← Deadline: White House
Deadline: White House
“Governor Gavin Newsom is the latest target of Trump’s DOJ”
00:42:04
June 15, 2026; 4pm: Nicolle Wallace and guests discuss the breaking news that CA Governor Gavin Newsom and his wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, are being targeted and investigated by Trump’s Justice Department.
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- [00:00]
Gavin Newsom
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- [01:01]
Nicole Wallace
Hi there, everyone. It's four o'clock in the east. The governor of the country's largest state, a likely future presidential contender and one of the most prominent critics of Donald Trump, who currently holds elected office, is out with a stunning piece of news this afternoon. California Governor Gavin Newsom saying that he and his family have become targets of the Trump Justice Department simply because he has dared to stand up to and criticize Donald Trump. Here is some of Governor Newsom's statement posted online this afternoon.
- [01:33]
Gavin Newsom
One by one, anyone who has challenged Donald Trump has ended up on his hit list. And today I proudly join that list. After calling for my arrest last year, Donald Trump directed his Department of Justice to investigate me. And just in the last week, I've learned that his campaign has reached my own home to get me. He's coming after my wife, Jen, a public servant, a woman who's dedicated her life to supporting women and girls. Someone who has done nothing wrong other than having the temerity to advocate for what she believes in. If they can't intimidate me, they'll go after the mother of our children. Donald Trump picked the wrong target. We have nothing to hide. His political operatives can take every record and read every page, but they'll be looking in the wrong place. Because if they really want to find corruption, look no further than 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Donald Trump is selling the presidency. He's running the largest cash heist in American political history. Trading foreign tariff relief for approval of his golf courses, day trading behind the Resolute desk, reaping hundreds of millions of dollars in personal profit. And he's doing it openly. He's doing it on camera. He did it last night on the White House lawn. He's doing it through cryptocurrencies. He's doing it through the receipt of a $400 million private jet from a foreign government that he plans to keep when he leaves office, through his son's ventures in countries where his own administration is simultaneously making policy. His personal fortune has skyrocketed by $4 billion since making his return to office. This is the behavior of a regime, not a republic. The White House has become a marketplace, a marketplace for sneakers and coins and watches, cologne, guitars, Bibles and phones. Influence for sale, access for sale. And today, my family and I can personally confirm that justice is for sale.
- [03:51]
Nicole Wallace
Aides to Governor Newsom say that at least part of the investigation focuses on the governor's wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, and that people affiliated with nonprofit groups that she runs have already been questioned by federal agents. Two sources tell our colleague Carol Lennig that a federal prosecutor's office based in Sacramento is focused on the tax filings of Jennifer Siebel Newsom. It began in early 2025 and is just one of several investigations centered around the Newsom family. Aides to Governor Newsom also say that the investigation picked up steam around the time that Todd Blanche took the reins at doj. That would, of course, coincide with the time he began very publicly auditioning for for the role of permanent attorney general in earnest. The breaking news that California Governor Gavin Newsom has been targeted by the Justice Department as delivered by Governor Newsom himself, is where we begin today with some of our favorite reporters and friends. New York Times Justice Department reporter Glenn Thrush joins us. Also joining us, NYU law professor and legal analyst Melissa Murray. She's the author of the U.S. constitution, a comprehensive and annotated guide for the modern reader. Also joining us, former Department of Justice pardon attorney Liz Oyer is back with us. Glenn Thrush, take us through your reporting on this story.
- [05:11]
Glenn Thrush
So basically, what we know is what the governor has has told us, the investigation, as far as we can tell, the reporting that we have done so far, and this is very preliminary, we just learned about this today, mostly focuses on the governor's wife and the not for profit that she runs. And she's a document documentarian. She's written about gender discrimination. There have been over the years critics who have scrutinized and criticized some of the donations. They have they have taken so this is apparently a tax investigation run out of Sacramento. We don't have a general sense yet that this is run out of main justice. But as I'm sure your viewers know, a sensitive political investigation against one of the President's handpicked targets would have to essentially, if not be signed off on by the Attorney General, certainly within his realm of knowledge. But the one thing I would caution against is really assuming that there's absolutely no basis for this investigation. Obviously, Newsom wanted to get out in front of the front of this story. So I would just caution folks to just wait a couple of beats as the reporting evolves to, to see if there was anything, anything justified at the bottom of this. But I will say, in general, it is uncanny. It is a heck of a coincidence that the only investigations that we keep hearing about involve Democrats and, and President Trump's targets. There don't seem to be any allies of President Trump's on these list of, of investigative targets that we are right and talking about every single day.
- [06:58]
Nicole Wallace
Yeah, I mean, tax crimes are serious, but so is physical assault against cops. So I take your point, Glenn Thrush, but I want to focus in on the part of the timeline that coincides with Pam Bondi being fired. Todd Blanche, very clearly auditioning for the permanent job, just put out there for me anything I may have missed. What we know is that Comey, after two failed attempts to indict him, is indicted over the seashell malarkey that even right wing legal analyst Jonathan Turley calls Bill Barr's favorite smear bs. We know that the governor and his wife come under scrutiny. Who else that's a critic is targeted as part of Todd Blanche's audition tape?
- [07:38]
Glenn Thrush
Well, as, as I reported, the day before Bondi was fired, Bondi and Blanche had gotten together and identified a list of investigations to be fast tracked. Newsom's name wasn't on it. Cassidy Hutchinson, the former aide to Mark Meadows, who testified before the J6 committee, was kind of at the top of the list, as was John Brennan, the former CIA director who is now the subject of a floundering investigation in South Florida based on comments and an annex that he wrote into a report on Russian interference in the 2016 election. So there was a concerted effort by Blanche and Bondi at a time when Bondi felt her job was endangered, to accelerate these investigations, to put everything on the front burner. Act Blue, the Democratic fundraising arm that, that does appear to have some significant legal liability potentially in terms of an investigation, was also part of that list.
- [08:36]
Nicole Wallace
Glenn do you have any knowledge of any investigations that Todd Blanche has overseen or been a part of that do not include investigations in the category of Trump directed retribution?
- [08:50]
Glenn Thrush
I mean, they're not publicized, you know, the department.
- [08:54]
Nicole Wallace
But do you know of any.
- [08:57]
Glenn Thrush
Yeah, I mean like, you know, there are we talking about sort of fentanyl stuff and Raul Castro and but no,
- [09:04]
Nicole Wallace
I mean, I'm not talking about Marco Rubio's honey doulas. My point being there is nothing known. And again, I won't speak for you. If you know of any, let me know.
- [09:16]
Glenn Thrush
Well, look, Nicole, there's no doubt that as we're and we should say that I believe Blanche is meeting today with Chuck Grassley, his out, you know, the administration's ally who is running the Senate Judiciary Committee about Blanche's impending confirmation hearings which, which we are hearing are not necessarily going to go in his favor. There's a real potential that at least two Republicans on the committee, Thom Tillis and John Cornyn, are going to raise serious objections. So he's facing an uphill b. So, so there is this general sense and Blanche denied that he was auditioning. But, but again, I would, I would direct viewers to go online and look at this interview that he did with Sean Hannity in which he does something truly extraordinary. Blanche had had this general lawyerly reserved. He was kind of playing both sides here, pushing forth this image of being and Liz Oyer wrote about this wonderfully in her in her substack the other day that he'd been putting forth this image of somebody who is reasonable, who was going core interests of the department while at the same time seeking to protect Trump's image. The first part of that equation has been thrown out over the past six to eight weeks. He is doing everything that Trump wants him to do. And I think the question now is will the Senate pay attention to this or will they, as they have done in other Trump nominations, eventually cave and appoint and confirm Todd Blanche as the permanent attorney general?
- [10:45]
Nicole Wallace
I mean, Liz Oyer, the question for people like Tillis and Cassidy and Cornyn is what will you do when your wife is under criminal investigation by the Department of Justice? Because retribution in the second term is broadly understood by Ty Blanche to include Republican critics as well. I think that Thomas Massie and Marjorie Taylor Greene and John Bolton would certainly Cheney Adam Kinzinger. I mean, the list goes on and on. That retribution is a brush that can be painted across anyone that doesn't go along with the charade of a second term as president that Donald Trump is carrying Out. And Todd Blanche is enabling.
- [11:31]
Liz Oyer
Yeah. So Blanche and Trump both know from personal experience that being under investigation is very damaging. Just the investigation itself, it's a lot of work, it's a lot of money. It's a lot of pressure on an individual's family just to be in that situation of being under criminal investigation. So they know the power of opening an investigation into an enemy of the president. That is a punishment unto itself, even if it goes nowhere, as most of these investigations likely will go nowhere because there's no merit to them. But what's especially notable about an investigation of someone like Gavin Newsom is that there historically has been a very detailed, very laborious process that prosecutors at the Justice Department have to go through to open an investigation or prosecution of an elected public official. That process would go through Main justice, through the Public Integrity Section, which is a specialized unit run by a career non political prosecutor that would essentially advise the attorneys in the FIELD In a U.S. attorney's office like the one in Sacramento, whether Main justice standards would support opening an investigation into a political elected official. That state stakes for that type of investigation are especially high because it has the potential to deprive the American people of the services of a public servant that they elected and put into that office. So the bar is very high. And it would be something that career experts in the Justice Department would weigh in on. But under this administration, the Public Integrity Section has been totally decimated, absolutely gutted. That specialized office that used to have about three dozen or so employees had at last count, two remaining staff members. Just illustrating that there is no concern in this, in this Justice Department about the norms and the values of the institution. It is all about dismantling the safeguards that allow the president and his, now his personal fixer, Todd Blanch, to get his enemies to punish people even when the institutional norms don't support that. And that's what really jumped out at me about the case of Gav. Of Gavin Newsom here.
- [13:47]
Nicole Wallace
Melissa, there's also the way, you know, as Glenn said, we learned about this. Most of what even the best reporters that cover the Justice Department know comes from the governor himself. I want to play a little bit more of his rather extraordinary public statement.
- [14:05]
Gavin Newsom
I'd like to say something to my wife. These times are not normal. They're not ordinary. I love you and I'm sorry he's doing this. You have not earned a single one of the indignities that he's trying to inflict on you and our children. And to Donald Trump, this country, this country does not belong to you. It does not belong to your cronies. And we're going to fight your lawlessness, and we're going to continue to remind the people of this country of your corruption, that same corruption our founders warned us against. As we move to celebrate our 250th anniversary, I'm going to keep reminding Americans of what they warned would happen if a man with no character ever held the office of presidency. So let me say it again, Mr. President, come after me. I'm not going anywhere. And the country is watching.
- [15:06]
Nicole Wallace
Melissa, these stories do have a pileup impact, right? Where, you know, one delay if you're on the plane is something you remember forever. But, you know, if you're at LaGuardia and you see the board and 50 flights are canceled, it sort of becomes a blur of cancellations. One political retribution is the same way, right? When we focus on one in the moment we had to stop the presses moment. I think you were with us when Eugene Carroll was reported to be on under investigation. And then questions arose about whether it was someone who may or may not have contributed to her defense. The thing about looking at them as a group is you can lump all the critics into one category, but there is something insidious happening, right? They're becoming bigger and bigger and bigger figures. This is the governor of California. This is a likely presidential candidate in 2028. And this is one of the most astute observers of all the things that make, you know, makes Trump happy, you know, winning the Internet, trolling his opponents. He's really on the money, on the grift. What do you make of the targeting of the Newsoms?
- [16:16]
Melissa Murray
I mean, you've said it best. This is someone who is likely to be a presidential rival in the next election. This is someone who has brought the fight to the president in terms that are incredibly personal, but also using the president's own tools. And he's been very adept, Gavin Newsom has, at using social media. I will also note, I see saw Jennifer Siebel Newsom's documentary that just filmed at Tribeca the other day, misrepresentation. The entire movie is about the way in which political retribution and the Internet and social media is used to target women and to keep them out of political office here. It seems that the targeting of Jennifer Siebel Newsom and her husband is intended perhaps to send a message to him as a rival. But it certainly sends a message to any other dissenters, any other potential rivals that this is what is waiting for you on the other side. If you go against Donald Trump, this is what you can expect and that's intended to be a deterrent. It's intended to have a chilling effect. And as Liz said, and as I've said on this program before, the process is the punishment. This is meant to weigh you down, to burden you, to make it hard for you to do other things, maybe even hard for you to run a rival presidential campaign.
- [17:30]
Nicole Wallace
All right, no one's going anywhere. When we all come back, there's a lot of news breaking today. We'll get to a warning coming from the highest levels inside this Trump White House about the Trump administration's own willingness to upend the Constitution. Plus, Donald Trump using the men and women of the military as props for his ego driven 80 year old birthday spectacle at the White House over the weekend. We'll talk about what that looked like and what kind of damage it could do to the American military and broader national security. And later in the broadcast, trying to end the war in Iran that Donald Trump started, even if he leaves America in a weaker place than before the war began, a quote unquote deal might be in place. No one has seen it and the details are at best confusing. We'll bring you all the reporting on all those stories and more when Deadline White House continues after a quick break. Don't go anywhere.
- [18:26]
Jimmy Uso
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Nicole Wallace
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Gavin Newsom
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Nicole Wallace
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Commercial Announcer
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- [19:28]
Gavin Newsom
have known each other for more than
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Jimmy Uso
a decade tussling over politics and policy when she worked in the White House,
- [19:33]
Nicole Wallace
and I reported on it and now
- [19:35]
Liz Oyer
we're friends and colleagues and on our podcast, Clock it, we are positioning ourselves at the intersection of culture and politics.
- [19:43]
Jimmy Uso
Clock it is where we talk about what we see and hear in the news. So you can start to clock it too.
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Gavin Newsom
Clock it with Simone and Eugene.
- [19:51]
Nicole Wallace
All episodes available now. A stark reminder today that the constitutional protections we have long assumed would always protect us because they were bedrock principles of our very democracy, are to Donald Trump nothing more than stumbling blocks as Trump and his cabinet seek to pursue an agenda by any means necessary. Alarming Brand new reporting from New York Times reporters Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman for their new book Regime Change, finds that Donald Trump and his administration actually went further than anyone knew at the time and previously realized or reported in seeking to upend constitutional protections, specifically suspending the rights of habeas corpus and invoking the Insurrection Act. All of it was in service of furthering Donald Trump's mass deportation agenda and stifling any constitutionally protected dissent against that agenda. That push by Stephen Miller and other key administration figures to suspend habeas corpus, the constitutional right to be brought before a judge and have your detention justified, and by JD Vance to invoke the Insurrection act, which would have allowed Donald Trump to deploy troops on the streets of American cities. Those twin efforts were so concerning that even conservative, conservative legal people working inside this White house of Trump 2.0 saw it necessary to vehemently push back. The New York Times journalists report this quote. Last spring, Will Scharf, an arch conservative lawyer serving as the White House staff secretary, wrote a secret memo to the chief of staff that reflected growing unease in the West Wing about one of the extreme measures being weighed by Stephen Miller, the powerful advisor driving Trump's deportation campaign. The Constitution, Mr. Scharf wrote in his memo to Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, permits suspension of habeas corpus only in cases of rebellion or invasion. Courts have almost uniformly held that only Congress can do it. Suspending habeas corpus was one of the two radical ideas Mr. Miller had been pushing that alarmed Mr. Scharf. The other was invoking the Insurrection act to deploy the military to enforce the law on American streets. As protests grew against deportation suites, the debate over invoking the Insurrection act came to a head in January after ICE agents killed two American citizen Alex Preddy and Renee Goode. They had been protesting ICE action in Minnesota. Of that, the Times writes this quote a few days after the Preddy killing, vance walked into Ms. Wiles west wing office. Vance got to the point they needed to invoke the Insurrection act swiftly to crush the unrest in Minnesota. It would be painful in the short term, he said, but the message it would send would make sure no one tried it again. While the White House ultimately did not move forward, the Times cautions that the desire to unleash troops on the streets of American cities is still alive and well. The journalists write this quote. Yet just as the idea of suspending habeas corpus was set aside but never fully abandoned by some inside the White House, the Insurrection act, at least in the eyes of its proponents, would remain a loaded weapon in a West Wing eager to test the limits of presidential power. We're back with Glenn, Melissa and Liz. Glenn, these are your colleagues Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan. Your thoughts on this reporting.
- [23:30]
Glenn Thrush
Well, you know, what's really interesting about this, I'll kind of flip it a bit on its head. I think, you know, there was some sense that we knew that Miller was pushing for these maximalist, these maximalist objectives. What is very interesting to me is even in the, even in a Trump to White House with no guardrails, this died a quiet death. And I think that reflects a couple of realities. I think first, I would point to, and again, this is not necessarily included in the reporting, but there is a strong countercurrent within the, within the West Wing, including David Warrington, who's the White House counsel of, of a kind of a libertarian streak. And I think Miller, Miller's push first through America, first Legal, that, you know, this Trump nonprofit that has been really the storehouse for these ideas, has left some people in the Trump coalition, even some inside the White House, feeling profoundly uncomfortable. That's number one. And number two, as you said, Nicole, the political realities on the street have been catastrophic. And this really, I think the question is, does this, did this period of time reflect kind of, kind of a high watermark in terms of Miller's audacity and the extension of executive power? Or is what, what we are witnessing now, a lull in that, that, you know, to accommodate the backlash and the midterm elections, and we're going to see something of a renewal of that, a clash between the executive and the legislative later on? We just can't tell. But what it really shows, I think, is the tensions even within the White House of what Miller and by extension what Trump really want to accomplish.
- [25:21]
Nicole Wallace
I mean, Melissa, I guess I'll flip it back over. And this person I'd never heard of him before. But Mr. Scharf writes a memoir because he views the Constitution as the only legal argument that will stop this radical, unconstitutional, extreme conduct on the part of two of Trump's most influential advisers. And I guess my question is, does that lawyer who stopped these things survive the book?
- [25:50]
Melissa Murray
Who knows? I mean, I think there's so many interesting things in this reporting. One, the idea that this very conservative lawyer who has been part of the administration and maybe blessed other policies, thought that this was a line in the sand, this was a bridge too far. To be very clear, the writ of habeas corpus dates all the way back to England and the Magna Carta. This was viewed as one of the fundamental rights of the people, that you cannot just be thrown in jail without the government explaining why it has done so and justifying it. We've had presidents push the envelope on this. They've genuinely been rebuked in most cases, either by Congress or the courts. And this is the history that Will Scharf invokes in this memo that he writes for Susie Wiles. The idea that Susie Wiles is the thing standing between us and a legitimate constitutional crisis is genuinely frightening. I mean, like, one person is standing between us and a president who believes he has almost unchecked power and who is facilitated by individuals who are senior members of the staff who are, you know, encouraging it in some capacity or would like to see him take this on. So this, to me, is just an alarming memo. Like, it may have been a path not taken, but the fact that we have people considering this, given the case law on this, given the very clear history regarding the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, the fact that Congress is unlikely to defend its prerogative to invoke the writ of habeas corpus and to suspend the writ of habeas corpus here over the president's encroachment on that power, all of this, to me, is just incredibly alarming. Like, we literally owe it to Susie Wiles that we are not in a legitimate constitutional crisis over the writ of habeas corpus.
- [27:32]
Nicole Wallace
Yeah, I mean, I guess, Liz, the other lens would be if Democrats were to do what all of the polls available suggest they will do, and that is retake control of the House and potentially the Senate. I would imagine one of the first people you'd want to talk to is this lawyer who wrote the memo. If you want to look at the mass deportation program, if you want to look at the efforts to deny people their rights before they were deported, if you want to examine that? It seems like you have some real breadcrumbs here.
- [28:08]
Liz Oyer
Well, there's actually quite a bit that Congress could do here. Part of the problem with the Insurrection act and a lot of these authorities that the president could in theory invoke in emergency situations is that they were written into law centuries ago. Very outdated. They really are due for updating. Congress should take a hard look at the law around habeas corpus, the Insurrection act, invoking the National Guard. All of these emergency authorities that Trump has contemplated using and has in some cases, what the National Guard used are things that Congress needs to review and reign in so that they are not susceptible to this type of abuse in the future. What we see from this memo is the extent to which the White House is exploring the potential to expand its power without really consulting or working with the lawyers, the people in the Justice Department who are entrusted with implementing policy of the executive branch. This was under Pam Bondi's leadership. I think the Scharf memo shows that Bondi was really sort of an empty vessel and was being pushed down. Directions from Stephen Miller and co in the White House and not really having the opportunity to weigh in from a legal perspective, which is not at all how the justice system or the legal system is supposed to work. And we really need Congress to step up and do its oversight of the Justice Department and look at some of these older laws that are due for
- [29:36]
Nicole Wallace
Liz, I'm going to ask you to stick around. You too, Glenn. Melissa Murray, thank you for starting us off today. To be continued. I am sure when we come back, we'll stay on this story and look at this new reporting on resistance inside the Trump administration. We'll also show you another celebrity finding her voice on these very stories. We'll tell you who that is on the other side.
- [30:01]
Jimmy Uso
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Glenn Thrush
Let's Jumble only available in permitted states.
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Glenn Thrush
See terms and conditions for details.
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Nicole Wallace
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- [30:32]
Commercial Announcer
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- [31:03]
Gavin Newsom
You can watch Ellie Velchi five nights a week in prime time on Ms. Now as he takes command of the 11th Hour, the breaking news in the
- [31:11]
Jimmy Uso
last hour, the 11th Hour with Ally
- [31:13]
Gavin Newsom
Velshi, weeknights at 11:00pm Eastern, premieres tonight on Ms. Now.
- [31:18]
Melissa Murray
Renee Nicole Good is not a symbol. She is an American woman, a queer woman who is doing the very best she could do to be good in an unjust world. Yeah.
- [31:34]
Liz Oyer
And I am honored to celebrate her
- [31:36]
Melissa Murray
life and her legacy tonight because the life she gave is our responsibility to Carrie.
- [31:46]
Nicole Wallace
That was actress Julia Roberts over the weekend speaking about Renee Nicole Goode, the 37 year old US citizen, mom of three kids. She was fatally shot by an ICE agent in Minneapolis earlier this year. Glenn is back with us. The piece of the Swann Haberman reporting that's so interesting is that sometimes from the outside you have an impression that they're impervious. You know, they must be because people are screaming at the top of their lungs and at least some of them are not. I mean, some of them still try to channel Donald Trump's very thin skin when it comes to some news coverage. Really, your newspaper and just a few choice spots in television, mercifully not this program. But the idea that this story which woke up the country, woke up the resistance, Julia Roberts was at an award show right after Renee Nicole Goode was killed and didn't say anything. So it was really interesting to see her honor, Renee Nicole Goode last night. I wonder if that was something she'd been wanting to lend her voice to. But this really is the turning point for the resistance. It puts Bruce Springsteen's tour in motion. He goes and performs with Tom Morello and launches Streets of Minneapolis, which precedes the Land of Hope and Dreams tour. I mean, it is such a cataclysmic political moment in terms of waking up Minneapolis and Minnesota and the resistance of the country and the reporting suggests that, that some people inside the West Wing saw it for what it was.
- [33:19]
Glenn Thrush
Well, first of all, on Julia Roberts, as a, as somebody who has been into the history of the civil rights movement, Julia Roberts, if memory serves me, right? Her hospital bill when she was born was paid for by MLK and Coretta. And her parents, along with her brother Eric Roberts, were, I think they ran like a theater company in Georgia. And they were really close to the king. So she comes, she comes by this for a really long, long time. But I think, look, I think there's always this edifice with the White House, right? With every single White House. It is built to intimidate it. You know, there is, there's a reason they make these buildings out of white marble, right? It is to give a sense of permanence to institutions, to institutions that are supposed to endure, but the people inside of them are supposed to be temporary, right? And no one has been more willing to sort of use these, these vast edifices to protect themselves than Donald Trump. What that belies is a lot nervousness and a lot of concerns inside. Trump perceived 2024 as a mandate to expand executive power almost infinitely. And the people around him interpreted the Supreme Supreme Court decision that enabled him to escape prosecution as, as a constitutional validation of Trump's political victory. But from the very beginning, I think everybody knew that there was an expiration date on this. And there is a sense ultimately that there will be a reckoning, whether it's at the hands of a Democratic controlled Congress or the electorate in 2028 or, or the scathing eyes of history. I think pretty much everyone who's involved in this process, with the potential exception of Trump himself, knows that there is going to be a day of reckoning. So we have seen throughout. You know, even in my reporting on Todd Blanche, he's thrown a red flag several times. It hasn't been consequential because he cares about being appointed permanent Attorney General more than he does about making these individual process points. But ultimately, I think almost everyone around him whose lives are not entirely iterative of Donald Trump knows that, that while he might not have guardrails, they are. Most of them are younger than 80 and foresee a future in will have to defend their actions when Donald Trump is no longer on the stage.
- [35:50]
Nicole Wallace
I think that applies to everyone except maybe Todd Blanche. Liz the New York Times op ed board writes this of his candidacy for Attorney General. Todd Blanche is unfit for office. Trump has every right to select an AG who shares his policy views. But Trump has no right to expect that the Senate will confirm an AG with a track record of disdaining the law and using law enforcement as a partisan weapon. Todd Blanch, whom the president nominated for the job last week, falls into this category. He's already damaged the Justice Department as a senior official there, and he has misled Congress. The Senate should reject his nomination. A useful standard for judging Blanche's nomination recently came from Cornyn, Quote, I want to make sure he understands that the senator said, because the AG is not the president's private lawyer, no matter what claims Blanche makes. Now, he has already demonstrated that he rejects that distinction. He views himself as the President's loyal enforcer. It may be a cop out, but I sometimes try to answer the question of how bad are they? With, they're so bad, even Trump's sycophantic Republicans don't like them. And Blanche now falls into this category. You know, how bad is he? He's so bad, Republicans are willing to be quoted in the New York Times criticizing him.
- [37:09]
Liz Oyer
Yeah. Interestingly, the National Review, which is a very conservative publication, also has come out against the confirmation of Blanche as Attorney General. So we're seeing it on both sides of the political spectrum. We're seeing a couple of key Republicans in Congress express discomfort with Todd Blanche's confirmation. So it's going to be a battle for him to get confirmed.
- [37:28]
Melissa Murray
Confirmed.
- [37:29]
Liz Oyer
And my hope is that some Republicans will ultimately decide that this institution, preserving the institution, preserving the rule of law is more important than catering to the political desires of this president. In this moment, the Justice Department's very future is in peril. Todd Blanche has shown himself to be someone who does not respect the institution. He doesn't respect the core values that he, as Attorney General, would be entrusted with protecting, which is include the Constitution and the rule of law. He is not at all suited for that position. And my hope is that members of Congress will put those larger core American values and pillars of our democracy over and above the politics of the situation.
- [38:16]
Nicole Wallace
We'll all be watching together. Liz Sawyer, Glenn Thresh, thank you so much for spending so much time with us today. We are grateful. Up next for us, from the blatant corruption of it all to desecrating the United States military, we'll look at the cage match thrown by the deeply unpopular President of the United states on his 80th birthday on the South Lawn of what's supposed to be the People's House. Next, When flagrant, previously unimaginable public corruption becomes so operationalized and normalized at the highest level of our federal government, we get the spectacle that the world saw at the White House yesterday. In honor of Donald Trump's 80th birthday party, Trump was joined by billionaires and Republican lawmakers and family members to watch men fight in cages on the White House lawn during the UFC Freedom250 event. New York Times reports today that the event was grotesque, over the top, even by Trump's own standards. Quote, it was such an astonishing sight for so many reasons. The use of the trappings of the White House for violent cage fighting, the corporate sponsorships, the eruptions of casual cruelty. Even for a president with a lifelong penchant for P.T. barnum esque gambits, this one was in a league of its own. Equally concerning is the blatant corruption on display was the use of military members who had to meet certain physical requirements as props at the event. Our friend, Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling warns this about Trump's use of our troops for his UFC spectacle. The military's value must come from its neutrality. The military is trusted because it stands outside the contest, and it is respected because it is seen as belonging to everyone. The moment it becomes associated with one side, one movement, one personality, one cultural trend, or even one event, the source of that credibility begins to erode. The prestige being borrowed is gradually diminished by the borrowing itself. I want to bring in our friend, military analyst Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling. He served as the commanding general of the US army in Europe. I thought you wrote the most thought provoking and really troubling piece about what was wrong. Right. It felt wrong. But you pointed out what was really the lasting damage.
- [40:48]
H
Explain, Nicole. This came from a speech that I went to. As I explained in the article, back when I was a captain stationed at West Point in the Department of Physical Education, instructors were always allowed to come when the cadets had guest speakers. And in this particular case, we had the late author Thomas Wolf, who wrote Bonfire of the Vanities, the Electric Kool Aid Acid Test, and a bunch of other great books. What he talked about was the future of America. And this was back in 1987. And then he directed part of the speech specifically to the cadets in the audience, and he said he was concerned about the evolving of the professional force. We had recently gone from a draft army to a professional force, and he was concerned that there was going to be a separation of societies. And what he said was, and the words I used in this article is, you have to be careful about becoming sentinels at the Bacchanalian feast, monks at an orgy. And that line kind of echoed back to me. I thought about that several times over the last couple years because of the discipline and the selfless service and the integrity that is brought into the military society versus how whatever direction the civilian society goes so as you said in your opening just now, this was an interesting cultural event using the White House grounds, which many people do not agree with for something like a cage match. And I'm not degrading or denigrating the UFC or cage matches or this kind of fighting, but when you talk about dedicating the culture of the White House to support something like that, okay, you can have a debate on that. But what happened over the weekend was increasingly the military was pulled into it and instead of being sentinels at the bacchanalian, they were invited into the feast itself. We had flyover Air Force flyovers, the Marine band playing a joint force color guard. Before the matches began. We had Medal of Honor winners escorting people through a rope of other soldiers who whenever a Medal of Honor winner approaches, everyone salutes that individual. So when those Medal of Honor winners were awardees were with those martial art fighters coming down the corridor, the soldiers providing the honor guard were saluting. Very few people knew the difference between what they were saluting was not the martial arts fighters, but the Medal of Honor recipients who were with them. So it just confuses the American public and I think it unfortunately brings the military, which is a unique institution in our democracy, into the fray. And they shouldn't be there. In my view. They just should not be there.
- [43:53]
Nicole Wallace
Unfortunately, in covering this story, I know that this is not one and done. The conversation will continue and we're lucky to have you for it. Lieutenant General Mark Herling, thank you for joining us today and for your piece after the break. The taxpayer funded renovation to the Trump altered reflecting pool near the Lincoln Memorial, the one he likes to have on a picture with other skyscrapers for some reason has already run into problems. We'll tell you about that next. Donald Trump's obsession with beautifying DC Just hit a roadblock. Mother Nature Trump's project to make the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool quote American Flag blue, which was finished just one week ago, has already fallen victim to algae. Politico reports that an Interior Department spokesperson claims the current algae is residual from supply lines that sat dormant for eight weeks during construction. And it is part of the normal startup process. But if you're wondering just how much of your taxpayer dollars were spent to get us here to this algae covered reflecting pool. Online federal contracting records show that $1.7 million was awarded to Green Water Solutions for the ozone nano bubbling system, while $14.2 million was awarded to Atlantic Industrial Coatings to line the pool in that color. Trump talks about American Flag Blue. We'll let you know when it turns blue. Another break. Donald Trump says there's a deal with Iran, but could it be worse than the Obama deal Trump blew up? Of course it can't. We'll explain what deadline White House continues after that break.
- [45:47]
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