← Deadline: White House
Deadline: White House
“The stuff of revolution”
00:42:55
Nicolle Wallace discusses the Supreme Court’s ruling that essentially greenlights discrimination in ICE raids and the escalating threats against American cities.
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I think people just gotta not live in fear and stand up. Just can't live in fear. Like hold your ground and stick together and fight against them.
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C
He wants everyone to be afraid. If that's he loves to see that people are afraid. That's why he's bullying the most vulnerable. We need to unite and we definitely.
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Need to speak up and not fear the fact that because we do have a voice that we will be deported.
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Hi again everybody. It's five o' clock in New York. If we are to be saved, we will be saving ourselves, as you heard right there this weekend and today on the streets of the great city of Chicago, there have been thousands and thousands of protesters objecting to Donald Trump's threats to deploy federal troops into the city and ramp up immigration enforcement efforts there. There has been, quote, a prolonged back and forth with Trump and the city over the past few weeks. Today Donald Trump said this, quote, we'd love to go into Chicago and straighten it out, end quote. He reiterated that in a long social media post to which Illinois's Governor J.B. pritzker responded, quote, I want to help people, not hurt them. Says the guy who just threatened an American city with the Department of War. Governor Pritzker there referencing a jaw dropping and alarming social media post. And he sends a lot, but we do want to draw your attention to this one. He sent it over the weekend. We're going to show it to you. Yeah, here's what the text said. Quote, Chicago about to find out why it's called the Department of War. It's from Donald Trump's account. And then there's a picture and an allusion to the movie Apocalypse now, only this one had a new title. I don't even know how you say this word. Someone clearly made it up. Shippocalypse. Now Chicago and Apocalypse. That was sent out from the American president. Governor Pritzker snapped back, quote, the President of the United States is threatening to go to war with an American city. This is not a joke. This is not normal. Donald Trump is not a strong man. He's a scared man. Illinois won't be intimidated by a wannabe dictator, end quote. And it's not just the governor calling out Donald Trump's threats and autocratic and clearly dictator like moves and announcements and tweets. Chicago's Mayor Brandon Johnson wrote an op ed in the New York Times this morning. It says this, quote, lowering crime rates here does not require an occupation of our city by armed members of the National Guard. As the White House continues to threaten us with Chicagoans, including survivors of violence, have spoken out against such an extreme measure. Sending in the National Guard is the wrong solution to a real problem, end quote. While the presence of National Guard troops in the Windy City remains, at this moment, at least as far as we know, a threat. DHS today did begin its crackdown on illegal immigration in the city of Chicago. The local officials and immigration advocates said they had seen only a handful of arrests so far. Meanwhile, the United States Supreme Court earlier just temporarily, sided with Donald Trump and his use of ice in another American city, Los Angeles. The highest court in the land today in a divided ruling, lifted the ruling by a lower court judge which had paused immigration raids in the Los Angeles area after they have been challenged as unconstitutional racial profiling. Donald TRUMP Turning the U.S. military against U.S. cities is where we begin the hour with some of our favorite experts and friends. Former DHS chief of staff during Donald Trump's first term. Myles Taylor's here joining me at the table. Princeton University professor, MSNBC political analyst Eddie Galad is here. And former Assistant U.S. attorney and President of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. Maya Wiley's here. A few days ago, I led this hour with Marge. I'm going to. And I said I'm sorry in advance. I'm going to do something like that again. This is Megan Kelly. Again. I don't do this very often, but let me just show you what she had to say. Miles.
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D
We can't have Trump going in without the invitation of this governor. I'm sorry, but we can't have it. He does not have the constitutional permission to do it. It very clearly is not constitutionally permissible. He cannot do it. I really hope he doesn't do it because I don't want a world in which I'm siding with Governor Pritzker over President Trump. But I will if he does it because he can't do it legally.
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C
Marge is in. Marjorie Taylor Greene is what I was talking about, Myles. And I guess I make this point about Marjorie Taylor Greene. She broke with Trump over the Epstein files. Megyn Kelly is cagey and cute about it. She broke for about eight seconds there with Donald Trump overusing the military in Chicago. But is it significant to see these very public cracks in some of his highest profile members of his coalition?
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A
You know, I would like to say yes, Nicole, but we've also seen that movie before where people in his coalition warn him not to do something, say that it's going to be a red line, watch him cross it and accept it. And nowhere was that more obvious than the January 6th insurrection and Donald Trump's efforts to prevent the transfer of power. I mean, you have Republicans first say that he was joking. Like they are saying in this case, they're saying it's just a meme about Chicago. He's joking. The president himself says he's joking. That's what happened with the January 6th insurrection and the transfer of power. And they drew these red lines and said, well, he obviously has to transfer power and if he doesn't, I can't support him and it's egregious and it's unconstitutional. And then he did. And to this day, they are supporting him and recharacterizing that event. But there's a much bigger history of this, Nicole, a very long history of Donald Trump saying something outlandish, egregious or perhaps illegal, people saying, well, he's just joking, he's not actually going to do it. And then him doing it. I mean, there are too many episodes to list. But I can remember when Donald Trump said he was going to reopen Gitmo and start sending prisoners to Guantanamo Bay and sending migrants. And, you know, his own press people came out and said he doesn't really mean that. And that's a joke. And Miles Taylor's lying. Well, look, it's one of the first things he did when he started this administration is he started to spend millions of dollars to send people to Gitmo. Same thing with Greenland. I can remember telling the public that Donald Trump in private talked about swapping Puerto Rico for green and he wanted to take Over Greenland. And you know what the White House did? They denied it. They denied it. They said Trump didn't say those things. And if he did, Trump was joking about those things. What's one of the first things he did when he came back to office? He announced that he wanted Greenland and he wanted to take over Greenland. We need to believe him when he says he's going to bring the Department of War to Chicago. We need to believe him when he says he's going to send troops into American cities. And we need to believe him when he says he believes that the President of the United States is all powerful.
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C
I'm going to do this one more time and then never again. But I do want to put the post from the weekend up, because this can never be normalized. An American president sent out a tweet. Essentially, it would be easy to understand it as a declaration of war against Americans living in an American city. Miles Taylor, you know better than just about anyone how reluctantly General John Kelly spoke out and did a recorded interview. Ahead of the interview, he warned about exactly this. He did an interview after Secretary Matt. When General Mark Milley described Donald Trump as fascistic to the core, that's a quote to Bob Woodward. He did an interview where he confirms that Donald Trump meets all the technical definitions of a fascist. But he goes further, and he describes what is wrong with putting US Troops on the streets of American cities and warns about its impact to the military. Where are all those voices speaking out for what this does? Put that tweet up one more time. I promise this is the last day we'll do that. What does this do to the military to have a president use them as propaganda against their fellow Americans?
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A
Well, I think, Nicole, anyone who was trying to find a moment, or perhaps anyone who was waiting for a moment to say that we crossed over that line into Trump creating a fascist environment, has got to look at the timestamp on that post and say it happened in that moment. You know, our friend Garrett Graf, the historian who you've had on before and who's been out there on the networks, you know, Garrett, a couple of weeks ago said this in a fantastic post where he said, we've crossed that line. And it's. It's not always a bright line. But if you were doubtful about that, this type of tweet says it. And you mentioned John Kelly, you know, we're not talking about a random appointee inside the government. We're talking about the guy that was by the president's side as the White House chief of staff. You talked about Jim Mattis. We're talking about his secretary of defense. We talk about these people who were there with him in these moments and who have attested that he had these fascistic impulse and now we are seeing it brought to life. I think this is deeply demoralizing to the United States military. But to your question, Nicole, why aren't we seeing a lot of these folks speaking out? I think the answer is fear. I mean, when you say that a man is going to act like a fascist, you know, that means he's going to engage in intimidation and threats and he will try to destroy the lives of his critics. Now, I would like to think some more of those critics are going to come back to the fore. But I know people personally who spoke out the past couple of years who've now gone to ground because they're terrified. They've seen what's happened to me or John Bolton or Chris Krebs or go on down the list and they don't want it to happen to them. Donald Trump is living out his authoritarian fantasies. It's happening.
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C
I raise the issue of the men and women of the military, Maya, because it is true that the Supreme Court seemed to give Donald Trump more tools to racially profile. That is happening. It's happening in America, greenlit by the members of the United States, conservative members of the Supreme Court. And I'm going to read, actually, let me do this right now. Let me read from Justice Sotomayor's dissent. Quote, that decision is yet another grave misuse of our emergency docket. We should not have to live in a country where the government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish and appears to work a low wage job rather than stand idly by while our constitutional freedoms are lost. I dissent.
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D
So here's the thing. This is going to come for everyone. That's the point about authoritarianism. What we are seeing right now in this Supreme Court essentially saying we will say the president and protecting the president's, our perception of the president's power is more important than protecting people from the overreach, the abuse of power that violates their constitutional rights. And we'll watch it play out, watch people get harmed before we will say it has to stop. If they will even say it has to stop. The red line. If we don't have a red line with the Supreme Court, we have lost a major part of our balance of power. But I think it's so important to ground this in everyday experience because, yes, people who look Latino or who speak a language like Spanish as a first language are being racially profiled. We have many people in this country who are here lawfully who have violated no laws and have certainly contributed nothing but good things to this country, who are being harassed, pulled over. But what we have seen in D.C. and what we've seen in other cities, we've seen it in New York. It isn't only Latinos, it's any black people. My friend's son in Washington, D.C. went to find his passport so he could simply go to work. And he was right to go find his passport as a young black man because he knew they were going to come for him. So we have seen blockades in city streets for no reason, deciding who to pull over. And it is people who are Asian or Pacific Islander or Native American or black. It is racially profiling, but it is coming for everyone. And the point here about the military is going to become much more crucial because as we've seen in other countries that have faced this kind of authoritarianism, it is when the military says we won't do it anymore. And we may come to that reckoning very soon in this country where our own military says we won't do it anymore. The other thing that we have to remember, and we have veterans who have been calling this out for a while and saying that the military has to take more action. Even before this administration came into power, we have a lot of military who are deeply concerned and troubled and don't want to do this. But there is by some estimates, 11% of military that are white supremacists or other white extremists in the military. And so unless we have leaders come out and say no, we will have a bigger problem.
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C
I want to stay with Maya's first point, and Miles made this point, too. And I just want to center this on this idea. People can't hear the first thing that Miles and Maya just said. They said they will come for everyone. But let me go through the list that I came up with this week. Trump talks about deporting adjudicated violent criminals. News organizations pull that question. Whoa. 87% support the deportation of the, quote, worst of the worst, the adjudicated violent criminals. January 20th comes and ends within two weeks. They have redefined criminality. They have changed what was always a civil offense, being in the country illegally, that is now a crime. They make that change. You know, no one takes to the streets, but they have criminalized being here in a legal process that made that a crime. They're deporting people to seekot and Otherwise, without due process and over the objections of federal judges and the Supreme Court. So they've changed it from adjudicated violent criminals to people who've simply committed the offense of being here illegally. And then in raids, they sweep up people who may not even be here illegally, people with legal status. And then, and then I think we all remember in late spring, they start sweeping up American citizens. Holy. You know what? And then they talk about stripping Rosie o' Donnell's citizenship. American citizen with a lot of power to move that quickly from adjudicated violent criminals to nonviolent criminals who are simply here illegally, to people who aren't even here illegally, but were born somewhere else, to American citizens, to Americans he doesn't like in seven months should terrify everyone. Why are we numbing?
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B
Why are we numb? That's a great question. You know, all the trains are running at the same time, which lets us know that this is not just about Trump. All of the trains are running at the same time. That's the first thing I want to say. The second thing is that they're running at the same time because they're presupposing some things that are already extant, that is that Americans have been selfish for a long time. So they're presupposing selfishness. They're presupposing that selfishness will generate indifference, that it's not happening to me, it's happening to these others. Even when it happens to others that I might not think it should happen to, it's not happening to me. And then there's fear and cowardliness. So there's the cudgel of fear that generates a cowardly response, matching or joining selfishness and indifference. And so when you got that combination and you have an authoritarian force with all the trains running at the same time, the environment is perfect for this. To mix my metaphors, it's perfect for a Cat 5.
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C
So what breaks the cycle?
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B
I don't know. Typically in the history of the country, when this happens, it's a 15 year process. It has always been that way. When the wheels come off and the ugly underbelly of the country evidences itself, it has taken a while for us to get it right, for us to recalibrate. And usually it happens geopolitical reasons or there's a sense in which it feels as if the country is about to literally come apart, fall apart at the seams.
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I feel that right now.
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I feel it deeply. That's why I'm. I don't know what will bring us here, because we're in a place where the cultural rot is such that it's like dry Kindle. You know, I keep trying to reach for metaphors. Something makes this moment possible. That's not just simply about their will to power. It's about the environment in which they're exercising it.
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C
Yeah, I'm just taking a break, but I want to put some dots out there for all of you. I mean, you've got grand juries in D.C. refusing to indict. New York Times had an incredible story about it. It's not just the sandwich guy, but the grand juries are saying they're seeing through what is clearly whatever her name is, Pyro Piro's BS not indicting almost never happens. You can explain that to us. On the other side of the break, you've got governors going toe to toe with Donald Trump holding up a mirror to how ludicrous he is. You've got governors and mayors standing up for their city before he comes in, learning from L. A. I want to, I want to ask you guys if I'm tilting at windmills or if I'm seeing something meaningful. I have to sneak in a quick break first. When we come back, Donald Trump spent his first term railing against the so called deep state, those in the government who checked his autocratic impulse impulses simply by refusing to break the law. Fast forward to today and Donald Trump is building his own deep, deep state, one that is loyal only to him, not to the U.S. constitution. And it's helping Trump move this country quickly, much closer to autocracy. We'll take you inside. That great piece from our friend Miles Taylor also had major tensions between Donald Trump and South Korea after that massive ice raid at a Hyundai factory in the state of Georgia. Donald Trump says he wants foreign companies to invest in this country. But after Friday's raid, there are big questions about why they would ever do that. And later, how Tom Hanks became the latest pinata in Donald Trump's culture wars. Deadline. White House continues after a quick break. Don't go anywhere.
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As Donald Trump threatens a major US City with again, quote, unquote, in his own words, war. While dismantling federal institutions and firing thousands of federal workers to make room for MAGA loyalists with little qualification for the jobs they're getting, Miles Taylor is warning about the startling reality and the irony of Donald Trump's consolidation of power. Miles writes this quote, despite years of assailing the deep state, Trump and his allies are working to build one of their own to make sure the MAGA movement remains entrenched inside the government for a generation or more. It goes without saying that government that serves a singular man instead of a mission isn't much of a republic. It is something else, something we've all seen in history books but never thought we'd see here in America. The scaffolding of autocracy is going up right in front of us and the construction workers are being hired for their loyalty to the leader. The deep state is real because Donald Trump is building it himself. We're back with Miles, Eddie and Maya. Miles, say more.
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A
Yeah, look, I wrote that on Substack because I felt like, Nicole, that people were not pointing this out enough, is that Donald Trump spent years railing against a fake deep state. Now, he made this up. This was a conspiracy theory because there was not inside the US Government a secret cabal of highly networked government employees that were trying to oust the president of the United States. That's a story he told in response to the fact that there were people inside of government who told him he could not do illegal things. And there's a big difference between people who speak truth to power and an illegal deep state running a coup against the president. So that deep state never existed. But of course, the deep irony here and the deep hypocrisy is that Donald Trump is now very systematically working to create an actual deep state. He is Doing that in a two step process. One, as you've covered so well all through this year, he is purging the federal government of people he considers disloyal. And we're not talking about just political appointees. We're talking about frontline civil servants from the CDC to the FDA to FEMA and on. But there's a second stage to this process, and that stage is beginning now in earnest. And that second stage is to restock the government with people that are loyal to Donald Trump. So he's not draining the stuff, the swamp. He's restocking it with loyalists who will be in those jobs for a generation. And the place he is starting is the place where there are the badges and the guns. He's not doing it at the EPA or the Department of Agriculture. He's doing it with the FBI and ice first by lowering all the standards, making it easier to recruit MAGA people into those jobs. So that far into the future, those people with badges and guns can continue to execute Donald Trump's unconstitutional vision for how the US Government should function. That's what's really scary about this, is he's trying to create a legacy that goes beyond these four years by putting thousands of people around the government who want to advance Trumpism.
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C
How does a country protect itself from that?
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A
Well, look, it's very hard. I mean, by design, Nicole. I mean, the only way to undo this quickly would be to use the same tactics that Donald Trump has used that many of us have said are unlawful. I mean, he's gone into the government and wholesale deleted agencies. He's pushed the boundaries of the law to fire people who are supposed to have civil service protections. He's gone and he's relocated people far from their families and cut their pay to try to convince them to quit. He's done all of these mob like things to try to, quote, drain that swamp so he can bring his loyalists in. And that's actually one of the few ways to be able to reverse it. And that's going to put whoever, a future president who wants to try to fix this into a very difficult spot. Now, hopefully between now and then, we've got courts that are steadily ruling that Donald Trump's actions have violated not just the Constitution, but appropriations law and any number of other congressional edicts that make it hard for the president to just wholesale go delete agencies. But I don't know if that's the case. And we also don't know if Trump's going to abide by those. So. And that's the point here.
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Here.
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The point is that they are creating something that will take a generation to undo. And really, you can't describe it any other way than a hostile takeover of the entirety of the federal government for the long term.
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C
Have you seen a single example where the Supreme Court has slowed this process you describe?
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A
No.
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C
No.
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A
In fact, if anything, the Supreme Court has been surprisingly silent on Donald Trump's violations of appropriations law. And there's a reason I keep, keep mentioning that, is that the way Congress spends money becomes law, and it becomes law that binds the president. So when Congress says, you must have this agency, that's called the Department of Defense, and here's how many employee. Employees in this office, and here's how much money, the president can't just decide, well, I don't want to spend that money. He's required to spend it the way Congress says he's supposed to spend it. They have violated appropriations law all throughout the United States government. This would be the type of thing I would have expected a Supreme Court to take up right away and say, no, Mr. President, you must do what Congress says. But the court has taken up all sorts of other cases that have been favorable to Donald Trump and has been incredibly silent on that question of their persistent violations of Congress's spending law. That, to me, is something that I hope will be rectified in the coming quarter term. But I'm not holding my breath, Nicole.
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C
So, Maya, before the break, we talked about a constellation of. And I think the $64 million question is, can they form something recognizable to enough voters to turn the tide in the midterms? Tell me what dots you see.
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D
There's so many dots.
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C
And I. Tell me, tell me.
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D
I would actually say it's more than dots, you know, because there's a lot of interconnection here. But first of all, you know, the idea. People are outraged. They're outraged. And a lot of why having this conversation isn't because people aren't engaged, angry, think this is crazy. All the things that Martin said, important because he's given voice to what a lot of people are saying when they're having their living room conversations and talking to their neighbors. The thing is, what do you do? And so that's why we've seen so much protest. That's why we've seen so much organizing that is happening on the ground. If you look at what's happening with Free DC Free DC Are citizens of this city. Residents is what I mean by citizens, participants coming together and actually taking action and demanding that federal troops get out. We saw it in Los Angeles when we saw groups showing up, people, and I'm not saying organized people showing up at a church that was a sanctuary church just showing up. And then groups that were organizing also giving them a way to continue. They're actually walking every day over to the detention center where there are U.S. marines for no reason standing out there in military gear, uncomfortable, who don't want to be there. So things are happening constantly. The target boycott on target. One of the things that we should remember that Martin, in his really excellent summary of the takeover in the deep state, what we need to remember is where it really started was the takeover of the courts. Where it really started was the takeover voting rights. I mean, Miles, sorry, but what it really started was when we had the Suprem Court actually undermined voting rights in 2013, which is part of what made it so much more difficult to have true representation of what a majority of this country thinks. Because after that, we had so much radical, like partisan gerrymandering, racialized gerrymandering, weakening and suppressing black voters. The Civil Rights Coalition has been speaking out about this since 2013. We've been working on judges because what we saw in Trump won, that preceded Trump won, remember this preceded Donald Trump being president in his first term was literally a Senate that decided it was going to deny a sitting president the ability to have a nominee, confirm, Merrick Garland, confirm. But that's what set up the ability to have a deeply extremist, imbalanced and ideological Supreme Court. So that that guardrail, the guardrail of ensuring that people can vote and ensuring that people of color, in particular black people, Latinos, Asians, could vote, those things are what got here. But people have not stopped fighting about it.
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B
So the question we have. Because I think that's right, so the question we have to ask ourselves if we say that it's. If we concede the point is, why hasn't it worked over the last seven months? So this. I'm just saying. I'm not trying to say that it should. I'm just trying to. What? Because I don't want to. I don't want to think. I think I want to hold these two things at the same time, Right? That there's this actual activism on the ground that's happening that actually shows the work, the way, a pathway to getting to the other side of this. And then there's a sea of indifference, the reality of selfishness that defines a large portion of the country that has allowed this to happen in so many ways. So it seems to me, and I may be wrong here, and you're on the front lines in this regard, but the scale of the response has to match the scale of the damage.
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C
You go first.
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D
Well, so this is. I mean, I think this is exactly right. And this is what we have to understand. They had the project 2025 was real. Miles said it earlier where it's like it was in writing. We told it, but it was impossible for folks to quite. We were raising red alarm bells, you know, alarm bells and red flags. The question is how it catches up. Because the other thing that they've been doing has been very tactical. If you think about why they came out against diversity, diversity, equity and inclusion on day one and then said we had an invasion on day one, it was intentional to set up the terms that told some people, it's not you we're after. It's not you if you're white in rural America. It's not you if you're the base. But what we have to catch up with is in a context where they had so much radically, rapidly, and shockingly been able to violate laws, violate the Constitution, and not have Republicans stand up and say no.
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B
Well, with the big beautiful bill, though, they're going after those folks, too.
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D
Well, this is my point. This is my point. So I think some of it is we just have to recognize there is catching up to what we have, what we did win and the guardrails we did have, and the catching up to regrouping, to the ways in which we find new strategies. We recognize that the rules are broken and that we have to create a strategy that honors the vision we have for this country as a diverse one, as a Democratic, small D Democratic one, where we come together and recognize we have problems we have to solve together and not have anyone tell us we can't, but also have anyone tell us they can take over our institutions to prevent that from happening. That's what we're catching.
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C
And how do we make our law firms and universities responsive to what the people in the streets clearly want and not what the dictator in waiting wants? Because that the fact that they all fell, they all capitulated, except a handful that fought and batted a thousand in court. The law firms that fought all won, but the vast majority of them capitulated. They did social media post deals with Donald Trump and they're now working for him quietly.
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D
That's why it's that. Yeah, that's why it's us.
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C
All right, I need you guys to stick around a little bit longer. Myles, thank you for what you wrote and thank you for sounding the alarms at what I know is a great risk for doing so. Thank you for continuing to speak out, my friend.
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A
Thanks, Nicole.
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C
When we come back, how Donald Trump's agenda of ICE raids and mass deportation is doing very real damage to the fabric of our country and our communities, as well as to the American economy. Then one of Donald Trump's own stated goals and political promises, that's next. I think that you have to have faith that in the end it'll all be okay, that no matter who wins a presidential election, we will live in a democracy. The First Amendment will govern what journalists can say and do. The Constitution will protect the rights of everybody if you can agree that most people want those things. Our show is about trying to bend the arc toward that end result deadline.
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White House with Nicole Wallace, weekdays from.
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4 to 6pm Eastern on MSNBC. Hey everyone, it's Chris Hayes. This week on my podcast, why Is this Happening? Harvard political scientist Erica Chenoweth.
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People often find out the world they're.
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In after the fact and that's what makes this wave of global autocratization, as.
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They call, much more like the one that was in the 1920s and 30s than the one that was in like the 1960s and 70s. Because in the 60s and 70s there were bright lines.
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There was a coup outright by the.
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Military declaring themselves the caretaker government, or there was an armed revolution that won. We're in a different world where most of the aspiring autocrats today are elected authoritarians.
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That's this week on why Is this Happening?
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Search for why Is this Happening? Where we're listening right now.
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And follow subscribe to MSNBC Premium on Apple Podcasts for early access, ad free listening and bonus content to all of MSNBC's original podcasts, including the chart topping.
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Series the Best People with Nicole Wallace. Why Is this Happening? Main justice and more.
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Plus new episodes of all your favorite MSNBC shows ad free and ad free listening to all of Rachel Maddow's original series Ultra Bagman and Deja News. Subscribe to MSNBC Premium on Apple Podcasts.
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It is the signature thing that got Donald Trump elected twice. One of his signature pledges to strengthen the American economy and specifically to bring back American manufacturing.
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We're going to rebuild our manufacturing and it's going to happen. It's going to happen fast and beautifully. Not only will we stop our businesses from leaving for foreign lands, but under my leadership we are going to take other countries jobs. We must be able to build the chips and semiconductors that we need right here in American factories. It's a matter of economic security. It's also a matter of national security for us. We have more plants being built. We have everything. We're doing so great, and we want to keep it that way.
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As Rachel might say at this moment, watch what he does, not what he says, because you may want those things that he utters, not all consistently, but his own immigration enforcement actions may be undercutting his ability to achieve any of that. An immigration raid at an electric vehicle battery plant in Georgia owned by the South Korean company Hyundai, where nearly 500 workers were arrested, has strained relations with one of our closest workers, trading partners, throwing the future of the kind of investment Donald Trump campaigned on into question. New York Times is reporting this about the impact of that one raid, which US Officials boasted about almost immediately, saying it was the largest ever. Obsessed with size, quote. The raid has sent shockwaves across the Pacific, said Tammy Overby, who formerly led the U. S. Korea Business council at the U.S. chamber of Commerce. Talking to my friends last night, she said, I had one guy say, quote, we're getting mixed messages from the administration. You want our money, but you don't want us. She said, it had a chilling impact all across boardrooms in Asia. End quote. Joining our conversation, professor of economics and public policy at the University of Michigan, Justin Wolfers is back. Eddie and Maya are still here. Justin, tell me what is happening and tell me what the world sees.
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Okay, so some background here. The United States has a free trade agreement with Korea. If you want to get a visa from Korea to come and work here for a short period of time, you just get on the Internet. It's an eta. You just push a button, eta, and it's automatically granted. There's no paperwork, no nothing. And so what you have here is a company, Hyundai, that has decided to set up a battery plant in the US which is exactly what you imagine this administration wants. But there's an idea in economics called technology transfer. It's not enough just to have the machines and put American people next to them. You've got to know how to set up the machines, and you've got to make sure that the American people know what to do with the machines. A factory is more than just people and machines. It's also knowledge. And so Hyundai wants to bring Hyundai's knowledge to go with Hyundai's machines. And American people, that's what they're in the business of trying to do. ISIS come in, shut the whole business down. And I Think it's sent a message that's chilling not just within Hyundai, but within any company that would think about sending any staff here under any service circumstances.
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What rationale is there for the aggressive nature of the arrest? Putting people in handcuffs and chains around their legs?
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Boy, it's hard for an economist to think of an economic rationale for doing this for a public humiliation and a public humiliation that's broadcast around the world. Presumably one only broadcast that if one is proud of that. And I guess that the message that sends, whether intentionally or otherwise, is you when your people aren't welcome here. Nicole, There was a funny project several years ago called the Toaster Project. There was a bloke out there who decided in Britain he'd try and make a toaster without using any imported goods. That toaster ended up costing him months of his life. $2,000 worth of material. He plugged it in and it worked for three seconds and then it exploded. I'm telling you that story because it's a metaphor for what happens if you refuse to rely on the ingenuity and goods that come into us from around the world.
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The world. No one's going anywhere. I want to show all of you what's happening to farmers in this country as well. We have to sneak in a quick break before we do that. We'll all be right back.
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Going to lose 25 or 30% of the farmers in this country if they don't do something.
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It has to be done.
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And it's not just here, it's everywhere. Mr. Trump, you looked at me, sir.
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And you said I was love you.
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Mr. Trump, I need to see the.
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Fruit of your love.
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I'm 6th generation farmer from Newport and we made a decision to go out.
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This year in the spring. So my son will not be the seventh generation on our farm.
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Five of my customers have committed suicide.
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That's how serious that this is. If there's no emergency funding this year, there will be one out of three farmers will file bankruptcy. Justin, There is clearly, in their own words from farmers, a desperation that includes this testimony. Quote, in the last 14 months, five of my customers have committed suicide from a farm equipment supplier. What is causing all of their pain specifically?
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E
It's a good reminder then, Nicole, why we talk about economics and it's because underneath it's people's lives. What's causing their pain is tariffs. Foreigners are no longer buying American products at the same rates they once were. That's the retaliation side of it. But the other side of it, that's really stupid. Is is the Trump administration failed to read page one of the tariff handbook which says don't put tariffs on inputs. And so a lot of the inputs that farmers need, whether it's fertilizer or machinery, those prices have now gone up. So if you're not getting more for your output and your inputs are now costing you more, that's the big profit squeeze and that's what's causing the pain you just saw in those clips.
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So, Eddie, these folks aren't numb.
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But.
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We'Ve talked a lot about disinformation and we've talked a lot about what's broken in our politics. And the thing that caused the pain is the tariffs. And the tariffs were done just by Donald Trump. Republicans allowed it. Do you see anything on the horizon that suggests that their pain is still the four alarm fire it used to be in American politics?
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I'm not sure sure, because when we look at the numbers in terms of his support, I mean, there's some cracks, but they're still pretty strong.
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Right.
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Because in some ways political identities have calcified. That is to say, I see myself as a Republican or a MAGA Republican. And it's not just simply a political identity, it's who I take myself to be. So that's not going to break. And then suddenly I'm going to start voting Democratic or this is just a just how we might think of the matter. So I'm not sure how it will manifest itself in terms of our politics. But when people are talking like this, right, it is the stuff of revolution and that's what we have to understand. And revolutions aren't necessarily planned, but that kind of stuff that we're hearing, the scenes are coming apart in the country.
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It seems to me it's to your earlier point, feels like we're coming apart. They feel that, too. Justin, thank you for joining us. Eddie and Maya, thank you for being here for the whole hour. When we come back, Donald Trump has a new target in his culture wars. American icon Tom Hanks. Why West Point will not be honoring the film icon after a short break. Iconic and beloved American actor Tom Hanks is just the latest victim of Donald Trump's culture wars and the utter chaos his ire has caused US Military academies. The Washington Post is today reporting that a West Point alumni group has canceled an upcoming annual ceremony where Hanks was set to receive a prestigious award so that the Academy could instead focus on preparing its cadets for the future. But Hanks has been outspoken in his criticism of Donald Trump participating in a 2020 Biden campaign fundraiser and most recently portraying a Trump supporter on Saturday Night Live from that report, quote. The decision marks a dramatic shift from June when the association announced hanks as the 2025 Thayer recipient. The alumni group cited his work acting in several movies portraying U.S. service members, quote. It also credited his producing A Band of Brothers and the Pacific, both World War II themed miniseries, and his extensive advocacy for veterans. But the planned celebration appears to have run headlong into Trump era politics. We'll stay on top of that. Another break for us. We'll be right back. If the pro democracy movement is looking for a new rallying cry, here's one for you. I used to say our job is to stop stupid or at least slow it down. We can be the instigators who force them to answer questions they don't want to answer. Answer. We can talk about Epstein not because of their distraction, but because what does.
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It mean for a nation that is.
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Willing to protect those who would prey on our children. We need to ask the theoretical questions, but ask them and demand the truth.
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Of the answer from those who are.
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Not doing their jobs.
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We can do all of the above.
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Everything she said was profound and interesting and riveting and instructive and inspirational. That's Stacey Abrams, Democratic powerhouse, voting rights activist, author, all around badass. She is my guest on this week's episode of the Best People podcast. Stacey Abrams will get you fired up and ready to battle for our democracy. Scan the QR code on your screen to listen and after you do, let me know what you think on Blue sky or Instagram. Thank you for letting us into your homes. We are grateful.