← Deadline: White House
Deadline: White House
"Signs of fallout from the Epstein files"
00:41:22
Ali Velshi, in for Nicolle Wallace, on accusations of a cover up by the Trump administration after multiple outlets, including MS NOW, reported that memos and handwritten notes from FBI interviews with a woman who accused Donald Trump of sexual assault when she was a minor, are missing from the Epstein files that were released to the public.
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Anchor Ali Melshi
Download today. Hi everyone. It's four o'clock in New York. I'm Ally Melshi in for Nicole Wallace. Everywhere you look, from the justice and the halls of Congress to the highest echelons of academia, there are signs of fallout from the Epstein files. Let's start with the Trump Justice Department, which is facing accusations of a cover up after multiple outlets, including Ms. Now, reported that memos and handwritten notes from FBI interviews with a woman who accused Donald Trump of sexual assault when she was a minor are missing from the Epstein files that were released to the public today. Our colleague Lisa Rubin reports that the Justice Department may have been tracking the kind of documents that are now missing. A memo from Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche directs staffers to flag certain documents, including FBI 302s. FBI 302s are the forms that FBI agents use to summarize witness interviews. Among the documents that Ms. Now and NPR have reported are missing yesterday are three 302s with a woman who accused Donald Trump of assault when she was about 13 or 14 years old. We can also report that Blanche asked reviewers to redact, quote, names of confidential sources or cooperating witnesses. There are reverberations from the Epstein files outside of Washington as well. Today, the former treasury secretary and former Harvard President Lawrence Summers resigned from his positions at the university this morning, Summers saying in a statement, quote, I have made the difficult decision to retire from my Harvard professorship at the end of this academic year. A spokesman from Harvard says the resignation was, quote, in connection with the ongoing review by the University of documents related to Jeffrey Epstein that were recently released by the government. And the Wall Street Journal reports that Bill Gates apologized to staffers at the Gates foundation for his ties to Epstein. The Journal reported that quote. In a town hall on Tuesday, the Microsoft co founder acknowledged that he had two affairs with Russian women that Epstein later discovered, but that they didn't involve Epstein's victims. I did nothing illicit. I saw nothing illicit, he said. That's according to a recording reviewed by the Wall Street Journal. And that's where we start today. Jennifer Freeman joins us. She's the attorney for several Epstein survivors and she is special counsel at Marsh Law. With me at the table, our senior legal reporter Lisa Rubin is here. Plus the political analyst Molly Zhang Fast as well. She's the host of Fast Politics and she's a New York Times contributing opinion writer. Welcome to all of you. Thank you for being with us. Lisa, let's start with you and this remarkable reporting which takes this Epstein scandal into a new place.
- [03:23]
Taxpayer Caller
If you're talking about the document that I discovered this morning, look, Ali, I was as surprised as anyone to find it in plain sight on the front landing page for DOJ's Epstein Library. And as you described, it's a nine page memo from Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanch. It's dated January 4, 2026. And that's a date with significance because Congress mandated that the Epstein Files Transparency act be complied with by December 19th. And yet on January 4th, Deputy Attorney General Blanche is writing hundreds of attorneys who are still reviewing Epstein files with directions about how to conduct that review. In many respects, the memo reads like a standard document review protocol that someone like me, who is a former civil litigator, is used to seeing. And yet there are some things that jumped off the page. And the first and most important thing that jumped off the page to me was he was telling the reviewers after you mark something as responsive, meaning it pertains to one of the nine categories of documents that Congress said DOJ had to produce documents. In response to after you do that, there are some additional pieces of information that would be pertinent to us. One is, does it reflect, for example, a deal, meaning a civil settlement or a plea bargain or a proffer agreement. But another category in the last category is market. If it's an FBI 302. Now you're making FBI 302's trend. Today. Our folks, our viewers and folks out in the public are finally learning what a 302 is. But like among people like me, that's common parlance. That's the FBI's standard form for how it reduces the contemporary.
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Anchor Ali Melshi
Rather than looking at a transcript of an FBI interview with someone, there is a digest.
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Taxpayer Caller
I think the most important part is there is no transcript. This is the closest thing we get to a transcript. So when the FBI interviews someone live, nobody is taking a transcription like a court reporter would in live testimony at a court or at a deposition, the
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Anchor Ali Melshi
302 is the key to that interview?
- [05:15]
Taxpayer Caller
Well, I think there are two keys to the interview, and our reporting yesterday talks about the second piece of them in real time. When you're interviewing, if you're interviewing Molly, for example, you're taking handwritten notes, or maybe another agent who's present is taking handwritten notes sometime after that interview. And sometimes it's days, but oftentimes it's weeks or months, someone takes those handwritten notes and turns them into a narrative format in this FBI 302. So ideally, what you want to see is both of those things. The handwritten notes are oftentimes harder to follow, but they are also much more comprehensive in terms of the information that a witness provides. And with respect to the Trump accuser, we are missing handwritten notes for all four of her interviews, and we are missing 302s for three of them.
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Anchor Ali Melshi
Three of them. That's remarkable. Jennifer, tell me what you make of this.
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Attorney Jennifer Freeman
What I make of it is, once again, what I see is both incompetence and some efforts to intimidate victims and survivors and perhaps some intentionality here. What I don't see are careful, consistent approaches. I don't see that while they talk about victim redactions that just didn't happen. So you can have all the discussion you want in a memo, but what really happened was that the victims were and the survivors were seriously disserved since so much of their identities were revealed. While by contrast, the identities of the perpetrators or the alleged perpetrators were not revealed. So you can have a nice memo with the protocol, but it seems like they were also not followed or not supervised sufficiently.
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Anchor Ali Melshi
Jennifer, obviously central to this discussion, more central than Jeffrey Epstein or Donald Trump or anybody else accused, are justice for these survivors. Does having Donald Trump's name more closely tied to this raise the stakes in getting justice for the people you represent?
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Attorney Jennifer Freeman
Well, it may well do that. I mean, I hope that it doesn't. I hope that justice is fairly dispensed, as it should be. But it is hard not to see that that is a issue when it comes to survivors. I mean, the Survivors yesterday at the State of the Union, many of them were there and they were completely ignored by.
- [07:37]
Anchor Ali Melshi
In that they didn't get a prize. They didn't get an award or a medal or anything like that. They didn't get recognized.
- [07:41]
Attorney Jennifer Freeman
They didn't get recognized at all. They didn't get acknowledged.
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Anchor Ali Melshi
Yeah, Molly, let's talk about that. There are elements of justice or accountability going on across the world. In the United Kingdom now with Larry Summers. It is wild how this doesn't seem to penetrate sort of the rich and famous around here.
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Political Analyst Molly Zhang Fast
Yeah. You have two arrests in the uk, Former Prince Andrew. We have, we have that.
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Anchor Ali Melshi
The former ambassador to the United States. Yeah.
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Political Analyst Molly Zhang Fast
We also have all of these royal families throughout Europe who are, you know, experiencing real reverberations. Look, I think that we're gonna, I think America can only go on like this for so long, like the rest of the world is real and we're seeing real accountability here. And remember, this is like the largest, probably the largest sex trafficking ring in American history. More than a thousand. Todd Blanche admitted more than a thousand victims. These are crazy numbers. And you know, when I was talking to Garcia. Representative Garcia.
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Anchor Ali Melshi
Yeah.
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Political Analyst Molly Zhang Fast
Who is the ranking on oversight, he was saying that, you know, there are, there's so much incompetence here and there's so many redacted names to protect people who have, you know, decided not to prosecute or who have, you know, it's just, it feels like both incompetence and a certain amount of COVID up. And if it's cover up just because it's covering up incompetence, that's still a cover up.
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Anchor Ali Melshi
Right. But let me understand a little bit more about this, this Donald Trump accuser. You've told me that the smoking gun part, and that is we're missing four sets of interviews and three 302s. What's the basis of the allegation?
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Taxpayer Caller
The basis of the allegation, we don't know where it comes from. And that's one of the reasons why ally people like me are harping so much on the absence of the 302s, because we assume that that allegation, which was aired in a 2025 FBI internal document, was something that was said to the FBI at another point in time, probably, but we don't know definitively during one of those 2019 interviews. And that is memorialized, we know, in the 302s or in notes, but is absent from the files. But the accusation as the FBI recited it in at least two different 2025 documents is that when this woman was a teenager, sometime between the ages of 13 and 15, Donald Trump forced her to perform oral sex and during that episode, also struck her across the head. She says that she was also a Jeffrey Epstein victim. I have read her original 302. In that 302, she describes how she became a victim of Jeffrey Epstein, who she, she didn't know was Jeffrey Epstein at the time. He was a man she knew.
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Anchor Ali Melshi
She found out in 2019.
- [10:22]
Taxpayer Caller
She found out in 2019 at around the time that Jeffrey Epstein was first arrested in the Southern District of New York, because a friend in whom she had confided in the time sent her a photograph of Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump coincidentally standing next to each other in a photograph that the FBI agent said was a widely publicized photo of the two of them. She hesitated before sharing that photograph with the agents. She said she wanted to crop it. They asked why. That's when her lawyer interrupted, according to the 302, and said she had fears of incriminating somebody and was particularly concerned about retaliation. She was then asked toward the end of that episode about the picture after she let the FBI agents take a picture of that picture. Do you know the other individual in this photo? And she acknowledged that she did meet Donald Trump, but offered no further elaboration. All this is a long way of saying she made very detailed accusations against Jeffrey Epstein. In that first interview, she acknowledged having met Donald Trump. But certainly that July 24, 2019, interview is not the place where this particular accuser aired what she had to say about Donald Trump. We know she said it because we have a confidential source who has seen unredacted versions of these documents with the woman's name present in them. So that person can link the 2019 FBI memoranda with the name of the victim who is described in these 2025 internal FBI documents that are summarizing allegations against a host of prominent names. Donald Trump, just one of them. They include people like Leon Black, the hedge fund giant Jess Staley, a former banker who was very close to Jeffrey Epstein, and even Harvey Weinstein. Former President Bill Clinton is also on that list. But the allegations against Donald Trump are that allegation as well as one other that doesn't stem from a sexual misconduct committed by him, but rather something that he witnessed. A woman that we know to be a woman named Jane. She testified at Ghislaine Maxwell's trial under that pseudonymous, told the FBI in multiple interviews and then testified to this at trial that when she was 14 years old and first came into Jeffrey Epstein's orbit. One of the first places that he took her as the sexual abuse was getting underway was to Mar A Lago, where he took her and his dark green Jaguar to meet Donald Trump. She then told the FBI that Epstein, sort of with a half smile on his face, said to Donald Trump, this is a good one, huh? And Trump, sort of with a nod, acknowledged the same. That part of the story she didn't reset at Ghislaine Maxwell's trial, but the other part of it, the fact that she met Donald Trump when she was 14, having been taken to Mar A Lago by Jeffrey Epstein, is something she has been steadfast in maintaining all along. And her lawyer, with whom I spoke yesterday, said, this is something about which Jane has been steadfast. And so I want to reiterate to our viewers, even if this allegation about Donald Trump and the sexual assault turns out not to be corroborated or something that the FBI followed up on, isn't it enough that someone as credible as Jane, someone that the Southern District of New York considered to be credible enough to put on the stand in Ghislaine Maxwell's criminal trial, said when she was 14 years old, a middle schooler still that Jeffrey Epstein took her to Mar A Lago and paraded her in front of a Donald Trump.
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Anchor Ali Melshi
Isn't that enough? Jennifer, you in September talked to Nicole on her podcast about your theory of the case, and you said there should be information about a lot of allegations involving other men, some of which are already public. So this notion that there's nobody to prosecute, there's no one to look at. And one of the bigger issues is that that I think are really important is the classic, follow the money. How did Epstein become so wealthy? Where did he get all that money? I think after 3 million documents, or 6 million documents, whatever there is, we don't have answers to those basic questions, which is what most people want to know. Why did people go to Jeffrey Epstein to manage their money? He had no particular experience doing this. And we're talking about super wealthy people. We're not talking about people with $10,000 to invest, we're talking about people with millions of dollars to invest, somehow deciding that this is the guy who's going to manage my money.
- [14:18]
Attorney Jennifer Freeman
Well, that's an excellent question. Why would they go to him, someone who didn't even have a college education? And you have to wonder, what is that? What was that about? But this notion also that there is missing information applies to One of my clients, Maria Farmer, who reported Jeffrey Epstein in, and Ghislaine Maxwell and others in 1996. And all of that information is not. I haven't seen it in the 3 million files. Maybe it's there somewhere, but I certainly haven't seen it. What I have seen is a one page document talking about child pornography, but not all of the other allegations that Maria farmer made in 1996, which the U.S. government, in response to. Which the U.S. government did absolutely nothing. So once again we see so much incompetence on. Or maybe something else in response to survivor accusations. Survivor complaints, survivor abuse. What is that about?
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Anchor Ali Melshi
Well, I'm getting farther away from the incompetence idea because I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but this thing is turning me into one. The counterargument here is that there's no conspiracy here. The rich and famous in our culture get away with stuff.
- [15:34]
Political Analyst Molly Zhang Fast
I think that it's many of these things, but I think we're definitely missing a lot of documents. And I think that's a really important point. Everyone says that, that they're just, you know, there are the, the documents we know are missing and then there are many more documents.
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Anchor Ali Melshi
But I'm, I'm worried that incompetence gives somebody a pass.
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Political Analyst Molly Zhang Fast
Right. And it should not. And I think that there's the chance for this to become actually bigger than me too, in a way, because if the FBI is held accountable, I mean, I interviewed Maria Farmer on my podcast this last weekend and we were talking about how she really had, if, if they had just started investigating this in the 90s when she had come forward. Think of all of the survivors. I mean, Danny Belsky even talks about this. You know, she was abused in 2006, 2007. I mean, there were hundreds and hundreds of girls that could have had these tragedies prevented. And I think about Julie K. Brown, you know, when she came back to
- [16:29]
Anchor Ali Melshi
this case, Miami Herald reporter, fantastic reporter, right.
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Political Analyst Molly Zhang Fast
Who was the one who sort of re. Who brought this case back when it was already sort of settled and Epstein was kind of out. And she said she found these girls and she started searching their lives stories and she saw that they had had their lives, they had had so much tragedy and they had had their lives really ruined. And when I talked to Maria Farmer, you know, she's sick, she has cancer, she has really suffered. These people have given their lives for accountability and it has not come.
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Anchor Ali Melshi
Danny Bansky. Bensky, at the survivors press conference yesterday, I want to just ask the control room to Play what she said about this yesterday.
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Taxpayer Caller
Why are there no investigations when there are plenty of people in these files to investigate? Have we read them? Why is the FBI director out there partying like a college kid when he should be investigating the vast criminal enterprise this administration needs to do better? How can anybody feel safe in this country when our president's sympathies are going to the former Prince Andrew and not to survivors?
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Anchor Ali Melshi
We're gonna let Danny Bensky get the last word on this one. Thank you to Jennifer Freeman and to Lisa Rubin. We appreciate your time. Molly's gonna stick around. When we come back, one major takeaway from last night's State of the Union is that Donald Trump exists in a bubble propped up like an authoritarian, completely out of touch with the rest of America and its concerns. We'll show you why the state of Donald Trump's America is, in fact, not so hot. Plus, Minnesota was a target in his speech last night, not addressing his unpopular and deadly ICE crackdown, but instead calling out alleged fraud aimed at some members of the community. Senator Abby Klobuchar joins us a little later on. And later in the show, Republicans are working overtime right now to justify Donald Trump's lies about election fraud. We'll get to all of that and more when Deadline White House continues after this.
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Anchor Ali Melshi
during Donald Trump's rambling, muddled, nearly two hour speech last night. The state of Donald Trump's union is very different than that of most Americans.
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Panelist Michelle Norris
What a difference a president makes.
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Anchor Ali Melshi
A short time ago, we were a dead country. Now we are the hottest country anywhere in the world.
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Panelist Michelle Norris
The hottest.
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Anchor Ali Melshi
It's getting bigger and bigger and stronger. Nobody can believe what they're watching. Well, that's true. Nobody can believe what they're watching. The Washington Post found that 64% of Americans think Donald Trump is out of touch with the concerns of most people in the United States today. With just 34% of Americans approving of Trump's handling of tariffs, 32% approving of his signature thing, inflation campaigned on that. And that anchor isn't contained to Donald Trump. It's bringing his party down with him as his party faces a wide enthusiasm gap ahead of the midterms this fall. That same poll, Washington Post poll, found that 79% of Democrats said they were certain to vote this fall, compared to just 65% of Republicans. That's a big gap that and what are going to be a lot of close races. I want to bring in political analyst and host of the Bulwark podcast, Tim Miller. Also joining us, senior contributing editor Michelle Norris. And Molly is still with me here at the table. The reason we have three of you here is because I hardly wanted to watch that thing. I certainly don't want to talk about it anymore. But we must a little bit because there were some key contextual points about that speech. Michelle, let me start with you. The bubble, the, the being divorced from the things that Americans are worried about. Donald Trump seems to once in a while try to land that plane, right? He tries to talk about affordability, the things that really affect Americans, and then he just veers off. He mentioned affordability one time last night and it was to mock it.
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Panelist Tim Miller
And this is an example of where being in a bubble is really quite a problem for him, where he just either if he has advisors, he's clearly not listening to them, and he's not showing any kind of empathy for people who really are struggling right now. And part of this is a little unusual, it's a little bit nuanced because by standard economic indicators, the economy is actually doing okay.
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Anchor Ali Melshi
That's right.
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Panelist Tim Miller
But talk about affordability. It's not just an economic issue. It is a psychological issue. There are a lot of people who feel like they can't live the life that their parents live, that the middle class or even a working class lifestyle is slightly out of reach for them. And in a moment where there's so much chaos and so much instability, this is real. This is. And the fact that he mocks that is surprising. And it also shows that when he's surrounded by people who are as wealthy as his circle is, that he just has no understanding of what it's like to live closer to the ground, where you actually have to sit down at the end of the month and budget and make some really difficult decisions about does Johnny get new shoes or do we pay for the roof that needs to get fixed? That is just a concept that I don't think he can wrap his head around. I don't think he's ever had to think about that. I don't think the idea of affordability for someone who's grown up with a silver spoon is just something that he can even grasp. And as a politician, he's incapable of showing the kind of empathy that you would hope that someone in that position would have.
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Anchor Ali Melshi
Yeah, Tim, Michelle's point is really valid because if you look at the top line numbers, the economy, economic growth, the Dow which he talked about last night, unemployment numbers, the top line numbers look really good. If you own a home or multiple homes and you have investments in the stock market or much of your your wealth is in the stock market. This is one of the best economies in the history of the world. In the history of the world. The problem is we talk about a K shaped economy where some people are seeing a downward shift and some people are seeing upward. This is the jaws of an alligator economy. The rich are doing fantastically and the poor are not making a go of it.
- [23:39]
LifeLock Representative
Yeah, it's true. And the upper middle class is doing great. And to Michel's point, look, plenty of people have been born with the silver spoon and then managed to develop empathy or surround themselves with people who have different experiences or struggling. Donald Trump has made the choice in the second term in particular to surround himself with the richest people in the history of the world. Basically.
- [24:03]
Anchor Ali Melshi
Just to be clear, we're not talking about sort of rich people, Tim. We're talking about many, many billionaires in his cabinet and those around him who are not in his cabinet who are advising him. Billionaires, not multimillionaires.
- [24:15]
LifeLock Representative
It goes back to Kind of the original sin politically of his second term, which was that inauguration where you had like literally like four of the five richest people in the world sitting in the front row in front of his cabinets, who also had a bunch of billionaires right this. And he hangs and he only goes to. He's not doing the rallies anymore. He's ensconced in the White House or he goes down to his clubs where he's surrounded by other rich people and they are doing well. And you know who else is doing well? Scammers. White collar criminals are doing great right now. You know, they gave J.D. vance the job of frauds are last night during the State of the Union, which is interesting because there's a lot to work with most. A lot. Some of his colleagues are. And their families are committing crypto fraud right now. So he could probably start with them. But like, that is just. That is what they've decided to do. Like, he, he wants to get the adoration of rich people. He wants to him enrich himself and his family. And, and he's made a conscious choice in the second term to focus on that. And I think that that is reflective in his political problems with demographics of people who thought that he was going to make the economy better for them, but instead he's making it better for him.
- [25:24]
Anchor Ali Melshi
So he had two signature things when he ran for office, Molly, the second time he had immigration and he had the economy. He is so underwater in terms of approval on both of those things. It's wild. He invoked Zoran Mandani last night. And I would have thought, you know, you said to me, when Trump and Zoran Mandani had that meeting, you said, game recognizes game. I would have thought he would have recognized that Zoran Mandan, he ran on basically one issue, affordability. Donald Trump just all he carried on last night about is how people come across the border and kill Americans.
- [25:52]
Political Analyst Molly Zhang Fast
Well, he's a very undisciplined politician and that, you know, so he started talking about how much he loves Zorin. But I thought what was really interesting was that you have a Supreme Court that has given him a tariff off ramp.
- [26:04]
Anchor Ali Melshi
Yes, totally.
- [26:05]
Political Analyst Molly Zhang Fast
He's supposed to be about affordability. You have these tariffs, they're making everything more expensive.
- [26:10]
Anchor Ali Melshi
And he could have said, I was trying to make this better for you, but the Supreme Court and you had
- [26:14]
Political Analyst Molly Zhang Fast
John Roberts there looking between him and Kavanaugh. Their faces were like meme after meme, you know, just looking pained and exhausted. And here was his chance to just take an off ramp. And instead, he just doubled down on tariffs. And I think it shows he's just such an undisciplined politician that he can't take a win, even when it's sort of right there for him.
- [26:36]
Anchor Ali Melshi
As you and I talked about, he was given an off ramp, and he just turned around and ran right back onto the highway in the wrong direction. Michelle, very little will stay with me about that speech. It's not a speech for the ages. But the thing that will stay with me is this wildly racist thing he did in the middle of it. This fraud thing wasn't about fraud. It was about Somalis.
- [26:57]
Panelist Tim Miller
Well, much of that speech, including the way that he used people who deserve our sympathy because of awful things that happen to them often at the hands of people, much of that speech was about trying to make America afraid of people who don't look like them. And when he talked about Somalis, he didn't talk about Minnesota. So it was an interesting sort of backdoor way to talk about tangentially about what we've seen going on in Minnesota, because Somali Minnesota has such a large Somali population. But if it was about fraud, let's just say the fraud that has happened in Minnesota is real. It has a very large price tag. It involved a small number of Somalis, but there are somewhere between 80,000 and 100,000 Somalis, Somalians, ethnically Somalians that live in Minnesota. A very small percentage of them have temporary protected status. Most of them are citizens. And if they are not citizens, they have permanent legal status on their way to citizenship. And it was, you know, the fraud in Minnesota that was attached to a small number of Somalians was used as the pretext for Operation Metro surge, you know, sending thousands of federal immigration agents into the city. Well, if they were really trying to root out fraud, they would have conducted that surge in a very, very different way. So this was another example of him using sort of heightened polarization to serve his agenda. And what he does is he tries to, you know, he ran into Washington on a hot gust of fear and rage, a rage that he used to generate fear among people. And that is almost like a default for him, you know, when he has nothing else to say. What he goes back to is, let me make you afraid of those people who don't look like you, those people who are taking your America, those people who taking a country and turning it into something that maybe will feel something somewhat uncomfortable for you. He's very comfortable in that space. But when we have so many other things going on in America and When people are looking at his immigration agenda and they don't much like what they see, I just don't see much currency in that for him.
- [29:05]
Anchor Ali Melshi
I'm going to ask you all to stick around for a minute. We're going to take a quick break and we'll be joined by Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar on the other side. Why have I asked my electrician I found on Angie.com to bury my pet hamster? I was so moved by how carefully he buried my electrical wires, I knew I could trust him to bury my sweet nibbles after his untimely end. This is very strange, Angie.
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LifeLock Representative
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- [29:34]
Concerned Caller
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- [30:34]
Anchor Ali Melshi
I wanna bring in Senator Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota. She's one of the state's candidates for governor. Senator, good to see you. Thank you for with us.
- [30:42]
Panelist Michelle Norris
Thanks, Ali.
- [30:43]
Anchor Ali Melshi
I think it was interesting, the conversation I was just having with my panel that for most Americans they need to address, they would like the president to address the things about immigration that were not what he talked about. Right? The ice surge, the danger, the death. Some of the members of Congress were actually shouting that stuff out. But he didn't when it came to Minnesota, as we mentioned, he talked about fraud. He made some ridiculous claims and issued some real racist comments but didn't get to what most Americans think. He's doing a bad job on immigration for, for.
- [31:14]
Panelist Michelle Norris
So fraud is a real issue. One of the focuses in Minnesota right now is to make sure that these cases are brought and prosecuted. There have been 80, 90 cases brought already. And we also have to change the processes in the state government so this never happens again, so that we root out this fraud. But that aside, what the President did last night was not to focus on what is on the minds of the people of Minnesota. And that is, of course, we still have 500 ICE agents getting ICE out of our towns, off of our streets, even though they have reduced the forces there. And of course, Alex Preddy, Renee Goode, their families were waiting to hear some mention of them. Innocent American citizens who were gunned down on our streets. But beyond that, one of the things that most struck me about this State of the Union is that he spent only 2.9 min talking about affordability out of an hour and 47 minute speech, which is mind boggling. It's mind boggling. 3.9 minutes. Ali talking about health care. These are the number one issues on the minds of the people across the country. And when you look at the first salvo, the opening salvo, that is weirdly the part that I think no one will forget. Because it's when Americans realize this isn't about their State of the Union Union, it's about his State of the Union. He said, our nation is back. Bigger, better, richer and stronger than ever before. Okay, so the average American is not feeling richer at all. The tariffs have cost them $1700 in the past year. Like the guy that I brought, the small business owner, the brewer from Morehead, Minnesota, or the guests that were there that actually represented America. And that is, I think, the complete disconnect between what Donald Trump sees is going on as his life and what is going on in American's life. And it's a wild disconnect and why Democrats have been winning in elections across the country.
- [33:24]
Anchor Ali Melshi
But it's confusing to me because if you look back at the elections in November in New Jersey and Virginia and New York and to some degree California, but it was a different topic. People turned out in remarkable numbers to protest the handling of the economy, to some degree, immigration. Since then, the immigration issue has become much more substantial and focused in Minnesota. But poll after poll shows on these two issues, immigration, which is his signature issue, and the economy, which he ran on. He's completely underwater on both of those issues. And if he wanted to be an easy fix, he could be. But this really opens up the road for people like you who understand that when you're talking to your constituents, not, not the 13 billionaires that he surrounds himself with all the time but your constituents. This is not the same economy for everybody. This is a different economy for the rich than it is for the rest of us.
- [34:12]
Panelist Michelle Norris
It truly is. And people, small businesses like the guy, Sean Severson, my guess, like they don't have a big reserves of like a big corporation might if there's problems. He's got nine employees and these tariffs are really difficult for him. Whether it's aluminum, whether it is the hops, whether it is the fact that Canadian tourism is down because of the president's rhetoric and the 51st state, all of that has hurt them. And people just hate this chaos and the tariffs changing over a hundred times. It's been a major, major issue for them. So you've got that going on and on. Immigration, people wanted order at the border. Okay. And that's right. I support that and I support going after the violent offenders and the worst, the worse, as Trump calls. But that's not what happened in Minnesota where innocent people were pulled out of their homes, rammed through doors and thrown like the Hmong elder thrown in a car in his underwear, driven around for an hour, only having them figure out the guy they were going after has been in prison for years and still is in prison. That's what was happened over and over again in our state.
- [35:25]
Anchor Ali Melshi
And I remind everybody there was a bill that got through Congress that Donald Trump stopped. It was not a bill that all Democrats liked and it was not a bill that all Republicans liked. But it was meant to deal with the border, a matter that is of serious concern to it was there. It could have been passed, but for Donald Trump specifically. John Thune was really sort of upset that this didn't happen. It was like, this is a real bill. Why, why did this not get pill get passed? We did real work on this.
- [35:54]
Panelist Michelle Norris
And when you talk to people out there, I was just this with some of my rural constituents today, there are issues in rural hospitals, farm economy. And people are really scared. People who are legal, who have green cards or who are in some kind of temporary status, who can legally be here, are scared because of what happened in Minnesota. So we should be actually making it more easy for people who are are legal to get these green cards, vet them, make sure that they're able to work, especially in our rural areas right now. And he's gone the opposite. And that is another problem with people are seeing all over the country with these policies he's put in place that actually there is a meeting of where the, where immigration policy is and the economy where he's actually been setting us back. And there's plenty of Republicans who, if they weren't so scared of him, are willing to say, yeah, we should get some more immigration reform so we can allow more people to work in our jobs that are in our country, like in healthcare or like in the ag sector. And he's just made that harder to get done. Not to mention all the innocents that are already here that they've apprehended and thrown in a car because of bounties.
- [37:13]
Anchor Ali Melshi
You're a lawyer and a legislator. You know full well that when you register to vote and you attest that you are legal to vote, if you're lying, that's a felony. And if you're found to be lying and prosecuted, you will not become a citizen of the United States. You could actually get yourself deported or you could go to jail. It is, the numbers are infinitesimal. It's, it's zero. My calculation was 0.000005% of non citizens register to vote. This, this requirement of the SAVE act to provide proof of citizenship, passport or birth certificate every time you vote, not just a register to vote every time you vote, is actually, I think, going to hurt people in red states more than blue states.
- [37:52]
Panelist Michelle Norris
You know, we had a ballot measure on this in Minnesota and it was so interesting. In a lot of the rural areas, people like, wait a minute, I have registered to vote. I am a legal voter. And now you're going to say I'm going to have to do this and this and this. Mail in ballot. Balloting would be very, very difficult to do under this bill. And that is incredibly popular. And this is what you point out on red states. Utah is like nearly all mail in balloting. You've got states like Oregon that are that way and it's a mix of red and blue states. Mail in balloting has come great strides since the pandemic and people have really learned to like to vote that way. And this would be a huge detriment for the ability of people to vote, particularly in rural areas. So that case has got to be made. And I appreciate you bringing that up and why that's such a problem. Problem with that bill.
- [38:43]
Anchor Ali Melshi
Senator, good to see you again. Thank you for joining us. Senator AMY quick break. We'll be back with our panel right after this. Donald Trump's State of the Union. I said I wasn't going to talk about it that much, but there are a couple things we have to talk about tomorrow. We won't talk about this. It felt like an effort to go Democrats in the House chamber into a reaction. Trump called Democrats who wouldn't stand and clap for his immigration enforcement policy crazy, and that said they should be ashamed of themselves, which prompted Representatives Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar to shout back at him, saying that Trump had killed Americans in reference to the deaths of Renee Nicole Goode and Alex Preddy in Minneapolis. And as we mentioned earlier. But it begs mentioning again, the most disgusting comments made by Trump was when he referred to the large Somali immigrant community in Minnesota. He described them as pirates who ransacked Minnesota. And references referred to that community as a reminder of parts of the world where bribery, corruption and lawlessness are the norm. His words. We're back with Tim, Michelle and Molly. Tim, I have to say, like, this is. I understand how applause lines work on State of the Unions, and Democrats were sitting and Republicans were getting up and clapping. I was actually unusually disappointed that Democrats gave him the applause line on that. It's gross, it's disgusting. And it was racist. Wasn't. It wasn't meaningful, and it wasn't a policy discussion.
- [40:14]
LifeLock Representative
Yeah, I've got a couple thoughts on that, Elliot. I don't know that, you know, hall monitoring, whether the Democrats were standing or clapping or sitting, like, really matters. I think that the MAGA folks really are interested in that. I saw Megyn Kelly had a hawk's eye, see who stood and who didn't stand, you know, anytime they were honoring a veteran or whatever at the event. And I, I just, I don't think any voters care. I don't think it matters to anybody. I think the Democrats should have done what they felt was right. I'm good with people being rowdy there. That's how they do it in the UK I think if Democrats wanted to shout back at them, that's probably what I would have done. If they feel like that's out of decorum, I just don't think that's that politically meaningful. I am interested. You talked with Michelle and you mentioned again that raised this comment about the Somalis. It was interesting, that quote. It was. What was it? Bribery, corruption and lawlessness. Lawlessness, yeah. Bribery, corruption, lawlessness.
- [41:08]
Anchor Ali Melshi
When you point at somebody, you have three fingers pointing back at yourself.
- [41:11]
LifeLock Representative
Yeah, that's, that's this. The Trump administration and people have literally bribed themselves to get pardons. In the Trump administration, the corruption is rampant. He's enriched himself and his family beyond anybody's wildest imaginations. I mean, Spiro Agnew resigned over, you know, some thousands of dollars in A paper bag. Donald Trump's making that a thousand times over in his family. Family, obviously the lawlessness. I don't need to explain. So if he has a problem with that type of government, you wouldn't know it by how they're governing.
- [41:40]
Anchor Ali Melshi
You know, Molly, I was, I'm just trying to figure this out. I'm trying to remember how frequently the State of the Union was actually a letter that was written. And I was begging last night. I was praying to myself, could this just have been a letter? I think, I mean, look, we have to cover these things and it's important and it's contextual. But I'm sort of with Tim. At some point, most people aren't watching the State of the Union address and even when they used to, you'd say, let me tune in and see what the President want, what the agenda setting stuff is. There was none of that last night. There was no meaningful policy discussion. There were a couple things he threw out there, but there was a red meat ish stuff.
- [42:11]
Political Analyst Molly Zhang Fast
Yeah. And he also got bored at some point and just started rambling, doing his shit.
- [42:16]
Anchor Ali Melshi
Contemporaneous stuff.
- [42:17]
Political Analyst Molly Zhang Fast
What I think is meaningful is the stuff he stayed away from, the stuff that had been a winner that now is a loser. Right. He knows Minnesota, what happened in Minnesota is not popular. We've heard Republicans from Minnesota say, the gubernatorial candidate saying he's dropping out cuz it's not winnable now. So we know what's not working and he knows what's not working. And we even saw him last week talk about his poor polling when he was talking to angel families. He said, you know, I don't understand why this stuff isn't more popular. So this is a president on the back foot. And I think it's important to remember that he was going into this with the lowest polling he's had since after January 6th. And you know, it's. I think he's in. I think he's really in a sort of spiral.
- [42:59]
Anchor Ali Melshi
Yeah, it's. I mean, we used to talk about whether he'd pivot and whether he'd do something. At least we don't bother with that anymore. Molly, thank you. Tim Miller, thank you. Michelle Norris, thank you. And Michelle, also thank you because sometimes when I'm away, you fill in for me. So I'm grateful for that. Thank you for all for joining me today. After the break, a popular wellness influencer and architect of the Maha movement and someone who doesn't hold a medical license going in front of the Senate today, hoping to be confirmed as the nation's top doctor. We'll tell you how that went next. So it might have flown under your radar today, but it shouldn't. Donald Trump's surgeon general pick the wellness influencer and RFK junior Ally Casey Means faced the Senate Health Committee at her confirmation hearing today. Casey Means does not hold an active medical license, something that might be helpful if you'd like to be the nation's top doctor. But what she lacks in licensing, she makes up for in Make America Healthy Again credentials. She rose to prominence criticizing traditional medicine, telling people, trust yourself, not your doctor, and co authored a book considered the bible of the Maha movement. Well, today she faced bipartisan grilling over her views on vaccines. And when asked by Republican Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, who is actually a doctor, she did not rule out a link between autism and vaccines, saying, quote, we should not leave any stones unturned. Important to note here that Senator Cassidy's criticism of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Did not prevent him from voting in favor of RFK's confirmation. We'll see what he does this time. All right, after the break, Trump's pressure campaign on both the state and the federal level to root out his lies about voter fraud. What's being done about that? We'll get to that next.
- [44:43]
LifeLock Representative
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- [44:45]
Taxpayer Caller
The IRS said I filed my return, but I haven't.
- [44:48]
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- [44:51]
Concerned Caller
What do I do?
- [44:52]
Anchor Ali Melshi
My refund though.
- [44:53]
Panelist Michelle Norris
I'm freaking out.
- [44:54]
Anchor Ali Melshi
Don't worry, I can fix this.
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- [45:00]
Taxpayer Caller
I'm so relieved.
- [45:01]
Panelist Tim Miller
No problem.
- [45:02]
Anchor Ali Melshi
I'll be with you every step of the way.
- [45:04]
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