← Deadline: White House
Deadline: White House
"A victory that might come back to bite Donald Trump"
00:42:34
Nicolle Wallace on Kentucky Congressman Thomas Massie conceding defeat last night after being beaten by a candidate Trump personally recruited to run against him, after Massie angered Trump by being one the main drivers in Congress to release the DOJ files on Jeffrey Epstein.
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- [00:00]
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- [00:54]
Unnamed Political Commentator
By the way, today is the six month anniversary of the Epstein Falls Transparency act. We've taken out two dozen CEOs, an ambassador, a prince, a prime minister, a minister of culture, and that was just six months. I got seven months left in Congress.
- [01:26]
Nicole Wallace
I have never seen a happier concession speech in my life. Hi again everyone. It's five o' clock in New York. It's a political victory that might come back to bite Donald Trump in the you know where that was Kentucky Congressman Thomas Massie conceding defeat last night in a Republican primary after being defeated by a candidate Donald Trump personally recruited to run against him because he was mad at him. Massey angered Donald Trump by being one of the main drivers in Congress for transparency around the Jeffrey Epstein files. Massie is hardly alone, though. Republican members of the Indiana state Senate and Republican Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana have all met the same fate after Donald Trump deemed them insufficiently loyal even though they did all sorts of things that their histories suggest they didn't agree with, all in the service of loyalty to Donald Trump. So while Trump and his allies are celebrating their losses as a sign of the president's political strength, political strategist Dan Pfeiffer warns of this quote, yes, the incumbent president can influence primaries inside his own party, and yes, Trump is getting rid of people he believes wronged him. But spending nearly $20 million to defeat a Republican in a district Donald Trump won by 35 points is not the flex people think it is. At best, this is a Pyrrhic victory, and Trump's revenge tour is a big problem for the GOP moving forward. Trump is a massive drag on his party, and to win, many Republicans will need to show some independence from the deeply unpopular president. A smarter, savvier, less megalomaniacal leader would give his party the room to do what they need to do to win. Trump is incapable of doing so, and the GOP will pay a price for that. And Trump's quest for undying loyalty may have blocked his own agenda before the midterms or even finished. As Politico reports, quote, yesterday a conquered and consequently unbridled Senator Bill Cassidy joined Democrats to become the 50th yes vote on a war powers resolution, opposed Trump's ballroom funding and reconciliation, and called Texas's AG Ken Paxton, Trump's freshly endorsed challenger for John Cornyn's Senate seat, a, quote, felony that is likely just the beginning. Lawmakers ignored the president's demand to attach the Save America act to their housing bill. And Majority Leader John Thune is pushing back on yet another Trump demand to fire the parliamentarian. Even administration ally Senator John Kennedy expressed doubt about DOJ's $1.8 billion anti weaponization fund. Now Cornyn could join their ranks. This closing of the ranks is happening as we speak. Politico is reporting that Senate Republicans are dropping the $1 billion in funding for Trump's pet project, that Gilded Ballroom, the picture of which Trump carries around like his favorite little whoopee. Donald Trump's unflinching demand for loyalty, even at the expense of his own party's political success and agenda is where we begin the hour with some of our favorite experts and friends. Staff writer at the Atlantic video podcast host David Frum is back and Alex Wagner is still with us. David Frum, let me ask you about this. Sometimes I have some trepidation. I don't know that it's a good thing to flag some of these things. I feel like this is in the Democrats interest to have some of these absolutely unpalatable people win primaries so that the Democrats can prevail in general elections. But Trump's unstoppable and this is who he is. And he clearly doesn't care about his party or his party's political fate. But I wonder what you make of the men who tried to sort of straddle loyalty and some shell or shadow of conviction and were voted out of office anyway.
- [05:23]
David Frum
Trump is winning more and more of less and less and the penny has to drop. I mean, I don't have a lot of sympathy for the plight of John Cornyn, for example, who was never A profile in courage. He was a normal Republican who tried to do normal Republican things but never stood up for the American way in the way that Mitt Romney did or even Bill Cassidy who did vote for one of the impeachment convictions. And yet and oh, Cornyn also did things like name highways for Trump and other self abasement but yet he represented the American system working the way the American system is supposed to work. He is what you would expect a Republican from Texas to be. And he's not surrounded by this stench of scandal that Ken Paxton is and still Ken Paxton scandalousness called somehow to Trump and there and Cornyn looks like he's going to to lose. But these victories are very, I think Dan Pfeiffer is right about this. These victories are very short sighted. Trump got handed another defeat just today when a U.S. district Court told told him that no, the Presidential records Act of 1978 is not unconstitutional. You have to keep records and you have to turn them over. You can't use them as your personal property. You have to turn them over to the national archivist at the end of your presidency. I think there is something where some gravity is reasserting itself. But he does have that control of more and more of less and less.
- [06:44]
Nicole Wallace
Yeah, I mean Alex, even the redistricting gambit which he seems more committed to than sort of elevating the political prospects for his own party, has this double sided real political impact. And it is not, I don't know that anyone has explained to Donald Trump that when you change the maps you make a 10 point wave adequate where a 15 point wave in the past might have been required. And I wonder what you make of all these moves that politically at least for Trump represent two steps forward, possibly three steps back.
- [07:19]
Alex Wagner
It's almost as if Nicole, he doesn't care about the Republican Party. I mean, which is weird, right? Not because it's surprising that Donald Trump doesn't care about people other than himself, but because there is the very real possibility, one that he's keenly aware of, that he will face an impeachment trial, that there will be Oversight committee hearings dragging up all of the clowns in the administration to clown themselves further in front of the American public. I mean the real, there are real costs to losing both houses of Congress one or more. And Trump seems to be so focused on his own vendettas that he's forgotten about that very, very looming reality. I mean the latest New York Times polling, setting aside the approval rating shows on a gener ballot, Democrats have a 14 point edge among likely voters. That is really meaningful. And Dan Pfeiffer, who you quoted at the beginning of this segment, has a grace piece on that, on the message box substack. That is legitimate. And that means that these sort of meddling around the margins as Republican leaders are doing in these congressional districts could actually make congressional districts more competitive by putting spreading Democrats around. You have more, you know, this could redound to be a major problem for Republicans come November. They have assumed they're going to hold together the coalition that they had in 2024. Not if you look at the polling. Trump is hemorrhaging support among young voters, independents and voters of color. The coalition that brought Trump into office is not the coalition that's going to be there for him in November, including and especially right now when he's doing everything he can to shred that coalition.
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Nicole Wallace
Well, and even the pillars of this coalition, David Frum, are gone. I mean, he's lost 25 points among white, non college educated voters, which since 2015 has been a central plank of his political coalition.
- [09:05]
David Frum
And he's got this other thing hanging over his head, which is the end of the Voting Rights Act. The effect event, it's not formally ended, but it's very sick. It's listening to one side. Political scientists have been arguing for decades, but what would be the practical real world effect of eliminating the Voting Rights Act? What the Voting Rights act does, or at least the portions that are in trouble now, what they do is they effectively they crowd a state's African American voters into one or two or more districts where they represent a super majority. So the people of those districts are guaranteed that they will be able to elect a fellow member of their group to the United States Congress. But what they also do is they then make the rest of the state less minority, less liberal, less Democratic and give Republicans advantages in all the parts of the states that are not crowded into the Voting Rights act districts. And political scientists have wondered, well, if you ended this and you had more race neutral allocation of seats that might actually move a number of black and therefore probably Democratic voters into other districts and make the whole state more competitive. Others political scientists have said no, no, you're wrong. Academics do that. We're about to find out the answer that question that has been argued in academic papers for 40 years. We're about to get a real world answer in 2026. What happens when instead of having 70 or 80% African American voters in one or two districts, you have substantial numbers of black American voters in more districts.
- [10:36]
Nicole Wallace
And Alex, is not what civil rights activists wanted. It is what the Supreme Court has delivered. It is the changed battlefield heading into the midterms.
- [10:47]
Alex Wagner
Yeah. And I think that there are sort of multiple conversations to be had around this, those that pertain to the actual sort of horse race of it and those that, you know, look at the sort of moral underpinnings of the Voting Rights act and the degree to which we owe minority communities representation of their choosing, given the systemic injustice that's been perpetrated on these communities for hundreds of years. But that's another conversation. The reality is we are living where we are. And Ron DeSantis in Florida could have made the Florida map that much more competitive for Democrats. Unwittingly a true dummy. Mander. I can. I'd say one thing, though. As we look at, as we look at the sort of weird, I guess, silver linings to all of this. And while it is great that Thom Tillis and John Cornyn and Bill Cassidy have found their spines again because they are walking out of office or being tossed out of office, let us not give a pass to the Republican Party in the Senate that the only people who can decock themselves away from Trump are the people who are leaving Congress. It is outrageous that the only people in the Senate, in the Republican Party who feel like they have the. I keep using the wrong words. The backbone to say the right words.
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Nicole Wallace
Alex. We just, we just, we just trained not to use them on television. They're the right words. No, this is right. You can only find a conscience.
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Alex Wagner
Yes, yes, that. You only find your conscience when you're leaving. I mean, it's good, I guess, that they found it on their way out the door. But that's not a party. That's a group of cowards.
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Nicole Wallace
It's not even a group of cowards. It's a mob organization. And Jim Comey, who's been indicted, I don't know, two or three times, described the group around Trump as La Cosa Nostra. Right. Like our thing, our family. It's not a functioning organization. You're talking about academics. There are no academics, David Frum, who look at people who only do what they view as more right after they've left the organization that is functional. There is no one who only does, on their political deathbed, the right thing. Who would say that the thing is healthy while they're in it, if they can't do what they believe to be right. And I have struggled personally with how to sort of welcome people into the pro democracy coalition at Various stages when those of us who were in the coalition in 2015 faced all sorts of derision from Republicans who, you know, liked or either liked or thought that Trump was sort of the show, whether they liked it or not. But this idea that this is what strategists said in the Cornyn race. What's the return on investment for Trump? Said one Cornyn support about Trump's late stage Paxton endorsement. I don't understand why you take this risk versus sitting back and doing nothing. Now you've created an enemy for six months when you have a razor thin majority. I mean, the reason you do it is because you are a man child obsessed with revenge. That there are still people looking for the why is amazing to me.
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David Frum
Well, that's the question. Your question about what is the moral judgment? That's a complicated question. And I don't have, I don't think we have time for it right now. But here's the question, and I actually asked this in the first Trump administration of an outgoing Republican lawmaker in the Cornyn situation. Look, okay, nevermind principle, never mind courage. What about petty vindictiveness? What is stopping John Cornyn and Bill Cassidy from saying right now, you know what, you took away my political career. You know what? Ballroom. No, I'm a no on the ballroom. I'm a no on the slush fund. You know, I'm just gonna, I've got six months here. My job in the next six months is I'm going to have a little petty, vindictive fun. Where is that? I mean, there's, as you know, there's a lot of that in politics. It's usually not declared, but it's a powerful motive. And sometimes it can. Often it leads to bad, but sometimes it can lead to some fun.
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Nicole Wallace
Yeah. I mean, and it can also clean up their legacies, which are at best tarnished for whatever comes next.
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Charlamagne tha God
Alex.
- [14:41]
Alex Wagner
Yeah, I mean, look, I think there is the practical reality of not having the, you know, Trump acts over your head anymore and how liberating that is. There is the sense that this petty man child in the White House deserves to have his own comeuppance. And then there's also the added benefit that I think when Republicans see other Republicans acting honestly and with integrity, perhaps it will be inspiring to them too, because as we've learned, anything in the Trump era, there is safety in numbers. Right. If he has three Republicans who will go against him, maybe there are some others, Susan Collins waiting in the wings to show that they have some integrity left, who knows anything could happen.
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Nicole Wallace
Anything could happen, which is why we're here. It's all changing all the time. This is something that's changed really quickly in concert with Trump doing things that are wildly unpopular, going to war with Iran without communicating with the country why we're there, how long we'll be there, what success will look like, the brazen corruption. I can't come up with a better or cleaner word for it. And people's feelings about their economy, the broader economy and their personal economy. In April, Donald Trump's approval and handling of the economy was 38%, now 33% that it might be the fastest drop since he's been a national political figure, five points in a month. His overall job approval rating has dropped the same number, 38% to 34%, in the same amount of time. And whether or not he's focused on the things people care about, the problems they're facing, almost 70% of Americans say no. So the arches, the ballrooms, the color blue he selected for the reflecting pool, these are not America's priorities.
- [16:19]
David Frum
David from yeah, and one more, and this is a point I think you can really pound home in a way that people can understand. The no tax on tips giveaway, which we've all heard so much about from the Trump people. It expires in 2028, but something he really cared about, which is the no tax on Trump and no tax on Trump's children. That's forever the deal he has purported to strike over his the leak of his returns. By the way, the reason he's so mad about those returns is because when they happened, they revealed absolutely disgraceful behavior in the returns and caught him in a series of lies, including that he was on edge of bankruptcy when he ran for president in 2015. He was not. He was in desperate condition. That's one of the reasons he ran. But that deal he's purported to strike includes a no audit provision for him, his entities and his children. Donald Trump in 2016 and 2017 paid $750 in federal income tax. Now, that's probably not the right figure, and it's probably not a figure he would have been able to get away with if he hadn't been elected president in 2016. He's now said, even after I leave office, no audit. If I put down 750, you have to take the 750. And now he really does have the money, and 750 would be an outrage. But that's what if he puts it down, there's no one in the IRS who will ever be allowed to challenge it according to his own deal. So tax on tips. No tax on tips, temporary, no tax on Trump forever. I think people will understand that.
- [17:39]
Nicole Wallace
They totally understand that. And it's why his numbers seem to fall every time a new poll is taken. All right, no one's going anywhere. When we come back, we'll all still be here, but our friend Miles Taylor will join the conversation as well. Also ahead for us, how Democrats can use Donald Trump's endless and shameless and very public facing embracing corruption, self dealing and grift to pummel the Republicans in the midterms. It's already breaking through and sinking in with the American people. Plus the growing fears about an actual Ebola outbreak in Africa that has already sickened hundreds, including one American. And the questions it's raising about how Donald Trump's cuts to USAID and the CDC have hampered the response to this newest deadly outbreak. We'll get to that story later in the hour. Deadline White House continues after a quick break. Don't go anywhere.
- [18:32]
Charlamagne tha God
Actions will always speak louder than words. Actions will always tell you what politicians value more than rhetoric does. And everyone sitting around waiting for this golden age to happen, it's not, okay, not for you anyway. For him and his family, his allies. Oh, they getting fat while you starve, okay. And that's why our taxpayer dollars going to this weaponization fund to compensate his allies should piss you off. Okay? You should be outraged. You should actually be in the street protesting against this. Okay? Not only is it corrupt, it is a blatant slap in the face to the economic hardships you folks are facing. Okay? Trump told you he don't care what you're going through financially. All right? He's not even acting like he sees what you're going through. All right? He's not even, he's not even detached from people's economic struggles. He just doesn't care. He's pushing for financial windfalls for his allies, his family, not you.
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Nicole Wallace
That was Charlamagne, the God yesterday on his program, the Breakfast Club. We're back with David and Alex. I mean, Alex, he crystallizes the piece of it that I think a lot of political journalists are missing. It's not that no one has gone into the Oval and said building an arch and a ballroom and a reflecting pool and taking the plane from Qatar while people are suffering sounds bad. He has taken that in and said, I don't give a rat's behind. I mean, he's taken it in and he has said both to multiple reporters at a briefing and then in a friendly Fox interview where he was given a rather embarrassing opportunity to clean it up. I absolutely meant it and I would say it again. He described it as a perfect statement. So I guess at some point the story isn't about Trump, it's about the rest of us. And I wonder what you think it says that Republicans still fall in line.
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Alex Wagner
Yeah, I mean, I guess it's pure cowardice because it's not going to win them elections, it's going to lose them control of Congress and it's a betrayal of the people that they've been elected to represent. I mean, I am with, I think David was really nailing it when we were talking about the reasons why the corruption is so just beyond the pale right now. Right. You can list all of the outrageous maneuvers of this administration, this president. But I do think in conjunction with the economic lived reality. I'm with Sarah Longwell here. I think the corruption on its own would be cause for deep concern concerned. But the thing that really resonates with the American people is the corruption taking place at the very same time that summer is upon us. They can't afford hamburger meat. They can't afford to drive on the family camping trip. They maybe can't afford their air conditioning bill. And they may not be able to take their kids to the doctor at the same time that the person who was elected to do one thing and one thing only has not only failed in that mission, but is failing with impunity and with a self congratulatory spirit that is nauseating. And it's a combination of those two realities. It's the collision of those two things that I think is going to be absolutely devastating, not just for the Republican Party, but for the legacy of this presidency and the legacy of the gop.
- [21:49]
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- [22:19]
Simone Sanders Townsend
Simone Sanders Townsend and I have known each other for more than a decade, tussling over politics and policy when she worked in the White House and I reported on it.
- [22:28]
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- [22:35]
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- [22:41]
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- [22:49]
Nicole Wallace
Well, I would add one more. David. No, go, go ahead.
- [22:53]
David Frum
To Alex's point about the cost of food and the cost of fuel, we can see what Americans are doing about those costs. They're actually not cutting back yet that much on their expenditures. They're financing them. Americans seem to be collectively deciding this seems to be a temporary hiccup. Maybe it'll go away by the fall. So they're continuing their present patterns but charging more. And we're seeing rising credit bills, but we're also seeing rising interest rates and the beginnings of some serious signs of trouble in the credit market. Rising car loan defaults, for example. So when you think about what is the environment going to be like in November, unless there's some miracle by September and October, Americans will have figured out, no, things are not getting better. I over borrowed over the summer to pay for food and fuel. I have to cut back. And by the way, I'm facing a soaking on my credit card bill because as high as the interest rate charges were before, they're now even higher because long term interest rates are higher.
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Nicole Wallace
David, what I was gonna ask about was the third group. And I thought about this when Donald Trump kept saying, like a verbal tick, the country's so hot. I keep hearing how hot country is. I kept wondering, like, where is he hearing that? He's hearing that from his feedback loop in 2.0, which is the omelette line at Mar a Lago. You look at Jeff Bezos interview with Andrew Ross Sorkin today lavishing Donald Trump with praise. I mean, Trump is in a monogamous relationship with this sort of new oligarchy. And I wonder again, at some point, this isn't about them, it isn't about Trump, it's about the rest of us. It seems to be leaving. I don't know what, 70, 75% of Americans available to a politician who says you're getting screwed and simply points to the things you've pointed at since we've been on the air.
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David Frum
Yeah, well, that feedback loop may not even be saying what they really think. I mean, does Jeff Bezos, who's a pretty astute decision maker, does he really look at Donald Trump and say that's somebody who would make the manager of an Amazon warehouse in Topeka, Kansas, Would I give that guy a middle level management job in my company and be confident that he wouldn't be stealing from me. I can't believe that Bezos thinks that way. Some of the tech bros do seem kind of romantic, and some of them take substances, and they may be past the point of making astute judgments. I don't think Bezos has passed that point.
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Nicole Wallace
So why does he say that?
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David Frum
Because one of the lessons of the Putin regime in Russia is however big the oligarchs are, whoever controls the army and the security services and the nuclear weapons is bigger. So you want to stay on that person's good side as long as he controls the army, the security services, and the nuclear weapons.
- [25:33]
Nicole Wallace
Alex, let me show you just a little snippet, because snippets are all we have. This is a snippet of Republican defiance of Donald Trump. Republican Congressman Fitzpatrick saying he's going to kill the $1.8 billion slush fund for which top Blanche won't rule out money for violent insurrectionists.
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Todd Blanche
US
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David Frum
what do you make of this $1.7 billion fund for.
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Republican Congressman Fitzpatrick
We're going to try to kill it.
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David Frum
You're going to try and kill it. Wow. Okay.
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Charlamagne tha God
And how.
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Republican Congressman Fitzpatrick
Well, we're considering legislative options. We're going to write a letter to the AG to start, but we're considering a legislative option.
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Dr. Van Gupta
Okay.
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Republican Congressman Fitzpatrick
We're trying to unpack exactly, you know, what the legal machinations are, but can't do that.
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Nicole Wallace
You know what, like nine years ago I would have said letter. That's lame. You're nine. I'll take it. He's gonna. A letter. He's going to look at legislative options. It is. It is tragic that it is news, but that's a Republican saying no to Donald Trump's $1.7 billion slush fund.
- [26:36]
Alex Wagner
Now, whatever form the jumping off the ship takes, we'll take it, Nicole, because Congress is the body. We will put it on primetime.
- [26:46]
Nicole Wallace
Because.
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Alex Wagner
Because, because look, it is indicative of a party that's maybe finally waking up to the fact that creating a $1.8 billion slush fund for insurrectionists is not the right thing to do for both the party and the American public. I was talking to Michael Fanon today for my podcast, and the idea that Michael Fanon, who was beat unconscious and Tased by January 6th insurrectionists, now has to use his tax money to pay these people. Reparations is literally the textbook definition of unjust. I mean, you need a reparations committee. Committee to study this quote unquote, reparations committee. The wrongdoing the moral stain that this thing represents should be enough to shock anybody's consc. This, to say nothing of the fact that it totally castrates the entire legislative branch. You cannot have the President self appropriating $1.8 billion to give out to stooges. Like, that's just not how. That's not how the separation of powers work. So, yeah, I mean, I'll take it. If it's like a letter that's being written that eventually amounts to actual legislation. Let's go.
- [27:49]
Nicole Wallace
Yeah. And we've been joining
- [27:52]
David Frum
because there's a legal question about this 1.8 billion. What is it? Where does this money come from? It's not an appropriation. Congress hasn't voted. It's not a settlement because there is no. The reason Trump withdrew his case was because the courts were going to say, look, we only have federal courts, only have jurisdiction over what the Constitution calls cases or controversies. If it's the same person on both sides of the versus sign, there's no case or controversy. So we have no jurisdiction. If there's no jurisdiction, there's no lawsuit. If there's no lawsuit, there's no settlement. So what is this fund? It's not an appropriation, it's not a settlement. It's just a pure taking by the exe. It's stealing. It's the executive reaching into the treasury saying, here's something that isn't nailed down. I'll take it. And that's probably not legal.
- [28:37]
Nicole Wallace
Former DHS Chief of staff Miles Taylor has joined our conversation in progress. We couldn't finish this up without you being here. The idea that we still cover it as news when there are just a couple of, like, hiccups and burps and gasps of defiance or objection to Donald Trump is sort of a. It's part of a larger fabric of what we've been covering. But the fact remains that the conduct is now so outside the realm of what is they can sell politically to the electorate. And what is perhaps legal that you are starting to hear Republicans object to things Donald Trump wants to do.
- [29:14]
Miles Taylor
And I think perhaps legal is even generous. There's a more dramatic word for this, and it goes all the way back to one of our presidents, James Madison. He wrote in the Federalist Papers that if an executive had this type of unilateral power over how to spend taxpayer dollars, it would be tyranny. That's what he called it. And he explained that the reason that the appropriations power that David Frum just mentioned was given to the Congress and not to the president was it was the most, in his words, quote, effectual weapon against tyranny. Donald Trump has taken that weapon away from the United States Congress. He's done it unilaterally. There's no clearer definition of high crime and misdemeanor than that.
- [30:02]
Nicole Wallace
Yeah. But I guess the other side of it is Congress has let him.
- [30:06]
Miles Taylor
They have. They've been willing. And I think that's the big story of the second term.
- [30:10]
Nicole Wallace
Right.
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Miles Taylor
It's not just one man who's off the rails.
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Nicole Wallace
Right.
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Miles Taylor
It's a party that's complicit. And the fact that we've only seen one Republican in the Senate really come out and blast this slush fund when, as David just noted, it's probably the biggest heist in American history of any kind, of any sort. That tells you a lot about the United States Congress. The Congress that spent most of its legislative time this week talking about the ballroom, trying to get ballroom funds passed instead of inflation and wars or this heist.
- [30:43]
Nicole Wallace
Glad you're here, David from and Alex Wagner, thank you for starting us off this hour. Miles sticks around a little bit longer. When we come back, the Ebola outbreak in Africa is getting worse, sickening hundreds, including an American. And there's real concern that Donald Trump's cuts to USAID and global health organizations have already made it worse. We'll explain after a short break.
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Republican Congressman Fitzpatrick
I like this stuff. I really get it. People are surprised that I understand it. Every one of these doctors said, how do you know so much about this? Maybe I have a natural ability. Maybe I should have done that instead of running for president.
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Nicole Wallace
That's Donald Trump during the coronavirus pandemic during his first term. And whatever else you think of Donald Trump, whether you voted for him or not, whether you like him or not, a public health policy expert, he is not. Now, why does that matter today? Well, there are record numbers of measles cases in our country right now. They affect kids. There's a hantavirus outbreak in the world being closely monitored. And there are mounting concerns over a deadly Ebola outbreak in Central Africa. And it is clear to everyone paying attention that Donald Trump has rendered the United States of America and the rest of the world less prepared and less safe by the things he has done by shuttering foreign aid. And USAID meant to keep diseases under control by monitoring them and understanding them and in the best case scenario, keeping them far away. And he has done that because he thinks those steps were, quote, radical and not aligned with American interests. Perhaps nothing is more aligned with American interests. The Ebola outbreak of a rare strain of Ebola currently with no vaccine or treatment, has already killed more than 100 people in the Democratic Republic of Congo. It has also sickened hundreds more people, including an American doctor who has since been taken to Germany for care.
- [32:44]
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Miles Taylor
Every small d Democratic muscle that we have is flexing.
- [33:28]
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Nicole Wallace
Meanwhile, an international relief group says Donald Trump's cuts are partially to blame for the outbreak, forcing them to cut down their work in the NOW epicenter and leading to delayed detection of the disease itself. While a group made up of NOW former USAID staff says it quote, would have been there with gloves and gowns and body bags and medicine, leading door to door contact tracing, making sure burials are safe, stopping the spread. But Donald Trump shut down usaid, calling it waste and abuse. Turns out it kept us all alive, end quote. For the record, the State Department denies that cuts to USAID have hampered the response to the outbreak. Joining us at the table, medical contributor Dr. Van Gupta. He's a pulmonologist and global health policy expert. Miles is still here. Just tell me what under a Democratic or Republican president who hadn't gutted USAID basically eliminated usaid, what would be happening and then help us understand how what Trump and I guess Musk was involved in this in the beginning, what their cuts have done to our ability to respond.
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Dr. Van Gupta
Sure, absolutely. So I would say there's an interagency here at work. Nicole, you know this well where it's USAID PEPFAR program under the State Department basically doing more than just treating disease. I mean there was very noble causes that in which these entities were formed, but they Built laboratory infrastructure, Nicole, across the global south and parts of Africa where we would have early disease detection of say, a rare variant of Ebola. That's what they did far more than just providing medication. They also, in 2014, for our viewers, worked closely with the US military. US military, I'll say this is a. For the Air Force, played a vital role in the last pandemic or the last outbreak of Ebola in West Africa for command, control, support, logistics, moving things around, medical supplies. That's critical. None of that is being talked about right now because none of that is happening. So there's an interagency response spearheaded by USAID and pepfar where all this medical equipment is being distributed. US Military is the backstop actually moving things around, supporting patient care. None of that is happening, certainly not at the level it was happening 10 years ago. And here we are. And so what I would say is more even more broadly, preparedness weakens quietly and fails visibly. In this case, they wanted it to weaken loudly. And now what we're seeing happening is quite visible tragedy. 600 cases, 130 deaths. It's gonna get worse before it gets better.
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Nicole Wallace
What is the current status of the Ebola outbreak and what is the risk to people traveling or people living and working there? And what are the risk to us?
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Dr. Van Gupta
Well, I said that the risk is concentrated to sub Saharan Africa. So specifically the three countries that we keep talking about now, Congo, South Sudan and Uganda. Some concern about Rwanda and spillover, just because there's a large border between Congo and Rwanda. So regionally major concern. It's focused, Nicole, specifically in the eastern province of Congo where there's failed public health systems. There is crowded, high density populations. So the concern here is also they don't have a lot in the way of diagnostic testing that our government would have supported at scale. So are we under diagnosing cases? Probably. Hospital capacity is a meager fraction of what's needed. What you need is what the American doctor who's been evacuated to Germany thankfully is getting, which is advanced ICU level care. That's what is required to save lives. So we're going to see more cases, likely, tragically, a lot more deaths, but it's going to be concentrated. And I think the American public needs to keep in mind that risk to them is still very minimal, especially with border closures, screenings at airports, which makes sense.
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Nicole Wallace
What part of Donald Trump's brain thinks that this chaos and these threats to global health are good for America?
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Miles Taylor
I don't know. It's the same Donald Trump who says he's an expert on the Bible, he's an expert on trade, he's an expert on taxes and the law, and he's also a health expert. So that's the direct answer. But you know, realistically I don't think he actually, even after managing or mismanaging, Covid knows the magnitude of dealing with any of these health crises. And as soon as the hantavirus news broke, it's the first thing I wrote about the next day after that story broke is I was out there saying, look, we're not ready for something like this to happen again. On his watch, many, many lives were lost because of that mismanagement. And as we were talking about during the break, there were 20 years of preparations after 9, 11 for a pandemic and how the United States should respond. When Covid happened, Donald Trump threw the playbook out the window cuz it was too bureaucratically complicated for him and created a task force that struggled to reinvent the wheel in the midst of crisis. I worry that would happen again.
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Nicole Wallace
Yeah. And put himself in the middle of it. Going to the briefing room to ask if we could put bleach in our lungs. No one's going anywhere with to sneak in a short break. We'll all be right back. On the other side side,
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Todd Blanche
Ty Blanche could not commit to saying that people who beat law enforcement officers would be available, these funds would be available to them. It's an insult to people, not just to me, not just to my co workers, but to the American people. The American people watched with their own eyes and they saw what happened on January 6th.
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Charlamagne tha God
It feels so obvious that it's difficult to find the words to explain why. Like why? Why should the federal government pay millions and millions of dollars to these people that tried to usurp democracy here? Why should we pay them millions and millions of dollars for attacking me and my colleagues, causing deaths, violence, destruction? Why should we pay people who had their day in court and many of whom pled guilty to these crimes? It doesn't make any sense to me and I just hope that we're able to stop
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Nicole Wallace
Miles. It feels like another Rubicon crossing. The announcement of a fund for which there is no legal means for the funds to be dispersed. No legal means for this to be described as a settlement. He didn't settle with anybody. As folks have explained, he represented himself on both sides and audacity doesn't come close to it. But the scandal really, I mean, Michael Fanone called it an effing disgrace of taking taxpayer dollars and giving them to people who carried out violent acts against cops. How do you take something that represents such a new bottom and put it into context for people who are maybe just starting to tune into how Trump is governing in a second presidency, second term?
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Miles Taylor
Well, and they get to keep it secret. That's the other piece. The people who try to defend him, defend him, defend him, get to that point and say, well, that feels a little fishy. Well, yeah, it feels a little fishy. The whole thing feels fishy. But Nicole, you put it into context of other things that have a legitimate purpose that we've tried to create as a U.S. government for restitution, the 911 Victims Fund. I know you've reported about this for years, how hard it was, how long it took to get Congress, and frankly, former Republicans I used to work with and for in Congress to approve money for first responders who are dying of cancer from here in New York City After 9 11, it was like pulling. And now here's the President, he wants to give cash to criminals and they're not saying anything and he's doing it overnight. That's really alarming. But let me give you another number. This amount of money, the 1.8 billion, is about how much we spent every year at the Department of Homeland Security to protect the nation against weapons of mass destruction. Okay? Nuclear weapons, biological attacks. In fact, it's bigger than that core number. He's spending more than gets spent to protect you from weapons of mass destruction, to reward criminals, to go let them buy new cars on the taxpayer dime while those cops that we saw got nothing.
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Nicole Wallace
When you look at the, I don't know, the corruption in plain sight, the politically toxic nature of what Todd Blanche sort of begrudgingly said. Okay, you're calling it a slush fund. What does it say to you about the people around Trump?
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Miles Taylor
Well, I mean, it really does say that they're willing to go to prison for the guy. I don't say that lightly. I mean, Todd Blanche would have had to have known that adding this addendum to the slush fund, in addition to just the obvious, in my view, criminality of the fund itself. But this addendum that allows Donald Trump to avoid tax scrutiny for the rest of his life forever and ever. Forever and ever. And his family members, which hypothetically means they never have to pay taxes again, cuz they can never be audited again. He had to have known in signing that document that it was going to put him in a world of hurt legally in the long run. But what did he know that we didn't, Nicole and I suspect that he knew or was told that he would get away with it. He might have a pardon. He might be protected. There are layers to how corrupt this is. We don't fully know how this all came about. We don't know what the conversations were like behind the scenes. But this is why an investigation is. Is more than warranted. It's one of the most obviously corrupt acts in the history of the Republic.
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Nicole Wallace
Do you would you bet that Todd Blanche has already been pardoned or pre pardoned?
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Miles Taylor
I don't think he's been preparedoned. I think Donald Trump wants to dangle the pardons out till the absolute last minute like any effective mob boss. He's gonna keep the possibility of protection as a possibility because then people will keep doing what he wants.
- [43:33]
Nicole Wallace
Teller, your insights from having been inside are dark, brother, but they are super important. Dr. Gupta, your insights and expertise on the damage we've done around the world is invaluable. Thank you for being here. Unfortunately, we're going to continue to need that expertise. We're going to make a quick turn to Ken Burns, who says the founders would have some thoughts about this moment in American history. Don't go anywhere. We'll show you that on the other side of a break. My guest on this week's episode of the Best People podcast is Ken Burns. Ken has spent his life and career poring over the history of our country. Take a listen to what he told me about how the founders would react to this moment.
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Ken Burns
The founders would less be surprised by someone taking authoritarian power than they would be by the abdication of what they correctly said was the after their poetic preamble. Article one is the legislative and article two is the executive. That would be the manager carrying out what the legislative wanted. And that is not happening. And we're seeing even the courts go into that realm. Washington had three pleas. He said, avoid partisanship, no foreign entanglements, and leave office, please. That's his message. And those things are a good starting point.
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Nicole Wallace
And they're all on the line. The entire conversation is available right now on YouTube. You just scan the QR code on your screen to watch. Or you can, of course, download the conversation wherever you listen to your podcasts. One more break. We'll be right back. Thank you so much for letting us into your homes tonight. We are grateful.
- [45:25]
Simone Sanders Townsend
Simone Sanders Townsend and I have known each other for more than a decade, tussling over politics and policy when she worked in the White House and I reported on it.
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Eugene Daniels
And now we're friends and colleagues, and on our podcast, Clock it, we are positioning ourselves at the intersection of culture and politics.
- [45:42]
Simone Sanders Townsend
Clock it is where we talk about what we see and hear in the news. So you can start to clock it too.
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Podcast Announcer
Clock it with Simone and Eugene. All episodes available now.