← Deadline: White House
Deadline: White House
"A problem in this country that is less common than getting struck by lightning"
00:42:47
July 9, 2026, 5pm: Alicia Menendez, in for Nicolle Wallace, on those around Donald Trump feeding into his every lie and every whim rather than stand up to him and his falsehoods about our elections.
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- [00:01]
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Adopt Us Kids Representative / Sylvia Garcia
I learned it from my adopt adoptive mom.
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Alicia Menendez
Hold my hand. You hold my hand. Learn about adopting a teen from foster
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Adopt Us Kids Representative / Ms. Now Host
care@adoptuskids.org you can't imagine the reward brought
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Alicia Menendez
to you by Adopt Us Kids, the U.S. department of Health and Human Services and the Ag Council.
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Tens of millions of votes are cast every year. Hundreds of millions every two years. And yet with some of the most powerful people in the world, including the president, encouraging people to look for fraud, on average, there's only three cases a year of non citizens voting. Just for comparison, every year there are dozens of people who are killed by lightning strikes in America. Nearly 10 times as many lightning strike deaths as noncitizens voting in an election. I won't say non citizen voting never happens, but it's extremely rare.
- [01:22]
Alicia Menendez
Hi again everyone. I'm Alicia Menendez in for Nicole Wallace. It is now 5 o' clock here in New York. The federal government is focusing a lot of its time and a lot of its attention on a in this country, that is less common than getting struck by lightning. That was Washington State Attorney General Nick Brown having to set the record straight because those around Donald Trump feed into his every lie and every whim rather than stand up to him and his falsehoods. About our elections. Last week on this program, we told you about a redirecting of 260 FBI personnel to dig into Trump's 2020 election defeat in Georgia. That reporting by our colleague Ken Delaney gained some traction. Up on Capitol Hill, ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Mark Warner calling out the FBI for not doing its job. He said this misuse of taxpayer dollars is negligence and abuse of power of the highest order. Warner said this in a blistering new letter to FBI Director Cash Patel and Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche Warner continues, quote, as the nation's principal law enforcement and domestic intelligence agency, the FBI should direct its resources towards investigations that protect public safety and address urgent threats, not partisan political wild goose chases. This diversion of significant FBI resources towards a political investigation threatens the purpose of its mission and endangers Americans. We strongly urge the department and bureau to reconsider this decision and put the eye back to work preventing and investigating real crimes. He added, it is alarming that you have chosen to divert these crucial national security resources and personnel to an investigation driven by the personal political interests of the President. The FBI declined to comment on the matter. Senator Warner raising this issue as a matter of national security. Just like the reporting we brought you yesterday. At this hour, the administration is holding hostage counterterrorism funding from states if they do not comply with new voting rules. Mounting concerns as the administration fans the flames over election falsehoods is where we begin this hour with voting rights attorney and founder of Democracy docket, Mark Elias. Also joining us, Harry Littman. He is a former deputy Attorney general and former U.S. attorney. Plus Mitch Landrieu is here. He is a former senior advisor to President Biden and VP Harris, former former mayor of New Orleans, now the co chair of American Bridge 21st century. Mark, I always like to do a check in with you. Where are we in the escalation in this administration's war on our election systems?
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Mark Elias
Look, we are progressing up the ladder that Donald Trump always brings us. He starts with dangerous rhetoric. He escalates it to a point that, you know, the rest of us start sounding the alarms but people on the right say oh don't worry and we get a bunch of both sides about we eventually wind up in court and he loses. And then after that we know what happens which is that he then incites his supporters. We saw that in the aftermath of the 2020 election. We saw that with the tragic deaths in Minneapolis when we saw government officials shoot U.S. citizens after Donald Trump escalated from irresponsible rhetoric to worse to court losses to then these deployments. And I fear that that's where we're headed for this this fall is that you know, Donald Trump is going to suffer a political defeat this fall. He knows that. You know that. I know that. Mitch knows that better. Probably any of us smartest political brain in the in the country. Harry knows that. And, and look what Donald Trump wants to do about it is try to set up a permission structure that he can say it was all stolen, that it was all rigged. And the way he does that is by FL FBI agents into a place like Fulton county, not because there's a genuine investigation not because there's anything to be found, but sheer simply because the act of flooding FBI agents and seizing ballots to do this stuff creates an atmosphere as if there is a there there when there is none.
- [05:29]
Alicia Menendez
Mitch Landrieu, I don't wanna tell you how to do your personal branding, but if I were you, I would include that incredible endorsement from Mark Elias on every Twitter bio, Instagram bio, your personal website. It is fantastic. I wanna read you, Mitch, just a little, this letter from Mark Warner. He writes, dedicated FBI special agents and intelligence analysts work tirelessly to identify legitimate threats and conduct investigations into complex issues involving terrorism, counterintelligence and espionage, cyber attacks and violent crime. Their work is crucial to safeguarding Americans from harm, crime and corruption and terrorism. Unlike those serious threats to the country, this fool's errand of an investigation will serve to erode trust in the FBI, the DOJ and America's elections. That gets it. Exactly. And it's especially interesting to me, Mitch, given that this is a president who ran on this idea that he was going to make America safer, he was going to make America more secure, and instead what we see is him diverting resources that would ordinarily be spent in those endeavors and relitigating something that was settled six years ago.
- [06:37]
Harry Littman
Well, thank you, Mark. Thank you for that compliment. I think you're great as well. I'm gonna make a couple points. First of all, Donald Trump is a liar, he's a crybaby, and he's basically a sissy and a sore loser. And that's kind of what this is about. But much more importantly right now, when you take 200 FBI agents whose primary mission is to fight terrorism, to fight violent criminals, to maybe put politicians away who are stealing money from the public, and you put them on a case of basically chasing ghosts, then you actually are putting, and Senator Warren is correct about this, the nation's security, personal security at risk. Because when, for example, all the ICE agents are chasing grandmas and the FBI agents are chasing ghosts, I'll tell you who they're not chasing. They're not chasing potential terrorist threats, they're not chasing white supremacist threats, they're not chasing violent criminals, and they are literally putting the lives of American at risk for the President's own ego. And you know, this is part of why his numbers now are in the tank or what I would like to say in the toilet. He's focused on ballrooms, he's focused on this Qatari jet, which evidently he can't even retrofit after. I don't know, seven years ago, trying to get two other, you know, planes on the tarmac, which have not been done. He's focused on the gold. He's focused on, you know, the reflecting pool. He is not focused on people's safety and he's not focused on people's cost. And he's going to pay a very, very heavy price for this. And Americans will not be fooled. I will end with this. Thirty years ago, Mark Elias, the man sitting right next to you, defendant Senator Mary Landrieu, after she won a resounding election, they accused up a voter fraud. After a million dollars in eight months of holding a senator back. There was no fraud. This is, we've seen this in the south for the last 50, 60 years. It's the same old song, just reheated. It's never been true. It's not true now. And it's going to make Americans less safe.
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Alicia Menendez
Harry, you and I both had hate back then. Yes. And their senses of humor. I mean, Harry Lippman, it is true. This is not new. But the volume it is happening at is what is different. And the fact that it is not just coming from party institutions, but it is actually coming from inside the government itself is what makes it so additionally dangerous.
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Adopt Us Kids Representative / Ms. Now Host
Yeah.
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Mitch Landrieu
And here's something that I think is new, is that these are all efforts they're making where the courts have made clear you have no power here. The states have many of these cases brought by Mark Elias. If we're throwing around superlatives, I can say is the premier without doubt election lawyer in the country. But the courts have rebuffed them. So now what they've taken to doing is bluffing and bullying the states to try to shake them loose and do things that they have no power to command. And it is, it's all sort of these kinds of bully boy tactics that are without any legal grounding at all. And I just want to say Warner, but, but also Mitch and Mark have now made the good point that you don't hear enough, which is the, the opportunity cost 268 intelligence analysts, almost 10% of the FBI's entire intelligence analyst force. That's a lot of cases and a lot of public safety that is not being attended to.
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Alicia Menendez
Mark, you had a federal judge just this week quashing a subpoena by the DOJ to get the names of 2020 election workers in Fulton county, calling it unreasonable. I mean, it's great that the courts are holding the line, but why can't Trump just let this Georgia loss in particular go oh, because it's the core
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Mark Elias
to his whole movement. Right? I mean, the whole, the whole theory of Donald Trump from the beginning is that he is indefeatable. He is, he is. There is nothing that can, that, that can take him down. And the mythology of Donald Trump is that, you know, notwithstanding the bankruptcies, notwithstanding all of that, that somehow he always comes out on top. And in 2020. He didn't come out on top on 2020. He lost. And he lost a resounding defeat across a variety of swing states. But the two states that, that stung the most for him were Georgia and Arizona. Why? Because Democrats had not won Georgia and Arizona in recent years. Right. Those were not swing states when he lost them in 2020. And so for him, the reason why he focuses so much on Georgia and Fulton county and why he focused so much on Maricopa county in Arizona is because they are the thing that proved that not only did he lose, but he actually lost ground that these were Republican strongholds that became Democratic. And so the Maga movement since 2020 has had only one principle that cannot be violated by anyone, and that is the election annihilism of 2020. So it does not matter whether you are working in the White House or you want a federal judgeship. We've all those clips of these, these people who are supposed to be, you know, impartial judges refusing to say who won the 2020 election. We've seen the clips of federal prosecutors looking to become U.S. attorneys doing the same dance of trying to embrace election denialism. And that is because of this, Alicia. You can be against Donald Trump's tariffs and you can still be in the MAGA movement. You can even be a pro choice. You can even be pro choice and now be that of da. The. You can run hhs. The one thing you can't be, the one thing that's not tolerable, is to say that Donald Trump lost in 2020 and there are no states he's more sensitive to than Georgia and Arizona.
- [12:21]
Alicia Menendez
I'm glad that even you, Mark Elias, sometimes get those acronyms confused because, wow, they really do it to me. I want Harry to read you some reporting from Mark's group, Democracy Docke. They write this now. New research indicates that state voter registration lists, a common administration target, are actually accurate and up to date. And both blue and red states are largely doing a good job maintaining their lists. Across the country, the average state active registration rate was 85% in 2024, suggesting that most states maintain accurate registration lists that reflect the normal churn of voters moving, minors turning 18 and people dying. There is no they're there. And I wonder the extent to which this effort on the part of the federal government to nationalize American elections is gonna end up being litigated in the courts.
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Mitch Landrieu
Well, here's the thing, Mark will tell you more than anybody, when it actually push comes to shove, it's in this frenetic, very quick turnarounds. And if they just have a little bit to try to foment chaos, remember him in 2020, just get some chaos and my Republicans in Congress will take care. That's the strategy. And on this Fulton county point, Alicia, the 260 agents, one of the reasons the subpoena was quashed is because it's all outside of the statute of limitations. There's no there there. And even if there were there there, it wouldn't be there because there's nothing to investigate. They're literally just there combing through, trying to create the 100% false impression that somehow people are voting unlawfully in this country.
- [14:02]
Alicia Menendez
Well, and Mark, they are trying to chill the people who were just like good Americans who are showing up and trying to participate in elections from doing that. Mitch Landrieu, all that data that I read you about state voter registration lists, it's good news. It's like the system is actually working as the system is supposed to work. But part of the issue and part of the reason I wanted to surface it here is because their lies are so voluminous that there is going to have to be a counter effort to set the record straight.
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Harry Littman
Well, I think that's true. Two points. As a lawyer and an officer of the court, in order for something to pass muster before a reasonable judge, you have to have facts and evidence. And if not, they tell you to take a hike. And I think in every case in America, that told him to take a hike, because there are no facts and there's no evidence that's different from the political realm. Secondly, in Georgia, I just came back from Georgia. I was there for three days. Conservatives and Republicans are now voicing real concern and aggravation because, you know, there's a Republican governor and there was a Republican secretary of state, and they're actually responsible for running those elections. And they take great pride in the fact that they ran clean, open and fair elections. So this thing is not necessarily going to fold. The way Donald Trump says it, people are way ready to get past this. And you know, there's evidence that people are ready to get past him, too. He's going to do everything he can. But just remember, look, when the guy's lips are moving, he's lying. Lying about the plane and why it's grounded. Lying about the votes, lying about, well, who damaged the reflecting pool. He just, he, this is something wrong with this guy. And I think that at some point in time, you know, he can bellow and yell all he wants, at some point in time, the American citizens are going to get his number and send him and some of his friends packing.
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Alicia Menendez
Right. The question mark is always, will Republicans,
- [15:46]
Mark Elias
will Republicans call him out? No, I mean, Republicans will never call him out.
- [15:49]
Alicia Menendez
Republicans, not just will they call him out, Mark, but, but also will they carry his water? Right. If the entire thing he's doing here is using 2020 to set a predicate for future elections, I think we have seen they are, they will not call him out between now and then. The question is, when he turns to them on that day and says, now I need you to carry this over the finish line for me, will they say, no, I won't do it?
- [16:09]
Mark Elias
No, I think they'll go along with it. I mean, I. Look, look, we saw this. You know, the statistic I always try to point out to people is that the last big case we won when I was representing President Biden in the Democratic party after the 2020 election, the last really big case, there was some cleanup, but the real last really big one was when was when the state of Texas sued four states to try to throw out the elections. I don't know if you remember this, but there was this big lawsuit went straight to the Supreme Court with this petition. And there was an amicus brief that was organized by Mike Johnson at the time was just a, you know, Mitch probably knew him, I had never heard of. He was just a backbencher Louisiana congressman at that time, but he organized a amicus brief of House Republicans try to get them on board with throwing out the election. And 126 of them signed on. On the night of January 6th, after the violence, 139 Republicans voted against certification. So I think this idea that somehow they are going to abandon Donald Trump after he loses the midterms, that's just not right. Like, like he, he has built a movement that is entirely premised on everybody falling in line about election den. And it is going to take the collapse of the Republican Party as we know it today and the replacing of it with something else, maybe still within the Republican Party, but something fundamentally different. Before election. Denialism is something that you can cross unless you are one of the handful of people who are retiring from office and don't care.
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Alicia Menendez
Mr. I have only about 30 seconds left. Go ahead.
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Harry Littman
I'd just say that I think Mark is completely right about the elected officials, but I'm telling you that across America, working men and women, Republicans, Independents, Democrats, think the president has lost focus. They care about one thing primarily and that's their cost of living and the promise of the American dream disappearing because now their kids are not gonna have a better life than them. And every time you divert to talk about the pool or the ballroom or the war or the Save America act, they're saying, you're not focused on me. And they will punish, they are gonna punish him. In the midterms.
- [18:12]
Alicia Menendez
Marc Elias, Harry Lipman, you have all complimented each other more than Europe complimented Donald Trump at the NATO summit. Thank you both so much for starting us off this hour. Mayor Landrieu, you are staying with me when we return. The mayor just alluded a moment ago brand new reporting on why Donald Trump switched planes, couldn't fly his Qatari gifted Air Force One home from the NATO summit in Turkey. It turns out sometimes older is better. We're going to explain next. Also had another deadly shooting by ICE agents leaves a father of three dead and a family and a community demanding answers and an independent investigation into his death.
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Adopt Us Kids Representative / Ms. Now Host
Death.
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Alicia Menendez
We'll have that story later in the hour. The lead White House continues after a quick break. Stay with us.
- [18:58]
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- [19:26]
Alicia Menendez
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- [19:57]
Adopt Us Kids Representative / Sylvia Garcia
Courage.
- [19:57]
Alicia Menendez
I learned it from my adoptive mom. Hold my hand. You hold my hand. Learn about adopting a teen from foster
- [20:05]
Adopt Us Kids Representative / Ms. Now Host
care@adoptuskids.org you can't imagine the reward brought to you by Adopt Us Kids, the
- [20:09]
Alicia Menendez
US Department of Health and Human Services and the Ad Council. Despite Donald Trump's repeated claims that his brand new Qatari Air Force One is a major upgrade, there is new reporting debunking Trump's claims that he switched planes for, quote, old time's sake, finding that security concerns forced him to ditch the aircraft just one week in. Our colleague Carol Lennig reports this, quote, President Donald Trump swapped out his new Qatari gifted Air Force One for his flight from the NATO summit to the United Kingdom after concerns that the gifted aircraft lacks the secure communications system and military defenses needed to safely manage a rapidly escalating conflict with Iran, according to two former national security officials familiar with the matter. Instead, Trump flew from Ankara to a US Base in the United Kingdom in his original Air Force One. Trump's earlier choice to use the gifted cutlery jet as a primary presidential aircraft has been controversial. You know that. Because the gifted plane lacks key military defenses of the original Air Force One, including the ability to refuel midair and missile defense systems, according to a law enforcement official briefed on its capabilities. The main concern Wednesday was the president's need to use the command and control functions of the original Air Force One. That's according to two other former security officials. Those systems turn the plane into a flying situation room, allowing the president to receive classified intelligence briefings, communicate securely, give orders to military officers around the world. Trump, however, pushed back on the claims when pressed by reporters on the old plane last night watch.
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Mark Elias
What was the security concern that caused
- [21:54]
Alicia Menendez
it to change lanes?
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Harry Littman
We sent this one in so that
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Ozempic Ad Voice / Genesis GV70 Ad Voice
the Air Force base here was in
- [22:00]
Harry Littman
the same exact line.
- [22:02]
Adopt Us Kids Representative / Ms. Now Host
So you saw.
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Alicia Menendez
You're saying there wasn't a security concern?
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Mitch Landrieu
No, no.
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Harry Littman
Why would.
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Alicia Menendez
Any other issue?
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Ozempic Ad Voice / Genesis GV70 Ad Voice
No, except.
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Harry Littman
Except we sent it a little early. Same line going back. We sent it a little bit early so that we could let them see at the base.
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Ozempic Ad Voice / Genesis GV70 Ad Voice
The whole base came out and saw
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Harry Littman
the plane and then we landed.
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Ozempic Ad Voice / Genesis GV70 Ad Voice
Do you know why they had us
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Harry Littman
close our window blinds?
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Ozempic Ad Voice / Genesis GV70 Ad Voice
That was done well, yeah, because you're,
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Harry Littman
you know, probably on a dangerous way.
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Alicia Menendez
Going to bring in Ms. Now senior investigative reporter Carol Lennig. Mayor Landrieu is still with us. Carol, this is a truly incredible piece of reporting. I walked us through some of it. Tell me what I missed.
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Adopt Us Kids Representative / Ms. Now Host
You didn't really miss really anything except the big picture here, Alicia, is that the president is, you know, behaving in a way that he's embarrassed that the plane he insists is perfect and better than the old one is actually not as good as the old one. And it's interesting because you played such an important clip here of his explanation, which is, you know, we're going the same line and we sent the plane ahead, the new plane ahead so that the troops could see it. I talked to national security experts who currently work in the government last night who said that is just not true. That was not the reason. The reason was that the older planes that Donald Trump sort of derides for not being fancy enough and not having the right leather seats and not having the flag paint, the blue paint that he prefers with red, white and blue, that plane is the one that turns the White House, forgive me, turns the plane into a situation room where he could be in contact with his military commanders without any threat of interception and he could authorize the strikes on Iran, which he did while flying from Ankara to the uk. These are essential things about the plane that his new one, gifted by the Qataris and outfitted at the cost of hundreds of millions of dollars, an estimate of at least a billion, we're told, just can't do and can't protect him if the Iranians decide to try to shoot a missile at that plane. Can't protect him in the same sure fired way that his old plane that he's rejected can.
- [24:27]
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- [24:55]
Adopt Us Kids Representative / Sylvia Garcia
courage.
- [24:56]
Alicia Menendez
I learned it from my adoptive mom. Hold my hand. You hold my hand. Learn about adopting a teen from foster
- [25:03]
Adopt Us Kids Representative / Ms. Now Host
care@adoptuskids.org you can't imagine the reward brought
- [25:07]
Alicia Menendez
to you by Adopt Us Kids, the U.S. department of Health and Human Services and the AG Council.
- [25:10]
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Have you ever wanted to share your opinions with Ms. NOW about our TV
- [25:14]
Mark Elias
programs, podcasts, live events and more?
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Now's your chance to have your voice heard. Join the MSNow Insights community at Ms. NOW Insights.
- [25:25]
Alicia Menendez
Carol, do you know did your reporting tell you if there were any of these conversations prior to the President leaving for NATO?
- [25:34]
Adopt Us Kids Representative / Ms. Now Host
I wish I could answer that. It's such a good question. What I know is that the decision was made on Wednesday morning that because of these security issues, because of the end of the ceasefire that Trump announced that day that they were going to have to shift into the older and safer plane, the plane that was designed from the ground up to be a military plane and not, as one of my sources said, a passenger jet with great paint and great leather seats.
- [26:02]
Alicia Menendez
Mayor Landrieu, this is part of what Carol wrote about the plane's fitting. The Qatari Boeing VC25B, originally manufactured as a passenger jet in 2012, does not have some of the original Air Force One's equipment and some of the jets capabilities have not been fully tested. The sources added, quote, this plane was built for aesthetics, not mission. One former national security official said, I know we talk a lot about the reflecting pool as a metaphor for this presidency, but perhaps the plane is as well. Mayor
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Harry Littman
all hat, no cattle. You know, I watched him. He's such a bad liar. I have five kids. That's like watching my 14 year old son tell me about why he didn't come home on time last night. You know, in Louisiana we say stuff like, I might have been born at night, but I wasn't born last night. But just think about, you know, what that tells you about the President's judgment and his choice. This is the guy that went in to Iran without a day two plan for what you could have predicted was them taking over the Straits of Hormuz. If you took this plane in and you didn't give them enough time to actually put the stuff on it that you needed to let the President operate the way a president's supposed to or protect the President from harm because you wanted to show off. That says a lot about your leadership skills. I would remind America when President Trump took office in 2016, he bragged almost every day about how he was going to have two new planes. He was going to get Boeing to really kind of give him a break. Those two new planes still are not done after all of these years. And so he gets this kind of freebie that he thinks is his. Actually the American people on that because we put more money into that plane now than the Qataris. But to fly that over there in that danger zone at that time and put himself at risk and therefore putting the nation at risk is really just a, it just says a lot about who the guy is. And you know, he's lost focus, he's got bad judgment, he makes bad choices and his choices hurt the American people.
- [27:54]
Alicia Menendez
Especially because Carol, so much of this could have been guessed at, could have been predicted at the outset in your reporting. You know, national security officials say it can take years to fit a plane out to the standards of Air Force One. For those who did have concerns, how long did they expect Trump to engage in this bizarre shuffling so he could ride on his golden plane before it became a security issue like the one we saw just in the past few days?
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Adopt Us Kids Representative / Ms. Now Host
Well, again, back to the President's ability to make things up on the fly, you know, so he has said that this jet was a gift to him, but it ends up being a cost to taxpayers. He has said that this jet is so much better and completely safe, including his spokesperson who didn't answer our questions last night, but issued a statement today saying that this plane, the new Air Force One, is perfectly great and totally up to the standards. But it's not, because security officials convinced the President he could not fly on it while we have hostilities with Iran. The claim that we could outfit this in rapid fashion in 15 months is also completely belied by what Mr. Landrieu just outlined. It takes years to build this kind of plane from scratch, usually when there's national security clearances for all the people building it and for the suppliers who are doing the work and manufacturing the plane in a secure place on site. It is such a top secret product and it's not easily kind of refashioned out of a passenger jet. So, so many things about this were, I guess I should say in the newsroom here at msnow, the reporters who really know this material like the back of their hand said, no, duh, this is what was going to happen when there was a security issue. He would have to go back into the other plane. But that is an embarrassment to him. It, it kind of puts lie to all of the claims he has made heretofore.
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Alicia Menendez
Mayor, only have about 30 seconds left. But $400 million to retrofit the plane, do you think that or the safety and security piece of this resonates most with voters?
- [30:21]
Harry Littman
Well, I think both of them are really, really important. People see that he's focused on planes and ballrooms and not their cost. And I think that hurts. But the most important thing about this is you have a president that put his own comfort ahead of the safety and security of American citizens. If something should befall the President while he was in that air because that plane could not do what it was supposed to do, they could put America itself at risk and put everybody in this nation at risk. And he continues to put himself above everybody else because he's just not thinking. He's just got this massive character flaw in this blind spot, and it hurts the American people and it puts us at risk and it challenges our safety and it's just wrong.
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Alicia Menendez
Carol Lennig, as always, thank you so much for bringing us your reporting today. Mayor Mitch Landrieu, thank you so much for being with us, helping us understand this all. When we return, the growing demand for answers after an ICE agent shot and killed a father of three was driving a crew to work at a home building site in Texas. We have that story after a quick.
- [31:24]
Adopt Us Kids Representative / Sylvia Garcia
People are dying.
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Mitch Landrieu
What are they doing murdering innocent Mexican people?
- [31:28]
Adopt Us Kids Representative / Sylvia Garcia
They come to work. They come here to work. So what if they don't got papers?
- [31:35]
Alicia Menendez
A small fraction of the growing outrage after Lorenzo Salgado Araujo was shot and killed by ICE agents earlier this week. Protesters flooded the streets of downtown Houston yesterday where the father of three was killed by an ICE agent during a traffic stop on Tuesday. Reuters reports the Mexican president, Claudia Sheinbaum, says that her government will be filing criminal charges over Mexican citizens who have died while in immigration custody or during ICE operations. ICE says that Araujo tried to drive over ICE officers, which led to the officer firing his weapon in what they say was self defense, but they offered no evidence to support that assertion. As Lulex president pointed out in a press conference yesterday, that statement almost exactly mirrors what I said after the shooting death of Renee Nicole Goode, which was later disproven by video evidence. One of Lorenzo's children, Ronaldo, said this about how he would like his dad to be remembered.
- [32:31]
Ozempic Ad Voice / Genesis GV70 Ad Voice
I saw a video posted on Facebook that he had been shot. I recognized him immediately, not from his appearance, but from his voice crying for help as he lay on the street bleeding out. Part of his dream was to build a house for himself and his family, just like the hundreds he had built for himself over his career. One that he could call home, one that he can call ours, our home. And he did. After he built his own house with his crew composed of family members and other loved ones. He achieved it after it was built up. After it was built and up until last weekend, you can find him every evening after work, resting on his porch, listening to music, petting his dog. I am deeply heartbroken to see that the man who taught me the value of hard work, family values and education will no longer spend an evening on that porch. I am calling for a full investigation.
- [33:41]
Alicia Menendez
I want to bring in Democratic Congressman Sylvia Garcia. She represents the Houston area. Congresswoman, thank you so much for being with us. What are you hearing from your community right now?
- [33:50]
Adopt Us Kids Representative / Sylvia Garcia
Well, there's still outrage. There's still A lot of grief. And it's also mixed with some level of fear, Alicia, because they know that if this happened to Lorenzo Saldano, it could be happening to them tomorrow. So, you know, we all are still heartbroken. As you said, he was a family man. He was a business owner. He was a father. He had three boys. He's 52. He was a productive citizen. And let me underscore, he had no criminal history. Nothing.
- [34:23]
Harry Littman
Nada.
- [34:25]
Adopt Us Kids Representative / Sylvia Garcia
But yet he was stopped and ended up fatally shot. And I'm pleased to say that I do have some breaking news. I did have a conversation with the acting director of ICE and they have confirmed that he was not a target. He was not a target, as his family has always said. He was a good, solid, decent human being. He was a father. He was a hard worker. They also confirmed that there is nobody body cam camera video to release. There's no dash cam, body dash cam videos to release. And that the vehicle was unmarked and frankly, no lights or no sirens. So you have to ask yourself, Alicia, if you were followed by a black SUV and then had another one come bruin itself right in front of you, what would you do? If it's not marked, you don't know who's trying to stop you. Is it someone who's going to steal from you? You know, pull you out of the car and rape you? I mean, you don't know. But ICE is using the same playbook as they did in the. The case in Minneapolis with Renee. Good. They're saying that he weaponized the car, that he refused orders that. That he
- [35:54]
Alicia Menendez
was.
- [35:54]
Adopt Us Kids Representative / Sylvia Garcia
Was going to run over them, and that they shot him in self defense. He was the driver. How did they shoot him? In the right side of his stomach. So there's so many questions, and my conversation with the ICE director, I. I really pressed him because I was really concerned at the timetable that ICE released the name of, of. Of the decedent, Mr. Sogl, even before the medical examiner's office has confirmed his identity, even before they had spoken to the family. So they showed no level of human decency. ICE owes them an apology because they released a name to the media before they had even spoken to the family. It's just really, at least I could go on and on with all the concerns that we have. But the bottom line for us is that we want this family to get the answers. We're asking for a complete, independent, thorough investigation and we want justice for the Salgado family.
- [36:56]
Alicia Menendez
Can you give me a sense, just real quick, Congressman, of what an accurate investigation would look like, what accountability looks like here and what you can do from your approach in Congress.
- [37:08]
Adopt Us Kids Representative / Sylvia Garcia
Well, you know, we're hit on all fronts. You know, I've had conversations already with my colleague, Congressman Green, who sits on the Department of Homeland Security Committee, and he will use everything that he can to try to get a hearing there, or if not a shadow hearing, to just get to some of the facts. I've talked to my other colleague, Christian Menefee, who is on the Oversight Committee. He will be doing some of the same through there. And then I keep calling for an investigation, and it has to be one that's thorough, complete, and independent. This whole idea that the Department of Justice and OIG are looking at it, really, that's what you did in the good case. And we still have no results from that six months later. No one has been held accountable. Nobody has told us what really happened there. That but for the videos that the public came forward with, we knew that their playbook story of this weaponization of the vehicle and it gives us a right of self defense to shoot. That's all they have here. And in the end, that's all they'll have unless we have a full investigation. So it needs to be something modeled like the United States Commission on Civil Rights, because obviously these are civil rights and human rights violations. It could be the General Accounting Office to just look at what they did and what they didn't do and how they're spending their money. It could even be the United Nations Council on Human Rights, because these are human rights violations. I'm pleased that the Mexican president has taken note and may be doing something, because we've got to do something. This is just one more death too many. And we've got to bring outside independent folks to come in and look at it. We should do that.
- [38:52]
Mitch Landrieu
That.
- [38:53]
Alicia Menendez
Congresswoman Sylvia Garcia, thank you so much for your time today.
- [38:56]
Adopt Us Kids Representative / Sylvia Garcia
Thank you, Alicia.
- [38:58]
Alicia Menendez
All right. When we return, how this latest tragedy in Houston squares with the new DHS secretary's vow to make the administration's immigration crackdown quieter and more discreet. Unbelievable. That's all ahead. I want to bring in national immigration reporter at the Bulwark, my friend Adrian Carrasquillo. Adrian, I'm not sure if you saw this, reporting from the Washington Post about how Lorenzo's son found out what had happened to his dad. Let me read you just a little bit of it. The first inkling of what had happened surfaced on his phone. Community activists were posting about Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in the heart of a Houston neighborhood. Many Mexican immigrants call home. When he reached the site, Ronaldo Salgado saw his father's white work van. Then a video popped up on his social media feed. It showed a man struggling on the ground after being shot by an ICE officer. How familiar is this story becoming to members of our community?
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Ozempic Ad Voice / Genesis GV70 Ad Voice
It's familiar. From everything we saw that happened in Minneapolis, ICE gives the same exact, almost word for word explanation that their agents were bravely defending themselves from these, like, crazed illegal aliens and that they were using their car as a battering ram. And then what you actually find out is what you found out yesterday at the press conference, which was heartbreaking. Like to hear the son, Ronaldo, not just talk about his father. But I. I think in that mom moment, he would have been excused for just breaking down and not being able to get through it. In that moment, wanting to honor his father and to tell everybody who he was. And. And that's what I tried to do in my story is just like, who was this man, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo? You know, for. To be here for 35 years, to have three US citizen sons who are college students. There's sometimes criticism when you highlight how long someone has been here. The idea being that you don't care if someone's been here six months. But that's not what it is. It's how many lives man affected, not just his family. It reverberates out to the community, to the workers that went to his house and asked him for work, and he gave them work, to the houses that he built with his hands for people in the north Houston suburbs. And then his dream was to build his own house, and then he did. So, you know, that is what DHS and ICE have done by killing this man. And, of course, there are so many questions, and who knows how many answers we'll get, though many people are demanding them.
- [41:28]
Alicia Menendez
Well, especially because to hear Ronaldo talk about his dad, it was such a reminder that the avatar that this administration has cultivated of what the American immigrant is could not be farther from the truth. Right. A person who worked hard, a person who built everything from the ground up, also that he could enjoy a peaceful moment on his porch. I'm just so struck that this is all happening the same week, Adrienne, that you have political reporting that Mark Wayne Mullen is supposedly trying to make everything they're doing at DHS a little bit more quiet, a little less obvious. Well, there couldn't be anything more obvious about what this administration is up to than what we watched transpire. This Week in Texas.
- [42:14]
Ozempic Ad Voice / Genesis GV70 Ad Voice
I've never seen some words and some reporting age more poorly because they said that it was quieter and smarter, they said more professional. They said that it was, don't expect the Minneapolis anytime soon. And what we literally saw, saw then right after that was what happens when overarmed, under trained, overly aggressive agents with enough guns for war who are in unmarked cars. I mean, the congresswoman said it to you. What are any of us going to do if we're being surrounded by unmarked cars? How terrifying that is. And so, you know, yes, this administration quickly goes to release the name of someone and to call them an illegal alien as you're just, just try to dehumanize them as they did with Renee.
- [43:04]
Mitch Landrieu
Good.
- [43:05]
Ozempic Ad Voice / Genesis GV70 Ad Voice
You know, she was sort of this radical lesbian. Don't feel bad for her. Other U. S. Citizens, other white people. And, and what we're seeing is, is how people are feeling bad. There was the reporter, Lydia Terrazas had the, had this video of the Mexican man on his knees crying
- [43:23]
Alicia Menendez
about how
- [43:24]
Ozempic Ad Voice / Genesis GV70 Ad Voice
immigrants are being treated and chased like dogs. You had, the Washington Post reported that he said in Spanish, they're killing me. And I confirmed with that. He said, mesan matando. And you know, the congressman, Joaquin Castro just released a video on that. To hear those words which echoed to me, the I can't breathe of Eric Garner and of George Floyd. These final words are just. It's heartbreaking. And we cannot let these stories go without pursuing them.
- [43:51]
Alicia Menendez
Adrian Carrasquillo, thank you so much for your reporting and for reminding us who Lorenzo actually was. And thank you for joining me today. We're going to take a quick break.
- [43:58]
Adopt Us Kids Representative / Ms. Now Host
We're going to be right back. Back.
- [44:04]
Alicia Menendez
Nicole's guest on this week's episode of the Best people podcast is someone who knows the stakes of fighting the Trump administration, Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock. Just take a listen to part of their conversation.
- [44:17]
Ozempic Ad Voice / Genesis GV70 Ad Voice
The great thing about our country is, yeah, we, we have robust and sometimes rambunctious arguments about, you know, bread and war and the size of government and
- [44:31]
Mark Elias
all these things that seem like such
- [44:33]
Ozempic Ad Voice / Genesis GV70 Ad Voice
quaint little arguments now. We used to fight over them so vociferously. They all feel very quaint when we're trying to save the democracy itself.
- [44:41]
Mark Elias
I fight so hard for this.
- [44:44]
Ozempic Ad Voice / Genesis GV70 Ad Voice
And it's the first two chapters in my book.
- [44:46]
Mark Elias
One is on voting rights, second on
- [44:48]
Ozempic Ad Voice / Genesis GV70 Ad Voice
dark money, because these are not just issues alongside other issues.
- [44:54]
Mark Elias
Pick your issue, whatever it is.
- [44:55]
Ozempic Ad Voice / Genesis GV70 Ad Voice
You could say, well, climate change is an existential threat to our very survival.
- [45:00]
Mark Elias
And it is.
- [45:01]
Ozempic Ad Voice / Genesis GV70 Ad Voice
But the Democracy is the house we live in.
- [45:04]
Mark Elias
It's the context in which we get
- [45:06]
Ozempic Ad Voice / Genesis GV70 Ad Voice
to fight for all of these things. And so for me, it is fundamental. It is sacred. I believe that a vote is a kind of prayer for the world we desire for ourselves and for our children.
- [45:21]
Mark Elias
And so, yeah, I look back at
- [45:23]
Ozempic Ad Voice / Genesis GV70 Ad Voice
that time and I'm proud of what we did.
- [45:28]
Alicia Menendez
You want to hear more of that sermon? Just scan the QR code on your screen to hear the rest of this week's episode. You can download the best people wherever you get your podcasts. Another break for us. We're going to be right back. Thank you for spending part of this Thursday with us. We are so grateful. I hope you'll join us tomorrow noon Eastern for ON the line Courage. I learned it from my adoptive mom. Hold my hand. You hold my hand. Learn about adoption, adopting a teen from
- [45:55]
Adopt Us Kids Representative / Ms. Now Host
foster care@adoptuskids.org you can't imagine the reward brought to you by Adopt us Kids, the u.
- [46:01]
Alicia Menendez
S Services and the AD Council.