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Deadline: White House
“The dismantling of the asylum system as we know it”
00:40:31
June 25, 2026; 4pm: Nicolle Wallace and guests discuss the Supreme Court’s decision to upend the asylum system as we know it. In a 6-3 decision, with the 3 liberal justices dissenting, the court decided to let Donald Trump functionally end temporary protected status for hundreds of thousands of refugees from Haiti and Syria.
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- [01:05]
Nicole Wallace
Hi there everyone. It's four o' clock in the East. It has been the promise of America since before our founding that we as Americans will serve as a beacon for those seeking refuge from other parts around the world. But today, Donald Trump's Supreme Court destroyed that promise, effectively slamming our doors to those who need us most. In a pair of rulings, the Supreme Court dismantled the asylum system as we know it, permitting Donald Trump functionally to end temporary protected status for hundreds of thousands of refugees from Haiti and Syria. The decision has implications for refugees from at least a dozen more countries. A dealt to strike a blow to the ability of refugees to claim asylum in this country at all. Both decisions were split 6:3 along ideological lines, with all three liberal justices dissenting. The liberal justices do not hold back in articulating their outrage and their dissent. Here's Justice Kagan on the role of race in Donald Trump's decision to end temporary protected status for certain countries. The justice writes this quote, the majority claims to see no evidence that race played any role in the Haiti decision. But the evidence is there, plain to see in the president's statements, which the majority, and for that matter his own lawyers, cannot even bear to repeat that. So here are some of those statements. Haitians in the United States probably have aids and Haiti is a shithole country which is, quote, filthy, dirty and disgusting. And Haitian immigration is, quote, like a death wish for our country. And Haitians, along with some others, are quote, poisoning the blood of our country and this quote, why is it we only take people from shithole countries like Haiti and Somalia? Why cannot we have some people from Norway and Sweden? The majority briefly replies that those remarks are not overtly racial, but it is hard to know what that means. Haitians are black. Norwegians and Swedes, not so much. The statements fairly shout in their racial undertones and overtones alike, that race entered into the president's resolve to remove Haitians from this country. The injustice of that decision is further compounded by the Court's other decision today, which allows Donald Trump to prevent any new asylum claims whatsoever. Here's Justice Sotomayor on that ruling. Quote, the Court today blesses the executive branch's decision to slam the door shut on all who are fleeing persecution, despite the detailed inspection and asylum system that Congress enacted and commands. Congress passed the Refugee act in 1980 because it did not want this country to repeat the mistakes of its past. The consequences of today's decision are predictable. More people will die. More people will attempt to cross the border illegally, and some will make it while others will not. More people will turn back and be subjected to violence because of something they cannot or should not have to change about themselves, such as their race, their religion, nationality, or political opinion. Donald Trump's Supreme Court making a mockery of the words emblazoned on the Statue of Liberty quote, give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free is where we start today. Andrea Flores is here. She's the founder of Securing America's Promise and a former DHS official and White House advisor in the Biden administration. Also joining us, senior editor and legal correspondent at Slate, Dalia Lithwick is here. She's the host of the Amicus podcast. It has been a busy day for you, Dalia. Let me start with the the dissents are unbelievable. Written for the moment. Sometimes we say written for history, but written for this moment. And I don't know that I've read. I know I say this every time after Dobbs or after anything shocking, but I really don't know that I've read twin descents that registered this much alarm with the individuals that make up the majority.
- [05:16]
Dalia Lithwick
I think the tell in some ways is that after Justice Sotomayor read her dissent aloud from the bench, which justices don't always do, but she was spitting mad. The almost unprecedented thing, which is Justice Alito had a dissent to her dissent. He took issue from the bench unscripted with what she said, and it's such a breach of the Court's decorum and protocol to be like, no, you. And it really shows you, I think, that she was scraping on a nerve. And I think the other through line of these two dissents is that both of these justices are not only calling out Justice Alito in the majority for playing sort of semantic tricks in both cases with statutory language, but the real human costs, the suffering that is gonna come about. And they make no bones about calling it that.
- [06:20]
Nicole Wallace
Well, I mean, Justice Kagan also says what the justices and Trump's own lawyers won't say, that for Donald Trump, it's entirely racial. He doesn't want people from, quote, shithole countries, which is how he describes Haiti.
- [06:35]
Dalia Lithwick
Right. And you'll remember when the Muslim ban was passed and we had this same completely fatuous debate about, oh, he didn't mean all the things he said and it wasn't really a Muslim ban court twisted itself into pretzels to say that the words that come out of Donald Trump's mouth have no significance. And this is the same problem on Rocket fuel. And to have Justice Alito in his majority just batted away so much so that he won't even acknowledge it, which forces in some sense Justice Kagan to read it into the record to create a dissent where she says, here are the words that were said that are emblematic of what Donald Trump was trying to do. Really tells you again, the degree to which the gaslighting is truly, truly the thing that is making, I think, particularly today, Justices Kagan and Sotomayor absolutely, incandescently
- [07:35]
Nicole Wallace
angry because the justices who choose their words carefully chose these words. I'm going to let their words do the talking. This is more from Justice Sotomayor's dissent. What happened to the people who were turned away from the border? Those turned away from the border found themselves subject to the very persecution and crime they were fleeing. One woman who had fled Honduras after receiving death threats from gang members was beaten, cut and knocked unconscious by an unknown man after being turned back from a port of entry. Another asylum seeker who was turned back at a port three times was later raped in the presence of her child. Those living in migrant camps were subjected to break ins, robberies and assaults, quote, facing serious harm at the hands of criminal organizations, including kidnapping, extortion, physical violence and sexual assault. Some were murdered in Mexico while waiting for an opportunity to be processed by U.S. officials. One couple that grew discouraged after a month of waiting in a camp near the border decided to cross the river and ask for asylum once they reached US Soil. But they were caught in a swift current and drowned. Andrea, Sending people to their deaths is precisely what Justice Sotomayor is providing evidence to prove that today's decisions do.
- [09:03]
Andrea Flores
We didn't really even need more evidence. It's just a fact that our land border is one of the most dangerous land borders in the world because our asylum system has been in tatters really for the past decade. And this decision today just reaffirms that this court has no respect for the text of asylum law, which is pretty clear that, you know, an asylum seeker has that procedural right once they reach the border. But this issue is going to keep coming up in our politics because whether it was under President Biden, it was this, this was an issue under President Obama. This was the policy that was being challenged. So this is back from 2016. And today President Trump has already unilaterally suspended access to asylum at the border. So this is just adding a layer that the president didn't even factually need. So that, that really stood out to me.
- [09:55]
Nicole Wallace
I want to read more from Justice Kagan's decision, the first one we talked about, because she also uses her dissent to put human beings at the center of today's story. So we will, we'll follow her lead there. Consider Leila Doe, who fled Syria with her daughter in 2013 after her neighborhood was bomb. Today Doe lives in Illinois where she works as a behavioral technician for individuals with disabilities and cares for her elderly mother, a U.S. citizen. Without TPS, she will have to leave her mother and return to a still ravaged, violent and dangerous country. Doe fears that as a single woman living alone, she will be robbed or even killed there. And she is afraid that her now 17 year old daughter, who has lived in this country almost all her life, will have no future in Syria because she speaks little Arabic. What Dahlia Lithwick, do the conservative justices have to say in response to the human toll of this?
- [11:05]
Dalia Lithwick
I mean, I think it's again, Justice Alito being angry that Justice Sotomayor was upset tells you everything you need to know. In their view, this is a statutory, a constitutional valence and that's what they want to address. And so we get these incredibly crabbed opinions, you know, in, in one case, reading arrival to mean, you know, again, cute wordplay about what arrival means, reading determination. In the other case, cute wordplay about what that means. And this kind of hypertextual approach, which is, you know, we're a bunch of Vulcans, this is our job to read the words of the stat. Except I think, and this is so essential, what they end up doing is A ignoring the explicit intent of Congress in crafting these rules. And they end up absolutely circumscribing judicial power of review. So what they do in the end is they further kneecap Congress, they further kneecap lower courts, and they elevate themselves again into this imperial judiciary that can make words mean whatever they want to mean on the day that they are deciding a case,
- [12:28]
Nicole Wallace
again, because their words are far more precious and meaningful than mine. I'm going to let Justice Kagan stand here again. This is another person who will be affected by today's decision that she writes about. Andrea, quote Fritz Emanuel. Leslie Myott is a Haitian national who's held TPS for 15 years. He lives in California where he works in a laboratory researching Alzheimer's. It's a job he can hold only because of his TPS work authorization. Mayotte suffers from type 1 diabetes, which is easily treated in the United States. But in Haiti, the same disease can be a death sentence given that country's collapsed healthcare infrastructure. And beyond those health issues, Mayotte believes his long term residency in the United States would make him a prime target in Haiti for kidnapping. It is remarkable, Andrea, I know that people fluent in the spaces you are have all the evidence needed to sort of point out the weakness, the lameness of our legal and policy process. But the justices, to put so much storytelling in a dissent does feel like a real primal scream for people to wake up and see what the human toll is of today's decisions.
- [13:52]
Andrea Flores
I'm so glad you're highlighting the human toll because we just heard two stories of people in our economy whose lives would be completely upended by this decision. But what is so scary about what the court did today is that this could impact 1.3 million TPS holders by giving President Trump the ability to terminate their status without judicial review. He has been open that he wants to terminate as many of these protections as possible. And I want to just warn people that that could also mean TPS for El Salvador. And the reason I'm pointing that out, Nicole, is because that population has been in the United States since the early 1990s, right? Over three decades of lives in the United States. And it is just so stunning that this court, as Dalia said, could pretend that this is a technical issue. It's a huge blow to the economy as well, because TPS holders, every year they generate $6 billion in revenue to the United States. Why? Because they have work permit, work permits to be here, work legally, they're employed. I mean, it is such an attack on legal Immigration. And it is such a betrayal to anyone who thought that he was simply going to be targeting those who were undocumented or threats to our community. He is going after the health care industry, the restaurant industry, so the construction industry, so many different industries that rely on TPS holders.
- [15:20]
Nicole Wallace
It is interesting too. I mean, maybe Alito will fly another flag if he's still mad when he gets home tonight. Dalia, I think this was the time of year when he, when he engaged in that behavior in the past. But the idea that, that they're mad, I mean, wait till they see how the country views immigration. When Trump was elected, immigration was 44 points less popular than it is now. I think the last New York Times poll I saw was around the beginning of this year. And 80% of all Americans think immigration is a good thing. When Trump made clear that he wasn't targeting the worst of the worst, people who committed any crimes other than being in the country without status, those numbers took their most dramatic leap in a generation or two. And here is a TPS recipient, someone who was going through the immigration process legally, who had legal status before today, speaking to some of the points Andrea made outside the Supreme Court.
- [16:18]
TPS Holder Speaker
For many of us, this ruling is not just about policy. It is about our homes, our families, our future, the uncertainty if we may even live or die. TPS holders have built lives in this country. We are nurses caring for patients, workers supporting our economy, parents raising American children. We are home and we belong here. I am heartbroken that the Supreme Court did not do the right thing today to secure our safety.
- [17:18]
Nicole Wallace
Dalia, as I said, I mean, 24 months ago, that woman's plight was more divisive question. Now, people who are in this country seeking asylum or with temporary status have a lot more support from the public after seeing the Trump administration, administration's excesses in Minneapolis and beyond. What do you make of how thin skinned politically justices like Alito have been over the past three years in terms of the climate in which they've issued these what I imagine will be very polarizing opinions.
- [17:57]
Dalia Lithwick
I think if you look at this in the aggregate and you hold it up against the recent Calais decision about racial gerrymandering, if you hold it up against, you know, the affirmative action decision from a few years back. Right. The whole aggregation of decisions that the court has made that permanently undo statutory and constitutional protections for people of color, I think it's fairly clear that this isn't the Supreme Court lifting up MAGA values. This is MAGA values in perfect alignment with that of some of the majority of the Supreme Court. And I think this is a kind of, as you suggest, dog catches the car moment where Americans have now spent months watching ICE raids on courthouses and in schools, terrorizing small businesses, arresting citizens under the guise of going after the worst of the worst. And now everybody kind of knows somebody who's been swept up in the dragnet. And this, all this fear mongering proves to be, no, it could be your neighbor, it could be your friend, it could be the nurse who takes care of your mom. And I think it's really, really unfortunate at this point that the court is blinkered that and still very much of the agenda, that when we say we're going to stop the immigration problem that never existed to the extent that Trump posited that it existed, that's happening on its own steam, undeterred by opinion polls.
- [19:37]
Nicole Wallace
It's just amazing. It's just amazing. And I wish I had the capacity to stop being shocked and horrified because you're exactly right. It is a perfect alignment. Andrea, thank you for starting us off. To be continued, some incredible reporting. We'll stay on top of this story. For our part, Dahlia sticks around a little bit longer. When we come back, major pushback against Donald Trump coming, of course, not from the Supreme Court, but from another federal judge calling Trump's push to crack down on mail in boating, quote, unconstitutional. Plus, Trump promised that his DC Renault wouldn't cost the American public one dime is what he said, quote. One dime. Okay, but he didn't say anything about $1 billion, did he? New analysis has found that all those vanity projects are ballooning into costs and he's planning to pass them on to you. We'll bring you that reporting ahead and later. Even his own supporters are sick of him. While Trump ranted on and on at his state fair, crowds were seen heading for the exits. One journalist who was there at Trump speech last night. Tell us what really happened. We'll talk to him about all that and much more when Deadline White House continues after a quick break. Don't go anywhere today.
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- [22:14]
Nicole Wallace
There are some bright spots in the news today. A major win to tell you about for voting rights ahead of November's midterms. A federal judge in Massachusetts has blocked multiple federal agencies from enforcing major parts of Donald Trump's sweeping attack on mail voting in the 23 states that have filed lawsuits against it, as well as Washington, D.C. district Judge Indira Talwani found that Donald Trump's March executive order for a nationwide voter registration list and for the US Postal Service to deliver mail ballots only to those on the list are, quote, legally void, as they are, quote, ultra virus and unconstitutionally violate the separation of powers. She writes, quote, the Constitution does not grant the president any specific powers over elections. The Constitution reserves the power to determine voter eligibility to the states alone. Neither the executive branch nor Congress may interfere with this power. The timing is rather extraordinary. The ruling also notes that the US Postal Service has zero no authority to control mail in voting, effectively banning this alarming promise made yesterday by Donald Trump's postmaster general to align the independent agency with Trump's war against mail in voting.
- [23:32]
Postmaster General
Yes or no? If a state refuses to turn their absentee voter list over to the federal government, will the Postal Service still mail their ballots under this proposal rule under our proposed regulation?
- [23:45]
Monday.com User
No.
- [23:45]
Postmaster General
We would tell the state that we need the manifest. You're telling these states either give the federal government this information, trust the federal government, trust the Trump administration. We'll take good care of of these and if you don't do it, you can't mail absentee ballots. You're going to make a decision that people cannot vote by mail. That's unacceptable.
- [24:07]
Nicole Wallace
Joining our coverage is Mother Jones national voting rights correspondent Ari Berman. Dalia Lithwick is still with us. Ari, I don't want to make too much of the victories and the wins because I think Donald Trump has proven that whack a mole is always his legislative strategy. If a door shuts, he, you know, sticks his head up some other underground place and tries again. But on the legal front, this does seem like a significant victory.
- [24:36]
Ari Berman
Hey, Nicole. Well, it absolutely is a significant victory and also great to be with Dalia as well. But if you look at the details of this, the Trump administration has now tried a number of different times to try to essentially end mail voting. And every time they've done so, it's been blocked in court. His first executive order on voting was blocked in court. Of course, the Save America act, which he remains obsessed with, has no chance of passing the Senate. And now his new executive order, which is really a backdoor form of trying to end mail voting, was blocked as well. And there was really two key points from the ruling. One, the states run their elections with oversight from Congress. The federal government has no role to play in telling states how to run their elections. And that, too, the job of the post office is to deliver the mail, not create rules for mail in ballots, let alone a blatantly illegal extortionary scheme that would essentially say, give us your voter rolls or you don't get a mail ballot, which was just an absolutely crazy proposal that luckily now the courts, at least for now, have blocked.
- [25:44]
Nicole Wallace
Dalia, I want to read a little bit more from the decision. So this is from Judge Talwani's ruling. Quote, it is clear that the federal agencies charged with compiling confirmed citizen lists lack the ability to create complete and accurate lists of the US Citizens residing in every state. While the EO provides that the confirmed citizen list shall be derived from certain federal records, those records do not necessarily track name changes, such as when a woman changes her name at marriage or residence changes when citizens move from state to state. It is specific, it is decisive, it is conclusive. It doesn't seem particularly ideological is the Trump legal strategy to have this make its way to the Supreme Court, where they find something that no other judge does.
- [26:34]
Dalia Lithwick
I mean, first of all, there is a male voting case pending at the court that will come down next week. So I think to your larger point, this is a multi pronged attack, right? Play of many plays. And I think that, you know, Ari's right. You bat one away, the next one comes up. And so is the hope that this gets to the court. Maybe the Clock is ticking on this. You know, this entire policy. The administration has taken the sort of irreconcilable positions that like, no harm, no foul, we haven't done anything yet. We're just chattering amongst ourselves. Nobody's been compelled to do anything. And at the same time, like TikTok, we gotta get this done. So I think that in some sense they're trapped under their own shot clock. But I think to your point, it's very, very clear that, and we even heard it in the testimony from the Postmaster General, the play here isn't so much this particular act of vote suppression or the SAVE act or, you know, the attempt to suppress ballots that come in a couple days late, which is the case at the court. The play here is to completely destabil confidence in voting so that you can set up the claim that elections are stolen all the time and to sort of absolutely make clear that all of these things that we are doing are to make you safe from these stolen elections. So please accept that all of the programs that we're putting in place are just benign programs to keep, you know, illegal voters from voting. So I think we have to be very clear about what the big play is, which is to chill voting, to scare voters from going to their polling places and to create uncertainty. And in that sense, whether this wins or loses, I think the message has to continue to be, you can't conscript the post office into doing this. You can't stop counting mail in ballots, can't take away the prerogatives of the state to decide how voting is conducted and your vote counts.
- [28:45]
Nicole Wallace
Yeah, I have to say, like hit pause though, and just say, how are we at the place where the post office is now? Like a MAGA actor, I'm gonna ask both you that question on the other side. Like, I feel like I miss like the middle chapters of this book where the post office became part of this effort. I'm gonna ask both of you that question. On the other side of a break. Don't go anywhere.
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Tennessee 2012 Celebrate America's 250th birthday with a perfect night's sleep this July 4th. Save up to $600 on Serta Perfect Sleeper X mattresses and adjustable base sets with a Q4 support system that helps relieve aches and back pain. Visit a SERTA retailer today. This is a Monday.com ad the same Monday.com helping people worldwide getting work done faster and better. The samemonday.com designed for every team and every industry. The samemonday.com with built in AI scaling your work from day one the same Monday.com that your team will actually love using the samemonday.com with an easy and intuitive setup. Go to Monday.com and try it for free. Yes, the same Monday.com you are being used as part of a much bigger story that this president is trying to play out where he does not believe elections that he loses are valid elections. Please push back on being a pawn in this authoritarian playbook. The Postal Service is one of the most important institutions in our country. Don't taint it with the obsession of this one man. Please push back.
- [30:58]
Nicole Wallace
Ari the American Postal Workers Union has also weighed in. They write this quote, the Executive Order is an unconstitutional attack on the millions of Americans who vote by mail and another front in an ongoing assault on voting rights in the United States. The union rejects the premise that the United States Postal Service had to comply with the EO. The Postal Service was created by Congress in 1971 to be independent of the White House. The Executive order also ignores the fundamental purpose of the Postal Service and Postal workers, which is to provide universal service to all.
- [31:31]
Monday.com User
How did we get here where the
- [31:33]
Nicole Wallace
Post Office is now marching as compliantly to the MAGA bagpipes as Mike Johnson?
- [31:42]
Ari Berman
Well, you remember, Nicole, that Trump tried to do this in 2020 when people started using mail voting in larger numbers because of COVID He tried to defund the Post Office and radically changed leadership so that people wouldn't get mail ballots. And that became a huge story. There was tremendous pushback against it and ultimately that plan failed. But now he's trying again and there's going to have to be a big public outcry again because this story has gone kind of under the radar because so many other things are happening. But it's really right out of the Trump playbook because what he does is he tries to weaponize any kind of agency that he doesn't like to Try to serve its own ends and try to change it from something that benefits all Americans to something that only benefits the MAGA base. And so I believe there's going to be a big fight about this. The court order against it is just one part of that fight. There has to be a lot of outcry. There's already been a lot of pushback from election officials. And basically the message just has to be the post office just has to continue to deliver the mail like it's always done. That's all we're asking. We're not asking for any kind of special treatment. We're just saying if someone requests a mail ballot, please get it to them. It's really as simple as that.
- [32:53]
Nicole Wallace
I mean, Dalia, I may be dating myself, but I mean, buckets of votes from overseas that contain military ballots used to be like this red line that people didn't want to cross. I mean, the right to vote if you're serving your country and you're overseas or, you know, the idea that this is now sort of chum in the water and this MAGA aligned Supreme Court is either likely to be sympathetic or at least contemplate. This does feel like we're kind of at the bottom of Alice in Wonderland's looking glass, looking back up.
- [33:31]
Dalia Lithwick
I mean, I think this is all reverse engineered, right? If you look at the SAVE act, if you look at general moves in voter suppression, it's always reverse engineered to try to disenfranchise voters that the administration believes will be voting for Democrats, right? And so, right or wrong, they've convinced themselves that people who vote by mail skew against him. Let's be clear, Donald Trump votes by mail. But I think that there is this very, very surgical effort to try to disenfranchise the kinds of people who vote by mail. And again, to destabilize confidence in voting by mail on the theory that, you know, maybe we can get some of them to not show up. But I think, you know, the other thing that's probably worth saying is we could have the same conversation about did any of us think the Justice Department works for Donald Trump? Did any of us think until this year that big law firms work for Donald Trump or that, you know, major networks work for Donald Trump? I think this is, in some sense his superpower is taking neutral entities and kind of bending them beyond recognition. In his view, they're the people who do what he needs them to do.
- [34:50]
Nicole Wallace
I mean, Ari, the piece of this, it seems like it could have a parallel to the gerrymander what's turned into a bit of a political debacle for Republicans is that lots of Republicans vote by mail also. I mean, you cast into complete suspicion over on Earth too, the validity of anything that you send in the mail. And you could actually deprive yourself of a lot of votes that could be, at least in the midterms, go to Republicans.
- [35:19]
Ari Berman
Well, you know this very well, Nicole. That's why the smart Republicans hate when Trump talks about this, because he is alienating his own voters in places like Florida, in places like Arizona, states like Utah, Alaska that have virtually all male elections. And so it's bad politics for Republicans. And one of the reasons that the Republican Party did better in 2024 is that despite what Trump was saying about rigged elections, they actually used mail voting in higher numbers. They used voting in higher numbers. They took advantage of all this stuff. And if they go backwards, it's going to disenfranchise their voters, particularly at a time when Trump's voters are less motivated to vote. So you put an obstacle in front of Democratic voters, they're going to overcome that obstacle in this midterm election because they're so motivated to cast a ballot. You put an obstacle in front of Republican voters, they may just say we're not going to vote at all because we're already not that happy about what's happening. So it's bad politics. Trump's obsessed with it because he can't get over his 2020 defeat. And it' it's true that Democrats use mail voting more than Republicans. So yes, you would hurt more Democratic voters, but it's undeniably true. You'd also hurt a lot of Republicans as collateral damage as well.
- [36:30]
Nicole Wallace
It's so interesting. I hadn't heard anyone lay over the enthusiasm gap. I mean, it's, I think, two to threefold on the Democratic side and it's not a good long term strategy. But to your point about people, voters who will likely overcome obstacles, they're not on the Republican side right now. Ari Berman and Dalia Lithwick, thank you so much for this conversation. I feel smarter already. When we come back, Trump claiming his DC Rally last night was, quote, packed to the brim. Not sure that's accurate. Reporters were there and they reported and saw things with their own eyes that we'll share with you next. Donald Trump tried to pull an only I can fix it out of his hat to save himself from humiliation after multiple, multiple musical artists pulled out of performing in his Great American State Fair. And he did that by inserting himself. As the headliner for the kickoff event last night, it didn't seem to go very well. The celebrations are off to a very rocky start, with video from the Bulwark showing what appears to be a steady stream of people leaving the event. In the middle of Trump's speech. You can hear him talking, listen, drug prices.
- [37:49]
Donald Trump
We are delivering the largest reduction in drug price history with price differences.
- [37:56]
Nicole Wallace
Guess they felt like they'd heard that riff before. Not a great look, though, for a guy who worries so much about crowd size. The Bulwarks. Jared Polin also shared the this snap Online of an attendee lying down on the grass, writing that Trump's speech was literally putting people to sleep. Let's bring in the aforementioned rapid response Senior editor at the Bulwark, Jared Poland.
- [38:18]
Monday.com User
So how was it?
- [38:21]
Jared Poland
The speech was definitely a short one by Trump standards. I've watched hundreds of Trump speeches since I've started working for the Bulwark, and his speech last night came in just a little under 30 minutes. And a lot of the crowd there, I would say, were definitely not your typical sycophantic super, super Trump crazy supporter. There were definitely some of those there towards the front, but a lot of the people hanging out towards the back that I talked to, this had been their first Trump rally and there were some people towards the front that I had talked to that actually it was his 116th Trump rally, and so those people, I imagine, stay. But a lot of people got their picture of Trump and headed for the gates.
- [39:03]
Nicole Wallace
Trump is obsessed with late night, so I will show you how late night covered this. This is Jimmy Fallon.
- [39:12]
Donald Trump
Well, tonight, President Trump headlined a rally to celebrate America's 250th after all the musical artists dropped out of his concert. It's the first event where byob means bring your own band and you all. Tonight included a military flyover, Lee Greenwood singing God bless the usa, and a speech by Trump.
- [39:33]
Ari Berman
Even Trump's biggest fans are like, is this a repeat?
- [39:36]
Donald Trump
Because I feel like I've seen this 400 times.
- [39:41]
Nicole Wallace
Remarkable, because Jimmy Fallon, of all of the men and women in late night and on that stage, pokes fun at Trump the least. But this is where it hurts the most if you're Donald Trump. A repeat, a rehash, not so a list. What was it that they couldn't last blog? We're talking about how all powerful Trump is that he's literally got media organizations, law firms, and all the federal government working for him, but he couldn't rub sticks together and get anyone better than himself.
- [40:12]
Jared Poland
So a lot of the people that I talked to at the rally, they were there not because of Trump, but because they wanted to be there to see the festivities. There were definitely some Trump supporters there, but I think a lot of the people backed out because Trump really has made this entire America 250 celebration about him. And a lot of people that were there definitely were looking for something to celebrate America and were happy to see the president speak. But I think they were more so there for the flyovers and the Marine Corps ban that was planned before. So I think the attendance would have probably lasted a little bit longer into the night had the original act stayed on board.
- [40:54]
Nicole Wallace
I want to show you Trump trying to do some crowd building for his next event featuring himself. This is Trump seeming to beg the crowd to come to his Fourth of July speech.
- [41:07]
Donald Trump
Then on July 4th, we will have the greatest show of all on the National Mall. Your favorite president will be speaking. So please show up because if we have two empty seats, you know what's going to happen. The fake news is going to say he didn't fill out the arena.
- [41:26]
Nicole Wallace
I mean, he doth protest us so much. The idea that we're the problem, he seems to be the problem when it comes to empty seats. Clearly showing the vulnerability that this exposes. The lack of attendance, the lack of enthusiasm and people walking out looking for non political, I guess, most generous description acts.
- [41:49]
Jared Poland
Yeah, I think this celebration would have been a lot better had Trump not made himself the center of it. But unfortunately with Donald Trump, he's incapable of doing that. I mean, he wants to be at the center of every bit of this America 250 celebration. And last night, I think you saw how the crowd feels about that. As soon as he came on, the crowd started to thin out. And I think come the fourth of July, because the fireworks are at the end, you might not see that as much. But last night there was nothing to look forward to after Trump. So they got their pictures and they head for the gates.
- [42:24]
Nicole Wallace
So sad. So sad. I guess as he would say hashtag sad. Jared, thank you for being there for your reporting on this. We appreciate you. After the break, another judge calling. I think the legal term is BS on Donald Trump. And Todd Blanche will tell you about it now.
- [42:38]
Simplisafe Voice
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- [42:45]
Nicole Wallace
The Justice Department has a growing credibility crisis in the courts. A federal judge made clear today that she is not taking DOJ at its word when it comes to killing Donald Trump's slush fund. The Department of Justice refused to put in writing as ordered by this judge. That the slush fund is officially dead, saying that what Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has said publicly is good enough. That claim left the judge wholly unsatisfied, and she ordered DOJ again today to officially put in writing an end to the fund. Writing this, quote, that the defendants have refused to accord a genuine degree of trustworthiness to their representations about the fund not going forward is particularly concerning because of the president's consistent support for the fund and Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche's acknowledgment that the fund remains, quote, important. We'll stay on top of this story. See who blinks first. See if the Justice Department complies with the judge. After a break, the New York Times revealed the enormous cost to taxpayers of Donald Trump's atrocious home redecorating efforts both at the White House and all over Washington, D.C. we'll bring that to you next.
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