← Deadline: White House
Deadline: White House
"Obama could never draw a crowd this small"
00:42:15
June 29, 2026, 5pm: Nicolle Wallace on Donald Trump’s long awaited Freedom 250 Great American State Fair going off with a whimper this weekend.
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- [00:01]
Nicole
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- [00:29]
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- [01:04]
Nicole
Sometimes the pictures really don't tell the full of the full story because if you look behind us you see, okay, there are a couple hundred people back there.
- [01:10]
Donald Sherman
But the truth is when you make
- [01:11]
Nicole
your way over here and you're in this, you're in a wash of people. There are thousands of people here and I'll tell you what, that's with rain, with everything else going on, the fact that it is heightened security just because of the world right now. It's really an awesome crowd and it's
- [01:26]
David Barenvold
people that want to be here.
- [01:30]
John Heilman
Don't believe your eyes guys. Don't believe your ears. I put on my glasses to get a closer look. The live shot literally behind all those people saying all those things tells a totally different story from the things coming out of their mouths. Hi again everyone. It's five o' clock in the east. Donald Trump's long awaited freedom 250 great American state Fair went off with a whimper this weekend with what looked like tens dozens of people showing up for the event, which was plagued with problems. Power outages, a shutdown, Ferris wheel, extreme weather, and the cancellation of a performance by one of the only artists who stood by Donald Trump other than Kash Patel's girlfriend. And that was part of Vanilla Ice. Needless to say, the less than stellar reviews of the fair and the viral posts about his itty bitty little crowds have gotten under Donald Trump's skin in a big way. Donald Trump posted this response on Truth Social Quote do you think people appreciate what a fantastic job we did in building and operating The Great American State Fair at the National Mall packed with happy people. People, oh my God, I can't believe I'm reading this. And everybody loving it. President went on, Ask yourself the simple question. The president of the United States switched to all caps, quote, do you think that Obama or sleepy Joe Biden could have done it? The answer is in Trump's post. No. The answer was like Obama did it last week at the opening of the Obama Center. But I guess in this case, Trump has a point Obama has never in his life. Like if Obama's motorcades draw bigger crowds for OTRS trips that aren't even announced. But it was all part of a weekend that did little to turn around Donald Trump's political fortunes and dispel the belief among Americans that Trump is obsessed on himself and his vanity projects, more so than he is on the concerns of the American people or his own coalition who are screaming at the top of their lungs about the economy and about a very unpopular war in Iran. As the deal to end that war with Iran, one of the main drivers of Trump's cost of living crisis, all but collapsed, Trump appeared to be more focused on the national monuments slash golf course tour. There's now a golf course on the agenda and his apparent plan to plant 47 trees in his own honor, like in honor of him, according to new reporting in the Washington Post. And if you thought it couldn't get any worse, Vice President J.D. vance bailed. He wasn't around to pick up any of the slack or absorb any of the embarrassment, saying, oh, they rejected me, not you, Donald. He was promoting his book. He was on a book tour. This is all real. Donald Trump and his administration embarrassing themselves and our country by doubling and tripling down on self aggrandizement as Americans can't afford to pay their bills and fill up their tanks with gas. It's where we start the hour. Some of our most favorite reporters and friends. Scott McFarland's here. He's the chief Washington correspondent for Midas Touch. Also joining us, New York Times investigative reporter David Barenvold is back with us and Puck News senior political columnist and national affairs analyst John Heilman is here. Halman, I'll start with you for some framing on this. Like it doesn't read as real. I read this and I, and I, and I like, is this AI, is this really what they're doing? And I thought about the book that I know you and I have been through the regime change reporting where one of the closest people to Donald Trump is this woman, Natalie Harp, who helps create this altered reality for Donald Trump. But what is, what is the issue here where like he actually thinks that it's his job to make up lies about the reflecting pool put on at taxpayer expense, sparsely attended celebrations that are so politically poisoned. No normal people want to be a part of them and build things in his own honor when he couldn't even line a frickin pond.
- [05:41]
Nicole
You always give me the good questions, Nicole, where it involves like some combination of speculation, you know, psychoanalysis and a little tiny, little bit of political analysis.
- [05:53]
John Heilman
I think Natalie Hart's perfect for you.
- [05:55]
Nicole
Is the. I totally agree. You know, this is why I come on the show because it's like, right, that's my strike zone right there. It's a very small strike zone, but that's my strike zone. I keep thinking about the fact that you made this point about the Obama, Obama did exactly, you know, had brought out, you know, U2 and, and Bruce Springsteen and all these people to, to place Stevie Wonder to play in Chicago last week. And you can't really blame Trump for not knowing about that, right? I mean, you can't blame him because I don't think he knows about, I don't think he knows about it. Don't you think that's the deal? It's like, is not she like turned
- [06:30]
John Heilman
off all the TVs, like, don't like unplug the cable?
- [06:35]
Nicole
They're not on the networks he watches. They're not on the networks he watches. He's watching other networks. And Natalie, Natalie Hart, the harp, the, the human fax machine, the human printer is not printing out stories to please the boss about, hey, look at Barack Obama's lineup, right? I think Trump in that, I think the bubble of delusion, I mean, look, you and I both think that Trump's mental acuity is declining pretty precipitously. We also think he has various kind of psychic things that I'm not qualified to, to, to diagnose seriously, but has various kinds of syndromes and pathologies that, that in combination with the information bubble that a lot of presidents do get into, right, where they, where they, they lose touch with what's really going on out there. And I think that, that, that combination is part of what explains the other things you're talking about that are more serious things. Right? Because the reality is that we did on the show a few weeks ago when Trump had the drawings of the Golden Ballroom, right, that was replacing the East Wing. And the most amazing thing about those drawings was not the drawings was that he had them on his lap and he had invited reporters in, holding them up, boast about them as if he didn't understand that it was politically toxic. And the Donald Trump of 2015, 2016, that, that Donald Trump wouldn't have been like that.
- [07:53]
Mike Schmidt
Right.
- [07:53]
Nicole
I mean, Donald Trump knew his base, knew what working class voters he knew he had a fingertip feel for what voters wanted. That's why he won in 2016 and he still even had it to some extent in 2024. Again, you can dislike him while you want, there's plenty of room for that, but he had a fingertip feel for what millions of Americans wanted. I think the fact that he has lost that is illustrated in a hundred different examples this last weekend was one of them. The Golden Ballroom. Boasting about these pictures as if like somehow this was the thing that was going to heal him politically is another sign that again, he's in a profound bubble, somewhat self created, somewhat I think the product of his own mind, somewhat the product of the circumstances in which he that the velvet prison that he's built around himself and people like Natalie Harp, who knows, if she actually ever gave him a representative of bunch of what the news coverage was, she would be fired if not imprisoned. Right. And, and whatever kinds of cognitive decline he's suffering is the kind of magic admixture that has led to this period. That and I got to tell you, you got to stop saying this thing about how you check to see if it's AI the rule now, Nicole, like what Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman who said, you know, when the White House says something, our presumption is they're lying until proven otherwise. I think you have to presume that the most ridiculous things that you see, that those things are real until they're proven to be AI as opposed to the other way around. Because that is just what we're seeing over and over again. I mean, that the more ludicrous it is, the more likely it's true.
- [09:31]
John Heilman
Yeah. I mean, and look, David, I mean, the Times had some phenomenal reporting. We had Luke Brabwater on at the end of the week on Friday. Byline was one of the bylines on it. I mean, we don't even know how much redecorating of the White House and the monuments and the mall that's planned. But I don't say it facetiously, like he could not adequately source a bid to effectively and successfully line the reflecting pool. And we think he's going to build an arch through which cars Will drive. I mean, that's insane. That is absolute insanity. And I wonder if we are really so devoid of checks and balances on the public safety side that he's just going to Bulldoze all of D.C.
- [10:17]
David Barenvold
well, one of the, there's two interesting things that work here. One is that, you know, every president in their second term gets frustrated with their inability to change things domestically. They move to foreign policy where they have more free hand. Trump did that, and then it worked in Venezuela, it didn't work in Iran. Now he's taken another step inward, which is he's going to try to change the things within like three miles of his house, where he does have more power and he has a very pliant Interior Department. You know, that there are less checks and balances to stop him from doing things on the Mall. But there's something really interesting at work here, which is that the things that Trump wants done the most are often, in this case, the things that are done the least well. And the Reflecting Pool is a great example of that. The Great American State Fair where I just came back from is another example of that. Because they get handed out as no bid contracts or they give given to allies or toadies or yes men, and they just do it fast and don't ask any questions, don't do any of their own independent thinking. They just want to rush to please Trump and do exactly what he said. And it comes back to Biden. It came back to bite him at the Reflecting Pool. It's now coming back to Biden at the Great American State Fair. That nobody underneath him feels like it's to their advantage to take two seconds to think about what he said, to push back, to offer alternatives, to even seek competing bids. They just want to go as fast as they can. And you see how quickly it sort of turns into them stepping on a rake.
- [11:32]
John Heilman
I mean, Scott McFarlane, there is a really sort of macabre apples to apples that you can draw. I remember during COVID he wanted to have a rally, I think it was in Tulsa, and there were Covid restrictions in place. He wanted them all overridden. His staff was forced to pack an indoor arena. Allies became extremely ill after that event. But because he wanted the room packed and because he had a sense that looking like his events were sparsely attended, even in the throes of the deadly COVID pandemic, the arena was packed. He has the same insatiable appetite to be feeded. And there was nobody there. I mean, what is, what does this say about the people around him and their impotence.
- [12:20]
Scott McFarland
It was Indeed Oklahoma in 2020 where that happened. And his fixation on crowd size has been one consistent portion of Trump presidency 1.0 and 2.0. And I feel like all of this was doomed to fail at the Great American State Fair, the second Milli Vanilli canceled. Only bad things happen when Milli Vanilli cancels on you. There's going to be a chapter of the story of Trump that's titled Milli Vanilli canceled on Trump, but he persevered.
- [12:50]
John Heilman
Yeah.
- [12:50]
Scott McFarland
Here's the thing, Mikol. I've got an official document here. I've got a post it note that lists all the important dates coming up soon on Trump vanity projects. It's put up or shut up time. July 8th, he's gonna be in court or his Department of Justice will be in court on the slush fund July 9, the Department of Justice, Nicole, on July 9 has to actually put on paper what it says people did at the reflecting pool. That's the deadline to charge people either with minor water touching or some type of felonious box cutter assault. Then mid July, he's got to answer for the TARP on the Kennedy Center. The judge wants to know why the TARP is still up there when the tarp's coming down. There's an Epstein file deadline this week. Todd Blanche is testifying. All this stuff is going to come back up again and again. It's vanity project month in July with or without Milli Vanilli.
- [13:41]
John Heilman
I love that. I mean, and the reason we're laughing, I guess, at him is because Milli Vanilli was his idea. And I wonder how, man, how much
- [13:51]
Donald Sherman
of
- [13:54]
John Heilman
where are we heading? I mean, we're now, as I think Scott puts it, like the half of Milli Vanilli that's still alive didn't show up. That's where we are in the Trump story.
- [14:06]
Nicole
Yes, that's where we are in the Trump story. That is exactly where we are in the Trump story. And you're gonna end up with the last remaining Backstreet Boy playing at the next big Trump event. I do want to, Nicole, go back to something you mentioned in the top that we didn't stop to talk about, which is the planting of the 47 trees. And, you know, there are so many things to say about it, but it is the case that the man who uprooted and destroyed the White House Rose Garden now feels as though there's some kind of symbolic consonance with the notion that he's going to go out and plant 47 trees. And I just, again, in the realm of stranger than fiction, we're doing the same thing here up at my house where you actually planting trees. We're pulling out 47 weeds every day, just as a kind of incant, as kind of an incantation. I hope I don't get indicted for saying that. But that is what we do every here. Every morning we take a walk around the house and pull up around the property and pull up 47 weeds and put them in a bag and send them out with the weekly trash disposal.
- [15:11]
John Heilman
Symbolically, I mean, David, what is your sense of whether Congress has any appetite for doing its job? I mean, Congress, I think, had a commission that was supposed to be in charge of keeping the celebration apolitical, keeping it something that everyone could participate in. We don't know if that would have been better attended. You have to assume it couldn't have gone off much worse. But are there any rumblings that Congress is going to assert any of its powers here?
- [15:44]
David Barenvold
Well, the congressional committee to celebrate the 250th is still around. It has less money than it did before because a lot of its money was shifted over to President Trump's Freedom 250. It's still there. It's doing some celebrations around the country. I don't think Congress as a whole in this instance is going to do anything to try to reassert its authority over the 250th. I think they are happy to stay out of this. Even Democrats in Congress seem happy to focus on other things which maybe have a little more import than the things going on here in D.C. so I think, you know, there are some legal restrictions on Trump, and there's certainly, as I said, some restrictions caused by the failures of his own administration. But I don't see Congress taking action on this when they've taken action on so little else.
- [16:25]
John Heilman
Scott, any of those dates look more promising than others on the legal front?
- [16:31]
David Barenvold
Yeah.
- [16:32]
Scott McFarland
I mean, the July 8th slush fund court hearing in Alexandria, Virginia, it's enormous. The judge has frozen that slush fund, saying she wants the Department of Justice to put it on paper that the slush fund's not moving forward, want to kill it off officially, and the Department of Justice has refused to do so, raising questions. Are they using some type of sleight of hand or words strategy to avoid actually killing the thing off if that hearing doesn't go as the Department of Justice would like it to go? If there's any questions raised that's a problem for next week because one week from that day, July 15, is when Todd Blanche goes before the Senate for his confirmation hearings. And again this weekend, Nicole Thom Tillis said the slush fund is a deal breaker for Todd Blanche. Got to get rid of that thing. Those two dates are critical, I think, moving forward for the Department of justice and $1.7 billion for KOT beaters.
- [17:25]
John Heilman
Unbelievable. You couldn't make any of this up. Also ahead, you guys are going to stick around ahead for all of us. It's another breathtaking example of a parent's self enrichment in a presidential administration where self dealing is the thing, they've made it normal. Brand new reporting in the New York Times on how Donald Trump's kids, his sons in this instance, stand to benefit financially after the Trump administration signed a massive mining deal with Kazakhstan. They're not the only family members or sons of Trump officials who are cashing in on the federal government. We'll bring you that extraordinary new reporting later in the hour. DEADLINE White House continues after a quick break. Don't go anywhere.
- [18:11]
Donald Sherman
He's just trying to exercise control over the Republican Party. And this is how cults, political cults and religious cults work, that you have to accept the lies of the leader. And he uses that as a litmus test for political loyalty. And that's really what's going on to get everybody behind him. So when he tries his next caper, his next attack on our constitutional democracy,
- [18:33]
Nicole
he will have people behind him because
- [18:35]
Donald Sherman
what he cannot tolerate is any kind of free thinking and actual interaction with the real world.
- [18:43]
John Heilman
Heilman. Congressman Raskin puts this more articulately than I've been able to do since I saw Kevin Warsh refuse to answer the question about who won the 2020 election. Kevin Warsh is someone I worked with in the Bush administration. He's really, really smart, very, very normal, more than normal, like an exceptional person, like on that side of the aisle. For Kevin Warsh to sit there and not say who won the 2020 election affirms what Jamie Raskin is saying. And it's what he's talking about. And it's not Donald Trump anymore. Like people are staring at the wrong part of the story. He's wanted to indict Comey since 2017. The story is that he finally has in Todd Blanche someone who'll do it. The intel story, too. It's not about what Donald Trump wants intel to do. Trump hacking his intelligence heads by 2017. He fired Comey in, I think it was January of 2017. It's about Bill Pulte and what he's willing to do to agencies just not designed for political hacks. How do we sort of move or shift our gaze?
- [19:49]
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- [20:49]
Nicole
Avoiding your unfinished home projects because you're not sure where to start. Thumbtack knows homes, so you don't have to don't know the difference between matte, paint, finish and satin or what that clunking sound from your dryer is. With thumbtack, you don't have to be a home pro, you just have to hire one. You can hire top rated pros, see price estimates and read reviews all on the app download today. I don't. I mean, look, I never know how to make people start to shift their gaze to call. Even though, because I feel like we're kind of constantly urging people to do this and it's not a new message. And I think that, that, that the thing you just said has a corollary, an important corollary in the Congress right where I can't. I really can't think of a more vivid example of enabling run amok than what we saw last week when Donald Trump went up to Capitol Hill and did that meeting with the Senate caucus gotten a shouting match with Bill Cassidy, who was apparently so pissed off that he came out over a vote that Cassidy had taken to go with Democrats and ask for a War Powers resolution. Right? They had this fight. I know we talked about this on the show last week, but I still keep playing it over my mind. He was so angry and so proud of himself and still so angry about the way Trump torpedoed him in the primary, that he went out of the meeting and did something no one almost ever does. He stood in front of a microphone on the record and basically recounted the fight they'd had in the meeting and basically said, I was not going to let. I'm not going to take it. I was not going to take it. I stood up for myself, I'd do it again, et cetera, et cetera. And he. And for a minute there, you're like, well, I guess Bill Cassidy finally found his balls, you know, and then a
- [22:33]
John Heilman
few hours later, he changed his vote. Yeah.
- [22:37]
Nicole
And then a few hours later, he changed his vote. And that's, to me, that's the thing about this enabling thing we're having. The enabling is happening. It's happening inside the administration, is happening outside the administration. Right. And then all of it, the enablers, ultimately, I think, will be the story as much or more than Trump himself. If Trump is irresistible as a subject of criticism, it's right that we focus on him. It's right that we criticize him. He's caused a lot of damage. He could cause a lot of damage more. But in the end, what history writes about this, history is going to write about how the Republican Party not just acquiesced to him and allowed him to take it over and dominate an entire era in presidential politics and destroy effectively what was the traditional Republican Party, but how even after he was clearly failing politically and otherwise, they still are enthralled to him. And as I say, I think Bill Cassidy is the best example of that. And the people you named on the inside are just like, there were still some people in Congress who stood up to Trump in Trump 1.0, and there were still some people inside the administration who stood up to him in Trump 2.0. And you can imagine why there would be more capitulation after he won an impressive victory in 2024. But that is 18 months ago, and his numbers suck, and his power and leverage over people is less than they've ever been, and yet they still bow down before him and enable his increasingly lunatic ideas. I don't have an explanation for that, but it is certainly the thing we need to be paying attention to now, because Trump is not a strong man on his own. He's only a strong man to the extent that he has these kind of enablers around him inside the White House and at the other end of Capitol Hill or at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue. And. And if that. That. If the danger that the country faces and Our democratic institutions face are mostly now not just about Trump or maybe mainly about Trump, but about whether these people are going to continue to give him what he wants despite the fact that his power in every other way really is obviously waning.
- [24:44]
John Heilman
Yeah, I mean, Scott, you mentioned almost offhandedly about cops getting beat up. I mean, these are not like 50, 50 issues. Ooh, I don't know where I stand on the insurrectionists beating cops. Like 100% of Americans think it's abhorrent. The plot twist here is that Trump convinced some sliver of them that it didn't really happen. And I wonder as you cover DOJ now, you know, how much of it is this non reality. I mean, like to be in there defending the Flesh Fund is to argue against what actually happened on January 6th.
- [25:18]
Scott McFarland
And over the last 24 hours, Nicole, another dozen January 6th riot defendants have just sued for a million dollars apiece in damages. Perhaps thinking of the Department of Justice is a hospitable way for them to make money off of their status as former January 6th defendants. That's what they think of the Department of Justice at this moment, that they want to bring them to court to help expedite their payments. At what point, though, Nicole, does self interest weigh out as we get closer to the election? We're 80 or so days from early voting in some states. There's one Republican who took a stand against the slush fund. Brian Fitzpatrick. Pennsylvania always is a tough race. There are three other Pennsylvanians, Republican incumbents in toss up races. According to Cook Political Report. At what point do these Republicans have to distance themselves a little bit from for self preservation or is the self preservation muscle just not there, as Heilman has alluded to?
- [26:17]
John Heilman
Yeah, we'll be watching. Scott, thank you so much for your reporting. David, thank you so much for your reporting and for joining us and for starting us off. Heilmann sticks around a little bit longer. When we come back, a deeply reported new investigation in the New York Times underscores how the sons of Donald Trump, Eric and Don Jr. Are their names and people in the Trump administration are benefiting financially from deals Trump's making with foreign governments. It is so far beyond the realm of anything that has ever happened before. And the question for the American people and Democrats in Congress is what can be done to put a stop to any of it. We'll get to all that after a short break,
- [27:00]
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- [27:59]
Donald Sherman
i'm pretty confident talking into a mic.
- [28:02]
Scott McFarland
Hey, I'm doing it right now.
- [28:03]
Donald Sherman
But home projects? I second guess everything.
- [28:06]
Nicole
Is that noise normal?
- [28:08]
Donald Sherman
Is that water damage?
- [28:09]
Scott McFarland
Who do I even call?
- [28:11]
Donald Sherman
That's where thumbtack comes in. Just upload a photo or voice note and it uses AI powered search to match you with the right top rated local pro. So instead of guessing you get clarity and can hire with confidence for your next home project. Try thumbtack Hire the Right pro today
- [28:30]
John Heilman
each deeply reported account of self dealing from the Trump White House seems to get more brazen than the one that came before it. The New York Times has now reviewed a number of federal filings and is out with an extraordinary piece of investigative reporting that details the latest way that Donald Trump's family and allies appear to be profiting off Donald Trump's policy decisions as president. It involves a billion dollar mining deal with Kazakhstan and one that both Trump and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick's sons stand to profit from. In a meeting last September, Donald Trump and Howard Lutnick secured a deal with the leader of Kazakhstan to give a little known American company now called Kaz Resources access to one of the world's largest untapped reserves of tungsten. It's a crucial rare earth mineral. Here's where the apparent self dealing comes in. According to the New York Times, weeks after that meeting, quote, investors with a firm called Dominari securities, which is housed at Trump Tower in New York and partly owned by the president's two eldest sons, Donald Trump Jr. And Eric Trump, joined with other partners to take a 20% stake in the corporate entity related to the Kazakhstan project. Around the same time, Cantor Fitzgerald, an investment company controlled by Howard Lutnick's family and overseen by his sons Brandon and Kyle. Lutnick helped one of the lead investors working with Dominari on the Kazakh deal raise $210 million in new capital for a related entity. Such rounds of fundraising typically net Cantor millions of dollars in fees. The deal was, quote, ultimately signed on November 6, six days after the investment involving the Trump sons and their partners, which was not publicly disclosed at the time. As the New York Times reports, this continues a pattern of self enrichment in the second Trump administration that has few precedents in American history. When asked for statements, both the White House and the Commerce Department rejected any suggestion that the Trump administration was improperly mixing government actions with family business. Trump's sons both denied being involved in the specifics of the deal. Eric Trump claimed they were passive investors. A Cantor Fitzgerald spokesperson said that company's executives were not involved in discussions related to government funding. And Dominari securities didn't respond to the Times request for comment. Joining our conversation is Donald Sherman, the president and CEO of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington or Crew Hellman is still with us. Donald, what's so interesting about the story, if the reporting doesn't leave you gobsmacked, is that the denials are so parsed that they don't actually undermine any of the gobsmacking reporting.
- [31:21]
Donald Sherman
That's right. The administration and the president's family would have us believe that Don Jr. And Eric are the luckiest passive investors in the history of passive investment. You know, we've got a situation where regular folks are struggling every day with rising costs, with groceries, energy, housing and every everyday items like that. And the Trumps have had the most lucrative year of their lives, profiting off the presidency. They've made billions in the last 18 months and we're supposed to believe that this is all just happenst?
- [32:01]
John Heilman
Heilman I want to read a little bit more from this Times report. It's long, but it's worth a thorough read. The Times reports this quote, one or both families, that's the Trumps and the Lutnicks have financial ties to at least 14 companies that are actively working with the federal government on critical mining deals, including the Kazakhstan project. According to federal filings examined by the New York Times, all 14 of these companies have either benefited directly from offers of financial assistance from the Trump administration or have pending permit applications before the Commerce Department overseen by Lutnick. According to the Times, the total amount of federal funding that the Trump administration has provided or is considering providing to the companies exceeds $8.9 billion, according to public statements by the companies in the federal government. Again, this is a piece of reporting based on documents, and that's what's on paper. This is extraordinary.
- [33:01]
Nicole
Yeah. And I think, Nicole, there are two things to say about this, one of which is, relates to Howard Lutnick, I think. And, you know, again, we all have been spending a lot of time with the Swann and Haberman book, and one of the things that comes through in their reporting about, about Trump and Lutnick is that, you know, it's not like Donald Trump has a lot of respect for Howard Lutnick. You kind of, you get the sense that, you know, he. There's a point where he refers to Ludnick in a very unflattering way, and they ask him about it in their interview, the fact check interview at the end of the book, and he doesn't deny it. He doesn't swat it away. He doesn't sort of say. He basically sort of seems to treat Ludnick a little bit the way he used to treat Rudy Giuliani, with a kind of very thinly veiled contempt. This is a person who's not obviously qualified to be the Secretary of Commerce, but his degree of disqualification is not as gratuitous as some others we look at, Pete Agatha, Bobby Kennedy Jr. They're more flagrantly unqualified. Howard Lednick, because of his history, Cantor Fitzgerald is at least kind of on paper qualified. But in every aspect of his behavior that we've seen in Trump 2.0, he's not a serious person. And this makes you ask the question, if Trump doesn't really think he's a serious person and kind of demeans him behind his back, and he's not a serious person, a person serious enough to have the job he has, why is he there? Well, this story gives you an idea of why he's there. He's there because he can help enrich the Trump. He can help enrich the Trump family. He has those kind of connections and is willing to do this kind of stuff that anybody with any real sense of ethics or, or appreciation for the requirements, ethical requirements of government service never would. That's the first thing. The second thing is the last thing you said, which is you made this cut. You said that this is all really good reporting and it's all on paper.
- [34:37]
Mike Schmidt
Right.
- [34:38]
Nicole
And I guess what I would say about that is, is I think that there has been incredible reporting about corruption and the degree of it in this, in this Trump 2.0 period. And I think that it has only begun to scratch the surface. I think that that when all is said and done, the degree, and we are shocked every day by the scale of it and the brazenness of it, and I think that we are only seeing 10% of the iceberg. We're not seeing anything like what is really going on. And I think some of the great books that will be written about this second Trump term will be those written by investigative reporters who do work or the kind of people who investigate Enron and things like that who are going to go back and dig through the money story, because that is going to be at the center of Trump's legacy, of his defilement of the White House, of the unprecedented things he's done, but also by just how freaking rich he got off of all of this. And there are going to be a lot of breadcrumbs once he's out of office. And I think we are all going to look back and say, wow, we thought that it was brazen and we thought that it was beyond our wildest imaginations of how large it was. And it turns out we only knew about a tenth of the story.
- [35:51]
John Heilman
I mean, Donald, are there breadcrumbs in this reporting that will put in motion lawsuits from crew?
- [36:00]
Donald Sherman
Well, there's certainly breadcrumbs there that demand oversight. And I think hopefully we don't have to wait for those breadcrumbs we revealed. If Congress does its job, there are details there and there are strings that should be pulled, including around the timing of these deals, the timing of Cantor Fitzgerald's financial relationships with some of these companies, the timing around the Trump Sons investments in these companies that demand oversight. Right now, if Secretary Lutnick was involved in green lighting, a funding deal that financially benefits a company that is son's own, that would likely violate the ethics rules for executive branch employees. There's potential criminal implications. And then Commerce, the Commerce Office of Inspector General should be taking a look at Secretary Lutnick's activities. Right now. Congress should be asking questions, but of course, the congressional majority is not doing their job. And certainly if Congress changes hands, I would have Secretary Lutnick before Congress sooner than later. So we don't have to wait until after the Trump presidency is over to find out why $8.9 billion in taxpayer funds are being invested in so many companies that just happen to have ties to President Trump's sons and Secretary Lutnick Sons.
- [37:23]
John Heilman
Right. You have to believe in an extraordinary amount of coincidences. Donald Sherman, John Heilman, thank You both so much for spending time with us on this. When we come back, the Supreme Court's ruling today in the Slaughter case is just one part of Donald Trump's concerted effort and the effort being underway by his allies to vastly overhaul and expand their powers to fire federal workers. There's brand new reporting about how Trump defanged a government panel meant to protect workers who are walking wrongly terminated. We'll have that reporting for you after a short break. Donald Trump's obsession with an all out campaign to expand his executive authority and fire federal workers at his own will has been assisted by a number of consequential decisions. There was a Supreme Court decision today that we've covered, but also a ruling by a little known board meant to stop civil service politicization. Brand new reporting in the New York Times reveals that the White House secretly pressured the Merit Systems Protection Board. It's meant to be an independent agency that just protects federal workers from unfair firings. The board made a decision that, quote, backed President Trump's assertion that he has broad authority to reshape the executive branch as he wants. That ruling broke with decades of precedent. Accepting the White House argument that Article 2 of the Constitution gives Trump the power to dismiss officials without due process. Let's bring in the reporter behind that story, New York Times investigative reporter Ms. Now contributor Mike Schmidt. Mike, let me read one more paragraph from the story and ask you if this was part of the Comey obsession as well. You write this. Unprecedented firings were taking place across the government in some like the ousters of Maureen Comey and a Manhattan federal prosecutor and the daughter of the former FBI director. The Trump administration cited the president's Article 2 power offering. No further explanation. Last September, Ms. Comey sued to contest her firing. She argued that her case should be heard by a federal court in part because the Merit Systems Protection Board, quote, cannot and does not function as intended. In her particular case, she said the board would be especially handicapped given its long standing reluctance to weigh in on the president's Article 2 authority. Was this effort to sort of corrupt this board designed to protect federal employees, the reverse engineering to make it easier to fire Maureen Comey and others like her, or was this just a part of Project 2025 and the effort to reshape the government?
- [40:07]
Mike Schmidt
We don't know. And that's one of the problems when you start to attack independent bodies and you start to try to sway them, it creates an appearance of an issue. So the mspb, the Merit Systems Protection Board, something I knew very Little about before I worked on this story is, as you said, supposed to protect federal workers from being fired unfairly. One of the things about Donald Trump and his first and second administration is that we get to see into parts of the government that we usually don't see into and learn about. In this case, the Merit System Protection Board was set up after Watergate. It's supposed to be there as a check to make sure that people in the civil service don't get fired for political reasons or unfair reasons. They're supposed to operate like judges. Now, they're not in the judicial branch, they're in the executive branch, but they're supposed to be treated like judges. And when you have a judge, one party is not supposed to go meet with one side without the other one present. But in this case, the White House met with the leader, the interim leader of the Merit Systems Protection Board, to tell them about their opinions and how they thought the Merit Systems Protection Board should look at the case. They made a point in the meeting of saying, we're not telling you what to do, but they privately had a meeting with this person who was supposed to be a judge to tell them, you know, their. Their point of view. The White House later told us this was a job interview for the person. Let's just put that aside for the second for now. The Merit System Protection Board then went ahead and made an extraordinary decision in which they sided with the Trump administration, and they basically ruled in a way that would defang the Merit Systems Protection Board going forward and give Trump the ability to replace people in the federal government. Why is that important? One of the people, one of the jobs that they could, they could zero in on was federal prosecutors. This would allow them to fire federal prosecutors and to have more of a hold on who a federal prosecutor is.
- [42:22]
John Heilman
Why was the board so easily corrupted?
- [42:27]
Mike Schmidt
Well, look, we don't know why the board makes it, you know, totally makes the decision why they did. But, but to, to your point about the, you know, when. When a board meets with someone in private like that, that's party to a matter, it allows people like yourself to say, well, why was it corrupted? Because you can't see into the process. There's a reason that when you're at a trial, one side just can't go secretly meet with the judge and tell the judge what they think the judge should do. And because of that meeting, it creates disappearance, which is like, okay, well, what really happened here? Was this a decision that was based on the law and the facts, or was this a decision that was based on politics. And that is a larger question that sort of encompasses a lot of what the Trump administration does, especially on the law enforcement side. Are decisions being based, made on the law and the facts, are they being made based on politics? And one of the issues is is that Trump and those who work for him in his second behave in a way that allows for that perception to be a very, very valid and open question. Why is the government doing what it's doing? Why is it using its power? Is it using its power for political reasons, for vengeance, or based on the law and the fact
- [43:52]
John Heilman
and just another road that leads to the politicization and weaponization of doj, of prosecutors? It's an incredible piece of the puzzle. Mike, thank you so much for joining us to talk about your reporting. One more break. We'll be right back. If you want to understand exactly how we got here, how we got to this point in the history of our country, and you can only talk to one person about it, you should think about talking to Eddie Galat. He's one of my go to guests in big moments in Breaking News. But right now he's out with a timely and important new book about how America celebrates its anniversaries. Take a listen to some of our conversation from this week's new episode of the Best People podcast.
- [44:39]
Donald Sherman
Donald Trump's kind of carnival barker kind of approach, right. Has a kind of popular currency. But the actual effort to rip out the entrails of the infrastructure of the mid 20th century, to dismantle the good society, to dismantle the New Deal, this infrastructure of the civil rights movement and what came out of it. These people are engaging in a wholesale attack and they have an intellectual rationale for it.
- [45:09]
John Heilman
Which is what? Which is what?
- [45:11]
Donald Sherman
That A, they believe that the country is fundamentally a white republic. B, they are deeply skeptical of the overreach of government on behalf of folk who they don't believe to be central to their idea of the American republic. And to be honest with you, they hold a view of the founding. This is a kind of small point, but they hold a view of the founding where America's perfection was secured in its beginnings.
- [45:44]
John Heilman
To hear more of our conversation, just scan the QR code on your screen right now or download the Best People wherever you get your podcast. Be sure to let me know what you think on any Instagram or Bluesky. One more break. We'll be right back. Thank you so much for letting us into your homes tonight. We are grateful.
- [46:03]
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