← Deadline: White House
Deadline: White House
"It's almost quaint"
00:42:51
Nicolle Wallace on the development that the United States, in the aftermath of what Secretary of State Marco Rubio described as merely a "law enforcement operation," will have a presence in Venezuela for the foreseeable future.
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- [00:00]
Ian Bassin
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- [00:26]
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- [01:01]
Nicole Wallace
Hi again everybody. It's now five o' clock in New York. Five years to the day, to the hour, really. Hundreds of people were injured, more than a thousand people arrested, seven people lost their lives gone as a result of what the American people watched play out on live television. As we've been covering a literal and figurative assault on American democracy in our very way of life. Before we go on, just so you're aware, this hour we're expecting a vigil to get underway up on Capitol Hill. It is designed to commemorate January 6, 2021, one of the darkest days in our modern American history, one of the most destructive, but perhaps also one of the most instructive as it relates to what we're all living through now, and also watching with our own eyes our new World Order. It was a lesson we all learned the hard way in those final days of Donald Trump's first term as president. That he was willing, that he was able, and that he was excited about testing the far reaches, the outer limits of his own power as president. Now, five years later, he's taking that show on the road, absent advisors who would rein him in. It's a veritable world tour of that in which our closest allies are now girding themselves, coming to grips with the new reality of what America is. That the phrase you can't do that for reasons of law and norms or morality or the world order or what they thought of as American patriotism. That those don't mean anything anymore from the American leader, an aspiring autocrat hell bent on really understanding just how much he can get away with. With that understanding. It feels almost quaint to tell you about this development. The UN Human Rights Office today described the US Intervention in Venezuela as a, quote, violation of international law. It was quaint because now it appears that the United States, in the aftermath of what Secretary of State Marco Rubio describes as a mere, quote, law enforcement operation, will have a presence in Venezuela for the foreseeable future, according to Donald Trump. Donald Trump told NBC that this would be the case. He said this, quote, we have to nurse the country, Venezuela, back to health, end quote, before its citizens can hold an election originally scheduled for next month. Donald Trump named a number of his top aides who would do that, who would run Venezuela, describe them as overseers of that effort. They are headlined notably by Stephen Miller, who yesterday put the world, including all Americans, on notice that we will dismiss treaties ensuring a nation's sovereignty as international niceties. Watch that with your own eyes.
- [03:50]
Tyler Pager
We live in a world in the.
- [03:53]
Jacob Soboroff
Real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that.
- [04:00]
Tyler Pager
Is governed by power.
- [04:02]
Jacob Soboroff
These are the iron laws of the world. We set the terms and conditions.
- [04:05]
Tyler Pager
We have a complete embargo on all of their oil and their ability to do commerce. So for them to do commerce, they need our permission.
- [04:12]
Jacob Soboroff
For them to be able to run an economy, they need our permission.
- [04:16]
Tyler Pager
So the United States is in charge.
- [04:20]
Nicole Wallace
We could stop here and spend the next hour talking about Stephen Miller's belief that strength, force and power equal what a governing philosophy. But in the course of his ramblings, he told us a lot. He fanned the flames of aggression on the topic of Greenland. He questioned by what right our NATO ally Denmark asserts control over its own territory over that island. Today, the leaders of France, Germany, Britain and other European nations sought to answer that question. They released a joint statement that reaffirmed the fate of Greenland is up to the people and the Danish government. But again, statements and strongly worded letters don't ever stop Donald Trump. They certainly didn't before or after the January 6th insurrection. And we would be wise to understand that they won't stop him now. This is where we start the hour with some of our favorite reporters and friends. Former Director of the CIA John Brennan is back with us. Also joining us, Protect Democracy Executive Director Ian Bassenseer. Also joining us, New York Times White House correspondent Tyler Pager is with us. I want to start with you, Director Brennan, and ask you if you would assess the country any differently than I just did.
- [05:34]
John Brennan
Unfortunately, no. I find, obviously, Stephen Miller's comments just totally repugnant and so inconsistent with what I think the values of America should be. Donald Trump, for his life, has operated very much like a mafia Don using threats and intimidation and bullying to get his way. Now, as commander in chief, he also has the opportunity to use violence. And what we saw in Venezuela was that Donald Trump saw Machado or Maduro as the local mafia don, and he wanted to remove him because he wanted to control that country. And now it seems as though they're working with the mafia couples that are.
- [06:19]
Ian Bassin
There.
- [06:21]
John Brennan
The ministers of interior, defense, the vice president, the acting interim president. He knows that these are people who have lived with corruption. And I think he's hoping to leverage that. And it's much more practical for him to work with them as well as with other authoritarian leaders around the world rather than deal with the messiness of democracy. And so what we've seen now in this country is that Donald Trump, one of the most appalling aspects of this 55 year anniversary of the assault on the Capitol is that the person who orchestrated that assault was reelected to be President of the United States. I've lost faith in so much of the American electorate to do that. But Donald Trump now is flexing his muscles and sees this hemisphere as something to control, something to be in charge of and to extract its wealth on his behalf and behalf of what his agenda has been, which is increasingly imperialistic. And he doesn't want to deal with rules or regulations or international law or whatever. So, again, where we are today in 2026, I think is such a dangerous point and just demonstrates that we have somebody in charge of our government and our capabilities, military, diplomatic and intelligence, who is going to wield that power in order to assert his influence, his power, his authority over anybody, including our NATO partners.
- [07:45]
Nicole Wallace
Ian Bassin, let me ask you to build on Director Brennan's analysis with this analysis in Politico from Kyle Cheney. He writes this as he did five years ago. Donald Trump is surgically targeting the space between the lines of constitution testing or blowing past limits that his predecessors didn't dare to approach. Each gambit, including last week's operation to yank Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro from Caracas, required Donald Trump to step across legally dubious boundaries. It's a maximalist view of executive power carried out with the bravado of a president who knows he's out of the reach of prosecutors, lawmakers and courts who tried to punish him for threatening the transfer of power five years ago. Your thoughts?
- [08:30]
Ian Bassin
Well, he. The president essentially views those rules, those laws, the Constitution, as for fools and suckers. And we've talked about this before, his worldview is that, as Stephen Miller articulated, might makes right. Power and strength are the only thing that matters. And, you know, I think Stephen Miller is right in one sense, that that was the iron law of how human civilization operated for hundreds, if not thousands of years. And it was miserable. Life was nasty, brutish, and short, as Thomas Hobbes wrote. And Hobbes wrote that as part of an Enlightenment movement that tried to move us past living in a world where we had to fear at every moment that someone was going to murder us from behind. Because nobody wanted to live that way. Nobody wanted to live under decades, as Europe did, of war between people who had different ideas of what the good life should be. And so first the Enlightenment and then the American founders built a that said we should have rules, we should have laws, we should have elections, we should have ways of managing our differences, both within countries and across countries, ultimately culminating in the creation of the United nations after World War I and World War II to avoid living in a society that was just rife with murder and violence and war, because nobody wanted that. And so hundreds of years ago, our founders built a system that led us to live in the greatest era and place in human history where we could wrap on the assumption that we had a level of peace and security. And Donald Trump wants to throw all of that away and go back to a Hobbesian state of nature that none of us should want to live in. You know, Professor Una Hathaway has a wonderful piece in the New York Times today talking about the achievements of the rules based order, both globally and here at home in terms of the reduction in losses of life that we have seen around the world the decades that we've been alive. Conservatives of all people should want to conserve that. And instead, what we see is an administration going back on it. And it's ironic that President Trump tried to distract from the January 6th anniversary with this attack on Venezuela, because they are both birds of a feather. January 6th was a demonstration of his view that might makes right here at home. And his unlawful invasion of Venezuela was a demonstration of his view that might makes right around the world. We shouldn't want that globally, we shouldn't want it domestically.
- [10:56]
Nicole Wallace
Tyler Pager, I want to ask you if the administration has settled on a reason for why they seize Maduro. Maduro is awful, but so is Vladimir Putin. And I haven't seen any plans to go kidnap him in the night. These are the answers that we've seen and captured on video and shared with our viewers. Mike Waltz, who has a job at the UN has said it was about illegitimate elections that put Maduro there Rubio got very prickly when he was asked why we were, quote, fixated on who was running Venezuela and said we were going to, quote, coerce them. Donald Trump has said in multiple interviews, including one that I'll play for you with Joe Scarborough, that we're there for the oil. Let me play you Joe Scarborough describing his conversation with Trump.
- [11:52]
John Brennan
He asked him, Mr. President, when you say, quote, we're going to run everything.
- [11:56]
Ian Bassin
That obviously causes deep concerns because of.
- [11:59]
John Brennan
The disaster in Iraq.
- [12:01]
Ian Bassin
The president's response, Joe, the difference between.
- [12:04]
John Brennan
Iraq and this is that Bush didn't keep the oil.
- [12:09]
Ian Bassin
We're going to keep the oil.
- [12:13]
Nicole Wallace
So, Tyler Pager, is that the White House position? This is exactly like Iraq. The only difference is to, quote Trump, quote, we're going to keep the oil. Is that the official White House position of the objective of the seizure of Maduro?
- [12:26]
Tyler Pager
I think there's a lot of reasons, what from the administration about why they captured Maduro. And so I think part of it is that there are competing interests at play here, right at its core, what the administration said, and I was at Mar a Lago on Saturday when they had this press conference to announce the capture. They said it was a law, primarily a law enforcement operation supported by the military because there is a warrant and indictment against Maduro. And then they unveiled one against his wife, too. But when you talk about the longer term strategy, you hear the President and some of his top aides talking about the oil. And my colleagues and I have been covering this mounting pressure campaign over the last year. And there were times when the administration was more focused on the drugs, more focused on immigration, more focused on the oil. And each of Trump's advisers have different personal matters here at play. Stephen Miller obviously is very focused on the immigration angle here. Marco Rubio is very focused on the broader regional dynamics, particularly as it relates to Cuba. And oil was something that was very animating for President Trump. His aides, primarily led by Stephen Miller, talked to him about the American companies that used to have a foothold in Venezuela. And they convinced him that those, those, those assets were stolen from the American people and that it is America's right to get them back. I mean, so we heard Trump talk quite extensively about that. And Nicole, I also think it fits in broader to what we've seen has animated Donald Trump. When we think about his second term in office, what is most exciting to him is being able to tout money that he says is coming into the country, whether that's through tariffs or through taking stake in companies or now through oil. This is part of a larger pattern that Donald Trump is trying to achieve. Now, whether or not the tariffs are bringing money into the country or Americans are actually going to see profits from whatever sort of oil arrangement the US Works out with the interim government of Venezuela remains very unclear. But I think it is part of this narrative that Donald Trump is building. And when his aides talk him extensively about the oil, he saw an opportunity there. So I think obviously there's this law enforcement piece of it and that is what they're going to argue in court. But there are longer term impacts that the administration is trying to pursue and depends on who you ask. They each have different visions that at times collided to ultimately bring us to where we are today.
- [15:03]
Nicole Wallace
I just want to make sure I understand. I mean, a law enforcement operation is the explanation for involving the military in seizing Maduro, but law enforcement enforcement is inadequate for seizing the boats allegedly carrying drugs, is that right, Tyler? They say that's their position.
- [15:22]
Tyler Pager
The position, you know, obviously this is part of a multi pronged pressure campaign. And so as I said, there are many different elements here at play. And I think that's what is confusing to many lawmakers.
- [15:34]
Nicole Wallace
But let me ask you, is it confusing? I mean, as someone covering it and as you said, who got, you got on the phone with Trump, is it confusing or is it incoherent and inconsistent?
- [15:44]
Tyler Pager
I mean, it depends on precisely what you're asking. Right. And so the law enforcement, is it.
- [15:50]
Nicole Wallace
Law enforcement to seize Maduro but military to bomb the ships twice in the case of the September 2nd? I'm just trying to understand what they're saying. I'm not asking you to defend any of it.
- [15:59]
Tyler Pager
Yeah. What they would say is, is that it's both. Right. That the law enforcement operation was necessary to capture Maduro and they needed military support to carry it out. When it relates to the ships, Trump and the conversations that he's had with AIDS and publicly says the military is required because those pose a threat to the American people. He says when they have taken out the ships or the tankers, that that's saving American lives. So they are separating them in terms of protecting the American people. But they are all part of this broader pressure campaign which they are saying is multi pronged. And I think that is why the American people, or many American people, people that I've talked to, lawmakers on Capitol Hill have been confused because the rationale has been changing and the pieces of the campaign are diffuse and not all that coherent at times.
- [16:50]
Nicole Wallace
Ian Bassin, the idea that the military is the only institution that could seize or interdict drug boats is a conclusion never reached before by a single Democratic or Republican administration in the history of this country and others. The Coast Guard was viewed as a perfectly capable agency to seize, arrest, detain anyone driving drugs back and forth for multiple reasons. One, because murdering them is illegal, and two, because you learn who the drugs are being manufactured by and sent here to. I mean, it's sort of drug war against drugs 101. But I wonder what you make of the incoherence of the policy. And Donald Trump, to his credit, not trying to hide the banana at all. He told oil executives, according to the Wall Street Journal, quot get ready. Trump had a vague but tantalizing message for a couple of American oil executives one month before the US Captured Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro. Quote, get ready, big changes are coming to Venezuela. Trump hinted. Trump also told Joe Scarborough the only difference between Venezuela and Iraq is that we will keep the oil. Trump seems to be communicating exactly what the plan is, in his view.
- [18:07]
Ian Bassin
Yeah, and I think the reason that you and Tyler were struggling there is you were grasping for a Latin term in the law. I remember learning in law school it was bullius shidius. And what that means is that the.
- [18:17]
Nicole Wallace
Administration'S making it Bill Barr term of ours.
- [18:20]
Ian Bassin
It's italicized in most of the US Reports. Bullies, shittiest. And the administration is essentially saying that what they have done in Venezuela is lawful because they were merely executing an American arrest warrant and that the military was serving in a support capacity to the Department of Justice to execute that warrant. But of course, if that were the case, and I'm not going to acknowledge or agree with that as being a valid legal rationale, but even if it was, that would mean that once they had extracted the arrestee and brought him to US Jurisdiction to stand trial, the operation would be over. But of course, as you said, Donald Trump is not. I don't know where you got this expression. Maybe it's also Latin hiding the banana in that. He came out and said, we are running Venezuela right now. We're running Venezuela and we are currently engaged in a naval blockade, as Stephen Miller alluded to, to block them from moving any sort of commerce into or out of the country. Well, those things obviously are completely inconsistent with this merely being a law enforcement warrant execution operation. And so, like, let's just be clear here, you can get all the fancy lawyers, you want to invent Latin legal terms, okay? But at the end of the day, we all know what's going on here, which is as John Brennan said at the beginning, Donald Trump believes that he to operate like a mafia don, that power and might make right, as Stephen Miller articulated. And they're going to go in and attack whatever country they want to extract whatever oil they want and recreate a world, as I said before that we left because it was miserable to live in. And I think the important thing here in terms of what to do about it is Congress. And the Republicans in Congress can't get drawn in to a technical analysis of these bananas legal theories, one, because they completely without merit, but two, because all of the different precedents that the administration is citing over the last several decades in which presidents have aggrandized more and more of the powers that the founders tried to split for good reason, between the executive branch, the legislative branch, presidents have been seizing because Congress has abdicated for decades on exercising the power that the founders gave to Congress to decide when we should initiate hostilities in war overseas. And if Congress were to look at those precedents and say therefore it shouldn't act here, it would simply be compounding a problem that has been building for decades. This is a moment finally for members of both parties in Congress to reassert the power that the founders gave the Article 1 branch, the representative branch, the legislative branch, to decide when we go to war, because that is a power too immense for one man, especially a man as deeply troubled as Donald Trump, to hold on their own.
- [21:09]
Nicole Wallace
Well, and that's a constitutional and legal and elegant way of saying they have to decide how dumb they want to act. Because I think a kindergartner understands that if it's a military operation, when you are double tapping fishing boats in the Caribbean, but a law enforcement operation, when you're sending in special forces, men and women of the military to seize Maduro, you know, something doesn't smell right. We have much more. I want to pull Director Brennan back into this conversation. Donald Trump is saying that US Involvement in Venezuela could take longer than and he's also talking about having Greenland in his sights. We'll show that to you, tell you about it, try to understand what it means. Also ahead, it's been just about one year since the start of a deadly and devastating wildfire that ravaged parts of Los Angeles and Southern California, entire neighborhoods and communities destroyed. The long rebuilding process is underway. Our dear friend and colleague Jacob Soborough covered the fires as an LA native brilliantly. His new book Firestorm is out today. It has a whole bunch of brand new reporting and an interview with California Governor Gavin Newsom to tell you about and share with you later in the hour. Deadline Whitehouse continues after a quick break. Don't go anywhere.
- [22:27]
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- [24:01]
Ian Bassin
They'Ve been after this guy for years and years and years and you know, he's a violent guy.
- [24:08]
Gavin Newsom
He gets up there and he tries to imitate my dance a little bit.
- [24:14]
Ian Bassin
But he's a violent guy and he's killed millions of people. He's tortured. They have a torture chamber in the middle of Caracas that they're closing up. But he's tortured people and.
- [24:28]
Nicole Wallace
Director Brennan, Serious question. I mean, Maduro is an awful guy and Donald Trump has left his number two in charge of the country. Do you think he knows that? Serious question.
- [24:40]
John Brennan
Well, he doesn't care about human rights in Venezuela. You know, I think it was very intentional. The strikes against the boats off the coast of Venezuela, the remarkable demonstration of US Military capability and intelligence insight that led to the capture of Maduro. He basically is signaling look what I can and look what I will do. And I don't care about international law I don't care about domestic U.S. law. I don't care about the U.S. congress. There's no restraint on what I can and will do unless you agree to my terms. So it's a clear signal to Delce Rodriguez and Minister of Interior Cabello and Defense Minister Lopez, as well as to the Colombians, to the Cubans and others, it's like, okay, you can negotiate with me on, but make sure it's on my terms and I get what I want, whether it's the extraction of oil wealth in Venezuela or whatever. And so it's a signal to the hemisphere. It's a signal also to our NATO partners and to Denmark and others that, look, you're powerless to stop me because I'm not going to be restrained or constrained and my administration is fully behind me. It sends a very, very chilling and dangerous signal that this is a person out of control and it's a person who unfortunately controls the instruments of power and capability within the US Government. We are really in for some really rough times if this is what America is going to do in that global landscape.
- [26:02]
Nicole Wallace
I wanted to brennan with you. As for your analysis, if you are in the military, that Donald Trump in an interview with Joe Scarborough described the difference between the operation and Iraq as being unlike with Bush, we will keep the oil as well as tipping off the oil companies before and after the operation and not members of Congress. And making clear that US Foreign policy is now most generously interconnected with I think fairly could be articulated as driven by the pursuit of other countries resources.
- [26:41]
John Brennan
Yeah, I think Donald Trump wants Venezuela to be a vassal state of the United States. He wants to be able to control the wealth and what happens with the oil. He wants to make sure that US Oil companies are able to get their wealth out of Venezuela, unlike in Iraq where that was quite frankly, I disagreed with that policy. But there was a plan in terms of day after and there was never a sense that the United States was going to run Iraq and control it. They were going to try to ease a transition. And that's why I think Donald Trump sees again, letting the opposition take over in Venezuela is just too messy and it's too fraught with uncertainty in terms of what the United States is going to be able to get out of it. What he wants again is the individuals, corrupt individuals who are willing to give him what he wants. That's why he tried to extract the mineral wealth out of Ukraine. Again, he's using the power and influence the United States to extract things from other countries that are part of their sovereign legacy and wealth. And so, again, there's a world of difference between what happened in Iraq and Venezuela. But he certainly is marching and moving forward. Again, I'll use the analogy of Mafia don. He's going to get his way, and he's going to demonstrate that he has opportunities to really make things painful for you if you don't concede.
- [27:53]
Nicole Wallace
Ian, what does it mean that America has used the military to remove an indicted leader and our president is saying that Colombia, Greenland, maybe Mexico and others are in his sights? What does it mean if you've woken up in Kiev or Taiwan and this is what America is saying out loud and in public?
- [28:24]
Ian Bassin
I think this has been commented on, that this is a gift to Vladimir Putin and to Xi Jinping, who have argued for years for a global order in which they control their country, their spheres of influence, their regions. Xi Jinping would like to retake Taiwan and have dominion over Asia. Vladimir Putin would like to retake Ukraine and have dominion over Europe. And Donald Trump is essentially saying the United States will have dominion over the Western Hemisphere, and you all can do what you want in your areas. And so I think for the president of Taiwan and of Ukraine, they should be very concerned about what precedent this sets. And, you know, I think to underscore Director Brennan's points, there's no credit given for removing an admittedly horrific dictator in Venezuela when in their reports today, the regime that is being left in place there, which is essentially, as Director Brennan said, the capos to the don of Venezuela are engaged, as we speak, in a repressive crackdown on those people who are celebrating the Maduro ouster. And there are quotes out of Venezuela today saying it feels like right after the stolen election in Venezuela, where the government tried to suppress dissent. So, you know, out with the old boss, in with the new boss, same as the old boss. You know, that's not really solving a human rights problem. I think Director Brennan was also correct that we should be very concerned about what this signals in terms of the future, of how Trump plans to use this vassal state. And one thing that troubles me deeply is that there's a history of these sorts of authoritarian engagements overseas creating pretexts for greater crackdowns at home. Right. And here, one thing that I'm concerned about is that if you can get Delsey Rodriguez and the leaders in Venezuela to do whatever Donald Trump says, because Stephen Miller says he's threatening them, as Trump indicated yesterday, I think he's going to try to force them to say that they intervened and stole the 2020 election for Joe Biden to sort of validate his fantasy dream that he actually won an election in which he lost and use that as the basis for sort of further federal encroachment on state election apparatuses here in the United States. So when that happens, when we see someone senior in Venezuela say it, no, that was something they were put up to by Donald Trump.
- [30:40]
Nicole Wallace
I want to ask you, Tyler Pager, who you guys view as the point person on this? Like, where do you go with all your questions about Venezuela since Trump keeps maintaining that we are running it, and even admitted that that was a controversial answer, but every time he's been put to him by yourself and others has had the same consistent answer?
- [30:57]
Tyler Pager
Yeah, I pressed him on that very question multiple times after he said for the first time that the US Was going to run Venezuela. It seems that Marco Rubio is playing a leading role in sort of the coordination. Trump said at the press conference that Rubio had talked to Delsey Rodriguez. But I think one of the challenges here is that Rubio sometimes says one thing and then Trump does an interview or does a news conference and says something more specific or something a little bit different. And so the exact mechanism by which the US Is running Venezuela still remains unclear. I spoke with Secretary of State Marco Rubio over the weekend and asked him about some of the comments from Delsey Rodriguez where she was quite negative on the United States. And what he told me was that he wasn't passing judgment quite yet and that they were going to give it some weeks or months to really see how things unfold and that they were confident they could have a productive relationship. So we're watching to see if that happens.
- [31:57]
Nicole Wallace
Tyler Pager, John Brennan, Ian Bassin, thank you for all of the comments in English and Latin. I appreciate them all. When we come back, we are fast approaching the one year mark since the start of some of the most devastating wildfires in United States history. Our dear friend and colleague, Jacob Soborough covered the deadly LA wildfires as they happen. He did so brilliantly and with his hallmark humanity. And now he has written a book about the fires, their impact, and how, like so much of American life these days, they became fiercely politicized from the start. Jacob joins us after a very short break. Stay with us.
- [32:37]
Jacob Soboroff
This is a neighborhood I know very well. I was born and raised in Pacific Palisades, California. It is unimaginable to see it in this state. This is a beautiful community of 23 or 24,000 people in a coastal community along the Pacific Ocean, where the Santa Monica mountains meet the sea. I have been evacuated from my home. I grew up in a house up at the top of a hill that you can't see because of the smoke. Right now in this neighborhood, the entire community of Pacific Palisades as we know it has been destroyed this afternoon and this evening in about a 24 hour period.
- [33:17]
Nicole Wallace
That was my dear friend and colleague Jacob Soboroff almost exactly one year ago, reporting live on the ground from the devastating wildfires that hit Los Angeles. They left unimaginable destruction to his hometown. The Palisades and Eaton fires would go on to be the costliest wildfires in American history. They destroyed thousands of structures, including Jacob's childhood home. Jacob is out today with the first must read of 2026, an incredible new book called the Great Los Angeles Fires and America's New Age of Disaster. In the book, he reflects on what it was like to be covering this story that was so deeply personal on the front lines, covering a once in a generation natural disaster. The importance of strong leadership from the top down and responding to the devastation, and the role of misinformation in shaping the disaster response. On his coverage of the fires and what he learned in the aftermath, Jacob writes this quote. Watching your hometown burn down is not something I would wish on anyone. But in the wake of these great Los Angeles fires, I've had the privilege of seeing up close how the natural catastrophes faced in America's new age of disaster cannot be fought by first responders alone. Ordinary people, the workers of the United States, are today as much a last line of defense in America's new age of disaster as the brave men and women on whom we have so long relied in disaster. Hope often emerges and it is not the people, not the politics. They found it after the great Los Angeles fires of 2025. I want to bring in my friend and colleague, Ms. Now senior political and national correspondent Jacob Sobroff, author of the amazing new book Firestorm. Hi.
- [34:52]
Jacob Soboroff
Hey. Thank you so much for having me and for doing this.
- [34:55]
Nicole Wallace
I feel like this was 11 years ago and five minutes ago.
- [34:58]
Jacob Soboroff
Isn't that crazy?
- [34:59]
Nicole Wallace
It's crazy. It's like a real time warp.
- [35:03]
Jacob Soboroff
The hair on my arm is standing. When I was watching, that was me and you talking in the clip that you played. And I will not. I lost signal in that shot when we were talking because we stayed on you. Yeah, that's right. The wind was blowing so hard. I write in the book about that exact moment. It literally knocked me off of my feet. Knocked me back off my feet. And I wasn't sure we were going to be able to get back on the air. But as you always do, you said, as soon as you're ready, wave your hands, call me. And I did. And we showed you just from around the corner.
- [35:33]
Nicole Wallace
And I want to read something that's hard for me to read without starting to cry. But I just want to ask you. I mean, I called it a natural disaster because it was the winds, right, that made the fire so deadly and so dangerous. But I mean, you really, it seems like with the book, you were able to do some investigative work on why this was so devastating. Will you talk about that?
- [35:57]
Jacob Soboroff
I think I needed to because I definitely couldn't comprehend it in real time. Like family separation, too. It's why I wrote my first book. When you're in the middle of these things, how do you process them as you're witnessing them with your own eyes? And to take it a step further, when you're watching your childhood, neighborhood, and memories carbonize in front of your own eyeballs and you're supposed to talk about it to a national television audience, it's you, but it's everybody who's watching us right now, it's not possible to process in real time. And so that's why I had to do this. And I went. The thing that crystallized it for me was I went to Washington, D.C. on the weekend of the correspondence dinner last year, and I sat with a career emergency management official who said to me, he said, give me your notebook. He was still working for the government, wasn't supposed to be talking to me, but he said, and he had been to every mass casualty event over the last five years, fires. He said, give me your notebook. And I slid my notebook across the table at this Tex Mex restaurant in Washington, D.C. and he said, look at this. And he drew an X. He said, what you experienced was not your childhood and the past, but the fire of the future. And I said, well, what do you mean, the fire of the future? And he said, obviously, the global climate emergency changes in the way that we live. Those were a thousand electric car batteries, including, when I was talking to you, I remember one exploding behind me. Our infrastructure is falling apart. But most importantly, and he may as well have circled it, politics of blame, misinformation and disinformation, which exacerbated this disaster to a degree that I don't think I could have possibly anticipated and certainly didn't see in the moment.
- [37:24]
Nicole Wallace
Well, and it puts in motion that kind of Politicized disinformation, fraught response. I mean, we saw it in North Carolina, we saw it in other places. I don't want to go to the first break, though, without reading from the book, because it's beautifully written and it says as sort of raw and real as all of your live reports were. So let me do this. Okay? This is from page 146. Quote, I don't really know what to say were the words that came out as our crew filmed me in real time. My hands were thrust in the pockets of my green fire pants. My NBC News baseball hat was on. My face was caked in the soot we'd been standing in all morning. The house was made of red brick, later painted white by the owner who bought it from my parents when I was around 5 or 6. When the house collapsed, the red brick was exposed again, as if the house were opening up to reveal something I hadn't seen since we moved away. Welcoming me back home. I remember standing on the same street corner, manning a lemonade stand with my brother and hanging in our backyard pool with my sisters and looking out my bedroom window at the street. There was nothing left. I pulled out my phone and called my mom on FaceTime. Mom, look at this. Is that Frontera your birth house? She asked as I panned the camera across the landscape, which looked as if it could have taken a direct hit from a ballistic missile. Not all that different from what I'd seen on the outskirts of Lviv, Ukraine, covering the early weeks of the war there.
- [38:45]
Jacob Soboroff
Yeah, my Nicole, my wife, just asked me, actually, right before I came out here, if I could send her a picture of that lemonade stand. It's so crazy to think back on all of this, of the memories and how they could go like that. And I have reported for this network from Florida at hurricanes, at other natural disasters and fires, but nothing has ever prepared me to do what I had to do here. And it's also why this story. Yes, it's a story about politics. You're gonna get a lot of juicy stuff about Gavin Newsom and Donald Trump and the beef that they have and Elon Musk. And I can tell you all about that. But this is a story about real people as much as it is about politics. And it's in experiencing this that I realized I needed the connection with the people that I got to hang out with and spend time with and that you'll meet in this book as much as anything else. And I wouldn't have known that had I not had the experience that you just read.
- [39:35]
Nicole Wallace
Well, I think my favorite part of the book is sort of the reporter's notebook. So we'll go through and read some more of that. On the other side of a break. Jacob sticks around you. Also, as you've been talking about, you have a new interview with Gavin Newsom with some news. News has been made. We'll show it to you. Don't go anywhere.
- [39:53]
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Ian Bassin
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- [41:21]
Nicole Wallace
We'Re back with our dear friend and colleague, Jacob Soborov. So Jacob, in real time, while you were covering this, you were bringing us the stories of all the people who were not just losing their homes as you did, but losing their businesses, losing their jobs, losing their livelihood, losing their communities, losing their ball fields, losing their grocery store. Remember you walking through once and there were, you know, racks of or shelves of food.
- [41:43]
Ian Bassin
Yeah.
- [41:43]
Jacob Soboroff
Before the fire, I was outside the Ralph supermarket that had burned down. I remember talking to you from there. Yeah.
- [41:47]
Nicole Wallace
But in bringing to life all the people that worked in all those businesses and communities and neighborhoods and their impact, talk to the governor about that as well.
- [41:55]
Jacob Soboroff
Gavin Newsom said something that was prophetic to me actually. Before, after I had interviewed him on Meet the Press on the Saturday after the fire. He pulled me aside. I write about this in the book. And he said to me off camera, but not off the record. So I put it in the book. He said, I'm really worried about what Trump is going to do because he was President Elect at the time. Remember when he gets into office in terms of immigration policy and how it's going to impact the fire recovery. And sure enough, it has been catastrophic, at least in his view. And when I talked to him last week in the interview that's been airing this week, I asked him about that, and I want to show a little bit of that. Here's Gavin News. What's the impact of ICE and CBP being in LA on the recovery from the fires?
- [42:38]
Gavin Newsom
I mean, it's, it's impacted the entire construction industry across the United States. A huge, a disproportionate, I mean, California, Texas, a few other states, up to 35, some cases estimated 40, 41% of the workforce are immigrants.
- [42:51]
Jacob Soboroff
So is it.
- [42:52]
Ian Bassin
You've got a.
- [42:53]
Gavin Newsom
You've got direct labor shortages, you've got direct impacts from these tariffs. I mean, we could just talk about the tariff impacts and the retaliatory nature of what's happening with our relationship to Canada and someone's supplies to come from there. The direct impacts as it relates to those that have rebuilt, it's impacted the challenges, the headwinds of immigration policy and tariff policy are hurting the recovery and making it more costly.
- [43:17]
Jacob Soboroff
What he's hitting there is something that I often cite when I go to any of these type, whether it was family separation or this. The fissures in our society are exposed when big events like this happen and we get this X ray vision just for a second to understand what's really going on below the surface. There are more undocumented people in LA than anywhere else. And these fires made it very clear how important the undocumented community is to everybody's everyday lives, but especially to the recovery effort. And the policies of this administration are directly, according to Governor Newsom, affecting now the rebuilding process as well.
- [43:51]
Nicole Wallace
How did the fire and the Trump administration's response to it change Newsom?
- [43:56]
Jacob Soboroff
Well, interestingly, even though Trump was President elect at the time, he and Newsom, excuse me, he and Musk, were spewing all this misinformation about the cause of the fires. We could turn on the tap from the Pacific Northwest and let the water flow. He wasted billions of. I laugh. It's horrible. Billions of gallons of water for no reason in no way or shape or form that helped the people of Los Angeles. And he fueled the flames, metaphorically, of the fire in real time as the flames were still burning, by confusing people about the causes and what to do. Gavin Newsom, there's a story in the book about Gavin Newsom sitting watching Elon Musk do a livestream with firefighters poking them, basically about the water, conspiracy theories about why the water was running out. And Elon Musk says in some pretty. Excuse me, Gavin Newsom says in some pretty salty language at these guys, what are they doing? We gotta start fighting back. And he credits that as the beginning of the social media strategy that you're seeing an employee against Trump right now. He said, I am not gonna stop and let these guys run all over me, confuse the residents of my state and hurt people in Los Angeles and throughout California by spewing misinformation, especially in a tragedy like this. And you asked how did it change him? His whole strategy has changed since then.
- [45:10]
Nicole Wallace
Well, and it's the training ground for what we see on a national stage when ICE and CBP come to la. Another big story you cover.
- [45:18]
Jacob Soboroff
Maybe that's the next book I hear, an ice.
- [45:20]
Nicole Wallace
I don't know exactly. Oh, that's good. I don't know how you find time to do these, but I'm really glad that you do.
- [45:26]
Jacob Soboroff
Thank you.
- [45:27]
Nicole Wallace
Thank you so much. And congratulations on it. It's brilliant as everything you touch is brilliant.
- [45:31]
Jacob Soboroff
Thank you for your support. Always.
- [45:32]
Nicole Wallace
Thank you.
- [45:33]
Jacob Soboroff
Appreciate it.
- [45:33]
Nicole Wallace
Thank you. The book is out today. Today's pub day. It's called Firestorm, the Great Los Angeles Fires and America's New Age of Disaster. Jacob, thank you for being here to talk about it. One more break.
- [45:42]
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- [45:43]
Nicole Wallace
We'll be right back. We are now more than two weeks past that deadline to have released all of the files related to the Jeffrey Epstein investigation. And we're just starting to get a sense of how far behind the Department of Justice is. On meeting that deadline, DFJ officials tell a federal judge that it is still reviewing more than 2 million documents and have released just 1% of the total. In a letter signed by Jay Clayton, that's Manhattan's top federal prosecutor, as well as Attorney General Pam Bondi, the deputy attorney general, Todd Blanch. We learned that 400 Justice Department attorneys will spend, quote, the next few weeks reviewing and redacting files. All this comes amid mounting pressure from Democrats on Capitol Hill. Today, a group of senators called for an audit of DOJ's compliance, or lack thereof, with the Epstein, Transparency Act. We'll stay on top of that story. One more break. We'll be right back. Thank you so much for letting us into your homes. We are grateful.
- [46:45]
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- [47:11]
Ian Bassin
Wireless plans require the purchase of a sim card.
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