"A tumultuous moment"

Summary

Podcast Summary: "A Tumultuous Moment"

Podcast: Deadline: White House
Host: Nicolle Wallace
Date: October 1, 2025
Episode Theme:
This episode explores the increasingly volatile intersection of politics, national security, and law enforcement under the Trump administration’s second term—after a government shutdown and dramatic efforts to defund counterterrorism and law enforcement grants to blue states. Through conversations with leading reporters, former officials, and city leaders, Wallace investigates both the real-world security risks and the political motives behind the administration’s actions.

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Main Theme and Purpose

At a “tumultuous and increasingly dangerous moment” (01:12), this episode investigates how the Trump administration’s federal funding cuts target blue states, specifically slashing grants to law enforcement and counterterrorism programs. The ramifications—both practical and political—trigger urgent lawsuits, anxiety among security professionals, and the specter of domestic political retribution wielded as governance. The episode also examines escalating ICE enforcement tactics and the ethical crisis posed by using executive power to punish political opponents.

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Key Topics and Insights

1. Government Shutdown and Funding Cuts to Counterterrorism (01:12–08:26)

• Context: Sixteen hours into a government shutdown, Trump’s administration is using it to escalate staff cuts and defund grants to blue states—over $100 million in funding destined for NYPD, FDNY, and NY State Police counterterrorism efforts is at risk.

  • “They helped fund bomb squads, K9 teams and chemical weapon detection... trained officers to respond to an active shooter...” (01:52, Nicolle Wallace quoting NYT)

• Political Retaliation: Blue states and cities facing grant termination must comply with ICE or lose funds, raising alarms about undermining police and security. Lawsuits filed by blue-state attorneys general allege the administration is redirecting funds to Trump-aligned states.

  • “You have chosen to defund the counterterrorism efforts at the NYPD, at FDNY, NY State Police… You have ignored [threats]... These programs... have a proven track record of success.” (02:30, Wallace summarizes NY Gov. Hochul's letter)

• Expert Insight: Senior Lawfare fellow Michael Feinberg underscores that “for counterterrorism efforts to really be successful... you need to have state, federal, and local departments and agencies working hand in glove.” Cutting funds “is not just going to weaken New York City, it's going to weaken the entire United States counterterrorism apparatus.” (05:57–06:40)

2. The Motive—Political Revenge Over Public Safety (08:26–12:43)

• Law Enforcement as Leverage: There is no legitimate law enforcement reason to cut these programs, says Feinberg; it’s political punishment of blue states.

  • “They're exaggerating… they’re not war zones like the President said... but they certainly do need federal funding to function efficiently and safely.” (07:15–08:02, Michael Feinberg)

• Miles Taylor (former DHS chief of staff): “Is your life worth less because you live in a blue state? And Donald Trump seems to be saying again and again... yes.” He draws a line from FEMA funds to counterterrorism grants—services are held hostage to coerce compliance. (09:07)

• Escalation: “Donald Trump is pulling away money to protect them against terrorism and he's trying to cast the political opposition as terrorists.” (10:20, Miles Taylor)

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3. Designating Political Opposition as ‘Enemy Within’ (12:43–17:38)

• Wallace frames this as a watershed moment: “For the first time he put together the two sides of the invasion coin... describing what's happening in the country from his political opponents: the enemy within…” (11:36)

• Taylor outlines the blueprint: Trump aims to “deprive Americans that live in places that don't support him of their core government services, [and] also to go on offense against them using the forces of government power... The architecture was built last week with this executive order... to start adding opposition figures to the US Government's terrorist watch list.” (12:43–14:16)

• Alex Wagner (author, journalist): Trump’s guiding principle in the second term is “revenge... He really sees two groups: those who are with him and those who aren't.” (14:40, 15:36)

• Why do people stay? Those now surrounding Trump are loyalists, “people who want to help him implement his governing philosophy, whatever that may be.” (16:21)

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4. Dismantling the Defenses: Law Enforcement and Institutional Purge (22:10–30:31)

• Defunding the Police (Ironically): Trump’s method of “backing the blue” only applies to those who are personally loyal. Miles Taylor warns this will spur backlash as firefighter and police associations rally in protest.

  • “Police and firefighters and 911 victims families would show up... and say, how dare you put lives in danger... The administration isn’t even trying to go through Congress with this. It's trying to do it by fiat.” (23:07, Taylor)

• Purge of Independent Agencies: Michael Feinberg explains the targeted dismantling at DOJ and FBI; meanwhile resources are built up at ICE—now with a bigger budget than the Marine Corps. “They're taking resources away from independent, experienced agencies that can push back and devoting it to ones whose members probably lean more Trumpist, more MAGA...” (27:33–28:44, Feinberg)

• No More Guardrails: “The only real inoculation we have... are hopefully engaged citizens at the ballot box… Congress has shown an unwillingness... The judiciary, through a major ruling on presidential immunity, essentially removed any guardrails...” (29:16–30:31, Feinberg)

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5. Escalation of ICE Tactics and Media Suppression (32:12–45:37)

• Violent Incidents: Journalist Dean Moses describes a brutal ICE arrest in a Manhattan courthouse; photojournalists are shoved, one leaves in a neck brace. (32:39–33:11)

• Pattern of Abusive Enforcement: NYC Comptroller Brad Lander chronicles daily violence by masked ICE agents at Federal Plaza. “The abductions themselves are lawless... they don't present warrants, they don’t tell you why they're detaining you... and as you mentioned... that behavior is unacceptable. Suspended him for a couple of days, but then put him right back on.” (34:40, 36:30)

• Media Intimidation: ICE and DHS fuse “agitators” and “members of the media” in official statements, laying rhetorical groundwork for criminalizing press oversight.

  • “Putting the word agitators next to members of the media... No one's allowed in that hallway unless you have a media credential... This is not a place where... agitators have free reign.” (37:53, Jacob Soboroff)

• Legal Entrapment: Immigrants are blocked from remote hearings—forced to risk courthouse attendance, only to face violent enforcement.

  • “They’re being... essentially... these aren’t courtrooms anymore. They’e abduction traps.” (42:02, Brad Lander)

• Public Backlash: Despite a hardline deportation platform, the American public is responding with record-high support for immigration as vital and moral outrage at abusive treatment.

  • “A lot of the comments... were, I voted for Trump. I wanted more deportations, but I don’t want this.” (44:33, Brad Lander)

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6. Catholic Teachings as a Moral Rebuke—Pope Leo XIV Criticizes Trump Policies (45:37–46:59)

• Pope Leo XIV (the first American pope): Rebukes the Trump administration's immigration and militarization policies as hypocritical and inhumane.
  • “Someone who says I'm against abortion but says I'm in favour of the death penalty is not really pro-life… I don't know if that's pro-life.” (46:43–46:59, Pope Leo via Wallace/Miles Taylor)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Is your life worth less because you live in a blue state? ... He seems to be saying that the answer is yes.”
  — Miles Taylor (09:07)

• “He never backed the blue, he backs the brown shirts. Donald Trump said he supported law enforcement, but what he meant was, ‘I support law enforcement that supports me…’ He’s building his own deep state.”
  — Miles Taylor (25:32)

• “You don’t do that [give ICE a bigger budget than the Marine Corps] for standard, run of the mill, law enforcement. You do that if you’re trying to set up a domestic force.”
  — Michael Feinberg (28:44)

• “Revenge isn’t a law enforcement policy, and it isn’t a national security strategy.”
  — Nicolle Wallace (17:38)

• “The only real inoculation... are hopefully engaged citizens at the ballot box. Because Congress has shown an unwillingness... The judiciary... essentially removed any guardrails...”
  — Michael Feinberg (29:16)

• “These aren’t courtrooms anymore. They’re abduction traps.”
  — Brad Lander (42:02)

• “Someone who says I'm against abortion but says I'm in favor of the death penalty is not really pro life... inhuman treatment of immigrants... I don’t know if that’s pro life.”
  — Pope Leo XIV (46:43–46:59)

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Important Segment Timestamps

• 01:12 — Nicolle Wallace sets the perilous stage: funding cuts, the government shutdown, and the risk to NYPD/FDNY.
• 05:57 — Michael Feinberg on the necessity of federal/local counterterror collaboration.
• 09:07 — Miles Taylor indicts the administration's blue-state targeting.
• 12:43 — Taylor outlines the Trump plan to designate political opposition as “terrorists.”
• 15:25–17:17 — Alex Wagner on Trump's philosophy of revenge.
• 22:10–26:57 — Segment on the attempt to defund the police, purge loyal officials, and weaponize law enforcement.
• 32:39 — Dean Moses details a violent ICE incident against journalists.
• 34:40–44:33 — Brad Lander and Jacob Soboroff on systemic ICE violence and America's changing views on immigration.
• 45:37–46:59 — Pope Leo XIV’s rebuke of Trump immigration policies as anti-life.

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Conclusion

This episode of Deadline: White House powerfully documents the Trump administration’s attempts to weaponize federal power for partisan ends—including slashing security funding to cities, labeling dissidents as terrorists, and leveraging law enforcement against perceived opposition. The conversations reveal alarm among national security experts, public officials, and legal advocates, who warn that these tactics both endanger the country and undermine democratic values. The episode ends with a rare moral rebuke from the first American pope, encapsulating the profound ethical risks at stake.

Transcript

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[Nicole Wallace]

Hi there everyone. It's four o' clock in New York at a tumultuous and increasingly dangerous moment for the federal government and the country and the city of New York. Sixteen hours into a government shutdown and the prospect of the Trump administration using said government shutdown to finish what Elon Musk and his chainsaw started with mass firings that could further gut the federal government and potentially impair its ability to function. All that coming as Democrats have managed to stall a parallel effort by Team Trump to hold the safety and security of millions of Americans as ransom. Yesterday, a federal judge blocked the Trump administration from temporarily withholding federal funds to 10 blue states and the District of Columbia. Among those funds, more than $100 million that was bound for the New York Police Department, FDNY and New York State Police programs, programs that have been put in place to fight terrorism in the days and months and years since the September 11th terrorist attacks. @ stake money that, according to the New York Times, quote, helped fund bomb squads, K9 teams and chemical weapon detection. They helped train officers to respond to an active shooter situation or collapsed building and paid for intelligence analysts and for members of the National Guard standing watch at Grand Central Terminal. New York's Governor Kathy Hochul, writing in a letter to Kristi Noem this quote, while the Trump administration may talk tough, in practice, you have chosen to defund the counterterrorism efforts at the New York Police Department, at fdny, New York State Police and law enforcement agencies from Long island to Buffalo. You have ignored the National Counterterrorism Center's own determination that New York has been attacked by foreign or foreign inspired terrorists nearly twice as many times as the next most targeted state. And these programs now on the chopping block have a proven track record of success. One NYPD official telling NBC News that the department has thwarted 71 plots against New York City since 911 and that they have flagged and uncovered threats against targets in other cities and states as well. So it's not just New York City that's being impacted. The governor of Massachusetts is warning that the cuts, if they go through, would affect information sharing among federal, state and local agencies. It would make it harder for agencies obtaining equipment, and it could even affect response to active shooter situations. It is all part of a bigger effort, though, by Donald Trump and his administration to target cities and states that he doesn't like. The ones that refuse to bend to Trump's autocratic ambitions and unpopular policies, especially when it comes to mass deportations. The blue state attorneys general are suing to force DHS to hand over these grants. They were created and funded by Congress. By the way, they claim in a lawsuit that the funds originally bound for their states are instead going to states like North Carolina, Indiana and Tennessee because the Trump administration believes those states are more aligned with the Trump agenda. These AG's aren't alone. This morning, more than two dozen cities and counties in California and Washington state filed their own lawsuit against the Trump administration for demanding that the cities and counties cooperate with ICE in order to receive $350 million in grants. The Trump administration defunding the police and weakening national security is where we start today with senior political reporter for Axios, Alice Eisenstadt. Also joining us, former DHS chief of staff during Donald Trump's first term, Miles Taylor's back and former assistant special agent in charge at the FBI, current fellow at Lawfare Michael Feinberg is here. We are excited to announce right now, right here, that he is now officially an MSNBC national security and intelligence analysts. Michael, welcome to the. I don't want to call it a dysfunctional family. It can be a chaotic family. But welcome. Welcome to the team. We're lucky to have you. I start with you, and I think this is a good thing. So I'm going to put these pictures up in the spirit of trying to make this conversation bigger. Donald Trump has recently been enjoying New York City and all the kinds of events that are attracted to and only happen in New York City, things like Yankees games and the Ryder cup and the US Open. And I wonder if you can just talk about how the NYPD counterterrorism Programs, the funding for which they're trying to cut, help make the whole city and everybody in it and everyone that visits it safe.

[Michael Feinberg]

Well, it's really almost disingenuous for us to talk about counterterrorism efforts as if they could be neatly demarcated between NYPD and FBI and DHS and the rest of both the state, city and federal Alphabet soup that runs around the island and the outer boroughs, of course, as well. Because one of the real lessons that we learned the hard way after 911 was that for counterterrorism efforts to really be successful, to really get to the proverbial left of boom, as we used to say, you need to have state, federal and local departments and agencies working hand in glove. But in order to do that, the state and local agencies generally do need a financial boost because they don't have the same resources as the federal government. So to take that away now is not just going to weaken New York City, it's going to weaken the entire United States counterterrorism apparatus.

[Nicole Wallace]

And why would you do that? I mean, what would the law enforcement benefit be? I mean, obviously none. But why would you cut those programs?

[Michael Feinberg]

The only explanation that makes sense to me is the one you already articulated and is being used as the basis of the attorneys general suits, which is essentially that this is an attempt to punish blue states and blue cities. And there's a real irony because the Trump administration is making a lot of political hay talking about how disorderly and crime ridden the major cities in America are, but at the same time, they're pulling away the rug in terms of offering them resources that could help ameliorate that supposed condition. Now, I think they're exaggerating. My family and I go to New York all the time, as well as, you know, D.C. and Chicago and LA fairly regularly. And you know, they're not war zones like the President said yesterday, but they certainly do need federal funding to function efficiently and safely, as any city does. So it's not quite clear what this is other than attempt to, as they say, own the libs in the blue cities.

[Nicole Wallace]

Miles, I think you have spoken on this program in the past about witnessing efforts to do this with disaster relief funding. This is obviously taking something that diabolical like depriving disaster relief from a natural disaster struck city or state to affirmatively cutting that city's or state's ability to fight terrorism, which has always, until this moment, been viewed as attacks or threats to the whole country. Donald Trump seeming to believe that terrorists would target just a city, not the country anymore.

[Miles Taylor]

It begs the question, Nicole, is your life worth less because you live in a blue state? And Donald Trump seems to be saying again and again, not just here, he seems to be saying that the answer is yes, your life is worth less to him if you live in a blue state. Whether it's your house burning down and the FEMA funds he wants to dangle to make you beg for them, or the counterterrorism funds or the anti violence prevention programs, all of those things. He's putting lives in blue states at greater risk by doing this. And he knows that these are programs that work. I know that because I've briefed him on that. I can remember his first US terrorist attack as president. When we were October 2017, there was an ISIS inspired attack in New York City of a truck that mounted the sidewalk and mowed down cyclists. I think it killed eight people, wounded a few dozen. And the response that we mounted as a country, not just in New York City, but in major cities around the country to prevent copycat attacks, was enabled by these types of grant funds.

[Alex Wagner]

Right.

[Miles Taylor]

We saved lives. If this money is pulled back, we will lose lives. I feel confident in saying that. I feel dismayed in saying that. But people will die by pulling back this money. But Donald Trump is doing this with an array of government services. And as you noted, Nicole, we've talked about this for a few years, that if he returned, he was going to put the services that Americans depend on, especially in blue states, at risk. He was going to hold those services hostage as a way to try to coerce those people and their state and local leaders to do things the Trump administration wanted. But one last thing on this, Nicole, that I want to say is Michael pointed out an irony that Trump has been saying, you know, these are crime ridden places. Now he's pulling back the money that would make these places safer. It's actually even worse than that. Donald Trump is pulling back these counterterrorism funds and within the past week, he's started to create an apparatus to designate left leaning groups and Democrats as terrorists. You cannot overstate this here. He's pulling away money to protect them against terrorism and he's trying to cast the political opposition as terrorists. This is, to me completely absurd and it actually does put people in vastly greater danger.

[Nicole Wallace]

Well, Myles, I'm going to need you to say more because I think the, the mask off moment that you're talking about had sort of reached a stunning crescendo yesterday where for the first time he put together the two sides of the invasion coin he's described in lawsuits since he's been reelected. An invasion, something that judges haven't accepted. It was his rationale for invoking the Alien Enemies Act. But going back to the first midterm elections of his first term in 2000, he talked about a caravan that was invading. But yesterday, before the generals, was the first time I'd heard him describe what's happening in the country from his political opponents. The enemy within, which is how he describes. We're not dissidents yet, but that's certainly the path we're on. But political opponents is the enemy within with the invasion. And you're talking about designations for terrorism, the stripping of police programs. If you put it all together, what do you see?

[Miles Taylor]

You're totally right, Nicole. This is the week that we got the complete picture of Donald Trump's plan, which is to deprive Americans that live in places that don't support him of their core government services, but also to go on offense against them using the forces of government power. We don't need to warn people about that anymore. Donald Trump warned them in his own words. When he said yesterday that American cities would be a training ground for the military, I thought that was one of the most chilling things I had heard in the second Trump administration. He's talking about effectively using the American people as cannon fodder to train the military. And we know where he's focused because he said he's focused on Democratic cities and Democratic states. And if you take it a step further, like I noted, Nicole, and you combine it with the executive order we saw last week, which makes it easier for the president to designate Americans as terrorists individually, to put more Americans on the terrorist watch list. You see what they are planning to do. They are planning to use U.S. forces in democratic cities, but also to go beyond that and to start watch listing the opposition to make their lives more difficult, to track their movements, and to be able to, if the president wants, exert leverage to get people to do what they want. This sounds very Orwellian. It sounds. Sounds like fiction, but it's exactly what was just. The architecture was built last week with this executive order, again, to start adding opposition figures to the US Government's terrorist watch list.

[Nicole Wallace]

Alex, Donald Trump's approval rating is somewhere between 36 and 39% in the five polls I saw the day before yesterday. His retribution policies have the opposition of about 70% of Americans, including 40% of MAGA. Republicans. Republicans. Why are they. Why are they digging this sort of political trench for themselves?

[Alex Wagner]

Yeah, Look, Nicole, Donald Trump and I published a book earlier this year called Revenge the Inside Story of Trump's Return to Power. And revenge, Trump outlined during the campaign would be the governing philosophy that he would approach, that he was going to approach his second term with. Behind the scenes, Trump would joke about retribution, he would joke about revenge. During the campaign, he talked about it publicly. And now as president in the Oval Office, he's executing that. So whether it's politically popular for him or not politically popular for him, it's something that he's thought about a lot. It's something that he wants to go through with, and you're seeing that play out in real time.

[Nicole Wallace]

You know, it's J.D. vance that called Donald Trump America's Hitler. So I'm just curious what the standard is to end up on the kinds of lists that Miles is talking about.

[Alex Wagner]

Yeah, look, Trump really sees two groups of people, those who are with him and those who aren't with him. And he particularly looks back on the people who opposed him during his first term. Whether it was people like John Bolton or others, he's out for revenge on those people, and he's out for revenge on anyone who really seriously opposes him during his second term. It's sort of a binary view he takes of people in the political spectrum.

[Nicole Wallace]

I mean, I understand that they were all having to live with his perceived psychological traumas from the rule of law catching up with him. But what is the explanation for all the people around him? Do people just say, like, I'll call you back, Alex, I've got to go into my retribution meeting?

[Alex Wagner]

No, look, you know, Trump just. There's a difference between who is around Trump in his second term versus who was around Trump in his first term. The people who are around Trump during his second term are people who are on board with him, who are loyalists who want to help him implement his governing philosophy, whatever that may be. When Trump came into office during his first term, he was surrounded by people who didn't really necessarily know him that well, and people who may have wanted to stop what they saw as impulses that they didn't like. When Trump came into office during his second term, he's surrounded by loyalists, people who worked on the campaign with him, people who are his supporters and allies. So it's really a fundamentally different structure that is surrounding Trump this time around, and that's determining how a lot of things are playing out.

[Nicole Wallace]

But what is the philosophy? You said there? It's a different governing philosophy. What is the governing philosophy?

[Alex Wagner]

The governing philosophy, Revenge is Definitely. And retribution is definitely a part of his governing philosophy. It's definitely a part of what he's been doing while he's been in the White House. Look what happened to James Comey last week. Right. Perfect example of that. That's not everything that Trump is doing, but it's definitely part of how he thinks about politics.

[Nicole Wallace]

I mean, I guess what I would say to you, Michael, is revenge isn't a law enforcement policy, and it isn't a national security strategy. And what Trump is actually doing is making the country weaker and by extension, making himself politically weaker. And I wonder, as someone with a mind of looking to threats and looking to that which makes the country's ability to protect itself from all threats, what theory you have as to why?

[Michael Feinberg]

I think he likes being in power, and I think he likes being in power for its own sake. There is not an underlying political theory. There is not an underlying governing philosophy. There is not an underlying legal jurisprudence that he's trying to execute on. He likes being the number one person in charge. And, you know, if you look at what we've been talking about since the show began, there's no real way to impose order or structure on the different topics. Miles very thoughtfully brought up the executive orders, for example, on designating domestic terror organizations. It's important to know that's just legal word salad. There is literally nothing in the Constitution or any provision of the United States Code which allows the president of the United States to designate a domestic terrorist organization, a foreign terrorist organization. Yes, there are many statutes and a robust framework of case law that allows that. But when you start designating domestic advocacy groups as terrorists, you run into some real First Amendment problems very quickly.

[Nicole Wallace]

And I guess I'm old enough to remember when they cared about the First Amendment. Alex, thank you so much for taking us. I guess down is the only word to use down the rabbit holes of that place. Extraordinary. Extraordinary reporting. Miles and Michael, stick around with me. Ahead for us today, more incidents of masked ICE agents violently arresting immigrants. And now also journalists being attacked and photographers trying to document these arrests. We'll show that to you and we'll talk with a New York City official who has been there and is calling out the use of excessive force and calling for accountability today. Plus, it's a question you hear off TV or all the time. We'll ask it on tv. Is Trump okay? As we said, lots of people are talking about it. Democrats and some of the highest profile Republicans in Washington, D.C. also talking about it today, some members of the military who may have to take their orders from him. We'll have that story ahead as well. Also, later in the broadcast, the power of your wallet. You listening right now? And the pushback against corporations that stay on the sidelines or do the wrong thing when our democracy is under attack. We'll have all that and more when Deadline White House continues after a quick break. Don't go anywhere.

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[Nicole Wallace]

We're back with Miles and Michael. So, Miles, Donald Trump is defunding the police. Donald Trump is defunding programs championed by Rudy Giuliani when he was mayor. Some incredible people who are public figures to this day. I believe our current police commissioner at one point worked in some of these counterterror programs. John Miller, who's over on CNN talking about counterterror and national security issues, was one of the pioneers of these programs. And the men and women of the New York Police Department and the Fire Department of New York are American heroes. Their heroics on 911 are part of the fabric of our country's modern history. I wonder why you think that Trump is interested in defunding the police in a manner that seeks to sort of erase and rewind the clock on the things that we did to keep our country safe after 9 11.

[Miles Taylor]

Well, I think it's deeply shortsighted. It's obviously highly political. And it's meant to do the thing that we always talk about that Trump is trying to do, which is to create leverage to get leaders, Democratic leaders in particular, in places that he doesn't like and which don't like him to do things that he wants. But there is something here, Nicole, about them defunding the police in perhaps a way that they maybe didn't intend. And to put it another way, I think this is going to blow up in their faces when the groups, especially the sheriff's associations, the police associations, the FBI agents associations, Michael can speak to some of these as well, start to mobilize the firefighters associations and say, wait a second, this is what allows us to do our jobs. This is what allows us to save lives. And I've been on the receiving end of those angry voices. When I worked on Capitol Hill on the Appropriations Committee. Anytime a member of Congress, and it was usually libertarian members of Congress or Tea Partiers tried to slash money for these types of grant programs, they got eaten alive because police and firefighters and 911 victims families would show up on Capitol Hill and say, how dare you put lives in danger danger by trying to cut these funds and going to put the money towards your political priorities. The administration isn't even trying to go through Congress with this. It's trying to do it by fiat. It's trying to do it all by itself. And I think I would suspect they're going to be on the receiving end on some from some very loud and very angry first responders in this country.

[Nicole Wallace]

Miles, if you take the pardons of all of the January 6th insurrectionists and you take the defunding of the police programs pioneered after 911 at the NYPD and FDNY, and you take the partnerships that, as Michael's talking about, are almost inextricably linked into FBI office programs in places like New York. There's this, there's an obvious now dismantling not just of the administrative state, which was something Bannon said out loud in the first term, but of all of our defenses. And I wonder what part of Trump's political instincts are wrapped up in weakening our defenses.

[Miles Taylor]

Well, it was always this, Nicole. He never backed the blue, he backs the brown shirts. Donald Trump said he supported law enforcement, but what he meant was, I support law enforcement that supports me. Now, our friend Frank Fogloosi, who of course was also at the FBI and served alongside Michael, calls this the pocket police. Donald Trump has Long wanted his own pocket police that is accountable to him, that's not accountable to the oaths they take, that is not accountable to the Constitution that's willing to advance his edicts. And it's why, Nicole, if you look at another hypocrisy from the Trump administration, including the turning on their message of backing the blue, is one we've talked about before, that Trump is building his own deep state. He said he was going to dismantle the deep state. He's actually building his own deep state. But the first place he started was not the EPA or the Department of Agriculture, it's federal law enforcement. Because Donald Trump realizes he can lose the Congress, he can lose the courts, but if he has the guys with badges and guns, he has power. And that's why he's focused on lowering the standards into the FBI and ICE and driving ideologically aligned people into these jobs so that they stay and advance his agenda well past his administration.

[Nicole Wallace]

I mean, Michael, your very existence as a contributor to this network and not a senior member of FBI leadership essentially proves Myles point. The fact that you are not currently at the FBI, that Brian Driscoll is not currently in the FBI, Andy McCabe, Pete Strzok, Lisa Page, Jim Comey, the number of people who've been purged from the FBI who may have planned to spend their careers there is becoming infinite. What is that purge about in light of this effort to strip New York City of its counterterrorism capabilities?

[Michael Feinberg]

So I think that this purge is a lot more nuanced and a lot more planned than the average citizen realizes or wants to contemplate. It's important to look at the organizations with which he's starting, which is namely the Department of Justice and the FBI. It is not a coincidence that these are two of the oldest prosecutorial and investigative agencies and in our country's history. And with that age comes an ingrained culture of independence and doing the right thing, regardless of which way the political winds are blowing. And all of the new funding, the new resources, the high priority mission sets, are all going to ice, which, no offense against. Miles's former agency is one of the newer ones that doesn't have that sort of institutional culture yet. So they are taking resources away from the independent, experienced agencies that can push back and devoting it to the ones whose members probably lean more Trumpist, more maga, and giving them the resources to be built up. I don't know that it's actually sunk in for anybody yet that ICE has a larger budget than the US Marine Corps. You don't do that for standard run of the mill law enforcement. You do that if you're trying to set up a domestic force and what.

[Nicole Wallace]

Is in the system at this point as an antibody for that? Michael.

[Michael Feinberg]

Very little. The inspector general community which normally monitors the executive branch for abuses has been gutted. The special the Office of Special Counsel, which is not the sort of special counsel that Robert Mueller was, but is an independent agency that enforces apolitical norms in the executive branch, doesn't have a full time director. It has an acting director. We have seen that regardless of how Congress appropriates money, Donald Trump and his administration just are going to choose not to spend it if they disagree. So the only real inoculation we have, the only antibodies and immunities are hopefully engaged citizens at the ballot box. Because Congress has shown an unwillingness to stand up to this. The judiciary has, largely through a major ruling on presidential immunity, essentially removed any guardrails or limitations on how the president may act. So it's really up to the citizenry at this point.

[Nicole Wallace]

I guess that is the most important thing for people to understand. And anyone watching this conversation and thinking my thought bubble is about not being able to sleep tonight and thinking that I will text both of you so that you stay awake as well. That I'm sure you're already doing that. Miles Taylor and Michael Feinberg, thank you for a sober but honest conversation today. Thank you very much after the break. We've been talking a lot about ICE already. There's news that the ICE agent who body slammed an Ecuadorian mother in an immigration court in New York City and was temporarily removed has been reinstated, is back on the job today. We'll get reaction to that after a short break.

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[Miles Taylor]

It was a really sickening thud of when his head and his back hit the back of the very hard floors in the hallway and the ICE agents just rushed away. Thankfully, my other colleagues and some of the actual security guards who work there independent of ice, did step in, tried to call for medical attention. He was left there for some time, I would say 30 to 40 minutes, really not moving at all until EMS was able to come and take him away. But the actual ICE agents themselves, they did not intervene. They just left.

[Nicole Wallace]

That was journalist Dean Moses on what he witnessed there a violent interaction with ICE agents at a Manhattan immigration court yesterday. It ended with another journalist, Berhal Ellibol, leaving on a stretcher. He was in a neck brace as he left, with officers shoving Dean out of an elevator as he attempted to photograph ICE agents arresting a woman who had just left immigration court. The agents then shoved photojournalist Olga Fedorova, who fell down next to Eliev. It was unclear how Ali Bull's injuries occurred. Fedorova told the New York Times this that he was already on the ground when she fell next to him. Quote, his camera was next to him. It was still on. She said he was covering his face and he was moaning in pain as he was unable to move. It is not the first, but it is the latest incident of violence involving ICE at this courthouse. Last week, an ICE agent was, quote, removed from his duties after video emerged of him shoving the wife of someone who had just been detained by ice. At the time, ICE stated that, quote, the officer's conduct in this video was unacceptable. The officer has since been reinstated. Joining our coverage, New York City Comptroller Brad Lander and MSNBC's Senior national and political correspondent Jacob Sobroff is here. Brad, I wonder if you could take us through what is happening day in and day out and then talk about these two incidents which have garnered a lot of attention.

[Brad Lander]

Thank you. The violence is really escalating by ICE agents at 26 Federal Plaza. So every day, law abiding people seeking asylum come to 26 Federal Plaza for hearings. They've got a hearing date. They come, they appear before a judge. In most cases, the judge gives them a next hearing date. Maybe they get time to get a lawyer or their hearing is scheduled on their asylum application. Many of them then walk out and are able to get in that exact elevator and go downstairs. But some random times, without the government, without DHS having said anything in the hearing, ICE agents just grab people in the hallways. And now, as you've seen in these videos, over the last few days, they've gotten even more violent, throwing that woman, who's the wife of someone who had just been detained to the ground. And what Dean Moses did there in that video you see is just get on a public elevator. That's a public hallway. He steps into the public elevator. Those ICE agents had not said to the woman, you're under arrest. They had not told people to stay back. So that's assault. They simply assaulted him, threw him and Olga to the ground. And a journalist just trying to do his job wound up in the hospital.

[Nicole Wallace]

What do people need to understand about what you described as escalatory? I mean, because I think Jacob was down there and did some incredible reporting from there. But these two incidents suggest that the mere act of taking people basically who show up for their hearings, who are obviously trying to do things the right way in terms of addressing their immigration status, is a brutal tactic. But the physical brutality is what seems to be escalating. Is that right? And can you say more about that?

[Brad Lander]

Agreed. I mean, we've seen some of this all along. I think your first point is right. It's worth remembering that the abductions themselves are lawless. They don't present warrants, they don't tell you why they're detaining you. There's no clear reason, they're wearing masks, they don't identify themselves. So that's already an act of violence. And in some cases is they get very rough with the asylum seekers and they have in the past pushed or, you know, ripped apart folks. I mean, obviously I got arrested in a pretty aggressive incident back in June, but over the past few days, that agent, you know, Victor, who threw that woman to the ground last week, that was just a level of, I'm going to do whatever I want. Like, almost like he's drunk on the violence. And as you mentioned then I said that behavior is unacceptable. Suspended him for a couple of days, but then put him right Back on. And I believe those agents yesterday who were so aggressive with the journalists are angry that there was even a few minutes of accountability. They want to show the cruelty and the violence both to deter and frighten asylum seekers, but also to deter and frighten journalists and the public.

[Nicole Wallace]

Jacob, what is the legal architecture for acting with what appears to the untrained eye like impunity?

[Jacob Soboroff]

There is none. And Nicole, I do want to say about the comptroller. If it weren't for the comptroller and other elected officials from the city going down there in the earliest days of this, I think that the level of attention to what's playing out in the hallways of 26 Federal Plaza every single day would not be what it is. And so I'm so glad to be here with him to talk about this. When it comes to the legal justification or the justification at all why the administration is saying these agents are permitted to do this or they support them in doing this, or why they might have reversed course on that one particular agent who threw the mother to the ground last week. Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security after this incident took place, said that there was an obstruction of operations by and I, I want to be really clear about this. Agitators and members of the media. Putting the word agitators next to members of the media. Let me be really clear. No one's allowed in that hallway unless you have a media credential and you are entitled to be there or you are an elected official and are entitled to be there. This is not a place where members of the public, quote, unquote agitators have free reign to roam around and taunt ICE agents. There are people there doing their jobs. I did it for one day and in five hours I saw five people detained in a way not unlike you're seeing on your screen play out. And so they're pushing together this idea that the media, us, the members of the fourth estate, are the ones causing the problems here. When it's the practice itself. It is this unprecedented apprehension on a daily basis of people going there, as the comptroller said, to do the right thing, to show up for their immigration hearings, who are the ones that are causing problems here.

[Nicole Wallace]

I want to hold both of you over a break and ask you about really collapsing support from the public for both the kinds of people being detained and deported, people with jobs, people with American born kids, people with American spouses, and the increasing violence that we're seeing in the apprehensions. So everyone sticks around. We'll all Be right back. We are back. Brad Lander and Jacob Sobroff are still with us. Jacob, I want to ask you about some reporting in New York magazine that suggests that they are not permitting immigrants who were in a legal process to take their appointments online. Are they not without the right to argue that this is entrapment, that no one is interested in the legal process anymore if they're facing forcing them into courthouses where they're increasingly at risk of being violently detained?

[Jacob Soboroff]

That's certainly what immigration advocates, attorneys for people who are, as you said, in some cases feeling like they're being forced to show up for these appointments, would say. And the stories are countless. You know, we all know well the story of Nori Santay Ramos, who was deported to Guatemala after showing up to her routine immigration hearing. She was asked with her late mother, who died, to remind everybody once they got back to Guatemala to show up for this hearing. And also in an untraditional and sort of unprecedented way, when her mother had gone to these check ins time after time after time, the contours of what is normal, what this process looks like continues to shift on a daily basis. And it seems to be in the interest of meeting Stephen Miller's quotas, of having thousands of deportations, you know, a million deportations by the end of the year, you know, modeling it after DWIGHT D. Eisenhower's 1954 program. And it's not just in the immigration courthouse hallways. It's on the streets of Los Angeles. We saw these videos from Chicago marching down Michigan Avenue outside of big box retail stores, where I think it's the last place that any immigration enforcement operator would tell you a tactical team was needed to chase people down the street in order to find violent undocumented criminals.

[Nicole Wallace]

Brad, in all your years of public service, how many members of trend or violent criminals show up at a courthouse for their immigration hearings?

[Brad Lander]

I have seen none. And I've now, at immigration court, you know, just since June, probably sat in on 50 hearings, and they've got the entire record. All those individuals have given fingerprints. They have their biometrics. These are not people who even have a misdemeanor. They're in court because they fear persecution if they're deported back to their country. That's what their hearings are about. And they're being exactly as Jacob says, essentially. You know, I say in many ways, these aren't courtrooms anymore. They're abduction traps. They come down to see the judge as required, and those masked ICE agents grab them in the hallways.

[Nicole Wallace]

Jacob, what is the sort of state of mind or the psychic toll for attorneys and attorneys groups who help undocumented plaintiffs and clients.

[Jacob Soboroff]

I'll tell you something, Nicole. I think people feel very resolute. You would think that people feel dejected and scared right now. But the outpouring of support after you aired Nori's story, the amount simply of funds that were raised to bring her back to have to mount a legal challenge to this administration's, what people are calling illegal deportation of her, it surprised even me. And at a time when I think the easy thing to do would be to feel dejected by all this, look at the journalists that show up. Again, I want to say I went one day to 26 Federal Plaza. There are journalists that are showing up there. So sketch artists that are showing up there day after day after day to document this. And the same can be said of journalists from La Taco on the streets of Los Angeles who are monitoring every twist and turn of this saga. And I think it's Donald Trump said it himself in the first term. I don't like the sight and the feeling of people being separated. That's what made him reverse course. And I think not only lawyers, but journalists, citizen journalists, people on the streets are starving, starting to sort of dial into that. And you saw it on Michigan Avenue literally chase masked armed tactical agents away as they try to carry out these policies.

[Nicole Wallace]

Brad, you've got 79% of all Americans, according to the New York Times, now think immigration is a good thing. It's a record high after an election largely understood or analyzed by pundits to be one where people were proud, waving around signs that said mass deportation. Do you see this as a dynamic issue in our country and in our politics?

[Brad Lander]

I really do. You know, last week when I posted the video of that woman Monica being thrown to the ground, a lot of the comments in my mentions were, I voted for Trump. I wanted more deportations, but I don't want this. And also, you know, I think what people were told is, yeah, these are gang members and violent criminals, but when they see with their own eyes, these are hardworking families trying to do things the right way, being treated like that, when members of the press just trying to do their jobs are being treated like that. Trump or Kristi Noemi or Tricia McLaughlin can say what they want, but Americans can see with their eyes that this is not the way to treat people. And I really agree with what Jacob is saying. When cases have gotten into federal court, many of these folks have been released because what they're being taken on is paper thin. So the lawyers are going to keep going. I know those journalists are going to keep going. Dean Moses, he's there just about every day. And I'm going to keep showing up until they stop abducting our neighbors.

[Nicole Wallace]

All right. Well, let's keep this conversation going as well. New York City Comptroller Brad Lander and Jacob Soboroff, my friend and colleague, thank you so much for your time today. Up next for us, the pope has weighed in and we're what it means to be pro life, calling out the hypocrisy of inhumane treatment of fellow human beings. We'll bring you that surprising story next. Yesterday, Pope Leo XIV delivered his first public rebuke of the Trump administration since becoming the first American pope back in May. Pope Leo blasted Trump's ongoing immigration crackdown as inhumane and his politically charged military speech this week as concerning. Pope Leo also suggested the policies from this current administration with Catholics serving in about one third of its top positions, are not as pro life as they might want you to think. These answers came after a question about a Catholic award that Democratic Senator Dick Durbin was set to receive for his work on immigration advocacy, even though he supports abortion rights. Watch.

[Miles Taylor]

It's important to look at many issues.

[Nicole Wallace]

That are related to what is the teaching of the church. Someone who says I'm against abortion but.

[Miles Taylor]

Says I'm in favor of the death penalty is not really pro life.

[Nicole Wallace]

So someone who says that I'm against.

[Miles Taylor]

Abortion, but I'm in agreement with the.

[Nicole Wallace]

Inhuman treatment of immigrants who are in the United States, I don't know if that's pro life. Some rare comments from the pope. We'll continue to watch how he uses his massive platform and megaphone. Up next for us, more reactions still to Donald Trump's rambling and head scratching and other famously low energy speech to the nation's top military leaders yesterday. The next hour of Deadline White House starts after a very short break. Stay with us.

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