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Deadline: White House
"Interference"
00:46:01
Nicolle Wallace reacts to the latest on Donald Trump’s efforts to politicize the Federal Reserve and MSNBC’s Jacob Soboroff gives an update on his reporting about Nory Sontay Ramos.
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- [00:00]
Nicole Wallace
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- [00:32]
If you're looking for new ways to get ahead, then you're our kind of person. We're Udemy and we help learners like you upskill in AI, productivity, leadership and management and more. Learn at your own pace from real world experts. You can also prep for certifications that show employers what, you know upskill for the career you want@udemy.com now back to your regularly scheduled listening Donald Trump has the ability to stem the bleeding. But rather than change his tariff policies, reverse his disastrous energy policies and restore the health care coverage that he has just ripped away from 15 million Americans, Trump wants to make the Fed his economic scapegoat. When Trump seizes control, Fed decisions won't be driven by data, but by Donald Trump's personal feelings. Hi again Everybody. It's now five o'clock in New York. Another day, another part of the federal government that Donald Trump is trying to wreck and or bend to his will. His target this time is the Federal Reserve, the country's central bank. It is supposed to remain completely independent of all political influence and forces making monetary decisions based solely on on the data, decisions like whether and when to lower interest rates, which is what markets and experts are expecting to come from the Fed's two day meeting this week and what Donald Trump has been pressuring the Fed to do for months. Now that pressure has come in the form of threatening to fire Fed Chairman Jerome Powell, who has remained steadfast despite Donald Trump's campaign of intimidation. At one point, he even did what only few have done, fact check Donald Trump to his face. We're taking a look and it looks.
- [02:25]
Like it's about 3.1 billion.
- [02:27]
Went up a little bit or a lot. So the 2.7 is now 3.1. I'm not aware of that. Yeah, it just came out.
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Yeah, I haven't heard that from anybody at the Fed.
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Our notes had about 3.1 as well. 3.1, 3.2.
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This came from us.
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Yes. I don't know who does that now.
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You're including the Martin renovation.
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Steve Liesman
You just added, you just added in.
- [02:58]
Nicole Wallace
A third building is what that is. That's a third building.
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It's a building that's being built.
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No, it was built five years ago. We finished Martin five years ago.
- [03:07]
It's part of the overall work. It was built five years ago. But Donald Trump's months long public pressure campaign against Jerome Powell and the rest of the Fed is not the sum total of his attempts to reshape the bank. Tonight, the Senate will vote on Trump's pick to fill a vacancy on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, a man by the name of Stephen Mirren, a Trump loyalist who currently serves as the chair of Trump's Council of Economic Advisers. Mirren has said he will not resign from his current role, but take a leave of absence if confirmed to the Fed. The Senate vote happening tonight means that if Mirren gets sworn in tomorrow, he can be present for the Fed's meeting that begins tomorrow. Yet the latest news surrounding Donald Trump's interference in his fight to fire another member of the Board of Governors, Lisa Cook, is pretty bad news for him. Yesterday, DOJ filed an emergency motion trying to undo a judge's ruling from last week that temporarily blocked his ability to fire her. Meanwhile, it was first reported by Reuters that there is no evidence in the form of a loan estimate that refutes Donald Trump's entire manufactured rationale for firing her. From Reuters, quote, The document dated May 28, 2021, was issued to Cook by her credit union in the weeks before she completed the purchase. It shows that she had told the lender that the Atlanta property wouldn't, would not be her primary residence. The document appears to counter other documentation that Cook's critics have cited in support of their claims that she committed mortgage fraud. But by reporting two different homes as her primary residence, two independent real estate experts said, end quote. Donald Trump's interference in the independent Federal Reserve is where we begin this hour with some of our favorite experts and friends. Joining our coverage is CNBC senior economics reporter Steve Leesman. Also joining us, Puck News senior political columnist, MSNBC national affairs analyst John Heilman. Andrew Weissman is back with us. Let me start with you, Steve, on just this, this tactic. And I think because Trump and his allies have done it to so many people, it requires us to ask if it is a coincidence that so many people suddenly have questions about their mortgage applications.
- [05:33]
Steve Liesman
Look, I think there's general agreement that there is a concerted effort by this president to either limit or eliminate the independence of the Federal Reserve. He thinks he's smarter than the collective wisdom of the Fed and the economic experts. There. Not that the hasn't made mistakes over there. And he's doing this through a couple ways. Obviously, this thing by Bill Pulte is an effort to get rid of Lisa Cook as the Fed governor. Without that position, Nicole, he could not gain a majority on the separate Federal Reserve Board until the end of 2028 if Powell stays. So there's some calculation in there, but clearly the impression that people get from all of the combination of his axes, the criticism of pow, the relenting criticism of Powell, the threats to fire him. In fact, at one point he said he was going to fire him and he kind of backed off the same day and putting Myron on the board, which is again unprecedented in the sense that we have had people go from the White House to the Fed, but they sever all ties. This would be the first time that a person has kept his or her job and remain unpaid. And what's interesting is the term is only four months. However, it can be extended if nobody takes that position or is nominated and approved for that position. So what could happen here is he could remain this. And the trouble you have is that here you have a guy that wants to go back to the White House and if he's not going to do the bidding of the president, well, the question will become the extent to which he is welcome back at the White House.
- [07:09]
Nicole Wallace
Let me I always like to try to understand things I don't understand when I get the chance to talk to you. So Steve, you're blinking out there. You are. You're back. Does do the markets do business leaders by and large like Jerome Powell, do they like a Powell led Fed?
- [07:31]
Steve Liesman
I think so. I think Wall street has been relatively supportive of Powell. They think he might have moved quicker to address the inflation problem from the pandemic. But he did pull off essentially what has not been done for a long time, which is that soft landing from the high. Everybody was convinced there would be a recession. The recession didn't happen under his watch. So while he did make a mistake at the front and he's acknowledged this, he didn't move fast enough. Well, because there was a pandemic going on, among other reasons, to address the inflation from the pandemic, he did so and he did so forcefully. I think overall, if I could answer your question, Nicole, I would say business leaders like an independent Federal Reserve, they don't necessarily want somebody or a board in general that's beholden to the president.
- [08:20]
Nicole Wallace
And I guess I'm asking because I pressed and I've tried to understand where the business community comes in on the question of a democracy or a country making clearly autocratic moves or deploying tools more familiar in an autocratic state. The Fed seems like, like their thing, a thing that matters to them. And I wonder if you're surprised, unsurprised, phased, unfazed, that there isn't a more vocal effort to preserve the independence of the Fed.
- [08:49]
Steve Liesman
I have been surprised throughout this presidency over the last six months that business has not stepped up more forcefully. I suppose they're enjoying their tax cuts. I suppose some of them, or many of them are afraid of retribution from the President. One gentleman did, Ken Griffin, he did speak out on the page of the Wall Street Journal. The Wall Street Journal op ed has also been very vocal about this issue. But in general, to the extent there is communication, it's behind the scenes and not public. And there has not been much of a move, as far as I can tell, from the business community, to protect the independence of the Federal Reserve.
- [09:24]
Nicole Wallace
And I guess what I'm trying to understand is if they don't care enough to protest, what does it mean for everyday small business owners and consumers in America if Donald Trump takes over the Fed?
- [09:36]
Steve Liesman
Well, just a couple things. The people who really should care are the Senate. Right. The Federal Reserve is a creation of Congress and that may be the thing that ultimately saves Lisa Cook's job. We'll see about that. But right now you're going to have a vote for Steven Myron at 5:30, a cloture vote, I believe, or 6 o', clock, and then a full vote by the Senate at 8 o'. Clock. And all of these structures that we talk about every day on your show, Nicole, freedom of the press, the separation of powers, these are human made structures. They only exist because humans want them to exist. The Fed's independence is right along with that. If people do not move to protect it, if they accept the idea that Stephen Myron will remain on an unpaid leave of absence from the White House while he's on the Federal Reserve Board, then there's nothing to keep that structure in place if people don't do it. And so that's where we're at right now.
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Nicole Wallace
I mean, Andrew, there are not a lot of new Trump stories. And this has a haunting echo to what we just talked about with Maureen Comey.
- [10:41]
Andrew Weissmann
Absolutely. I'm going to quote from, don't worry, it's not too eggheady, but from Robert Jackson, a former Supreme Court justice, the lead American prosecutor in the Nuremberg trials, who said that the Constitution preserves liberty by dividing power. The same story with Maureen Comey you're seeing here. Congress has created the Fed. Congress created rules about how it can be treated, its independence, that you have to remove somebody only for cause. You can't just remove them at will. They're not a cabinet where there you can do it at will. And this is the president, which is kind of expected. The president's like, I want to do whatever I can. I'm going to do as much as I can. And it's incumbent on Congress and the Supreme Court to be pushing back on that if we are going to live in the society that was created by our Constitution.
- [11:42]
Nicole Wallace
Are we?
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Andrew Weissmann
I mean, so far, I would say that the Supreme Court has done a terrible job. You can go just over and over the number of decisions where they have caved on that issue. Go back to Trump v. United States, the immunity decision, presidential immunity decision. The lower courts are pushing back. The lower courts are saying that Congress is done things and that the president does not have that power. And that is our system of government. Our system of government is not that we create a president and that the other branches have no role. And this story, very much like the Maureen Comey story, is an individual story that represents that fundamental tension.
- [12:26]
Nicole Wallace
Hellman, I guess what I want to explore with you is, is this really in Donald Trump's interest? I mean, he wanted full control of the Department of Justice, and now it is his lackeys who are withholding the Epstein files from his most devoted political supporters. Does he really want to own the Fed?
- [12:47]
I mean, Nicole, one of the things about the Fed from the standpoint of a president, is that a lot of them have been frustrated in the past at various times, especially around elections where. Where presidents have wanted the Fed to be either usually cutting interest rates to try to goose the economy when an election is on the horizon. That was famously true with George Herbert Walker Bush heading in the 1992 election and have tried to kind of jawbone the Fed. But one of the great things about the Fed in general for presidents is its independence, because there is a degree to which they don't have to own the decisions that the Fed makes. And again, I'm not an economist, and I don't play one on tv, although I've covered the economy at various times in my career. It certainly is the case that the most toxic thing politically, that we know in any economy anywhere in the world in modern history is inflation. And the kinds of policies that Trump seems to favor on the part of the Fed, which is a loose Money policy that would drive growth is also the kind of policy that could very well lead to inflation. We already have more inflation right now than Trump said we were going to have. We know all these stats, we've talked about them a lot on the show. But the danger here for Trump and the political sense is that he doesn't know better than the Fed. To get back to what Steve said a couple minutes ago, he doesn't know better than the Fed and that he's going to do what he thinks is the right thing, which is if he can take over as much as possible, the Fed. If he can't take it over, he doesn't seem to think he can. He thinks that firing Powell is a bridge too far. Clearly, he thinks that that might upset the markets and the business community enough that he's held back from doing it. So he's trying to do it now, piece by piece. And if he gets to the point where he has effective control over the Fed and cuts interest rates in a kind of promiscuous way, he's going to be looking potentially at hyperinflation. Hyperinflation, again is at the period when we're not. We're also seeing slowing growth because of these economic policies. A world of not just stagflation, but of radical stagflationness, radical stagnancy on the growth side, and inflation that's going even faster in terms of price rises than we're currently seeing. That's political poison for Republicans in the midterms and for whoever ends up being the Republican standard bearer in the 2028 presidential election. But Trump thinks he knows better about this, just like he thinks he knows better about tariffs. And I think he's just doing what he thinks is what he believes with no evidence to undergird it, what he believes is the right thing for the economy. But, boy, there's no other president that I have ever covered who would have wanted to take ownership of interest rates throughout their term.
- [15:33]
So, Steve, do you think Scott Besant thinks it's a good idea for Donald Trump to take over control of the Fed?
- [15:41]
Steve Liesman
I don't think he thinks that. He just wrote a piece that was critical of The Fed, a 3,000 word article, which, by the way, no Treasury Secretary has ever done either. But he did endorse the independence of the Fed. Just to add to what John was talking about, there's actually, Nicole, a school of thought that says the Fed was invented to blame for problems in the economy. So it is a fascinating idea that the president is taking actions to essentially own this. And we have a survey coming out tomorrow of some strategists, economists and fund managers. And I can tell you that first of all, a large majority of them think the President is moving to eliminate or limit the independence of the Fed. That's the first thing. The second thing is they see very bad outcomes from that on both inflation, unemployment, growth and the value of the dollar. So this is not seen as the optimal economic course to take, I would say.
- [16:37]
Nicole Wallace
Can you explain what you just said to me? So they don't see. So smart economists survey. So like a poll, right? In my world, inflation, tariffs, value of the dollar. Why is the market still so high?
- [16:52]
Steve Liesman
Well, because I think it's, first of all, it's trading on AI. It's trading on the idea that the Fed is going to cut interest rates either in part because it's the right thing to do or because they believe that the President will sort of jawbone those rates lower. That's the first thing. And I think the idea is you kind of take the. Also there's this AI trade that's out there that has been raised a lot of optimism and enthusiasm about the market and about the economy and investment in certain individual sectors. But if you look at the places where there are tariffs, those sectors are not doing quite as well. You also are not gonna trade future inflation right now. You're gonna trade the momentum that's going on. So the market seems a little divorced from these realities. And what these economists are talking about is something that would happen down the road. You might have, you know, you can juice the economy for several months, which is sort of why you have this independent Fed idea out there, which is that, yeah, you have this short term gain you can get through low interest rates, but longer term, you want people who are gonna sort of, I guess, be adults in the room and say, yeah, you can do that. Now, you can eat all that candy or you can eat all those stimulants and you can run around like crazy, but you're gonna crash later on. And that's the reason for the independent Federal Reserve. And that's the concern out there among these experts that we surveyed.
- [18:13]
Nicole Wallace
And just real quick, I know you've been so generous with your time, but just quickly, Steve, who's looking out for sort of working class families for whom inflation and the tariff regime that Donald Trump promised, as those all hit and as we head into the holidays, what happens to them?
- [18:30]
Steve Liesman
It'll be an interesting holiday because as you know, the Supreme Court, I think, is going to rule sometime in October. And right now you could imagine if your idea is to import those things that hang on the trees or the lights or anything like that, you might be hanging loose for a little bit. Wait until you see if you got to pay a tariff, tariff on it. I think there's a price to be paid here. What's happening though in the political process is the politicians wind up and they're like, oh, the June inflation report came out. It was all cool, no tariff inflation. July a little bit more. See, no tariff inflation. What might be happening here, Nicole, is this tariff inflation and these higher prices may be spread out over several months. What we've seen, I think you and I talked about this, we've seen retailers eat the prices for a little while and they could be dribbling it out over time. So you may get here six months from now and see a tariff impact. Meanwhile, the politics has moved on to, oh, no tariff inflation at all. But it's a bit like the proverbial frog boiling in the water.
- [19:37]
Nicole Wallace
Yeah, there's a lot of that going on. Stieglasen, thank you for answering all my questions and helping me make sense of it. Andrew Weisman, thank you for staying here across two hours. Halman, you're sticking with us. When we come back, a stark warning from a Republican member of Congress who says Donald Trump is being plagued basically by Vladimir Putin and that the consequences for the west could be dire. That story's next. Also had the exclusive reporting Jacob Stoboroff brought to us earlier this month about the honor roll student from Los Angeles who was deported to a country she barely knows. Her story took a tragic turn. We'll tell you about it. And later in the hour, Stephen Colbert meeting. This perilous moment for our country will show you what he said after his soon to be canceled show won big last night at the Emmys. Deadline White House continues after a quick break. Don't go anywhere.
- [20:32]
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- [21:03]
Nicole Wallace
I think that you have to have faith that in the end it'll all be okay, that no matter who wins a presidential election we will live in a democracy. The First Amendment will govern what journalists can say and do. The Constitution will protect the rights of everybody if you can agree that most people want those things. Our show is about trying to bend the arc toward that end result.
- [21:25]
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- [22:04]
Nicole Wallace
The calls are coming from inside the GOP House these days with a rare public warning from a Washington Republican. Donald Trump is being played by Vladimir Putin. As a result, our friends in Europe are getting very nervous. The latest Romania says it shot down a Russian drone that flew into its airspace over the weekend, which the European Union's foreign policy chief called a quote, reckless escalation by Moscow. It was also the second incursion in less than one week by Russia over a NATO country. The NATO alliance scrambling on Wednesday to shoot down Russian drones over Poland, prompting a rare implication of Article 4. Donald Trump, meanwhile, suggested this could have simply, quote, been a mistake by Russia, which a Republican lawmaker here at home says is the result of Donald Trump being manipulated by Vladimir Putin, which he argues have could have serious global security consequences. Here is that warning over the weekend by Republican Congressman Michael McCaul.
- [23:06]
With all deference to the president, I don't think that was a mistake. I think, I think Putin is testing the resolve of NATO. What I'm concerned about is that the escalation here and the temperature rising. We got to be very careful not to be on the precipice of a World War 3. I never had any good faith anticipation of these negotiations. Putin is KGB once and always, and I don't think he's playing fair. I think he's manipulating the president as a KGB officer would.
- [23:41]
Joining our conversation, former deputy national security advisor to President Obama, MSNBC contributor Ben Rhodes. John is still here with me. Ben, I guess I want to explain why that's news, right? It's news because Republicans don't criticize the that which they've always opposed when Donald Trump does it. This Republican who I just played happens to be retiring. So a little bit of truth came out. Your thoughts.
- [24:09]
Ben Rhodes
Well, yeah, and he's also been a prominent voice on national security for a very long time. And look, I think part of what is happening here is just stating the obvious. Since the meeting in Alaska, think about what's happened. We've had an escalation of Russian attacks in Ukraine. We've had the incursion of these Russian drones into Poland, which led to the scrambling of NATO jets to shoot down these drones. And the prime minister of Poland saying this is the closest they've been to war since World War II. Right. And so what you see is Putin pushing the envelope. You know, he has the summit with Trump that leads to the kind of scrambling of the European allies and Zelensky coming to Washington. Mainly, it seems to just get Trump from fully embracing Putin's terms for ending the war on essentially all of Russia's conditions. And then when, obviously that leads nowhere because Zelensky can't agree to those terms, you have this Russian escalation. And I think what he's getting at, Congressman McCaul, is, is that if the US commitment to collective defense of NATO is essentially revealed to not be with teeth. If essentially the Russians are probing and they're kind of finding out over time that the US Isn't really in, it's just the Europeans by themselves, then the possibility of Russia ratcheting up efforts on that Polish border or on the border of the Baltics or anywhere else along the eastern flank of NATO goes up. And we do have a real risk, not just of Ukraine, but of potentially a W conflict.
- [25:34]
Nicole Wallace
You know, John Halman, what's interesting to me, if you. If you just put the frame around it that Ben just did the window in time, Putin is doing to Trump what Trump does to Republicans, right? So Putin gets what he wants from Trump. Trump launders him back into polite society, giving him a literal red carpet welcome, building an elevated stage on which they walk together, touching, and then into one of the most iconic symbols of the American presidency, the presidential limo called the beast. What does he do after that? He humiliates Donald Trump almost immediately. He knows Donald Trump wants the war to end, so he escalates savage attacks all over Ukraine, targeting civilians, drones escalating into Kyiv in places they've never been before, basically making a fool out of Donald Trump. If you lay that sort of psychology over the Putin, Trump relationship that we now, for nine years, have laid over the Trump, you know, fill in the blank Republican example. Putin, as with Trump, will not respond to being pandered to or being sort of accommodated. Trump seems to have put the world on a much more dangerous path.
- [26:58]
Well, Yeah, I guess 100% on all of that, Nicole. And I would draw the analogy even further to Michael McCaul, which is to say, I don't know how much Putin enjoys humiliating Trump. I can't be inside Vladimir Putin's head. What I do know on the basis of his actions, and I think Ben would agree with me about this, is that Putin has a large long term objective and that he is going to continue to try to pursue that large long term objective, which is to say to take back everything that was once part of the Russian empire in Europe. And unless somebody stops him, that's what he's going to do. And what he sees on Trump's part is that Trump will not just welcome him and roll out the red carpet, he'll also, Trump will occasionally complain about Putin. He'll sometimes write a tweet, he'll sometimes have a quote, he'll sometimes express that he's upset and he's really angry at Putin and he wants Putin to do this and he wants Putin to do that, but he doesn't do anything about it. Right. So the same, the analogy is perfect when it comes to congressional Republicans because Michael McCaul can go out. You're right. It's news that any Republican ever criticizes Trump over anything. But what are they going to do about it is the real question. Right. And there is occasionally from Lindsey Graham or somebody else some expression of discontent with Trump's foreign policy, especially with respect to Putin. But no one in the United States Senate in this term is going to stand up and say, all right, we are now going to vote some sanctions against Russia and we are going to override the president's veto if he vetoes them. We saw that in the first Trump term. We don't see that anymore. And so to me, yes, it's news that McCaul said those things, but it's meaningless news in the sense that the only thing that's going to change Trump's behavior is action on the part of Senate Republicans. The only thing that's going to change Putin's behavior is action on the part of the west, particularly on the part of the United States. And in both cases, there is no action forthcoming. There is only an open door to Putin to keep doing what he wants to do, and there's an open door to Trump to keep doing what he wants to do in the absence. Those two guys will keep going until someone actually makes them stop. And no one is willing to do.
- [29:07]
That right now it's a bleak but an honest assessment of where things are. Too bad Marco Rubio isn't for the things he was for when he was in the United States Senate because he actually sees Putin the way McCall does. But he's busy. Let's see. Here's what happened today from the Trump administration. Trump truthed about it, so we know it's true. The president posted on Truth Social saying US Military forces conducted a second kinetic strike this morning on a Venezuelan boat, along with video of the alleged strike. The president alleges the strike occurred while, quote, these confirmed narco terrorists from Venezuela were in international waters transporting illegal narcotics. We switched to all caps, a deadly weapon poisoning Americans. We go back to non caps headed to the U.S. ben Rhodes, when you take, we'll do patterns for the day. Right. When you take the pattern of the last strike, we learned within days that the boat actually didn't represent an imminent threat because it couldn't, because it was driving away from America and that there were 11 people on board and no evidence was ever produced. What are your thoughts about how Trump is using the military?
- [30:22]
Ben Rhodes
Well, I mean, first of all, nobody knows where this is going. It's not going to stop drug trafficking. What we've seen is a major escalation in the use of force in our hemisphere with no legal basis, no strategy articulated, just these kind of performative posts on true social. But if you pull back the Cameron Nicole Trump campaigned on ending the chaos globally. And clearly what he had in mind was the war in Ukraine and the war in Gaza and ending the forever wars that the United States has been in since 9, 11. The war in Ukraine has escalated substantially since Trump took office, and there's no end in sight there. The war in Gaza is escalating as Mark Rubio is in Israel.
- [31:00]
Nicole Wallace
Today.
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Ben Rhodes
You have Israel preparing to go ahead with this offensive on Gaza City shortly after they bombed a US Partner in Qatar. And then you've got Trump, instead of ending the forever wars, rebranding the Department of Defense, the Department of War and starting what feels like a forever war in our own hemisphere against drug traffickers? Where does that end? What are the objectives? What's the legal basis for these strikes? Are we going to go into Venezuela and suddenly find ourselves in a war in our hemisphere? So there's no clarity on what the point of all this is. You're not going to stop drug trafficking by blowing up a couple of boats. And you may very well make a mistake. But you also may be paving the way towards more military interventionism in this hemisphere, whether it's in Venezuela or taking back the Panama Canal. And so not only is this kind of bad, I think foreign policy, but also kind of goes against like a pretty core plank of America first foreign policy. I think more people need to be pointing out here this is not what he told his own people he was going to do as commander in chief. It's risking getting the United States into more wars at the same time that we're not ending the two principal wars that Trump campaigned on ending on day one.
- [32:12]
Nicole Wallace
It's amazing. As you're talking, imagine if you ran on I will never release the Epstein files, but I will have a thousand agents pour through them to cross out my name. I will make everything at Walmart and Home Depot and Target more expensive. But I will bully one of those three CEOs and holding the line on prices and I will start a war in our hemisphere. Now go vote. I mean, it's just, I mean, it's amazing. I know it's true, but when I hear it sometimes my ears hurt. Ben Rhodes and John Hammond, thank you for being my friends. Thank you for being here today. When we come back, our friend and colleague Jacob Soboroff will be our guest with a tragic update in the story of Nori Sante Ramos, the honor roll high school student from Los Angeles who was deported along with her mom to Guatemala. Jacob joins us next. I think that you have to have faith that in the end it'll all be okay, that no matter who wins a presidential election, we will live in a democracy. The First Amendment will govern what journalists can say and do. The Constitution will protect the rights of everybody if you can agree that most people want those things. Our show is about trying to bend the arc toward that end result deadline.
- [33:25]
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- [33:50]
Jacob Soboroff
Do you think it's fair, Nori, what happened to you?
- [33:53]
Nicole Wallace
No, it's not fair at all because we had like a case going on. It was not my mom's fault.
- [34:02]
Jacob Soboroff
Well, you were trying to do the right thing.
- [34:04]
Nicole Wallace
Yes.
- [34:05]
Jacob Soboroff
Do you think that they knew that you were an honor student?
- [34:09]
Nicole Wallace
I don't think so.
- [34:10]
Jacob Soboroff
Do you think that they knew that, that you were a star runner?
- [34:15]
Nicole Wallace
No.
- [34:16]
Jacob Soboroff
How about that you were gonna go to college?
- [34:18]
Nicole Wallace
They didn't know anything.
- [34:19]
Jacob Soboroff
And that you wanted to be in fashion.
- [34:21]
Nicole Wallace
Maybe they didn't care. They were just like, no, we have to just deport them.
- [34:28]
Jacob Soboroff
What's it like when you wake up here?
- [34:33]
Nicole Wallace
It's not my home. That was 18 year old honor student track star Nori Sante Ramos. We first introduced you her two weeks ago. She spoke there exclusively to our friend Jacob Soboroff about her experience of being deported from Los Angeles along with her mother Estella, back to her mom's home country of Guatemala. It's a country she doesn't even know after they fled Guatemala due to threats of gang violence. But since we first brought you that story, there's been a tragic update. Both Estella and Nori say that ICE confiscated Estella's medication when they were both arrested. And without that medication, Estella died shortly after she and Nori arrived back in Guatemala. Jacob Sobroff writes this for msnbc.com, quote According to Nori, her mother was. Her mother told her she wasn't feeling well. We insisted on taking her to a doctor, but she refused. She was too afraid to go out. Hours later, her condition worsened. Estella began vomiting and collapsed. Nori and one of her sisters, who lives in Guatemala and was with them at the time, tried to help, but they had no medicine. Joining our coverage, MSNBC senior national and political correspondent Jacob Sobroff's here and with me on set, MSNBC political analyst Princeton University professor Eddie Claude is here. Jacob, how's Nori doing? And tell us what happened.
- [35:59]
Jacob Soboroff
I've been hearing from Norrie over the course of the last just about a week since her mom passed away. And as you can imagine, Nicole, it's just awful when we talk about the consequences of deportation, who's really being deported and why they had no criminal record, what happens to them? This is what happens or potentially could. And two months after being deported, with her honor student track star ascending, senior from Los Angeles, Estella Ramos Baten died at the age of 45 because she didn't have the medication, according to her daughter and her which is what she told us two weeks before her death when we visited them in Guatemala. ICE had taken it away when they were apprehended in Los Angeles after their routine immigration check in ICE tells us, I should say that when they were in Texas, the second stop after being detained, they gave Estella a medical evaluation and prescribed her the medications that she needed. But this medication for her blood pressure was not one of them. And so her worst fears were realized. You know, when we were there and I was talking to Estela in A tiny little kitchen in a tiny little apartment where they were hiding out from the same gangs from which they fled. The thing that you wanted to tell me was she was so worried about Nori and what might happen to Nori. Let me play a little bit of that for you, Nicole. This is Estella before she passed away. What she said there, Nicole, is what I really want to emphasize. We can't go out because she was terrified that the gangs they ran away from in the first place that brought them to Los Angeles were the same ones that were standing outside their door at any given time. And that's why they didn't go get any medication. That's why they felt unable to get any medication. And even when Nori says her mother got sick, they didn't leave the house until it was too late.
- [38:03]
Nicole Wallace
Jacob, when you were here at this table and you first brought us the story of Nori and her teacher in Los Angeles, who brought the story to you? I said to you, you look more inspired and optimistic than I've seen you in the last seven months. And this story is one of the saddest. Not that there's any relativity to the operational ele, human cruelty, but I wonder how you're feeling right now.
- [38:33]
Jacob Soboroff
It is sickening. I feel awful to be in touch with Nori and to know that she's there. You know, the family has started a GoFundMe, which you can find on my social media page or elsewhere. The expenses that they were going to be paying towards their appeal of their immigration case went towards Nori's mother's funeral in the same village that she ran away from after she was beaten by the gang that made Nori so scared at the time that she fainted from fear. And Norrie is terrified today. I'm in touch still with her teacher, Darcy White, here in Los Angeles, who has mobilized an incredible community of people to do whatever they can to try to get Nori back here to the United States now that she is alone without her mother in Guatemala. But the facts are what they are. You know, 60% of the people in Los Angeles that were picked up during the height of these raids in the summer, according to Syracuse University, had no criminal records. They were like Norrie and Estella. And so we know the one story. We know Norrie's story in detail because Darcy White reached out to me. Because we went to Guatemala, we were able to be face to face with them. But how many other stories like this are there? It's disheartening, but again, I hope that through sharing this. Nouria was wearing that same sweatshirt that you're looking at on your screen as she wailed over the coffin of her own mother at the funeral, which was televised on local television, as is custom. And that coffin was draped not just with the Guatemalan flag, Nicole, but the flag of the United States of America. And neither of them were citizens of this country. But this was Norrie's home. This was Estella's home. And if there's anything from all this that I want people to understand is that that is what I have come to believe about Nori and her mother. And by the way, the people that she left behind here, her own mother's park boyfriend here in Los Angeles said, and I want to make sure I get this exactly right. The stress and the sadness and the deportation is what killed her, you know, not to mention the medical conditions. But she was a nervous wreck.
- [40:34]
Nicole Wallace
And this is why I want to bring Eddie in. I have to sneak in a quick break. We'll all be right back. On the other side, we're back with Jacob and Eddie. So I don't know if you two know this, but I, I think of you too, as, I mean, Jacob, you're an award winning journalist, you're lots of other things, but you're also sort of my correspondent of humanity. And Eddie, I feel like when there is something that questions, that makes me question what other humans can do to other humans. You're someone I always need at this table and to watch Nori's story. And Nori's mother is younger than me. To think of a mother leaving her daughter is just at a human level, so awful. And I wonder what your thoughts are on how we hang onto our humanity and put it out there at a time when that doesn't feel like a universally held value.
- [41:27]
Eddie Glaude
Yeah, I mean, that's the question. We've done this so many times together. And, you know, first of all, I just always want to lift up Jacob for foregrounding these stories, for telling us about the human cost of these policy decisions, but I just can't help but feel in my gut that Norrie lost her mom. She'll never see her again. She'll never feel her hugs again. She'll never hear her tell her she loves her. She can never tell her I love you. She will have to grapple for the rest of her life with how her mother died, under what conditions her mother died. And I just keep thinking that we can talk about this in terms of the policy questions and the politics and the like, and the question for us is, will you be complicit in it? And you can be complicit in the evil just by indifference or your silence. But in the face of that story, particularly for these people who are. Who are billboarding their Christian commitments right now, they claim to be warriors for Christ, and they can stand by and let that story just blow by them and justify the policies that produce that outcome. There's something broken at the heart. The soul has been corrupted of the nation, and it's not just simply because of Donald Trump. I've said it before, and I'll say it again, underneath this is this country. It's us. And you try to hold back the anger and the rage and the tears, because that's what they want, right? But, damn, she's lost her mom.
- [43:19]
Nicole Wallace
And I always try to be cognizant when I ask you to say more if you actually want to. So I'll come up with another question, because I can't tell in this moment, but I think the piece of it that is, that. Is that we as that Jacob certainly as a journalist, always includes in the picture, is that people voted for mass deportations with such enthusiasm, they carried the signs like, this wasn't a secret part of Trump 2.0. But to me, that was when the train left the station in terms of our human connection being lost, because any human movement of that many humans was going to result in tragedy. And that. That became such a celebrated part of our politics in 2024, to the degree that that was the word on the placard might have been when it. When we broke.
- [44:12]
Eddie Glaude
You know, when you have dehumanization at the heart of the politics, right, the human element falls out. You can do whatever you want to do. You can separate moms and dads. You can sell children. You can separate. You know, I'm thinking about the conditions under which you leave would lead people to enslave people, the conditions under which would lead people to bomb people, the conditions under which to lead people to separate children from their parents, right? You don't see them as your child. You don't see them in the same way you see the people you love, right? So the hatred blinds you to the humanity right in front of you, and you become the monster. I mean, we are awash with monstrous behavior. That suggests that what Trumpism and Maga ism, what they have tapped into is something that has been a part of this nation since its founding, that has allowed us to look the evil of what we've done squarely in the face and to move on. And here we are in a moment and you have to report on it every single day where this stuff is happening all around us and people are getting on with their lives. And you wonder how.
- [45:20]
Nicole Wallace
Yeah, I want to put that back to Jacob, because you're in the streets where it's happening. You live in la, which has been targeted not just by ice, but with military as well. How do people, at least, how are you and how is your city, how is LA just getting on with it?
- [45:40]
Jacob Soboroff
Everybody's having a hard time. And I think Nicole, I'm always so grateful to be here with Professor Glaud too, has so beautifully put this into context because it made me think actually of something that Tom Holman said to me on the second day of the wide scale immigration raids here in Los Angeles as we stood in that loading dock in la. He said, someone's going to die during all this. And last week we saw someone die in a confrontation with ICE in Chicago. We've seen Estella die in this circumstance after she was deported to Guatemala with Nori. We talked about how mass deportation is family separation, just by another name. But to be honest with you, I hadn't thought of this circumstance. I hadn't thought of a circumstance where a family from la, a young woman who spent the majority of her life in Los Angeles public schools and excelled in them so much so she was getting ready to go to college to be a fashion designer, was deported with her mom after a routine immigration check in, gets back to a country that they were terrified to be in and had run away from around a decade before. And the form of family separation that Norrie is now facing as a, and now an 18 year old living in Guatemala is the death of her mother in a country that they fled from but she never knew. And so you know, I guess to me what this all brings up is family separation is more than just at the border. It's more than in the interior. This is another form of family separation.
- [47:04]
Nicole Wallace
Jacob Sof and Eddie Glad, thank you guys for being here today. When we come back, we'll show you something I think we all need to see. Stephen Colbert's patriotic America loving message after the soon to be canceled Late show took home an Emmy award last night. I'll show that to you next. Last night at the Emmy Awards, the Late show with Stephen Colbert won outstanding talk series two months after CBS's stunning announcement that they are canceling the show. Take a listen to what Colbert told the audience in his acceptance speech 10 years ago.
- [47:41]
Ben Rhodes
In September of 2015, Spike Jones stopped.
- [47:44]
Jacob Soboroff
By my office and said, hey, what.
- [47:46]
Ben Rhodes
Do you want this show to be about? And I said, ah, Spike, I don't know how you could do it, but I kind of like to do a late night show. You know, a late night comedy show.
- [47:53]
Nicole Wallace
That was about love.
- [47:54]
Ben Rhodes
And I don't know if I ever figured that out. But at a certain point, and you can guess what that point was, I realized that in some ways, we were doing a late night comedy show about loss and that's related to love. Because sometimes you only truly know how much you love something when you get a sense that you might be losing it. And 10 years later, in September of 2025, my friends, I have never loved my country more desperately.
- [48:18]
Jacob Soboroff
God bless America. Stay strong, be brave. And if the elevator tries to bring you down, go crazy and punch a higher floor.
- [48:37]
Nicole Wallace
We all love that. We all celebrate it along with him. Before we go, a personal message for all of you. I have done an interview this week for this week's episode of the Best People podcast that is with someone so truly remarkable. It's out today. It just dropped. It features Jess Michael. She's a survivor of Jeffrey Epstein's sexual abuse. She's also an incredibly skilled and powerful advocate for healing and for survivors everywhere. Her story has inspired me. I hope it does the same for you. Lord knows we need that these days. To listen to it, scan the QR code on your screen. You can listen or download the conversation wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you for letting us into your homes tonight. We are grateful.