarre as this attack is,

Speaker 16 I mean, you know what?

Speaker 16 The details of it aren't working out for him.

Speaker 16 We first had reporting from ProPublica and Reuters that the thing for which Lisa Cook is being accused is not something for which people really ever criminally get charged.

Speaker 16 Then we had further reporting from ProPublica that the thing for which she is accused is something that has also been done, apparently, by at least three members of Trump's cabinet.

Speaker 16 His labor secretary, his EPA administrator, and his transportation secretary have all also apparently done what they're accusing Lisa Cook of doing, according to mortgage documents.

Speaker 16 As have family members of the Trump administration's federal mortgage guy, who made this accusation against Lisa Cook in the first place.

Speaker 16 Now, this weekend and today, we have reporting that Lisa Cook does not appear to have done anything wrong with her mortgage at all.

Speaker 16 Documents about her mortgage process show that she didn't commit the kind of mortgage fraud that they are accusing her of at all.

Speaker 16 Tonight, a federal appeals court has again blocked Trump from firing Lisa Cook.

Speaker 16 We'll be watching the United States Supreme Court late tonight and into the overnight hours to see if they'll make some sort of emergency intercession on Trump's behalf to try to keep Lisa Cook out of the feds meeting that starts tomorrow.

Speaker 16 But I mean,

Speaker 16 this was their their big swing, not just to go after one public servant. This was their big swing to give Donald Trump massive new powers that no president has ever had before.

Speaker 16 This was their big swing to take control of the Fed and make it subject to his whims and his peculiar form of economic genius that right now is bankrupting your favorite North Dakota soybean farmer.

Speaker 16 I mean, this was their big swing to give Trump huge new power over the biggest economy on the planet.

Speaker 16 And they apparently never googled to see if the accusation would stand up to even one day of scrutiny.

Speaker 16 They never checked to see if the accusation would be blatantly, obviously, publicly, provably untrue.

Speaker 16 Their intentions are exactly what you think they are.

Speaker 16 Their capabilities, though, are not so much.

Speaker 16 I mean, you may have also noticed today that Donald Trump has not initiated a U.S. military invasion of Chicago.

Speaker 16 I mean, Trump literally threatened to wage war against the city of Chicago. He threatened a military apocalypse in the city of Chicago.

Speaker 16 Chicago's about to find out why it's called the Department of War. That is not somebody posting about Trump.
That's Trump posting.

Speaker 16 After making that threat, the mayor of Chicago and the governor of Illinois pushed back super hard, as did the people of Chicago, who said, no, no troops in our streets.

Speaker 16 And hey, wouldn't you know it, now Trump has lost interest, apparently, in mounting a military invasion of the city of Chicago. He's apparently not sending the troops there after all.

Speaker 16 And hey, if you are watching me right now and you are one of the people

Speaker 16 One of the tens of thousands of people who went to those big peaceful protests and rallies and demonstrations against Trump's promised invasion of Chicago.

Speaker 16 Congratulations, you did it. You stopped him.
It worked. He did not send troops.
He does not like being resisted. And when people resist him,

Speaker 16 more often than not, he stops what he's doing.

Speaker 16 He gets diverted.

Speaker 16 Moves on to try something else instead. You know who also stopped him? Grand juries.

Speaker 16 The least romantic, least heralded part of our whole criminal justice system, regular citizens.

Speaker 16 Every day we're getting more and more news about grand juries, regular citizens, who are doing something previously unheard of in the criminal justice system.

Speaker 16 They are refusing to hand down indictments against people the Trump administration is trying to charge in the cities that they have invaded.

Speaker 16 In Los Angeles first, and now every day in Washington, D.C., grand juries are saying no, they will not sign off on felony charges being brought against people who Trump's feckless and incoherent prosecutors are trying and failing to prosecute.

Speaker 16 And speaking of incoherent, Trump has now had to post a like bowing and scraping apology for oops, having his immigration agents

Speaker 16 arrest and shackle and deport hundreds of South Korean workers who were apparently legally in the United States constructing a battery plant in the state of Georgia. Oops.

Speaker 16 Oops. Didn't mean to horrify and shock and insult one of our most important geopolitical and economic allies, getting their whole country up in arms against us

Speaker 16 because we have built an abuse machine in the name of immigration enforcement that is a machine we can't control and it just goes after anyone who looks foreign and oops, did we do that?

Speaker 16 We didn't understand who they were, why they were here. We just arrested and chained them all.
Oops, were we not supposed to do that?

Speaker 16 So now Trump has had to post this. He just posted this online.

Speaker 16 When foreign companies who are building extremely complex products, machines, and various other, quote, things come into the United States with massive investments, I want them to bring their people of expertise.

Speaker 16 I don't want to frighten off or disincentivize investment into America by outside countries or companies. We welcome them.
We welcome their employees.

Speaker 16 Oops.

Speaker 16 Yeah, that's not what you've been doing. This is what you've been doing.
This is not a welcome.

Speaker 16 Did you not know they were going to arrest all these people?

Speaker 16 Did the people doing the arresting know why they were arresting these people or who these people were? Was this part of a plan?

Speaker 16 You're not even a year into this term in office and you already have no idea what your own government is doing. And you apparently can't stop it even when you do.

Speaker 16 Strong men want to seem strong.

Speaker 16 They say things all the time that are meant to create the impression that they are very powerful, very strong, they can do whatever they want. That does not mean that they are strong.

Speaker 16 In our case with our would-be strongman,

Speaker 16 this guy has put together the only federal prosecutor's team in the history of the United States legal system who actually can't get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich.

Speaker 16 In our case with our would-be strongman, This guy has decided to mount an overthrow of the Federal Reserve Bank of the United States of America with the legal equivalent of scribbling something mean about the Fed on a bathroom wall and hoping the rumor mill will take care of the rest.

Speaker 16 In our case, in the case of our would-be strongman, this guy, oops, accidentally arrested 300 South Koreans without any idea of why

Speaker 16 and now has no idea how to fix it. Now that South Korea obviously is met.

Speaker 16 I mean, in our case with our would-be strongman, you better watch out or you're going to get a U.S.

Speaker 16 military invasion of your city unless, unless, unless you say no real loud, in which case, okay, then no invasion. I'll go invade somewhere else, maybe.

Speaker 16 And yes, I know, I know that they are now promising a massive assault on their political enemies.

Speaker 16 They're going to use the whole government to annihilate the whole political left in America. I know that's what they are saying now.

Speaker 16 Their ambitions are as grand as they are predictable and unsurprising. It is textbook stuff.

Speaker 16 But never forget for a second that they are also just terrible at everything they try to do, which is why pushing back against them almost always works.

Speaker 16 Watch what they do, not what they say.

Speaker 16 We've got a lot to get to tonight. More to come on both those fronts.
Stay with us.

Speaker 18 Attacks are escalating on reproductive rights across America, and the Trump administration is once again leading the charge.

Speaker 18 They are trying to end abortion access, slash funds people rely on for care, and shut down Planned Parenthood health centers.

Speaker 18 When lawmakers try to shut down Planned Parenthood, they're blocking your access to birth control, cancer screenings, STI testing and treatment, abortion, gender-affirming care, and more.

Speaker 18 Planned Parenthood won't back down. You can help keep up the fight.
Donate now at plannedparenthood.org slash defend.

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Speaker 16 This is the cover of the latest New York Times magazine. You see it says there in big bold letters, the war on cancer.

Speaker 16 And then on top of those words, a big red stamp that says, canceled, quote, how the 50-year campaign to save millions of lives was dismantled in six months.

Speaker 16 Quote, in the mid-1970s, America's five-year cancer survival rate sat at 49%. Today, it's 68%.

Speaker 16 But now, an extraordinarily successful scientific research system, one that took decades to build and has saved millions of lives and has generated billions of dollars in profits for American companies and investors, that system is being dismantled before our eyes.

Speaker 16 Quote, in a matter of months, the Trump administration has canceled hundreds of millions of dollars in cancer-related research grants and contracts and suspended or delayed payments for hundreds of millions more.

Speaker 16 It has terminated hundreds of government employees who helped lead the country's cancer research system and who ensured that new discoveries reached clinicians and cancer patients and the American public.

Speaker 16 President Trump's proposed budget for next year calls for a more than 37%

Speaker 16 cut to the National Cancer Institute.

Speaker 16 Yeah, you'll remember when Trump was running for president against Kamala Harris last year and he said, vote for me, I'll get rid of cancer research. Vote for me, I'm for more cancer.

Speaker 16 I mean, not what he ran on, right? Not what anybody in their right mind would run on.

Speaker 16 But nevertheless, it is one of the most shocking facts of this second term of Donald Trump being president that his administration really is engaged in a comprehensive, aggressive, super thorough campaign to permanently destroy cancer research in this country.

Speaker 16 Not to pause it, not to refocus it, but to stop it.

Speaker 16 In the New York Times magazine this weekend, Jonathan Mahler reports that, quote, a deliberate and targeted attack is what cancer research is experiencing right now.

Speaker 16 One National Cancer Institute official told him, quote, they have studied how the National Institutes of Health works, studied it hard and learned it well, and they've put sand in the gears in ways that are very effective, devastating.

Speaker 16 The former number two official at the NIH, who stepped down this year after 18 years there, says, quote, it's an absolutely unmitigated disaster.

Speaker 16 It will take decades to recover from this if we ever do.

Speaker 16 Why are they doing this? I mean, who asked for this?

Speaker 16 Or who benefits from it, right? Cui bono, right?

Speaker 16 Jonathan Mahler writes this weekend, quote, America's 80-year run as the world's leader of biomedical biomedical research and America's 50-year run as the global leader of cancer research may well be coming to a close.

Speaker 16 And he says, quote, for no apparent reason. For no apparent reason.
And that is the question that hangs over this entire debacle, right?

Speaker 16 I mean, who in 2024 went to the voting booth thinking, yeah, the one thing I know is that we got to get rid of cancer research?

Speaker 16 We're going to talk later in the show tonight about what Trump is doing to vaccines in this country and the way that lots of people with public health backgrounds are trying to figure out ways around that to save public health given what he's doing to vaccines.

Speaker 16 But with cancer at least, I mean, unlike with vaccines, with cancer research, I mean, nobody's really pushing crazy potent narratives about the evils of cancer research the way that Trump's health secretary, Robert Kennedy, has been pushing crazy potent conspiracy theories about the evils of vaccines.

Speaker 16 Dismantling cancer research has what constituency, right?

Speaker 16 This is not something around which I can see any political constituency whatsoever, but it is a determined, comprehensive project that they are engaged in with incredible energy.

Speaker 16 Why is this happening?

Speaker 16 Joining us now is Jonathan Mahler. He's staff writer for the New York Times Magazine and the author of this remarkable piece.
Mr.

Speaker 16 Mahler, thank you for all the work it took to get this piece done, and thank you for being here tonight to talk about it.

Speaker 19 Thanks for having me.

Speaker 16 I just wanted to ask you to explain what I thought was one really important point that you made in this piece, that

Speaker 16 this defunding of cancer research, which you've documented, doesn't appear to be the byproduct of indiscriminately slashing the budget. It really does appear to be planned and targeted and deliberate.

Speaker 16 Can you explain that a little bit?

Speaker 19 Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, you can sort of, the instinct, the impulse, I think, is to see it as collateral damage, right? To see it as, well,

Speaker 19 this is, you know, just...

Speaker 19 the sort of byproduct of some larger effort to shrink the government,

Speaker 19 to kind of get the liberal elite research universities in line, et cetera.

Speaker 19 You can sort of look at it through that lens, but in reality, this has been such a kind of deliberate, focused, conscious effort. And this is not an easy thing to do.
I mean,

Speaker 19 the NIH and the National Cancer Institute, the NCI, were constructed to be insulated from politics. They were built to not be vulnerable to a political attack.

Speaker 19 So it's not an easy thing to do to start to dismantle the biomedical research system, to dismantle the cancer research system. And it took a concerted, deliberate,

Speaker 19 well-thought-through campaign.

Speaker 19 So it really isn't fair to see it as just collateral damage, just a sort of a, you know, a byproduct, a necessary byproduct of a larger effort to sort of straighten out the government and to get rid of the woke bureaucracy.

Speaker 19 It really was a targeted, deliberate effort.

Speaker 16 And I mean, forgive me for asking it this way, but is there some Earth 2 out there?

Speaker 16 Is there some corner of the MAGA world or the conservative political universe that I've never stumbled upon where cancer's good and cancer research is bad? Where there's some conspiratorial

Speaker 16 mindset around cancer research, something akin to the way they've demonized the public health miracle that is vaccines?

Speaker 19 Yeah, no, there really isn't. I mean, I did not come across one.
I mean, I think that the most,

Speaker 19 the best explanation I could come up with was, you know, that this was

Speaker 19 maybe,

Speaker 19 you know, think about this from the point of view of the tech right, right? This is like if

Speaker 19 the Silicon Valley approach here might be, we need to disrupt this system.

Speaker 19 You know, we haven't cured cancer yet, and we need to take this effort out of the hands of the government, and we need to empower private industry to

Speaker 19 cure cancer. The problem is

Speaker 19 they're not proposing anything new.

Speaker 19 This isn't an effort to reform cancer research. This is an effort to dismantle and defund cancer research.
There's no plan. There's no, well, we're doing all this so that then we can do that.

Speaker 19 There is no that.

Speaker 19 So

Speaker 19 it's very hard to, honestly, to understand because as you say, there's no constituency for this. And there has always been a very, very powerful bipartisan constituency for this research.

Speaker 19 That is why it has been so well funded across so many decades.

Speaker 19 It's honestly mystifying.

Speaker 16 It's mystifying in political terms.

Speaker 16 And at some point, somebody will make political traction out of this issue because there is no constituency for it, at which point we will find out if this damage is at all

Speaker 16 reversible. Jonathan Mahler, staff writer for the New York Times magazine, it's a really, really important piece.
I knew some of this was going on, but nowhere near the half of it.

Speaker 16 Thank you for doing this very difficult reporting and for being here tonight. I appreciate it.

Speaker 19 My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Speaker 16 All right. We've got much more news ahead tonight.
Stay with us.

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Speaker 16 So today was the day for everybody who works at the CDC, the Centers for Disease Control, to return to their headquarters in Atlanta. Their headquarters that

Speaker 16 is still full of bullet holes. It's less than a month since an anti-vaccine gunman fired hundreds of bullets into the CDC campus.
Repairs are still ongoing. You see a lot of the bullet holes there.

Speaker 16 But nevertheless, the staff is being ordered back to work there as of today, anyway. CDC employees have been through quite a lot recently.

Speaker 16 In addition to that concerted, major, violent attack on the CDC headquarters, which killed a police officer.

Speaker 16 You may remember just a couple of weeks ago, the CDC director was abruptly fired after just 29 days on the job. After she was fired, all the rest of the agency's top leadership quit in protest.

Speaker 16 And then everybody who works at CDC went out front of the buildings and clapped them out to support their decision to quit in protest, to salute them as they left the building.

Speaker 16 The CDC director who was fired then said explicitly why she was fired.

Speaker 16 She said Trump Health Health Secretary Robert Kennedy ordered her to pre-approve the findings of his vaccine advisory board that's due to meet this week.

Speaker 16 Kennedy, of course, has fired all the vaccine experts on that board, filled it instead with people who've made their careers spreading conspiracy theories and doubt about vaccines.

Speaker 16 The fired CDC director wrote about her dismissal, quote, I was told to pre-approve.

Speaker 16 the recommendations of a vaccine advisory panel newly filled with people who have publicly expressed anti-vaccine rhetoric.

Speaker 16 Trump's health secretary has denied that's the reason that he fired her, but we may hear more about it soon because she's going to testify in Congress day after tomorrow, Wednesday.

Speaker 16 The following day, Thursday, that's when Kennedy's wacky vaccine panel is going, in fact, to meet to discuss recommendations on a whole bunch of vaccines, including COVID and Hep B and measles, mumps, and rubella.

Speaker 16 All of those are on the agenda for that CDC meeting this week. Tonight, ahead of that meeting, Kennedy has announced five more appointments to that advisory board.

Speaker 16 As the New York Times reports tonight, quote, like other members currently on the committee, some of the new editions have expressed skepticism about vaccines or vaccine mandates.

Speaker 16 Joining us now is Apoorva Mandeville. She is Science and Global Health Reporter at the New York Times.
Ms. Mandeville, thank you very much for your time being here tonight.

Speaker 22 My pleasure.

Speaker 16 What should we expect out of,

Speaker 16 at least as far as you can tell, out of that testimony on Wednesday from the fired CDC director and from the vaccine approval meeting the following day?

Speaker 22 Well, from the Wednesday hearing, I think we will at least find out what Dr. Monares thinks happened, because in his hearing, the health secretary, Robert F.

Speaker 22 Kennedy Jr., said that he asked her point blank if she was trustworthy, and she said no.

Speaker 22 That seems like a very odd conversation to have. And I have a feeling she's probably going to deny that.

Speaker 22 So it's a bit of he said she said but she will probably also again detail the things she said in that Wall Street Journal op-ed you showed where she talked about the things that mr.

Speaker 22 Kennedy asked her to do that she felt she could not do and that's why she was forced out

Speaker 16 and then on Thursday

Speaker 22 sorry I was just gonna go ahead please go ahead Thursday On Thursday at the vaccine panel, we are going to see these new panelists, plus the seven that were announced a couple of months ago.

Speaker 22 they will be discussing the hepatitis b vaccine and voting on that and and we're expecting to see them change those recommendations at least a little and possibly quite a lot

Speaker 16 in terms of dr mineris's expected testimony on wednesday as you point out there is this weird scenario we had that incredibly lit up almost bizarre and performative angry hearing appearance by secretary kennedy recently in which he described described this scenario around her firing, which, I mean, I wasn't there.

Speaker 16 I don't know if it happened, but if it did happen, it's definitely stranger than fiction. Just a conversation that just doesn't happen in real human communication.

Speaker 16 At the same time, I do feel like this is a moment of unusual political potency because I feel like Secretary Kennedy, as much as his pugnacious affect and other things about him may appeal to the president and the president's supporters and pro-Trump media, it does feel feel like there are Republican senators who are uncomfortable with his

Speaker 16 work at the Health and Human Services Agency and who may specifically be uncomfortable with what he's doing at CDC and what he's doing at vaccines. What is your sense of the sort of political

Speaker 16 momentum around this question, around CDC, and potentially around this testimony?

Speaker 22 I think you're right that there are some Republican senators who have become increasingly irritated and dissatisfied with Mr. Kennedy's stances on vaccines.

Speaker 22 But I don't know how much political weight that's actually going to carry. I mean, we did see, you know, Senator Bill Cassidy, who was sort of the determining vote for Mr.

Speaker 22 Kennedy, feel really uncomfortable, it seemed like, about the decisions he's made and asked some really tough questions, including whether he agreed that President Trump should get a Nobel Prize, a Nobel Peace Prize for Operation Warp Speed, which brought us the COVID vaccines.

Speaker 22 And we saw Senator John Barroso, who also has not really spoken up about this kind of stuff before, take a stance.

Speaker 22 But at the end of the day, I'm not sure that that will make a big difference to President Trump, as my colleagues have reported. It seems like Mr.

Speaker 22 Kennedy enjoys a particularly close and protected relationship with the president. And it does not seem like President Trump really wants to

Speaker 22 shake Mr. Kennedy out of that job or even interfere with how he's doing it.

Speaker 16 We'll We'll see if

Speaker 16 that holds through what I expect to be pretty important, potentially politically explosive testimony on Wednesday.

Speaker 16 And we'll see what that wacky new vaccine advisory panel does on Thursday, how hard they're going to go with this. Apoorva Mandavili, science and global health reporter at the New York Times.

Speaker 16 It's an honor to have you here tonight. Thank you very much for being here.

Speaker 22 Thank you for having me.

Speaker 16 All right, we'll be right back. Stay with us.

Speaker 16 This is such a weird story. All right.

Speaker 16 As headlines go, it at least started with a very clear headline. Quote, $10 million in contraceptives have been destroyed on orders from Trump officials.

Speaker 16 These are birth control pills, IUDs, hormonal implants. The Trump administration decided that they were going to block these supplies from being delivered to developing countries.

Speaker 16 We had promised to deliver these supplies and Trump said, no, no, no, we're not going to deliver these supplies anymore. So this stuff had been sitting in a warehouse in Belgium ever since.

Speaker 16 This stuff was kind of in limbo. And groups like the Gates Foundation and the Children's Investment Fund Foundation had offered to buy the stockpile so they could deliver these supplies instead.

Speaker 16 The UN said they'd buy this stuff. They'd pay millions of dollars to buy these birth control pills and stuff.

Speaker 16 But rather than take any of those offers, the Trump administration said no, they would instead spend an additional $167,000 taxpayer dollars to incinerate this stockpile of perfectly good contraceptives.

Speaker 16 Which, okay, wow.

Speaker 16 But then look at what happened next. The Trump administration apparently told reporters in a statement that the incineration was complete.

Speaker 16 They had, in fact, burned 100, excuse me, $10 million worth of contraceptives.

Speaker 16 They explained, quote, the administration will no longer supply abortive facient birth control under the guise of foreign aid.

Speaker 16 Now, first of all, none of the products in this $10 million stockpile were abortifacients.

Speaker 16 This was like birth control pills and IUDs. Birth control

Speaker 16 pills are not abortions.

Speaker 16 IUDs are not abortions. It's just birth control.

Speaker 16 But it got so much weirder from there. So as I said, the warehouse where all of this

Speaker 16 contraception had been stockpiled was in Belgium. Authorities in Belgium saw this report in the New York Times with the Trump administration confirming that it had

Speaker 16 set all these contraceptives on fire. They've incinerated these $10 million worth of family planning supplies.
Authorities in Belgium went to the warehouse and checked to see if the report was true.

Speaker 16 And it turns out all the stuff was still there.

Speaker 16 The birth control that is in no way an abortion had not in fact been burned up. It had not been incinerated.

Speaker 16 The Times Times says the same official who had confirmed to them that the incineration had happened now was not responding to calls or texts or emails.

Speaker 16 After the Times published a new story about how, in fact, nothing had been burned, the official finally replied, quote, there was a miscommunication.

Speaker 16 Quote, there was a miscommunication with international staff and no destruction has yet happened, but we are reviewing the matter.

Speaker 16 It's like the way a Three's Company episode always resolves. It's all just one big misunderstanding.
Chrissy!

Speaker 16 Great work all around you guys. Great work.

Speaker 16 We'll be right back.

Speaker 16 Just before I go, one last reminder. Next week, this time, this show, Vice President Kamala Harris is going to be here for her first news interview since leaving office.

Speaker 16 She's going to be here live in person with me, 9 p.m. Eastern next Monday, the 22nd of September.
We have a ton to talk about. I'll see you there a week from tonight.

Speaker 1 Surprise! Beach day.

Speaker 2 No excuses. I'm in.
Give me five.

Speaker 3 With Bic Soleil Glide Razor, you'll have hydrated, smooth skin that's ready to go on the fly.

Speaker 5 No shave cream needed.

Speaker 6 You can prep, shave, and hydrate all in one step.

Speaker 8 Thanks to moisture bars that hydrate your skin during and after shaving.

Speaker 9 Five flexible blades hug your skin for a close shave.

Speaker 11 Glide into smooth.

Speaker 12 It's your time to shine with Bic Soleil.

Speaker 13 Buy now at Amazon and Walmart.

Speaker 14 Ready? Your skin looks amazing.

Speaker 3 So smooth and beach ready.

Speaker 20 Let's go.