“Be careful what you wish for”

Summary

Podcast Summary: Deadline: White House – “Be careful what you wish for”

Episode Details:

• Title: Be careful what you wish for
• Host: Nicolle Wallace, MSNBC
• Release Date: July 15, 2025

In this episode of Deadline: White House, host Nicolle Wallace delves into the turbulent political landscape shaped by former President Donald Trump's actions and their repercussions on various facets of American society. The discussion spans multiple critical issues, including internal fractures within the MAGA movement, controversial judicial nominations, aggressive immigration policies, gerrymandering efforts in Texas, the economic impact of Trump's tariff strategies, and the dismantling of USAID leading to the destruction of vital food aid. Experts and analysts provide in-depth analysis, supported by notable quotes and timely insights.

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1. MAGA Movement and the Jeffrey Epstein Files Scandal

The episode opens with an exploration of the current discord within the MAGA (Make America Great Again) movement concerning President Trump's handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files. John Heilman highlights the schism between MAGA supporters who staunchly believe in the conspiracy theories surrounding Epstein and those who, while ideologically aligned, are wavering under political pressure.

Key Points:

• Trump's Base Division: The MAGA movement is splitting into factions—those unwavering in their belief in the Epstein conspiracy and those beginning to question the narrative under Trump's new stance.
• Charlie Kirk's Influence: Initially signaling a move away from the Epstein discussion, Kirk later reaffirms his commitment to unraveling the files, reflecting the conflicting directives within the movement.

Notable Quotes:

• John Heilman [00:56]: “Be careful what you wish for. Donald Trump has spent the last decade stoking and priming his base of supporters to not believe their eyes, to not believe their ears when it comes to anything having to do with the US Government.”
• Charlie Kirk [02:37]: “So what I want to make an addendum to what was said yesterday is we're going to keep on talking about it.”

2. Judicial Nomination Controversy: Emil Bovet

A significant portion of the discussion focuses on the contentious nomination of Emile Bovet to a federal judgeship. Over 75 former federal and state judges have publicly opposed Bovet's nomination, citing his history of power abuse and disobedience to court orders.

Key Points:

• Egregious Record: Bovet's actions, including mishandling the Eric Adams case and attempting to circumvent judicial orders, render him unsuitable for a lifetime judicial appointment.
• Bipartisan Opposition: Judges from both conservative and liberal backgrounds unite in opposition, underscoring the severity of Bovet's conduct.

Notable Quotes:

• Former Judge Nancy Gertner [77:35]: “Bove has gone into the Department of Justice and proved precisely the opposite. From firing career prosecutors to arranging troubling deals, his trajectory has been anything but professional and neutral.”
• John Heilman [78:36]: “This is an unheard of nomination and would be an unheard of judicial selection.”

3. Immigration Policies and Mass Deportation

The episode delves into the Trump administration's aggressive immigration policies, focusing on the mass deportation program and the deplorable conditions within detention facilities.

Key Points:

• Indefinite Detention: A July 8 memo mandates the detention of immigrants without bond hearings, violating due process and standard legal practices.
• Humanitarian Crisis: Reports highlight inhumane conditions in detention centers, likening them to internment camps, with families being torn apart and individuals detained indefinitely.
• Public Backlash: A Gallup poll indicates a significant decline in support for Trump's immigration policies, reflecting growing public disapproval.

Notable Quotes:

• Carol Leonnig [51:58]: “This is a drastic overhaul of the way the US Government has handled immigrants. They're going to be detained indefinitely at taxpayer expense.”
• John Heilman [67:57]: “A Gallup poll shows Donald Trump's immigration approval rating has dropped to just 35%.”

4. Gerrymandering and the Texas State Legislature

The discussion shifts to the Texas Republican legislature's efforts to gerrymander congressional maps, influenced by President Trump's directives, aiming to secure more Republican-leaning seats ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.

Key Points:

• Special Session for Redistricting: Governor Greg Abbott announces a special legislative session focused on redrawing congressional districts.
• Potential Backfire: Experts warn that attempts to create more GOP-friendly districts may inadvertently lead to more competitive races, benefiting Democrats.
• Poll Insights: With Trump’s approval ratings on immigration and tariffs sinking, the political maneuvers may not yield the intended electoral advantages.

Notable Quotes:

• John Heilman [26:28]: “Adding Republican voters to blue districts means taking those same voters out of the red districts where they reside. The result is more competitive districts.”
• Eddie Glaude [27:54]: “Trump knows that's not what they're doing, and fortunately, Gavin Newsom knows that's not what they're doing.”

5. Trump's Tariff Policies and Inflation Impact

An analysis of President Trump's tariff strategies reveals their unintended economic consequences, particularly heightened inflation rates and increased consumer prices.

Key Points:

• Implementation of Tariffs: Trump's aggressive tariffs on the European Union and other countries have quadrupled consumer tariffs over a year.
• Economic Indicators: The Consumer Price Index (CPI) shows a 3% monthly increase and a 2.7% annual rise, signaling rising inflation.
• Market Response: Initial market reactions were muted, but recent data indicates a tangible impact on everyday consumers.
• Future Projections: Economists warn of escalating price pressures and potential stagflation if tariffs continue unchecked.

Notable Quotes:

• Charlotte Howard [34:46]: “You have average tariff rates now that are about quadruple the level they were a year ago. You have consumer sentiment weak.”
• Nicolle Wallace [33:17]: “If some of this material does come to light... people are going to be pissed and they're going to blame Donald Trump and they're going to blame the Republican Party.”

6. Dismantling of USAID and Destruction of Food Aid

The episode highlights catastrophic inefficiencies within the Trump administration leading to the destruction of 500 tons of emergency food aid, which could have supported 1.5 million children.

Key Points:

• Policy Shifts: Under Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency, USAID was disbanded, and oversight shifted to the State Department.
• Logistical Failures: Requests to move food aid were ignored, resulting in the impending destruction of expired food supplies.
• Humanitarian Fallout: The wasted aid represents a significant loss of resources that could have alleviated severe malnutrition in regions like Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Notable Quotes:

• Rick Stengel [87:36]: “People all around the world see the US saving lives... It's just a terrible thing for US diplomacy.”
• John Heilman [85:47]: “500 tons of emergency food... is now expired and about to be turned into ash.”

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Conclusion: In this episode, Nicolle Wallace and her panel of experts dissect the multifaceted challenges emanating from Donald Trump's continued influence on American politics. From internal divisions within the MAGA movement and problematic judicial nominations to aggressive immigration policies and economic missteps, the discussions underscore a nation grappling with deep-seated political and humanitarian issues. The episode serves as a poignant reminder of the far-reaching impacts of leadership decisions on both domestic and international fronts.

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Notable Exclusions: The summary omits promotional segments, advertisements, intros, outros, and non-content-related sections, focusing solely on the substantive discussions and analyses presented during the episode.

Transcript

[Nicole Wallace]

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[John Heilman]

I don't drink at all until 4 o'.

[Sam Stein]

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[Nicole Wallace]

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[Eddie Glaude]

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[Nicole Wallace]

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[Eddie Glaude]

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[Nicole Wallace]

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[John Heilman]

Hi there everyone. It's four o' clock in the East. Be careful what you wish for. Donald Trump has spent the last decade stoking and priming his base of supporters to not believe their eyes, to not believe their ears when it comes to anything having to do with the US Government, that out of all of those in Washington, he and only he, is the person who will give it to him straight, who will be transparent and tell them the honest and difficult truth all the time. And they believed him. So what happens when that very same base of fervent supporters is now told by that very same president regarding a conspiracy that they have been following and believing with fervor for years to move on, that there's nothing to see here and it's time to just shut up and get over it. Well, we're going to see, we're seeing some of it unfold right now. With MAGA melting down over the Trump administration's handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files. It's a movement torn into two distinct factions. Those staying true to the conspiracy who will stop at nothing to get those files released and made public, and those who may actually still believe the same things, but are either too afraid or too faithful. We're going to acquiesce to Donald Trump's wishes to move on and have this go away. So yesterday on his podcast, Charlie Kirk, who's huge in this world and has been very vocal about making the Epstein files public, said this we thought maybe the tide was turning and soon MAGA was going to fall in line behind its leader.

[Nicole Wallace]

Honestly, I'm done talking about Epstein for the time being, I'm going to trust my friends, the administration, I'm going to trust my friends in the government to do what needs to be done, solve it. Balls in their hands. I've said plenty this last weekend.

[John Heilman]

But Charlie Kirk would go on to clarify today that he's actually not done talking about the Epstein files. Watch.

[Nicole Wallace]

So what I want to make an addendum to what was said yesterday is we're going to keep on talking about it. When I said for the time being, I was talking yesterday, I was telling the audience, guys, I got a whole deck of stories I got to cover here.

[John Heilman]

When I said I was moving on, I just meant, you know, for today. Tomorrow's a new day, a clean slate, if you will. So there you have it. As ludicrous as ludicrous can be, a story that's actually pretty rare in the Trump era. The supporters, at least at the beginning, not immediately throwing themselves at the altar of Donald Trump and giving him exactly what he wants. We did see Republicans on the House Rules Committee vote last night against a Democratic amendment that would force the Justice Department to release the Epstein files. So for their part, they've fallen into line. As for how that was received in MAGA world, though, far right commentator and close ally of Donald Trump, Laura Loomer, posted this quote, does anyone care about the midterms anymore? What are we doing? All of this leaving Donald Trump in a bit of a tough spot today. When asked by reporters, he decided to stand by his Attorney General and then reiterated his own conspiracy theory about the Epstein files.

[Nicole Wallace]

The attorney General has handled that very well.

[Carol Leonnig]

She is.

[Nicole Wallace]

She's really done a very good job. And I think that when you look at it, you'll understand that. What did she tell you about the review?

[John Heilman]

And specifically, did she tell you at all that your name appeared in the.

[Nicole Wallace]

No, she's given us just a very quick briefing. And in terms of the credibility of the different things that they've seen, and I would say that, you know, these files were made up by Comey, they were made up by Obama, they were made up by the Biden. You know.

[John Heilman]

Comey's been gone since 2017 when Trump fired him. But that is where we start today with some of our favorite experts and friends. Puck News chief political columnist, MSNBC national affairs analyst John Heilman here. Also joining us, managing editor of the Bulwark, MSNBC contributor Sam Stein is here. Halman, you and I have been talking about this. It feels like for a week this is the first MAGA scandal, sort of created by messed up, by creating divisions among and with Trump so far incapable of tamping it down, magasized scandal that I can remember.

[Nicole Wallace]

Well, that's certainly right. Nicole and I would say, you know, we've saw with you played the Charlie Kirk just now. We saw with Charlie Kirk a kind of mini me version of what Trump's going through. Right where Charlie Kirk has his big conference, his Turning Point USA conference over the weekend, this bunch of college young MAGA people down in Florida, 7,000 people. He gets up there on stage and says how many people care about this Epstein case? And it's all 7,000 of the people in the room put their hands up and he's like this really matters. This is going to be a big deal. Then yesterday you have you mentioned Laura Loomer. Laura Loomer puts a goes out on X and says, you know, Charlie Kirk would be nothing without Donald Trump. Charlie Kirk's whole organization is built on the back of Donald Trump. There would be no turning point USA. There would be no 7,000 people in that room. There would be no giant business. So you better watch what you're doing over there, Charlie Kirk. And what do you see? Just a couple hours later, Charlie Kirk said, well I'm done talking about this for now, we're moving on. And then today, as you point out, Nicole, because he now is a captive of his own base who are all who look up and say, wait a minute, over the weekend you were telling us this was the most important story ever and we've been betrayed and now you're telling us we're going to move off of it. That's bullshit, Charlie. And so he's now on the air today basically saying, well I didn't really mean move on. What I really meant was just take a pause for a second cuz I got a lot of other important things to talk about. It is the same story, Nicole, writ small in Charlie Kirk's case as writ large in Donald Trump's case, which is that they are being consumed by the monster that they created. And there is in fact maybe there's some way out. But right now it seems like a lot of people are very desperate to both keep feeding that monster while not letting it devour them.

[John Heilman]

Yeah. And I mean Sam, if only we'd seen inside a Trump conspiracy theory and knew what they would choose. Oh yeah, Dominion. We know exactly what they choose. They follow their base. They follow their base to the brutal assault physical of law enforcement officers. They follow their base in terms of repeating things that Tucker Carlson Described as demonic. Tucker Carlson described Donald Trump as demonic, but went ahead because he was so afraid of the Fox audience in that instance of that lawsuit. There's not an instance where the MAGA media figures have bucked the base, have bucked the viewer, Habakk the listener. And so I wonder what you're watching for in this.

[Eddie Glaude]

Well, like Charlie Kirk, I had vowed never to talk about this again, but that vow was two hours ago, and we've already hit the statue of limitations of it. So I'm good to go. There is a little bit of poetic justice, I suppose, to this, right, in that Trump, who has been the primary source of conspiracy theories in our nation's politics for over a decade now, is in a way being consumed by a conspiracy theory of its own. And obviously, you know, he's, he, he does play some form of guilt here in spreading this because it was him and his minions and his allies who have been stoking the Epstein story for years. I mean, there's plenty of tape on Dan Bongino, Cash Patel, even Pam Bondi saying, we know we have the files. They need to turn them over. And now, of course, in a position of power, they're not doing it. What I'm struck by, though, is just sort of how these conspiracies are incredibly impossible to dislodge. And I think that's what's happening here, which is that you can't convince people who in conspiracy theory that suddenly everything they've been told is wrong. And we know this because it's been tried before. And today in our Morning Shots newsletter, we revisited maybe the first real big conspiracy theory to consume a presidency, which was birtherism. In 2011, it was Donald Trump spreading birtherism. And Barack Obama's White House assumed at first that they could just push back with the truth, but it got to the point where it was overwhelming everything the White House did. And so what did they do? They put out Obama's birth certificate. And did that stop the conspiracies? No, it just expanded the conspiracy. So suddenly it was, it's not a long form birth certificate. You need to put on more. And Trump, who had been spreading it, was like, well, where are the college transcripts? And where's his passport information? And so you build off the conspiracies into more conspiracies. And the only real way to get away from it is to change the subject. And so Trump's right now at a place where he's trying to figure out a way to change the subject. And that's why you see Trump say things like, well, you know, James Comey wrote these memos or Hillary Clinton wrote memos. And so we can't trust it. Never mind the fact that, you know, his own people said the memos don't exist or that it would make no sense that James Comey wrote these memos. He's got to build a different conspiracy to consume the conspiracy that is consuming him. And that's where we're at in the saga.

[John Heilman]

Well, what's interesting is that I don't know that you can say that you changed the subject and dispel any of the MAGA conspiracies. There are people who still believe Trump's lies about President Obama. There are people who still believe leave Trump's life. So I actually, I don't. Is there an example that you can think of where a Trump backed Trump fueled Trump perpetrated MAGA franchise conspiracy has been successfully debunked by a Democrat or anybody else?

[Eddie Glaude]

No. When I say change the subject, I mean literally move on to a different subject. Right? I mean, people will never not believe that. The people who believe in the big lie about the 2020 election will never be convinced fully that in fact it was a properly held election with very little if any fraud in it. No matter how many court cases, no matter how many studies, no matter how much adjudication, they're not going to believe it. And so the way you get around it is you simply figure out a way to stop talking about that. And in Trump's case, with respect to Epstein, you can see that's what he's trying to do right now. I mean, at first it was him saying, why are you still asking me these questions about Jeffrey Epstein? That's old news. As if he wanted to move on to policy. Because that's what Donald Trump loves to talk about, his policy. And then he just bleed it out, stop talking, stop asking about Epstein. And now he's saying, well, don't trust anything that comes out about Epstein because it's all tainted by James Comey. It's his effort to try to change the subject onto something else or to make it so the conspiracy is even grander than we could possibly imagine.

[John Heilman]

I want to show you how Democrats and Republicans are dealing with this because I think, I think sort of establishing this fact, John, that there is not a Trump backed Trump branded conspiracy that in the mind of his own base has been debunked that any of us can think of. And I'll keep thinking while we're on that Tape. Don't believe your eyes, don't believe your ears, which is a Trump quote, was in the form of tariffs. And it took him a long time to come back to the fabulousness of a tariff not being a tax. But you see, even that lie that he began laying the foundation for in 2017 or 18 he's now cashing in on. Some of his people are actually buying that bs, despite the fact that they too are paying more for everything. But let me show you what Mike Johnson is saying about this because there and again, I would welcome being corrected. But I don't think there is a Trump backed, Trump branded, Trump fueled MAGA amplified conspiracy theory that has been debunked. So here's how Mike Johnson is riding the wave.

[Eddie Glaude]

For transparency. We're intellectually consistent in this.

[Nicole Wallace]

We.

[Eddie Glaude]

Look, Reagan used to tell us we should trust the American people. I believe in that principle. I know President Trump does as well, and I trust him. I mean, he put together a team of his choosing and they're doing a great job. It's a very delicate subject, but we should, we should put everything out there and let the people decide it. I mean, the White House and the White House team are privy to facts.

[Nicole Wallace]

That I don't know.

[Eddie Glaude]

I mean, this isn't my lane. I haven't been involved in that. But I agree with the sentiment that we need to put it out there.

[John Heilman]

So he said to put everything out there. I mean, Republicans didn't vote to put everything out there. They just had a chance to do that and they didn't. That was the Democrats. Bill, what do you make of the fact that the Republicans, the House Republicans, people willing to walk off a clip for Donald Trump and do all sorts of stuff that before Trump, we know they didn't believe in, can't even get their message and their votes straight on this?

[Nicole Wallace]

Well, I think their message is very straight, Nicole. It's just in conflict with their action. Not an unusual thing in the MAGA world where you say one thing and do the other. I think that there are many politicians in America who would like to not see whatever the Justice Department has on Jeffrey Epstein released in the public. There are a lot of prominent people outside of politics who would prefer that outcome too. And so you'll have Mike Johnson basically saying we are full transparency. And now over here just don't pay attention to the fact that we're voting to not against the thing that would be full transparency. And to your point about Trump backed conspiracy theories never dying, the question is kind of have they been Successfully debunked for people who are not in the MAGA culture. Are they people who have been successfully debunked to the people in the MAGA cult? I think to Sam's point, there were probably some voters out there in America, probably some who were curious when Donald Trump said that Barack Obama was born in Kenya. And I think probably the White House's release of Barack Obama's birth certificate put that conspiracy theory to rest for those people. It didn't put it to rest for people who are in the MAGA culture. Actually at that point it was the pre Maga cult because that was back in 2011. And what I think you're right about, and there's a simple explanation for it, there are no Trump conspiracy theories that have ever been debunked to the MAGA base and the believers in Donald Trump. And the reason is it is a cult of personality and Trump has never repudiated a single one of his own conspiracy theories. We've never heard Trump say, you know, I said this thing before but new facts have come to light and therefore I withdraw. I apologize, I was wrong about that. My followers can now abandon that thing I said six months ago, six years ago, whatever. You've never heard Trump say that. And because Trump has never said that, none of those conspiracy theories have ever been debunked cuz he's the only one who could debunk them to the members of the personality culture.

[John Heilman]

Yeah, I mean I was referring to Trump backed conspiracy that his followers no longer believe. I guess my follow up question for you, Heilman, is does he still have that power you just described? Because he seems to be trying to tell his supporters and his acolytes in MAGA media nothing to see here, move on. And he doesn't seem to have been particularly effective.

[Nicole Wallace]

Well, I think we're going to test that, Nicole, because the question, I don't know where the story goes from here, but we've seen him laying the basis down. You pointed out the Comey thing, that long truth social post over the weekend where I know you guys talked about this on the show yesterday, where he basically conceded implicitly that there are Epstein files. It's not like there are no Epstein files. And he started to lay down the predicate for saying these are, these are fake. Basically the stuff that's in these files are fake because they're the product of Jim Comey and Hillary Clinton and et cetera, et cetera, all of his favorite boogie men and women. I think that's the question is if some of this material does come to light, and you had Laura Trump yesterday saying, and Laura Loomer is now pushing for an end at special counsel, Laura Trump is saying there will be more, substantially more transparency on this going forward. If some of these files do come to light and Trump says don't believe them because they are the product of Jim Comey or whoever, whatever fictional deep state characters he decides to blame, what will happen then? Will the base go along with that? History would suggest they will, but who knows? This may be a first in another way, in that they may actually look at it and go, that makes no sense. I don't know. I'm not going to bet a lot of money that they're ever going to succumb to that conclusion. But, you know, we're in a new world here when it comes to Jeffrey Epstein.

[John Heilman]

I want to show you guys what Hakeem Jeffries, how the Democrats are handling this.

[Carol Leonnig]

The American people deserve to know the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth as it relates to this.

[Nicole Wallace]

Whole sordid Jeffrey Epstein matter.

[Carol Leonnig]

Democrats didn't put the Jeffrey Epstein thing.

[Nicole Wallace]

Into the public domain.

[Carol Leonnig]

This was a conspiracy that Donald Trump, Pam Bondi and these MAGA extremists have been fanning the flames of for the last several years.

[Nicole Wallace]

And now the chickens are coming home to roost.

[John Heilman]

Sam Stein, Democrats seem to have gotten their ducks in a row quicker than MAGA Republicans on this one.

[Eddie Glaude]

Yeah, well, I think it's worth sort of stepping back for a second and kind of recognizing how surreal the situation is right now where it's like, well, you know, Laura Loomer's calling for a special. And we're like, yeah, that's probably a serious thing. What's going on in our reality is a little bit hard to stomach.

[John Heilman]

She got the national security advisor fired. So we know exactly. We pay attention.

[Eddie Glaude]

This is where we're at. And we just, we have to go with it to that point. Democrats are going with it. You like the transition? Hakeem Jeffries is, you know, echoing what the party wants to do here, which is keep the story in the spotlight, force uncomfortable votes, maybe perhaps get some testimony or hearings. And really, honestly, I think the onus is going to be placed not necessarily just on Trump, but on Pam Bondi. It's very clear that there's a lot of frustration on the right with how she's handled this situation. There's evidence that she and obviously Dan Bongino, who I don't know if he showed up to work today, we'll have to check on that, but that they are in some sort of loggerheads here and that this is ripe for political exploitation, honestly. And what's interesting to me is how much Trump has stood by Pam Bondi through all this. Usually you would expect Trump to look around and say, oh, I could throw this person under the bus and deflect some of the attention on myself. But in this case, he's been very adamant that he thinks she's doing a good job. He's very adamant that he doesn't want to see her go. And that seems to be the pressure point where Democrats are focusing. So I expect them to continue to make calls for whatever files or documents can be released to be released. And I expect them to push for hearings on the Hill involving either Patel, Bongino or Bondi.

[John Heilman]

I mean, at least in Megyn Kelly's telling at turning points, he's directing her actions. And the theory on the right seems to be that it's, it's a cover up being directed by him. But as we all know, only, only time will tell. We do not know all the facts here. All right, no one's going anywhere. Speaking of Democrats fighting back, Democrat Gavin Newsom is fighting back against Republicans efforts to redraw the congressional congressional map in Texas, the California governor responding to Donald Trump to complain at that game. We'll explain next. Also ahead, more evidence today that Donald Trump has been completely incapable of fulfilling his campaign promise to lower prices for anyone, all thanks to his tariffs kicking his trade war into serious overdrive today. And later in the broadcast, there's new reporting on the increasing lawlessness of Donald Trump, Trump's mass deportation plan taking power away from the courts and putting it in the hands of ice. They'll have all those stories and more when DEADLINE WHITE HOUSE continues after a quick break. Don't go anywhere today. Donald Trump put out a pretty random truth social post this morning bragging about his past performance in the state of Texas, you know, the Republican stronghold which has voted for every Republican nominee for president since 1980. But what that post actually was was a green light for Texas Governor Greg Abbott and the state's Republican legislature to forge ahead with a plan to hold a special legislative session in order to further gerrymander that state's congressional map with the goal of manufacturing more Republican leaning seats for the 2026 midterm elections. This is not new. And in the past, Democrats would lean on the court system to try to fight back, maybe even the court of public opinion to dissuade The GOP from going through with something that is such a brazen power grab, especially at such a tragic hour for the state of Texas. Here's how California Governor Gavin Newsom intends to fight back against this.

[Nicole Wallace]

I saw what Governor Abbott did today. Yeah. Announcing a special session that will include redistricting, seizing power. Even after these guys are blood, they're not around, man. They're playing by a totally different set of rules. And here I am in California trying to raise the bar of sort of bipartisanship. Years and years ago, we did independent redistricting in a state that I assure you with two thirds majorities in the legislature could gerrymander like no other state. And we've been playing fair. But I saw what he just did today, made me question that entire program. I mean, these guys are going to do everything in their power to maintain their power. So your question is, was a specific question. If we don't take back the House of Representatives, I don't want to be alarmist. I don't want to say game over. That will be one of the most profound moments, I think, in modern history of this country.

[John Heilman]

We're back with John and Sam. I mean, Sam, whatever anyone in the Democratic Party, the Republican Party thinks about Gavin Newsom, he does have his eye on the ball in terms of where the political fight is being waged. And Texas Republicans have no shame. I mean, it's a state that should be abandoning its cravenly partisan politics and coming together in the wake of the tragedy and figuring out how to make sure the rivers never overflow again. In my humble opinion, that's what Texas policymakers and lawmakers should be doing. But they're doing that is not what they're doing. And Donald Trump knows that's not what they're doing. And Greg Abbott knows that's not what they're doing. And fortunately, Gavin Newsom knows that's not what they're doing.

[Eddie Glaude]

Right. I mean, this, the context of this can't be separated, which is incredibly tragic plot, resulting in, you know, well over 100 dead, many missing. And yeah, the conversation has now abruptly shifted to can they squeeze out five more Republican districts in a gerrymander. That would happen what is traditionally mid cycle for gerrymanders and. Or for redistricting, I should say. And look, if you talk to Republicans, elected Republican officials from Texas in Washington, D.C. they don't really want this. I mean, they think that they might be actually endangered if the Texas legislature takes Republicans from their fairly safe districts in order to create more Republican leaning districts. And in A way of election. It could backfire on them, frankly. Now, the person who does really want this is Donald Trump. And Donald Trump is pushing for this hard because he thinks this is a way to potentially hold onto the House of Representatives. And as we know throughout the last six months, if Donald Trump wants something in this Republican Party, he will get it. And that's what's happening here. As for Newsom, look, I appreciate what he is doing. I understand what he's doing. It's notable that he did this round of interviews in Tennessee on a number of national podcasts. He's clearly got his eye on a national profile. The logistics here are a little bit harder than he is letting on. There is an independent redistricting commission in California, which means he'd have to figure out a way to go around that commission or disband that commission if you wanted to do redistricting. California already is fairly heavily tilted to Democrats, so it's unclear how many more districts you could get out of it. But there are Democratic governors in other Democratic run states who if they wanted to really lean in on this, even as just sort of preventative volley against Abbott, they could do it. And that's what Gavin Newsom is actually doing here. He's saying, look, I'm not going to play nice if you do this. And I think other Democratic governors probably will come in and echo that point if Texas does go ahead with this.

[John Heilman]

Halman, I want to. I think there's a technical term for what Sam's describing that I've never seen before. It's called the dummy mander. This is from Politico. In Texas, Republicans are in danger of creating a so called dummy mander whereby an attempt to draw more seats for one party accidentally benefits the other. Texas congressional map already heavily favors the gop. So any changes to further benefit the party would have to walk a careful line. Adding Republican voters to blue districts to reduce Democrats margins means taking those same voters out of the red districts where they reside. The result is more competitive districts across the board, ones Democrats hope to take advantage of as they harness anti Trump energy in the midterms. Quote, they're playing a little bit of roulette with these maps. That's Julie Johnson, a Democrat of Texas. In a wave election like what we have a potential opportunity for in 26, I think it makes these Republicans very vulnerable. On immigration, Trump is for Trump historically low in terms of approval. On inflation, Trump is where Biden was let that sink in. MAGA on tariffs, which aren't all in effect yet. Trump is below 35%. Trump's approval rating on the policies that typically turn out, the voters who typically turn out in midterms, are all deeply, deeply underwater. There is an element of be careful what you wish for here for Republicans, isn't there?

[Nicole Wallace]

100%. And I think what you're pointing to, Nicole, is the day is coming. You know, it's been said before, but I actually feel a little more confident about saying it now. I stopped saying it a long while ago, which is that, you know, the day would come where congressional Republicans would start to. To look at their political interests as being separate from or diverging considerably, at least from Donald Trump's, and would say, you know what? I'm about to face my voters in this midterm election. Donald Trump is now a lame duck. I know there's still some question about what Donald Trump intentions are related to 2028, and there probably will be all the way up until the very last day of 2020, or at least until election day 2020. But if you believe that Trump is not going to try to stay in office for a third term, and I think a lot of Republicans at least profess to believe that, that he's grooming J.D. vance, there's a moment that comes where you say, you know what? This makes sense for Trump, doesn't make sense for me, and where Trump's politics start to diverge in a significant way from theirs. And you can see it if you go through all the numbers that you just ticked off right there, those are the reasons why that day, if those numbers, they continue in that direction, why that day is going to come sooner rather than later, where Republicans who are running for reelection are going to have to say, you know what? We love you, Donald Trump. Love you for everything you're for. You've made America great again. But I got to take care of myself over here. And my politics are not your politics anymore. I swear, that day's coming. I don't know if Sam agrees with me, but I feel like we're starting to see the first signs that that day may actually be on the horizon.

[Eddie Glaude]

I'm not sure I agree with that. It's coming that soon. Let's just put it that way.

[John Heilman]

Look, I mean, a lot of.

[Nicole Wallace]

I didn't say soon. I didn't say soon.

[John Heilman]

We'd all be dead if we held our breath. But I will say they're going to have to run on different stuff if that's not to be borne out. Because on immigration. Oh, yeah, yeah. On foreign policy and on the economy, Trump has made a mess in five months that politically, you know, I think only Trump has the Houdini skill set to get out of his own messes. No Republican has so far been able to emulate those political skills. Sam Stein. Oh, go ahead, Sam.

[Eddie Glaude]

I was gonna say the most fascinating thing is that they're rushing to undo the damage that they've caused. Right. Like Josh Hawley introduced a bill today to undo basically the big beautiful bill. So they recognize that trouble is ahead, that he voted for yes, maybe don't.

[John Heilman]

Vote for it and then it doesn't become law and then you don't have to write a law and pass a law to undo the law that you voted for. It also assumes that the MAGA voters are stupid, which I actually don't think is the case. But we'll find out. We'll test it. Sam Stein, thank you for being here. John sticks around a little bit longer. Up next for us, Donald Trump's whiplash tariff policy policy. Finally coming into economic focus a little bit new data shows what economists fear could happen and what Trump promised and campaigned on making not happen. We'll explain all that next.

[Nicole Wallace]

As President Trump continues implementing his ambitious agenda. Follow along with MSNBC's newest newsletter, Project 47. You'll get weekly updates sent straight to your inbox with expert analysis on the administration's latest actions and how they're affecting the American people.

[John Heilman]

The American people are basically telling the president that they are not okay with any of this.

[Nicole Wallace]

Sign up for the Project 47 newsletter at msnbc.com project47. Start your day with the MSNBC Daily newsletter. Each morning, read sharp insights from the voices you trust. Catch standout moments from your favorite shows.

[John Heilman]

The second Trump administration has gone to unprecedented lengths to radically transform America.

[Nicole Wallace]

Stay up to speed with our latest podcasts and documentaries and get fresh perspectives from experts shaping the news. It's everything you love about MSNBC delivered to your inbox. Sign up [e-mail] subscribe to MSNBC Premium on Apple Podcasts for early access. Add free listening and bonus content to all of MSNBC's original podcasts, including the chart topping series the Best People with Nicole Wallace, why Is this Happening? Main justice and more. Plus new episodes of all your favorite MSNBC shows ad free and ad free listening to all of Rachel Maddow's original series, Ultra Bagman and Deja News. Subscribe to MSNBC Premium on Apple Podcasts. I will end the devastating inflation crisis immediately, bring rates and lower the cost of energy. We're going to bring those prices way down. A vote for Trump means your groceries will be cheaper with the price of bacon, the price of lettuce, the price of tomatoes, bacon, lettuce, tomatoes, all the.

[John Heilman]

Everything is so much higher than it ever was.

[Nicole Wallace]

Groceries, cars, how, everything, we're going to get the prices down. Starting on day one, we will end inflation and make America affordable again.

[John Heilman]

So much for that, apparently, because today, brand new data lays bare Donald Trump's ongoing failure to accomplish all the things he said he was going to do on day one. End inflation. It has to do with what's called the Consumer Price Index, a trusted barometer for inflation. Well, today that measure shows that over the course of a month, prices rose 3%, contributing to an overall 2.7% increase from 1 year ago. Among the contributing factors, Donald Trump's tariffs, which have had an effect on products like household furnishings and appliances. New York Times reports this quote. Economists expect price pressures to intensify over the coming months, especially if new tariffs the president has threatened against the European Union and a host of other countries in recent days are imposed on August 1 as planned. Joining our conversation is executive editor and New York bureau chief for the economist Charlotte Howard. John Heilman is still here as well. Charlotte, we talked about this. I feel like as the, as the increases were planned, as the increases were started and stopped, started and stopped, as Taco figured in, in terms of a bet that Trump wouldn't do any of these things, but now enough of them have gone into effect that consumers have responded and inflation is indeed up. Yeah.

[F]

I think that you see playing out here part of what you were talking about in your prior conversation, where there are these kind of competing realities.

[John Heilman]

Right.

[F]

When I think about the Trump era, it feels sometimes like you're living in this bizarre orange kaleidoscope. You have Trump's reality, right, where he says he's going to, you know, advance all these tariffs by August 1st, and it's for real this time. You have the reality, as viewed by investors, where you have markets basically shrugging off these threats. But increasingly, you have this third reality, which I would argue is the real one, where the economy is starting to respond to this set of erratic policies. You have average tariff rates now that are about quadruple the level they were a year ago. You have consumer sentiment weak. You have, as you pointed out, inflation ticking up in June compared with May and compared with the year prior. So across these different measures, you have signs that all of this erratic policymaking, this bullying, this kind of buffoonery from The Trump administration is starting to have a real impact on the economy.

[John Heilman]

So John Heilman, we could have done an hour with the promises to lower the prices of everything. We could have done a second hour with voters responding to those promises with very real and very understandable economic anxieties that despite the Biden administration's economic successes, people didn't feel it for a variety of reasons. They weren't communicated clearly, they weren't marketed clearly. The Biden administration would say they weren't covered clearly. But this 0.3% is something that people are going to see. It will be real, it will be felt. I wonder if you think it'll be successfully spun.

[Nicole Wallace]

I, I say, Nicole, I think the question isn't about spin. And I think that's really part of the story of the Biden administration, because I know we've talked about him 100 times. We have all these arguments about was it covered properly and was it what about the context of the rest of the world and all the rest of it? Prices were high during Joe Biden's time in office. He had a lot of economic successes, but this was one that he did not have. And people felt it. They were right to feel it. They were unhappy about it. They mightyou might argue that Joe Biden couldn't do that much about it, but people felt that their dollar was not going as far as it once did. And that is a large part of the reason why Joe Biden ended up not being able to seek reelection and why he would have lost had he sought reelection and why Democrats got blamed. And I think the same thing is going to happen now, because this is an unspeakable reality. It's the, it's, the inflation is different than GDP growth. It's different than the unemployment rate. It's different than all of those things because it affects absolutely everybody in a way that they can count. They know how much gas costs when they fill up their car. They know how much eggs cost. They know whether their dollar, their household budget is going as far as it did before, whether it's going further or it's going out going further as far. And so I think that in the end that, that the reality of the inflation that's going to come out of these tariffs and about the uncertainty around these tariffs, but particularly if Trump makes good on some of these more outlandish tariff threats where prices are going to rise and when they rise, people are going to be pissed and they're going to blame Donald Trump and they're going to blame the Republican Party. And they're going to be right to do that, just like they were right to blame the Biden administration when prices went up. The that's just how our politics work. The person in office gets blamed for rising prices. And it will happen, I think, again to Trump and to Republicans if that's what happens at prices. And I think that's where it's going.

[John Heilman]

All right. No one's going anywhere. There's another piece of this. There's the live reality, which I think you're both getting at the price of things we buy. But there's also the failure from Mr. Art of the deal himself to make the deals he said he was going to make. We'll have that conversation next.

[Nicole Wallace]

And I'm highly confident that you'll see a handful of new deals over the next two.

[Eddie Glaude]

Weeks, but you will see a cascade of new deals coming out in the near future.

[Nicole Wallace]

But as long as we continue to make progress, I think you're going to see a lot more deals that are announced prior to that July 9th time frame. And as you get to July 9th, that number is only going to go higher.

[Carol Leonnig]

We're going to announce a whole bunch.

[Nicole Wallace]

Of deals over the next week or so. But as always, there's going to be a flurry going into the final week as the pressure increases on trade.

[G]

There's going to be quite a bit.

[Nicole Wallace]

Of news this week, and I think the headline of the news is that there are going to be deals that are finalized. Well, these tariffs are real. If the president doesn't get a deal that he thinks is good enough. But, you know, conversations are ongoing and we'll see where the dust settles. I watched the show this morning.

[Carol Leonnig]

They were talking about, well, when's he.

[Nicole Wallace]

Going to make the deal?

[Carol Leonnig]

The deals are already made.

[John Heilman]

The letters are the deals, the deals are made.

[Nicole Wallace]

There are no deals to make.

[John Heilman]

We're going to have a lot of deals. And Trump says the deal is already made. For those keeping score, I count to right, one and a half, one and three quarters. I mean, Charlotte, that the, the fog of disinformation and bluster and spin and whoever's writing Lutnick's talking point should either be fired or get a raise because they're so audacious, they're comical. But the damage and the prices, the pain feels like it's already come. What is this about at a substantive level at this point?

[F]

What is this about at a substantive level? I feel like that's a deeper question than we have time for. But on at least the Top level. You have a president who either is treated by allies as a bully, who's using these tariffs to extract concessions on a number of different areas. Right. Economic areas, but also to try to extract, you know, other things he wants from these countries. So either he's a bully and he's using the tariffs as a cudgel, or he's a buffoon. And I don't think that's a position that you really, as an American, want for your president to be in. I do think, you know, you said that the pain has come, it started to show. But there's so much more that could happen. Should these tariffs actually go into effect?

[John Heilman]

Right.

[F]

30% by August 1st. With the EU, our biggest trading partner, that's a colossal level. So if that were to go ahead and if the EU were to retaliate, it's preparing its retaliatory tariffs in case a deal isn't signed. That would have a very big economic impact. And I think there are impacts that are kind of insidious as investment is chilled and you see companies waiting to allocate their resources because they don't know what's coming next. Part of why the effects of inflation have been relatively modest to date is because companies have gotten so good at managing their supply chains, and they were stockpiling goods earlier in the year in preparation for the scale of uncertainty. There's only so long that kind of strategy can continue to buffer Americans from higher prices. So I think you have started to see the effects of this, but there's so much more that could come.

[John Heilman]

John Heilman, in honor of your last point, we have this graphic. This is from Fox News, of all places. This is Donald Trump's approval on inflation and Joe Biden's approval on inflation separated by about six months. And I'm not great at math, but I think those numbers equal the same. Donald Trump not viewed any more favorably on the topic of inflation, which he, to your point, rode to victory. For all the other things in the news cycle, this feels like the biggest flashing red for Republicans in the midterms.

[Nicole Wallace]

Yeah, I think that's right, Nicole. And look, you know, we did, you know, Charlotte was talking about how we had this. We do live in this, in this. There's this alternative reality that's, that's conveyed by the stock market where the market has not been done what a lot of people thought it would do with around these tariff policies. It increasingly. Trump makes announcements, he makes threats, he levies tariffs, then retracts them. It's all over the map. And they now, even with inflation, they see the inflation number come in as they did yesterday today, and sort of says that and they say, ok, you know, we're not going to react the way you think we're going to react. We're just going to let it ride. Because Trump, there's always, they've kind of started, started to buy this notion that just like Taco was one was their view about a lot of the Trump trade policies. They look at the inflation number and they say, well, this will be great because it'll just force the Fed's hand. The Fed will then cut interest rates and that'll solve the problem or raise interest rates. I should say that they'll be able to kind of this one way or the other, we're going to navigate our way through this situation. And I just, just look at it and say that the underlying realities are the things that the Republicans have to look at with fear because they have passed a budget, a big beautiful bill, they passed a giant bill that is massively inflationary, that's going to push the deficit off the cliff. Where the world markets are looking at America as not a safe investment anymore and where Donald Trump is still flirting with, with the notion that he might try to kick Jerome Powell out as Fed chairman. And you know, in his heart, Trump thinks he should be in charge of the Fed. That I think is game over for the American economy if, if Trump were to make a move on Powell. And you know, he wants to, Nicole, you know, he wants to make that move. He's been hinting at it for months. And I think if I'm a Republican right now, I'm looking at the real economy and where it could be a year from now. And there's not a single forecaster I know who looks with confidence to a year from now and says things are going to be great in terms of prices, in terms of stagnation, in terms of inflation. More often they say things like stagflation than they think. A well controlled, happy pappy boom. And if I'm a Republican, that's what I'm worried about when it comes to the midterms, stagflation.

[John Heilman]

Well, if I was a Republican, I'd be worried about abdicating all of my responsibilities under the law when it came to tariffs and trade. I mean, I think there's a judge right now whose position is that they're all illegal. I wonder. So I agree with Michael.

[F]

It's really remarkable. I mean, Congress, the people who are in Congress are the only people in the world who seem to have made the calculation that keeping their job requires them not to do it. I mean, they're just handing over power and not doing what they're authorized to do. This case that you mentioned is going to go into oral arguments later this month. And even the Cato Institute, which is a conservative think tank, you know, filed a brief challenging the Trump administration's authority to set these tariffs for this very reason that it is not in its power to set duties. I will say the Economist did a poll over the weekend with YouGov, its partner, that showed that even Republicans don't want higher tariffs. 40%, only 40% of Republicans favor raising tariffs. So this is really unpopular across the board.

[John Heilman]

And there is no Republican that was ever for a tariff before Donald Trump came along and decided he wanted to pass tariffs like this. Charlotte Howard, thank you so much for joining us. John Howman, thank you for spending the hour with us. Up next for us, one Republican on the Hill today saying he wants to make sure parts of Trump's mega spending bill that he just voted for never become law. That's next. As a couple folks have mentioned this hour, it has been 11 days since Donald Trump signed his so called big beautiful bill into law. And Missouri Senator Josh Hawley, who voted for said big beautiful bill, is already officially running away from his own vote. He just introduced legislation to repeal the law. He voted for some of the bill's key Medicaid provisions. Again, he voted for the bill he's now trying to undo. He also told NBC News after he voted for the bill this quote, you cannot take away health care from working people. And unless this is changed going forward, that is what will happen in coming years. So I'm going to do everything I can to stop that except not vote for the bill that made it happen. Now what Hawley campaigns on legislation he introduced to undo the legislation he helped pass. Well stay on top of this story and this senator and watch for more. Up next, Trump's immigration policies may be backfiring. The next hour of Dead End White House starts after a short break. Don't go anywhere.

[Nicole Wallace]

MSNBC Films presents Season 2 of Leguizamo does America, an NBC News Studios production. On the next episode, John Leguizamo travels to Denver Sunday at 9:00pm p.m. eastern on MSNBC. These are people being caged. 32 people per cage. Only three toilets for a group of 32 grown men. And where they drink water is from the toilet. It's only a spigot that comes from the toilet. And that's where you also drink water. People were yelling at us, help me, help me. I heard somebody in the back yell, I'm a US Citizen.

[Sam Stein]

Listen.

[Nicole Wallace]

Every Floridian should be ashamed that our taxpayer money is being used for this. Terrorizing communities, putting people in an internment camp.

[John Heilman]

Not just every Floridian, but every American. Hi there, Everybody. It's now five o'clock in the east. That was Florida Congressman Maxwell Frost warning that the inhumanity and lawlessness of Donald Trump's mass deportation program is rapid, rapidly accelerating before our eyes. Congressman Frost was describing his visit to Donald Trump's immigration facility deep in the Florida Everglades, which Trump himself nicknamed Alligator Alcatraz. The cruelty that the congressman described in that clip and the scenes that we have witnessed of the brutal ice arrests of high school volleyball players, dads of U.S. marines and grandmothers appear to be backfiring politically, at least causing support for Trump's signature campaign issue to plunge. A new poll from Gallup shows that Trump's immigration approval rating has dropped to just 35%. That number is only likely to get lower as Americans learn more about what Trump is doing to immigrants and immigrant communities. New reporting by the Washington Post finds that it is now nearly impossible for millions of immigrants to leave facilities like the Florida Everglades Detention center, forcing them to stay in conditions like those described by the congressman potentially for years. Washington Post with this stunning piece of reporting, quote, the Trump administration has declared that immigrants who arrived in the US Illegally are no longer eligible for a bond hearing as they fight deportation proceedings in court. In a July 8 memo, Todd Lyons, acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, told officers that such immigrants should be detained, quote, for the duration of their overall removal proceedings, which can take months or years. Immigration lawyers say the Trump administration is expanding a legal standard typically used to hold recent arrivals at the U. S. Mexico border to a much broader group, including immigrants who have lived in the United States for decades. Many of them have US Citizen children, lawyers say, and probably have the legal grounds to defend themselves against deportation. This policy appears to be just the latest step by the Trump administration to consolidate power in the hands of ICE outside of the American court system. Washington Post adds this reporting, quote, in the past, immigrants residing in the US Interior generally have been allowed to request a bond hearing before an immigration judge. But Lyons wrote that the Trump administration determined that such immigrants, quote, may not be released from ICE custody. In rare exceptions, immigrants may be released on parole, but that decision will be up to an immigration officer, not a judge, he wrote. And this policy has already taken effect with immigration lawyers reporting that their clients have been denied bond hearings in immigration courts across more than a dozen states since the memo was issued last week. That is where we start the hours of our favorite reporters and friends. Washington Post national investigative reporter MSNBC contributor Carol Lennig is here. She is bylined on all that great Washington Post reporting we read from. Also joining us, senior opinion writer and columnist for the Boston Globe, MSNBC political analyst Kim Eckinstore is here. And Princeton University professor MSNBC political analyst Eddie Glad is here. Caroline, do me this favor and just take me through not just your reporting, but what it changes because it feels like it changes something. That has been standard practice. That has been, I hate to use the word norm because Trump made such a mockery of norms, but just talk about how this changes the live reality for so many immigrant families and immigrant communities.

[H]

Nicole, you summed it up already pretty well. But I'll tell you without wanting to be breathless about it, this is a drastic overhaul of the way the US Government has handled immigrants coming into our country who might claim asylum, who might claim a reason why they're able to come into our country and live here. Now, they're going to be detained indefinitely at taxpayer expense. And for most of the legal experts we spoke to, they're also going to be denied their due process rights to make their claim about why they should be allowed to stay here. You know, the Trump administration has, and Trump's allies have dismissed previous decades of policy as catch and release, you know, detain and release. And now they're just going to detain and detain. That's going to cost US Taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars. And it appears that this policy change comes right in the wake of the big beautiful bill that provides billions of dollars for exactly this, the profit of private correction facility owners and operators to detain people. Secondly, you have all sorts of folks who are no longer going to be able to get out on a bond hearing live in America until their real adjudication of their immigration status. It will make it, as far as I can see, much easier for the Trump administration to deport people without any stops. From A to Z. It'll be, we detained them, we kept detaining them. And if we want to deport them, we may do that without any warning to anyone.

[John Heilman]

Carol, let me read from the report. Forcing them to remain in detention facilities, often in far flung areas, such as an alligator infested swamp in Florida or the Arizona desert, would make it more difficult to fight their cases because they'll be unable to work or easily communicate with family members and lawyers to prepare their cases. Quote, I think some courts are going to find that this doesn't give non citizens sufficient due process. That's Paul Hunker, an immigration lawyer and former ICE chief counsel in the Dallas area. They could be held indefinitely until they're deported. How do you legally create a structure where people who've committed no crimes, it sounds like they're making space for anyone just in the immigration or asylum seeking process. How do you create a legal structure where you keep those people forever and then send them to a third country? How do you avoid judicial review?

[H]

It's the $64,000 or now $64 million question, Nicole. A lot of the way in which the Trump administration has proceeded as it seeks rather desperately to meet this 3,000 a day arrest and deportation goal of Stephen Miller's and Donald Trump's, a lot of the way that it's done that is sort of create a supra law. There is not any rooting in the current legal system for doing this. Remember last year there was a report by the federal government and by the Department of Homeland Security responsible for all of this, saying that they didn't want to detain these individuals indefinitely. And there were 7.6 million people then on the docket seeking asylum or challenging their deportation or alleging that they should be allowed to stay in the country. Think about how large a group of people that is and how each of them have very different, you know, different buckets of legal claims. It seems, it seems to strain credulity that we're going to have a consistent legal strategy. And if it mirrors what the Trump administration has done in its deportation of individuals that they said were the corporate, quote, worst of the worst to an El Salvadoran prison while a federal judge was ordering that their plane be returned and circle back to the United States, if it mirrors that, then this will be very much extrajudicial.

[John Heilman]

Kim, let me, let me. There's a lot of new reporting. Let me get through the reporting. There's so much to say about this, Caroline. It's whenever you think they've done the most audacious and inhumane thing, they do the next most audacious and inhumane thing. And maybe we should just stop there on that point. Kim, your thoughts?

[Sam Stein]

Yeah. So what we're talking about the judiciary and what backstops there are to this kind of not only cruel and unusually cruel treatment, but also so unlawful. I mean, the law provides, and the Supreme Court has even said that people facing deportation must be given adequate notice and must have due process, the right, the opportunity to make their case as to why they shouldn't be deported or detained. And that clearly is not happening, in part because the same Supreme Court has consistently, right up through this week, when there is a challenge, Trump policy and the lower court blocks it temporarily while the people who are challenging it can make their case, the Supreme Court swoops in and lifts that block and lifts that injunction. The Supreme Court made it more difficult writ large, for lower court judges to even issue injunctions of broad applicability. So what the Supreme Court has been doing, telling the Trump administration and telling lower court judges, yet let him do what he wants and then we'll figure out the legalities later. Problem is the people who are in these awful detainment facilities that are being put up under short notices and as is described, looks more like a concentration camp or a gulag inside rather than an ICE detention facility where people should get, get their basic needs met. It's allowing that to happen and the harm caused to these people, their families, their communities, the, the places, places where they work will be irreparable by the time the courts really, only the Supreme Court, because they're really the only people left empowered to review this. That's how they made it themselves, gets involved. So this is basically, there is no legal backstop at this moment, not the way that it's been created. The Trump administration has been successful in amplifying its own and spreading its own power in the executive while the judiciary and Congress has basically whittled away.

[John Heilman]

Eddie Glad Trump. Stephanie Cutter said this to me after the election. She was the senior advisor to Vice President Kamala Harris, and she said, you know, at his rallies he played videos. And the press never really covered the videos. And that's fair. I never covered the videos. But there were videos of crimes committed by people in this country illegally. And they were, you know, this macabre warm up show. I don't even know how to describe it in the context of a Trump rally. But what Trump ran on was finding the people that carried out heinous crimes in this country who were also people in this country illegally. That is not what the Trump administration's mass deportation program is accomplishing. That's what Obama accomplished to be fair and accurate. And that was controversial in its own right, in its own time. What Donald Trump is doing is ripping people out of communities, ripping people out of high schools, hunting people at baseball practice, ripping out people who have been here for decades, ripping people out of this country whose children are home alone, scared that their parents won't come home, and alienating the likes of Joe Frickin Rogan. What are we doing? EDDIE.

[Carol Leonnig]

Well, I mean, it's whatever we can, however we describe it, Nicole it's evil, it seems to me. I think those videos that we saw during Donald Trump's campaign, those were just like the Trojan horses to allow for a broader policy that is really about responding to the demographic shifts of the country. It began a process of defense dehumanization. These people are violent threats, infestations. They're aliens. That dehumanization allows for or enables the justification to treat them any sort of way. When you dehumanize people, you can separate them from their families, you can separate their children, you can put them in what in effect is internment camps because they can be indefinitely detained. So I think it's really important for us to understand, understand what is the object of this, the fact that ICE is now the largest funded federal enforcement agency in the country. Their charge, I believe, as I said before, is to make America white again. And I think that's driving this. NICOLE and remember, the whistleblower in the Justice Department told us this was going to happen. They were going to blow past the due process for immigrants. Tom Holman told me that this was told us that they were going to do this. They didn't have to worry about, you know, racial profiling. They don't give a damn about the law. And to be honest with you, they might not even care about the polls.

[John Heilman]

NICOLE well, I hope not, because here's something that happened and I don't, especially with you, Eddie. We don't get to a lot of silver linings, but this has happened and this is really important. Gallup, which is credible poll by every measure. The Gallup poll reports this, that a record number of Americans say that immigration is a good thing, that immigration people coming to this country from other places is a good thing is at a record high number of almost 80%. Only 19% of Americans responding in the Gallup poll think that immigration is a bad thing for our country. So you're playing, Eddie to 19% of the electorate that is against immigration. Your dehumanization campaign backfired the day you picked up the father of three Marines to active duty. Your dehumanization campaign ran into reality when you lost some of your closest and most powerful media figures like Joe Rogan, Candace Owens and others. Do you think that'll slow this down?

[Carol Leonnig]

I pray that it will, but I'm not sure you Know, we thought the backlash around the Epstein files might have done something, but look what happened. Everybody suddenly toeing the governmental line, or the Trump line, as it were. I mean, this is different. But I don't trust these people to have a kind of moral center, it seems to me, or to try to hold this guy accountable. You know, I think there's this tendency historically, Nicole, for the country to sign off on barbarity and then once we see it, we say, oh, my God, that's not us. And then we admit that it's cruel. And we think the admission alone constitutes absolution. And when it doesn't, you know, all hell breaks loose. So let's see if we jump out of that cycle, that circuitry, as it were. But I hope you're right. I pray that you're right. But in the meantime, we have internment camps. We have people being sent to places like South Sudan and El Salvador. We have the cruelty right in front of us.

[John Heilman]

Hugh Carolinag, if you go to the body reporting and the record on what Eddie just articulated, you have child separation. The cruelty was made policy. The policy was, in Trump's telling, the deterrent. That's why journalists were invited inside. I think it was in Texas along the border to see the children. They mar blankets and cages. Trump 1.0 DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen testified about what the meaning of a cage is. We actually, we witnessed that. And the policy was reversed by Donald Trump. But there are still kids who were separated by the American government. In the name of all of us American taxpayers who have not been reunited with their families, I wonder if you can, based on your reporting, speak to how many people have already been impacted, detained, denied their access to due process. I mean, what is the scope of the human toll so far?

[H]

Well, it's in the tens of thousands. Remember, as you've highlighted multiple times, the goal is 1 million in a year. That's Donald Trump and Stephen Miller, his deputy White House chief of staff staff. Their goal is 1 million deportations in a year. But think about all the people and I've seen these videos too, and talked with very many, many sources, as well as lawyers for some of these individuals and their families. Think of all of the family members who as one we recently witnessed a father loses his wife and the mother of his children. She's taken away when she appears for her legal appropriate court hearing where she's supposed to check in and she's following all the rules, she says, here I am for my court hearing to discuss my request for asylum and she's gathered up at the courthouse steps just outside and hauled away. And her daughter's at home and her husband will not have her at home. That's five more people on top of her who are affected. We have all the individuals now, based on a story that I and a colleague broke over the weekend, all of the people that ICE and the Department of Homeland Security are now saying they want the power to deport to third countries where they have never lived and they do not speak the language. They want the authority to be able to send those people there. That's no longer deep deportation. That is starting to get into the area of rendition. We don't know how many people will be affected by that. But it's a really important point you make about the number of human lives that are touched right now. At least the number we can see are tens of thousands.

[John Heilman]

It's incredible. It's an incredible piece of reporting. Karolenik, thank you very much for the reporting and for joining us to talk about it. Kim and Eddie, stick around. When we come back. We've heard from so many of you about an interview yesterday with Ewan Wilder, the Little League coach who blocked immigration agents from questioning players kids on his team while they were practicing. But his bravery and his quick thinking can teach each and every one of us during this uniquely alarming moment for democracy. Next. Plus, more than 75 former judges have joined the fight to keep Trump insider Emil Bovet from winning a lifetime appointment to the federal judiciary. One of them will be our guest later in the hour. And Donald Trump has literally torched America's once great soft power, the power we use to use to do good around the world. Why Trump's misguided quest to put America first is leading to celebrations in places like, like China. So then, White House continues after a quick break. Don't go anywhere. What did the bystanders do? They were, I, I, I'm a New.

[Nicole Wallace]

Yorker, bone on bone.

[Eddie Glaude]

And we're tough people here, but we.

[John Heilman]

I, I saw cowards.

[Eddie Glaude]

And I hate to say that, as.

[Nicole Wallace]

Somebody who love the city.

[John Heilman]

What did you want to see and what, and what, what disappointed you?

[Carol Leonnig]

Obeying to authoritarianism, to authority that was.

[Eddie Glaude]

Out of line.

[Carol Leonnig]

Pissing on the Constitution.

[John Heilman]

And I.

[Carol Leonnig]

Became up like, I don't care. I don't care.

[John Heilman]

We're back with Kim and Eddie. Kim, that's human. Wilder, he's a youth baseball coach in New York City, says ICE agents approach some of his players at practice. And he had the presence of mind to remind his players and the ICE agents about the rights guaranteed to everybody here under the constitution. I've spent 24 hours wondering if I would have that presence of mind or if I was one of the people that moved him to tears who walked by and did nothing. I pray I wouldn't have been one of those people. But what do you think when you see a person living this reality that Carol and yourself and others are writing about and reporting?

[Sam Stein]

I mean, it's so unbelievably heartbreaking to know that even in the face of what is something that is abjectly wrong, no matter what your views are about immigration policy, whether you want stricter rules or more loose rules or whatever, you should know that it has nothing to do with accosting people at a ball game or a ball game practice. That has nothing to do with protecting the borders or being tough on immigration. That's just cruelty, plain and simple. And to the point that we were talking about beforehand, that there is this groundswell of support for immigration and that polls are recognizing that so many Americans are appalled by all of this and this hope that maybe that will make a difference. It can only happen in two ways, and that is if people speak out and say clearly what they are seeing and do what they can to stand up against it. At any time that we have seen authoritarian regimes, we often talk about the resistance and the righteous efforts and the. And the civil disobedience that is necessary to stand up to it. But, but the flip side of that, Nicole, is even as Americans become more aware, more horrified by what they're seeing, this idea that that may spur change from the top, I'm not sure that's the case. Because remember, yes, there are elections coming up for Congress where lawmakers will have to be held accountable. But when has Donald Trump ever done what is in the best interest of Republican lawmakers, even at election time? Never. He demands fealty, he demands loyalty, and that is give it. Or he find he. He backs a challenger like, that's it. That's how he operates. And remember, he's in a second term, so he is a lame duck president. Either he recognizes that he cannot be elected again and his time is limited, or he doesn't and just thinks like an autocrat, he can just stay in office. But tell me how he believes he's answerable to the electorate anymore. He's not. And he's not acting as if he does. So my only deduction as somebody who's covered politics and law for a very long, is that he's doing These policies because he believes in them, because he thinks that this is right. He talked about from jump, from the moment he descended the, the stairs at Trump, the escalator at Trump Tower. He is called people from south of the American border, murderers, rapists, not the best people. He has denigrated the people from Haiti. He denigrates people from Muslim and other black and brown countries while at the same time offering refugee status to white South Africans. He has said exactly who he thinks is an American. And it's loud and clear. And these policies back that up right down to, you know, a post on DHS's website as all this horror is unfolding that's saying, oh, remember our heritage and history. Showing a picture of white people on the Oregon Trail while not even acknowledging all the black and brown people and lives that or lost in the genocide of indigenous people that took place. The Chinese immigrants who helped build the railroads out west, which is why we were able, the frontiersmen were out there, the black buffalo soldiers who were pit against indigenous people. They were trying to fight for their own freedom, fleeing the American south, finding themselves going battle to battle with other people that the government pitted against each other so that they could benefit, so that they could profit. But that's what DHS on their official website wants to say. Remember this? This is what America is all about. They are telling us this to our faces. I can't believe that this is just about polling. This is about who they believe, a foundational core of this administration.

[John Heilman]

I saw that post, someone showed it to me and I said that cannot be real. But to your point, it's very real. It's all out loud and it's in front of us. And so I guess Eddie, my last question gets to something that Coach Wilder pointed out. What do we do? Right? I mean they've shown their hand, they've shoved it in our faces. What do we do?

[Carol Leonnig]

First of all, I saw that interview and you know, I was, I'm struggling for words in some ways. What do we do? We do what Coach Wilder did, of course, in our day to day lives, in the moments when we have to make a choice. But I think we need to understand that cruelty thrives amid selfishness and fear. That when people believe that this won't touch them, when folks think that it doesn't have anything to do with them as they try to pursue their day to day lives and when they're afraid of what will happen to them, cruelty thrives. And so I suppose what we have to do is address the moral rotation that's in the country that has led us to be so selfish. And so, you know, these folk, some of these folk, Nicole. And just really quick will say, empathy is a sin.

[I]

Christians.

[Carol Leonnig]

Right. So I think part of what Coach was trying to get us to see in that moment, not just an indictment of those who walk past, but it's an indictment of the moral rot in the country. And so we have to make choices in our individual lives, but we also have to describe the problem so that we can orient ourselves to it appropriately.

[John Heilman]

Such an important conversation with the two of you. Thank you so much for being here. Kim Eckinstore and Eddie Glad. And I want to let our viewers know if you happen to miss this conversation yesterday with Human Wilder, we did something for the very first time. We turned it into sort of a capsule episode, a special episode of the Best People podcast. And you can find it, you can actually find it right now if you want to by scanning the QR code on your screen or you can listen to it wherever you get your podcasts. When we come back, we'll be joined by a former federal judge who's leading the effort to make sure Emil Beauvais, the top Trump DOJ official who encouraged government prosecutors to disobey court orders, never, never makes it onto the federal bench. That's the warnings against confirming top DOJ official Emile Beauvais to a lifetime seat as a federal appeals court judge, reaching a fever pitch today with a group of more than 75 former federal and state judges appointed by Democratic and Republican administrations urging the Senate Judiciary Committee to reject Bove's nomination, which they are set to vote on this Thursday. They write this, quote, Mr. Bovet's egregious record of mistreating law enforcement officers, abusing power and disregarding the law itself disqualifies him from this position. The group of judges point to the several controversies Bove has found himself at the center of the dropping of charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams, the mass firings of DOJ prosecutors who investigated January 6, and the whistleblower allegations that Bove plotted to violate court orders, arguing that any one of those actions or scandals would be disqualifying. Beyond Bove's troubling record at the Justice Department, they write, quote, it is also deeply inappropriate for a president to nominate their own criminal defense attorney for a federal judgeship, especially when that president has said he is nominating judges based on whether they will be more loyal to him than the country. Joining our conversation is one of those judges who penned that letter, former federal Judge Nancy Gertner, thank you so much for being with us.

[I]

Yes, you're welcome. It's good to be here.

[John Heilman]

Take me through what feels like a problem with proportion. I mean, in proportion to the things that tripped up other judicial nominees. There's just so much against Mr. Bove. How do you communicate that clearly to the members of the Senate Judiciary Committee?

[I]

Well, let me put it this way. No one is born a judge. Everyone has to go from where they were to a position of neutrality. And usually for the majority of judges in the United States have done that by going through the U.S. attorney's office, the Department of Justice, where they can show their ability to be professional and neutral. Bove has gone into the Department of Justice and proved precisely the opposite. From firing career prosecutors and FBI agents who were involved in the investigations of the insurrectionists, to, you know, to, to, to arranging the really very troubling deal with Eric Adams for the dropping of charges in exchange for cooperation with the government, not cooperation in a case to the whistleblower situation in which the whistleblower was not, by the way, was not only the whistleblower. There were apparently other people in the room who confirmed that Beauvais said, in effect, that he, the courts, he would disobey court orders. So the usual trajectory from being an advocate, then being in the Department of Justice and showing your chops as a professional and someone who believes in the rule of law, his trajectory in the Department of Justice has proved to us just the opposite. It is an unheard of nomination and would be an unheard of judicial selection.

[John Heilman]

In normal times. The indictment from just one of those three scandals from Daniel Sassoon, who left the department over the Eric Adams quid pro quo, which was only corroborated when Tom Homan went on TV with Eric Adams and they played out the whole thing on television, would be enough to give Republicans pause. I mean, what does it say about the Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee that they're no longer listening to the kinds of voices in conservative legal circles that ostensibly shaped a lot of their views on these matters in years past?

[I]

Well, the co writer of this letter was Judge Michael Ludwig, who is an extraordinary. Was a conservative Court of Appeals judge and my co signatories, the 75 judges. It takes a great deal for judges, even retired judges, to step up to the plate and say, this is deeply, deeply wrong. So what it, I mean, it says wonderful things about the retired judges. What it says about the Republican Party is extraordinary to me. This is a lifetime appointment. This is a position of considerable, of authority. This could well be a position on the way to the Supreme Court. And you're quite right with what you said moments ago, which is any one of these things would have been disqualifying. Any one of these things would be disqualifying. I have had a role in judicial nominations and selection in Massachusetts. And, you know, the, the, you, you can't expect someone to be absolutely pure. But we have rejected people whose tax returns were filed late. We have rejected people who, you know, logged too, you know, egregiously about this president or that president, sort of showed themselves to be very partisan. It's hard to imagine a candidate that checks every box in a bad way the way Emile Beauvais does.

[John Heilman]

It's an extraordinary, extraordinary moment. It's a really important letter. Thank you for writing it and for joining us to talk about it. Judge Nancy Gertner, thank you.

[I]

Thank you.

[John Heilman]

When we come back, a stunning example of waste, fruitless waste on the part of Donald Trump and his administration. Why America is incinerating 500 tons of food aid that could have been used to save lives and feed starving children all around the world. I'll have that story next. To truly grasp the horror of what's come in just six months time of US Humanitarian assistance, foreign policy, international law, things it took decades of painstaking work to build and then to build trust in, look no further than the result of Donald Trump's unprecedented and so far unexplained dismantling of foreign aid programs. 500 tons of emergency food, high energy biscuits meant to be given to children plagued by severe malnutrition in Afghanistan and Pakistan. It's now expired and about to be turned into ash. From the Atlantic's reporting, quote, since Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency disbanded USAID and the State Department subsumed the agency. No money or aid items can move without the approval of the new heads of American foreign assistance. That's according to several current and former USAID employees, end quote. Two of the USAID employees said that staffers who sent the memos requesting approval to move the food never got a response. And so, quote, over the coming weeks, the food will be destroyed at a cost of $130,000 to American taxpayers on top of the $800,000 used to purchase the biscuits, which, according to that reporting, would have been enough to feed about 1.5 million children for a week and keep them alive. Maybe joining our conversation, former undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs during the Obama administration MSNBC political analyst Rick Stengel's here. Rick, there's been some incredible reporting in The Atlantic, in ProPublica, in the New York Times about how completely capricious and arbitrary and senseless the massacre of USAID was. The effects that were still being felt. Just talk about what this means for America and for, for a program that did all good to not be doing such harm.

[G]

Yes, Nicole, it's sad and shameful. The story that you just talked about in the Atlantic. People, Foreign Service officers had never seen food destroyed before. One of the things that was a little bit underreported is when they first put that freeze on USAID funding several months ago, stop work, order. There was food all around the world that was just paused and rotting on docks in the sun. And as you know, those packages of food, there's the picture from all of them, say from the American people. It's a really proud thing to be able to be around the world and see those packages being delivered and people appreciating them. These high energy biscuits would save children in Sudan, would save children in Gaza. And it's just a terrible thing for US diplomacy. And as you mentioned, the long term effects are great. There's a nonprofit that estimated that 3.3 million people will die a year from these cuts in USAID funding.

[John Heilman]

Why do you think, why do you. I was about to ask you, why do you think George Bush didn't fight harder? I mean, why do I think he didn't fight harder? I worked for him when he pressed, fought for and passed pepfar. But why do you think this wasn't the fight that people who still have some gas in their tank in terms of having a following? I mean, Bono went on Joe Rogan after Musk had effectively dismantled USAID through Doge, after he'd already traumatized the workforce and cut funding to programs all around the country. Months after that it happened. The Bush center put out a statement after all this had happened. Why do you think there wasn't a more urgent effort to try to save PEPFAR and USAID and foreign food assistance?

[G]

You know, Nicole, I don't know. I mean, PEPFAR is one of the greatest things that the US Government has ever done. It's right up there with the Marshall Plan. They estimate it's saved 25 million lives since it went into effect. You'd think it was the kind of thing that it didn't take any political credibility to defend. And by the way, the cuts to PEPFAR are less severe than some of the other cuts. A lot of the cuts are to development aid rather than humanitarian aid. But I just think, man, you could go up to the plate and swing for the fences in defending pepfar. And I don't understand why people didn't do it. And also, so speaking of public diplomacy, it's one of the greatest programs for public diplomacy in American history. People all around the world see the US Saving lives at a time when we started doing that, when it wasn't a popular thing to do. So I don't understand. And it saddens me greatly, as I know it saddens you.

[John Heilman]

Well. And I mean, to be fair and to be accurate, I think some PEPFAR funds have been salvaged. It was created by a Republican. It was championed by many of the Repub. I think Trump's daughter championed PPEPFAR during the first term. I think Marco Rubio, I think some of PEPFAR specific funds may have been salvaged. But this broader issue of usaid, I mean, extremely conservative people have worked at usaid. I think we've been on together when Administrator Nasios has been on, talking about the power after 9, 11 of soft power of food aid. Do you think that this is something that can be toothpaste put back in the tube? Are these programs that could be rebuilt by future presidents?

[G]

It's a good question. If we're talking about it philosophically, I don't think there's anything necessarily wrong with usaid. Instead of being an independent agency, being part of the State Department where it reflects the foreign policy of whoever is elected president, you could distribute the same funds. It could be more aligned with policy. But Doge and Elon Musk went after somebody that was already not popular with the American people. As we've talked about many times on this program, the public thinks that the foreign aid budget is 20% of the federal budget and it's less than 1% of the federal budget. They went for an easy target. And also why it didn't have people defending it.

[John Heilman]

Yeah. Rick Stangle, thank you so much for spending time with us on this. When we come back, I'll show you more from my interview with music legend Jimmy Jam for the Best People podcast.

[Eddie Glaude]

She was supposed to do her vocal next, and she just said, I'll do.

[Nicole Wallace]

My vocal in Minneapolis.

[Eddie Glaude]

She wanted no part, no part of following that. What Michael just did Repetitive.

[John Heilman]

Or Janet, or was it Daphne?

[Nicole Wallace]

Michael Wood. Michael was very competitive. Michael, when he's done singing, he comes.

[Eddie Glaude]

In and he says, okay, Janet, you're.

[Nicole Wallace]

Gonna do your part now. And Janet goes, ah, Michael, I think my vocal.

[Eddie Glaude]

My voice is a little, you know.

[Nicole Wallace]

And so she doesn't wanna do it right.

[John Heilman]

My mind was blown. The sibling rivalry between Janet and Michael Jackson is just one of the most extraordinary things and incredible behind the scenes stories told by music legend Jimmy James. He shares them with me in this week's episode of the Best People. The whole interview, the whole conversation is available on YouTube. Just scan the QR code on your screen or download the episode. Wherever you get your podcasts, I hope you'll listen and tell me what you think about it. One more break. We'll be right back. Thank you so much for letting us into your homes. We are grateful.

[Nicole Wallace]

When work gets crazy, I like to stop by the bar after, have a few cold ones.

[John Heilman]

I don't drink at all until 4 o'.

[Sam Stein]

Clock.

[Nicole Wallace]

We limit ourselves to one bottle of wine a night. Excessive drinking has a way of sneaking up on us. A few drinks a few nights a week, it can add up. And suddenly we're at greater risk for long term problems like heart disease, cancer and depression. Reason enough to rethink the Drink [e-mail].