← Deadline: White House
Deadline: White House
"A week that changed the world forever"
00:45:29
Nicolle Wallace on Trump's suggestion that the United States has never needed it's NATO allies -- and the responses from leaders of our longtime friendly nations.
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The new year brings new health goals and wealth goals. Protecting your identity is an important step. Your info is in endless places that could expose you to identity theft leading to lost funds. LifeLock monitors millions of data points per second. If your identity is stolen, our restoration specialists will fix it, guaranteed or your money back. Resolve to make identity, health and wealth part of your New year's goals with LifeLock, save up to 40% your first year. Visit LifeLock.com SpecialOffer Terms Apply Avoiding your unfinished home projects because you're not sure where to start. Thumbtack knows homes so you don't have to don't know the difference between matte, paint, finish and satin or what that clunking sound from your dryer is.
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A home pro, you just have to hire one. You can hire top rated pros, see price estimates and read reviews all on the app Download Today. Let me start by paying tribute to the 457 of our Armed services who lost their lives in Afghanistan. I will never forget their courage, their bravery and the sacrifice that they made for their country. There are many also who were injured, some with life changing injuries. And so I consider President Trump's remarks to be insulting and frankly appalling. And I'm not surprised they've caused such.
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C
Hurt to the loved ones of those.
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A
Who were killed or injured. And in fact, across the country.
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C
We see you. Hi again everybody. It's five o' clock now in New York. How tragically and shamefully emblematic of a week that changed the world forever. A final mark of embarrassing punctuation at the tail end of American global leadership. That was UK's Prime Minister Keir Starmer. He he was responding to an assertion Donald Trump made over and over again, one that is as insulting as it is wrong and incorrect. In what was almost a spiritual successor to his smear against US Victims or people who lost their lives serving in battle In World Wars I, 2 and beyond, Iraq and Afghanistan. When he called them suckers and losers, Donald Trump suggested to Fox Business that that the U.S. has, quote, never needed its NATO allies, that we basically never got anything from that alliance, that our friends stayed, quote, a little off the front lines, he said in the war in Afghanistan. To be clear, that's a lie. That's not true. It's not accurate. Separately today, Canada's Prime Minister Mark Carney, who gave a speech for the ages in Davos this week, corrected Donald Trump as well. When Donald Trump said Canada, quote, lives because of the United States, no said Prime Minister Carney, quote, canada thrives because we are Canadian. End quote. Again, these rebukes from our best friends on the world stage traditionally are echoes of a larger breakup, a larger rupture this week when Donald Trump used our economy and our military as pawns in a vain and selfish narcissistic campaign to blackmail our best friends and allies into ceding control of Greenland. In the end, though, Donald Trump secured what he's trying to brand as a, quote, framework of a future deal, one that at the moment looks a heck of a lot like the current arrangement. Part of the deal, my rear end. Washington Post reports this quote. For advocates of taking a tougher line with Donald Trump, the president's climb down regarding the strategic Arctic territory was proof that retaliation, not conciliation, is the answer to his hardball tactics. After accommodating Donald Trump on trade and on arming Ukraine, the Europeans finally stood up to him. Even more significantly, Donald Trump backed down, end quote. As our allies learned to stand up to Donald Trump, the American people are doing the very same thing. As we've been covering for the last hour, Donald Trump's targeting of a major American city, the great city of Minneapolis, is sparking thousands of thousands of ordinary Americans to take to the street in frigid temperatures to protest Donald Trump's ice crackdown on asylum seekers and immigrants and protesters and citizens alike. All of that contributes to what New York Times columnist David Brooks describes in today's New York Times. Like this quote, we are in the middle of at least four unravelings. The unraveling of the post war international order. The unraveling of domestic tranquility wherever Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents bring their jackboots. The further unraveling of the democratic order with attacks on the Fed independence and, excuse the pun, trumped up prosecutions of political opponents. Finally, the unraveling of President Trump's mind, end quote. All of that happening at once is shaping our future. As Robert Kagan writes in the Atlantic, quote, americans are entering the most dangerous world they have known since World War II, one that will make the Cold War look like child's play and the post Cold War world look like paradise. That is where we start the hour with our dear friend, former principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence Sue Gordon is here. It is so nice to see you, my friend.
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B
Great to be here, even though I still wait for that moment that we're talking about something other than this. Thanks for spending a little bit of time after you showed Prime Minister Starmer's remarks, because I Cry periodically on your show. What I know and what our President should know is the sacrifice of those who have stood shoulder to shoulder with us without demanding credit, without it being their fight, without being brow beaten into it. And so of all the things we're going to talk about, I just think for the American people, that is the most ridiculous of statements. America is graced with a lot of wealth and resources and we can use our power because, not of our president, but because of America and what we represent. But we are where we are because we've had friends. And for the people that know, whether you are our allies who have stood shoulder to shoulder, or my colleagues who have seen it, that's just beyond the pale. And America, if you listen to me on anything, listen to me on this. Without friends, we aren't who we are.
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C
I think that the history of 911 is such a, is such a, it's a memory hole because it had to be right to survive the horror of what we saw on our own televisions. I was watching the Today show as it was happening or if you were a child, right. And so you just grew up knowing your parents horror, you know, you felt differently every time someone got on an airplane for a really, really, really long time. I remember figuring out how to use those phones. They don't have them anymore, but I remember figuring out how to use the phones. So I would forgive people for cloudy memories. But what our allies did was after we were, before it had anything to do with Afghanistan. After we were attacked, they said, we will come with you. I don't even know that it was public who had done it or what we were going to do in response, or whether there would be a war in Afghanistan that the NATO alliance wasn't about. A war that grew to be very controversial and unpopular. The NATO alliance was about our country brutally attacked, heartbroken, grieving the loss of all these thousands of innocents. People on airplanes, planes turned into missiles, people jumping out of buildings. And they said, whatever it is that you need, we will come with you. What does it mean?
- [08:39]
B
It wasn't just big named allies. It was countries that have no wealth and no stake and still stood with us. So that's a tough one. But I don't want to get lost in any one moment of the Davos event or so many others, even though each one matters. What worries me is the pattern we're seeing and the precedent that it creates. Davos wasn't about embarrassment. It was about signal. Allies and markets look to that event for seriousness and predictability and what they saw was volatility and trust is the operating system of democracies and markets and alliances. And when leaders treat it casually and casually is a terrible word there because treated as though it has no meaning, the system still runs, Nicole, but it starts throwing errors, and those errors compound long before it actually breaks. So you can see what he says. You can see the ridiculousness of Greenland. We're attacking Greenland, taking it by force, buying it, and then backing it off as though you have some deal. That's exactly what our alliances would have provided us. That's not it. What is it is we can't be trusted. And you can't surge trust in a crisis when something big happens that requires. We can't say, okay, now you can trust us. It's the compounding of these things, the infrastructure that is being broken little by little, whether it is the undermining of our institutions that we're seeing events in Minnesota, or it is the things we saw there on the stage. To be clear, no matter where you fall on the, what policies you like, whether you want a stronger America in the hemisphere, whether you want closed borders, what I will tell you is how we're getting it now is not the way to do it. It represents an impatience and a desire to be able to say that you have something rather than doing the backbreaking physical labor of getting there. People should think of this not just as the event. And I don't want them to look past it, but I do want them to see the precedent that is being set, the bigness of what it means systemically, and start thinking about the signals when those errors start compounding.
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C
Well, let me ask you. I mean, I know enough. I know enough to be dangerous here, but foreign leaders do so much work away from the cameras before they break with America in front of the cameras. So what does it mean that Carney and Starmer, Prime Minister Carney and Prime Minister Starmer have rebuked Donald Trump all in a span of about 48 hours.
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B
It's breathtaking on the one hand, I think, and you and I have talked about this before, this administration is so far out over its skis and it has invested so little in the infrastructure that actually makes diplomacy and economies work, that it's got a lot of statements and not a lot of heft. I think what you saw for the longest time is people trying to say, and we just don't want the chop, just give it to them. So the idea that we have now gotten to the point that they are making a comment on the world stage about America, when they know that the reason why you don't typically do that is because of the power it gives Russia and China and, and the choices that it gives the unaligned about who they're going to make to tether their fortunes to. So to get them to that brink that they would make that statement, or the Danes, to say that the US Is a security risk. There is so much that happens before they would say that, because the consequence of saying that in a world order is so profound. And it isn't just the who do you trade with, it's about what you allow and what you tolerate and how far you can go. And so you're exactly right, Nicole, that that is a profound moment that is far more than a rebuke. I don't want people to think that it's the same as President Trump saying something mean about Macron's glasses or anything else. This is real statesmen talking to their teams about how to craft a moment, knowing that by showing the separation, you may have made the world order a little worse, but still they decided that that risk was more worthwhile. It's big.
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C
It's so stunning. And I think we err, not you and me, but we in the media err to separate the annihilation of the rule of law at the Donald Trump's Department of Justice from what's happening in terms of the degradation of our alliances. Because companies do business here, because if someone steals from them or if one of their employees is a victim of a crime, there is a system of laws here that is the envy of the world. They blew that on purpose and on TV and are bragging about it. That seems to be now knitted up to our decline on the world stage.
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B
The consequence, again, I think it will be easy to say, well, people are still going to trade with us and people are going to still have meetings with us. Yes, they will. They have to. We're big and we're strong and we're powerful, but we aren't as trusted. Even the decline in our institutions. Your point about the rule of law is great. And I think about my friends that are in the private sector, you have a trillion dollar company because you're in the United States and you have the rule of law. I think when I talk about precedent and looking for the signals of what's happening, don't dissociate what's happening with our institutions from our position in the world and don't be confused, because people will still deal with us. The question is, what's the world going to look like for democracies and the things that we believe in in terms of economic freedom and political freedom?
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C
Well, I mean, if you're a person with your job, if you're the Deputy Director of National Intelligence for another country, and you're looking at the live feed of Americans out in the street, judges refusing to bring indictments against protesters, that the Trump administration is asking for thousands and thousands of law abiding American citizens peacefully protesting the streets. And this looks like the reporting that my colleague Alex Wagner did in Hungary. I mean, this does not look like what people are used to seeing in America. How do you assess America right now?
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B
So, again, I think you look at that volatility, the erosion, the disconnects, and the first thing is you're going to decide whether you want to deal with it and how you want to deal with it. What I would do as the principal deputy of any of those countries.
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I.
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Wouldn'T spend a lot of time being public about it, but I would prepare for a world where I couldn't trust them. And remember, there are a lot of people. I think President Trump even did it in one of his first interviews where someone said, what about the things that China steals via cyber theft? And the President goes, ah, we do that. Everyone does that. No, no. Our intelligence activities are governed by the rule of law. So if I'm one of our partners, I have counted on that. Even though there have been times that we have betrayed that trust, I've counted on that. If you see this happening and the institutions failing and we're doing this within our own country, I'm going to start saying, hmm, what's the rule that governs our relationships? What do I share with them? How do I huddle together for warmth with them? It's big. And much like you cited in terms of what happens before the statement gets made, much of what's going to happen is going to be done quietly. It's just going to, like I said, institutions will exist, trade will happen, but democracy will be crumbling.
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C
I mean, this is a general strike. I mean, people like Scott Galloway have talked openly about the impact of economic strikes. I mean, if you're looking at America, is that sort of a flashing yellow of a globally destabilizing economic possibility?
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B
Yeah, the cognitive one, just global economic instability, given the bigness and they are importance. And, you know, when does our, when does our money not become count? When does our banking system not become counted on? When you attack. Yeah, the Fed, you know, when you can't have just at the moment when you have others in the world trying to become the monetary standard, we're going to do things to destabilize ours. So I, there are real decisions that these people who used to suspend disbelief because they had the fundamental trust are now seeing that fundamental trust is probably not well placed. And they're going to have to wait and see. Will you see economic impact? Sure. Will you see leadership impact over time? But the other thing, and we don't talk about this enough, there are people, I think the world order has broken and I think there are two big polls that have established themselves, and one of them's still trying to decide what the heck it's doing in every one of our actions that says we can because we can. There are people watching that say, oh, now I know how far I can go. And the other thing where I do think there's hope because you know me, I can't, I can't be on your show without, without being hopeful. I think there are signs that people are seeing that there is a lot more word than strength. And, you know, I go back to Governor Gavin Newsom, you know, fighting against the gerrymandering. I see the citizens in Minnesota deciding they're going to protect their neighbors. And again, this doesn't have anything to do with immigration, nothing. This has to do with America kind of finally deciding who we are. And I see signs that when we put up resistance, there's less behind it than the words, even though there's a lot of power that can have action. And if you want to take a hopeful sign of the whole Greenland ridiculousness, it's that he was saying things with absolute assurance and in a minute he backed down.
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C
Yeah, yeah. He'd only, he only responds to strength. You're absolutely right. I'm going to take that silver lining and run with it. Sue Gordon, thank you very much for starting us off this hour. It's so nice to see you, my friend. Keep it going.
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America counts.
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C
Love you. Love you. When we come back, we'll go back to Minneapolis, where thousands of Americans are running right now on the freezing cold streets of Minneapolis demonstrating against Donald Trump and his brutal ice crackdown in their city. Also ahead, an extraordinary and deeply reported new piece of reporting about the FBI during its first year under Cash Patel's leadership. The story details how the FBI's employees, both current and former, are sounding the alarm about drastic changes that have undermined the FBI's mission and made our country less safe. One of the reporters byline on that piece of journalism will Join Us Deadline Whitehouse continues after a quick break. Don't go anywhere.
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The new year brings new health goals and wealth goals. Protecting your identity is an important step. Your info is in endless places that could expose you to identity theft leading to lost funds. LifeLock monitors millions of data points per second. If your identity is stolen, our restoration specialists will fix it, guaranteed, or your money back. Resolve to make identity, health and wealth part of your New year's goals with LifeLock. Save up to 40% your first year. Visit LifeLock.com Specialoffer terms apply. Ms. NOW presents the chart topping original podcast, the Best People with Nicole Wallace. This week she sits down with American journalist Oliver Darcy. What makes me optimistic is we have been through very turbulent times in America.
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Before and things got better.
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And so that's what gives me some hope. The Best people with Nicole Wallace Listen now.
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For early access ad free listening and.
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Bonus content, subscribe to Ms. NOW Premium on Apple Podcast.
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We continue to monitor those massive protests in Minnesota where thousands of people are on the streets of Minneapolis in sub zero temperatures. They are protesting Donald Trump and his ICE activity in their city. I want to go back to our reporter Alex Tabitt on the ground for us there in Minneapolis. Alex.
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A
Well, Nicole, this protest has started to take a festive mood three hours in despite the frigid cold. I just found out this is going to be the coldest day in Minnesota in seven years. People like Billy here have ice in their mustache.
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B
Billy, why is it so important for.
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You to be out here despite the frigid cold? I've got kids and when you got.
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Kids, it makes you think of the future. And I want things to change. I want things to change.
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A
And these like soldier troops or whatever.
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B
They are coming in from an immigration department just expanded and exploded.
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It doesn't make any sense.
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B
It's scary.
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A
So I want to make a stand. And Cora, you're a veterinary technician. You came out here today from St. Paul. Obviously your community has been through so much and this week we saw a five year old boy detained by ice. When you saw that, how did that make you feel? And what does that say about the state of America right now?
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C
It's disgusting.
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B
It's heartbreaking and it's been astonishing and eye opening to see how many other.
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C
People are lacking the empathy.
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B
That little boy had his family ripped away from him. We think he's somewhere in Texas. We want our neighbors home. We love them. If you look at my carnics, I actually have a red eye and a blue eye because it's not about sides. It's about we, the people. It's about protecting our neighbors, and it's about knowing our rights. There's a right and a wrong way to do this, and this is the wrong way. And it breaks my heart because this is my community. This is my home. These are my neighbors. The outpouring of love I had just from people I've never even met in this city on this march is enough to keep me warm on this march. March. I'm just really proud to be here representing my community. And I want to say I've noticed so many other states, other countries who have been standing in solidarity, and it's beautiful, and we thank you and keep. Keep supporting us because we're going to be out here.
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C
I don't care how cold it is.
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B
Cora, thank you so much for your time.
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A
And Nicole, they say that the people of Minnesota are deciding descendants of Vikings. These are some of the toughest people I have ever met in my entire life. And you can feel that toughness right now.
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C
Nicole, some incredible reporting. Alex, thank you so much. I feel like a mother hen. But please, go get everybody warm. Go drink down some hot chocolate, please, for me. I want to bring into our coverage Democratic Congressman Robert Garcia of California. He's the ranking member on the House Oversight Committee. People out there, Americans out there saying, I've got kids and I want to see change. What is your reaction to the peaceful protests in Minneapolis today?
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A
It's obviously first very inspiring to see everyone out there. It gives a lot of us hope that we can be a better country and that there are folks that actually care about doing the right thing, that care about the Constitution and humanity and due process. It should also anger us, to anger us that folks have to go out there to fight and protect their rights, to actually stand up for a little boy who essentially is being kidnapped off the street and thrown into a detention center, which I might add, has a horrible reputation. We should be out there right now celebrating with folks. People should be gathering with family, enjoying a weekend. And this kind of terror is happening. Not just, of course, in Minnesota, but this terror is happening across the country. And I've been thinking a lot since the images of that little boy. I came to the US When I was an immigrant. I was a young kid. I only spoke Spanish. And a lot of us see ourselves in Liam and in kids and these images that we see. And it's horrifying to know that this could happen to anyone. And it's happening not just to people that are noncitizens. But it's happening also to United States citizens, whether it's in Minnesota, back here at home in California, where I'm actually at right now, or in places across the country.
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C
Congressman Liam Ramos wasn't just detained and shipped off to Texas. He was used as bait. I wonder what the legal processes, I mean, is that legal to you? Are there rules that govern what you can do with a five year old child in pursuit of someone who actually isn't here illegally? His father is not known to have committed any crimes and they were both in a legal process, they were asylum seekers.
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A
Absolutely not. And let's remind ourselves that Kristi Noem and Donald Trump and this agency, which have completely gone rogue, are breaking the law every single day. They're detaining folks without due process. They're not allowing people when they detain them to actually make any calls to families or to loved ones. They're then being released with no explanation. Folks that have no criminal records, which is a vast majority of people that they are detaining, they're not allowing members of Congress to do oversight visits at these detention centers. And so the law is being broken every day. Obviously, a lot of these cases are being, they're in the courts right now. But people need to continue to be in the streets in a way that is peaceful, under protest. And we have to be united and say this is not what we believe our country should be about. ICE is a rogue agency that should not exist. What they're doing right now in the harm that they are causing and trauma they're causing, the children and families should not be forgotten. And one thing that's going to be really clear, and I want ICE agents and those in leadership to understand that Donald Trump is not going to be the president forever. Kristi Noemi is not going to be the secretary forever. And Democrats are going to have the power to subpoena, hold people accountable and file criminal charges. And we have the majority. And as the future chair of the Oversight Committee, we are going to haul every single person that is responsible for these atrocities or this for the criminal actions that they're taking for breaking their own protocol, not just in front of Congress. We're going to make sure that we're held accountable by the courts.
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C
Congressman, really quickly, I think we all saw United States Senator, Senator Padilla thrown to the ground by ice. We also have all seen the tape of United States citizen Renee Nicole Goode, who was shot three times by an ICE agent who was also filming at the same time. What are your concerns about the treatment of immigrants and migrants who we can't see and who are not in front of cameras and do not have the same access to having their stories told. As a United States Senator or Renee Nicole Good.
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A
We should have no doubt that there are atrocities happening in these detention centers. And many of them now have a private, you know, essentially these private guards and these private security that are, they're not even members of the government that are the broad end. There's bounty hunters running around this country. There are horrific things that are happening. And one thing that a lot of people don't know is that up until a few months ago, members of Congress had essentially open access to visit detention centers. That's actually in the law. And it's been Kristi Noem and Donald Trump that have put up roadblocks to not allowing members of Congress to do oversight in these detention centers. And we've had to take that to the court. And even after winning court cases, they're still not allowing certain members to go in and view these facilities. And so there are, there are right now horrors happening because Donald Trump could care less about people and about humanity and certainly couldn't care about immigrants that are here, that are just working hard, they're trying to make their life better. Let's not forget the vast majority of folks that are here, they're working. They're the cooks in our kitchens, of our favorite restaurants, they're gardeners in our homes, in our neighborhoods. They're working hard to ensure that the offices that we visit are clean in the morning when they open their doors. They're taking care of our kids, and they just want to work. And it's, it is hopeful at least, at the very least, to see so many people turn out and support our immigrant communities. We got to keep that up and keep that fire in the months ahead, because it's going to get even worse. Donald Trump is hell bent on turning this country into a country in his own image and one where ICE becomes his own military, domestic force.
- [32:14]
C
Congressman, you were booked here to talk about Jeffrey Epstein. We need to have you back on Monday to have that conversation. Thank you for jumping in and helping us with the breaking news today. When we come back, that stunning new piece of reporting we told you about in today's New York Times about how Cash Patel, the director of the FBI, has fundamentally changed the agency and in the process, made all Americans less safe. We'll be back with one of the reporters by land on that new story next.
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Hey, everyone, it's Chris Hayes. This week on my podcast why Is this Happening? Ms. Now senior political and national reporter Jacob Soboroff on rebuilding Los Angeles When I think about how is it going, I think it's this weird cognitive dissonance. It's these neighborhoods are no longer there.
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B
You drive through them and it is.
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A
One big open construction site on two separate sides of la.
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B
But in a way the humanity that.
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Has sort of, as always, happens in these disasters. Not to be cheesy about it because now I've experienced that. I'm not just covering it. It really is a unified we all went through this collective trauma together in some way. That's this week on why Is this Happening? Search for why Is this Happening wherever you're listening right now and follow.
- [33:29]
C
Current and former FBI agents who are by design some of the most tight lipped people in our government, have come out in scores to sound the alarm over Kash Patel's almost completely transformation of the FBI, the agency tasked with keeping Americans safe. An extraordinary new piece of reporting in the New York Times Magazine, based on interviews with 45 people who either currently work at the FBI or left during the second Trump administration, reveals the level of fear reverberating through the agency because of how Kash Patel's leadership is undermining their mission. Patel's retribution agenda was clear from the start with a purge of high ranking officials who were involved in the investigations into Donald Trump or the deadly insurrection of January6. One senior executive at the FBI telling the Times this about those firings, quote, it was hundreds of years of experience in one brutal swoop. It made it easier to bring their people in. Yes, but there are no people to bring in with that level of experience because it is so specialized. You have to cut your teeth. It's just like the military to lead. You have to understand headquarters and the field. If there was any open question as to whether Kash Patel is qualified to lead the FBI, here is what one field office leader had to say to the Patel had his first directors call with the heads of all the field offices. He had no agenda, no organized thoughts, no strategy or leadership philosophy or priorities to share. I specifically remember him saying at one point, quote, I don't read, end quote. He then explained that he didn't read briefing materials. As for the future of the country's top law enforcement agency, One of the FBI's top recruiters tells the New York Times this, quote, I just got a message from someone I talked to about applying, saying wow, I got an interview. I had to say, I can no longer recommend that you go to work at the FBI. This isn't my FBI. I don't recognize this FBI. I want to bring in the journalist behind that reporting, Emily Bazelon, staff writer for New York Times Magazine. She's bylined on that reporting we've been reading from. Also joining us, former acting Assistant Attorney General for National Security at the Department of Justice, Mary McCord. Emily, I'd love to use this time to have you just take us through more of this extraordinary portrait of Kash Patel.
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D
Thanks so much. You know, I think one thing that's important to emphasize is we had 16 on the record sources for this piece, and you people are speaking out. And that in itself is a kind of sign of alarm and breakdown because this is a small c conservative institution, the FBI. It is not a place of the resistance. But people feel that the nonpartisan nature of the whole institution is being transformed in front of their eyes. And they were really worried about the FBI's capacity to continue to protect Americans from terrorist attack, from public corruption, all the kind of complex work that they do. So, you know, one thing that people talked about a lot is that Kash Patel has done a number of things that have made people feel like he values spectacle and social media and putting together a string of tweets more than actually making sure that the field offices on the ground have the resources they need for crucial investigations. People talked about that after the Charlie Kirk murder. They talked about it after the shooting at Brown. It's really come up in a lot of contexts, and that is, you know, a real shift in how the FBI has worked in the past.
- [37:18]
C
Let me read more from the story. You write this about Walter Giardina meeting with the head of the Office of Congress affairs over this sort of, I guess the right has kept this alive. Allegations about the Steele dossier. Quote, I didn't know my wife was about to pass away. I reserved a conference room at the hospital to meet with the Office of Congressional affairs next to her room so they could interview me. They didn't show up. She died the next day. At my insistence, I was finally interviewed two days after her funeral. I said, I don't want anyone to tell me it's too soon. I won't be emotional. I want to get this over with. I had a prepared statement with all the facts. I gave it to them. They didn't ask any questions. I sent all the records they asked for. Then it was over. They'd already decided to fire me, so no one was taking the interview seriously except me. In CR15, we worked the Cases we were assigned. It was not my idea to open Arctic Frost. We were detailed to Jack Smith. The supervisors came to us and said, you're going to do this. We're losing the ability for agents to conduct their work without fear or favor because the FBI won't protect you. I thought it was notable yesterday that Jack Smith became the most senior former official at the Department of Justice to defend agents who worked on the cases. And I think it' syour reporting reminds everybody that agents, it's, it's, you know, it's not like a volunteer society where you raise your hand to be on the food committee, or you raise your hand to be on counterterror, or you raise your hand to do cyber. An agent works on the cases that the agent is assigned to work on. And the more experienced agents worked on these, some of these higher profile cases. But just talk about what it means to have gone in and purged agents who worked on Jack Smith's cases or other cases that touched Donald Trump.
- [39:10]
D
Well, first of all, as you're saying, it's just a huge cultural shift in the agency because the idea until now has been, we the FBI, if there's criminal activity, we investigate it, no matter who did it. We go in in a nonpartisan fashion. We don't go after a target and then look for evidence. We have evidence, and then we figure out who the target is. And CR15 was this elite public corruption unit in Washington that Walter Giardina and lots of other agents have been fired from and that Kash Patel has shut down. There was another group firing of agents this week, seemingly in tandem with Jack Smith's testimony. And so I think you see two things. First of all, you see agents who, who took assignments, difficult assignments, and feel like they're punished for it. And then you also have this chilling effect on the current set of agents in the Bureau. They know that if they take a sensitive assignment now, it could come back to bite them later. And it's really hard for the Bureau to continue to operate in its traditional nonpartisan, without fear or favor fashion with all of that hanging over the heads of agents and analysts.
- [40:22]
C
All right, no one's going anywhere. We're going to sneak in a short break, but we'll be right back with much more of this incredible new reporting. Don't go anywhere. We're back with Emily and Mary. Mary, there's incredibly rich reporting about what can only be described as, you know, most generously, as conflicts, but in normal times would invite deep scrutiny about misappropriation of government resources. For personal use, questions about abuse. But because we're serious people, I guess, more focused on national security, we'll spend our time talking about all the ominous signs for that. The reason it breaks the FBI if you don't want to work on sensitive cases is because in normal order, you don't know if the case will end up ensnaring a sensitive person. And so I wonder if you can just explain how paralyzing that is for the Bureau, that people are afraid of getting fired because cases are being reverse engineered to target political figures.
- [41:26]
B
Yeah, I mean, I think. I mean, as the quote that you featured at the top of this segment made clear, that this notion that you will do what you're asked to do, regardless of whether it's something you maybe yourself would make as a priority, is kind of gone when the Bureau could just throw you under the bus or a new director could throw you under the bus. And. But I think another really important point here is, is not just the reluctance potentially to want to, you know, work on things that could be sensitive, that could at some point be described by somebody else as political. Is also this. The mass diversion of resources from the FBI's core specialties? Right. I mean, this reporting from Emily talks about 20% of the FBI being diverted to immigration and that the field immigration enforcement, which is not the FBI' job to do it, talks about field offices been being told that one third of their work should be on immigration enforcement. So that's a lot of people. The Bureau is about 38,000. So we're talking about taking people off of counterterrorism investigations, counterintelligence investigations, public corruption, like we've just been discussing with Agent Jardina and The Jack Smith January 6th investigation, drug cartels, drug trafficking, which is supposed to be a priority of this administration, but people diverting from that. Cyber specialists. These are people who go to Quantico. They go to specialized training, and then they spend years developing their expertise in these kind of things that other people just can't step in to do. So when you divert them to be essentially street ICE agents along with street cops, also inflating their numbers because of the types of arrests they're being involved in, and giving Keshe Patel some ammunition to talk about how many arrests are up. What you're really doing is diverting from the core functions of the FBI. And I think one of the things that came through in this reporting and one reason that 45 current and former agents were willing to talk to Emily, including 16 on the record, is because they are Worried about national security and public safety with this diversion of resources.
- [43:44]
C
Emily, there's an incredible passage about Kash Patel. It reads like a, like Richie Rich. Let me read that. Senior Executive 2. Every May, there's a Five Eyes conference with the head of every intelligence agency. This year it was in the uk Kash Patel is going in the lead up to that. His detail starts making crazy requests. He's got special requirements on everything, and the Brits are getting pissed. Before the conference, his staff says he's unhappy because he doesn't like meetings and office settings. What he wants is social events. He wants premier soccer games. He wants to go jet ski. He'd like a helicopter tour. Everyone who heard about this was like, hold on, is he really going to ask the MI5 director to go jet skiing instead of a meeting? The schedule is set and every five eyes partner is doing this. They can't just say that he's not participating and instead wants to go to a premier soccer game. This is a job, guys. His staff only cared about three things. What his meals were, when his workouts would be, and what his entertainment would be. The biggest plan is how he's going to get his girlfriend in there so she can go to Windsor Castle. How's that going?
- [44:50]
D
Yeah, I mean, look, how can you top that kind of close observation from someone in the FBI watching this and thinking, wait a second, this is the leader of the agency and he is very focused on things that are not part of the core functions of the agency. And how is this working? And yet, you know, Patel has been, it seems like invulnerable to this kind of criticism. There have been lots of stories about him flying government planes to a place called Boondocko Ranch, et cetera. And yet he is doing a lot of things that the President wants. And so he's part of this cadre of Trump officials that say yes to the President. And so the rest of it just doesn't seem to matter a whole lot.
- [45:39]
C
Until, as the reporting points out, the core mission is something that the whole country misses, misses being done in the shadows and in silence. Emily Bazelon, I hope that day doesn't come to pass, but your reporting is really important to understanding how it could. Mary McCord, thank you for joining us for this conversation as well. One more break. We'll be right back. My guest on this week's brand new episode of the Best People podcast is Susan Rice. She was exactly who we needed to talk to this week after listening to Donald Trump threaten our allies at Davos. Here's what she told me about Donald Trump's posturing on the world stage. How do we do a better job explaining how totally insane it all is?
- [46:32]
B
It's grand theft larceny, okay?
- [46:35]
C
That's what this is.
- [46:36]
B
He is extorting countries around the world. He's globalizing the grift and he's going around the globe literally stealing other countries resources.
- [46:48]
C
That's what's happening in Venezuela. That's what he wants to do in.
- [46:51]
B
Greenland, God knows where else. He literally stealing resources out of the ground and saying, this is mine, not.
- [47:00]
C
This is United States of America. I get to decide what happens to this. Right?
- [47:05]
B
That's what he said about the oil in Venezuela.
- [47:08]
C
And Americans are just like turning the page. They're on to the next story. Well, I mean, they do a masterful job of flooding the zone with so.
- [47:18]
B
Much that nobody can keep up.
- [47:20]
C
But it's our duty and our responsibility to keep up and to highlight the.
- [47:27]
B
Magnitude of the theft domestically and internationally.
- [47:32]
C
To use a word that is way overused now.
- [47:34]
B
It's unprecedented.
- [47:37]
C
I hung onto her every word. I'm confident you will, too. Premium subscribers can listen to the entire conversation starting tonight. And the episode will be out for everybody on Monday. One more break. We'll be right back. Thank you so much for letting us into your homes. We are grateful.
- [47:58]
A
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