← Deadline: White House
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- [00:00]
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LifeLock Customer/Representative
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- [01:07]
Nicole Wallace
Hi there everyone. It's four o' clock in New York. The political fate of one Donald J. Trump and his MAGA Republican Party right now, as we come on the air appears to be tied tethered to those glowing numbers next to every gas station in every town, in every state, in every corner of our great country. Gas prices are soaring because Donald Trump effed around by launching a war with Iran. And now Donald Trump is in the finding out phase of that as Americans sour on him personally and his party at historic and unprecedented rates. Oil prices hit the highest level in four years Thursday before climbing off those highs as the standoff with Iran and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz shows no sign of ending anytime soon. The nationwide price of gas, according to AAA, is $4.30 a gallon. It was 27 cents lower a week ago. It was $1.32 lower before the war started. The state's hardest hit with the Wall Street Journal describes as, quote, Trump's political stronghold. Wall Street Journal reports that AAA data shows this, quote, prices at the pump in Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin and Iowa climbed faster than in any other states over the past week. These soaring gas prices are dominating people's lives. They're making decisions because of them. They're dominating the national conversation as well. Here's just some of what people are hearing as they watch their news.
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Reporter/News Correspondent
Prices just jumped up to 419A gallon for regular, that's a 30 cent increase overnight.
- [02:43]
Nicole Wallace
The double spike could drive up prices close to 40 cents a gallon.
- [02:47]
Pete Hegseth
If you're feeling more pain at the
- [02:49]
Miles Taylor
pump right now, you're not imagining things.
- [02:51]
Nicole Wallace
No.
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LifeLock Customer/Representative
We all know gas prices are high, but new data from gas but he shows prices are going to hike even higher.
- [03:00]
Nicole Wallace
Remarks yesterday, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell warned of further pain, additional pain ahead beyond what we're paying at the gas pump.
- [03:09]
Reporter/News Correspondent
We're very well aware that people are experiencing higher gas prices all over the country now and that hurts that. And these are those those hikes may continue to happen. And other other things are going to start to reflect airline fares I mentioned and other other products and services dependent
- [03:27]
Nicole Wallace
upon petroleum and derivatives of petroleum.
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Reporter/News Correspondent
People are going to start to feel
- [03:30]
Senator Richard Blumenthal
that
- [03:33]
Nicole Wallace
anything you have delivered, like anything that travels to you from somewhere else. All of it. All of this. Now widespread and seemingly spiraling economic despair here at home is making Donald Trump squirm and publicly grapple with it. He seems to be looking for any way, any quick and easy way out of the war he began with Iran. Three sources with knowledge of the plans that are being cooked up tell Axios that Donald Trump is being briefed on a, quote, plan for a short and powerful wave of strikes on Iran, likely including infrastructure targets in hopes of breaking the negotiating deadlock. Other options reportedly include taking over a part of the Strait of Hormuz or a special forces operation to secure Iran's uranium. Msnow has not independently confirmed that reporting in Axios. But all of those plans sound very dangerous for the men and women of the military and they all mark a serious escalation and risk. So many of our friends and colleagues and regulars on this program have been warning us since the war began. Iran gets a vote. It gets a say in how the war goes from this point forward as well. Meanwhile, Donald Trump and his party are paying a steep political price right now. The new poll embroider shows Trump's approval rating falling to just 34%. 64% of all Americans disapprove of the job he is doing as president. Just 22% of all Americans approve of Donald Trump's handling of the cost of living. That is the single issue, more than anything else, that propelled him back to the White House in 2024. Based on what voters told pollsters, Donald Trump's approval on the economy overall stands at 27%. That is lower than at any point since he entered the political arena. Donald Trump defined an energy crisis he created when he went to war with Iran is where we start today with some of our favorite reporters and friends, former chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security during Donald Trump's first term. Miles Taylor's here and with me in studio. CNBC sen. Reporter Steve Liesman we've spent the better part of a year and a half separating what the market's doing and reacting to from and had absolutely no success.
- [05:56]
Steve Liesman
The market's doing this and the economy's doing that.
- [05:58]
Nicole Wallace
Okay. Whether you say tomato, I say tomato. But this is. I mean, gas prices are this thing that you see anywhere you go and whether you're filling up or not, you note the price and you make decisions about when you'll fill up when you see it. And everyone is deciding whether that high and rather shocking number is something to fill up on, because people are saying it's gonna go up. I mean, those are the daily calculations people are making in their lives everywhere in this country right now.
- [06:29]
Steve Liesman
I don't know if you saw me shaking my head when you were reading about Donald Trump saying, we need to do more bombing. Yeah, this will not solve his problem if his problem is oil. Right. So oil has a couple issues. We have been right now drawing on inventories. I think, to make it short, you may not have seen anything yet when it comes to high oil prices. Right now, we seem to be able to solve the problems that have been created by the closing of the Strait of Hormuz through inventories. Those inventories are rapidly dwindling. Now, what's interesting is how consumers are solving this problem. And I'll give you some data just from today. Real incomes are down two months in a row. The administration has touted this real income resurgence. Real means inflation adjusted, down two months in a row. Spending is okay. Some of it is going to its gas prices. So the question you might want to ask me, Nicole, is how can really be down when spending is okay? The savings rate. The savings rate is coming down. People do things. And maybe you have this experience in your own life. Well, is this a temporary shock or a permanent shock? I don't want to leave my house. I don't want to change my car. I don't want to move to a place closer so I drive less. I'm going to paper it over. So what we have is the savings rate is down. Now, I took some notes here. Two months in a row to the lowest level since 2022. People are drawing from their drawing to keep their lifestyles in the same place they were before. That can't go on forever.
- [07:53]
Nicole Wallace
What is the impact historically of a crisis that is described by folks like yourself as historic and historic energy crisis.
- [08:02]
Steve Liesman
It can be a recession. It depends on how the Federal Reserve reacts. Right now, they're hanging tight. They're trying to see if this can end relatively quickly and work its way through and not create an inflation problem. Tell you, we got inflation data today, the worst since 2023. 3.2% on the core rate, 3.5% on the headline rate. And what I'll explain to you is that I'm not worried about the headline rate. The headline rate is pushed up by oil prices, right? Not a big deal. You take out oil and food and you end up with the 3 2, which is a point over where the Fed wants it to be. And so that is telling us that we have a problem. You were talking earlier about oil and what it's involved in so many things. You have this fertilizer problem, which is not a problem necessarily for right now. Potential problem for next year, when farmers, farmers have been taking it on the chin. It's really terrible what's been going on out there, but. But that's a problem for next year. So many components of the things of our daily lives are made from oil prices and the chemicals that are derived from it that you could get some other inflation. So the Fed's going to be very wary of that. It means for sure you're not going to get interest rate cuts you might have otherwise gotten. And now you got to think about whether or not there might be interest rate hikes because of it, to control inflation.
- [09:17]
Nicole Wallace
I mean, the irony of Trump spending all this political capital on the Fed, even reimagining and reshaping it and having hikes seems pretty extraordinary.
- [09:27]
Steve Liesman
So I think we need to put some money on the table here about when is the first tweet when the President complains about his new Fed chair, Kevin Warsh? Kevin Warsh. Because the thinking on Wall street right now is that Kevin Warsh can't cut rates as the President wanted in June, July, September. There is no rate cut built into the. What we look at the future structure of Fed funds until July of 2027.
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Nicole Wallace
Maybe you say that, but Kevin Warsh, as a human and as a figure, wasn't able to say who won the 2020 election. Are you sure?
- [10:01]
Steve Liesman
No, no. I mean, if. Here's the thing. The difference between Kevin Warsh and Pam Bondi or Todd Blanche is that he has to convince 11 other people to go along with him. And right now, the feeling at the Fed is not to cut interest rates. It's maybe to move to a place where they could go either way here. So it's not a unilateral thing. Kevin is a persuasive guy. The chair of the Fed is a powerful position, but he has to bring 11 other people along with him.
- [10:35]
Nicole Wallace
Miles, have you seen Trump in a moment like this before, having worked for
- [10:40]
LifeLock Customer/Representative
him in the first term?
- [10:43]
Miles Taylor
Well, we tried to prevent a lot of moments like this, Nicole. I mean, I don't say that facetiously. I mean, there were wars, conflicts, international crises. He wanted to foment like this, including in the first term, he was considering going to war with Iran. He kept a number of us out of the room, as I was told by the White House chief of staff's office, because we were naysayers, because we were people who were trying to convince him not to. Now he didn't, but he's there. I've never seen him this unraveled, Nicole. He almost always, even in a losing situation, tries to find some way to put Donald Trump lipstick on a pig and say, well, look, I won even when he didn't win. The fact that he is still considering military options is the biggest admission you've gotten from this White House, that they know they are not winning, that they have put the United States in a losing position. Unfortunately, almost none of those options you read off citing Axios reporting would put the United States ultimately in a winning position. Remember, Nicole, we were told that the nuclear program was going to be decimated. It was implied that the entire Iranian regime would be changed. It was said that Iran wouldn't be able to attack its adversaries in the region. It wouldn't be able to fund its proxies, and the Strait of Hormuz would be reopened and its capabilities, military, voluntarily, would be decimated. None of those have been achieved. Those have not been achieved. And in almost every scenario, it looks like the United States will end up worse off vis a vis Iran than it was before. And so I'm not surprised to hear that Donald Trump wants to drop more bombs and create spectacle so he can say that something changed since very obvious failed negotiations.
- [12:25]
Nicole Wallace
I mean, and let's not skip over what the options are. One involves a mission that, based on, as you said, the Axios reporting, involves sending Special Forces in to what to dismantle, destroy, steal the enriched uranium. I mean, that sounds like a riskier military operation than anything that's been contemplated to date. The other is to take over part of the Strait of Hormuz. There's a blockade of a blockade of a blockade that doesn't seem to be going very well. So that's an escalation of something we haven't, we're not exactly crushing. And the other is to bomb their infrastructure which goes very close to the line that Donald Trump telegraphed he wanted to cross and invited outcry from across the ideological political spectrum. Are you clear on the 60th day of the war what the objective is?
- [13:28]
Miles Taylor
No, not at all. And I'm gonna tell you, if I was in the Situation Room, Nicole, I would be having this conversation with the President on that first option about going to try to get the fissile material. Look, it seems very compelling. I'm chief among people who wanna see Iran without a nuclear program. But that is an operation so risky, it belongs in special forces video games and not reality. I mean, if it could be pulled off without casualties, that's remarkable. But this is the type of thing in a video game you would lose 99 times out of 100. Why? The Iranians have known that this is a key target for the United States. It would be an extraordinary assumption that they haven't put every thought into booby trapping and putting forces around where that material is, so that if the United States or its allies landed in the region, they would be sitting ducks. They would be targets of Iranian firepower. That would be an exceptionally difficult operation to undertake safely. And then, Nicole, you point to the Strait of Hormuz and the attacks on infrastructure. Look, here's the reality that no one's pointing to. This is mutually assured destruction. Donald Trump can say he wants to attack Iran's energy infrastructure and the Strait, and he's talked about, you know, blowing up some of their oil capacity, but all that does is make the problems we talked about at the top of this program worse, because we actually need Iranian oil supply to go back into the global economy. We actually need the Strait of Hormuz back open. We need the system to be working. If we're permanently taking these systems and these passageways offline or delaying, we are just making the economic hardship worse. So if you were going to reduce it to one thing, Nicole, it would be this. Donald Trump's unstoppable ego is right now the source of our economic hardship. And that pain will get a whole lot worse if he doesn't find a way to end the war quickly.
- [15:29]
Nicole Wallace
I mean, it is sort of the quintessential Trump conundrum, if you will. You know, we don't have a leader that projects stability, consistency, or purpose. So all of these options, we can have the conversation in a military context, but if we're really being honest about how they come up, likely in the sit room, they come up in terms of policies put in front of Donald Trump to Get him out of his political crisis, which is staring sort of at a political collapse in November. That's so great. And after seeing Orban tossed out, I think he knows that it's possible even in an authoritarian state.
- [16:10]
Steve Liesman
I was listening to that conversation. Which problem is Donald Trump trying to solve right now? Is he trying to solve the nuclear problem? You're trying to solve the oil problem. And so many of the options that you talked about do not solve the oil problem. And so what was just said, I think, is 100% right. It just makes the oil problem worse. I think the thinking on Wall street is that the Strait of Hormuz will open. Somehow it just cannot remain closed. And I think that's a part of the reason why the stocks haven't fallen further and why there isn't more pessimism, at least on Wall street right now. But how it opens and whether or not we've already written the future in terms of very much higher oil prices and gas prices, I think that may already have been done.
- [16:56]
Nicole Wallace
Let me show you my obsession with voters in Main Street. Let me show you some more reporting from our colleague Alex Tabitt on how voters are feeling.
- [17:07]
Miles Taylor
What do you mean of gas prices? How is that impacting your life right now?
- [17:12]
Senator Richard Blumenthal
It's bad.
- [17:14]
Steve Liesman
People got to live. People got to eat. You know what I'm saying? And believe it or not, transportation is very, very important. And, you know, you have to choose whether you drive or eat.
- [17:26]
Nicole Wallace
You know, I mean, it's been a big impact, especially since I travel so much for work. It. It puts a big damper on my living expenses and everything.
- [17:35]
Miles Taylor
I mean, that was the whole thing that Trump promised everyone that people voted for is a lower gas prices.
- [17:42]
Nicole Wallace
And here we are. I always ask you why they believe him, and I guess I want to ask you a different version. How much is his capriciousness baked into the market's resilience?
- [17:59]
Steve Liesman
A lot of it. A lot of it. You come in every day and you don't know, is the president going to say something that will reverse the direction I thought things were going in? And if I could just add to that men on the street stuff that you just had there. We did our CNBC All America Economic survey. We found 80% of our respondents all across the country, by the way, were doing one of four things in response to higher gas prices, less discretionary, like going out. And some people were actually cutting back on essentials, like Medicare, like medical. And 30% were using their credit cards more. So this is a real effect when it starts to show up in a meaningful way in the data. That's another story. And that's going to be another leg and level to the story that I don't think that the president is appreciating right now because it's not directly in the data. We did 2% on GDP. Some of that was bounced back from the shutdown. But if it goes further and you have this drawdown in spending that starts to really hurt both earnings and the spending numbers, then you're going to have another level of concern in the White House that you don't have right now.
- [19:08]
Nicole Wallace
What's the timeline on that, the horizon?
- [19:10]
Steve Liesman
Well, I mean, March and April were two months that looked like consumer spending held up. I think over time, the ability of consumers to paper this over becomes less and less.
- [19:22]
Nicole Wallace
Steve Liesman, it's such a treat when we get to have you at the table. Thank you so much for being here. Miles sticks around. When we come back, more questions for Pete Hegseth on Capitol Hill as the war with Iran drags on. A big focus today was on America's readiness and how the growing cost of the war impacts that. We'll show you how he responded to those questions. Plus, Donald Trump's all out push to leave his mark and his face on the country, no matter who wants it there, no matter the political consequences, no matter the hardship for Americans, all request to align himself with some of the biggest and greatest names in history. There's remarkable new reporting that sounds like it could be from the Onion, but it's not.
- [20:03]
LifeLock Customer/Representative
It's real.
- [20:05]
Nicole Wallace
Later in the show, just a day after the Supreme Court essentially dismantled the Voting Rights act, one red state governor is using that ruling to suspend congressional primary elections just days before voting was supposed to start. We'll get to those alarming developments and much, much more. And deadline White House continues after a quick break. Don't go anywhere.
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Senator Lissa Slotkin
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- [21:29]
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You're great at protecting your data, but lots of places could still expose you to identity theft.
- [21:34]
LifeLock Customer/Representative
I thought it was safe.
- [21:35]
LifeLock Advertiser
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- [22:02]
Nicole Wallace
Pete Hegseth was back on Capitol Hill today, facing lawmakers who pressed him on the deeply unpopular war with Iran. Here's Hegseth when he was asked about the alarming reporting that the US military has depleted a significant amount of munitions in just the first 60 days of war.
- [22:21]
Reporter/News Correspondent
How many doers to replenish? That's the question.
- [22:23]
Pete Hegseth
I think that's exactly the right question too, Senator, because the time frame we were existing under was unacceptable. Okay, well tell me what this budget does. I mean months and years.
- [22:32]
Reporter/News Correspondent
Fast years.
- [22:33]
Pete Hegseth
I mean we're building new plants in real time.
- [22:36]
Reporter/News Correspondent
So just to replace what we have. I said months and then you said years.
- [22:41]
Pete Hegseth
It depends on the weapon system, but 2 to 3.4x of what we have today. So yes, we're dealing with a reality under the previous administration of what they sent to Ukraine and what they allocated elsewhere.
- [22:50]
Reporter/News Correspondent
I got it. So we fired years worth of munitions and it is clear that we're these are being expended to try to achieve some objectives. That was the plan. But Mr. Secretary, this war is stuck
- [23:12]
Nicole Wallace
difficult and inconvenient truce there presented to Pete Hegseth by Senator Mark Kelly. Joining our coverage is Margaret Donovan. She served as a captain in the army serving in the 101st Airborne Division. Later in 5th Special Forces Group, she was captain in the JAG Corps and is the former assistant U.S. attorney for the District of Connecticut. She's now a visiting lecturer at Yale Law. Miles is still here. Miles, that's intimidating. I'm sorry. To make you appear with Margaret and Oliver.
- [23:39]
Miles Taylor
Yikes. I'll just tap out.
- [23:42]
LifeLock Customer/Representative
As I was reading, I was like.
- [23:43]
Nicole Wallace
And Miles, no, we love you, Miles. We love you. We love you. I mean, what is your sense of how revelatory Heg says two days were on Capitol Hill?
- [23:57]
LifeLock Customer/Representative
Well, for example, the clip that we just saw, I'm so grateful to Senator Kelly for asking those questions because that has been sort of an untold story of this, is that this is a discretionary war, which means that everything that we are doing in this war, every munition that we are expending, are ones that we could have and should have been stockpiling. And I can just give you some numbers. There are reports that we have lost 24 MQ9 Reaper drones in this war. That's about 10% of the U.S. fleet. The Gulf states, not the U.S. but the Gulf states have expended, I think, 2,000 Patriot interceptors. Those are basically air defense Systems that the US produces. The annual production rate of those is about 600 a year globally. So if we have expended 2,000 since February 28, that tells you where those stockpiles are and they exist for a reason. There is a very real regional threat, the Indo Pacific threat, that the Gulf states and the United States want to make sure that they are prepared for. And so that is one of the costs. We can talk all day about how successful we are militarily, and that's great. But understand that there are necessary costs to being militarily successful. And those costs are we are down on stockpiles that are very important to national defense. And to the secretary's comments that we, the clip that we just played, we actually, this administration declined to send things like precision guided bomb units to Ukraine, saying that we didn't have enough in our own stockpiles. And that was before we started a war with Iran. So there are a lot of inconsistencies here. And if the purpose of these hearings is to determine should we keep funding the Department of Defense, is our money being used wisely? Those are questions that Secretary Hegseth really should have answered more directly and honestly. I think you can probably share this opinion. I don't know if Pete Hagseth knows the answers to those things. I don't think if he knows much of substance at all about the military. He's very big on culture wars and images, but I don't think he actually has any, like, long term strategic vision or even deep knowledge of how the military operates.
- [25:56]
Nicole Wallace
I mean, the Atlantic reporting suggests J.D. vance doesn't think he does either.
- [26:02]
LifeLock Customer/Representative
That would be consistent, I think, with most people's impressions. And like, look, he was a, you know, a largely unqualified candidate for this, which itself isn't fatal. You can surround yourself with experienced people, but we also see him firing very experienced people who could help him in times when he maybe needs to lean on people with more experience than he does.
- [26:24]
Nicole Wallace
What is the sort of geopolitical. I mean, these aren't state secrets. I mean, this was a televised hearing. China could see it, Russia could see it. What are the geopolitical implications of it being known the world over that America is low on bombs?
- [26:40]
LifeLock Customer/Representative
Well, it's certainly not good. And so I understand that he may not want to admit that, but the fact of the matter is he is there asking for, for Congress for money to fund the next fiscal year and to fund the war. He's asking for a trillion dollar budget. And so you have to be frank and transparent. He's under oath in these hearings with what the actual state of our national security is. And this is why you have to be really careful about going to war, because these are the costs that you incur that a country incurs when it goes to war. You're going to have vulnerabilities, necessarily, when you expend some of your most important strengths. And there was reporting. And I don't know if I didn't watch the entire hearing today, I don't know if it was asked about, but the end of the last fiscal year, he was spending something like millions on lobster towel and ribeye and all kinds of things to basically run out the clock and burn the budget before the fiscal year ended. So I hope he answers those questions as well. Why wasn't that put towards something more important, more useful, something that could stabilize us in a very destabilizing state?
- [27:41]
Nicole Wallace
You know, Miles, Trump is obsessed with men like Mark Milley. He was obsessed with the coverage, I think, in the Atlantic and in Bob Wilbur's book, and the criticism from men like Mark Milley and former Chief of Staff John Kelly and Secretary Mattis, who described him as, quote, dictatorial to the core. And then I think General Kelly went on to say he met, quote, every technical definition of a dictator. And I used to think he was stung by that criticism because it made him look bad. He wasn't mad that they described him as a dictator. He just wanted somebody who would let him play dictator as president. And I've spent months trying to understand why Pete Hegseth, who is actually more ludicrous in the flesh than Colin Jost is on snl. Why he's still there when they thrown. Kristi Noem is laying under the bus next to Pam Bondi, next to the labor lady whose husband was banned from the building. Why is Hegsest still there? The war has destroyed his political coalition. He's still there because he lets Trump be the dictator he's always wanted to be.
- [28:58]
Miles Taylor
Yes, he's still there because from him, Donald Trump does not get resistance. He gets praise and flattery, and he gets from Pete Hegseth, compliance. That's what he gets. That's what he wants. But we're also seeing like the world is a petri dish, Nicole, the consequences of that experiment. Because when there were people willing to push back against the president, people with four stars on their shoulders who said, I've been in war. You don't want to start one here. It's bad. Well, now we know what that looks like. I mean, just think about the position Donald Trump has put us in. Even if we were winning in Iran, regardless of what's going on in Iran, geostrategically, we are now all in on this one theater. The biggest military buildup in the Middle east since our 2003 invasion of Iraq. And every single missile we're firing at Tehran is one that can't be fired back at Beijing or Moscow or if another conflict breaks open. That's something that John Kelly or Jim Mattis would have said, if you're gonna go all in here, it puts us at grave risk. If another conflict opens up, it stretches us thin. But that's not the only thing, because in doing this, Nicole, we've also burned our alliances. That's part of the calculus You've gotta understand here. If another crisis erupts, if it's China trying to take Taiwan, if it's a takeover of a country that we're not seeing coming, if it's Moscow going into Eastern Europe, here's the thing. We've burned our allies. Spain shut us out of its bases because of this overflight in different countries has been restricted. The conditions you would want with a closeness to our allies are not going to be there. These are really, really big consequences that any experienced military figure would have seen coming by taking on this conflict.
- [30:52]
Nicole Wallace
That's amazing that that is the state of affairs with our allies. Myles and Margaret, stay with us. After the break, we'll talk to one of the senators who took part in today's questioning of Pete Hegseth. He believes the Trump administration is hiding the real cost of the war with Iran. We'll be back with that after a short break.
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Pete Hegseth
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- [31:42]
Podcast Narrator (Nicole Wallace Podcast)
Ms. Now presents the chart topping original podcast, the Best People with Nicole Wallace. This week, New Jersey Governor Mikey Sherrill.
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Nicole Wallace
I'm not just sitting here because, you know, it's fun to be governor. I'm sitting here because people are relying on me and I have a responsibility to those people. Government can change people's lives.
- [32:02]
Podcast Narrator (Nicole Wallace Podcast)
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- [32:14]
Senator Richard Blumenthal
I know you have characterized this war as a astonishing military success, to use your words yesterday. But the American people aren't buying it. And I know you feel the American people are seeing through the abstruse stuff that is thrown at them. But one point is irrefutable, which is America never succeeds in war unless the American people are behind it. And if what you're seeing as success now is winning, I would hate to see what losing looks like.
- [32:57]
Pete Hegseth
The negative nature in which you characterize the incredible and historic effort in Iran is part of the reason, Senator, why the American people view it the way they do. It's why I looked out at our press corps, the Pentagon, and called them the Pharisees in the press. Because they look for every problem. I'm asking you, look for every problem that exists.
- [33:17]
Nicole Wallace
I'm going to bring in to our coverage Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut. He serves on both the Armed Services and Homeland Security committees, where a lot of the important work is being done. Senator, what did you make of Pete Hegseth's performance today?
- [33:37]
Senator Richard Blumenthal
And Nicole, the most generous thing I can say about his performance today was that it verged on incompetence. His response to perfectly proper questions about the amounts of the costs, the impact on our economy, was to lash out at the questioners. He called us, defeat us. He said the press was incompetent. He blamed a lot on Biden and he refused, absolutely refused to answer with any specifics about what the costs are. They're either hiding what they know or they don't know. And I would say both are totally unacceptable for a Secretary Defense. He gave a performance that was a kind of modified Bondi, where he may have been less personal, but he was equally unresponsive.
- [34:37]
Nicole Wallace
Let me show you a line of questioning that I thought was incredibly ominous for our democracy. This is Senator Lissa Slotkin asking him about troops at the ballot box.
- [34:50]
Senator Lissa Slotkin
So Secretary Hegseth, if the president who regrets not signing that executive order to the then sec. DEF in 2020 asks to seize ballots or voting machines in states during the 2026 election, will you stand up for the Constitution and say no, or will you salute and do his bidding?
- [35:13]
Pete Hegseth
Senator, I didn't get a chance to answer the front part of your question, which, you know, there was a lot of deferred maintenance under the Biden administration that needed to be addressed because the world was in chaos when president issue, please. Well, again, that's the most important thing.
- [35:27]
Senator Lissa Slotkin
It's what's happening.
- [35:28]
Pete Hegseth
It's yet another gotcha hypothetical, which is your specialty.
- [35:32]
Senator Lissa Slotkin
It's not a hypothetical. I refuse to accept. You give that answer all the time. You and I have done this dance before. Get over it.
- [35:38]
Nicole Wallace
Okay?
- [35:38]
Senator Lissa Slotkin
In 2020, he's the president, your boss, the guy you're performing for right now told the journalists this year that he wished he signed that executive order to your predecessor, tell the American people, will you deploy the uniform military to our polls to collect voter rolls or machines?
- [35:57]
Pete Hegseth
Are you accusing me of performing because you're performing for cable news right now?
- [36:01]
Steve Liesman
But Mr. Secretary, we have.
- [36:03]
Pete Hegseth
It's a hypothetical.
- [36:07]
Nicole Wallace
Why is he so scared of Alyssa Slotkin or is he scared of Donald Trump?
- [36:13]
Senator Richard Blumenthal
He's more scared of Donald Trump. This performance by him was for an audience of one. The President, who by the way, has mentioned the possibility of using military force or ICE at the polls. It is far from a hypothetical. Senator Slatkin's question was deeply serious and important and it deserved a serious answer. But this answer that we got from the Secretary Defense was absolutely inexcusable. And let me just say there was a very simple one line answer, which is that the military has no role in the electoral process and I would never obey an illegal order that involved using the military improperly. So hit his kind of dance, as she correctly described, was evasive again. And I might just answer, he is living in a bubble. As you know from your very extensive experience in government, there's always a tendency to live in the bubble of Washington D.C. or even the White House or The Pentagon. But his bubble is he thinks this war is popular. He said it again and again. It is deeply unpopular. And what he's contemplating doing at the polls would be even more abhorrent to most Americans.
- [37:47]
Nicole Wallace
What is your measure of his fear? I thought his fear was palpable. Afraid to answer a question from Melissa Slotkin, Afraid of his own. Donald Trump is a lot of things. He is not. Afraid of his own press corps. He actually, to his credit, does talk to them. Pete Hegseth has kicked them out of the building. They've gone three rounds in court. What is your sense of what he's afraid of? Just Donald Trump being fired, being humiliated, being proven shallow, being proven a liar by J.D. vance, who, based on Atlantic reporting, thinks PeteGSeth is lying to Donald Trump in the room. Are you able to sense what he's afraid of?
- [38:28]
Senator Richard Blumenthal
I apologize for being maybe simplistic. I think he's afraid of the truth. He's afraid of the facts. Facts are stubborn things. We're in a quagmire in the Iran war. It is a war. They've tried now to characterize it as a pause because there's a ceasefire and therefore they have no obligation to comply with the War Powers Resolution or the Constitution. He's living in this bubble and he is afraid of the facts, which are we have accomplished none, zero of the objectives contradictory and shifting that have been outlined by the present. There has been no reduction in the nuclear arsenal or the enriched uranium. There has been no changing of regime. The destruction of of Iran's missile and drone capacity has been partial at best. They still have that strength and there is a path forward, which is negotiations and diplomacy. But he has rejected that truth.
- [39:39]
Nicole Wallace
Really bizarre. Bizarre series of appearances on his part. Senator Bloombald, thank you for joining us to talk about it today. One more break. We'll be right back.
- [39:53]
Reporter/News Correspondent
Okay, so your. Your quote was, we will keep pushing, keep advancing, no quarter, no mercy for our enemies. And yesterday you did not clarify whether you stand by this statement. So I'm going to give you another opportunity to clarify if that is what you meant. Do you stand by that statement you made on March 13?
- [40:18]
Pete Hegseth
We have untied the hands of our war fighters. We fight to win and we follow the law.
- [40:24]
Reporter/News Correspondent
Okay, so you're not clarifying, so you stand by that statement. So you're the Secretary of Defense. The things you say matter. And your response here right now makes it clear to the American people exactly why you are not right for this job.
- [40:42]
Nicole Wallace
We're back with Margaret and Miles Miles, we're at the part of the Trump story where people are taking the measure. Right. Of all of them. That's why Megyn Kelly and Tucker Carlson have now notably broken with Trump for a variety of reasons, but among them, people are focusing in on who Trump is. And so I think it invites a fresh round of scrutiny to who's around him. There was a man and a scared little boy there. And I think the policy, of course, matters. This is about whether the policy of the Defense Department is to carry out war crimes. I mean, giving no quarter is war crime. And it actually is consistent with some of the conduct that Democrats and Republicans have questioned in the Caribbean. But when you take the measure of the responses over the last two days, what is your best guess about what is going on at the Pentagon?
- [41:34]
Miles Taylor
Well, look, even if they don't succeed in this effort to impeach Pete Hegseth, Mark Kelly right there just impeached his character in front of the whole country. He basically said, will you commit crimes? And the Defense Secretary basically said, sir, I will not answer your question. I think Senator Blumenthal just basically said that was a baby Bondi basically being evasive to the point of bear hugging evil, refusing to reject evil, refusing to say that you won't break the law. The senator also, I think, just said that that was living in a bubble. And when we're talking about the Secretary of Defense living in that kind of moral bubble, the consequences are caskets. Nicole, this is really, really serious. And I am. I will just say one thing we've seen in the past year that I am encouraged by. We've seen people like Kelly and Senator Blumenthal and Senator Slotkin really stepping up. I mean, they are really stepping up there on top of their game. This is not performative for them.
- [42:33]
Nicole Wallace
No, I mean, and they are honoring their oath, they're honoring their Constitution, they're honoring public service. While Heccseth makes it ridicules, all those things.
- [42:42]
LifeLock Customer/Representative
Yeah, I mean, his last comment that, you know, and we follow the law, that is false. If you are saying no quarter, no mercy, you are advocating for a war crime. And to me, that is impeachable. Impeach, convict, remove. That is the answer. We cannot. He cannot be trusted. And it's not just about what Hegseth says, just as Miles was alluding to. This is about creating a culture in the military. And look, that conduct is bad in and of itself, but you're creating liability that could exist for years against soldiers who are relying on an adult being in that position as the secretary of defense.
- [43:16]
Nicole Wallace
And their answer is to pardon everybody. But there are a lot of honorable men and women in the military who envision spending their lives there. They don't want to function for two years and then get pardoned.
- [43:25]
LifeLock Customer/Representative
Yes, and there's a moral injury that comes with this, too. You don't want to, I mean, these are serious things to go to war, to deploy. You don't want to be questioning whether or not your leadership has bad faith in doing this. And he's not instilling confidence and he is not responsible. I think Congress should do its job and remove him from that position.
- [43:41]
Nicole Wallace
Margaret, it's great to have you here at the table. Myles, thank you for spending the hour with us. After a break, Donald Trump gives up on another important nominee, his administration. We'll bring you that reporting next. For the second time, Donald Trump has had to abandon his pick to be the country's surgeon general. After Casey Means, nominations stalled and Republicans actually pushed back. He called on Louisiana to vote Senator Bill Cassidy out of office, clearly harboring a grudge against Cassidy for his willingness to question Means and her actual qualifications or lack thereof. So Donald Trump announced his new pic on social media, of course, and it's FOX News contributor, radiologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Nicole Safire. He called her, quote, an incredible communicator. Safire, unlike Means, has an active medical license. But that hasn't stopped her from spreading misinformation. The Washington Post is reporting that she falsely claimed in 2022 that the CDC would mandate that school children receive coronavirus vaccines. They don't have the jurisdiction to mandate that. But maybe for Trump, third time will be a charm. We'll cover that when we come back. New reporting on how Trump remains unburdened by doing anything because it's the right thing to do and instead has spok on plastering his face everywhere. We'll explain next.
- [45:12]
Podcast Narrator (Nicole Wallace Podcast)
Ms. Now presents the chart topping original podcast, the Best People with Nicole Wallace. This week, New Jersey Governor Mikey Sherrill.
- [45:22]
Nicole Wallace
I'm not just sitting here because, you know, it's fun to be governor. I'm sitting here because people are relying on me and I've responsibility to those people. Government can change people's lives.
- [45:32]
Podcast Narrator (Nicole Wallace Podcast)
The Best People with Nicole Wallace listen now. For early access and free listening and bonus content, subscribe to Ms. Now premium on Apple Podcasts.