“Is Donald Trump okay?”

Summary

Podcast Summary: Deadline: White House

Episode Title: “Is Donald Trump okay?”
Host: Nicolle Wallace
Date: April 6, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode tackles pressing concerns about Donald Trump’s mental state and what his increasingly erratic behavior means for American democracy, foreign policy, and the rule of law. Nicolle Wallace is joined by key political analysts and insiders—including Miles Taylor, Ben Rhodes, Claire McCaskill, and Christy Greenberg—to discuss bipartisan worries about Trump’s fitness for office as the country faces a dangerous war with Iran. In the latter part of the episode, serious issues around Trump’s efforts to politicize the Justice Department, the firing of Attorney General Pam Bondi, and the continued lack of accountability in the handling of Jeffrey Epstein files are examined.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Growing Alarm Over Trump’s Mental State

• The discussion opens by analyzing Trump's recent vulgar and incendiary social media posts directed at Iran. Wallace highlights bipartisan criticism questioning Trump’s fitness for office.
• Notable quotes from both Democrats and Republicans, including rare rebukes from Trump’s former supporters and far-right figures.
• Notable Quote:
  • “[Trump is] the only president we have... if it was a loved one speaking and behaving in these ways, it would be irresponsible to not have that uncomfortable conversation. Are they okay?”
    — Nicolle Wallace (03:24)

2. The 25th Amendment and Cabinet-Level Crisis

• Miles Taylor recounts internal Trump administration discussions during the first term about invoking the 25th Amendment due to Trump’s instability, now resurfacing urgently in the second term.
• Notable Quote:
  • “Donald Trump's worst days in his first term are now his every day in his second term.”
    — Miles Taylor (08:18)

3. Bipartisan Reckoning and Religious Hypocrisy

• The panel discusses responses from both Democrats and Republicans, especially Marjorie Taylor Greene, who called for Christian members of Trump’s administration to “intervene in Trump’s madness.”
• Claire McCaskill questions the silence of Christian leaders given Trump’s Easter morning outburst and calls on Democrats to expose the religious hypocrisy of Trump’s evangelical base.
• Notable Quote:
  • “I do not want to hear any lectures from any Republican about their Christianity... All these people who say they're Christian nationalists, they need to read the gospel because they have forgotten what that man who rose preached and what they supposedly believe in.”
    — Claire McCaskill (17:15)

4. The Absence of Institutional Guardrails

• Ben Rhodes and Taylor discuss the danger of Trump operating without advisers willing to challenge him, leading to unchecked, erratic behavior with global consequences, especially in wartime.
• Rhodes worries not only about Trump's confusion but about his substantive desire to “commit war crimes” and escalate international conflicts.
• Notable Quote:
  • “The thing I’m actually most scared of is the substance of what he’s saying... He wants to bomb civilians back to the Stone Age.”
    — Ben Rhodes (13:47)

5. Republican Dilemma and Shrinking Coalition

• McCaskill and Wallace explore how the GOP’s ongoing support for Trump, particularly as independents abandon him, poses a political and moral crisis that could have historic consequences.
• The panel predicts that if the Republican Congress continues to abide by Trump’s actions, it risks historic discredit and electoral disaster.
• Memorable Moment:
  • “He campaigned on things that he has violated all of them. More importantly, he is in a war that he doesn't know why he got in it or what he's doing there or how to get out of it.”
    — Claire McCaskill (29:33)

6. Trump’s Retaliatory Use of DOJ and the Firing of Pam Bondi

• With Bondi’s firing as Attorney General for failing to produce legal wins against Trump’s political enemies, the panel examines Trump’s relentless demand for “results” and the systemic dangers of his retribution campaign.
• Christy Greenberg provides legal perspective, noting that Bondi failed not because of insufficient loyalty, but because there are legal limits—Trump wants outcomes that aren't legally possible.
• Concern is raised that Trump may pivot to extrajudicial methods—intimidation, harassment, and lawfare—rather than legal prosecution.
• Notable Quote:
  • “It is crazy that we’ve normalized retribution as the single objective of the Justice Department.”
    — Nicolle Wallace (38:13)

7. Ongoing Epstein File Scandal

• Survivor Danny Bensky argues for deeper accountability regarding Epstein files mishandling by Bondi and the Trump administration, noting the lack of personnel consequences compared to the private sector.
• Bensky underscores the ongoing trauma and lack of justice for survivors, contrasting the U.S. government’s evasiveness with more proactive international responses.
• Notable Quote:
  • “This isn’t Star Wars. These are people’s lives. This is 30 years of exploitation, and it needs to be taken really seriously.”
    — Danny Bensky (41:34)

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Important Timestamps

| Segment Topic | Timestamp | |---------------|-----------| | Trump’s inflammatory Iran post & bipartisan criticism | 03:00–04:30 | | Miles Taylor on Cabinet talk of 25th Amendment | 05:24–06:34 | | Panel on media platforming and conservatorship analogies | 07:18–08:36 | | Taylor: “Trump’s worst days now his every day” | 08:36–11:03 | | Trump’s confusion over “to the victor go the spoils” | 11:14–12:06 | | Ben Rhodes on absence of guardrails/war crimes | 12:06–14:09 | | Claire McCaskill on Christian hypocrisy | 16:29–19:02 | | Bondi’s firing, DOJ weaponization, legal analysis | 32:03–39:01 | | Epstein files mishandling with Danny Bensky | 40:27–44:00 |

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “If I were in Trump’s Cabinet, I would spend Easter calling constitutional lawyers about the 25th Amendment.”
  — Sen. Chris Murphy, as quoted by Nicolle Wallace (03:50)
• “President Trump’s worst days in his first term are now his every day in his second term.”
  — Miles Taylor (08:18)
• “The thing I’m actually most scared of is...he wants to commit war crimes. He wants to bomb civilians back to the Stone Age.”
  — Ben Rhodes (13:47)
• “It is crazy that we’ve normalized retribution as the single objective of the Justice Department.”
  — Nicolle Wallace (38:13)
• “This isn’t Star Wars. These are people’s lives. This is 30 years of exploitation, and it needs to be taken really seriously.”
  — Danny Bensky (41:34)

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Episode Tone

The conversation is urgent, candid, and, at times, incredulous at the normalization of extreme rhetoric and authoritarian behavior in U.S. government. Wallace and her panel shift between sober analysis and exasperation, especially when discussing the ongoing damage to democratic norms and the challenges facing anyone attempting to restrain Trump.

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Conclusion

This episode shines light on a bipartisan consensus that Donald Trump’s behavior is more concerning than ever before. It connects Trump’s erratic public persona with real policy dangers—in war and law enforcement—and exposes how weakened institutional checks have left the country relying on public mobilization and the electoral process for accountability. The discussion ends with a warning: unless Congress or voters act, Trump’s war, retribution campaign, and disregard for legal boundaries may continue unchecked, with grave consequences for American democracy.

Transcript

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[Ben Rhodes]

Yesterday, in your Truth social, you called the Iranians crazy bastards.

[Donald Trump]

True.

[Ben Rhodes]

What is your response to critics who

[Donald Trump]

say that I don't care about critics.

[Ben Rhodes]

What is your response to critics who say that it is your mental health that should perhaps be examined as this war continues?

[Donald Trump]

I haven't heard that, but if that's the case, you're gonna have to have more people like me because our country was being ripped off on trade, on everything for many years until I came along. So if that's the case, you're gonna have to have more people. Dasha Gunnar.

[Nicole Wallace]

I haven't heard that except for all the times that I went on TV and took the MOCA test. Remember that? Man, woman, tomato, chair, recliner, cheeseburger. Hi again Everybody. It's now five o'clock in New York. Now this is sad and if it was a loved one speaking and behaving in these ways, it would be irresponsible to not have that uncomfortable conversation. Are they okay? But there are no men or women in white coats coming to save Donald Trump that we know of. Even as many people he used to call themselves his die hard supporters are now taking to the airwaves to openly align themselves with all the people who've been worried for years and to question whether or not Trump is still there mentally. In the increasingly rare cases in which Trump mutters something semi coherent these days, it's usually something aggressive and belligerent and unbecoming of the office of the presidency. That includes his Easter morning message posted on social media during profanity that we're about to show you. Keep in mind, this is the only president we have. Quote, Tuesday will be power plant Day and bridge day all wrapped in one in Iran. And there will be nothing like it. Three exclamation points. Open the fucking straight, you crazy bastards, or you'll be living in hell. Switching to all caps. Just watch. Praise be to Allah. President Donald J. Trump in caps. After checking a few times to make sure that message was real and not the creation of an Iranian hack, They've been hacking a lot of people. Or some online impersonator, Americans of all political persuasions have started to ask the same question. What is up with Donald Trump? Democrats were straightforward in saying it in their assessments, quote, the ravings of a dangerous and mentally unbalanced individual. That was Senator Bernie Sanders, from his colleague, Senator Chris Murphy. Quote, if I were in Trump's Cabinet, I would spend Easter calling constitutional lawyers about the 25th Amendment. Congresswoman Ansari said, wrote this, quote, the 25th Amendment exists for a reason. The President of the United States is a deranged lunatic and a national security threat to our country, end quote. Those Democrats were not alone. This was a bipartisan reckoning. Former Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene writing, quote, everyone in his administration that claims to be a Christian needs to fall on their knees and beg forgiveness from God and stop worshiping the President and intervene in Trump's madness. I know all of you and him, and he has gone insane, and all of you are complicit, end quote. And this from, of all people, the right wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.

[Miles Taylor]

This is not what we voted for.

[Donald Trump]

And

[Miles Taylor]

we've never seen rhetoric out of presidents like this. When we go to war, even if you're for this war, this is really bad pr, folks.

[Donald Trump]

This is what I'm talking about.

[Miles Taylor]

The way Trump's behaving, way more erratic. His speech, you know, is not coherent

[Donald Trump]

a lot of the time. You can't deny this is happening. So this is a clown show, folks.

[Miles Taylor]

And I'm really worried. I'm really, really worried about this.

[Nicole Wallace]

And a note about platforming. Alex Jones. He's not a member of my political coalition, but he's an important member of Trump's. That is where we begin the hour. Former DHS Chief of Staff during Donald Trump's first term, Myles Taylor is here. Also joining us, political analyst former Senator Claire McCaskill's here. And with me at the table, former deputy National Security Advisor to President Obama, now co host of Pod Save the World. I hope it can. Contributor Ben Rhodes is here. Myles, I want to start with you because what happens that leads you to write anonymous op ed about conversations about invoking the 25th amendment. The first go round.

[Miles Taylor]

Nicole. I thought that if the situation was so serious inside the Trump administration that multiple members of his own cabinet were talking about how his impulsiveness and his recklessness might pose such a danger to our country that they would have to invoke the 25th Amendment to replace the president, that felt like something the American people needed to know, not us to keep to ourselves. I mean, surely if this had happened in the administration Ben was in around President Obama, Republicans would demand to know if his cabinet had thought he was so unstable they might have to replace him. To me, that was not the thing a bunch of unelected bureaucrats should be chattering amongst themselves about. The American people needed to know how serious that was. And it was that serious. The household names from the first Trump administration were flirting with the possibility, not that they needed to do it imminently, but that they might have to do it. Because as they compared notes on the President and his decision making style, they became worried he was not equipped to get us through serious national security situations and might accidentally get us into a nuclear war. I felt like people needed to know that.

[Nicole Wallace]

Let me show you what Ty Cobb said about Trump and the 25th Amendment. Not whether it's necessary, but whether this Cabinet will do it.

[Ben Rhodes]

It's not a surprise that we're in this much trouble. It's not a surprise that given the fact that the Cabinet will not invoke the 25th Amendment for a man who

[Miles Taylor]

is clearly insane and this war highlights that and these screeds that come out nightly at 2am or 4am or whatever

[Ben Rhodes]

time Trump's dec decides to vent without

[Miles Taylor]

oversight,

[Ben Rhodes]

it highlights the level of his insanity and depravity. You think he's just gone? I think he's gone.

[Nicole Wallace]

I want to drill down on something. Miles, that's tricky. My audience doesn't want to see Donald Trump talk. I have wrestled for 10 years with the fact that he knowingly lies when he talks. And so I will just pull the curtain back. It's a daily challenge for me to figure out how much and when to platform. I prefer to not take him live to monitor it and then show what is news or what has the potential to impact the lives of the men and women of the military or people around the world. But everyone in year 10 is still trying to figure it out. But he does post in a way that if he were a prominent figure in sports, sports media would talk of nothing other than his mental decline. If he were a prominent young actor or celebrity Or a woman especially. It would be all about why there isn't a conservatorship. It would be all about how the social media posts are so unhinged, as Ty Cobb says right there. Why do you think the things he posts overnight, and it is almost every night, I think he took. He attacked the Supreme Court last night. And I'll play some of what he said today, again with the proper context that I just described. But why do you think people have such a hard time with this part of the Trump story?

[Miles Taylor]

Well, I think people are honestly, Nicole, really reluctant to admit how serious it's gotten.

[Ben Rhodes]

Why?

[Miles Taylor]

Because if you admit that it's this serious, then you have to admit that our options are some things that we really don't want to do, but maybe need to do. Impeaching and removing the President of the United States, organizing the biggest mass turnout in American history to the polls, things that require a lot of work, things that really stress people out, maybe even invocation of the 25th Amendment. I'll add a caveat to that, which I'll mention in a second. But here's the fine point of it, Nicole. I mean this absolutely seriously. Donald Trump's worst days in his first term are now his every day in his second term. The worst we saw of the man in the first term, we're now getting that constantly. It is measurably worse than it was then. And we need to take this moment extremely seriously. We are in the type of war that we worry Donald Trump would get us into with his recklessness. The type of thing that one wrong move could lead us into an even more serious conflict. Very, very serious responses need to be considered. But people are scared to do that. And I think Marjorie Taylor Greene points that out with the volume with which she calls out her former colleagues. Wake up, you guys. She is saying to them, this is really, really bad. And it is, Nicole. Now, look, the caveat that I was going to add about the 25th Amendment is we walked through the scenarios in the first term, and our fear is that it actually wouldn't save us from anything because Donald Trump has so many supplicants in Congress. If he was replaced, it would only be temporary. The Constitution basically punts it over to Congress, and Congress can overturn it. And likely that would happen with a Republican House and Senate. So Donald Trump would come back in, he would purge people. It could be a bloody purge. That's the type of thing that makes you worry about a second civil war. I mean that. And that's why Cabinet Members declined to do something like that in the first term. Those were their words. I don't want to start a second civil war, but something has to be considered. And if this Congress had the courage, that right remedy right now would be impeachment. And shy of that, the American people need to realize it's probably not going to be people of conscience in Washington that save them. It will have to be, once again, the people themselves. As Thomas Jefferson said, this will be not hyperbole. The most important midterm election in American history. We always say that. But now we have a proof point here of Donald Trump acting so unhinged. People are talking about the 25th. It'll be up to Americans.

[Nicole Wallace]

Let me just play a little bit more of Donald Trump. This is him trying to remember. I think he's trying to remember the phrase, to the victor go the spoils.

[Donald Trump]

You know, the old days. To the victim, okay, you know that to the winner belong the spoils. Go the spoils. And I've said, why don't we use it? To the Victoria go the spoils. And we don't have that. We haven't had that in this country probably in a hundred years. Because even the Second World War, you look at the Second World War, we didn't have it with the Second World. We helped rebuild all those countries. We rebuilt Germany. How about Germany telling us, Germany telling us that, well, it's not their war. We had nothing to do with getting. They wanted me to go and tell them everything I was doing. We didn't know anything about it. Well, if I would have told them, they would have leaked it and we wouldn't have been nearly as successful, possibly. Right. But to the victor belong the spoils.

[Ben Rhodes]

Doesn't instill a lot of confidence. Nicole. Look, I think there's a bunch of things that are happening here. One is that, as Miles said, Trump's always been a little crazy. Right. In the second term, there are absolutely no guardrails around him. There's not a Jim Mattis at the Pentagon to kind of talk him out of a bad idea or probably to pocket veto something crazy that he says. There's not a bunch of people in the White House who are kind of meeting to try to figure out how to contain him. So what we get is the uncut version of Donald Trump. Like this is him without any guardrails around him. That's the first thing. The second thing is he's just getting older. I mean, he's forgetting stuff. He's tripping over his words. He's not kind of following threads of information, even out of his own head, because he's like 80 years old and not the healthiest person. And that's not a surprise. We Democrats went through that with Joe Biden. Right. The other thing that I'd say, though, is he's now in a war. So this is not like he's posting online about, you know, the Mueller investigation. Not to say that that was low stakes, but he doesn't control any of this. Like the Iranians control the Strait of Hormuz, the Iranians control whether and how this war ends. Israel is involved in this war. And so he's doing the same things that kind of work for the show, the Trump show. But he has now started something that is much bigger than him. And the thing I'm actually most scared of is the substance of what he's saying just then. He's saying, the problem in World War II is that we didn't conquer Germany. He's saying, we want to go back to 100 years ago.

[Nicole Wallace]

Stone Age is going to. Before that, he wants to go back to the Stone Age.

[Ben Rhodes]

He's threatening war crimes. It's actually the things he wants to do that are the scariest. It's not that he's mixed up about it. It's that he wants to commit war crimes. He wants to bomb civilians back to the Stone Age. He wants to return to an era when big powers tried to conquer other nations, which leads to world war. It's the substance that is even more alarming than whatever's, you know, going on in that head of his.

[Nicole Wallace]

So what happens next?

[Ben Rhodes]

I do think, and this is where I entirely agree with Miles, like, he will not stop unless the guardrails are imposed on him. And I think everybody who's taken the measure of the last five weeks, nobody can conclude that Donald Trump on his own knows how to land this plane. He's also purged his own administration of people who might be experts on Iran or might be experts on how to do certain things. That means Republicans in Congress, that means the markets with their own form of discipline. That means other countries not going along with what he's trying to get them to do, but saying we may need to find our own plan to end this war. Right. I think there are probably already plenty of negotiations happening with the Iranians from Europe and Asia and other places, but essentially there need to be guardrails around Donald Trump so that we are minimizing the damage he can inflict, including from within the US Political system. Democrats have to be Much more aggressive in using levers of power to force attention on trying to get an end to this war. And Republicans, for their own political survival, because they're headed to an absolute rout, should be running away from this. But just going down with this ship is not something that anybody should do just because they're afraid of the wrath of Donald Trump's truth posts.

[Nicole Wallace]

I mean, to that point, Claire, the posts fall on a lot of deaf ears. I mean, they're. Overnight, the Supreme Court has been a target of some of the most vicious posts, but the body, the Senate, still operates the way Ben Rose and Miles described as completely. I mean, I thought there was. I worked for a president with a low approval rating. And I am shocked to see Republicans continue to abide by all of his deeply unpopular things, things that they never believed in. He today quoted Vladimir Putin and said, putin explained it to me when he smeared NATO and called NATO a paper tiger. I mean, everything they pretended to hold dear, Trump has, as Marjorie Taylor Greene keeps saying, has sort of shoved through the wood chipper. What, in your view, is the best case scenario from this moment forward?

[Claire McCaskill]

That's a hard question. I guess the best case scenario would be the 25th amendment, and then you would get J.D. vance as president until the next presidential election. I do want to hone in on one point, however. You've spent some time today with General Hertling and Ann talking about his screed is basically telling the whole world that he wants to commit war crimes and putting our military in an untenable position. But Marjorie Taylor Greene hit on something in her post that I think we need to underline, and that's the Christianity piece of this. Can you even imagine what the avowed Christian Mike Johnson, speaker of the House, would have done if Joe Biden or Barack Obama would have issued a public statement on Easter morning using the vile language that he did and spewing the hatred that he spewed. Can you imagine what they would have done? I mean, the blowback would be so intense and it would be constant and it would be aggressive and there would be. Every media outlet would be covering it. Fox News would cover it like they've never covered anything. The majority of people who call themselves evangelical Christians in this country voted for Donald Trump. If Mike Johnson is serious about his Christianity, can he not even muster one word of criticism about what this man said out loud as President of the United States on the most holy holidays in the Christian religion? It is unbelievable to me. So I do not want to hear any lectures from any Republican about their Christianity or the lack thereof on the part of the rest of this country. All these people who say they're Christian nationalists, they need to read the gospel because they have forgotten what that man who rose preached and what they supposedly believe in. And I think the Democrats and Talarico is doing this in Texas. I think this is an opportunity to expose the hypocrisy on the religious front. He would not be president were it not for people who thumped their Bible and claimed to be Christians.

[Nicole Wallace]

I'll read a little bit more of that post from Marjorie Taylor Greene because you've all talked about it. She adds this our president is not a Christian and his words and actions should not be supported by Christians. Christians in the administration should be pursuing peace, urging the president to make peace, not escalating war. That is hurting people. This is not what we promised the American people when they overwhelmingly voted in 2024. I know I was there more than most. This is not making America great again. This is evil. All right. No one's going anywhere. Still ahead for us, Donald Trump fired his attorney general, Pam Bondi. He's now looking for someone, I don't know, worse than her, someone willing to prosecute his perceived political enemies without any evidence or legal justification why that might not work out so well for Donald Trump and his campaign of political retribution. Later in the hour. And even if she's no longer the country's attorney general, Congress still wants to talk to Pam Bondi. We're still asking her to testify about her botched handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files. We'll get reaction to that from an Epstein survivor ahead. DEADLINE White House continues after a quick break. Don't go anywhere

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[Miles Taylor]

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[Christy Greenberg]

Do you see any checks on your

[Commercial Announcer]

power on the world stage?

[Nicole Wallace]

Is there anything that could stop you if you wanted to?

[Donald Trump]

Yeah, there's one thing. My own morality, my own mind. It's the only thing that can stop, not international law. And that's very good. I don't need international law. I'm not looking to hurt people.

[Nicole Wallace]

So that's where we are. His only check is going to be his own mind. I remember in sort of going back and reading the things Miles wrote anonymously at the time. I remember all the reporting at the time and after about General John Kelly's approach to North Korea after Trump started tweeting little rocket man and that there were genuine fears that he was going to start a nuclear war with North Korea and General Kelly or whomever else was involved basically orchestrates this love affair. I mean, one of the things Trump reportedly took were his love letters and he takes him out and brags about the love letters he wrote. The world is now consumed. What an easy mark Trump is for manipulation and flattery. How does that figure if you're Iran and you're such an, you know, I mean, Israel and Iran have been in a hot and cold war now for years and years and years. Trump is sort of stepping in with no poker face, no ability to keep secrets. I mean, the zone general said, I wish you'd keep that secret. He revealed it anyway. Laura Ingraham says she's worried he can't, quote, take in information and this posture where he's still on the 38th day of a war that's taken the lives of 13 men and women and injured hundreds. Quoting Vladimir Putin and praising him as, quote, explaining NATO to him when the Wall Street Journal has reported that Russia's helping Iran.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah. And to target our people and facilities. Look, first of all, it's clear that this man has not sat down with a single person who knows anything about Iran since he made this decision. Right. Cuz anybody would have told him they were going to close the Strait of Hormuz. I think the more interesting thing is Trump is able to get something from people that feel like they have a lot to lose. So if you're a Republican, you're worried about that primary challenge, or you're a big research university, you're worried about losing your grant, or if you're a European nation, you're worried about the tariff impact on some sector of my economy. The Iranians feel like they have absolutely nothing to lose. This is existential for them. The moment that the Supreme Leader was assassinated and he talked about rise up and regime change, they were going to do anything. It doesn't matter how many things you blow up in Iran, doesn't matter how many leaders you kill. If you know anything about this regime and the 35 year old Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps colonels who are currently running the Strait of Hormuz like a toll road, they're not going to capitulate. He bombs their power plants, they'll bomb Middle Eastern oil infrastructure and cast us even further and we can continue on this escalation ladder. I think the only way flattery to get out of this and you see Rubio doing this a little bit, is just give him something that he can say, we destroyed their navy. You know, we won.

[Nicole Wallace]

Right?

[Ben Rhodes]

I mean, the only way to get off that escalation ladder because the Iranians are not going to give Trump a win if he takes Karg Island. They're going to try to kill our people on Karg island as long as it takes them to do it. The Iranians aren't going to give it to him. And so other people are going to have to convince him, hey, you accomplished this thing. And then meanwhile, everyone else is going to have to clean up the mess. The Europeans, we'll probably have to negotiate reopening the Strait with the Gulf Arabs and the Iranians. Right? But just get Trump out of the war. And thus far you see Rubio trying. We destroyed the Air Force and Navy. Let's go home. That's actually probably the soundest approach, as crazy as it is, and we shouldn't be here. But I worry that otherwise, if it's just Donald Trump and the Iranians, this is an escalation ladder that can keep going much further up Miles.

[Nicole Wallace]

Donald Trump seems to think it's Donald Trump and the Iranians, hence the, you know, personal letters posted on True Social.

[Miles Taylor]

I don't think he's getting any real information, Nicole. I really don't. I mean, I don't think he's even getting. Not that if he got the information, he would be making good decisions, but that was at least the difference between term one and term two is people were willing to go into the Oval and have an argument with the president. And more often than not, it was General Kelly. I mean, he was in a constant private, you know, disagreement with the president over senseless things that Trump wanted to do. But those moments of disagreement kept him from acting crazy. Now, as we've seen also from reporting from the New York Times, Trump's aides have said they are afraid to tell him the truth on the ground. They are afraid to tell him how bad it could get. And so he's operating in his own reality. But there's a second layer that makes it worse. Nicole. It's not just that they're afraid to tell him. So many of them are so actually brainwashed to see the guy the way he sees himself now as some kind of messiah. I mean, we already forgot that we saw a leaked video from the White House last week that they accidentally posted where Trump compares himself to Jesus, where his spiritual advisor is there comparing him to Jesus. I mean, I go back to what Senator McCaskill said before the break. This is really shocking stuff. They see him as some sort of deity, and people like that are not going to put the president in check. And I'll just say I want to wake those folks up. I posted something a couple of days ago on Defiance News about how even though Trump wants to compare himself to the man who was crucified 2000 years ago, Jesus of Nazareth. Donald Trump was the one who literally talked about casually crucifying his enemies to us. I mean, that he talked about migrant bodies hanging on the spikes of the border wall so everyone could see them. So it would send a message, do not defy me. That's the character of the man in the Oval Office, a man who thinks crucification is a tool of a president. That man now has us in a very, very serious war with a country of 90 million people.

[Nicole Wallace]

Claire, it feels gaslighting to say, but the good news is but the degree to which people are taking in information about Trump outside of the 30% that behaves cult like, as Niles is pointing out. I mean, there's nothing you can like Donald Trump. If you know, talking about the Iranians with F bombs is your jam, knock yourself out. But you cannot argue that he has the character or the capacity for the office he holds. And I wonder what you make of the shrinking size of his coalition, which perhaps at the Same time is becoming more deluded and detached from reality. What sort of political problem does that pose for the country outside of an armed insurrection?

[Claire McCaskill]

Well, I think the Republicans in Congress are really facing a dilemma at this moment. And by the way, Donald Trump doesn't understand the extremist mindset of the Iranian leadership. He doesn't understand that the people who are in charge of Iran right now are no different than the people he killed. They are very much believe that if they die for what they believe in, they are martyrs. They are not somebody. This is not a people that are going to be moved by threats. This is not some state senator from Oklahoma who's afraid of a primary. This is not some congressman from upstate New York who's worried about a primary. These are extremists. And they, when he does these things, they dig in more. They become more adamant about extracting damage. So really the political issue here is at what point does the fact that the independents are moving away from Trump by the droves, at what point does it show the enthusiasm of the Democratic Party is at an all time high? At what point do the Republicans in Congress begin to push back, begin to say the obvious part out loud? History is going to paint them with a very black brush if they don't begin to stand up now and say what is obvious to anybody who's paying attention. He campaigned on things that he has violated all of them. More importantly, he is in a war that he doesn't know why he got in it or what he's doing there or how to get out of it. And if they don't start speaking up pretty soon, the midterms are going to be the least of their problems. They will have a very difficult time. J.D. vance and Marco Rubio need to quit measuring the drapes because they would have a very difficult time getting elected president if somebody doesn't start pushing back pretty quickly.

[Nicole Wallace]

Yeah, I can't decide if they're measuring the drapes or like playing dueling each other. Miles Taylor and Claire McCaskill, thanks for starting us off on what can be a pretty uncomfortable conversation. I appreciate both of you. Ben sticks around. When we come back, why Donald Trump's firing of Pam Bondi as his attorney general might not give his retribution campaign the boost he's looking for bringing that reporting next.

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[Nicole Wallace]

as Pam Bondi's disastrous tenure as the country's attorney general fades into the rearview mirror, the question remains whether Trump can find anyone for the top job at DOJ who can deliver where she couldn't. Excuse me? The New York Times reports this quote President Trump's pick to replace Pam Bondi will face the same conundrum that every attorney general he has hired and fired has confronted. It is hard to steer the Justice Department when the president is grabbing the wheel and stepping on the gas. Trump is searching for a tougher version of Bondi, but the fault lies not in the shirking weakness of those he has called upon to execute his will, but rather in the impossibility of his request to bring criminal charges against political targets with little or no evidence or legal justification. Quote. It's certainly not about the willingness or the loyalty of any one person to carry out the president's orders, said one former federal prosecutor. It's more that there are limits on the president, courts, grand juries, lawyers and investigators who understand norms and ethics that have started getting in his way. Legal analyst Christy Greenberg is here. She's a former criminal division deputy chief at SDNY and host of the YouTube show Courtside. Ben is still here as well. This feels like, you know, awful news wrapped in less awful news with a bow of more ominous news on top. Pam Bondi wasn't fired because she stood up to Donald Trump. Pam Bondi Tried to do everything he asked for. And the only place where, I mean, she had no dignity by the end, she was happy to be rebuked by judges. She was happy to see the kinds of people that usually are magnetically drawn into a Department of justice, especially at the change of an administration. People like Danielle Sassoon flee the Department of Justice. But that wasn't enough. I mean, what does that say about what's coming next, Christy?

[Christy Greenberg]

Well, I mean, Donald Trump wants wins. And all Pam Bondi delivered were losses, right? She was the head of the DOJ when they prosecuted James Comey, lost prosecutor Tish James. She lost. She tried to charge six Democratic lawmakers who basically just said, follow the law and refuse illegal orders. They lost every single member of the grand jury. That's unheard of. That must be a record where not one person votes to indict. But more importantly, I mean, she really lost credibility with the judges when DOJ just lied repeatedly in court. She lost credibility with the prosecutors, as you said, Danielle Sassoon in the Eric Adams case and refusing to investigate the agents who killed Renee Good and Alex Preddy. Prosecutors also left in droves after that. So, I mean, you. You have this situation where, I mean, she lost and now she's lost her job. But Todd Blanche was the deputy Attorney general during all of that, and the deputy Attorney general, for anybody who knows, doj, is really the one that's running the day to day. So I don't think it's going to be all that different while he is acting, and it's certainly not going to be all that different for anyone else because you need evidence, you need facts to be able to present to grand juries, to judges, to be able to prosecute a successful case, to a conviction. So I don't see this necessarily changing. The one thing that I think is interesting is there's this narrative that she wasn't really serving him well and all she was doing was serving him. Everything she did was at his direction. When his name came up in the Epstein files, what did she and Todd Blanche do? They went straight to Donald Trump to tell him about what was in the files. So at every stage, they'd been doing his bidding. And the problem is she wasn't getting results. But I don't think you're going to see results, really from anyone. I mean, we'll see. I think Todd Blanche knows certainly that if he wants to keep that job, he's got to deliver something. So we'll see what he does in the weeks to come.

[Nicole Wallace]

This is how the Times reports it, Bondi and Blanche got the president's message, stepping up efforts to investigate several other Trump targets, including the democratic fundraising group ActBlue, John Brennan, former CIA director, and Cassidy Hutchinson, whom the president has accused of lying about his actions on January 6, according to two officials briefed on the effort.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, but these are like fictional crimes, which is why they go nowhere with a grand jury, I think. So here's what worries me. You know, what worries me is what's been proven under Pam Bondi is that there is no legal mechanism through which he can persecute his opponents. And at what point is he suddenly looking for something that is more extrajudicial. Right. In his capacity to harass opponents or go after opponents or make their lives miserable?

[Nicole Wallace]

Like what?

[Ben Rhodes]

Well, you see this in other authoritarian systems, right, when maybe we don't have the goods on a crime, but we can just tie you up in tax auditing and make your life miserable, or we can throw so many legal proceedings at you that we're going to bankrupt you in legal fees, even if we never get a conviction. Like, I kind of worry that Pam Bondi's mistake may have been to actually go through the front door of the justice system to try to persecute his political opponents.

[Nicole Wallace]

To go to grand juries.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, to go to grand juries. That's the front door. And if the door is shut because there's no crimes that, you know, he starts getting more creative. Now, the flip side of that is you're at your strongest your first day in office when you're president, particularly second term president, and the courts are seem. I mean, I was looking at the Supreme Court the other day. They didn't seem intimidated that he showed up there. There's a diminishing currency to him asking people to do extrajudicial things because people are starting to think about, well, I have a life and career on the back end of this guy. Do I want to commit crimes or do I want to break the law, or do I want to norms on his behalf?

[Nicole Wallace]

It's crazy that we're having this conversation.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah. But I just don't know what is the other pathway he has to go after his opponents than things that people stretch the boundaries or go beyond the boundaries of the law? Because the law doesn't.

[Nicole Wallace]

To the degree that he's moved the overtone window that we've normalized retribution as the single objective of the Justice Department is batshit crazy.

[Ben Rhodes]

It is. It is.

[Nicole Wallace]

And that's the analytic lens through which we're examining his next pick is insane.

[Ben Rhodes]

Well, cuz it's clearly the thing that animates him. You know, it's clearly the thing he cares about. And we got Cash Patel. I mean, this could come up at the midterms when he will turn to the Justice Department and he will say, I think this is an opinion. Right? Find me the fraud. And do we really think that the next person he selects for that job isn't going to say if he loses as midterms, if Republicans lose, that there was fraud? Do we really think Kash Patel is not going to go along with that? So this is coming for us and we shouldn't presume that there's some line he won't cross.

[Nicole Wallace]

That's insane. Ben Rose, Kristi Greenberg, thank you both for having this conversation with us. When we come back, Han Bonney is no longer the Attorney General, but that doesn't mean she get away with not testifying about how she handled the Epstein files. Epstein survivor Danny Bensky will be here after a short break. Don't go anywhere. The House Oversight Committee is so far refusing to let Donald Trump's firing of Attorney General Pam Bondi allow Pam Bondi to escape accountability for how she handled the Epstein investigation. Congress members from both sides of the aisle still want Pam Bondi to testify as scheduled next week. Republican Nancy Mace, who forced the bipartisan vote, told Axios this, quote, my subpoena still stands. I did it by name, not as the sitting Attorney general. Republican House Oversight Chair James Comer has not ruled out forcing Pam Bondi to testify, according to his spokesperson. We've also just learned that Donald Trump's Commerce Secretary, Howard Lutnick, who has been under growing scrutiny for his ties to Jeffrey Epstein, is scheduled to appear before the committee for a voluntary interview on May 6. He has denied wrongdoing in any association with Jeffrey Epstein, but he has lied about it. Back with me at the table, Danny Bensky, she's one of the Epstein survivors who has been bravely sharing her story and advocating for transparency from the Trump administration. How are you doing?

[Danny Bensky]

Okay. Yeah, I mean, it's just the saga. I shouldn't say saga, because we've heard a lot about that word saga with Todd Blanche recently, but it just, it never ends. You know, I feel like we survivors just really want to see Bondi testify, you know, and so we've been on a lot of calls recently with Republicans asking for their support and making sure that she does testify and hoping that, you know, she'll be held in contempt if she doesn't the same way that the Clintons should have or were going to be. Right.

[Nicole Wallace]

What would you ask her?

[Danny Bensky]

I think we would start with what was the process for the redactions. Right. We know that they were so poorly mishandled, handled and mismanaged. And so I think just having some clarity on what that process even looked like that would be helpful.

[Nicole Wallace]

When Todd Blanche says things about this being in the past, and you've got investigators at the state level in New Mexico just starting an investigation, what does that mean to you?

[Danny Bensky]

Yeah, I mean, first of all, he's not a suitable ag. He just isn't for the Epstein files. Right. I think he's somebody that's been calling this a saga over and over again. This isn't Star Wars. These are people's lives. This is 30 years of exploitation, and it needs to be taken really seriously. And he keeps saying the files were never mishandled. And I think everybody from here to Mars can see that, that they were absolutely, horribly mishandled. You have survivors identifying everywhere. You've released nude photos of underage girls. Like, how you can possibly look at this and say that it went well is beyond me. And I think that everybody in America would agree. So when he's saying these things that feel like time to turn the page, that's a huge issue. I think also he basically gave Maxwell the second sweetheart deal happened under his watch. Right. That he was the one who had this interview with her. And, you know, so I just feel it was bad with Bondi. I feel like it's going to be worse with Blanche.

[Nicole Wallace]

What do you say to people or how do you explain the fact that a lawyer who was at Goldman Sachs, Kathy Rundler, I think is her name, lost her job at Goldman Sachs? And a lawyer who was at a firm called Paul Weiss Bradkarp lost his job atop the firm after his emails with Jeffrey Epstein were made public. A health guy lost his deal with protein bars. And then a few weeks later, CBS News, Peter Atiaradia. And no one's been fired in the Trump administration. What does that say to you?

[Danny Bensky]

That we're not investigating, that we need to investigate. You know, that's what survivors have been calling for from the very beginning, so that we see the accountability in places of power. You know, I was recently in the UK and we met with parliamentarians, and I asked them, what do you find credible or like, what is the process for credibility in the Epstein files? And one of the members of Parliament said to me, everything's credible in the Epstein files. Until proven otherwise. Right. Like, that's. We're going to investigate. Why wouldn't you.

[Nicole Wallace]

You realize, like, how gaslighting it is here when they're like, everything.

[Danny Bensky]

Yeah. I mean, it was like such a different experience, and it was like, yeah, of course.

[Nicole Wallace]

Why do you think that is?

[Danny Bensky]

I don't know. I think power protects power in this country, and I think that we're also. It's even bigger than that. I think it goes shifting accountability. I think women are often in the seat, and especially survivors are often in the seat of taking all the blame, taking all the accountability. Right. I remembered in 2008 when I was questioned by the FBI, that I felt like I was in trouble. You know, I felt like I was.

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