← Deadline: White House
Deadline: White House
"Gold-plated monstrosity"
00:42:51
Nicolle Wallace on the Trump administration's bulldozing of DOJ systems.
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- [00:00]
Nicole Wallace
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Nicole Wallace
Terms apply.
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- [01:05]
Senator Chris Murphy
We are creating a new assistant Attorney General position who will have nationwide jurisdiction over the issue of fraud.
- [01:13]
Nicole Wallace
Now, of course, that person's efforts will.
- [01:15]
Senator Chris Murphy
Start and focus primarily in Minnesota, but it is going to be a nationwide effort because unfortunately, the American people have been defrauded in a very nationwide way.
- [01:28]
Nicole Wallace
Hi again, Everybody. It's now 5 o' clock in New York. It is the sad truth that the bulldozer's already gone. The rubble's been cleared away. The demolition of the Department of Justice, our system of justice, our bulwark of the rule of law in America, once the envy of the world, the model for democracies all over the world is complete. Now, though seemingly all at once, we are getting a better look and a better understanding. The gold plated monstrosity Trump is building up to replace it, starting with a development that's expected to take place over the next couple of days. As you just heard from the vice president, J.D. vance, he made an announcement that the Justice Department is in the process of creating a new high ranking position with extensive powers. It sounds like position answering not to the Department of Justice, but to him and Donald Trump. The senior official will have broad authority to investigate fraud across the country. Nevermind the redundancy of the task as the Department of Justice already has a whole unit in charge of those cases. According to J.D. vance, the genesis of this post Watergate norm obliterating position stems from something very much in the news. Right now in the MAGA world, allegations of fraud in Minnesota's daycare industry. In typical fashion, JD Vance insinuates that those incidents are part of a broader nationwide scandal. In fact, just this week, the Trump administration froze more than $10 billion in federal child care, family assistance and social services funds for five states. They all happen to be blue states. One of them is New York. New York's Attorney General, Letitia James is now among a number of officials to sue the Trump administration over freezing those funds. Speaking of Letitia James, in the context of this dire new era of American justice, the New York Times has reporting today that the Trump administration just won't quit in its search for a punishment or a crime to punish when it comes to Tish James after multiple earlier attempts to have her indicted by a grand jury have been dismissed. It appears at ToJ, after failing, is going to try, try again. The New York Times, citing people with knowledge of these efforts, is reporting that federal prosecutors are investigating financial transactions involving Attorney General Tish James and her longtime hairdresser, opening a potential new front in Trump's retribution and revenge campaign. Separately, Donald Trump, for his part, is again vowing to, quote, lead a movement to get rid of mail in ballots along with voting machines. Meanwhile, today we learned that Texas agreed to provide its state voter rolls, including dates of birth, driver's license numbers, and the last four digits of Social Security numbers for some 18 million people living in Texas to Donald Trump's DOJ. Make no mistake, there are consequences to this new reality in which we all live. New York Times reports that in addition to mass departures, people just leaving, and a fear of working on any case that draws unwanted scrutiny or attention from the leaders of the Department of Justice or the FBI. There are too many open prosecutions and investigations to focus on any new matters. Quote, across the Justice Department rank and file, prosecutors and agents have expressed serious concern that a denigrated, distracted and depleted workforce hurts the government's ability to identify and stop terrorist plots, cyber attacks, mass violence and fraud, putting the country in a weaker position. Again, just in the course of a year, Donald Trump has taken a wrecking ball to the Department of Justice. And now he appears to be in the process of replacing it with something potentially more dangerous. That is where we begin the hour with some of our favorite reporters and friends. NYU law professor, legal analyst Melissa Murray is here. Also joining us, voting rights attorney and founder of Democracy Docket, Mark Elias is here. Also joining us, New York Times investigator, investigative reporter Mike Schmidt. He is bylined on that piece of reporting we read from about the Justice Department. Let me start with you, Mark Elias, because this is something you and I talk about in our podcast conversation, and that is the effort to gain access to voter information. It's sometimes shorthanded by campaign types called the voter file, which may be a mistake because everyone should understand that this is information you don't want shared with anyone that isn't supposed to have it. We what does it say to you that Texas has given the voter files to doj?
- [06:03]
So, while everyone right now is focused on a number of very, very big national crises, including what's going on in Venezuela and the tragedy in Minnesota, the Department of Justice's efforts to grind away at states and get access to the most sensitive information on voters, we're not talking about information at sort of at a, at a high level of abstraction. We're talking about your individual voting records. If you are watching this program and you have ever registered to vote or voted in any state, the Department of Justice wants your specific information, including your Social Security number, your date of birth, your partisan registration, whether you vote by mail or in person, whether you have voted absentee, whether your ballots ever been challenged, whether you've ever voted provisionally. What's happened to those challenges? I mean, they want all of it on every single one of you. And this is a 50 state plus District of Columbia effort on their part. The 20 or so states that have refused to give it to them have been sued. My law firm and I, we have intervened to defend voters in every one of those states. But there are another category of states, 7 to 10, depending on who you believe, that have turned that information over voluntarily. They have said to the Department of Justice, great, you want it, here it is. And, and I'm here to tell you that the only reason why the Department of Justice wants this information is that so come next October and November, when they want to interfere in the elections, when they want to disenfranchise voters at scale, when they want to contest the outcome of the elections, when they want to take the big lie and build an effort to subvert the outcomes, they need to have a voter file because they need to have the information to know which voters they want to disenfranchise, who they want to accuse of fraud. And that's why they're getting these records. And, and this needs to be a front page issue every day. And thank you, Nicole, for bringing it up.
- [08:02]
Well, I started with it, Melissa Murray, because I think that our muscle memory in covering Trump is really around issues that he sought to have the Department of Justice soften when it had to turn to him or his campaign or his allies. But what seems to be the pattern in 2.0 is where they're sharpening the Department of Justice to pursue his perceived enemies. And we've spent a lot of time and attention on the efforts to prosecute Jim Comey, the ongoing effort to prosecute Tish James. But this effort to seize, to use the Department of Justice to seize every registered voter's voter data is the only thing that affects every single person, Democrat and Republican. It is exactly the kind of thing that Republicans used to have in their DNA of opposing the federalization of any sort of contact with the voter file. And it's happening, as I think Mark is alluding to, without any real uproar.
- [08:58]
Melissa Murray
No, it's exactly right, Nicole. This is a Department of justice that is not working on behalf of the people of the United States. This Department of Justice is essentially a personal law firm for Donald Trump. There were shades of this in the first Trump administration, but it has gone to full throttle in Trump 2.0, and you see the impact of it all the time. This is perhaps the most egregious. It's not simply that this will allow the administration to make really surgical interventions in the post election landscape, as Mark has described. This is basically your identity, your entire voting record, your addresses, parts of your Social Security number. These aren't things that most people want in the public domain or within the grasp of the government. And again, as you point out, it is completely antithetical to what we would have understood to be conservative values just a generation ago. I mean, this is big government, government writ large. And it smacks of the kind of authoritarianism that is absolutely antithetical to a democratic society.
- [10:05]
Nicole Wallace
And that Department of Justice that we're talking about, Mike Schmidt, based on your reporting, is sort of rumbling down the road, you know, with one of the wheels off, a couple of them rolling on rims. I mean, it is depleted. And I think that's maybe putting it generously. Take us through what you're reporting.
- [10:23]
Mike Schmidt
Look, what we're trying to say in our story is that in any administration, it's difficult to protect the country, you know, from threats. From threats when you're trying to keep your eye on the ball. And at the Trump Justice Department, where they have gotten rid of a lot of the most experienced investigators, they have half of SDNY working on document production for the Epstein case. When you have senior officials working on political prosecutions, when those types of things are going on. It makes it harder to do the basics of protecting the country. And that when we went out and talked to folks in the department, it was clear to us that they were afraid that all of this turmoil that has gone on has put the department and the FBI in a weaker place to do the basics of protecting the country. And look, the Justice Department will point to prosecutions that they have made and threats that they have, you know, stopped and said, look, you know, we are functioning and such. But the numbers are pretty significant.
- [11:31]
Nicole Wallace
I think I see the number the.
- [11:32]
Mike Schmidt
FBI, the number of FBI agents is down so much that they're trying to go out and get recently retired FBI agents to return back to working at the FBI after leaving. At the U.S. attorney's office in New Jersey, a major U.S. attorney's office, they had lost 50 prosecutors in the span of a year, and they've hired 10 more to replace them. But as we point out in the story, when you hire a federal prosecutor, you're hiring a baby federal prosecutor in most cases. And it takes a long time to grow them into the, you know, the hard charging, fearless federal prosecutor that's able to bring the most complex cases. And the other thing we found out in the reporting is that the department, the investigators, are having trouble opening up new cases because so many of the people who remain are being forced to work on cases that people who left were working on. So they're backfilling by just simply just trying to help finish the other cases so they can't open new investigations.
- [12:41]
Nicole Wallace
It seems, too, that if you look at the people that were purged in the first months and email, Bove oversaw some of this. Kash Patel first said he wouldn't do it and then got there and went ahead and did it. They purged the people who common sense would suggest were the best. Right. The best prosecutors worked on the most brazen attack on the United States Capitol. The best people, the most sort of discreet and qualified, worked on what had to be a sensitive effort to return national defense information from a former president's house. So it seems that it's not just the numbers. It's about the caliber and quality.
- [13:14]
Mike Schmidt
Correct? Correct. It's not just that, like, oh, a lot of FBI agents and federal prosecutors have lost their jobs. These are the people that were doing the most intense, complex work. And they're coming from major offices across the country. And look, at the end of the day, hopefully the ramifications of it aren't great. But as we say in the story, the first thing that happens when Something catastrophic happens, whether it's a terrorist attack or a major fraud, like a Bernie Madoff type of thing, is, what did the FBI know? What did the Justice Department know? It is the sort of central question that journalists raise when something awful happens. And is the department in a place where it is running down every single one of its leads? And is there political exposure for the administration by spending so much time on the President's political priorities? There's a longstanding reason why the Justice Department is supposed to be at an arm's length distance from the White House. Obviously, a lot of the postwatergate norms, we shouldn't probably even talk about them anymore, because they're gone. Because they're so gone. It's like we're beyond that at this point. But. But one of the reasons is that you want the department and the FBI to really be following the facts and really be running down its priorities and not running political errands.
- [14:35]
Nicole Wallace
Well, I mean, that brings us, mark Elias, to J.D. vance's announcement. Now, fraud of any kind is horrible, as is any threats toward law enforcement. But in terms of frauds, I mean, these are not people who, with a straight face, can say they have this clear record on it. I mean, J.D. vance this week also came out and said the only people that threaten law enforcement are the radical left, as the White House hosted the most audacious BS I've sworn once in the two hours. So I promise my control I won't do it again. About January 6th, basically, since it happens, I mean, the most delusional stuff that's been said about an attack that had Trump's own supporters injuring 150 law enforcement officers with injuries physical and psychological, that they'll have for years to come. That guy stood up and talked about the left being a threat to law enforcement. In the same vein, he's out there talking about fraud, something that's a crime already on the books and one that a functioning Department of Justice should aggressively pursue.
- [15:37]
Yeah, I think to pick up something Mike said, the great divide right now among legal commentators and observers on the left, I'll set aside the people on the right on the left is whether or not they still speak of the norms as if they exist or, like me, as something that people read someday about in the history books. I mean, the idea that I should lament that the Department of Justice is not bringing in baby prosecutors. I don't lament that the Department of Justice have brought in prosecutors right now. They'd be prosecutors for Pam Bondi. Hell, they'd be prosecutors for J.D. vance. I mean, to your point, J.D. vance is standing in the White House rather than commiserating the with the victim of a terrible shooting in Minneapolis, rather than doing the human thing, the humane thing of expressing, you know, sympathy for the grieving relatives of hers, he is sitting there making up lies and in the course saying the following. There is an entire network and frankly, some of the media are participating in it. He's literally saying there is this criminal enterprise going on and by the way, some of you are involved in it. And then he says, and part of our investigatory work is getting to the bottom of it. Well, he's using the first person plural. He's saying that somehow he, JD Vance is hand in glove with the Department of Justice in deciding what's going to be investigated, what isn't going to be investigated. We know that, for example, the state officials, state police and state prosecutors, they've been excluded from that. And now you point out JD Vance is setting up his own prosecutorial division within the Department of Justice. Do I want them to be successful at hiring?
- [17:21]
David Frum
No.
- [17:22]
Nicole Wallace
Do I want to believe that somehow they're going to go after the bad guys? I know better than that. And so when I say that this is the great divide, it is the divide. And the quicker those of us in the pro democracy movement, those of us who care about, about rule of law, get over the fact that we do not have the Merrick Garland Department of Justice. We have the JD Vance run Department of justice, we have the Pam Bondi run Department of justice, we have the Lindsey Halligan run Department of Justice. The better off we're going to be.
- [17:54]
Yeah. I mean, Melissa, it feels like former Department of Justice officials are the slowest to come around to this new reality. We have access to some of the best and smartest and really most esteemed. And Mike has covered the department for so long and you still hear it in their longing for the norms. And these things that protected us from subsequent terrorist attacks after 9 11, these things that insulated us from brazen corruption after the Nixon fiasco, these things that functioned, they're not on pause. They're gone. I mean, Trump burned them down. Trump was elected a second time running against all those things. And I wonder your thoughts or how much time you spend thinking about what rises up to replace them just to.
- [18:45]
Melissa Murray
Sort of comment on those folks who are sort of yearning for the salad days of an independent Justice Department.
- [18:52]
Nicole Wallace
I get it.
- [18:53]
Melissa Murray
But Mark is right. We haven't had that for a while. And arguably you could say that the failures of the Biden Justice Department to address the threat to democracy that a second Donald Trump administration would pose are rooted in that sense that they could simply reclaim the past and make the Justice Department independent again. Merrick Garland's decision to first prosecute the rank and file January 6th defendants instead of going straight for the head and those who actually organized, coordinated and planned the insurrection on the Capitol, I think that was rooted in some view that they would be independent. They did not want to be seen as going against step president in a vindictive fashion, all of that. I think the sooner we give up the ghost of the Department of Justice that was that post Watergate Department of Justice, the better off that will be. What has replaced that Department of Justice is, I think, a very partisan, cronyist kind of Department of Justice that, as you say, is under the thrall of J.D. vance. I mean, this whole discussion about fraud in Minnesota, starting a new division that is organized and anchored in the White House to prosecute fraud, that would be unheard of. But it's not. It's egregious, certainly, but it shouldn't be surprising to us right now. Just a few days ago, the Department of Justice announced that as a matter of civil rights, it was going to pursue any company in receipt of federal funds that is engaged in what the administration calls unlawful dei. It was going to investigate and possibly bring claims against them for fraud. So this is all part of the same plan. This is Donald Trump's Department of Justice.
- [20:33]
Nicole Wallace
Incredible. Mike Schmidt, thank you for your reporting on this and for being here to talk about it when we come back. They're not in compliance with the law. That's what a Republican congressman is saying today about the Trump Justice Department as it fails or refuses to release the vast majority of the Jeffrey Epstein files. What that congressman wants to happen next is our next conversation. Also ahead, there are new jobs numbers out today. The verdict is in 2025 under Donald Trump. Trump was the worst year, the worst year for job creation since, well, since the last time Donald Trump was in office back in 2020. Trump's job killing agenda and first year back in office and the damage his economy is doing to Americans. Later in the hour. DEADLINE White House continues after a quick break. Don't go anywhere.
- [21:22]
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- [21:53]
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- [22:02]
Nicole Wallace
The second Trump administration has gone to unprecedented lengths to radically transform America.
- [22:08]
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- [22:24]
Mike Schmidt
It's unfortunate that it's gonna have to be litigated somewhere because they've decided not to comply with the letter or the.
- [22:32]
Nicole Wallace
Spirit of the law.
- [22:33]
Mike Schmidt
And so I think it's almost like.
- [22:35]
Nicole Wallace
The invasion of Venezuela might makes right.
- [22:39]
Mike Schmidt
And I think the Attorney general's thumbing her nose at Congress right now because she's waiting to see if we can find a venue to show that she's violating the law.
- [22:51]
Nicole Wallace
That is news for a lot of reasons. One that was Congressman Thomas Massie, a Republican, on the need for oversight of Attorney General Pam Bundy herself and the Trump Justice Department as it continues to refuse to comply and or drag its feet on releasing the files related to the Department of Justice's investigation into Jeffrey Epstein. Republican Congressman Massie and Democratic Congressman Ro Khanna yesterday asked a judge to appoint an independent monitor, known as a special master, to oversee the release of documents writing this, quote, put simply, the Department of Justice cannot be trusted with making mandatory disclosures under the act. Massie and Khanna wrote to Judge Paul Engelmeier of the Southern District of New York, who's overseeing the case against Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell. Quote, absent an independent process as outlined above, we do not believe the Department of Justice will produce the records they are required to by the act and what was represented to this court. It is just the latest in the standoff between Congress and the Trump administration over the release of the Epstein files. Earlier this week, Congressman Massie opened the door to holding Pam Bondi in contempt of Congress over the failure of the Department of Justice to release the documents in its possession by the December 19 deadline mandated by law by Congress. We're back with Melissa and Mark. This is all the things Congressman Massie said. It was Mark and Moore, but it's also a test for Congress, right? Who do you want to be? Do you Want to be the doormat or things I can't say on TV any longer? Or is this the issue where you've got 80% of the public, 81% of the American people think Donald Trump is engaged in a cover up when it comes to the Epstein files? If there is a political predicate for doing the right thing, for doing the transparent thing, for doing what is now the law of the land, this is.
- [24:51]
Is, and let's not forget these Republicans all voted for this law. Right. I mean, this isn't just like Congress sent the subpoena and the Department of Justice is ignoring it or Pam Bondi is thumbing its nose at Congress, literally. Congress enacted a special law in November that said all the records have to be produced by December 19th. And then December 19th came and went and you know, as you recall, around December 20th, 21st, right afterwards, you know, we heard a lot of nonsense out of the Department of Justice that most of the records were being produced, but that they needed a couple of extra weeks. Now, we know that 6, 10 of 1% have been produced. That's right. Not 6%. 6, 10 of 1% have come produced. So that means 99.4% have not been produced. So when you talk about this is a moment for Congress not to be doormat. I mean, as you say, I could use language much more colorful than that. I mean, Congress passed the laws that give us all the records by December 19th, all these Republicans voted for it. And now here we are in January and what Pam Bondi said is I'll send you 6/10 of 1% of what you told me I had to give you.
- [26:09]
Yeah, I mean, Melissa, your articulation of sort of why it matters, that the Department of Justice is basically sort of a ghost or a relic of what it once was. This is the other half of that. Right? I mean, the lawlessness isn't just about the laws that are ignored. It's about ignoring the laws knowing that Trump will pardon you if you're doing it in service of him. And I think there's some extension of that in the refusal to follow this law.
- [26:36]
Melissa Murray
Well, I think it's partly that they certainly know that if they don't do this, there aren't going to be consequences. But the other reason there aren't going to be consequences is that the statute doesn't have much in the way of an accountability structure for failure to comply with its terms. And, you know, that may be how it got the bipartisan support that it did at the time that it did, but it does mean that it's a little bit toothless right now. And I think it's actually a really interesting development that Representatives Khanna and Nassi have now turned to the courts. They can't do it through Congress. The executive is not going to do it. They've now turned to the courts and they've asked Judge Engelmeier to appoint a special master, which he can do as the presiding judge in this case. The special master is often appointed in these kinds of things. 911 had a special master. But as an officer of the court, the special master can then initiate contempt proceedings, things of that nature. So there's now an accountability structure that proceeds to the judiciary. And I think that is actually really fascinating.
- [27:32]
Nicole Wallace
What do you think happens, Melissa? Do you think they slow walk it? Do you think they defy it? Do you think they comply?
- [27:37]
Melissa Murray
Well, I mean, slow walking has been the name of the game the whole time with this. I mean the redactions, everything that's all been about slow walking. I think it's going to be a lot harder to slow walk it if it is within the purview of the courts. And you have the special master, an independent monitor on it. Now, how much the independent monitor and the special master will be able to get out of DOJ is another thing entirely. But again, there may be more toothy mechanisms for holding the administration accountable through the courts.
- [28:06]
Nicole Wallace
Mark Elias the ads write themselves. Donald Trump engaged in an elaborate cover up, including defying a law he signed to shield either himself or his powerful friends from accountability on the Jeffrey Epstein files.
- [28:21]
Yeah. And your member of Congress went along with it. Right? I mean, like the thing is all these Republicans, they're all on the ballot. Every member of the House is on the ballot this, this November and a third of the Senate is. And so ultimately the ad is that Donald Trump had his Department of Justice cover up the, the Epstein files and your member of Congress, they went along with it. Are they there protecting you or are they protecting him? Are they in Washington, D.C. looking out for you or are they looking out for him? And I think given the Results of the 2025 off year elections and some of the special elections, that's something if I'm a Republican, you know, I worry a lot about. And to the extent they think they're going to get healthy because they're going to say, well, I voted for the original bill, the American people aren't that dumb. They get the game, they get the Washington game, which is that the Republicans vote for the bill. And then when Donald Trump doesn't comply, they say, I didn't see that. I've been busy. I didn't have an opportunity to watch it. I haven't read it. I don't know. Right. The American people will look through that. And if we are able to have free and fair elections come November, Republicans are gonna get kicked out of Congress.
- [29:32]
You still think it's an F look?
- [29:35]
Yeah, I do. I mean, I, you know, here's the good news. We're going to have elections. Right. Like you know anyone. I always get people who are always telling me, mark, why are you saying they're going to be elections? Donald Trump going to cancel elections. First of all, Donald Trump can't cancel elections. Second of all, authoritarians love elections. What they don't like is free and fair elections. And what I've said is the question of how free and fair they are is the question for 2026. And it is a question of what each and every one of us do between now and then, whether we are laser focused on ensuring that they are as free and as fair as possible. The courts have stood up to Donald Trump. We have had success. We are fighting them, we are calling them out. And we all have to do our part. Every single one of us has to do our part. And if we do that, then, yeah, I think we'll have free and fair enough elections. That'll be okay.
- [30:22]
All right, let's have that conversation, the three of us, on Monday. I won't put you on the spot as soon as you're both available to come back Monday. Melissa Murray. Monday, okay. It's a date. Thank you for being here today. When we come back, brand new evidence today that Donald Trump's economy is not the job creating machine he says it is. We'll bring you that reporting next. Donald Trump's final jobs report of the year 2025 is out, officially capping his first year back as president as the weakest year for jobs growth since the beginning of the COVID pandemic in the year 2020. So since the last time Donald Trump was our President, 2025 was also the worst year outside of a recession in more than 20 years. 50,000 jobs were added in December, slower gains than expected, with the unemployment falling only slightly as companies are hesitant to add new hires. Today's jobs report is also the first clear look at the labor market in months delayed by Donald Trump's breaking his own record for the longest government shutdown. One clear takeaway is that despite Trump's many, many, many, many, many promises that only he could fix it and his tariffs would bring back manufacturing jobs. That sector saw another 8,000 jobs lost in the month of December, for a total of 68,000 jobs lost in the year 2025. It continues an eight month continuous fall for manufacturing jobs since Donald Trump's sweeping tariffs began on what he called Liberation Day back in April. I want to bring in staff writer at the Atlantic, host of the David Frum video podcast. David Frum. Thank you, David, so much to talk to you about. But I just want to start with the metrics that Donald Trump likes to point to, and that's his record on the economy. Every metric, even with all of his efforts to manipulate them, is not good for him.
- [32:26]
David Frum
Well, there's one more data point that I think you could highlight that would be of great interest to the people who view, which is if you put the job creation by month to month in a chart, the first couple of months of the Trump presidency look consistent with the Biden presidency. The economy's still on a strong upward trajectory from COVID through January and February and March of 2025. Then comes the confirmation of the massive Trump tariffs in April. And that's when the job growth stops that month. And what seems to be going on, as you said, is a big decline in the production of manufacturing because they're making everything that goes into manufacturing more expensive. The reason you don't have an actual job recession is because the healthcare sector is still growing. And that dodged a bullet with the big cutoff in health care spending that was intended by the Republican Congress by cutting off the subsidies to the Affordable Care Act. Those are now back in place. So the healthcare sector may still be a sign of strength, but the rest of the economy is in really bad shape. And is this is especially true for the people who are under 30. If you're looking for that first job, it's not there.
- [33:33]
Nicole Wallace
You know, David, I keep sort of replaying the 2024 messages that sank in with voters, right. You don't have all that information in the time. Right. You have polls, but you don't really understand how the economic messages were landing. And they really are messages about hopelessness. Right. And you see them come up again in the New York mayor's race and you hear affordability shorthanded by national politicians. But at a local level, they're about everything you touch and everything that people touch, absent the billionaires and the AI sort of tech masters of the universe, everything that people touch is either unstable, there's volatility. They don't know how much it's going to cost month to month or it's gone up. And I wonder what you see as sort of the opportunity to seize the mantle of sort of a real economy and what people are dealing with in their day to day lives.
- [34:23]
David Frum
I think there's the message that. And you have a great messaging background. The message to drive home for Democrats about prices is Trump did it on purpose. That's one of the reasons that I don't quite like the affordability slogan, because it makes it seem like this is like something happening because of the. It's in nature. It's something that happened beyond any human control. The price increases that happened in 22, 23 and 24, that was the world economy coming. The world economy is closed. It comes back online. It's tremendously distorted. Some parts of it were working, some parts not. If you've ever lived in an old building with old water radiators. When the heat comes on the first day of winter, that banging sound as the steam makes its way, I know it well.
- [35:06]
Nicole Wallace
Yes. Your kids are like, can you make it stop? And you're no, not unless we move.
- [35:10]
David Frum
Yes, that's the economy in 2022. Bang, bang, bang. It's coming back to life after Covid. And there are a lot of price distortions and maybe Biden handled it right, maybe he made mistakes, but they weren't trying to actively to make it worse. But Trump's two big ide when he became president. One, I'm going to put a tax on every imported good, everything that goes into every food item, every input into manufacturing. Of course he's making it expensive. That's the goal. If a tariff doesn't make things more expensive, it doesn't work. And the second thing he said was, I'm going to round up and deport a million workers. So there are going to be fewer people working, there's going to be more. I'm making everything more expensive. What was supposed to happen? He did it on purpose.
- [35:54]
Nicole Wallace
Okay, so the messenger in me wants to add, wants to change one word. Trump broke it on purpose, right?
- [36:00]
David Frum
Yes, yes.
- [36:01]
Nicole Wallace
Okay. I feel like we can lay that over everything.
- [36:05]
David Frum
So when you'll see this on some of these Sunday morning shows, they will say there'll be a Secretary of the treasury, someone like that on. And they'll be asked, what's your message? And the only message you could say, what are you going to say to the American people about so called affordability? And what they could say, say is, look, we did this on purpose. It turns out it was kind of dumb. We're really sorry. We've learned our lesson. We're going to undo all of our signature economic initiatives and then things will stop getting worse. When you put it that way, you realize this is a hard case to tell because they did it on purpose, or as you say, they broke it on purpose.
- [36:40]
Nicole Wallace
Okay, I have to take a break to think about how we can lay that over everything else I want to ask you about. Stay with us. We'll both be right back.
- [36:56]
Senator Chris Murphy
My common sense tells me that the organizing principle of this administration is hate and division, a hatred of people who are fleeing persecution and torture, destitution to come to this country, an effort to try to sow division as a means of distracting us from the kleptocracy, the stealing that's happening in this government. I mean, this is kind of boilerplate 101 activity for a group of thieves who's trying to convert a democracy to autocracy. They run the country in a way that makes you think the biggest threat are people who aren't like you, when in fact, the biggest threat is the people who are running the country.
- [37:35]
Nicole Wallace
David Fromm, you write, you get into it differently than the senator did there. But I want to read what you wrote about Venezuela, the other big story story we've been covering all week. If they're going to transform Venezuela, that is a big undertaking and one that the Venezuelans are going to have a large voice in whether it succeeds or not, whether it's received peacefully or not. It is their country. They get a voice in what happens there. And when people are denied a voice, they can't resist, and they will resist, often with violence. It just seems that we are being led by people who are at best childish and at worst robber, like in their attitude toward the economy, toward the planet. The United States is not a nation of robbers. It's a nation of cooperators. It's a nation that exports ideas of freedom. It doesn't steal other people's wealth and import it to the United States. Donald Trump has evolved in that he's not even trying to pretend that the military operation on Saturday night, not even a week ago, was about in his word, in his telling to Joe Scarborough here, unlike Iraq, we're going to keep the oil. Joe.
- [38:42]
David Frum
Well, look, Nicolas Maduro is a dictator with a lot of crimes on his record, that there are many people welcome that he faced justice. But the idea that at the United States, which is the largest producer of the world of oil in the world right now, and you Throw In Canada, it's another six, six percentage points. So it's 28% between the United States and Canada. That is sort of short of oil. You can look at the price of oil and see, does the world need more oil? It's $58 a barrel. American producers are having a hard time. Even the Trump plan is go into Venezuela, grab a bunch of oil and sell it. But who is going to. But at the expense of the American taxpayer to provide the security? And meanwhile, the Venezuelans, what are they supposed to do as their oil is removed from them with no benefit to them?
- [39:26]
Nicole Wallace
Well, what is going to happen? I mean, how do you see this playing out?
- [39:30]
David Frum
I think a big bunch of nothing is going to happen. I think what is going to happen right now is that any reputable oil company is going to say, all right, you want us to go into the oil is in the eastern part of Venezuela, which is very jungly. Where are the roads? Where's the security? Venezuelan oil is very thick, very sludgy, so it doesn't bubble up to the surface spontaneously. You have to pump steam into the ground to push the oil back up in a reciprocating motion. To make the steam, you need electricity and a grid to carry the electricity. Who's going to build that in the jungles of eastern Venezuela? Meanwhile, with no risk of, of insurgency, with your confidence that your capital is safe, you can invest in Texas or Colorado and make a living there. In the world's largest oil producer, Donald Trump. You know, his dancing, his taste in music, He's a creature of the 70s. He hasn't taken on board. The United States is once again the largest producer of oil in the world. There is no shortage. Oil is cheap. Oil is at a price right now where it's hard actually to make a profit selling oil. There's not an oil company in the world that thinks what we need is to make a big trillion dollar investment to produce more of this Stu. We're barely breaking even on selling the stuff we have now.
- [40:43]
Nicole Wallace
You know, I feel like in your analysis and in what you've written this week, it's so clear. The lack of. I don't even know how to not insult them. And so I don't know why I'm trying to insult them. They're idiots around Donald Trump because the access to that info, you're an informed person. You worked at the highest levels of the government. He has access to people, the best people in the world, if he wanted them. Obviously, the best people in the world don't want to go work for Donald Trump. That in and of itself is a tragedy. But how do you think we're at this place where the President of the United States has a bunch of oil executives in and is promising to use the United States military for a, quote, very long time, that's how long he said he'd use them to protect this project.
- [41:25]
David Frum
Well, I said earlier on, I referred to a reputable oil company. Now, there are a lot of fly by night operators who pay to have brunch with the president at Mar a Lago. And they say, well, well, wait a minute. Here's a way that this is not a stupid plan. If the American taxpayer pays the cost of security, pays the cost of giving me my concession, if the American taxpayer pays all the costs and I can take a little piece of the oil, I'm not a big oil company. I'm a little oil company. I take a big piece of it and I steal it and I sell it for myself. Then I personally can make a profit, even if the whole operation from an economic point of view is crazy. And so this is where the robbery does come in. And this is where Chris Murphy's point is so, so true. They are, they are thinking like criminals. They are thinking, if we can just break the glass, grab something, run away, we can make money, even if it's a bad deal for everybody else.
- [42:16]
Nicole Wallace
Such a tragedy, David, from so much going on, I'm so glad we had a chance to talk to you about it. Thank you for joining us today. When we come back, what historian Heather Cox Richardson told me about Donald Trump's moves in Venezuela. Venezuela and why they look like something we'd see out of Vladimir Putin. We'll have that for you next. We are back with new episodes of the Best People podcast. And after Donald Trump's whatever it is he's doing in Venezuela, I knew I had to talk again to historian Heather Cox Richardson so she could do what she does best, ground me and all of us in the facts and the history of what we're watching. Here is part of her reaction to the new posture of the United States military under Donald Trump.
- [43:01]
Heather Cox Richardson
Listen, I think what we are seeing is a real attempt to institute the kind of Putinization of the United States of America, if you will, in that what Trump did in Venezuela was not to overturn a government in order to install a democratically elected leader or an opposition leader or even really to hurt the party in power because he left that party in power. What we saw was him extracting a leader almost as a threat to those remaining behind to say, give me a cut or I'm gonna do something even worse. And if you think about it that way, and you think about the threats against Mexico and the threats against Colombia and the threats against Cuba and even the threats against Greenland, it certainly looks as if what he is saying is not just America is gonna be the country controlling the Western hemisphere, but also the way to get along with the United States is not to spread or public health or all the things that we have tended to emphasize in the past. The way to get along with the United States is to give expletive to the president whatever he wants, give crap to the president and then he'll back off. And that is, I mean, that is actually slightly different than the United States is going to become a colonial power. That is a personalized power that looks very much like Vladimir Putin.
- [44:27]
Nicole Wallace
Everything she says is, as usual, brilliant and important and on the nose. You can hear the rest of that episode starting tonight for premium subscribers and the episode will be out for everybody starting Monday. One more break. We'll be right back. Thank you so much for letting us into your homes. We are grateful.
- [44:52]
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