“80 days out from the midterm elections”

Summary

Podcast Summary: Deadline: White House

Episode: “80 Days Out from the Midterm Elections”
Date: August 14, 2026
Host: Nicolle Wallace
Guests: Mark Elias (Voting Rights Attorney, Democracy Docket Founder), Sean Morales Doyle (Director, Brennan Center Voting Rights Program), Tim O’Brien (Bloomberg Opinion), Priya Sridhar (MS Now Pentagon Reporter), Allison Jaslow (Retired Army Captain)

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Overview

This episode delivers a vital, multi-faceted analysis of the political landscape just 80 days before the November midterm elections. Nicolle Wallace leads her panel through an urgent discussion of escalating attacks on election integrity, the Trump administration’s attempts to control elections via unfounded legal maneuvers, and the implications for American democracy. The episode also features on-the-ground reporting about deteriorating conditions for U.S. service members aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, exposing the human cost of Trump’s Iran war. Financial corruption linked to Trump’s Truth Social platform and instances of personal enrichment by the Trump family are scrutinized in the final segments.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Trump’s Desperate Election Tactics

[05:05 – 09:38]

• National Security Emergency Power Play:
  The podcast starts with concern over Trump allies floating the idea that the president could declare a national security emergency to seize control of election administration, a legally dubious and dangerous precedent.
  • “Stranger things have happened—Trump’s response to a proposal so radical and outrageous…to seize control of our elections.”—Nicolle Wallace [01:39]
• Baseless Claims of Fraud:
  Discussion about how repeated efforts to restrict voting methods (e.g., mail-in ballots) keep failing in courts, yet rhetoric about election fraud persists.
• Legal Authority for Elections:
  U.S. Constitution does not grant the president control over state-run elections. Courts consistently block Trump’s attempted overreach.

2. The Legal Fight: Courts as a Fire Wall

[04:14 – 16:58]

• Trump’s Legal Team’s Losing Streak:
  • The Trump DOJ is “over 22” in lawsuits to access state voter rolls and expected to go “over 30.” The courts are “failing to give in,” including overwhelmingly conservative judges.
  • “Of those 22 cases … eight of them have involved Donald Trump-appointed judges, 12 of them involve judges appointed by all Republican presidents.”—Mark Elias [15:49]
• Next Steps and Manufactured Deep State Narratives:
  • Anticipate escalation of rhetoric: losses portrayed as evidence of rigged systems, mobilizing claims of ‘deep state’ interference—signaling potential for more unrest.
  • “The only question is whether some of the judges at this point just say it’s getting so close to the election, they don’t have to decide.”—Tim O’Brien [06:44]

3. Undermining Public Trust: Civic Response

[09:52 – 16:58]

• Civil Rights Division Reversal:
  • “The crown jewel of the DOJ, which used to protect against civil rights violations … is now being used to accomplish the opposite objectives.”—Sean Morales Doyle [10:14]
• Comparisons with Hungary and Poland:
  • Even with obstacles, vote margins can become undeniable, as historian Tim Snyder highlights (clip).
• All Hands on Deck:
  • “We need the voters, the lawyers, the media, and the courts … It’s an all hands on deck moment.”—Mark Elias [14:28]

4. Voting Rights and Civic Participation

[13:09 – 17:41]

• Resilience of U.S. Democracy:
  • Despite unprecedented attacks, U.S. institutions and public engagement have so far withstood pressure.
  • “It takes people investing in democracy, refusing to give in to the campaign aimed at creating distrust …”—Sean Morales Doyle [13:09]
• Antibodies Against Election Deniers:
  • Systemic resilience requires “everyone to do their part”—voters, officials, courts, and civic groups.

5. Human Cost of War: USS Abraham Lincoln

[22:22 – 34:55]

• Exposing Deplorable Conditions:
  • Priya Sridhar recounts harrowing stories: sailors suffering due to extreme overwork, unsafe conditions, and neglect by chain of command. One sailor even jumped overboard.
  • “He told her … his contact lens prescriptions had expired and he was having difficulty seeing the aircraft. … They essentially brushed it off.”—Priya Sridhar [24:14]
• Trump’s Dismissive Response:
  • Trump shrugs off family concerns, claiming nine months at sea is “not nearly long enough.”
• Family and Service Member Voices:
  • Interview with a Trump-voting stepmother who feels betrayed: “I voted for Trump because he wouldn’t get us into wars like Iran.” [29:46]
  • Allison Jaslow emphasizes importance of leadership and mental health support for deployed troops.
• Congressional Pressure:
  • Lawmakers, spurred by this reporting, press for transparency and answers on the extended, grueling deployment and its impact.

6. Financial Corruption on Truth Social

[36:05 – 43:08]

• Profiteering from Policy Announcements:
  • Access to Trump’s official statements posted to Truth Social is sold to firms for $100,000/month, allowing lucrative financial bets ahead of market-moving news.
  • “Truth Social is the preferred method for Donald Trump … That just seems profoundly corrupt, absurdly corrupt. And it is also unconstitutional.”—Brendan Ballou [36:47]
• Pattern of Enrichment:
  • Trump family and associates profit on advance knowledge of significant policy decisions, including military actions.
  • “He’s in there because he sees the White House as a gigantic cash register.”—Tim O’Brien [41:51]
• No Pretense of Ethics:
  • Noted escalation from first-term “petty corruption” (Trump Hotel, Saudi deals) to open monetization of White House power, including the president’s sons leveraging proximity for personal gain.

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Notable Quotes & Moments (with Timestamps)

• Nicolle Wallace:
  • “Stranger things have happened is Trump’s response to a proposal so radical and outrageous … to declare a national emergency to seize control of our elections.” [01:39]
• Sean Morales Doyle:
  • “Every court that has ruled on this … has stopped it. The real point of all this is to undermine public faith in our elections, to cause distrust. … It succeeds if people stay home in the fall.” [10:56]
• Mark Elias:
  • “Too much cowardice by too many large law firms. … In the past, you'd be talking about the largest law firms in America, lining up to file litigation. They’re largely sidelined.” [15:01]
• Allison Jaslow:
  • “It was very insensitive. … This is a ship that deployed in November when we were not in this conflict. The mission has completely changed.” [28:35]
• Priya Sridhar:
  • “He was exhausted, contact lens prescriptions expired … He had told her, but they essentially brushed it off.” [24:14]
• Tim O’Brien:
  • “Trump has made billions of dollars on crypto alone. No other president in any era … has been this hungry to turn the White House into a casino and just harvest money.” [39:52]
  • “He’s in there because he sees the White House as a gigantic cash register.” [41:51]

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Important Segment Timestamps

• Disinformation & Legal Overreach: 01:39 – 09:38
• Losing Streak in Courts & Plan B: 06:30 – 08:36
• Tim Snyder on Resilience: 11:48 – 12:29
• All Hands on Deck Call: 14:28 – 16:58
• USS Abraham Lincoln Segment: 22:22 – 34:55
• Truth Social Profiteering: 36:05 – 43:08

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Conclusion

This episode of Deadline: White House offers a comprehensive, urgent analysis of the threats facing U.S. democracy, the mechanics of civic resistance, and the corrosive effects of corruption at the highest levels. The conversation is rich with expert insights, trenchant critiques of enablers (from silent law firms to corporate cowards), and moving personal stories that cut through political abstraction. The takeaway: democracy’s survival demands mass civic action, vigilance, and refusal to be demoralized by disinformation or the relentless “circus of lies” from powerful actors.

As the midterms approach, this episode stands as both a warning and a call to arms for listeners who care about fair elections and government accountability.

Transcript

[Priya Sridhar]

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[Nicole]

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[Allison Jaslow]

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[Priya Sridhar]

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[Priya Sridhar]

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[Nicole]

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[Sean Morales Doyle]

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[Mark Elias]

Three angles.

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[Allison Jaslow]

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[Nicole]

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[Sean Morales Doyle]

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[Priya Sridhar]

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[Nicole]

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[Priya Sridhar]

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[Sean Morales Doyle]

Let me put an idea in your head, okay? Because it's so hard to get the Senate to do anything now. They're on recess. They don't get anything done. If you declare a national security emergency

[Mark Elias]

as the President United States, they can't challenge it. It can only be overturned by a

[Sean Morales Doyle]

2/3 vote of both houses of Congress. So if you do this in the

[Mark Elias]

next month, we will get photo id, proof of citizenship, and a limit to mail in ballots. And let me just say this. Stranger things have happened. Okay? I'll leave it at that.

[Nicole]

How dumb do they think we are? Hi again, everybody. It's five o' clock in the East. Stranger things have happened is Trump's response to a proposal so radical and outrageous and unfounded an idea on a cable or podcast or whatever that was show to declare a national emergency, a national security emergency to seize control of our elections. It's deeply disturbing to hear that it's just over 80 days out from November's midterm elections. Elections we know will be a referendum on Donald Trump even though he's not on the ballot. Elections we know he does not look like he's going to be successful in. And he doesn't want his party to lose because if Democrats take control of Congress, they have already said they plan on holding the Trump administration accountable. Here's Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries just yesterday on that.

[Sean Morales Doyle]

Our focus right now is making sure that we win as many seats as we can in November, flip as many red seats blue and take the gavels back so we can actually function like a check in balance on and out of control administration. We're operating under the premise that the Trump administration and that Republicans have adopted voter suppression as an electoral strategy and are going to do everything they can to try to rig the election in their favor.

[Nicole]

Now, there have been countless efforts already by Donald Trump and his allies to take over elections about which democracy docket writes this quote, he largely has not succeeded. And the reason is simple. The US Constitution gives the president no lawful authority over how states run elections, and courts have said as much while knocking down many of his efforts. But with each loss, Donald Trump has grown more desperate and his actions more brazen, raising the risk that he will try something even more lawless. Just this week, we saw a federal judge expand an earlier block on Donald Trump's effort to limit mail in voting. But no matter what Trump attempts, his argument of election fraud has already been undercut by his own very special advisor, John Solomon, who said this to my colleague Von Hilliard last month.

[Tim O'Brien]

All I can acknowledge is what the intelligence shows.

[Allison Jaslow]

Right.

[Tim O'Brien]

I only know the Intelligence Committee has zero evidence that someone has flipped a, that a foreign power flipped a vote in 2020, 22 or 24.

[Sean Morales Doyle]

And so the 2020 election was in fact, the results as we, the American public. I'm still researching. So let me, let me, this is the first. But there's no intelligence. Now, you've been on that he's got to get. There is no intelligence that the election would have said that Donald Trump was president.

[Nicole]

The president said that tonight. Inspector Clouseau is still searching. It's where we begin the hour with voting rights attorney and Democracy Docker founder Mark Elias. He's here with me for the hour. Also joining us, the director of the Brennan Center's voting rights program, Sean Morales Doyle. I mean, Marc, it's not funny. I guess if you stare at this stuff every day, you have to find some gallows humor in the moment when even the most Trumpy, most conspiracy theory open person has to acknowledge what the intelligence does and does not say. And it does not say that there was any fraud. And Vaughn estimated about 2020, 2022 and 2024 there. I think that's where we are. That's sort of the baseline from whence they're doing all of this illegal, unlawful, dangerous stuff.

[Mark Elias]

Yeah.

[Tim O'Brien]

Look, the thing about, about Donald Trump is he's always been able to get people to usually lie in the driveways. You know, remember Rudy Giuliani, parking lot four season landscaping here, John Solomon? I guess to his credit, he didn't lie. He told the truth. And that poor woman who works, I assume, for the White House. Her job was to then physically get John Solomon out of the way of Van Hilliard as quickly as possible to minimize the damage. But the lies will continue and they will escalate and they will become more preposterous. As you showed in that first clip, you know where Donald Trump was asked a question of sorts about a national security emergency, citing a court case that has nothing to do with it, suggesting that he can overcome a legislative failure to enact a law by putting it in place and then Congress can overturn it by two thirds. I mean, it's just a bunch of gibberish, but it is the thing that lays the predicate for what comes next. You know, just today, Donald Trump's Department of justice went over 22 in their litigation efforts to get access to state voter file. They lost in their effort to get the 6th Circuit, very conservative circuit, to review that one of those cases en banc. So what we're going to see is the lies continue even as the court losses mount.

[Nicole]

You talked about what happens next. I mean, be a little more specific. What will they do? I mean, they haven't won in court. They're over 22. How many more state voter rolls are they trying to get? And what's plan B?

[Tim O'Brien]

Okay, so they sued for 30 voter rolls. They are over 22. They are definitely going to go over 30. Unless some of these judges just say, you know what, like this, where we're not going to, they're not going to win any cases. The only question is whether some of the judges at this point just say it's so it's getting so close to the election, they don't have to, they don't have to decide. So they're going to lose those cases. I think in the end, Donald Trump is going to lose his effort to co opt the postal service to, to coerce states to provide voter file information. I think that Donald Trump's Department of Justice efforts are going to lose their other court cases. So then they move to the next phase. And the next phase is escalating the lies and basically saying that losing these cases is proof that there is massive fraud, that losing these cases is proof that there is a deep state, that losing these cases is proof that, that they need to therefore take the next step, which in, you know, in the 2020 election was January 6th, and we will see what it is in 2026. But I think we all need to take seriously the possibility that Donald Trump will either use the power of the federal government, ice, cpb, FBI, who knows what to target his political opponents. And in this case, his political opponents will be voters and election officials, not just people like me and others who are more prominent. But, but they'll turn this against the public like they did in Minneapolis around immigration and or it might be the, the inspiration of, you know, right wing vigilantes, which we saw obviously on January six, but we've seen around election activity since, you know, you see every time there is an election that goes out the way that Repub don't want, you see these right wing vigilantes sort of pop their head above the sea level.

[Nicole]

So here, Sean, is what Todd Blanche, whose predecessor in the first Trump term, Bill Barr, who was sycophantic in every way, drew the line at these election conspiracies. He called them, quote, bullshit. Here's what Todd Blanche has to say about the integrity of our elections and how he's going to use the Civil Rights Division to meddle.

[Allison Jaslow]

Have you spoken with people in the

[Nicole]

Civil Rights Division to see what they're

[Allison Jaslow]

observing in these primaries and if you

[Nicole]

have any concerns that they have raised

[Allison Jaslow]

as they've been observing polling places?

[Sean Morales Doyle]

So I don't have an update necessarily today to say here's what we're doing. But yes, that is a, that is something that the Department of Justice, as every Department of Justice does, is making sure that we're appropriately monitoring between now and you're right, there's primaries, but up through the election and, and we'll continue to do that. It's important the American people know about it because we're doing it to make sure that we have elections that are fair and run the right way.

[Nicole]

I guess bit of a word salad in there. But the most important thing he said was yes. Yes. When she was asked, when he was asked if he spoken to the Civil Rights Division. What do you hear there, Sean?

[Sean Morales Doyle]

Well, he did say that other departments of justice have also deployed monitors from the Department of Justice to monitor our elections. And that's true. The difference here is that this Civil Rights Division of this Department of Justice has made it their stated mission to turn the depart the Civil Rights Division on its head and in the words of the head of that division, Harmony Dhillon, to drive the train in the opposite direction. And so the crown jewel of the civil of the Department of Justice, which has historically played such a significant role in protecting against civil rights violations and race discrimination in our elections, is now being used to accomplish the opposite objectives. And so that's worrisome. But again, they don't have any real legal tools or real legal authority over our elections. The statements at the beginning of the segment about calling for a national emergency are actually an implied concession. They're sort of telling on themselves here. They know the president doesn't have any authority over elections. And so folks are urging him to declare a national emergency and with the idea that somehow that will give him that authority. But that also won't work. He doesn't have any authority over elections. This campaign is not a legal campaign. It has been stopped at every turn by every court that has ruled on it, the 22 voter roll cases, multiple injunctions against his various executive orders, an injunction against his SAFE program overhaul. And they know they don't have this authority. And the real point of all this is to undermine public faith in our elections, to cause distrust. And so the way that this campaign to undermine our elections succeeds is not in court. It succeeds if people stay home in the fall. And that's what it's really all about.

[Nicole]

Let me show you something to that point that Tim Snyder said. I interviewed him this week for my podcast. Mark Elias is this week's guest. Tim Snyder is next week's guest. Let me show you what he said. To your point, John,

[Sean Morales Doyle]

we recognize that despite impediments, you can still win big, which happens. It's happened in the United States in the era of civil rights.

[Nicole]

It's happened recently in Hungary and Poland. You can win elections even when you're

[Sean Morales Doyle]

going uphill, it can happen.

[Nicole]

And so you have to work to make it happen.

[Sean Morales Doyle]

Which means everybody votes, everybody organizes, everybody accepts that this is a coalition in which there are going to be people

[Nicole]

to your right and to your left or above you, below you, whatever, who

[Sean Morales Doyle]

you don't entirely agree with, but who are on your side about the basic

[Nicole]

issue of democracy and renewal.

[Sean Morales Doyle]

So this election has to be won.

[Nicole]

It has to be won big. So I think I was asking him about the results in Hungary, how they had some of these impediments in place. Orban had been there 12 years. And whether or not it was just this pent up rejection from the public of the brazen corruption and the attacks on the free press and the oligarchy that took over their economy, or if it was something else that happened, that a million Mark Eliases made the system more fair, his point was even with all these structural impediments, that the vote was so big it was undeniable. Where do you see our election compared to that example, Sean?

[Sean Morales Doyle]

I think we should remember that we have a strong and resilient democracy in the United States. It's something that we've always prided ourselves on. It's not a perfect democracy. It's not the democracy we truly deserve. We still have worked to get it there, but it has survived in the last six years unprecedented attacks, unprecedented conditions, and has stood up in the face of all of that. And it's done that because the American people have invested in this democracy and that's what it's going to take. It takes people, it's investing in democracy, refusing to give in to this campaign aimed at creating distrust and going out and participating in all the ways that Americans can still participate in our democracy. Voting, talking to their elected representatives about what they want, what they care about. Being a poll worker, if you want to do that, encouraging your friends and family to make a plan to vote, working with pro voter organizations and civic organizations. We do have that strong democratic infrastructure. And so, yes, we have seen other nations stand up in the face of a slide towards authoritarianism and stand up for their democracy. And I think actually we're in a better place for doing that here given that democratic infrastructure that we have built.

[Nicole]

Marc Elias, how do you see this moment?

[Tim O'Brien]

Look, I think that we need everyone to do their part, right? So it's an all hands on deck moment.

[Mark Elias]

It is.

[Tim O'Brien]

Certainly at the centerpiece of all of this are the voters. And so every voter, as Sean said, needs to have a plan to vote. They need to make sure they're registered and they need to turn out to vote. But, you know, we can't just send the voters out by themselves. Right. We need the lawyers to do their part. And we've seen too much cowardice by too many large law firms. You and I have talked about this before, and so I'll raise it again. You know, in past election cycles, we would be talking about, or you'd be having on this show representatives of the largest law firms in America, all of whom would be lining up to send people out into as poll workers, poll monitors. They'd be filing litigation and they're largely sidelined. We would be talking about civic leaders and business leaders issuing press releases and giving time off for their workers to go vote and incentivizing them to be poll workers. And they are now all cowards and remaining silent. So, you know, and finally we'd be talking about the fact that the election officials are, you know, the uniform backbone of our elections. But over the course of the last, you know, three, four election cycles, we have seen more Tina Peters get involved in administering elections. So, you know, those have weakened and the Republican Party has become much more dogmatic in replacing good election officials with bad election officials where they can. So ultimately, we need everyone to do their part. We need the voters, we need the lawyers, we need the media, we need the, the few corporate leaders who are willing to speak out. We need the good election officials, we need the good secretaries of state and ags. And we need the courts. And, you know, we, we continue to rely on judges. You know, of those 22 cases, of those 22 cases where the Department of Justice has lost, eight of them have involved Trump, Donald Trump appointed judges, 12 of them involve judges appointed by all Republican presidents. The 6th Circuit today denied the Republic the do request to revisit the defeat that the Department of Justice had there. It's one of the most conservative circuits in the country and they lost their effort to get the 6th Circuit to review this. So I know it's fashionable to be down on the courts and I get it, Believe me, I understand it with every fiber of my being. But we're going to need to insist that the courts do their job as well.

[Nicole]

I want to ask you guys about one other election related story. The pillow guy is still out there. He was actually a candidate in the Republican primary. Mike Lindell, a close ally of Donald Trump, known as my pillow guy, said he's not ready to concede in the Republican primary for Minnesota governor. He blamed potential voting irregularities despite losing by 11 percentage points to Minnesota House Speaker Lisa DeMuth. Sean, this is a Republican primary, so this is sort of election denier against another Republican. Your thoughts about whether or not we have the appropriate level of antibodies in the system to, to, to deal with people like Mike Lindell?

[Sean Morales Doyle]

Well, I think it's easier to deal with someone like Mike Lindell when they lose by 11 percentage points, to be frank. But it is, it is. Everything that Mark just said is true. When we faced a president trying to undermine our elections, trying to overturn the outcome of an election back in 2020, it was a sort of desperate ad hoc attempt. After the election was over, it was met by resistance inside the administration from folks like Bill Barr and outside the administration from election officials in places like Georgia and Michigan, Republicans and Democrats alike. And that's not the situation that we face right now because this is a concerted campaign that began on day one of this administration because there are no longer people who will stand up to the president within this administration. He has populated his administration with election deniers and he has done his best to try to threaten those outside of his administration to scare them away from standing up against him as they would have in the past. That's all true. But it is also true that we have seen courts do their job to stand up in the face of this administration time and time again. It is also true that we do still have election officials like those who stood up to him in 2020 holding strong in the face of those threats. You know, they responded, the secretaries of state responded to those letters saying we'll come after you criminally if we have to by basically saying this is a joke. And so, yes, I do think we have the antibodies to protect against the election deniers and to ensure that we still have a democracy in this country. But again, we have those in place so long as everybody participates, so long as everybody does their part. And that means it's incumbent on voters as well.

[Nicole]

All right, we'll keep having this conversation because I think that the Trump administration is counting on is that people don't see or realize or step into their agency and power on this. So that's a great note to end on today. Thank you. Marc Elias and Sean Morales Doyle. We played a clip from the new episode of the Best People with historian Tim Snyder. The whole conversation with Mark Elias is still there, but for subscribers. You can listen to the conversation with Tim Snyder tonight if you want. You scan the QR code on your screen right now to sign up. Conversation will be available to everyone starting Monday. Also ahead for us, Donald Trump is outright dismissing out loud and in public the concerns of family members of sailors and Marines on board the USS Abraham Lincoln. That's despite all the reporting about the poor conditions on board the aircraft carrier. He says no, their family members are not concerned. The latest example of Donald Trump's utter disinterest and disrespect for the men and women who wear the uniform of our country is our next story. And later, with Donald Trump's money making scheme at his social media platform, now the subject of a new lawsuit. We'll look at exactly how he's putting been able to monetize and profit off of the White House.

[Allison Jaslow]

Why?

[Nicole]

Corruption doesn't even begin to describe what he's doing there. Deadline White House continues after a quick break. Don't go anywhere.

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[Mark Elias]

what else do I have to say?

[Priya Sridhar]

Family members of U.S. service members are

[Allison Jaslow]

concerned about the conditions on board the

[Nicole]

USS Lincoln that ship is going to go to.

[Mark Elias]

That ship is moving right now or very shortly, and it's being replaced with another. Not nearly long enough.

[Nicole]

It hasn't gone on nearly long enough, says Donald Trump, appearing to shrug off the deadly serious reports from family members of exhaustion and real mental and physical duress and horrific living conditions for United States service members currently on board the USS Abraham Lincoln amid an extended deployment nearly nine months at sea and six months into Donald Trump's war of choice with Iran, which Trump says is, quote, not nearly long enough, end quote. We learned yesterday that the Trump administration plans to send a fresh aircraft carrier in place of the USS Lincoln. That report was revealed on the after alarming accounts first reported by MSNOW's Priya Shriether about sailors forced to live with moldy showers, food shortages and without toothpaste, deodorant and soap. Ms. Now has also learned that one sailor jumped overboard, according to his wife, after expressing concerns about his mental health and being brushed off by his chain of command. In response, a Navy spokesperson said in a statement, quote, to protect patient privacy, we will not discuss individual service members or their medical information. I want to bring in the journalists who first broke the story. Our Pentagon reporter Priya Sridhar. She's also a former officer in the Navy. Also joining us, retired US army captain and Iraq War veteran Ellison Jaslow. Priya, tell us what you are reporting today.

[Priya Sridhar]

Yeah, that's right, Nicole. Well, I exclusively spoke to the 19 year old wife of that sailor who jumped off the USS Abraham Lincoln last Monday. And she told me that she wasn't completely surprised that this occurred because she had been receiving alarming texts from her husband since about the middle of his deployment. He was an aircraft mechanic who was working on helicopters on the aircraft carrier's flight deck. And he had told her that he was working very long shifts, he was exhausted. And he also expressed concerns that his contact lens prescriptions had had expired and he was having difficulty seeing the aircraft and he was worried that that could potentially lead to accidents. He said that he expressed both of his mental health concerns and these physical safety concerns numerous times to his chain of command and the medical team on the shift, but they essentially brushed it off. Now, even more shocking, Nicole, is that this spouse told me that she didn't even learn about this incident of her husband jumping off the ship from Navy leadership. She heard about it from one of her husband's squadron mates and she repeatedly reached out to the Navy for more information. She wasn't able to make contact with her husband for five days after he jumped off the ship. And it wasn't until Friday when she finally received official communication from the Navy that he was going to be medically evacuated off the ship. And I think really what this spotlights is the growing concerns, as you mentioned before, about the morale and the existing exhaustion and the toll that this ongoing war in Iran is having on our service members, specifically on this ship.

[Nicole]

Priya, let me just drill down on what you're reporting about this one individual working on helicopters that obviously impact the safety of many other individuals. You write this, quote, every single time he would make a mistake, they would yell at him and he would get into a lot of trouble. His wife said, quote, he would explain to them that he can't see because his prescription was expired, but they still allowed him to work. She went on to say, quote, I think that also had a big toll on him because he could have injured a lot of people and he could have injured himself because that's what they kept yelling at him about every time he made a mistake. Do we know if he ever received the prescription contact lenses before he worked on helicopters, presumably that carried other service members?

[Priya Sridhar]

Yeah, I think that's a really important question. And you know, typically when you go on a deployment, you will bring multiple pairs of glasses with you. I mean, that's something that the military requires. But I think given the fact that we've been hearing from so many service members and their families about supply issues, to the ship, it's reasonable to assume that he probably didn't have access to, to any of his prescriptions being refilled. So I wouldn't be surprised if this was a larger issue. And the flight deck of an aircraft carrier, as I've been reporting for weeks, is already a dangerous place regardless of whether you're at war or not. You have really high speed aircraft that are launching and landing there. You have bombs and weapons that are moving around at a very fast pace. It's extremely loud. So already when you're talking about people working these really long hours for months on end with no, no port call, this was a modern day record in the Navy to go 208 days continuously at sea with no port calls. Typically these aircraft carriers stop every 30 to 45 days. You add all of that together, Nicole, and we're just talking about one single sailor story right now. I mean, there's hundreds of these sailors that are working on the aircraft carriers flight deck. I think it's just potentially a recipe for disaster here. And I think the Navy is lucky that no one died as a result of any sort of accident.

[Nicole]

And Donald Trump's response today was, quote, it should have been longer. I want to bring Allison into this conversation. I have to sneak in a quick break. We'll all be back on the other side. Rebecca, Priya and Alison Allison, Donald Trump couldn't have sounded more out of touch with the families if he tried to. How does that land?

[Allison Jaslow]

I mean, I think that the service members who are aboard the USS Lincoln and their families probably feel like their deployment has gone on long enough. I don't know if the President has ever experienced something like a deployment before, but whether you're on ground or at sea, it's very emotionally trying. In fact, I think this situation is emblematic of an under discussed scenario that is dealt with by anybody who's deployed, which is there is mental health strain regardless of exposure to combat. People deal with family issues from afar that they can't address in person like you'd want to. And so it certainly was very insensitive. And I think, you know, it also papers over the fact that this is a ship that deployed in November when we were not in this conflict. They were going out on a routine rotation at sea. And the mission has completely changed. And I'm not sure that the guidance that they've gotten from the top down has helped them stay at ease in terms of understanding. Also, regardless of this change in mission, when their time at sea is going to end and it seems like it's reaching a fever pitch right now.

[Nicole]

Allison, let me show you Priya's interview with Bonnie York. Her stepson is 21 years old, and this is his first deployment. She says she's a Trump voter, but she voted for Trump because he wouldn't get us into wars like the one we're now engaged in in Iran.

[Allison Jaslow]

Maybe the government could have given us the information we needed to understand what we're doing out there and for our servicemen and women to say, okay, this is important, this is what we're doing this for. It's. Everyone's saying, well, they signed up for this. This is what it is. And I'm thinking, what are you talking about? They're going to be out there till they complete their mission. What.

[Nicole]

What are we completing?

[Allison Jaslow]

What have we completed?

[Sean Morales Doyle]

I'd like to know.

[Nicole]

I mean, it's a real wake up call, I think, for those of us covering Donald Trump's statements with puzzlement and sort of the analysis politically, that this is so devastating for him and his party ahead of the midterms, because the indecision, the we're going to effing bomb you back to the stone Ages, threatening to do things that are war crimes, and then saying, oh, no, we're fine. I think today he said, we're going to take control of the Strait of Hormuz. It'll be in American territory. We cover it as erratic from a national figure. And for the families and the men and women whose lives are literally dangling based on his decisions in matters of war and peace, in the case of at least the one individual who jumped overboard, it could be life and death.

[Allison Jaslow]

You know, responding to the interview that you just showed, we have a saying in the army at least, mission first, people always. And of course the mission comes first, but people always means two things. One, taking care of your people. And it's clear that the people on the USS Lincoln and have not been taken care of. Makes me wonder whether we plan to be in a prolonged conflict like this, because the simple supplies that support their medical needs should have been factored in as a part of an extended rotation here. But also clarity of mission is important for the people, not just their families. You know, I was deployed during the surge and I consider myself lucky because we were extended for a 15 month deployment just after we got on ground in Iraq. But I had buddies who were literally packing up and putting their goods on the ship, their equipment on the ship to go back home, had to unload those ships and continue fighting. And that is a scenario. Again, it might mean that the mission has to be first, but you have to manage that from the top down from a leadership perspective to help people reset their expectations. Otherwise, those service members, those sailors who once saw a light at the end of the tunnel and it's all of a sudden gone dark, are going to deal with some understandable mental health strain and issues.

[Nicole]

Priya, your reporting, I think, has lit a fire under Democrats in Congress at least, who want answers. What is your sense of whether or not families have received any answers?

[Priya Sridhar]

Well, Nicole, I don't think that the families have necessarily gotten what they feel they need from Navy leadership. As you know, there were two town halls that occurred last week on Thursday, one in person with the acting Secretary of the Navy and then a virtual one with other Navy leaders for families who don't live in San Diego. And they asked many questions about the conditions on board the ship. And they brought up the reports of this sailor who had gotten, who had fallen overboard or jumped overboard. And at the time, Navy leaders said that this person had been rescued, which, by the way, the wife told me that it took them an hour to get him back onto the ship and that he was quote, unquote, fine, which was met with a lot of anger from the family saying he is absolutely not fine and nobody on that ship is fine. So I think they're happy that finally the Lincoln is in the spotlight as they believe it should be. And they're feeling somewhat hopeful that they're still seeing these Democratic lawmakers write these letters to the Pentagon demanding answers about why this deployment has been extended, what the mission is, who is authorizing all of this, and when the Lincoln is going to come home. And by the way, Nicole, just in the past two hours, both Secretary of Defense Hegseth and Acting Secretary of the Navy Hung Cao have been tweeting up a storm, almost seeming to do some sort of damage control and publicity here regarding the Lincolns, saying that relief is coming soon and these sailors will be able to come home. The acting Secretary of the Navy actually acknowledged a lot of the things that I've been reporting about, saying that there were a small number of mental health cases that were treated, but there was no loss of life. And I think speaking to family members about that tweet, they're saying, you know, this is they're trying to minimize the pain that these service members have gone through. And what they're experiencing right now is just the beginning. Many of them are concerned about the long term impacts this deployment is going to have on their loved ones.

[Nicole]

Chris Sri they're incredible reporting that's had a real impact for these families. We'll stay on top of it. Alison, Jazza, thank you so much for bringing this all to life for us. Thank you both for spending time with us today. When we come back, it's being described as extraordinarily corrupt and unconstitutional, by the way. And it actually gets worse. From there. We'll take a closer look at Donald Trump's social media platform, ironically called True Social, and his blatant out in the open scheme to use the presidency to profit off it. You know that feeling when too many

[Sean Morales Doyle]

things fall through the cracks? Monday.com was built for that gap, the AI work platform where people and agents work side by side to deliver more together. Create your first Monday agent [e-mail] Simone Sanders Townsend and I have known each other for more than a decade, tussling over politics and policy when she worked in the White House and I reported on it.

[Allison Jaslow]

And now we're friends and colleagues and on our podcast, Clock it, we are positioning ourselves at the intersection of culture and politics.

[Sean Morales Doyle]

Clock it is where we talk about what we see and hear in the news. So you can start to clock it, too. Clock it with Symone and Eugene. All episodes available now. True Social is the preferred method for Donald Trump to make any official announcement. That's where he hires people. That's where he fires people. That's where he announces wars. That's where he announces ceasefires. So literally facilitating, you know, people taking bets on what the president's going to say and in his official announcement. So that just seems profoundly corrupt, absurdly corrupt. And it is also unconstitutional.

[Nicole]

That was Brendan Ballou on this program yesterday. He has filed lawsuits on behalf of media companies who call Donald Trump's latest scheme corrupt and unconstitutional. The Washington Post is reporting today that the company that owns True Social says more than 10 customers, primarily, quote, high frequency trading firms, have signed up to pay $100,000 a month for access to what the interim CEO boasted this week as, quote, a machine readable feed of posts from the platform's top accounts in milliseconds. And since Truth Social is where Donald Trump regularly announces major policy decisions that often literally shift global financial markets, just a split second edge or advantage can mean millions of dollars. In June, for example, the Wall Street Journal reminds us that when Trump posted that the US Quote, must respond to an Iranian attack in the Strait of Hormuz, trading in energy stocks spiked almost immediately. Two days after that, Trump posted that he was canceling Strikes because negotiations were proceeding with Iran. This time the instant reaction triggered a steep fall in energy and defense related share prices. For more proof of the corruption and opportunity for those willing to pay, remember the reports earlier this year of well timed trades made just days or minutes before major announcements from Trump? The Wall Street Journal reported that a mystery trader placed about $34,000 on Venezuela related bets just before Trump ordered the capture of its president back in January, which we learned about the next morning on, wait for it, Truth Social. In February, one group reportedly made $1.2 million on bets for the first u. S. Israeli strikes in Iran. And most of the accounts bet on a strike for what turned out to be the exact date of the operation. I'm going to bring in political analyst and Bloomberg Opinion senior executive editor Tim o'. Brien. Tim o', Brien, I think in the first term you could say coincidence or corruption. I think in the second term Trump has made a fool of all those people in the first term who bet coincidence.

[Mark Elias]

Yeah, I guess I would tweak that a little bit to say that it was just low level corruption in the first term. Like the Trump Hotel near the White House where the Saudis would take out entire floors prior to meeting with officials in the White House. All of that stuff is such small change compared, as you note to what we're seeing now in Trump 2.0. He's made billions of dollars on crypto alone. No other president in any era in the United States has been this craven and this hungry to turn the White House into a casino and just harvest money, regardless of the impact it has on the reputation of the presidency, the creation of nonpartisan socially responsible policy, et cetera, et cetera. And as you noted in the top of this block, the timing of this true social business opportunity is pretty extraordinary because when all of this stuff emerged that, you know, I think it was around $760 million in oil contracts were moving ahead of big policy announcement from the White House when dozens of accounts got set up on either Calci or Polymarket Prior to the Iran invasion. There was a suspect suspicious trading around Venezuela prior to Maduro being snatched. And the White House warned staff not to do that kinds of stuff because it was those things, it was bad. And you would think they then would take the next step. And any administration, Democrat or Republican, to say we, we forbid our employees from doing something like this, it's against the interests of the American public. But instead because it's the Trump White House, they think we're missing an opportunity to make a Lot of money. Rather than forbid this, let's just channel all of this to Truth Social and do exactly the same thing. And the only reason they're able to make money off of this is because Donald Trump's sitting in the Oval Office.

[Nicole]

Tim, what is your sense of how far they'll go? Right, like there's a lot more time left and everything is for sale, right?

[Mark Elias]

Well, they'll go as far as they can, I think, Nicole, because this is not a bug in this White House. It's one of the main reasons Donald Trump went was hungry for the presidency. In addition to insulating himself from the consequences of the law and his own illegal actions, he also understood after the first term that, that it was an extraordinary opportunity to make a ton of money. So when his sons go out and they talk about the sacrifices they made as a family by going to Washington and that and that, and that the President had to forego other moneymaking opportunities, we have to remember that he has made more money in the first, almost two years of his second term than he ever, ever made in any single year as a businessman. He's in there because he sees the White House as a gigantic cash register.

[Nicole]

The Suns have also made more money since Donald Trump has been back, and I think he's only been back in Washington. I think it's about a year and five months. I know it feels like 37 years, but it's just been a year and about five months. So there's two and a half years left. And the Suns are now. They're government contractors. Who knew? I mean, what do you make of the willingness to, of the sons to enrich themselves based on their father's position?

[Mark Elias]

Well, he's their father, and they learned at his knee. And, and they have absolutely no shame about profiting off of any aspect of this White House they can, whether it's opening a private club near the White House. Where the clear value of joining Donald Trump Jr's club is because he has his father's ear. They're getting into businesses that neither one of them had any experience in, whether it's the mobile phone business or harvesting rare earth metals in a mining business or harvesting tungsten in Kazakhstan. And in some cases, they've gotten overt help from their father. They deny that they've done that, but it's very apparent that they get it and they wouldn't be able to make this kind of money again. But for the fact that they're Donald

[Nicole]

Trump's sons, it's incredible. We need to go through all of it. Tim o', Brien, thank you for joining me on this news. Thank you, Nikol. When we come back, from the grimness of our politics to a magical moment among the cornfields of Iowa. Stay with us. After four long years, Major League Baseball returned to Iowa for the Field of Dreams game. The Phillies faced off against the Twins among the cornfields where the iconic 1989 movie starring Kevin Costner was filmed. The Phillies trounced the Twins 7 to 1, but that wasn't enough to ruin the mood, even for the Twins. Their first baseman, Royce Lewis, said this quote, just like chills. It was really cool having really emotional, having family there, a special day, just so unique. And the MLB plans to keep this tradition up because if you build it, they will keep coming. They'll have their fourth Field of Dreams game next year. According to the Des Moines Register, which reported that the Kansas City Royals will face off against the Boston Red Sox, the makeshift ballpark now has permanent locker rooms and suites so families get a chance to revel in the nostalgia of America's pastime played in the corn fields for years to come. But this year, this Mets fan will congratulate the Philadelphia Phillies, even if it kills me. One more break. We'll be right back. Thank you so much for letting us into your homes for another week of shows. We are grateful.

[Sean Morales Doyle]

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