“Trump’s fracturing coalition”

Summary

Deadline: White House (MS NOW)

Episode: “Trump’s Fracturing Coalition”
Date: December 8, 2025
Host: Nicolle Wallace
Featured Guests: Tim Miller, David Frum, Maya Wiley, Jacob Soboroff

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Episode Overview

This episode of Deadline: White House centers on the rapidly growing cracks in Donald Trump’s Republican coalition as his second term continues to generate controversy and erode support. Nicolle Wallace and her panel of political experts dissect the fear-driven loyalty in Congress, the rebellion of one-time Trump ally Marjorie Taylor Greene, the crumbling of Trump’s support over the economy, and the intensifying cruelty of the administration’s immigration policies. They also examine the president’s public and private demeanor—including growing questions surrounding his fitness—and what these developments mean for the future of both the GOP and the country.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

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1. A Fracturing MAGA Coalition: Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Break (01:37–08:37)

• Former loyalist Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene publicly rebukes Trump, revealing the climate of fear inside the GOP and claiming direct consequences from Trump’s retaliatory rhetoric.
  • Greene details death threats (“After President Trump called me a traitor, I got a pipe bomb threat on my house and then I got several direct death threats on my son,” [02:31]).
  • Trump's continued public attacks escalate the situation, using his Truth Social platform:

    "The only reason Marjorie Trader Brown green [...] turns brown under stress [...] is that she was jilted by the President of the United States. [...] Marjorie is not America first [...] because nobody could have changed her view so fast." — Donald Trump on Truth Social [03:07]

Analysis:

• The panel explores the role of fear and intimidation in maintaining party loyalty.

• Tim Miller notes the significance of an “intramural” breakdown: “There’s something interesting when he turns the fire hose of venom on one of his own political cudgels.” [05:07]

• Marjorie Taylor Greene’s break is especially notable because, as Miller puts it, “she still has a lot of her right wing crazy MAGA views and she’s looking at Trump and saying, you’re not delivering on this.” [07:05]

• David Frum asks whether Greene could expose Trump's disregard for his base:

  "Can she convince the most loyal Trump voters that he hates them as much as we know he does? Because if he didn’t hate them, he wouldn’t be grifting and pocketing bushels and bushels and millions for himself and, and his, and his family and friends." [08:37]

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2. Erosion of Support: Polls & Economic Discontent (03:43–11:36)

• Trump’s approval ratings on the economy are slipping—especially among his own party (Republicans dropping from 82% to 75% approval, July–November [03:43]).
• The failed “affordability” promises become a central point of criticism:

  • “He stood in front of melting groceries at Bedminster and said, I’ll make everything cheaper. And he has not.” — Panelist [11:00]

Structural Drivers:

• Trump’s signature policies (tariffs, immigration crackdown) have exacerbated economic pain.

  • “My two signature policies, tariffs and immigration crackdown, have both dramatically raised higher prices. I did it on purpose. I did it knowing that this would be the consequence.” — Panelist channeling Trump’s perspective [11:36]

• Republicans lack a credible message on affordability, compounding the party’s challenges heading into elections.

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3. Toxic Political Culture: Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Role & Rhetoric (13:10–17:26)

• The panel confronts Greene’s complicity:

  • Highlights a “60 Minutes” exchange in which Greene deflects blame onto Leslie Stahl, invoking media equivalency [13:10].

  • Maya Wiley underscores that Greene’s rejection of political violence is hollow without confronting her own record, including anti-Semitic rhetoric and alliances with white nationalist figures.

    “She has not suggested in the slightest that she’s not going to continue to be a white nationalist. [...] She participated in that in a very racialized way, [...] that also communicated anti Semitism, a way that stood up with people like Nick Fuentes.” — Maya Wiley [15:18–16:35]

• The conversation frames this as a moment of “intramural” contestation:

  • “What’s so interesting is how intramural this is… it’s a political man bites dog kind of story.” — Panelist [17:26]

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4. Questions of Presidential Fitness and White House Dysfunction (19:31–24:48)

• Increasingly public questions about Trump’s health:
  • Saturday Night Live and journalists comment on the president dozing off in high-profile meetings (“He’s literally falling asleep on camera in Cabinet meetings” [44:10]).
  • Panelists compare Trump’s activity levels to his first term and President Biden’s, noting a managed and limited public schedule [21:11–22:39].

Information Silos:

• The administration is “managing” presidential exposure and information flow, raising concerns about internal accountability.

  • “One of the hardest things, as you know, in a White House, is getting accurate information from people. [...] I am beginning to fear he may actually believe that grocery prices are down.” — David Frum [23:17]

Institutional Impact:

• Legislative branch has abdicated responsibility; Congress is described as “paralyzed,” reinforcing the unchecked nature of the administration’s actions [26:48–29:50].

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5. Immigration Policy: Intensifying Cruelty and Fear (30:57–42:13)

• Stories highlight the real-world impact of Trump’s harsh immigration policies:

  • Case of Annie Lucia Lopez Bellosa, a college student and Dreamer, deported and her family harassed by ICE [30:57–33:43].
    • Annie’s words:

      "We are here also to go to college because we want a better education. We just want a better kind of lifestyle. But not all of us are criminals." [34:50]

  • Faye Zhang’s son separated, hundreds protest in Queens.

• ICE’s aggressive and opaque tactics:

  • Agents engaging in masked operations, entering homes without warrants, and detaining citizens [36:43–38:31].

    • “We’re seeing massive reports of excessive force, disregard for having any rational connection... We’re seeing citizens getting dragged from their cars. [...] This administration is saying, said, we don’t even care about the rules.” — Maya Wiley [36:43–38:31]

• White House frustration with Kristi Noem’s (DHS Secretary) inability to build detention centers fast enough; calls for harsher, more expedited measures [39:28–41:22].

  • “They want to bring people into these detention centers, fill up these detention centers to levels that you have not seen ever before in order to model it after [...] deported a million Mexicans and by the way, some Mexican Americans.” — Jacob Soboroff [39:41]

• Privatization and increasing public backlash:

  • “Behind the wanting to build more centers is also they’re going to be private facilities. [...] Our Civil Rights Monitor poll [...] shows 55% of people really don’t like the job ICE is doing.” — Maya Wiley [41:22]

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6. The Larger Arc: Authoritarian Drift & Public Backlash (43:24–44:41)

• Rachel Maddow appears to discuss the “shock and awe” tactics of the Trump administration’s second term and its parallel to international authoritarian trends.

  • “They absolutely did not bring people along with them and people did not sort of have time to morally accommodate what they were doing. And Trump is a kind of a spent force. I mean, he’s literally falling asleep on camera in Cabinet meetings.” — Rachel Maddow [44:10]

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Notable Quotes & Moments (with Timestamps)

• On violent threats for dissent:
  “After President Trump called me a traitor, I got a pipe bomb threat on my house and then I got several direct death threats on my son.” — Marjorie Taylor Greene, summarized by panel [02:31]

• On Trump’s attacks against former allies:
  “Marjorie is not America first or MAGA, because nobody could have changed her view so fast. And her new views are those of a very dumb person.” — Donald Trump on Truth Social [03:07]

• On Trump’s economic failures:
  “He stood in front of melting groceries at Bedminster and said, I’ll make everything cheaper. And he has not.” — Panelist [11:00]

• On congressional cowardice:
  “No one will be able to figure out why didn’t they do anything? Why didn’t they do anything?” — David Frum [29:50]

• On family separation’s return:
  “Are these the worst of the worst? That’s the question we just have to keep asking over and over again.” — Jacob Soboroff [33:35]

• On ICE’s unchecked tactics:
  “We’re seeing citizens getting dragged from their cars. We’re seeing schools where ICE agents mask and refuse to identify themselves around children.” — Maya Wiley [36:43]

• On the administration’s private detention centers:
  “Behind the wanting to build more centers is also they’re going to be private facilities. [...] A lot of people who are going to make a lot of money off the suffering of people and families.” — Maya Wiley [41:22]

• On the authoritarian trajectory and backlash:
  “Trump tried to rush year 18 [of Putin’s rule]. And I think that was seen as very scary. But there was a cost to that for them as well, which is that they absolutely did not bring people along with them.” — Rachel Maddow [43:28]

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Important Segments and Timestamps

• Marjorie Taylor Greene’s split from Trump: 01:37–08:37
• Republican polling and economic woes: 03:43–11:36
• Toxic rhetoric and White nationalist politics: 13:10–17:26
• Trump’s public health/fitness concerns: 19:31–24:48
• Congressional abdication and shifting election math: 26:48–29:50
• ICE tactics and immigration stories: 30:57–42:13
• Panel discussion on authoritarianism: 43:24–44:41

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Tone and Style

The discussion is urgent, combative, and laced with both deep concern and dark humor—matching the stakes of the moment. Frequent callbacks to historical precedents and analogies to mafia movies, authoritarian foreign leaders, and past scandals further illustrate the seriousness with which the panel regards the Trump administration’s unraveling coalition and the implications for democracy.

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Summary Takeaway

This episode paints a stark portrait of Trump’s second-term Republican Party—rooted in loyalty by fear, increasingly fractured and vulnerable from within, publicly failing on core economic promises, and amplifying cruelty through policy. Yet, as even high-profile defectors like Marjorie Taylor Greene face attacks formerly reserved for “the left,” and the White House manages not just the president’s schedule but also the very flow of information, it becomes clear that this instability may be the regime’s undoing. The panel’s closing thoughts underscore the threat not just to political norms and vulnerable communities, but to the very structure of American democracy.

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For listeners, this episode is a bracing look at the GOP’s inner turmoil, how fear maintains Trump’s grip, and the on-the-ground consequences of that dynamic—for Congress, for immigrants, and for American democracy itself.

Transcript

[Host/Anchor]

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[Political Analyst/Commentator]

The American people are basically telling the President that they are not okay with any of this.

[Host/Anchor]

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[Political Analyst/Commentator]

I'm going to ask you about this almost solid support he has among Republicans in Congress. Is there in that support fear? Does the support come about because they're afraid that they'll get death threats? I think they're terrified to step out of line and get a nasty truth social post on them. Yes. And they're watching what happened to you? Yes. Behind the scenes, do they talk differently? Yes.

Yes. Hi again everybody. It's five o' clock in New York. The calls are coming from deep inside the MAGA House. That was outgoing Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who once was one of Donald Trump's closest and fiercest political allies. She's now pulling back the curtain on what people will say about Donald Trump when the cameras aren't on and his fracturing coalition, which she says is held together by fear. It comes as Trump continues to abandon and betray campaign promises he made to his base just 12 months ago. Things like addressing the affordability crisis in America and releasing the Epstein files. Marjorie Taylor Greene warning that Trump's party is sticking by him for now because of fear of the real life danger caused by those nasty truth social posts. Here's how she describes what happened to her after she publicly called out Trump for turning away from the issues he campaigned on.

After President Trump called me a traitor, I got a pipe bomb threat on my house and then I got several direct death threats on my son. On your so on my son. You say the president put your life in danger. You blame him. You say he fueled a hotbed of threats against me and that you blame him for the threats against your son. The subject line for the direct death threats on my son was his words. Marjorie Trader Greene. Those are death threats directly fueled by President Trump.

Donald Trump today repeated the attacks against Marjorie Taylor Greene that led to threats against her. Writing this on Truth Social, quote, the only reason Marjorie Trader Brown green turns brown under stress, exclamation point went bad is that she was jilted by the President of the United States. Certainly not the first time she's been jilted. Exclamation point. Marjorie is not America first, all caps or maga, because nobody could have changed her view so fast. And her new views are those of a very dumb person.

Is our president writing that? Of that we can be sure. While Trump's own party is no stranger to Donald Trump's violent and incendiary rhetoric, it seems even the fear of becoming his next target on True Social may not be enough to hold off further dissent for much longer. Elected Republicans continue to feel the heat from their constituents furious with Trump's handling or mishandling of the economy. And it's showing up where Trump is most vulnerable and sensitive in the polls. Polling analysis from the New York Times finds this quote, on the economy, the president's numbers have been steadily declining. In July of this year, 43% of voters approved of Trump's handling of the economy, according to Marquette University polling. By November, just 36% approved. Here, there was a noticeable drop in approval in the president's party from 82% who approved of his handling of the economy in July to 75% in November. That is where we start the hour. Some of our favorite experts and friends, political analysts and host of the Bull Work podcast, Tim Miller is here. Also joining us, David Frum is here. He's a staff writer for the Atlantic and host of the video podcast the David Frum Show. And with me at the table for the hour, former Assistant U.S. attorney, President of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, Maya Wiley is here. Tim Miller, who is the 75%.

You tell me.

I mean, the thing about Marjorie Taylor Greene and this interview wasn't all one thing. I mean, she also has absolutely zero interest in taking responsibility for all of her contributions to the toxic dialogue. Saying to Lesley Stahl, well, you did it, too. But on this political slice that we're starting with here, it is interesting. I mean, I'll only speak for myself. Anyone that criticized Donald Trump, who was once a Republican, has been subject to all sorts of vicious threats, including an uptube by Donald Trump. And so there's something interesting when he turns the fire hose of venom on one of his own political cudgels and she was, she was a political cudgel. She, she was a, a weapon used against Democrats. She was a weapon out in right wing media. She was QAnon adjacent. I don't know if she owns that or describes herself that way, but a lot of things she said synced up with them. And she is now out there telling everyone what it's like to be targeted by him. And I wonder what you make of the long term sort of political damage that she's doing right now in the middle of this media tour.

I think potentially some of it depends on how much she keeps pushing it. Right. And this is when you talk about, like, how big can that majority of that opposition to Trump get, what you're alluding to? Because look, Marjorie Taylor Greene in that 60 Minutes interview said some stuff that was still pretty crazy and pretty gross, right? At times. I mean, when she was talking about the ways in which Donald Trump is in league with the establishment, you know, she's talking about how he's a vehicle for Israel, which obviously continues some of her, her anti Semitic kind of undertones or overtones David Frum might say to some of her work in the past. She talks about how Trump hasn't gone after the companies making the vaccines hard enough at some level. It's not like Marjorie Taylor Greene flipped a switch and became a liberal. She didn't.

And I guess from my vantage point, that is what makes this interesting and relevant and newsworthy is that if Marjorie Taylor Greene kind of woke up one morning and said, you know what? It turns out I agree with everything that Nicole Wallace has been saying the last 10 years. Well then like, okay, great, welcome aboard, the water's warm. But that's not that politically interesting, right? Like, what she's saying is that she still has a lot of her right wing crazy MAGA views and she's looking at Trump and saying, you're not delivering on this. She went so far in that interview as to say that I'm not really MAGA anymore. I'm just America first, because MAGA means something different to me that is politically interesting. Because if there is some segment of the MAGA base that goes along with her that can have their eyes opened to a reality that we've all seen, which is that Trump doesn't actually care about his base voters at all. He cares about enriching himself and he cares about his fancy ballroom, et cetera. That is how you get his political popularity down into the low 30s, into the 20s, into a place where he can't politically recover from into A place where you have a Democratic wave next year. And so to that end, the question of whether Marjorie Tail Greener ever represents herself or whether there's a real segment of MAGA who still have MAGA views but have been let down by Trump and are no longer gonna support him. I think that's the key political question. And I think that she's right on the facts of a lot of this stuff, of her critiques of Trump. And so why wouldn't there be a segment of his base that would be unhappy with him and go along with her?

Yeah, I mean, David, from. To me, I'm interested in an even narrower question, and it is, can she convince the most loyal Trump voters that he hates them as much as we know he does? Because if he didn't hate them, he wouldn't be grifting and pocketing bushels and bushels and millions for himself and, and his, and his family and friends. He'd be trying to help them.

[Host/Anchor]

Well, it's worth remembering here that Marjorie Taylor Greene was also herself one of the most active and what do you know, successful stock traders in Congress. Just an extraordinary streak of successful bets as a member of Congress. And we'll see whether she remains as successful an investor when she's no longer in Congress. MAGA world is full of unstable characters acting on bad motives with difficult personalities driven by vanity and resentment and malice. So it's not surprising you can't make a very stable coalition out of that kind of personality. Some of them are harder working than others. Some of them believe more of the toxic things they say, some of them believe less of the toxic things they say. The, the reveal here is not that.

Marjorie Taylor Greene is about to go over to the side of light and law enforcement, or that she's going to be converted to honesty and truthfulness. Whereas Tim pointed out that she's given up the anti Semitic button pressing. This is the Jewish space laser lady, then. And while she says she recanted the Jewish space laser allegation, she remains someone who thinks that there is a right left combination to be made against Israel and Jewish influence in American politics. But what I think you're seeing here is the Trump the pressure of economic failure on the Trump campaign there. There's now a question of who's going to be, who's going to hold the bag. We are seeing a slowdown in job creation, net job creation nearing zero, high prices, not because of something happening in the world economy, but because Donald Trump did it on purpose with his tariff policy.

And she is Closer to the ground she conceived. There's a lot of economic dissatisfaction with what Donald Trump has done. Someone is going to take the blame for that. She doesn't want to hurt, be the fall guy. But in the Mafia movie, the guy who says, I'm not gonna be the fall guy is not a good guy. He's just someone who exited the scheme a little earlier than the people who do become the fall guy.

[Political Analyst/Commentator]

You know, David, it's interesting too, in sort of your earliest pieces and analysis and conversations we had about the tariffs.

You know, there's almost a complacency in how we cover affordability as a political story. The affordability crisis is an existential quality of life, you know, psychological angst and turmoil story. But because Republicans are so subservient to Donald Trump, they don't have any. They don't have anyone telling that story. And sometimes I wonder if it's. If it's, if it's as simple as that, that he is hurting. He has betrayed his voters on the most basic and universal campaign promise he made, which was that I say it all the time. He stood in front of melting groceries at Bedminster and said, I'll make everything cheaper. And he has not.

[Host/Anchor]

Look, his problem is Republicans say, Mr. President, we need you to have an affordability message, and we need one that's connected to reality. Okay, here's the affordability message. My two signature policies, tariffs and immigration crackdown, have both dramatically raised higher prices. I did it on purpose. I did it knowing that this would be the consequence. I did it despite being warned by everybody. I did it on purpose. I did it because I wanted to do it. I didn't have to do it, but I did it. I did it all by myself. Congress didn't agree, so the only and the best way to get afforded, to make life more affordable would be for me to admit that what I did was stupid and that I'm going to undo it and never do it again. Now, once you start saying that message, you realize it's kind of an improbable message.

[Political Analyst/Commentator]

Yeah. I mean, and it's where, it's where JD Vance will have a very hard time in his political future if he has to run on this economy because he's saying all the things that David Frum is saying and.

And people know they are not true. It makes me wonder if Marjorie Taylor Greene is just making a sort of obvious move to the Republican next Republican primary.

[Civil Rights Advocate/Expert]

Well, it does seem to me from that interview, given all the yuck factor, as Tim said, and There was a lot of it. And the fact that she is double downing on. She is who she is. I mean, the fact that.

[Political Analyst/Commentator]

Should we show that? You know what? Let me show some of that. Because again, I said this at the beginning. This isn't. It wasn't all one thing. Here's Leslie Stahl calling her out for contributing to the toxic political culture.

It's the most toxic political culture and it's not helping the American people. But you contributed to that. You, you were out there pounding, insulting people. Leslie, you've contributed to it as well with your own program. Yes. You're accusatory just like you did just then. I don't insult people.

You do.

And the way you question and you're accusing me right now.

[Civil Rights Advocate/Expert]

That one, I mean, look, David said it when he reminded us of her incredibly anti Semitic statement about wildfires in California being started by lasers from a Jewish cabal. You know, we should remember, this is the woman who sat, who went to a convention that Nick Fuentes organized and then tried to pretend that she didn't understand or know who he was when it was clearly a lie. So she's not really been consistently anything other than someone who's both embraced violence, at least violent rhetoric in multiple ways, including around Nancy Pelosi, whose husband actually did experience someone showing up at their door and being badly harmed in that form of what we call stochastic terrorism. That's what she's describing when someone like Donald Trump says something and it incites violence in others. And her decrying it now with her record is quite shocking. And while I want to believe. Cause certainly she should not, she should not be experiencing these threats of violence. I want to be very clear.

[Political Analyst/Commentator]

No one should.

[Civil Rights Advocate/Expert]

Or her kids. No one should. But to try to deflect from your actual role when you have reams and reams of fact behind you really does make it look also political. And I actually think she does mean it when she stands with women who are saying they've been raped when they were 14. That is something that she has expressed consistently concern around sexual violence. That is true.

[Political Analyst/Commentator]

And she's also, though, been on the other side of her own role in the toxic culture. I think it's an interview with Dana Bash where she says, I want to apologize for my role.

[Civil Rights Advocate/Expert]

She did. And so the question becomes, what is it you have now experienced, what you have supported? So you actually have some shift in your thinking. But I think going back to David's point about what she's doubling down on, I mean, she has not suggested in the slightest that she's not going to continue to be a white nationalist. And I say that with some explicitness because, remember, one of the things that Donald Trump has done here is that he won election because he said, trust me. And we have a Civil Rights Monitor poll we did with Cornell Belcher which really shows that that base that continues to support Donald Trump is a base that feels threatened. They feel threatened because they are struggling economically, but they also feel threatened because they are white and struggling. They feel threatened because they feel threatened in their own identity and ability to be part of this country. That's they talk about culture wars, but they are, they're being utilized by Donald Trump and by many outside of the administration to drive wedges and division that say that even while we share a lot of problems, trust us, because you can believe we've got your back. Marjorie Taylor Greene participated in that in a very racialized way, in a very way, the way that also communicated anti Semitism, a way that stood up with people like Nick Fuentes, someone who we know still engages with this administration. And I think until, until we see not only saying it's not okay to be politically violent, but it is not okay to paint whole groups of people as other and to suggest that it's okay to take their rights as long as you're protecting a certain kind of American wink, wink, wink. And that's the dog whistle nature of how we're watching a president do corruption and how we're watching an administration support, support it and where and how he's flailing now because now someone can point to how he's departed from that base.

[Political Analyst/Commentator]

And what's so interesting is how intramural this is, right? This is all on that side. And I guess that's, that's sort of why it's a political man bites dog kind of story for all of us to wrestle with. No one's going anywhere. When we come back, Marjorie Taylor Greene's description and criticism of Donald Trump as someone who's lost touch with his face isn't the only public facing sign of his growing political weakness. There's also what anyone can see with their own eyes to themselves. We'll show you that more and more in meetings at the White House, Trump's eyes are literally closing. We'll call it sleeping here. For our part, I think they might call it eyelid resting. We'll show you how that's sinking into the culture next. Also ahead, a chilling update to the story of a college freshman deported to hunting Honduras after she tried to go home to see her family in Texas for Thanksgiving. What immigration officers are now doing to her family, we'll tell you later in the hour. Deadline White House continues after a quick break. Don't go anywhere.

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The US military deployed on the streets of America. Whole communities targeted for removal.

[Civil Rights Advocate/Expert]

There was tremendous anxiety as they saw neighbors and friends being taken.

[Political Analyst/Commentator]

And when accountability finally came knocking, the Berne order to cover it all up.

[Civil Rights Advocate/Expert]

I never believed that America would be doing this.

[Political Analyst/Commentator]

A stain on this country. One that we said we would never repeat.

[Host/Anchor]

Rachel Maddow presents Burn Order. Listen now, wherever you get your podcasts.

[Political Analyst/Commentator]

Over the weekend, Saturday Night Live took aim at what is starting to look like a pattern. Donald Trump's growing habit of falling asleep in open press settings while ostensibly on the job. And what barely classifies as parody anymore comes after Trump appeared to fall asleep again during his own cabinet meeting last week. Take a look.

[Reporter/Jacob Soboroff]

President Trump has my back 100%.

[Political Analyst/Commentator]

You want to know why? Because unlike you beta cucks, he's a high energy alpha who trust me and.

[Reporter/Jacob Soboroff]

Listen to me no matter what. Isn't that right, Mr. President?

[Political Analyst/Commentator]

Stop.

Mom.

[Host/Anchor]

Donnie.

[Political Analyst/Commentator]

You can freeze my red anytime.

I wasn't sleeping.

I'm very much awake now.

Someone quickly tell me, where am I.

[Host/Anchor]

Who am I and what year might it be?

[Political Analyst/Commentator]

Final question.

[Reporter/Jacob Soboroff]

Yes, Mr. President. More Americans, including your own voters, now blame you for the affordability crisis. What's your message to them?

He's sleeping. We gotta get him to another MRI before he wakes up.

[Political Analyst/Commentator]

We're back with Tim, David and Maya. Tim, Colin Jost. As Pete Hagg said, this is one of my favorite developments of a second term. But this sleeping thing has kind of started to stick.

Well, for good reason. Look, our msnow colleague Jonathan Lemire wrote about this for the Atlantic about how he hasn't traveled at all this year and he's in his bubble at this time in 20, I guess it would have been.

He's still doing his rallies, he's traveling around the country. We haven't seen that from him. He's gone overseas A few times. And then besides that, he stays at the White House or goes to his golf clubs. And I think that it's pretty clear they're starting to manage his schedule. And part of the reason why they're having more of the Cabinet meetings instead of the rallies, because you can just shuffle right on down to the Cabinet meeting and people can tell you how great you are. And that's a lot more manageable for somebody that's coming up on 80 than the Trump we saw in 1.0. So I just think this is all objective stuff that we can view with our own eyes.

I think that I'd said in the past.

I think that there were times in the first administration where there would be people who opposed Trump that were saying, oh, he's losing it, he's tired. Trump kept a pretty vigorous schedule. He's not coal mining or anything. He's just talking, mostly having press conferences, but he kept a pretty vigorous schedule, especially compared to President Biden. If you compare his first term to Biden's term and how often they're out there, this time different, and the dozing off is something that happens to everybody as they get up to their 80s. And that's what we're seeing from this president.

I mean, look, there are not a lot of public figures in their 80s have their schedules managed so that they don't do what Trump is doing. I guess what I would push back and say, David, is they're not managing the schedule. He's falling asleep in the very limited public appearances he does have. And. And so, I mean, yes, but no. I mean, he's not doing anything in the things he's doing. He's not pulling off. What are we to do? Sort of as a public and as a press with as stiff said, what's in front of our eyes, which is that the very limited things that are on his schedule are things that he obviously can't handle. He can't stay awake at his own carefully scripted, highly limited public events.

[Host/Anchor]

They're also. But one of the things they are managing too successfully is the information flow. One of the hardest things, as you know, in a White House, is getting accurate information from people otherwise would come in every day and say, you're doing great, everything's wonderful, people love you, Mr. President. And presidents have to push back against that, especially in the second term when they have staff who just knew them as the president and don't remember before. Donald Trump always had a good sense before of what things worked. That's what he used Twitter and X to do to workshop his material. What insults worked, what forms of abuse worked, but what didn't? And I am beginning to fear he may actually believe that grocery prices are down. Somebody may be telling him that grocery prices are down and he doesn't check and he doesn't maintain sources of information. Weird thing happened. Just the other day the National Park Service announced that they were going to rescind the free entry on some federal holidays, especially Martin Luther King Day, and they were going to create a new free entry on June 14, which is both Flag Day and Donald Trump's birthday. So when I read this on some anti Trump site, I thought, that's probably just Flag Day. The National Park Service would not actually list President Trump's birthday as a reason you get a free day. But they do. They do. They mentioned both Flag Day and President Trump's birthday. Now, that's something that you would once have had the instinct to say, you know what? Celebrating making my birthday a cost of revenue to the treasury, that's not a good idea. But they're doing it because they're losing even the malicious awareness of where the public is that they used to have.

[Civil Rights Advocate/Expert]

Maya, I don't know that they care about that. I mean, you know, when you look at the role that Stephen Miller is playing, there is a lot of aggressive decision making happening that is deeply impacting the lives of many people and in fact, endangering them. Donald Trump has been very clear, and it seems that his appointed officials are doubling down on exactly what he asked for, which is whatever I want and whatever retribution, and then the rest is fair game. And what we're seeing, and we're going to talk about it when we talk about ice, we should be seeing it when we're looking at the Department of Justice now creating a list that we at the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human rights have over 240 national civil rights organizations. We're seeing people targeted and identified in order to try to stop anyone else from outside the administration from being able to tell the truth. So whether he's sleepy or not, way it seems to me it is an administration that has become a regime and that whatever is happening with his own presence, his own ability to stay awake, the permission structure has been created by him. And it includes cruelty for cruelty's sake, as well as as long as it allows some corruption. And if we're not able to get underneath that, we've got a real problem. And I think that's in part to David's part about we don't even know what information is flowing in and through. And by the way, this is an administration that has already eliminated over 6,000 data sets, for example, just on how black people are doing in this country. So in. And it's not just black people. So it's everything. So we are actually watching the kind of unraveling that should worry everyone and require us all to seriously consider how we do something about it and how we demand true accountability from Congress.

[Political Analyst/Commentator]

Congress, Yeah. I mean, David, it renders, you know, we've covered Congress taking themselves off the field again, as a political story, like the economy in some ways. But the catastrophic impact for the system is one, it wasn't made that way. Right. Like, the branches only function as three co equal branches. The judiciary isn't supposed to prop up the other two. But you really see it in these questions about Trump. Bob Corker, in the first year, the first Trump term, tweeted it at Trump about the White House being adult daycare. And it was the most public affront to a lack of fitness. And I remember thinking it was stunning, one, because it was Republican, two, because I think he chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and three, because he followed it up with legislation to take away, for the first time in American history, a president's nuclear authority. But it went really quiet after that. And you didn't hear a ton of questions about his fitness until Miles Taylor wrote the anonymous op ed that became the anonymous book about the Cabinet getting together to talk about the 25th Amendment. And then you didn't hear about it again until Kevin McCarthy after January 6 said, how about the 25th Amendment? That's too slow. Impeachment. And that came out in phone calls. This world of things that people say about Trump in private that they won't say or act upon in public feels like if there's one sort of significant piece of that Marjorie Taylor Greene interview, it's the window into the private conversations about Trump. Where do you think they are now? And whatever this is, it feels like year 700 of the Trump story, but I think it's actually year nine.

[Host/Anchor]

Well, one of the differences between Marjorie Taylor Greene and some other House members is she has a very acute sense of self preservation. You saw that with her stock trading and now you see it. She's exiting to go, I don't know, start a podcast and compete with Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson in the conspiracy podcast space. We can make a lot of money, but a lot of them just seem to be seeing this giant tsunami heading their way, thinking that maybe Trump will cheat, find some Way to cheat the election system. But if the tsunami is big enough, you can't cheat the shift that happened in Tennessee. 7. I'm not a voting expert. I don't keep track of these things. But my friends who are say if that degree of shift that happened in C7, which was plus 20 something for Trump and was then in the end plus nine for the Republican, if that happens across the country, you're looking at a loss of 40 plus seats for the Republicans.

[Political Analyst/Commentator]

Yeah.

[Host/Anchor]

Now, now maybe if you're in a 40 point seat shift, if you're in the most competitive seat, you're done for. If you're in the second most competitive seat, you're done for. But if you're in seats 36 to 42.

You know, a little bit of maneuvering could make the difference between losing 42 and 36 seats. But you could say something. You could say, maybe don't just help farmers, maybe don't make everybody's health premiums go up on the 1st of January, maybe something to save me in seat 36. But they're just sitting there and unlimited, like Marjorie Taylor Greene, who's out and on her way to a prosperous future, they're just doomed and paralyzed.

[Political Analyst/Commentator]

Yeah. It is the thing that when people study the history of this moment, no one will be able to figure out why didn't they do anything? Why didn't they do anything? David Frum and Tim Miller, thank you so much for starting us off today. Maya sticks around. When we come back, our colleague Jacob Sobroff will join our table. We'll talk about how Americans have protested Donald Trump Trump's cruel and increasingly unpopular deportation schemes. All across the country. There's new reporting on several fronts to tell you about. We'll have that next.

[Host/Anchor]

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[Political Analyst/Commentator]

The second Trump administration has gone to unprecedented lengths to radically transform America.

[Host/Anchor]

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[Political Analyst/Commentator]

As each heartbreaking example further exposes Donald Trump's lies that his increasingly cruel and unpopular immigration crackdown would only target the, quote, worst of the worst. The outrage grows. And it was palpable yesterday on a school playground in Queens, New York, where the New York Times says hundreds showed up to protest the separation of a six year old boy from his dad. Authorities had not told the father, Faye Zhang, where his son was being held. Ms. Now has learned that they've finally made contact. Their story has become a flashpoint of the fear tactics used against some of the most vulnerable people, as has the story that our friend Jacob Soboroff brought us last week. The story of the college freshman who told Jacob she was, quote, shackled and handcuffed at Boston's airport on her way to surprise her parents for Thanksgiving. Annie Lucia Lopez Bellosa was then deported to Honduras, where she and her parents fled when she was seven years old. Now the New York Times is reporting that ICE is targeting Annie's family in Texas. From that Times report, quote, the agents arrived in three unmarked vehicles and one agent in a green vest marked ERO Enforcement and Removal Operations rushed toward the student's father, Francis Lopez, as he washed his car. Mr. Lopez said he ran into his backyard and closed a latched gate. Quote, the agent forced open the gate and proceeded to enter the backyard. Mr. Lopez entered his house and locked the back door. He said after about two hours, the agents left without ever trying to communicate with the family or knocking on the door, end quote. Two hours. Apparently camped out in the family's backyard, obviously leaving them frightened. As Mr. Lopez told the New York Times, quote, especially for our daughters, one of them is still a toddler.

Let that sink in as I bring in senior political and national correspondent Jacob Soboroff. Maya's still here. Jacob, bring us up to speed on this story.

[Reporter/Jacob Soboroff]

Well, as Congressman Greg Cassar said in that New York Times article, what does this look like? It looks like retribution against Annie's family. For Annie speaking out to reporters like us here at Ms. Now and other outlets that she talked to after being literally picked off by ICE at Boston Logan Airport and going home to surprise her mom and dad for Thanksgiving. She's there on scholarship. Her dad worked at a tailor shop in Texas, was ecstatic when she got the scholarship and was accepted to go to college there in Massachusetts. And now ICE shows up at their house after, after, after leaving them alone previously. Are these the worst of the worst? That's the question we just have to keep asking over and over again, does this really look like heroin?

[Political Analyst/Commentator]

How is she even on the radar? She comes as she's seven. She's a dreamer.

Yep.

And I would say by every other president's definition, but I think Trump has used the term as well.

[Reporter/Jacob Soboroff]

Technically, she missed the cutoff date is what they say. But the bottom line is she was an ordinary American, if not citizen by definition, regular American kid like everyone Else I actually, I would love to play a little bit more what she said to me last week, because it gets to the heart of who this is and what they. And who it is they are doing, what they're doing to. So watch. Watch this.

What do you want the president to know?

[Civil Rights Advocate/Expert]

That not all of us are criminals. That many of us come here to.

Be able to work, be able.

To.

Be able to live a better life from our countries.

Many of us want to just work and provide for their families.

We are here also to go to college because we want a better education. We just want a better kind of lifestyle. But not all of us are criminals.

[Reporter/Jacob Soboroff]

So now she's in Honduras. This father and son who had come here to seek asylum from China that you mentioned, this huge, huge rally that happened in Queens yesterday. I talked to somebody who was there, an advocate who's worked on their behalf. Are separated as well. These are more family separation stories. We, we have to emphasize again and again, the outrage was universal. It was all around the world. People spoke out. The Pope spoke out about. At the time, the Pope spoke. Speaking out about it again. But this is, this is just as much family separation as what he did to people deliberately inside those detention centers in 2017 and in 2018.

[Political Analyst/Commentator]

And what happens to these families?

[Reporter/Jacob Soboroff]

I think that the odds of them getting back into the United States or the odds of this family from Queens being able to avoid the deportation are very low. I hate to say it, unless and until people do what they have done in some of the situations that get on the national radar, it's why, and I even hesitate to say it, because look at the alleged retribution that they're doing to Annie's family right now. But Mr. Barranco, the landscaper in Santa Ana that we had on this broadcast is still here in the United States fighting his case. But would he be if his three Marine Corps sons didn't stand up and speak out and fight on his behalf? If people weren't in the streets on the no Kings Day protest after that, standing face to face with the Marines and the National Guard troops to bring attention to this stuff. So I think that the only thing that has pushed back on any of this is people showing up and getting out into the streets just like they did in Queens yesterday, What is going.

[Political Analyst/Commentator]

To happen to her family? Why were they in their backyard?

[Reporter/Jacob Soboroff]

They were in there. We don't know the answer to that. And I don't want to give one when I don't know. And the Department of Homeland Security has not given one yet, as far as I understand, but the idea that they would show up there in a targeted way, he was out washing his car in the street, and they chased him into his backyard without allegedly a judicial warrant to enter the property.

They have a lot of questions to answer the questions, answers that I don't have and I think a lot of us don't have at this moment.

[Political Analyst/Commentator]

Maya. This is happening all over the country.

[Civil Rights Advocate/Expert]

This is happening all over the country. And what is so important about, I think the reporting that you're providing, Jacob, is that there is a narrative that is a set of lies from the administration. It is not true. It is not true that ICE agents are following the law. We are seeing massive reports of excessive force, disregard for having any rational connection in some instances, to whether or not someone is, in fact someone who does not have permission to be here. We're seeing citizens getting dragged from their cars. We're seeing schools where ICE agents mask and refusing to identify themselves around children. We have an FBI that itself put out a bulletin saying that criminals, including people who've been accused of rape and theft and violence, have been masquerading as ICE agents because they're right now doing something that most law enforcement is prohibited from doing, which is our New York City Police Department couldn't do this to anybody in Queens, which is be masked, cover up their identification, or refuse to show their badge. If I stopped a police officer, New York City police officer on the street right now for no reason, I could ask. I'd like your badge number and your identification because I saw something I maybe didn't like. We can't do that with ice. And it's one of the reasons, even before Donald Trump took office, we had many complaints about ICE's violating rights that were already not sufficiently accountable. But this administration is saying, said, we don't even care about the rules. We don't care if you have a warrant.

[Political Analyst/Commentator]

It's incredible. All right. No one's going anywhere. We just have to sneak in a quick break. Well, I'll be right back.

Rebecca, Jacob and Maya. So I don't bite at a lot of these stories, but because this agency affects the lives of so many vulnerable people, I want us to share this reporting with our viewers. This is from Ms. Now today, quote, White House officials have grown frustrated with Kristi Noem's leadership of the Department of Homeland Security, leading to calls for a new secretary to more aggressively support key parts of the president's deportation agenda. It's according to two sources, Trump is considering removing Noema's secretary as early as January, according to a White House official, a current federal official and two former Homeland Security officials. I think it's the Daily Beast that goes on to suggest with a similar line of reporting and a similar number of sources, that some of her personal life is a factor as well. What is it, in your understanding about her professional performance that they're not happy with?

[Reporter/Jacob Soboroff]

According to our colleagues, in the great reporting that our colleagues have done at Ms. Now, it is the inability to build detention centers and ramp up this mass deportation effort fast enough and big.

[Political Analyst/Commentator]

Enough so it's not awful enough in his view.

[Reporter/Jacob Soboroff]

That's what Stephen Miller's problem has always been with all of this. Remember, during family separation, they only took, they only, I say, usually the chills to say it. 5,500 children from their parents deliberately in order to harm them. He wanted to do 25,000 using a mechanism called administrative separations. And when it failed, he had Donald Trump Press Kirstjen Nielsen I reported my book at the time on Marine One as they were going to survey a natural disaster at the time, whether or not they could restart the policy. Melania Trump was there on the Marine One as well. And so, yeah, Greg Bevino has had to take this effectively to the streets to terrorize people, in the words of the advocates. And what they want is to be able to bring people into these detention centers, fill up these detention centers to levels that you have not seen ever before in order to model it after that Dwight D. Eisenhower policy that deported a million Mexicans and by the way, some Mexican Americans. And I think we have to, you know, say over and over again, deported Americans. And we are seeing, Maya, as you said, American citizens rounded up on the streets. And so as they build these detention centers, as Stephen Miller ramps up this program, I mean, that's another thing to keep a very close eye on, is that I saw in Rachel's Blue sky feed today, just a series of reports over and over again of American citizens continually being chased, rounded up and detained by federal agents on the streets of America.

[Civil Rights Advocate/Expert]

We have videos of people saying, but I'm a citizen and I have an ID in my pocket, like a verified id, Right? An enhanced id. This is not this is this the privatization issue? Because you didn't say that word, Jacob. But that behind the wanting to build more centers is also they're going to be private facilities.

[Reporter/Jacob Soboroff]

Exactly.

[Civil Rights Advocate/Expert]

And they're going to be contracted out, which means there are a lot of people who are going to make a lot of money on off of the suffering of people and families. But I will just say this because our Civil Rights Monitor poll I mentioned earlier shows 55% of people really don't like the job ICE is doing. That's not a comment on your views on immigration policy. It is views on behavior that is abhorrent. And so today we launched masks off rights on to draw more attention. But I'm saying this because what is coming, what we're seeing are the beginnings and even the attack on not for profit organizations, just for know your rights training for providing any form of assistance are now going to face targeting from the Department of Justice for doing things that are lawful. That's a problem.

[Political Analyst/Commentator]

That's all of their, all of their tells, all their mask off moments. Jacob, thank you. So good to have you at the table. Maya, thank you for spending the hour with us. When we come back, Rachel Maddow on the fork in the road for America and American democracy. We'll be right back.

This week's episode of the Best People podcast made some history because we went back to someone we'd already talked to before. When I tell you who it was, I think you'll understand why it was a treat for me to get to talk to my friend and colleague Rachel Maddow about her brand new podcast series Burn Order. It's about a particularly dark moment in the American story in the history of our country. We also talk about the current dark moment of we find ourselves in. She is her brilliant, brilliant self and a real beacon of hope about this moment amid her very realistic and fact based analysis about what comes next. Here's a little bit of our conversation. I think we've definitely got a sawtooth future coming up in terms of progress versus regression. But I think that there was a cost to them going so fast.

I think it was, there definitely was kind of a shock and awe.

Effect from them just sort of instantly going straight to like year 10 of Viktor Orban. Right. Like talking to Russians who experienced what happened over the first 18 years of Putin being in power. Like Trump tried to rush year 18.

[Civil Rights Advocate/Expert]

Yeah.

[Political Analyst/Commentator]

Yes.

Like tried to rush right through those things. And I think that was seen as very scary. But there was a cost to that for them as well, which is that they absolutely did not bring people along with them and people did not sort of have time to morally accommodate what they were doing. And Trump is a kind of a spent force. I mean, he's literally falling asleep on camera in Cabinet meetings.

Rachel, because she's. Rachel gives the most astute and brilliant analysis of where you are, but she also infuses it with more hope than I've heard her articulate in 12 months. You have to listen to her on this. She's absolutely brilliant. You can hear all of it on this week's episode of the Best People. Just scan the QR code on your screen right now to listen to the rest of our conversation or download it wherever you get your podcast. Be sure to let me know what you think on Blue sky or Instagram. One more break. We'll be right back.

Thank you so much for letting us into your homes.

[Host/Anchor]

We are grateful as President Trump continues implementing his ambitious agenda. Follow our along with the MSNow newsletter Project 47, you'll get weekly updates sent straight to your inbox with expert analysis on the administration's latest actions and how they're affecting the American people.

[Political Analyst/Commentator]

The American people are basically telling the president that they are not okay with any of this.

[Host/Anchor]

Sign up for the Project 47 newsletter at Ms. Now. Project 47.