← Deadline: White House
Deadline: White House
"A precarious day for the future of our country’s intelligence agencies"
00:43:36
June 19th, 2026, 4pm: Nicolle Wallace on Donald Trump’s personal political attack dog Bill Pulte officially assuming the role of Acting Director of National Intelligence -- a job for which Pulte has zero qualifications except for unwavering loyalty to Trump.
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Nicole Wallace
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- [01:10]
Nicole Wallace (Host)
Hi there everyone. It's four o' clock in the East. It is a precarious day for our country, for our national security, and for the future of our nation's intelligence agencies, with Donald Trump's personal political attack dog Bill Pulte officially assuming the role of acting Director of National Intelligence today. It's a job for which Pulte has zero qualifications except for his unwavering loyalty to Donald Trump. Brand new reporting reveals just how eager Pulte was to start the job and try to disrupt the office he is supposed to lead. According to CNN's reporting on this quote, Pulte showed up at his new job a day early on Thursday after asking for a list of every employee in the office so he could assess whether to fire them. That that's according to two people familiar with the matter. CNN adds this reporting quote the sources said Pulte is eyeing to cut hundreds of jobs at the office of the Director of National Intelligence. Pulte's appearance at ODNI Thursday caught staff off guard, including the outgoing director, Tulsi Gabbard, who was given a brief heads up on the visit. Trump himself has said that Pulte, who is a Trump loyalist with no intelligence experience, would start his job Friday. Pulte's short resume includes serving as the head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, where he's drummed up mortgage fraud cases against Trump's perceived enemies. And Donald Trump's decision to have him lead the country's 18 intelligence agencies has proven so controversial and unpopular that Even members of Donald Trump's own political party don't support Pulte. Trump was forced to nominate U.S. attorney Jay Clayton instead to be the permanent DNI, and after Pulte faced bipartisan backlash. But Trump, proving himself, if nothing else, erratic, abruptly pulled the rug out from Clayton's nomination hearing scheduled earlier this week, giving both lawmakers and the intelligence community whiplash. Now, with Pulte taking the reins at ODNI and Pulte's now publicly known plans to purge the office, the top Democrat on the House Intel Committee, Congressman Jim Himes, writes this. Quote, if the reports of Bill Pulte's arrival at ODNI are true, they demonstrate why he should never spend a minute as Director of National Intelligence, a role he is legally not qualified to perform. Pulte should expect the Intelligence Committee to closely scrutinize any actions he takes in what should be a very, very short period in this role to include any personnel decisions or declassifications. The top Democrat on the Senate Intel Committee, Senator Mark Warner, also weighed in, issuing this warning quote, bill Pulte is grossly unqualified for the responsibility with which he has been entrusted. I only pray that the American people don't end up paying the price for incompetence. Donald Trump putting US national security on the chopping block to serve his political appetites is where we start today. With a member of the House Intelligence Committee, Democratic Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthy of Illinois. Also joining our conversation, former Assistant Special Agent in Charge at the FBI and. And our national security and intelligence analyst, Michael Feinberg is here. Also joining us, Puck News senior political columnist, national affairs analyst John Heilman joins us for the hour. Congressman, tell us what you know about why Clayton's confirmation hearing was scrapped and why the urgent need for Pulte to rush into this office a day ahead of even Trump's timeline, which was Friday.
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Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthy
I don't know is a simple answer. I just saw Trump's truth Social tweet or whatever he calls it, and it was just. It caught everybody by surprise. Look, this guy is completely unqualified. Apparently, he even asked somebody, according to the CNN report that you quoted, whether he could take the President's daily brief home with him, which shows his complete lack of sophistication and lack of experience. And I think that basically Trump wants him in there to doge the place, doge the intelligence community and fire people who may not be loyal to the president and endanger our national security interests. Investigate election fraud, which is, of course, a bogus claim in the first place. And then third, potentially use sensitive information against the President's political enemies, which he did at the Housing Finance Administration as well.
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Nicole Wallace (Host)
Congressman, let me show you Trump giving him his marching orders. Just so no one thinks that we're being precious about any of this. Trump directed him to do what you just outlined on camera. This is from June 4th.
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Commercial Voiceover
Why do you think, Mr. President, he's the best person for the job?
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Donald Trump
Well, he's very smart. He's a person who's got high integrity. He's done a phenomenal job at Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac. You know, you probably have a trillion dollars in value there. But he's a very smart guy and he may find out some things about the rigged elections, et cetera, et cetera. I think he'd like to do it.
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Nicole Wallace (Host)
He may find some things out about the rigged elections, et cetera, et cetera. I mean, I not heard him described as smart by John Cornyn or anyone else. But even if he were, I mean, John Durham had more money than Robert Mueller and didn't find anything about any. I mean, everyone that has looked at this has found no evidence of any problems with the elections. Chris Krebs, a lifelong Republican, Bill Barr, Trump's very sycophantic Attorney General, what do you think Trump is saying when he says Bill Pulte is going to go and find things as ODNI about, quote, rigged elections?
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Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthy
Well, I think he's, it's, it reminds me of that phone call with Raffensperger in Georgia where he asked him to find votes. I think he wants this guy Pulte to, quote, unquote, find election fraud information which Tulsi Gabbard even was unable to find. And let's just be clear, even Thom Tillis, no liberal Democrat, calls this guy a sycophant. In closed door meetings, he's referred to, this guy Pulte is referred to as Little Trump. And so that is why he's there. The problem is it endangers our national security. And the only people are cheering this appointment are our adversaries because this guy Pulte will be focused on finding, quote, unquote, fraud in the elections here instead of directing his attention at our adversaries and national threats.
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Nicole Wallace (Host)
Congressman, let me show you one more piece of sound. This is Senator Jon Ossoff in an interview with my colleague Jen Psaki.
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Nicole Wallace
I think the installation of a thug and a hack like Pulte as the Acting Director of National Intelligence is maybe the most chilling and the most dangerous nomination or appointment that this President has made. Remember, it was Pulte's predecessor in this post, Tulsi Gabbard, that the president dispatched to Georgia to oversee that ballot raid on an election facility in Fulton County. Now he is putting Bill Pulte atop of the entire intelligence community. A partisan loyalist with no background whatsoever in intelligence or national security. He is putting the national security of the country at risk. His handling of this is putting the United States at risk and making a terrorist attack more likely because he is destabilizing America's intelligence capabilities.
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Nicole Wallace (Host)
Now, this is a worry that I've heard voiced off camera for many months now, that all the moves to dismantle the national security years and years and decades of experience at DOJ and at the FBI have done with the senator worries about out loud there put the US at risk for a terrorist attack. Do you share that concern?
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Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthy
Yes. Remember, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence was established after 911 because there was a lack of information sharing across the 18 intelligence agencies that make up the intelligence community. While there may be some wasteful spending, some reform, some streamlining, that can always happen in any large organization, the ODNI has largely kept our nation safe through Republican and Democratic administrations. If this guy Pulte doges the intelligence community, then we really risk the possibility that we return to the type of risks that we were trying to solve before or right after 9 11, before the DNI was established. And so we're kind of going backwards and at the same time creating new risks to our country. And I'm very concerned about that, especially at a time when we have all these big events happening around our 250th anniversary as a country, of course, the FIFA World cup, all the elections coming up, and so forth.
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Nicole Wallace (Host)
Let me bring in Michael Feinberg and John Heilman on this. Michael Feinberg, do you share these concerns about Mr. Pulte?
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Commercial Voiceover
My concerns are just as great, but from a very different angle. I'm probably in the minority among your guests today in that I'm not wholly convinced we should have a dni. I think there would have been much more efficient ways to deal with this stove piping information that we saw in the lead up to 9 11. But we do have one now. And what worries me is less what Bill Pulte is going to fail to do because of his utter lack of any intelligence experience whatsoever. What worries me is what he can accomplish with things that ODNI already holds. This is somebody who is now in a position to release any classified information he deems fit to the public. And what everybody in the intelligence community knows is that by selectively declassifying information, you can really paint an inaccurate picture of certain things. We saw the best example of this recently when under Tulsi Gabbard, they released information that showed Russia was trying to encourage the Clinton campaign to get the IC to investigate Trump. We know John Durham himself said that that itself was a Russian operation to tar Hillary Clinton's campaign. But because Tulsi Gabbard only released certain elements of it, she was able to convince a lot of people on the fringes who don't understand the intelligence community that the document was actually true. And Bill Pulte is largely going to have unfettered discretion to do that and essentially run a misinformation campaign on the American people for the benefit of Donald Trump.
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Nicole Wallace (Host)
Hamlin I want to add to Michael Feinberg's concerns this reporting and Reuters White House delays release of US Voting Machine study as midterms near quote White House officials have for months delayed the release of a U.S. government report that outlines what it describes as significant vulnerabilities in the nation's voting machines ahead of the November midterms. That's according to three sources. The report, produced by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, concludes that voting machines could be further safeguarded by, for example, updating their software. Sources said some White House officials have argued that the report could undermine voter confidence, particularly among Republicans. It's unclear what Bill Pulte plans to do with the report. He's been briefed on efforts by the agency to investigate flaws in voting machines, including the unreleased report. A really sort of harrowing data point in this conversation.
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Nicole Wallace
Yeah, a harrowing data point and a conversation full of harrowing data points. Nicole. Bill Pulte is obviously problematic in a lot of the ways that both of our other guests today have been talking about. I'm still focused here mostly on what on what Trump is trying to accomplish by pursuing this nomination in the face of the kind of opposition that he's going to face. And beyond the obvious kind of, you know, he wants someone who's a pit bull for him and he was going to do the things that Pulte is going to do and he's going to. Trump is probably applauding the idea. The guy showed up one day early for work and wanted a list of who he's going to fire. The Apprentice guy is obviously kind of that's the way that Donald Trump likes to roll. That's talk about playing to the audience of one. You can't do any better than that if you're Bill Pulte. But it seems to me that I literally was on the show just the other day with you when we were talking about on the day that we had the nomination for not the temporary, not the acting director of dni, but the actual, the person that Trump says he wants to be the actual director of dni, the permanent director of dni. And it seems to me that what's going on here, and I know this is not an original observation, but Trump is basically trying to hand congressional Democrats and congressional Republicans in some ways kind of a Devil's of Sophie's Choice.
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Donald Trump
Right.
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Nicole Wallace
Which is either I'm going to have this obviously unqualified guy who's an election denier, who's going to wreak havoc on, not just on the intelligence capacity of the United States, but in particular on things that the intelligence capacity of the United States touches that relate to elections, or you're going to give me what I want, which is for you guys to make another push to pass the SAVE act, which will allow me to try to mess with the elections in November. Both of them. From Trump's point of view, he kind of wins either way. Right. And I think he keeps going back at the SAVE act despite the fact that he's been told dozens, hundreds of times by the people who understand how voting, how the votes, where the votes are in the Senate, including John Th, who knows better than anybody that the SAVE act isn't going anywhere. But Trump does not want to give up on the SAVE Act. And I think this is mostly the Pulte. His, his insistence on Pulte is mostly trying to beat John Th With a cudgel to try to get him again. I think Trump is crazy to do this because I don't think the votes are there. I think Thune is just telling him the truth. But I think he, Trump somehow thinks that this is the way he's going to get the SAVE act passed. And that is the ultimate goal here that Trump is driving for. It's, this is mostly kind of about legislative tactical maneuvering. Very dangerous for the country, tactical maneuvering. But that is, I think, what Trump's ultimate objective seems to be.
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Nicole Wallace (Host)
Yeah, I mean, it's also the natural sort of plot point in a long story of Trump hating his intelligence agencies, saying to the world that he believed Vladimir Putin over the intelligence agencies. There have been volumes now written about how he won't consume the PDB in the first term. I think his son in law read it for him. I don't even know who's reading it now. Pulte wanted to take it home. It's not clear. I mean, I don't even know who the consumers are of the PDB in the second term. It's such a degraded office and an asset that most presidents of either in any political party view is like the crown jewel of US national security. And he thinks so little of it that he put this guy there. I think the flashing red sort of cliches don't even fit here, but it is certainly an alarming moment. I need all of you to stick around because there's actually more. There's more troubling news on the story. There's also some breaking news to tell you about. Todd Blanche has refused to go along with a judge who has ordered him to put in writing to commit in writing to killing Donald Trump's January six slush fund and promising that it's dead. He's refused to do that. Plus another blow to Trump's near obsession to remake Washington, D.C. this time his taxpayer funded $14 million renovation of the reflecting pool on the National Mall. Crews are still at war with the algae blooms that simply will not go away. And later in the broadcast, JD Vance better check his back with tire marks as Donald Trump and many in the Republican Party seem to be making the vice president out to be the fall guy and the White House's very bad and very politically unpopular deal with Iran. We'll have all those stories and more when Deadly White House continues. After a quick break. Don't go anywhere.
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Nicole Wallace (Host)
21 Mr. Attorney General, I wanted to ask a few questions about the anti weaponization fund. We know that the department has agreed to pause this effort until at least June 12th. I wanted to ask what your plans were for the fund after June 12th.
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Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthy
So thank you.
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Commercial Voiceover
So look, we're not moving forward with the fund.
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Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthy
You're right that there's a date that in the case in the Eastern Virginia in June, but we are not moving forward with the fund.
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Nicole Wallace (Host)
Period. Well, there's some breaking news this afternoon on that $1.8 billion slush fund. The Justice Department is now refus to say in a court filing in writing that it's officially killing it. A federal judge had ordered a sworn declaration in writing putting an end to the slush fund by today. But DOJ is arguing that the declaration is, quote, unnecessary and claiming that Acting Attorney General Todd Blanch's testimony to Congress, what we just played you should be sufficient. That testimony, though, is not under oath and not under penalty of perjury. All of this is because of the DOJ's continued resistance to backing off the fund in writing. Illegal battles over it will thus continue. We're back with Congressman Krishnamoorthy, Michael and John. Congressman, it's I guess pretty obvious it feels like a dumb question to ask, but for the record, why do you think they refuse to put in writing that the slush fund for payments for Trump's political allies, potentially including violent insurrectionists, is something they won't put in writing
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Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthy
because they don't want it dead? Regardless of anything that Ty Blanche said, President Trump wants this thing definitely alive. It contrary to rumors that it was on death row at that hearing, I think that it was probably transferred to that low security prison that Ghislaine Maxwell is at, that Todd lynch transferred her to as well. And by the way, that's yet another reason that he should not be the Attorney General. And I have circulated a letter with regard to this issue to the Senate with a lot of signatures from my colleagues on it saying he has no business being the Attorney General of the United States. He's still the President's personal lawyer looking out for Trump's personal interests, not the best interest of the country.
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Nicole Wallace (Host)
Carson, if you had to predict if enough Republicans share your view of The President's personal lawyer who's acting as acting Attorney General. Do you think there are enough to thwart his confirmation as AG Possibly, yes.
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Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthy
I think this, this anti weaponization fund is so unpopular with enough Republicans that I talk to that I could see, you know, not enough votes for his confirmation. And Thom Tillis, I think was one of those who, who basically said there's just no way that he could support, you know, Blanche's confirmation. And the reason is very simple. People like McConnell and others remember that the people that are supposedly going to get money from this anti weaponization fund are the very insurrectionists that attacked the Capitol in January 2021. And I just don't think that this fund is going to go away as an issue for Blanche's confirmation.
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Nicole Wallace (Host)
Michael Feinberg, I don't like to put my eggs in the Republicans will grow a spine, do the right thing, even if it's for US national security basket. But I will point out some signals of disapproval of the Blanche and or Pulte picks. This is from John Cordon. He tweeted out a quote from a Wall Street Journal piece that went like this quote, here's where things go off the rails when the President fails to acknowledge some hills simply can't be held and charges up anyway. That's what happened in the fight over Bill Pulte wiretapping and the Save America Act. His no win standoff with his Senate GOP risks more than national security. It's accelerating his lame duck status, sort of making an argument on the two fronts protecting US national security, which has never been persuasive for Donald Trump. But lame duck status gets right at his thin skin, little underbelly of an ego. Do you think either of those will be persuasive or do you think he's, as the Journal points out, charging up the Hill?
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Commercial Voiceover
I'm torn. On the one hand, I'm fortified by the fact that in order to oppose Todd Blanche, to keep him out of the RFK Building as the permanent Attorney General, you don't need all the Republicans, you just need a few. And one of the ones who seems like he might show the most spine is Thom Tillis, who of course is on the Judiciary Committee, where he actually wields quite a bit of power and could conceivably make it so that Blanche's name never even reaches the floor. But we've seen time and time and time and time again, from January 6th forward, Republicans say that they've had enough and they're going to stand up to Donald Trump. Only to back down when the rubber hits the road. So it's really difficult to say. But the reason I'm worried that I think Senator Cornyn's tweet is actually worth looking at is the two departments that could be the most influential in helping the White House skew the results of the midterm elections or interfere with them being carried out in a nonpartisan manner. Befitting civil society is the Department of Justice, which is supposed to prosecute election crimes, but has already announced that it is not doing the command post for election night that it has done literally every year in recent memory. And odni, which now has Bill Pulte at the helm. So, yeah, you know, am I glad Republicans are standing up at least in small numbers? Yes. Am I still worried existentially about the future of our country also? Yes.
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Nicole Wallace (Host)
Yeah. I mean, Halman, you'd have to stick your head in the sand not to see exactly where Trump is heading with this. He's heading to the exact dramatic testimony we heard from his own White House insiders in the very dramatic primetime hearings of the January 6 select committee, absent the key figures who literally barred the door. I mean, he wanted to seize voting machines. That's what the Reuters information reporting suggests is what Pulte was rushed in there for this week. It's a report. They've been holding it for Pulte to arrive. They think Pulte is a better bet than Clayton, One could easily and logically surmise. So they rushed him in there Thursday ahead of what was supposed to be a start date of today. It's all out in the open. Trump already said in the Oval he's there to look into rigged elections. Trump wanted the military to seize voting machines. And it was actually Rudy who, I think said that was going too far. So he called DHS and went online. This is all in the record. We know what he wanted to do on that front. And at doj, I mean, Bill Barr went on CNN ahead of the elections of 2020 and said he was going to pursue election fraud. It's Bill Barr who rather famously testified before that same SEL and said all the election fraud theories were bullshit. But here we are. No Bill Barr, no Rudy. I never thought I'd view that as a. As an unfortunate occurrence. And no guardrails whatsoever.
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Nicole Wallace
Yes, correct. That's the story of Trump 2.0 right there in a nutshell. Nicole. I don't want to. I don't want to there. We're kind of talking about things because of the weirdness of the fact that Tulsi Gabbard got, by Trump's direction, got dragged into these election integrity, supposed election integrity, these vote, you know, all of Trump's accusations of voter fraud, we suddenly are like, well, the DNI is involved in that. And when we're looking at. And obviously that is what Trump is doing with Bill Pulte. I just want to keep on us to keep our eye on the ball. You are right that that is what Trump wants to do. He wants to interfere with the November elections. He's made it clear. He said it a bunch of times. We've talked about it a million times on the show. So what's the office by which he's going to do that? It's not going to. The front line of that is not going to be the dni. The front line of that is going to be the Justice Department and the FBI. And so the question is, can you get Todd Blanche to be the actual Attorney General and can he get carte blanche confirmed? And I know that you are not naive, and I know that Michael is not naive, and I know that everybody is couching all of their comments about, you know, are the Republicans finding their courage? And yes, we've seen some signs of certain situations in which people are speaking out and, you know, people who are, you know, for various reasons, Bill Cassidy, John Cornyn, both feel betrayed by Trump. They couldn't find their spine before that. Todd Thom Tillis has been opposing Trump in certain limited ways once he's decided that he was going to leave the United States Senate. But I ask you right now, as we sit here, is there a Republican senator who's on the record opposing the nomination of Todd Blanch to be Attorney General? There is not. There is not one right. Even though the reasons to oppose that are manifest and obvious. And there are many Democrats you could find, and most of these Republicans know what those reasons are. You don't need hearings to know why. You just have to look at Todd's Blanche's behavior as acting Attorney General and as the dagger to know why he's not qualified to be the Attorney General of the United States of America. Yet no Republican right now is on the record for that. And I think that we are kidding ourselves if we think that some of these. There's a scattering of Republicans. I hope I'm wrong about this, but I'm much more in the camp of I'll believe it when I see it when the Republicans, that small collection of Republicans, band together and stop Todd Blanch, because that is where the rubber is going to meet the road on election interference is that the DOJ and the FBI. And that is why Todd Blanche matters so much and why I am so disheartened. And so, and so not just disheartened, but I was always a petrified but so why I find it so ominous that that is where the action is going to be. And I think Todd Blanche is going to get through. That's why. That's why I'm feeling so unnerved these days.
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Nicole Wallace (Host)
Yeah. And I mean, look, he's got cash Patel, who's got all the the hallmarks of the kind of person Trump would loathe. He's sort of messy. He seems to be drunk in public. There are cameras on him when he's drunk in public. He's obviously there to serve a larger purpose. He gets horrific press and the kind of press that Trump hates. So what do you need if you've got him there? You need the counterpart on the other side. I associate myself with everything you said, Heilman. Congressman, thank you for starting us off. We'll keep our eyes on this space. Michael Feinberg, thank you for starting us off. I never thought you'd be our optimist, but today you are. Hellman sticks around after the break. The green algae right now floating throughout the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool is certainly not the color of American flag blue as Donald Trump promised. New reporting on the no big contract awarded to a Mar a Lago neighbor hired to originally clean it up. We'll bring you that reporting next.
- [32:16]
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Nicole Wallace
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Nicole Wallace (Host)
Foreign, has done a lot of losing this week. The latest loss was in his war against the algae in the reflecting pool and what is perhaps the most perfect metaphor for the second Trump term. After focusing on seemingly little else, posting about the reflecting pool at all hours of the day and night, carrying around a bizarre graphic of the size of the reflecting pool compared to the size of buildings, giving out not one, but two, no big contracts to donors and one of his own contractors to repair and clean the reflecting pool. The White House and Donald Trump both claim that they're not involved in the selection of his donor and spending $14 million in counting taxpayer dollars on defeating the algae and turning the reflecting pool quote American Flag Blue more than seven times the original estimate. To do that, Donald Trump is worse off than when he started. Does that sound familiar? The algae that appears to haunt his dreams for the reflecting pool remain firmly in place today. And his much beloved American Flag Blue pool lining is actually coming up in chunks of plastic after National Park Service workers poured hydrogen peroxide into the pool in a desperate, ultimately failed battle against the algae. Despite those undeniable setbacks, to put it mildly, the Trump administration once again refuses to acknowledge the reality of their own reflecting pool. With his Department of the Interior posting this on social media. Quote, the advanced nano bubbler technology very effectively killed the algae that has plagued every Lincoln Reflecting pool reopening, most infamously, Obama's reopening since 1922. The reflecting pool water is crystal clear and our National Park Service team is now vacuuming up the dead algae resting on the bottom of some parts of the reflecting pool. Just like the destroyed Iranian Navy resting on the bottom of the Persian Gulf. Okay, I want to bring in New York Times investigative reporter David Farenthal. John Hammond still here. I mean, reality level set us. Is the reflecting pole currently American flag blue, or is it currently have algae in it and chunks of the blue lining floating in it?
- [35:56]
KFC Commercial Announcer
When we visited the pool yesterday, as you said, parts of it were very green. And most distressingly, this blue coating, which the Trump administration paid almost $15 million to apply just a few weeks ago, is already coming off the bottom and floating to the top. That's something that was supposed to last for years. That's the more worrisome thing to me. Algae maybe you can fight, but if they just put the the coating on and it's already peeling off, what was that money for?
- [36:21]
Nicole Wallace (Host)
I mean, what Was it money? For the. Money's for what? All the money is for. Like, like something that's half ass and cheap and tacky. Like everything Trump has ever done. I mean, I guess my question is, who can come in and save the pool? Like, who can come in and fix it? Who are we just stuck with the algae filled, floating plastic, tacky blue. Like, who thought the blue. I have just a swimming pool and I know that if I put a plastic liner in it, it would not make it through one winter in the north. Like, who. Who approved these ideas?
- [36:57]
KFC Commercial Announcer
Well, this is really interesting to me that one of the trends we see in this administration is that things that Donald Trump wants done the most, the things he's most focused on, often end up being the things that are done the least. Well, I mean, are. Iran is a big example of that, but this is a small example of that. He wants this thing done. He wants the pool fixed. And instead of going through the normal process of having people bid and finding the best bidder to do the best work for the least money, they just give out the contracts in a rush without competing them to two different companies that both turn out to be led by Trump donors. And one of them a very close friend of Trump's who's lived close to Mar A Lago with no effort to figure out if those guys that he just happened to know are the best. And we're already seeing the results of that. Right? The pool is green, and the bottom of the pool is now peeling off.
- [37:40]
Nicole Wallace (Host)
Hellman, I don't even, like, I won't even try to stretch this beyond algae and flaking plastic floating in the reflecting pool, but Donald Trump has made clear that there's nothing more important to him than the reflecting pool.
- [37:58]
Nicole Wallace
Well, I just want to say, Nicole, yesterday we talked about this a little bit. I made my trip through to the reflecting pool. I took all my malaria pills. You know, I had the mask and hazmat suit, the whole thing. I came with some anti crocodile, you know, gear. I had the whole thing. I, you know, so I've been there. I've seen it actually flying out of D.C. looking down, when they put the peroxide in, there was a moment there where the edges of the pool were back, was back to blue before the, like the, at the perimeter of it, before the peeling, before the paint or the plastic started to peel off. So it was a kind of like a blue rectangle around a green, larger rectangle in the middle. And it looked a little bit like a Mark Rothko painting. I kind of like that. I thought that'd be kind of a good look for the pool. I'm not sure Donald Trump knows who Mark Rothko is, but here's the thing that I want to say about this. I don't know if Nicole, if you. Are you through the Haberman and Swan book yet?
- [38:56]
Nicole Wallace (Host)
I've got about 100 pages left, so I've read about 10.
- [39:00]
Nicole Wallace
Have you gotten to the super glue yet? Have you gotten to this? Have you gotten to the super glue story yet?
- [39:06]
Nicole Wallace (Host)
Yeah.
- [39:07]
Nicole Wallace
Have you gotten to the super glue? So there's a story in there where Caroline Levitt walks into the Oval Office and Trump is personally super gluing little gold ornaments onto the furniture, the walls or something. Right. So I just think if there's any justice in the world, the answer to your question, Nicole, is the person who should have to go and glue the, the blue lining back. Make Trump do it. Like it's really important to him. You know, let's drain the thing, drain the swamp and then have Trump go in there and glue all the blue stuff back.
- [39:38]
Nicole Wallace (Host)
Do you know who he's going to make do it though? He's going to make Vance do it. Like, I think we should have a camera down there. I think J.D. i think he's going to put J.D. vance in like an old, old fashioned scuba suit, make him go under. I mean, it's unbelievable.
- [39:55]
Nicole Wallace
I have some leftover super glue from my, from my gold ornaments here, take the super glue down there, JD Take care of it. Go, go down there. You might be able to get my endorsement if you do that. Incredible.
- [40:07]
Nicole Wallace (Host)
He also repainted something else that we should all be very worried about. All of the Air Force One fleets. We'll show you that. Oh, and I guess the point isn't even what they look like. It's will the paint stay on when it takes off or flies through weather. We'll show them to you on the other side of a break. Don't go anywhere.
- [40:38]
Donald Trump
You know, you take a look at the Washington Monument, beautiful Lincoln Memorial, as you said. But the walking in between was disgusting. The thing was loaded up. We took 11 or 12 dumpsters, trucks full of garbage out of there that they were shoveling. And it was there for, it was there for years under the Biden administration. Again, Biden and Obama, if you combine the money they spent, it was over 100, I think $142 million. And they got nothing as usual. So I'm very proud of it. Maybe I shouldn't say that before it opens. Maybe I'LL open it, it'll leak like a sieve, but it's not going to link. I'm very good at building things and constructing things.
- [41:21]
Nicole Wallace (Host)
I mean, the Washington Post, where you worked during the first term, David, tracked the lies. I mean, I think maybe they stopped around 38,000 lies. But I was actually, I don't know if surprised is the right word, amused that being good at building things was also a lie. I mean, it seems that these are the most flawed, these are some of the most visible debacles of the second term. The bulldozing of the East Wing without any plan to rebuild with stairways to nowhere, and the plans that he trots out, the debacle of, you know, like a DIY swimming pool doesn't have this many mishaps as the algae and the plastic lining coming up. I mean, who's going to save the buildings and like the structures in D.C. from Donald Trump?
- [42:09]
KFC Commercial Announcer
What we've seen, you know, many presidents in their second term, you know, get frustrated by domestic policy and retreat to foreign policy where they have more agency. But Trump has did that and then ran into Iran where he didn't have the agency that he thought. So he's retreated sort of one step further to the immediate environment around where he lives. And there he's found that the Park Service and the Interior Department are very willing to do whatever he says, even if it doesn't make a lot of sense, even if it means discarding the processes, the bidding process that's designed to find the best vendor. They'll just do whatever he says, even if it doesn't. You know, in this case, let's resurface the pool, refill it, brag about it, but not have actually installed the filter that will keep it clean. So just run a step on a rake, basically refill the pool and then have it immediately turn green and embarrass everyone, though he's found that the Park Service is willing to do whatever he says. And I think that's a comforting thing to him, that this is a place where his word still goes,
- [43:03]
Nicole Wallace (Host)
goes green. I mean, it goes it was where it goes, like to no end. I mean, he looks an incompetent fool for all the promises he made about American flag blue. David Ferenfeld, thank you very much for joining us today. Quick break. We'll give Howman the last word on the other side. Heilman. This is the Qatari plane that Trump got as a present from the Qataris. This is the new Air Force One. He says he's going to paint all of the planes in the fleet, Air Force One, to look just like this. I suppose it is his prerogative to redesign Air Force One, but after the American flag, blue lining is now floating in the reflecting pool. I don't know that we should trust him to paint anything like not even the walls in his bathroom. What do you think of this obsession with redesigning and repainting everything?
- [44:14]
Nicole Wallace
Well, I think, I mean, look, I think that he is, David was just talking about how he's focusing on things that he can control and he's got willing servants at the Interior Department, the Parks Department and so on. I mean, he's obviously also into the notion of trying to build monuments to himself in various ways and to leave marks that he thinks will not be, will not be able to go away. To kind of build the Arc de Trump, you know, change the reflecting pool, change the East Wing, install the claw, and leave it there over the White House forever. Right. I mean, Trump is, you know, pretty dumb sometimes, but I think he knows some of these things are maybe more transitory than others, easier to tear down. But I think all of it reflects, Nicole, a sense that he recognizes on some basic level that that project, the project of, of exercising Donald Trump, and I mean exercising in the, in the, in the movie, the Exorcist sense, getting rid of the dance of Donald Trump, you know, is going to be a big project of certainly the Democrat gets back in the White House. Not just there's the big, there's the high minded stuff, the restoration of American democracy, the rebuilding we do need to do to our institutions, all that kind of stuff. But there's also just going to be a lot of. You saw it when they took the Trump name down from the Kennedy center, right? How many people were like, that was a big moment for people. I think you're going to see a lot of that. And Trump knows that. So part of what he's doing is trying to do things. If he changes a whole lot of stuff, he probably thinks some aspects of him, some markings that he leaves, some bird droppings of his will somehow survive the purge to come.
- [45:59]
Nicole Wallace (Host)
Can I tell you, I predict that all these things, you know, how miraculous it is in a normal transition that the old president moves out and then everyone goes for the swearing in and the new president moves in and it's like this feat of, like, human logistics. I will predict that they, other than rebuilding the, the East Wing, I, I predict that they wash away that, that spot pretty darn quickly. They might take more planning. I think it's going to be a
- [46:31]
Nicole Wallace
giant national steam cleaning, right? Like, it's going to be a giant national steam cleaning of everything he's touched. Just going to be like, okay, let's get in here. Clean it all, scrub it all out.
- [46:44]
Nicole Wallace (Host)
I think that's right. And the gold, I mean, I don't know who's going to be in charge of prying all that stuff off the wall. My thanks. My thanks to you, my friend. You've done the high and the low with me all week long. Thank you very much, my friend. After the break.
- [46:58]
Nicole Wallace
See you later. Good week.
- [47:01]
Nicole Wallace (Host)
The political miscalculations being made by JD Vance are under the microscope today as Donald Trump looks for someone, anyone, to blame for the very unpopular deal he's made with Iran. The next hour of deadline, White House starts after a quick break. Stay with us.
- [47:20]
Nicole Wallace
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Nicole Wallace (Host)
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- [47:30]
Nicole Wallace
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- [47:34]
Commercial Voiceover
on Monday dot com.