“The unrepentant embrace of ICE violence by the Trump administration”

Summary

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Podcast Summary: "The unrepentant embrace of ICE violence by the Trump administration"

Deadline: White House with Nicolle Wallace | July 15, 2026

Episode Overview

This riveting episode of "Deadline: White House" centers on the Trump administration's revived and unapologetic approach to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), particularly highlighting the violent consequences of mass deportation policies. Nicolle Wallace and her guests—Rachel Maddow, Ben Rhodes, John Heilemann, and Stephanie Ruhle—explore the lethal outcomes of these enforcement drives, the administration's disregard for legal accountability, public backlash, and the wider political, strategic, and economic implications—set against ongoing domestic protests and a tense foreign policy landscape involving war with Iran.

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Main Discussion Points

1. The Escalation and Toll of ICE Violence (00:46–11:09)

• Recent Deadly Incidents:
  Nicolle Wallace and Rachel Maddow detail a series of recent fatal ICE operations, including the killings of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston and Johan Sebastian Duran Guerrero in Biddeford, Maine. They emphasize these individuals were not targets of ICE warrants, exemplifying reckless enforcement ([01:32–06:58]).
• Public Backlash:
  Maddow describes visceral, instantaneous community outrage and mobilization in Maine, including vigils and protests:

  "There were already people in that neighborhood out on the street, completely outraged, just cursing a blue streak at those ICE agents... The instinctive, visceral reaction of people in that community that this was wrong." — Rachel Maddow [05:27]

• Administrative Dynamics:
  Discussion of DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin's attempt to temporarily pause ICE vehicle stops for retraining (after public outcry), immediately overruled by Trump ([01:32–04:40], [14:42–14:50]).
• No Political Upside:
  Maddow argues the administration achieves no political gain from this approach, facing opposition not just from Democrats but also from Republicans and local leaders in red states ([10:03–11:09]):

  "There's nothing that they're doing here that has any positive politically... the moral, legal, and I think deeply operational failures... just compound over time."

2. Trump’s Political Strategies and Communication Breakdown (11:09–17:58)

• Dehumanization in Political Rhetoric:
  Wallace and Maddow draw links between Trump's campaign rally tactics—montages of “crimes by illegals”—and the normalization of mass deportation and violence ([11:09–12:21]).
• Statistics & Policy Outcomes:
  Less than 6% of deportees are adjudicated violent criminals, despite administration rhetoric ([11:09–12:21]).
• Leadership Breakdown:
  Maddow elaborates on Trump's declining ability to communicate coherently or pursue strategic policy, describing him as out of control and reactive, weakening the GOP's prospects ([15:04–16:25]):

  "He's devolved in his own ability to communicate... cannot control his own feelings enough to make politically savvy decisions." — Rachel Maddow [15:04]

• Implications for Civil-Military Relations:
  The group discusses the impact of Trump’s erratic, performative policymaking on the Pentagon—specifically referencing his impulsive and unworkable directive to close the Strait of Hormuz and charge tolls ([17:01–17:58]).

3. Foreign Policy Chaos: War with Iran (20:46–31:46)

• Endless Escalation:
  The panel notes Trump’s announcement of an expanded war in Iran, including threats to strike energy infrastructure and bridges—actions that would constitute war crimes ([21:28–21:55]):

  "Next week comes the power plants. Next week comes the bridges. We're going to knock out all their power plants." — Trump, quoted by Nicole Wallace [21:37]

• Lack of Strategy, Political and Economic Fallout:
  Ben Rhodes and John Heilemann explain that Trump’s approach is performative and disconnected from viable strategy. The war was avoidable, and now there’s no good exit, with economic repercussions—including surging gasoline and food prices—becoming the defining domestic issue ([22:27–29:45], [29:45–31:46]):

  "All of these strikes... all of this military action... the current place that we find ourselves in is just about reopening the Strait of Hormuz, a body of water that was open before the war that he started." — Ben Rhodes [22:27]

4. Institutional and Moral Complicity (32:31–38:03)

• Interrogating Intelligence Nominees:
  The group dissects the spectacle of Jay Clayton, intelligence nominee, refusing to affirm Joe Biden’s 2020 election win, out of loyalty to Trump, displaying craven deference ([32:31–36:21]).

  "He literally cannot say the word 'won' for what Joe Biden did in 2020. That's the guy... who's going to lead the country's intel agencies." — Nicole Wallace [34:46]

• Concerns About Election Integrity:
  Rhodes warns of the risk that such pliant officials will aid Trump in delegitimizing future elections ([36:21–38:03]):

  "The concern... is not just that we have a DNI who can't answer a basic question like that, it's that Trump may try to claim that there was fraud or foreign interference... And can we have any trust that that guy will stand up and tell us the truth?"

5. Economic Drag: The War’s Cost at Home (39:31–44:03)

• Soaring Prices and Strategic Risk:
  Stephanie Ruhle breaks down how the war with Iran is directly fueling spikes in gas and food prices, with the closure of the Strait of Hormuz exacerbating inflation and draining U.S. petroleum reserves ([39:31–43:57]).

  "We are back at full throttle, it would appear, in Iran... every American is now paying more. The average price of a gallon of gas is sky high, $3.89 up from $3.15 one year ago." — Nicole Wallace [39:33]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Community Response to ICE Violence:

  "Hundreds of people in small-town Maine out at the downtown park and then flooding into Susan Collins's office and flooding into their own city hall... rejection of this." — Rachel Maddow [05:27]

• On Internal GOP Dynamics:

  "Republicans are having to try to make politics around him rather than through him, like they used to be able to do. And it means that he's the biggest bulwark... between them and potential electoral success in November." — Rachel Maddow [15:45]

• On the Failure of War Messaging and Strategy:

  "Meet the new phase, same as the old phase... Everything that's happened since then has been in some ways kind of inevitable because there just aren't... any other clubs in the bag." — John Heilemann [25:03]

• On Moral and Political Accountability:

  "It's humiliating to be unable to answer this question, to have to indulge the President's delusions." — John Heilemann, pressing on election denial [34:09]

• Economic Reality Check:

  "The Strategic Petroleum Reserve... is at the lowest level since 1983... There’s an implication here for emergency situations that’s not apparent right now, but could be..." — Stephanie Ruhle [42:19]

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Key Timestamps for Reference

| Time | Segment | |---------------|-----------------------------------------------------------| | 01:32–04:40 | Intro: ICE shootings, Trump overrules ICE stop pause | | 05:27–06:58 | Maine shooting, local outrage, community mobilization | | 07:46–09:35 | Critique: ICE structural incompetence, dangerous chases | | 10:03–11:09 | Failed political calculus, resistance from all quarters | | 12:21–14:50 | Pardons for violent criminals, public accountability | | 15:04–16:25 | Trump’s decline in strategy, comms breakdown, GOP impact | | 17:01–17:58 | Pentagon whiplash, absurd policies over Hormuz | | 21:28–21:55 | Trump’s war crime threats, escalation in Iran | | 22:27–29:45 | Strategic dead-ends, impact on global oil, U.S. prices | | 32:31–36:21 | Election denial, intelligence nominee’s humiliation | | 39:31–44:03 | Domestic economic fallout, risk to reserves |

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Conclusion

This episode paints a damning portrait of the Trump administration’s unrepentant, chaotic, and politically costly handling of both immigration enforcement and foreign policy. Through sharp analysis and reporting, the hosts and guests reveal how disregard for legal accountability, strategic incoherence, and moral abdication ripple outward: destroying families, angering communities, alienating allies, and deepening America’s economic woes. The tone stays urgent, direct, and often darkly humorous—matching the gravity and disbelief at the state of current affairs.

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Transcript

[Rachel Maddow]

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[Nicole Wallace]

Hi again Everybody. It's now 5 o' clock in the area with our dear friend and colleague Rachel Maddow on Monday night putting this story back in center stage again for all of us on the unrepentant embrace of ICE violence by Donald Trump and his cabinet as Donald Trump moves to stop any changes that might slow down his obsession with ICE meeting its mass deportation targets, even if the purpose was somewhere way, way, way back to save lives. Earlier this morning, Donald Trump blocked a move by his DHS secretary to pause ICE vehicle stops. It's a pause that was implemented for a reason. It was implemented after two deadly shootings during ICE traffic stops in the span of one week. The pause was fueled by an outpouring of exactly what Rachel describes there anger and people pouring into the streets over the killings of two men, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston and Johan Sebastian Duran Guerrero in Biddeford, Maine, including from Republicans, causing the Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markway Mullen to issue a temporary pause on low level vehicle stops until the agents could be retrained and had to do them ostensibly. Now the anger appears to have been no match for Trump's desire to achieve those targets those numbers, those arbitrary mass deportation numbers, as though they're not human beings behind them. Trump posting on Truth Social earlier this morning this quote, that the men and women of ICE are doing an all caps great job, one that has to be done. We cannot give up on one of ice's most important and effective crime fighting tools, switching back to all caps, the traffic stop, he writes. Once we do, we're playing right into the criminals hands. Neither Mr. Salgado Arahu or Mr. Guerrero were criminals and neither of them are the targets of the immigration enforcement. ICE didn't have a warrant for either of them and neither of them were the targets of any element of the ICE operations that got them killed. Despite Trump's insistence on pushing ahead with mass deportation, it is now abundantly clear that as long as ICE is allowed to operate like this, people will continue to die in our neighborhoods and in our communities. Yesterday a man in Florida was struck and killed by a tractor trailer. He was fleeing ICE agents on foot. One Florida state legislator speaking to the Associated Press called that death a tragedy that resulted from an out of control agency. Quote, whether it's ICE agents gunning down a father in the streets of Houston, shooting a young man in Maine, or conducting operations right here in Northeast Florida that result in a deadly crash, the outcome is the same, fear, chaos and death. She said the Trump administration now being forced to reckon with just how many deaths it will take before their mass deportation campaign becomes too toxic, even for the MAGA Republican Party. Even as the families and the young children of these men are left to pick up the pieces, is where we begin the hour with our very special friend, my dear colleague anchor, the Rachel Maddow Show. Rachel's here. Hi.

[Rachel Maddow]

Hey, Nicole. Thanks for having me.

[Nicole Wallace]

Well, thank you for sort of putting, you know, we've talked about this off camera, but there is a strategic purpose to the sort of cacophony of chaos. And when you lift a story up on a Monday, it's a important guideposts. And thank you for lifting this up on Monday night.

[Rachel Maddow]

One of the things that really struck me is after I heard about this killing in Maine that morning, I started going through social media video, which is the first thing that we had because it happened so early in the morning. There wasn't a lot of other sort of video running. There weren't a lot of cell phone cameras around. So we had some security cameras and we pretty quickly started getting in some social media video, just video from people in the neighborhood. And what I saw is after that shooting in Maine happened at 7

[Stephanie Ruhle]

before

[Rachel Maddow]

8 in the morning, there were already people in that neighborhood out on the street, completely outraged, just cursing a blue streak at those ICE agents for what they had done. And the instinctive, visceral reaction of people in that community that this was wrong. They wanted this out of their community. They wanted justice for this kid who was killed, this young man who was killed. I thought, like, okay, follow the lead of what's happening here locally. And then to see, even before noon that same day, we had hundreds of people in small town Maine out at the downtown park and then flooding into Susan Collins's office and flooding into their own city hall. And there was then supposed to be a vigil being held that night at seven o'. Clock. Well, the noon thing never ended. It just got larger and larger and larger all day long until 7 o' clock it was even. And then it carried on until the next day. And I feel like all I've done with this story is kind of just observe what's happening here. But I think it's really, really important to know that part of the news of what's happening in this era of the Trump administration is not just what Trump and Mark Wainwill and all the rest of them are doing in terms of immigration enforcement. And this is how they're doing it. It's how the American people feel about it and how they're willing to react and how they instinctively react with just revulsion and rejection of this. There's no constituency for what they're doing here. And I think they think they can keep doing it because maybe the MAGA base will rally to them for killing people like this in the. But it's not happening. And the people are against him.

[Nicole Wallace]

Well, and what's interesting is that it's sort of like all the stories from the first term where it would leak out that someone said something terrible about Donald Trump. There's not a single counterexample. Right. No one ever leaked out a story where they said nice things about Donald Trump. They just capitulate to him. And then privately, people like Mitch McConnell, who were reported to have called him, I think, quote, the most despicable person he ever knew, John Kelly, described him as. I mean, the ICE body of facts and evidence only reveal one thing. So the first thing that comes out is that they were not the targets. Not that killing a target of an immigration enforcement would be justified, but these men were literally just caught in the crossfire of an incompetent and corrupt immigration policy that seems to erode support from whatever the ostensible purpose is as well. Right.

[Rachel Maddow]

And I feel like some of the national discussion around this, some of the kind of like DC focused media discussion about this is about how it's so interesting that Mark Wayne Mullen doesn't want the Department of Homeland Security and ICE to get the same kind of headlines that they were getting under. Kristi Noemi wants it to be quieter. As if this was a press problem. Right. As if this was a publicity problem. No, if you've got untrained, newly hired, totally unaccountable, totally incompetent, poorly led, gung ho paramilitary forces who don't identify themselves and have no chain of command in terms of what happens when something goes wrong, if you have them conducting 2,000 arrests a day, good or bad press about that is immaterial. People are going to end up dying because of their bad actions. And I mean, even before the situation in Maine, obviously we had the killing during another stop in Houston, as you said. But last week in Detroit, the Detroit City Council came out and said, please, can we stop having these totally off the hook, reckless high speed car chases in residential neighborhoods after multiple buildings in Detroit were smashed into by cars involved in these high speed chases, for which all accounts are ICE agents are not trained. I mean, one of these situations in Detroit, a man ended up impaled in a residential neighborhood with cars into buildings. But these guys are just out there playing Dukes of Hazzard, told that they have immunity, told that, you know, we still don't even know the name of the guy who killed Alex Fredding. And for an agency like that, with that much money empowered the way that they are and that poorly led and poorly trained them, operating at the volume they're operating at is the problem, regardless of whether or not it attracts headlines.

[Nicole Wallace]

The public opinion and the public's role in this is something you've tracked since the first day. The public views immigration completely differently than they did two years ago. I think the latest poll in the New York Times on just the question of is immigration good or bad has 80% of Americans who think it's a good thing. Now it may be too late. DHS is now staffed to the gills with people willing to carry out these operations and funded to the nines. But the public is no longer remotely interested in what has become their mission.

[Rachel Maddow]

Well, yeah, I mean, there's nothing to brag about in the Trump administration's immigration enforcement. Right. Like, so they thought that it would be a good thing or a popular thing that they were going to build these, you know, 10, 12, 14,000 person mega prison warehouses all over the country. Right. And they thought they would just be able to buy these and cite them places. And meanwhile, they start getting calls from Bihalia, Mississippi, where Roger Wicker is like, no, no, no, you're not putting it here. They started getting calls from red states, from Utah, from Mississipp, New Hampshire, from all over the country, everywhere they wanted to put them. There's not a single politician, no matter how maga, anywhere in the country that wants one of those things there. And so they had to radically scale that back when they had that opposition, not only from regular Americans, but from their own people. There's nothing that they're doing here that has any positive politically and the moral, legal and I think deeply operational failures that they've got in terms of the way that they are mistreating people and the kind of things they're ultimately going to have to answer for. Those things just compound over time while they're getting no benefit from it at all.

[Nicole Wallace]

One of the things that I remember talking to Lee Gelert and you did a lot with our colleague Jacob ahead of his fantastic doc about child separation. And I remember in the transition between when Donald Trump won a second time and before he took office, I asked him what he was going to do to prepare for all the dehumanization that had taken place during that 2024 campaign. Trump started every rally. We didn't take him on TV, but people have talked about this. Every rally in 2024 started with sort of a montage of violent crimes carried out by people he claimed to be here illegally. And that's sort of the ground softening political move that leads to people waiving mass deportation, now signs at his convention. That's the sort of emotional underpinning this incompetent and immoral policy. They have not focused really at all on violent criminals. I mean, there's very, I think like less than 6% of the people who have been deported are adjudicated violent criminals. And the Supreme Court added that adjudicated piece. They can't send people off without due process. Do you think there's any political boomerang coming back to Republicans?

[Rachel Maddow]

Yeah, I mean, you look at the violent criminals and child molesters and people involved in child porn that Donald Trump has deliberately and individually pardoned. Right. I mean, they're just wants to pay him now too. Wants to pay him now too. One maybe wants to hire them on at the Department of Justice or insensitive jobs at the Pentagon. I mean, like he's literally taken people who are convicted assaulters of police officers and people who have been convicted of child molestation and other like unbelievably terrible crimes, and he's pardoned them because they're pro him. I don't think the American people are blind to those sorts of things. It's like J.D. vance saying that he's like, supposed to be the anti fraud guy. But those press conferences, the anti fraud things, keep getting interrupted by newsfeed reports of Trump pardoning yet another convicted MAGA fraudster who donated to his pack. I mean, I'm sorry, people just aren't dumb. We can see all of these things at once. And so any political advantage I think they thought they might have been able to get from scapegoating immigrants as the cause of violence and fear and danger in this country, they have surrendered that political ground by arresting this. Not arresting, but killing this 26 year old young dad in Maine and locking up more than 70% of the people they've locked up have no criminal record whatsoever. They've got this radical expansion of the prison in Texas where they hold kids, right? Women and kids. Dili, you know, you've got literally Japanese Americans who survived the Japanese American incarceration during World War II marching on Dilley saying, let those kids out. We were kids held as concentration camps here in World War II. Let these kids out. Now. What's their answer to that? No, these kids are the worst. Are the worst. I mean, the political ground here is like, they're like Wile E. Coyote. They have run off the end of the cliff. There's nothing below them politically that is supporting what they're doing. Criminal liability, moral liability and humiliation. And Mark Wayne Mullen told ICE officers yesterday, okay, no more traffic stops implicitly. Because, by the way, you guys are not trained at all in how to do them.

[Nicole Wallace]

You stink at them.

[Rachel Maddow]

Yeah, Trump undid that guidance. But there's a reason Mark Wayne Millen did that. It's because he knows more people are gonna die and he's gonna have to be the one who answers for it.

[Nicole Wallace]

When you look at sort of the two years of coverage that you've done, has it been two years? I guess 18 months. It feels like 1147 years and a half. What has changed the most since he's

[Rachel Maddow]

been back in office? I think that he is, I know this, I don't say this in a way that's meant to be cheap, but I feel like he's devolved in his own ability to communicate and to oh, totally.

[Nicole Wallace]

You mean the Islamic Republic of Japan doesn't do it for you?

[Rachel Maddow]

No, it shockingly doesn't. But I mean, not only can he not find the words that are supposed to go together to make the next. He can't form a political concept. So just as an example, this housing bill, right. Republicans want one concrete policy related thing to run on that's not taking away everybody's health insurance.

[Nicole Wallace]

Right.

[Rachel Maddow]

They want something else to run on and they've got it and they get it together. And Trump realizes, wait a second, that's not about me. And so therefore he has to get rid of it. I feel like he could be, even if you didn't agree with him, he could be a little strategic before, but he's become so I think emotionally in context, that he can't control his own feelings enough to make politically savvy decisions. And so Republicans are having to try to make politics around him rather than through him, like they used to be able to do. And it means that he's the biggest bulwark in the biggest bulwark between them and potential electoral success in November. They have to figure out how to contend with that. And I think that's why they're such a mess right now.

[Nicole Wallace]

Well, I mean, the other major institution has to contend with that is the Pentagon. Anyone involved in waging his war by social media post with Iran. I mean, I'm at a point where almost every day that I'm on the air between four and six, there's an announcement from Centcom that there are more strikes. And I don't know that there was ever a stop. I mean, that never stopped. I think you go back and track like four days out of five, they're announcing strikes in Iran. How do you take that emotional incontinence? You take the lack of a grasp of a strategic political concept and lay it over a war. How do you even cover what they're doing in Iran?

[Rachel Maddow]

Yeah. And I mean, what do you think it was like at the Pentagon when Trump announced the new policy, which is going to be that we will be closing the Strait of Hormuz and we, the United States of America Pirate Corps, will be charging, we'll be charging 20% of cargo to every ship on the ship.

[Nicole Wallace]

So what are we gonna do? Go like take inventory and then write a bill? I mean, what was that?

[Rachel Maddow]

But he's the commander in chief and he's saying that's our new policy. What do you do sitting there at the Pentagon? I mean, whether you're the, you know, the The Fox News guy who's like the in charge, right? Or whether you're an operational commander. Do you just wait till that obvious idiocy is negated by his next blurt, or do you try to operationalize that in the meantime until you hear that it's not happening? It's just not.

[Nicole Wallace]

Like, do you hold a civet and put in motion the guy that's gonna go charge the toll for this Strait of Hormuz that we don't control? Or do you wait for the next post?

[Rachel Maddow]

You just wait for it. Yeah. You'd wait for it to be over. And it's just, you know this as well as anybody. I mean, people who have those jobs, who have those operational jobs in some place like the Pentagon, have some of the hardest jobs in the world with some of the highest stakes on Earth, and they are entrusted with incredible power because it is such weighty stuff that's within their remit. And for them to have to contend with that clownish nonsense from somebody who purports to be in charge while they can't, while I don't think most of the time he's even in charge of his own faculties, it's just not fair to them. It's asking them to do a job that's impossible to do.

[Nicole Wallace]

It's so nice to get to do this job with you at the table. Thank you so much.

[Rachel Maddow]

Thanks for having me.

[Nicole Wallace]

I'm so glad to see you in the blush. Okay, there's an announcement that I get to make. Have you not done this yet?

[Rachel Maddow]

No.

[Nicole Wallace]

What is it? You're gonna be part of the MSNow Live event. We the people today in Texas.

[Rachel Maddow]

Oh, yeah, I'm going to that. Look, look, they made.

[Nicole Wallace]

I wasn't invited. I'm not in that picture.

[Ben Rhodes]

Are you going?

[Nicole Wallace]

Let me look at. I don't see myself in the picture.

[Rachel Maddow]

Do you want to go with me?

[Nicole Wallace]

I can stow away in your luggage.

[Rachel Maddow]

Okay.

[Nicole Wallace]

You're in the Dallas Fort Worth.

[Stephanie Ruhle]

Go with me.

[Nicole Wallace]

Go with me. Sometimes I learn when I look at the picture, you know, maybe there'. Maybe I'm like the continuity of coverage person in case you're like, you're the Secretary of Agriculture here, like, manning the live coverage. If you're in the Dallas Fort Worth area, please come join them or us. I don't know if I'm going to be there or not. Scan the QR code on your screen. Go to Ms. Now together to buy your tickets right away. I'm going to bring our friends John Heilman and Ben Rhodes into this conversation after a short break. Also ahead for us, as we mentioned, Donald Trump is still at war with Iran. He's turning the volume up again. The war he promised was never even a war. He's now threatening to bomb civilian infrastructure, which if true, is a war crime. And he has absolutely no way of getting out of what is quickly turning into something he explicitly campaigned against, a forever war. As that war continues, so do the high and climbing prices for American families on things like groceries and gas and energy. And with that ongoing economic distress, there's a whole lot more political pain for Republicans ahead of the midterms. The rising costs of Trump's war later in the hour. DEADLINE White House continues after a quick break. Don't go anywhere. You better eat your Wheaties today because there's a lot of news to cover. Money time for the business. All eyes on the new Fed chair. The economic fallout from the war is a temporary power. The president is now a major crypto industry operator. Is this White House for sale? Politics Is there an energy to respond to this aggressive gerrymandering? It has never been more important to be informed and engaged.

[Stephanie Ruhle]

Money Power Politics With Stephanie rule weekdays at 9am Eastern on Ms. Now,

[Rachel Maddow]

as

[Nicole Wallace]

Rachel and I were discussing now, after months of desperately trying to fight an off ramp to a war he started, Trump appears ready to plunge the United States military ever deeper into his war with Iran. According to new reporting in Axios, Trump held a Situation Room meeting Tuesday to discuss a massive offensive in Iran that will be wider in scope than the current strikes around the Strait of Hormuz. That's according to three sources with knowledge. The US Military has now conducted its fifth consecutive day of strikes in the Strait of Hormuz area and along the southern coast of Iran. When asked about what may come next in Iran, Trump alluded to conducting strikes on Iran that might be considered war crimes. Out loud. Watch.

[Rachel Maddow]

I'll save the energy targets for last, but ultimately we'll hit energy targets. Yeah, but we're going to hit them very hard tonight. We're going to hit them very hard

[Nicole Wallace]

tomorrow night we're going to hit them

[Rachel Maddow]

very hard the night after. And then next week it gets really bad for them because next week comes the power plants. Next week comes the bridges. We're going to knock out all their power plants.

[Nicole Wallace]

We're going to knock out all their bridges.

[Rachel Maddow]

Unless they get to the table and negotiate.

[Nicole Wallace]

I'm going to bring into our coverage former deputy national security advisor to President Barack Obama, now the co host of pod. Save the World contributor Ben Rhodes is here. Also joining us, Pak News senior political columnist. Our national affairs analyst John Heilman is back. Ben Rhodes, if threatening to, quote, bomb their civilization back to whenever it was the Stone Ages or the Dark Ages didn't work, why do you think he thinks these threats will?

[Ben Rhodes]

He doesn't really have anywhere else to go, Nicole, other than periodically making these threats and he tends to make them on Fox News or Truth Social. It almost feels like he's trying to talk to his own base in the United States and the only place left on earth where he's capable of appearing strong. The reality is if you step back and consider where we are, all of this military action, all of these strikes, the current place that we find ourselves in is just about reopening the Strait of Hormuz, a body of water that was open before the war that he started, none of the other objectives that he said at the outset, ending Iran's nuclear program, changing the Iranian regime, ending their ballistic missile program. We're not even talking about that anymore. We're five plus months into this and we're in this forever war loop that is just about opening a body of water that was open before the war. And that just shows you how out of cards use a phrase he likes to use. Donald Trump is Hellman.

[Nicole Wallace]

Rachel was just talking at length about Trump's sort of declining ability to execute a political play, political move. The war, I think, highlights that, plus his inability to carry out something difficult and strategic. And I remember an interview you did where you said, who will you turn to? And he said, me, myself, my brain. I think he pointed at his head. It seems that even his allies in the press know that that's the deal. And here's Brian Kilmeade, interestingly, sort of talking to him and his team. The only way, I guess, you can get through to them on tv.

[Rachel Maddow]

I also don't think that Witkoff and

[Stephanie Ruhle]

Kushner should be the ones doing this.

[Rachel Maddow]

They're business guys.

[Stephanie Ruhle]

They have not been effective in Ukraine,

[Rachel Maddow]

not been effective in Gaza. They have not been effective in this. They can't have three portfolios to begin with. We have a State Department for a reason.

[Stephanie Ruhle]

Marco Rubio, even Democrats admit, has been

[Rachel Maddow]

looked at as a genius internationally. He is the guy that most people

[Stephanie Ruhle]

would want even if you gave Truthsaver to Democrats.

[Rachel Maddow]

He should take the lead on this

[Stephanie Ruhle]

because you can't do this like a business deal.

[Nicole Wallace]

So the reason Marco Rubio won't take the lead on this is because Marco Rubio wants to go to Iowa more than he wants to go to Iran. Marco Rubio wants to be president. And this is so toxic. What do you make of just the way it has led to this sort of rare collapse of MAGA media compliance?

[John Heilman]

Well, I guess the place to start is the fact that, you know, that I saw this. There was a headline in the New York Times, I think, a day ago that said, the war in Iran reaches a new phase. And I thought, well, it's. I'm kind of quoting Roger Daltrey here, but. Or paraphrasing Roger Daltrey, but it's like, meet the new phase, same as the old phase, to your point, and the point about these threats, you know, it was Easter Sunday, famously, I know we're all amnesiac, but it was that Easter Sunday post on Truth Social where he said, give back the effing straits, you crazy bastards. And he threatened to blow up the bridges and the power plants. And people rightly pointed out that that would be a war crime. He then went further a couple days later and threatened to bomb them back to the Stone Age and obliterate all of Iranian civilization, which would be not just a war crime, but a crime against humanity. And here we are. And I think back there again. And I think in this case. Rachel. Rachel. You were quoting Rachel before. That's why I said that in this case, Nicole, the reason that he is incap of executing a political play, that's for sure. And that's a separate topic in a way, from this other topic. And I think that Ben will agree with me about this. Part of the reason why Trump can't come up with a new strategy is because there isn't a good strategy. This is a situ. He's been boxed in since the day that he decided to undertake this war. The war was never going to have a good outcome. And that's something. Again, we say it over and over again, but every president since the Iranian revolution has realized that going to war with Iran would not have a good outcome because of the structural factors. The straits Hormuz exists. Iran could take control of it. They would then have the upper hand. And that is exactly what's happened. The problem here was this was a misbegotten adventure. And once you went down this path, you were never going to have good options for getting out. And that's what Donald Trump is finding. And you hear him talking about it in these interviews, and the combination of frustration and bafflement like that, that he's used to pushing people around and stamping his feet and pounding his fists on the table and people comply. And that's not happening here. And there aren't really other. He doesn't have any other clubs in the bag, so to speak.

[Nicole Wallace]

Right.

[John Heilman]

I mean, what else does Trump have? He's not a geostrategic or geotactical genius. He just basically has that. He had the hope that by bombing the crap out of Iran for a few days that they would capitulate. And once they didn't capitulate. Everything that's happened since then has been in some ways kind of inevitable because there just aren't. There isn't. Some Marco Rubio is going to sit around in a room and come up with some genius way to get out of this or a way to kind of save face or way to win this war. It's not that they lack the capacity. It's that there is no way out that is, other than accepting defeat. And I think the political issue that you're raising is that gets into this questions of, you know, I mean, the other reason Marco Rubio, by the way, doesn't want to be, doesn't want this assignment is because when he goes out and says things like the free flow on the international waterways is essential to the international law, he three weeks later gets contradicted by the President who says, we're going to be the guardians of the strait in perpetuity, we're going to charge a toll. And then the president changes his mind 24 hours later. If I'm Marco Rubio, I'm not going to touch this thing with a barge pole, not just because there's no way to win the war, but because, you know, you're dealing with a madman as your boss who's going to screw you at every opportunity and is not going to care less. So that is the situation in terms of what the strat, how to deal with the war. The political thing is a separate topic, and I don't want to go on at great length, but it is clearly the case that if you add up everything Donald Trump has done over the course of the last six months, if you didn't know better, and maybe even if you did know better, you would think he is systematically trying to undermine Republicans, any Republican prospect of keeping control of the House and Senate. He's just done everything that the, that any vulnerable House or Senate member would not have wanted him to do, and that includes principally this entire war and the fact that it's now a hot war again and we're back where we started. Same phase, new phase, same as the Old phase is a nightmare. Is a nightmare for everybody who has to actually run a real, live, competitive race in the Senate or the House this year on the Republican side. Because it's going to do nothing but drive prices up. And if it drives prices up, it's going to, it's going to be very, very hard for Republicans to get reelected.

[Nicole Wallace]

Ben, the prices are already up. And anyone out there with kids home feeding them more meals than they do during the school year knows that everything is more expensive. Driving to baseball or swim meets or whatever you're doing. Everybody is staring. The economic consequences of this, this seeming like forever war in their day to day lives.

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah. And the problem, I mean, to build on something John said about the absence of a strategy to actually win, even if you had, even if Marco Rubio was a genius, which I'd like to fact check the idea that everybody in the world thinks that maybe Brian Kiln does.

[Nicole Wallace]

I'm with you.

[Ben Rhodes]

The problem from the beginning is that the Iranians get a vote and now the war ends. If they didn't collapse in the first few days, they were going to be in this position because they could demonstrate that they could take a punch. They are geographically right next to the Strait of Hormuz. So Donald Trump can't fix that by what he says. Once they cross that Rubicon into controlling the strait, they were going to use that leverage. But importantly, Nicole, they know about our midterm elections. They know what shutting down the strait, or at least obstructing the strait does to the price of gas in this country and to creating shortages around the world, the impact it's going to have in the agricultural sector when shortages of fertilizer getting out of that strait come online in the months to come. The Iranians are aware of all that. And so then when Trump blockades them and says, I'm just going to punish you economically even more on top of all these sanctions, well, they're now doing that in response. And that is an eminently predictable thing that would happen if you launch this war. And actually, it's a surprise to me that gas prices aren't even higher. They've gotten a lot out of the appearance of negotiations. You know, one of the whole purposes of this MOU and this whole process was just to signal to the markets that you could calm down and that, you know, bring down the price of futures. Well, look, the reality has never been that this was like some deal. The reality has never been that commerce has been flowing through this strait of horrible moves. The oil reserves that nations are turning to to avert. Shortages are beginning to run thin. And so the price issue is not only going to continue, it could potentially get worse as the weeks go by as nations have kind of already pulled every lever they can to kind of stopgap the absence of lots of resources that would usually flow through that strait.

[Nicole Wallace]

It has been a day of news that insiders use the technical term bonkers to describe. We'll get our two good friends on all of it in the lightning round on the other side. You better eat your Wheaties today because there's a lot of news to cover. Money time for the business. All eyes on the new Fed chair. Economic fallout from the war is a temporary power. The president is now a major crypto industry operator. Is this White House for sale? Politics Is there an energy to respond to this aggressive gerrymandering? It has never been more important to be informed and engaged.

[Stephanie Ruhle]

Money Power Politics With Stephanie rule, weekdays at 9am Eastern on Ms. Now,

[Nicole Wallace]

Rebecca, Ben and John. Ben, I think coming into today, a lot of people thought the big story was the blanche hearing because of the Republic Republican qualms with some of his conduct. But I think if you've ever seen the movie Liar, Liar, watching Jay Clayton play the role of Jim Carrey in Liar, Liar, when it came to the word won, who won 2020 was the bigger scandal. Watch.

[Stephanie Ruhle]

Do you deny that Joe Biden won the 2020 election?

[Ben Rhodes]

Senator, I'm not an election denier.

[Stephanie Ruhle]

Joe.

[Rachel Maddow]

Joe Biden was certified as the President of the United States.

[John Heilman]

Can you tell me why Joe Biden was certified as the winner of the 2020 election?

[Ben Rhodes]

I really,

[Rachel Maddow]

I'm going back to my constitutional law here, but I don't want to continue to have debate about this. But I believe he had the most electoral votes.

[John Heilman]

So he won the election.

[Ben Rhodes]

He followed our process, had the most

[Rachel Maddow]

electoral votes, was declared the winner.

[Ben Rhodes]

And.

[John Heilman]

And who has the most electoral vot. Is it the person that wins or the person that loses?

[Rachel Maddow]

I think that's your characterization.

[John Heilman]

You're here asking for the support of senators to lead America's intelligence community. We've established that you have an obligation to be honest and forthright with this committee and with the American public. But you refuse to answer a simple matter of fact about the 2020 election. Is that right?

[Nicole Wallace]

No, that's not right.

[John Heilman]

Then answer the question. Who won the 2020 election?

[Rachel Maddow]

I have answered the question.

[John Heilman]

Answer it. What is your answer?

[Rachel Maddow]

I've given you my answer.

[John Heilman]

What is your answer? You refuse to answer a basic question about who won a Presidential election. But you asked to lead America's intelligence community. Isn't it humiliating to be unable to answer this question, to have to indulge the President's delusions? We know, you know, everybody in this room knows the truthful answer to that question. Why can you not give it?

[Rachel Maddow]

I think I gave you the answer,

[Nicole Wallace]

Ben. Have you seen Liar, Liar where Jim Carrey plays a dad and the kid wants him to never lie again about when he's gonna pick him up and the lies can't come out of his mouth. In this case, Jay Clayton plays the inverse and the truth can't come out of his mouth. He literally cannot say the word one for what Joe Biden did in 2020. That's the guy that everyone thought would sail through and probably still, well, he's going to lead the country's intel agencies. What do you think?

[Ben Rhodes]

Yeah, I mean, that's because he has an audience of 1 o n e and therefore he cannot say who won the 2020 election. The reason I think it's more concerning beyond just what Ossoff pointed out about the humiliation of these grownups not being able to be grown ups, is the fact that the DNI has a role to play in potentially what Trump may do in the future to undermine elections. You'll recall that Tulsi Gabbard, when she was dni, somehow got involved in a raid of voting machines in Fulton County, Georgia. This was, I mean, could have had few purposes other than to kind of be fishing around Trump's bizarre conspiracy theories about foreign interference in the 2020 or Venezuelan interference. And look, the problem, the concern people should have, is not just that we have a DNI who can't answer a basic question like that, it's that Trump may try to claim that there was fraud or foreign interference in the midterm elections to try to undermine the result. And can we have any trust that that guy will stand up and tell us the truth about whether or not things Trump says about future elections are true? That's what should concern us.

[Nicole Wallace]

I mean, how. And that could potentially happen as early as tomorrow.

[John Heilman]

I gotta say, you know, I don't know if anybody in the history of the United States Senate when they've exercised their advising consent authority, if anybody's ever been rejected a denied confirmation on the basis of just simply being too pathetic to have the job. But if whether that's, there's a precedent for that or not, that's sort of what I think about Jay Clayton in this situation. Because, I mean, you two both have worked for presidents. And I'm virtually certain if I just asked you, hey, if you were about to take a job working for a president, and I said to you, if you tell the truth to the president about something as basic as does the sun rise in the east and set in the west, you know, if you tell the truth, are you worried that he's going to fire you? And if you said to me, yeah, I actually think, you know, there's a chance my boss will fire me if I tell you the truth. If you didn't, if you still wanted the job after that, I would say you're pathetic. That is pathetic. Like what, how, how can you possibly go to work every day for someone who, you know, if you confronted him with a basic fact, he's gonna could potentially fire you, that you lose favor with him for a basic fact like that. Not a controversial fact, not a criticism, just a basic fact. I just find it's just so, not just humiliating, but just so pathetic that Jay Clayton even wants to work for someone that he knows. If he just said, yeah, Joe Biden won, he might be fired the next day.

[Nicole Wallace]

Yeah, I mean, Kevin Warsh had the same position in his confirmation hearing. I think it was Senator Elizabeth Warren who put the question to him. And you could go back and quote Donald Trump, who, according to Sarah Matthews, his one time press aide, said, quote, I can't believe I lost to this effing guy. So you've even got an old Trump quote to rely on. But he chose a different path. Ben Rhodes, John Heilman, thank you both so much for joining us today. When we come back with Donald Trump promising more war with Iran with more crazy social media posts. That means one thing for sure. Donald Trump's bad economy and thus bad poll numbers will continue to worsen what it means and how long it lasts for American families. Trying to make ends meet is next. Donald Trump's war with Iran and his inability to end the war he started has turned with the administration at first framed as an economic short term disruption, into a brutal reality for Americans all across our country. On gas prices alone, every American is now paying more. The average price of a gallon of gas is sky high, $3.89 up from $3.15 one year ago. Prices are set to rise again as Donald Trump's war drags on. Joining our coverage, senior economics reporter for cnbc, Steve Liesman's here. Hello, my friend. Nice to see you.

[Stephanie Ruhle]

Good to see you, Nicole.

[Nicole Wallace]

So I used to badger you. It felt like badgering on my end about why the markets believed him when he had these BS announcements about the war being over. I don't relish this, but it turns out I was at least informed by 9 years of covering Trump to suggest that maybe they wouldn't endure. And now here we are. Tragically for the men and women of the military, we are back at full throttle, it would appear, in Iran. And tragically for American families, they're going to be paying more for gas. Gas, groceries and everything else. What is your sense of whether anyone is surprised?

[Stephanie Ruhle]

Well, I'll get to those. A couple of different answers to your question. The first one is that the way I look at this is snatching defeat out of the jaws of at least a modest victory. Gas prices had come down with the MoU with Iran. Oil prices had come down and now they're back on the way up. We had, it appeared, avoided the worst of the possible outcomes when it came to what could happen with oil and gas prices and inflation, for reasons I'll get to in just a second. But now it appears as if we're back on track and what we saw was not necessarily what we were going to get when it came to the oil prices and the gas prices. There's a lot of stuff that was in train, for example, the impact of higher fertilizer costs, as we know, a bunch of our fertilizer came from the Straits of Hormuzza, came through there. That was going to be something was hit later. The entrenching of these gasoline and oil prices in the economy, that was something that hit now but would hit over time. Because what happens is companies don't. They try not to pass along all of their costs immediately, but if they remain high, eventually they pass them along. The second thing you ask is why have markets believed them? It really had very little to do with that, Nicole. It had to with do. Do with what? One way to think about it is a kink in a fire hose. And the kink in the fire hose was all of this oil that was bottled up inside the Strait of Hormuz. What happened is oil traders could not go ahead and say, you know what, I'm going to trade the worst possible price for oil because there is all this oil still bottled up in there that's kept the lid on it and that a lot of that oil is still there. So the thinking was, oh, magically maybe, or somehow this oil can get out and then you'll get caught on the wrong side of the trade that's kept a lid on it. So in fact, all of his comments that he's made has made it very difficult for oil traders to take the worst possible position. It's kept a lid on it. The longer this goes, though, the longer reality will set in. And the reality is the lack of production and the lack of oil on the markets.

[Nicole Wallace]

What is the economic impact for Americans of the Strait of Hormuz remaining either closed or controlled by Iran?

[Stephanie Ruhle]

So that's going to raise oil prices in general if indeed that fee is put on. I think there are tremendous geopolitical concerns. It would clearly be Iran emerging stronger from this conflict than it was before. That's a very, very big geopolitical concern. And then I think the other thing that's happening right now is a couple of things. One is that Iran bombing and taking out some of the facilities and production in the Gulf, those have long term implications. Those things like those refineries are very complex pieces of machinery and very complex factories. They don't come back online immediately. So there's going to be a long term effect of this. The other thing I was just looking at Nicole, and I want to give you the right numbers here is we have done a tremendous drawdown of our Strategic Petroleum Reserve. It is at the lowest level since 1983. And then as a percentage of how much oil we need, it's at the lowest level. And God forbid there should be something like a hurricane or something and we need to draw down again. There's an implication here for emergency situations that's not apparent right now, but could be if we have a bad situation.

[Nicole Wallace]

So heading into the midterms, we are at very, very, very low, minimal reserves.

[Stephanie Ruhle]

That is accurate. The other thing I'll tell you, and we have a poll coming out on Friday from cnbc, is that it's not just the gas prices that bug people the most. It's the food prices and the grocery prices, housing and healthcare. We'll talk about this on Friday on CNBC when we get the poll together for release. But I was surprised at the results that we have.

[Nicole Wallace]

All right, we'll have you back on Friday. We want to dive into that poll with you. Steve, thank you so much for joining us today.

[Stephanie Ruhle]

Pleasure.

[Nicole Wallace]

One more break. We'll be right back. My guest on this week's episode of the Best People podcast is independent journalist, longtime CNN anchor Jim Acosta. He does not hold back on what he wants to see from Democrats fighting Donald Trump's authoritarian tactics.

[Rachel Maddow]

My sense of it is, is that

[John Heilman]

there has to be the prospect of accountability that is coming for Donald Trump and people will say, well, what about the Supreme Court?

[Rachel Maddow]

And what about that? We'll never get to a filibuster proof majority. I think with this conversation these days about where's Mitch McConnell, I kind of

[John Heilman]

think that the Democrats need to find their inner Mitch, you know what I mean, and be a little bit more ruthless like Mitch McConnell. And what would Mitch McConnell do if

[Rachel Maddow]

a Democratic president had knocked over part of the White House?

[Nicole Wallace]

He would hold up every confirmation like nobody would be confirmed. There would be like nothing and nothing would happen. Take a listen to the conversation that is deep, deep under the skin of right wing media folks. By scanning the QR code on your screen or download the best people wherever you get your podcasts, we want to thank you for letting us into your homes tonight. We are grateful.

[Rachel Maddow]

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[Ben Rhodes]

Joke.

[Rachel Maddow]

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