← Deadline: White House
Deadline: White House
“A horrible marker”
00:42:49
Nicolle Wallace discusses Trump’s escalation in his retribution campaign against political enemies as Christopher Wray finds himself added to the list.
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A
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C
He has turned this Justice Department into.
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B
His own political watchdog.
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D
It's horrible.
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C
No president has done this. This is what autocrats do.
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B
Trump's done so many bad things to undermine our democracy, to undermine our norms. This is one of the very worst.
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D
Hi again, everyone. It's now five o'clock in New York. If you give a Donald Trump his white whale a long sought after and long denied indictment of one of his perceived enemies, he's going to want another one to go with it. Immediately following the indictment of former FBI Director James Comey, Donald Trump brutishly proclaimed, quote, there will be others. And this weekend, he hinted in an exclusive phone interview with NBC's Yamich Alcindor that the Comey successor atop the FBI, Christopher Wray, who Donald Trump hand picked, could be next. Quote, I think Christopher Wray did a terrible job and we just found out about it. Over 200 people being embedded into that situation. And Christopher Wray never said that. In fact, he did the opposite. And I think it's very inappropriate what he, what he did. And I think a lot of his service was very inappropriate, period. Yamiche then asked Donald Trump, quote, do you think DOJ should investigate this and launch some sort of investigation into Christopher Wray? Trump said, quote, I would imagine, I would certainly imagine, I would think they are doing that. It's hard to know what Trump is talking about because he makes not a lot of sense. But what we think he's talking about is a new report on January 6 that was published over the weekend that we're sure he saw in the conservative media outlet the Blaze. That report says that more than 200 undercover FBI agents were, quote, embedded in the crowds to which Trump falsely insinuated in a separate social media post, were, quote, probably acting as agitators and insurrectionists. So we're gonna stop the car here, we're gonna make everybody get out. We're gonna turn off the motor and the air conditioning because this is batshit crazy. Normal presidents get their information from their intelligence agencies. This is what we are deducing from what we saw on his social media feed and what we found in weird conservative media conspiracy theory content. It is also a lie that is so audacious, we want to try to put it into context for you, our viewers. Here's how audacious it is. Kash Patel is pushing back at least on a little bit of it in an interview with Fox News Digital. So the facts here they are, as laid out in a December report from DOJ's inspector general, are as follows. Quote, we found no evidence in the materials we reviewed or the testimony we received showing or suggesting that the FBI had undercover employees in the various protest crowds or at the Capitol on January 6th. Now, what that report did note was that there were 26 informants. Now, informants are confidential human sources that law enforcement develops to help them stay. I think the term used to be left a boom, a violent activity. They were in the crowd that day, but only three had been specifically tasked by the FBI to report on the potential for domestic terrorism activity. The rest who were there just wanted to be there. They decided on their own in the other parts of their lives that did not involve being confidential informants to attend the insurrection. And no FBI informants were authorized by the FBI to enter the US Capitol. Director Wray has addressed the conspiracy theories. Can you confirm that the FBI had.
- [04:55]
E
That sort of engagement with your own agents and embedded within to the crowd on January 6th?
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B
If you are asking whether the violence at The Capitol on January 6 was part of some operation orchestrated by FBI sources and or agents, the answer is.
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D
Emphatically you're saying no.
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B
No. You're saying no violence orchestrated by FBI sources or agents.
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D
Now, again, we're going to stop the car one more time. That for Chris Wray, is yelling. Like, for me, that's just communicating. But for Chris Wray, that's yelling an emphatic no. So all this further unraveling of the rule of law happening against the backdrop from the New York Times regarding the Comey indictment, Quote, while vindictive prosecution motions are notoriously difficult to win the president's voluble vitriol and his incessant need to be on the attack could provide defense lawyers with an avenue to protect the very people he most wants to punish. There's a reason that prosecutors traditionally speak about cases soberly and only in court or through court filings. They do not want to give an appearance of bias that could prejudice a jury or provide a defendant with an opening to accuse them of harboring partiality or ill will. Trump, a politician, not a prosecutor, clearly does not subscribe to that tradition. Donald Trump's obsession with prosecuting the leaders of the FBI is where we begin the hour with some of our most favorite experts and friends. New York Times Justice Department reporter Glenn Thresh is here. Also joining us, former top official at the doj, MSNBC legal analyst Andrew Weissman's here. And former FBI assistant Special Agent in charge Michael Feinberg is here. He's now a fellow at Lawfare. Glenn Thrush, Take me through this reporting in the Times that what Trump is doing may actually have as a single beneficiary. Jim comey.
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E
Well, it is kind ofit is really something. Malicious prosecutionand your two other guests can speak to this more authoritatively are incredibly difficult to prove, as you said. But Trump is bending the legal system and the criminal justice system in very difficult to predict ways. I mean, you're watching the system respond, right? Because you're not having resistance at the level of Pam Bondi or her principal deputy Todd Blanche. You're not necessarily being able to encounter resistance to some of these edicts from above at the US Attorney's level, because people are being either forced to quit or fired. So things are moving down the chain in terms of imposing a level of, of reality and normality to this system. So you're seeing, for instance, in Washington, D.C. grand juries rejecting prosecutions, most infamously with the guy who chucked the sandwich. So to some extent, this is a reflection of the system responding to it. Are we going to see federal judges more willing to accept these malicious prosecution motions? Are we also going to see, for instance, in the Comey case, a greater willingness, perhaps because of this incredibly chaotic and politically directed prosecution here, as to whether or not a motion to dismiss, again, which isn't necessarily always the first point of consideration, will that then become something we're going to see more commonly? So the question here is whether or not this entire system is going to respond to Trump's aggressiveness and his desire to steer it personally from the White House.
- [08:51]
D
You know, Andrew Weissman, you And I talked, I think, over what, six years about Trump's very obvious assault on the rule of law. And there were. And it didn't always feel like it, but. But I suppose there were enough guardrails in the system to just extend Glenn's language on this, that they didn't spill into public in a way that shattered the public's confidence in the system. And I wonder if sort of squeezing much harder than Bill Barr was willing to squeeze and much harder than lifelong Republican prosecutor Eric Siebert was willing to squeeze. If this is now just this public message that Trump will never be able to rein back in. There are reports today that this is going to backfire on his own allies, that this. That he's opened a door that will take him down a path that will damage him politically.
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B
Well, when we started talking about this six years ago, it still was something that you couldn't say out in the open. And the idea was that when Senator Kamala Harris was grilling Bill Barr, the then Attorney General, about whether the President ever directed who should be targeted, you might remember, he sort of famously sort of waffled on that and tried not to answer. The idea being that you couldn't just say it. Now, we are in a position where it's just out in the open, where you have actual political retribution and you don't have anyone at the Department of Justice at the leadership level pushing back on this. As. As Glenn said, I should note, on the outside of the Department of Justice in Washington, in the limestone engraved in there are the phrase, where law ends, tyranny begins. That is where we are now. But the reason for that being there and the reason that Loretta lynch, the Attorney General, has said that the Department of Justice is the one cabinet position that stands for an ideal, is that this is not supposed to be happening. This is what brings you to tyranny. And final thought sort of harangue on this is, I'm so sick and tired of hearing Pam Bondi and Kash Patel say, well, no one is above the law. No one is above the law. Each time they bring some case. Well, of course, that's true, but it simply isn't the case in this Department of Justice, where you don't have to just look at the January 6th defendants who are all pardoned. But Mr. Homan, the Border czar, is somebody who there's no investigation of. And the criminal justice system didn't apply at the federal level to our sitting President of the United States. So that sort of intoning those words doesn't make it true whether this politically backfires? I mean, I don't know the answer to that. As a matter of fact, politics and polling, I do expect that Jim Comey is going to win his case. It is so palpably thin. And not just the way in which we got to that indictment, but just all signs from the grand jurors that this case will never be able to be proved beyond reasonable doubt is something that could backfire. But I think the message from Donald Trump is I can do this even with a thin case. Even with respect to former director Chris Wray, it's almost the point that even if it's a sort of laughable case, he can still exact this kind of revenge.
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D
Michael, I've read just about everything you've posted since this news broke and I want to ask you to do this, give me a mile mark marker in terms of where we are right now. And do you feel like we're farther, sort of down than even the moment that you wrote about so extensively when you left the bureau?
- [13:25]
C
Very much so. When I wrote, when I resigned from the bureau, when I told my story, you know, what was in my mind, what was foremost in my thoughts was how do we know, know how far down the road to authoritarianism we are? And I don't think we're in an authoritarian regime, but we're at a point where the president has very much evinced a desire to turn certain governmental departments into authoritarian tools. Everybody talks about how the prosecution of Jim Comey is unprecedented, and I want to push back against that. It's not unprecedented at all. It's just unprecedented in a liberal democracy like the United States. This is behavior we have seen in regimes in other countries throughout history, using theoretically apolitical, fact driven organs of government to go after political enemies. And the fact that it is happening here for really the first time en masse in United States history is a very worrisome sign.
- [14:38]
D
What do you think people need to understand? I mean, I did, I think it's almost a year ago, did a series on authoritarianism. It could happen here. And now that it's happening, I worry that it's, you know, the pot was turned from simmer to low and then low to medium. And we use these words tyranny and authoritarianism and people still get up and watch their baseball team not make the wild card. I mean, people still go on with everyday life. So what is it that people need to understand from your years of service in the FBI about what it means that this entire agency has now been turned over to tyrannical, authoritarian purposes.
- [15:26]
C
So I think there's, there's really two things people need to keep in mind. First, it is not enough that Comey will probably win his case. As Andrew well knows from his service in government and Glenn knows from his reporting, the federal government, through its investigative and prosecutorial tools, can very much ruin a person's life long before formal charges are filed or a matter goes to trial. And the other thing people need to keep in mind is there is no finite list of enemies that they are going to get through and then stop. As long as there are individuals posing the agenda of this administration, if they can, they're going to leverage the tools of states to make those voices silent. And just because they're going after former FBI and DOJ officials now, now or state level prosecutors who indicted or tried Trump does not mean that they're going to stop once those individuals are taken off the board. We already saw it in the last executive order targeting antifa, of all things, which by the way, anybody who has ever worked domestic terrorism will not tell you is actually a formalized group. It's maybe a shared set of values in an unfashionable fashion sense, but, but beyond that, it's not an organized structure the way Al Qaeda or ISIS is. But they wrote this executive order in such a way that they could rope in left wing advocacy and fundraising organizations into the domestic terror space. This is something that should worry everybody because you can't predict who their next enemy is going to be.
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D
Yeah. And I mean, Glenn, just to build on Michael's point, you also can't rely on the fact that everyone will have access to journalists like yourself to sound an alarm. You know, what Comey has in the system is that antibodies can be created by anyone that hears the story of Eric Siebert and Bill Barr's refusal to bring the case that was brought to a grand jury last week in the Eastern District of Virginia.
- [17:45]
E
That's one of the big challenges ofand, you know, this too, Nicole, of doing this jobis getting people to pay attention. These are arcane, procedural matters to most people. If you kind of go out there and ask people about what's going on at the FBI and DOJ and these firings, they couldn't care less. You know, and I also think the other factor here is like, a lot of Democrats hate Jim Comey. You know, the Clinton folks blame Jim Comey essentially for losing the 26 campaign, which rightly or wrongly is a pretty widespread opinion. I think a lot of Democrats and Clinton Supporters are obviously appalled by what's going on right now. But getting people to pay attention to this stuff, and Trump understands this. He understands that people's attention spans on bureaucratic issues and him turning it into these procedural battles. Look, his entire defense strategy in both of his federal criminal trials was to grind this down, to get it into the arcana, to get people battling back and forth and frankly, to change the subject. Covering this Justice Department is exhausting by design. Once you're done with one thing and you're covering it, something else pops up that warrants the same level of coverage. This is, again, is the way that this is being done. The only subject that seems to have attracted the public attention and caused Trump trouble with his own party. Because there is no resistance that I'm discerning from Capitol Hill on any of these moves dealing with Comey and any of these statements Trump has made in public about his enemies is the Epstein matter. Why? Because it has a personal impact on the reelection prospects of individual senators and representatives.
- [19:39]
D
I mean, the only thing I push back with is 38, 39, 41, 40, 38. It looked at every poll that's been published, and Trump barely breaks 40. So the cumulative impact, I think, can feel numbing with our nose against the glass. But the broader picture is, you know, gray and bleak and nobody likes it. I mean, that's a major drop off for a president still in his first year. I'm just taking a break. I want to show all of you what Andy McCabe had to say, which is stunning. It'll, it'll wake you up and bring you to attention if you're not already. And I also want to get into why he's mad at Chris Wray. Also ahead for us, why the prosecution of Jim Comey matters to all of us. We'll try to break this down with our very, very, very smart panel. The former chief White House ethics lawyer under George W. Bush, who would not let me have a Diet Coke purchased for me by a single reporter covering the Bush White House when I worked there and he was our ethics advisor, will be our guest. And later, whether they intended to or not, I think we say wittingly or unwittingly, the fb, the NFL has waded right into the red hot center of American population politics with its announcement of the mega superstar, their performer for February super bowl halftime show. Predictably, MAGA is crying and losing their minds. We'll tell you all about it later in the hour. Deadline White House continues after a quick break. Don't go anywhere.
- [21:09]
A
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- [22:11]
C
Saturday, October 11th from New York City, it's MSNBC Live 25. Join your favorite MSNBC hosts Rachel Maddow, Joe Scarborough, Mika Bruszinski, Nicole Wallace, Ari Melber, Alicia Menendez, Simone Sanders Townsend, Michael Steele, Chris Haynes, jen Psaki, Lawrence O', Donnell, Stephanie Ruhle and more. Visit msnbc.comlive25 to buy your tickets. Today.
- [22:42]
D
I'm going to show all of you something that former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe had to say to over the weekend about Trump's DOJ about indicting Jim Comey. Listen to this.
- [22:54]
G
What we are seeing is the very intentional, blatant, out loud dismantlement of the Department of Justice and the concept of prosecutorial independence in this country. And that is something that should terrify every person in this country, whether you are you consider yourself a Democrat or a Republican or unaffiliated, whatever, center, center, whatever voter. When you can no longer trust the independence of the Department of Justice and its application of its massive prosecutorial power, when it's absolutely clear that we live now in a place where the President can just demand that somebody be charged with a crime and then that charge happens, despite the fact that all of the prevailing analysis, apparently before that action was that there was no charge here, it is a horrible marker. This is a day that will go down or an act that will go down. I think in infamy, as an indicator of just how serious this fall from independence and integrity in our justice system has become.
- [24:05]
D
You all know as well or better than I do that Andrew McCabe chooses his words carefully and is as non hyperbolic and judicious in his words, choices and the things he writes as anyone. And to call the indictment last week a day that will live in infamy was a next level jolt for the already awakened paying very close attention. I take Glenn's point that that isn't all of us. Andrew Weisman, you, you, you worked with him. I mean, your thoughts about that analysis. Do you agree?
- [24:36]
B
Well, of course, I completely agree with, with Andy here. I was thinking about, you know, what you were saying about sort of how do we do a better job of sort of making sure people understand. Why is this so important? Why is Andy ringing this alarm? Why is Michael, why am I, why are people doing this who know the Department of Justice and on the. I know that one of the things that, that I hear is this sort of like, isn't this just what happens all the time in every administration? And the answer to that is sort of twofold. One, no, it doesn't. It's not to say that there aren't instances of it. I'll return to that in a second. But under Republican and Democratic administrations, this is not the norm. I always tell the story. If I worked on the Enron task force that was under the Bush administration, there was not a moment, not a single moment that Larry Thompson, who is the acting attorney general over that case in any way had any sort of political interference in that case. That's the norm in administrations. But I do think what it means, because people are cynical and they think this is what happens in back rooms, is it means that we really need to make sure that, you know, when politicians do this, whether they're in a party you like, whether it's your Democrats or Republicans or Independents, that it's called out because it leads to this kind of cynicism, it leads to people thinking this is what happens all the time. So, you know, these instances of bad behavior, even when they're aberrational, are viewed as systemic and indicative of something that happens all the time. And then it allows people like Donald Trump to say, look, it's tit for tat when it isn't. And that's why I think you're seeing people, you know, I think sort of across the spectrum, certainly in the legal world, in the law enforcement world and the intelligence community reacting this way to what is going on at the Department of Justice.
- [26:46]
D
I mean, I take your point that that's people's perception. I guess what I would point back to is the proportionality. I mean, there is no president in American history of either party who ever pardoned the number of people associated with his own businesses and campaigns as Donald Trump. There is no one in history who ever pardoned people who beat up cops in the numbers that Donald Trump did on his first day in office. There is no one in history who is systematically repelling Republican backed prosecutors from the department and all the people that work for them because they analyze facts that Bill Barr had rejected four years earlier and said there's no there there. Mr. And then had an insurance lawyer walk in on day one, walk into the wrong courthouse, as I just learned from some incredible new reporting from Glenn Thresh, and do what Donald Trump told her to do. This, I mean, because I take your point about what people feel, but I think that that is, that is part of the problem. People feel that predicated on lies. And right now, the target of the lies is Christopher Wray. And you, you talk about Comey not having a natural base of support, Christopher Wray, like I hope he has a dog, like he was Chris Christie's defense attorney. Trump turned on him. He's a guy without a constituency. And Michael Trump's coming for him over a conspiracy theory that I spent hours trying to figure out. I did my best to tell you the conspiracy and the facts, and I barely understand it.
- [28:13]
C
It's a really weird set of circumstances and it's quite frankly odd that he's going after Chris Wray. When I first heard the comments that he wanted Ray investigated, I assumed it was part of this general deep state conspiracy anti Trump madness that Tulsi Gabbard has been parroting at every press conference she can. And they were going to somehow rope in Ray's tenure into that. But to tie it to January 6th, it's lunacy and it's insulting and it's a whole host of other negative adjectives which, given our current fcc, I will avoid explicitly stating. But look, I was a supervisor in the Washington field office on January 6th 6th. I was called immediately back to the office to respond in a fashion to some of the things that were going on. And I can assure you, I will wager every penny of the pension which was taken from me, that the FBI was not instigating anything at the Capitol on January 6th. On the contrary, we were trying to contain it when it happened. And we were trying to investigate the egregious, offensive and unprecedented assaults on federal officers that occurred minute by minute during that insurrection. And whatever insult it was to pardon all the criminals who took part in that activity. It is almost a greater insult to imply that the people who tried to stop it, we're somehow involved in starting it.
- [30:02]
D
So perfectly said. And yet here we are. And so I'll put all of you on warning. We're going to need you. Glenn Thrush, an incredible new piece that I just alluded to has dropped. Thank you for all of your reporting and for joining us to talk about it. Andrew Weissman, Michael Feinberg, thank you for being here and starting us off this hour. When we come back, the growing fear over a Justice Department. That's all the things we've been talking about. That is now clearly one that will prosecute Donald Trump's political critics because he says so. And why. Our next guest says it means that no American is safe. Former White House ethics lawyer Richard Painter will be here. Don't go anywhere. So with all of this, there's the why and then there's the why right now. And the first one's pretty easy. The Department of Justice is clearly targeting former FBI Director Jim Comey because Trump told it to, and perhaps others in order to make Trump's ambition, which has never been a secret of retribution, a reality. But this isn't a new dream. Remember, Trump's calls to prosecute Comey actually predate what we know about the alleged crime the indictment alleges he committed. So why not? Then again, why now? The answer could be really simple. It's because right now he can. There are literally no guardrails now. Elements of a reforged federal government are willing and eager to cast off norms and traditions and ethics and laws to satisfy a president completely consumed by bitterness and revenge. Researcher Painter, former chief White House ethics lawyer from 2005 to 2007, put it in his latest MSNBC piece, quote, if the Trump administration can do this, then no American is safe from political prosecution. Quote, no American should have to go through the experience of being prosecuted under those circumstances. And the rest of us should not have to live in fear that it may also happen to us. We do not live in a dictatorship, at least not yet. Joining us now is former chief White House ethics lawyer under George W. Bush, Richard Painter. Richard Painter, we're such a long way from ethics. We're now. And some of this is on people like me, right? There were Hatch act violation stories, and I think sometimes it felt like there were other more urgent things happening in Trump 1.0. But the natural extension is to blow through all those norms and traditions and self imposed rules and now have crypto events in the West Wing and prosecute your critics. How do we make sense of where we are and where Trump is leading us?
- [32:49]
H
Well, this, what's going on right now, these politicized prosecutions, it's extremely dangerous. This is what happens in dictatorships in Russia. If you upset Vladimir Putin, you end up in a gulag somewhere. Billionaires who upset Putin have their assets confiscated, anyone who dares run against him for political office. This happens in dictatorships where the Justice Ministry is turned into a weapon of political retribution. And we cannot allow this in the United States. And this is happening on top of all of the other problems in the Trump administration, the violations of the emoluments clause of the Constitution, fraud, foreign government money coming into the Trump crypto business empire. Apparently, he's made close to a billion dollars in cryptocurrency just during his second administration. We aren't even through a year yet, and this goes on and on. This administration is not willing to abide by the laws and the Constitution of the United States. We do need to start with the Justice Department and what's going on there. The politicization of the Justice Department is worse than anything we saw, even under Richard Nix, worse than Richard Nixon's Justice Department. And I believe the United States House of Representatives does need to start impeachment proceedings against the attorney general. I know this decision was not made by the attorney general necessarily, apparently is made in the Northern District of Virginia. But we know there's extraordinary pressure put on the interim prosecutor, who is President Trump's former lawyer, his lawyer in the Mar A Lago case is now the prosecutor who's bringing these charges against James Comey. The Attorney General of the United States is responsible for what's going on. The Justice Department, it is a travesty. It is extremely dangerous. And yes, I believe the House of Representatives does need to start an impeachment investigation, starting with the Attorney General of the United States. And that should happen now.
- [34:50]
D
Richard, have you met the Republicans in the House of Representatives?
- [34:55]
H
I've met a few of them, and I know full well they're not going to do it. And that's the problem.
- [35:01]
D
So what do we do?
- [35:04]
H
Well, the answer may be pretty obvious. What has to happen. Some people need to get fired, and that's what the voters need to do. And I don't care what your views are on the issues, whether you're a Democrat or Republican or independent. We need a Congress that's going to hold accountable the executive branch. We need more. Liz Cheney's there in Washington, D.C. in Congress, if you're Republican, if you're a Democrat. We need more Jamie Raskins, but we need people going to stand up to abusive power. Use of power in the White House and in the Justice Department is extremely dangerous in the Justice Department. And we now may be having some problems in the military. I don't know what the secretary of defense is saying to the senior officers about their role and who their loyalty is to. Well, I should emphasize the oath of loyalty of an officer of the United States military is to the United States of America, to our Constitution, not to one man. I know there's one commander in chief, but he is there to excise his powers under the Constitution. So we need a House of Representatives and a Senate who will hold this administration accountable. And if they won't hold them accountable, we have to vote them out. And I urge the Republican Party to run candidates for Congress who will do their job. And that may include standing up to a Republican president because that's not what's going on right now. They're talking about investigating Christopher Wray. I mean, this just goes on and on. And it is not going to stop until Congress tells the president it has to stop.
- [36:39]
D
Richard Painter, thank you for your piece and thank you for joining us here to talk about it when we come back. The Magaverse is outraged today. They're very, very, very upset. They're going to have to go do whatever they do to cheer up because the NFL picked an outspoken Trump critic, a huge, huge, huge superstar to perform at the halftime show, the Super Bowl. We'll bring you that story next.
- [37:07]
A
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- [38:08]
C
Saturday, October 11th from New York City. It's MSNBC LIVE 25. Join your favorite MSNBC Live hosts Rachel Maddow, Joe Scarborough, Mika Bruszinski, Nicole Wallace, Ari Melber, Alicia Menendez, Simone Sanders Townsend, Michael Steele, Chris Haynes, jen Psaki, Lawrence O', Donnell, Stephanie Ruhle and more. Visit msnbc.comlive25 to buy your tickets. Today.
- [38:39]
D
Bad Bunny is one of the biggest superstars in the world. He's also one of the best selling artists of all time. With more than 100 million albums sold worldwide. Bad Bunny has three Grammy Awards, 10 nominations. His last sold out tour through the Americas broke records in ticket sales, and his extended residency in his home of Puerto Rico has brought hundreds of millions of dollars to the island's economy. Maybe you caught the Saturday Night Live episode he hosted or the three times he was their musical guest. You can also watch him host SNL season opener this weekend. I was about to say tomorrow, but it's only Monday. Bad Bunny is a huge, huge star. Anything and everything he does is seen certainly all over this country, but also all over the world. So in many ways, Bad Bunny is an obvious choice and arguably the most logical person to stand on that biggest music stage in the world in February. And it was a choice that the NFL made. Bad Bunny will headline the super bowl halftime show in February. It's being met with outrage, though, by the Magaverse, the very, very fragile Magaverse. After all, the Spanish language superstar is an outspoken critic of Donald Trump's and he decided not to perform in the US on his upcoming tour. He said this in an interview about that decision. He said he's, quote, very concerned that ICE would target his fans outside of his concerts amid Donald Trump's immigration crackdown. Bad Bunny posting on social media last night, quote, after discussing it with my team, I think I'll do just one date in the United States, end quote. Joining our coverage, host of the Bulwark Podcast, MSNBC political analyst Tim Miller is here. Tim, I don't know what the NFL feel thought. I think they picked one of the great artists of our time and they picked someone wildly popular. But Bad Bunny also happens to be sort of an honorable and a clear and a moral center in speaking out against the Trump administration, both in its treatment of Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria and in its current brutal and harsh immigration policies.
- [41:03]
I
Yeah, there's that old Mad Men line in the elevator and the guy looks at Don and says, I hate you. And Don looks at him and says, I don't think about you at all. I think that was the NFL's policy towards Trump. I think the Trump people, as you mentioned, the very fragile Trump boys who are upset and thought that whoever the biggest Trump star would be, it's hard to even come up with who that would be, but thought they would have a more favorable guest and a more dominant culture right now. And they thought that when they won the election, that meant that they won everything and they get to run roughshod over everybody. I do think that is part of their, their worldview, as warped as that is. And the NFL wasn't thinking about politics at all. I mean, I'm sure they had somebody vet what he had said about ice. We can talk about that in a second. But I think what the NFL was doing was saying, hey, we're trying to expand globally. They had a game in Ireland this weekend. They're trying. They gave Brazil recently. They're trying to have games all over the world. And so. So why not bring in one of the biggest superstars on the globe to come and do the halftime show and try to appeal to the broad global market as opposed to merely just like the angry white guy living in the south market. Nothing wrong with that. I'm a white guy living in the South. Bad Bunny's not my favorite. I'm not spending Bad Bunny that often. So I understand why they feel disconnected from it. But I also understand why the NFL might not be micro targeting me.
- [42:23]
D
Well, but in this country, I think Bad Bunny tops Taylor Swift in terms of downloads on Spotify. So, I mean, Fat Bunny's huge, huge, huge here. And in terms of American exports, I think he's as big as they get. I think what your first point though is so interesting about culture. They won the election and they know it. They believe they won culture because they think culture can be dominated the way the Republicans in Congress can be dominated. But that's not how culture works. And if you listen, and I know you pay really close attention to the manosphere, they're slipping. You know, if they're sort of like boats that were anchored together, you know, the manosphere has drifted away from them. And they have made inroads into culture in ways that the Republicans you and I work for really never did. But they're not dominant. They have. Trump has approval rating. I looked at every poll I could find. He doesn't crack 40.
- [43:20]
I
Yeah, no doubt about that. So just on both points and their feelings that wanting to dominate culture, I mean, you've seen this over the last few weeks, and I got a little Internet tip with Megyn Kelly, like one of the things she said to me is that we are going to defeat you. Which is like a kind of crazy thing to say just in general. But that was her point. It was like broadly everywhere, right? Like, we want your people, anti Trump people, pro democracy.
- [43:40]
D
Why is she so obsessed with you?
- [43:44]
I
I don't know. It's very strange. But she wants us to be silent, right. It's not just winning the election. That's not good enough. Right. Silent. And I think that they want the universities to cave to them. We've seen those across everything. That's what they want. The movies to go back to how they were before and all the mermaids to be white again and princess. That's what they wanted out of this election. It was not because Trump wasn't really about policy. A couple policies, the border tariffs. But mostly it was about this cultural feeling that they were being oppressed. And so this upsets them when they haven't won again. And I do just back to the manosphere. I do think that that like puts them. That's only part of the coalition that cares about that.
- [44:22]
D
Right.
- [44:22]
I
It's the most fragile part of the MAGA coalition. Some of these guys that came on board late, I've been really, I've been on a lot of flights lately, so I've been binging on their podcasts. You know, it feels kind of weird to them. It's like, why do you care about this so much? Like, this isn't about you. And they wasn't a bad bunny. City is very popular. So I do think in some ways like this need to feel like they need to dominate. Everything that's being pushed back on by south park and now by the NFL and other places is a sign of kind of the weakening grip of where they thought they would be right now, at least on that side of things. Obviously he has a pretty strong grip on the more governmental side of things.
- [45:03]
D
Right. He is an autocrat's clenched fist around the Department of Justice, but culture, not so much. Tim Miller, thank you very much for joining us on this quick break for us. We'll be right back. Writer and professor Timothy Snyder warns us that authoritarians prevail when we give in to despair and fear. Someone who refuses to do that despite a decades long feud with Donald Trump that has culminated in Donald Trump repeatedly allegedly threatening to strip her of her U.S. citizenship. Is my friend and former colleague Rosie O'. Donnell. Are you scared for your own safety and your own citizenship?
- [45:46]
B
No, he can't take away my citizenship. And if he can. That's the end of America and I wouldn't need it anyway. I'm in the process of getting my Irish citizenship because my grandparents are from here and you have birthright citizenship if that's the truth. And I would be sad if he.
- [46:03]
C
Would take away my citizenship, but it.
- [46:05]
B
Would also mean the America that I knew and loved is gone because no president has the right to do that. And we have the Constitution.
- [46:16]
D
Ladies and gentlemen, Rosie o' Donnell showing the way, offering a lesson on how to protect our sanity amid the chaos and cruelty of the Trump administration. She's also brimming with empathy and hard won wisdom on everything from motherhood to being a good citizen. Rosie o' Donnell is my guest on this week's episode of the Best People Podcast. Scan the QR code to listen to our conversation right now or download it. Wherever you get your podcast, be sure to write me on bluesky or Instagram and let me know what you think. One more break. We'll be right back. Thank you so much for letting us into your homes today. We are grateful.
- [46:53]
A
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