← Deadline: White House
Deadline: White House
“Trump’s war against the first amendment”
00:44:38
July 13, 2026; 4pm: Nicolle Wallace and guests discuss the breaking news that the Trump DOJ subpoenaed New York Times journalists over their reporting on security concerns surrounding the new Qatari-gifted Air Force One.
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- [00:00]
Jacob Soboroff
For me, being a part of this place has always been about the people, not about the politics.
- [00:06]
Ms. Now Announcer
From the field to the studio, Jacob is finding the heart of the story. Connect with Jacob souboroff weekends at 10am Eastern on Ms. Now.
- [00:20]
Nicole Wallace
Hi there everyone. Happy Monday. It's four o'clock in the east. Donald Trump's disdain for a free and fair press is nothing new, but it is now core to his political and governing thesis. And there's a dangerous and chilling new phase in his war against the First Amendment to tell you about, with the Department of Justice increasingly willing to use the levers of the Department of Justice to wage it. In a deeply troubling development, Donald Trump's DOJ issued subpoenas to several New York Times journalists on Friday over their reporting on security concerns involving Donald Trump's new Qatari gifted Air Force One. New York Times reports this, quote, the subpoenas, which seek to force the reporters to testify before a federal grand jury in Manhattan on Wednesday, were an extraordinary escalation in Donald Trump's efforts to threaten and intimidate independent news organizations. They add that, quote, in some cases the subpoenas were delivered by federal agents who showed up at reporters homes. The subpoenas contain few specifics, asking only that the journalists testify, quote, unquote, in regard to an alleged violation of federal criminal law, end quote. They were issued by Jay Clayton, he's the U.S. attorney in Manhattan's SDNY. The journalists targeted include some familiar faces to viewers of this program. Julian Barnes, Eric Lipton, Tyler Pager, and Eric Schmidt, all of whose reporting is absolutely essential to what we know about Donald Trump and his administration. They reported last week about how Donald Trump's shiny new Qatari jet lacks the same defensive countermeasures that were features of the old Air Force One, creating risk in using the jet abroad. That risk was underscored by the decision for Trump to leave Turkey last week on the old Air Force One. At the urging of the Secret Service. A spokesperson for DOJ claims that reporters are not the targets that those leaking classified information are. But adding to the concern that DOJ is taking marching orders from Donald Trump, is this reporting also from the New York Times? Quote, the White House directed Kash Patel, the FBI director, to oversee the leak investigation into reporting by the New York Times. Kash Patel scuttled a planned trip to Chicago and spent roughly eight hours at the White House Friday running the investigation from there rather than FBI headquarters, a major departure from historical practice. In response to the investigation and show of force by the Justice Department against journalists. The New York Times top newsroom lawyer David McCross said this, quote, the appearance of federal law enforcement agents on the doorstep of news reporters should shock the conscience of any American who believes in the Constitution and the press freedom it protects. Our journalists report the facts and advance the American public's right to know how their government is operating and how their taxpayer dollars are being used. This brazen act should be seen as nothing more than an attempt to prevent the public from knowing what is happening in their country by intimidating journalists who are doing their jobs. Donald Trump's escalating war against the journalists who cover him with an assist from the Department of Justice and the FBI at the highest levels is where we start today with some of our favorite reporters and friends. Former DHS chief of staff during Donald Trump's first term. Miles Taylor is here. Also joining us, New York Times investigative reporter Mike Schmidt is here. Mike, these are your colleagues. This is a beat that you are oftentimes on as well. Your reaction?
- [03:54]
Mike Schmidt
Look, these are five of the most important reporters not only at the Times, but I would say in the country right now. They are some of the, the most dogged, fearless folks I have ever worked alongside. They, you know, have, have broken story after story that has given the country a greater understanding of, of who Donald Trump is and the administration he is leading. There is a, a cheesy and at times cliche motto or credo that Marty Baron, the executive editor of the Washington Post used to say during the first Trump term. And that was we're were at work. And I think that in the time that we live in, this is the type of workplace issue that is going to come up a lot with the Trump administration, the Trump administration. Trump has sued the New York Times. There is an EEOC case against the New York Times. The New York Times has sued the Trump administration for additional access to the Pentagon. The Trump administration has executed a search warrant at the home of a Washington Post reporter. These are all things that have gone on between the administration and the press and what those five reporters who I work with are doing. And what we're all doing is we're just going to go back to work. We are not going to be deterred by this. This is an attempt to stop us, to chill us from doing the First Amendment protected work that is essential to journalism and to the American democracy. And you subpoenas are not going to stop that.
- [05:40]
Nicole Wallace
They're going to stop it. But it has to be disturbing for these journalists, as accomplished as they are, to be on the receiving End of a federal agent delivering a subpoena.
- [05:51]
Mike Schmidt
Look, as the executive editor of the Times said, Joe Kahn, in a statement that he put out over the weekend, it's clear what's going on here. It's clear what the government is trying to do and how they're trying to chill and stop us. You know, you can get into, you know, you know, we have to go to court and we have to defend our rights. And, you know, look, Donald Trump has wanted to do stuff like this for a very long period of time, as Miles knows, dating back to the first Trump term. You know, Trump wanted to go after reporters. He wanted to do things like this. He was stopped from doing that. As remarkable as the subpoena story is, the second story about Cash Patel working out of the White House on the investigation is just as remarkable. That that is how a federal investigation and the investigative criminal powers of the federal government are being used. And where the investigation is being run out of is just as astounding, Mike,
- [06:54]
Nicole Wallace
due to sort of level sets for us. Explain why that's so stunning in light of the last several directors of the FBI not even wanting to be seen at the White House or around the president they work for. And two, just explain what the reporting was about and why your colleagues think this so irked Donald Trump.
- [07:14]
Mike Schmidt
So, James Comey, when he was FBI director, I once asked him in an interview whether Comey, at 6 foot 8, was going to play in Obama, who had just named him FBI director in his weekly basketball game. And Comey, you know, being, being Comey said that he didn't think that would be appropriate, even though they were playing in the basement of the FBI because it was an appearance of a conflict and that it would look like he was too chummy with the president. So gives you one sense of what the post Watergate norms of federal investigations looked like, and that was that federal investigations were run by the FBI and the Justice Department at more than an arm's length distance from the White House, that they were supposed to follow the law. And the fact there's countless examples of Trump in his first term wanting to do that, wanting to use the investigative powers of the FBI and the IRS to go after his enemies, but being stopped from doing that. And that's because in this country, there was a belief that the law should be applied evenly and that the evidence should drive. Drive the application of the law. That has changed in Trump's second term, where he has used the FBI and other many other law enforcement agencies to do political errands for him, or at least he has tried to do that. So that is why an investigation being run out of the White House is something that we just sort of haven't seen and is new and different. The reporting that my colleagues did on the plane was particularly important because it raises a larger question about, okay, Trump took this plane that's worth hundreds of millions of dollars. He says he's going to keep it afterwards. He really likes the way that it looks, but it may not have the proper protections on it that a typical or true Air Force One would have to keep those on it safe. So it cuts to the heart of Trump's decision making, how he has taken gifts from foreign governments and the national security implications of that. That is a story worthy of the taxpayer, of the American understanding what is going on and why were these decisions made and is national security at risk? Because things have been sort of short circuited here and they have put a started to use a plane that is not ready for action.
- [10:00]
Nicole Wallace
Miles, you write about this. Actually, let me ask you, Miles, I mean, when you wrote anonymous and you were still anonymous, was there an attempt to use the Justice Department to find out who, who you were?
- [10:17]
Miles Taylor
There was. And at the time, Nicole, I found it to be deeply ironic that I was using the pages of the Times to say that this man is using the powers of his office for self selfish reasons, that he's abusing his powers. And then his response was to go abuse his powers to try to silence First Amendment protected speech. It got even crazier because I got a phone call, Nicole, at the time, from my former boss, John Kelly at the White House, who didn't know I'd written those words and who shared the sentiment of everyone else in the administration that whoever had written that was basically spot on, but said the President wants us to run a probe from inside the White House, basically micromanaging DOJ to go hunt down the leaker. And Kelly expressed to me, this is obviously not constitutional for us to do and we're not going to do it. We're not going to run an unconstitutional investigation trying to hunt down someone who has said what everyone in this administration believes. And that leads us to today. Nicole, there is good news here and we can get to the good news. The bad news, of course, is that we have clearly entered the no man's land of First Amendment violations. Those things that people in the first administration, like John Kelly say they would never do are now being done directly from the West Wing of the White House. Yalls reporting made clear Cash Patel at The White House for up to eight hours, sitting there, being micromanaged by the President of the United States, launching an investigation into the only constitutionally protected profession in the United States, journalists. Now, again, Justice Department says those journalists are not the target. That is semantics, okay? Those journalists receive those subpoenas. For all intents and purposes, they are the target. Now, the administration will say, well, it's because we're just trying to get to the source. Well, those sources are the people we're depending on to tell us what is happening inside this government. And I've got to agree with Mike. There is almost no instance of corruption inside this administration that is more urgently needed to be known by the American taxpayer than the fact that the President of the United States is taking expensive foreign gifts greater than any gift ever given to an American president, using it for his own purposes, and apparently trying to cover up the weaknesses and the corruption related to the giving of that gift. That is the type of thing we count on journalists to tell us. So the bad news is we've entered an era where a president is directing revenge against those people. But like I said, it's not all entirely bad news here.
- [12:52]
Nicole Wallace
I mean, Miles, it sounds like mostly bad news to me, though. And I wonder if you could just do the same level setting I asked Mike to do on how Republicans in the Senate just sleepwalk their way into confirming Todd Blanche this week, who is literally a walking violation of the Constitution. Name your amendment. He's found a way to work around it in service of Donald Trump.
- [13:17]
Miles Taylor
Well, that's where I get to the good news here, Nicole. The good news is Donald Trump opened an investigation into reporters, and then the publication Mike works for got a story out there about the leak probe itself. So the leak probe leaked. What does that tell you? That tells you that not everyone inside this government, not everyone inside this FBI, not everyone tied to this administration, is comfortable living in a country where the President of the United States wants to censor free speech. Because those people picked up the phone and called the New York Times and said, hey, wanna let you know the boss is livid. He's opening a leak probe into the New York Times. It was incredible to me that the Times published these two stories within hours of each other. The Times publishes its story about being investigated and then gets the scoop about the leaked probe itself. That is good for democracy that people are unwilling to put up with this. Now, I hope some of that, through some sort of civic osmosis, will make its way to the United States Senate. And some of those Senators will find their courage when it comes to this review of Todd Blanche, who has let his department, of which the FBI is a part, become one of Donald Trump's personal puppets. So hopefully this story, among others this week, will make their way to those senators. But I do think that Blanche is going to face a steeper hill to climb than he had, let's say, four days ago.
- [14:52]
Nicole Wallace
But it's like moving the treadmill from flat to one. I'm not sure how steep it is with these Republicans. Miles, let me show you what Jim Acosta had to say about the a word authoritarianism.
- [15:06]
Jim Acosta
I go back to what people like Ruth Ben Guillot have been warning, which is this is what happens with authoritarian governments. They immediately go after the press. I think this time around, Donald Trump wanted to make damn sure that he got the people out of the way who got in his way the first time around or he perceived that way his perceived political enemies. And this is a project just like Project 2025. This is a project of Donald Trump. Stephen Miller, you know, the people behind the scenes who surround him, who, who want an authoritarian like government in this country. And you can't have the press getting in the way of that.
- [15:45]
Nicole Wallace
Jim Acosta made those comments, Miles, before the subpoena story broke night. But let me just, in the spirit of what Jim's talking about, I mean, the success in the project is Elon Musk bought Twitter. Donald Trump's cronies bought cbs. They're about to take over cnn. The Washington Post has capitulated completely, it sounds like from Mike's colleagues reporting in their new book. Bezos would like to capitulate even further. Just hasn't figured out how to yet with the Washington Post. So we're down to independent media, which is vibrant and vital, but lacks the kind of robust legal departments to contend with these kinds of things. The New York Times, the Atlantic, we're blessed at Ms. Now to have editorial freedom. But Trump's been pretty successful in, if not taming the coverage of the few remaining independent outlets, limiting their reach and limiting the numbers. And we're 18 months in. I mean, what is the good part of that story?
- [16:50]
Miles Taylor
Well, we're in it. We're in it. His fascist experiment is working. And that still sounds like a charged word to some people. But remember, folks that I served with told Mike told you, told me that they expected Donald Trump to act like a little fascist in a second term. His own people said that that's what is happening. I mean, you remember Nicole, I came and sat with you in 2003 and said if he wins office again, mark my words, what he's going to do is he's going to open leak investigations into people as a way to vastly expand his prosecutorial revenge and to go after reporters. In fact, again and again, I've said that they're just following the playbook. This wasn't hard to see that they would come in and they would open leak investigations. I think as we came on the air, it was announced that the Pentagon is going to be having a joint task force to dig into leakers. They're gonna use that as the predicate to continue to torch the US Constitution. I suppose if there's any good news in here, it's that free speech does not go down without a fight. There are clearly people inside this administration still willing to talk to the news outlets. That shouldn't give us total confidence that the Constitution gets preserved. But state attorneys general are getting ready to sue to block the paramount merger. The judges are unwilling to roll over and submit to this. The news outlets like the New York Times, as you read at the beginning of this segment, are punching back hard, fighting this in court. Washington Post fought similar subpoenas in court. Wall Street Journal fought them in court, and they won in those courts. The judges have sided with them or the prosecutors have dropped those cases. We're not going to go down without a fight.
- [18:33]
Nicole Wallace
Mike, quickly, what will your journalists do with the subpoenas? Will they show up or will you fight them in court?
- [18:42]
Mike Schmidt
I'm going to leave the Times to speak for itself about how it plans to deal with this. But I think you can assume that this is obviously something that the Times will do everything to fight. The Times new coming into the second Trump term, that we were going to face extraordinary challenges in a range of different ways, including on the legal front. And we're more than prepared for that. We have someone in David McCraw who I, I can easily say is the top First Amendment lawyer in the country. And he is the tip of the spear and is dealing with this multifaceted, multi front battle that we find ourselves in with the administration. You know, just in the sense that there are so many different sort of legal issues that have come up, whether it's that, you know, us suing for access to the Pentagon or Trump suing us.
- [19:35]
Nicole Wallace
Yeah. Mike, thank you so much for starting us off on this. We have some breaking news out of South Carolina to tell you about before we go to break. One day after we learned of the death of US Senator Lindsey Graham, The Republican governor of that state, Henry McMaster, just announced that he is appointing Senator Lindsey Graham's younger sister, Darlene Graham, to serve the rest of Lindsey Graham's Senate term. It expires in January. Graham and his sister were very close after their parents died when they were young. Graham raised Darlene and became her legal guardian. Senator Lindsey Graham died Saturday night at the age of 71 of what a medical examiner said was likely an aorta tear caused by underlying cardiovascular disease. A special primary election will be held on August 11th to determine who will run against the Democratic nominee, Annie Andrews in November. When we come back, we are just learning more about how Donald Trump seems to be escalating the big lie that there was fraud in 2020 and that's why he lost to Joe Biden and about how he's using the power of the White House to sow doubt and confusion about upcoming races and bring about more distrust in our country around the integrity of our elections. We'll dive into that. Also ahead, breaking today, a judge calling Donald Trump's lawsuit against the irs, quote, self dealing in a scathing judgment which could put Todd Blanche in even more hot water days ahead of his Senate confirmation hearing. We'll have all those stories and much more when Deadline WHITE HOUSE continues on a very busy day of news. Don't go anywhere.
- [21:02]
Simone Sanders Townsend
Simone Sanders Townsend and I have known each other for more than a decade, tussling over politics and policy when she worked in the White House. And I reported on it.
- [21:11]
Laura Barron-Lopez
And now we're friends and colleagues. And on our podcast, Clock it, we are positioning ourselves at the intersection of culture and politics.
- [21:19]
Simone Sanders Townsend
Clock it is where we talk about what we see and hear in the news. So you can start to clock it, too.
- [21:25]
Ms. Now Announcer
Clock it with Simone and Eugene. All episodes available now.
- [21:36]
Nicole Wallace
Donald Trump appears to be taking his assault on the truth and democracy in American elections to primetime. Ms. Now is now reporting that Trump will deliver an address Thursday evening where he plans to unveil another round of lies about why he lost in 2020 to Joe Biden, this time claiming that newly declassified reports reveal foreign interference in that election that his own government didn't know about at the time. Lies that seemed conveniently obscure that he was the president of the United States. All of his hand picked people ran every facet of the government in 2020. His handpicked attorney General, Bill Barr ran the Justice Department. His handpicked replacement for Jim Comey, Chris Wray, ran the FBI. Both of them have repeatedly and publicly debunked these lies. If there was any foreign interference. Trump's address will take place in primetime. It is likely to mark the start of releases of so called evidence that everyone that worked for him in 2020 couldn't find. As Donald Trump makes it abundantly clear that there's no lever of national security power that he will not exploit and pervert to undermine our faith in our elections and our democracy, including these essential national security agencies. Ms. NOW has exclusive reporting that details Trump's plans to use our national security apparatus and turn it into a propaganda machine for his election. Lies quote A new White House task force reviewing thousands of pages of classified intelligence and law enforcement documents for evidence of irregularities in US Elections is expected to begin releasing documents within weeks, according to two US Officials with knowledge of the matter. Speaking to Ms. Now, the office of the Director of National Intelligence, whose acting chief Bill Pulte has been accused by Democrats of politically weaponizing federal government information, will be part of this effort. Democrats say that Trump has placed Pulte in this position so that he can aid Republicans in the midterm elections and potentially limit voting by Democrats. The release of the documents appears to be part of a series of accelerating efforts by Trump and his aides to again question and relitigate the results of the 2020 election claims that widespread voter fraud occurred in the country and decreased public trust in the results of pivotal elections this fall that will decide control of Congress. This effort is not just isolated to Pulte's Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Mississippi now reports that it is part of a whole of government effort to try to subvert November's midterm elections coming on the heels of Trump's weaponization of the Department of Justice and female one election protection advocate telling msnow that local election officials must prepare now for a federal assault on our elections, saying this, quote, this is unprecedented. She said, if you had told me in 2010 that we would be having this conversation, I wouldn't have believed you. But we have to take this seriously given events in 2020 and the President's focus on the fall. I want to bring in one of the journalists who broke this story for us, our White House reporter Laura Barron Lopez. Also joining us, former director of the CIA, our senior national security and intelligence analyst John Brennan. And Miles is still here. Laura, take me through what you're reporting.
- [24:49]
Laura Barron-Lopez
Yeah, Nicole, thanks so much. So my colleagues, David Rode, Jackie Alemany, Kane Delaney and I reported this morning that the white this White House task force is reviewing those intelligence and law enforcement documents that are currently classified and that the administration is looking to declassify some of those documents as it pertains to. I mean, the fact that they're searching for what alleged irregularities in the 2020 election. Now, I spoke to also a number of current election officials as well as election security experts who say that they've expected something like this for quite some time in terms of the administration to release documents like this. And they think that what it could have to do with is, you know, conspiracy theories potentially pertaining to Venezuela at the time. You've probably heard this conspiracy theory before, which is that Rudy Giuliani spread it right around the 2020 election that Venezuela was involved with Dominion Voting machines and manipulated those machines and somehow that influenced the election. That's not true. Also is whether or not China interfered, which was again looked into significantly at, at the time, interfered against President Trump. And the intel community assessment at the time was that there was no interference that swayed the election. There may have been influence across social media, but not interference. And so, again, one point I just wanna make here, Nicole, is that John Ratcliffe was the Director of National Intelligence at the time. And a former national security official, senior one that served during the Trump administration at that time, said that John Ratcliffe had access to all of this intelligence. And yet at the time, the intel community said that there was not interference. So again, the motive behind releasing this, the election officials that are trying to get ready for the midterms, a lot of them believe that this is about flooding the zone and sowing confusion and that that could potentially depress voter turnout.
- [27:01]
Nicole Wallace
So, Miles, like, I know that we're living in post truth America, I know all this. But just riddle me this. When Obama ran intelligence, the election was secure and Donald Trump won in 2016. When Biden ran the government and the intelligence, the election was secure and Trump ran in 2024. But when Donald Trump and all of his boobs were running US National Security, it got all effed up. Is that the theory?
- [27:27]
Miles Taylor
I guess so, Nicole. We like to say that this administration is built on lies, but it's also built on really bad leftovers, because these claims they are making are bad leftovers that have been sifted through years ago. They are moldy and inedible. Now, these claims that they're gonna try to make later this week, I expect them to cherry pick and selectively leak intelligence about Chinese interference.
- [27:52]
Jacob Soboroff
Can I stop you?
- [27:52]
Nicole Wallace
Can I stop you, though? What document is gonna show something that Donald Trump wouldn't have either stolen when he took, quote, national defense information to Mar A Lago in boxes that he then had flooded in the. Like, if he had it, are you sure it's gonna be something that didn't exist? Like, what is he. What documents are we talking about?
- [28:12]
Miles Taylor
Well, what they'll try to do is they'll try to mischaracterize shreds of information, but I think it will be easy to swat down. And I've gotta agree with you, Nicole. I mean, I helped stand up Donald Trump's election protection in the first administration with his Director of National Intelligence, with his handpicked Director of the FBI, with my former colleague Chris Krebs. And when it came to election time, those people who had access to all of that intelligence information, I was gone by that point. But people like Chris came out and said, we've seen it all and this election was secure. Donald Trump didn't like that because he had cooked up this lie that it was stolen. And so he fired Chris. And of course, one of the first things he did when he came back into office was ordered a Justice Department probe into Chris because Chris would not go along with that. I cannot think of a single person I served with who would stand by what this administration appears to be prepared to do is try to cherry pick little pieces of data to create some fake story about how someone stole the 2020 election from him. It wasn't real then when they had access to the information, oversaw the national security community. It isn't now. But you've got these clowns that are going into these jobs, like Bill Pulte, trying to hunt for anything. And I suspect it's going to be a kindergartner's collage that they show us later this week to try to make the case, which, by the way, I must say, every time they've hyped something like this, Tulsi Gabbard at DNI has hyped a lot of breathtaking disclosures of corruption. They've been nothing burgers, because they cannot stitch together credible information to support their conspiracy theories.
- [29:45]
Nicole Wallace
But let me. I understand it's Laura's job to stare at the trees and cover them, but let me just ask you, Director Brennan, to paint the forest for me. It is really what we understand today, based on the best reporting at the White House, that Donald Trump is going to tell the country that only Democrats can run free and fair elections, that the one out of the three times he ran that was faulty, the one where American adversaries interfered, the one out of the three that he ran, the one that got screwed up, was the one he was in charge of the year 2020. He's going to tell the country that 2016, when President Obama was in charge, when you were in charge, when all these people he likes to attack on his social media platform, that we only see when they're so weird and scary, they make headlines, that those elections were secure, that the one that Joe Biden ran was secure. The only election in our country's history over the last 12 years that was screwed up was the one that he, Donald Trump, was in charge of. And that John Ratcliffe is the only one that let one of America's enemies interfere in our election. That is really what he's going to take a spoon out and try to shove in the mouth of a MAGA voter.
- [31:00]
John Brennan
There you go again, Nicole, trying to apply logic and rational thought to the situation. And Donald Trump's, while I still can,
- [31:07]
Nicole Wallace
before he breaks my brain for good.
- [31:11]
John Brennan
Well, I think it breaks all of our brains. But again, we know that Donald Trump loves to throw things, things out and give nuggets to the MAGA base as a way to distract them and for them to actually believe what he's going to be pushing out there. And I fully agree with Miles in terms of what's likely to come out, which is going to be this dog's dinner of different bits and pieces of information that will misrepresent and mischaracterize the facts. As you well know, the intelligence community vacuums up a lot of information, from the most reliable and accurate to the unreliable information that comes in from fabricators and others. So Bill Pulte's charge, I believe, is to find whatever he can and then to selectively bring it out and redact it as a way to misrepresent the facts and the truth. But to think that Donald Trump is going to use the 2020 election and then the 2024 election as a way to rationalize what he is doing today, again, it defies logic. But it's clear by doing this, he's still very, despite all the perversion, as you pointed out, of the process leading up to the elections this November, he's still deathly afraid that the Democrats, in fact, will take potentially both houses of Congress, Congress, which is why he's resorting to these measures. But I also believe this is going to blow back on him. Because when they do this, I think you're going to have people within the intelligence community, either currently or formers, who are going to cast, you know, lay waste to these lies that are going to be coming out here and to have someone like a Bill Pulte who has no understanding of the intelligence process, the intelligence mission and intelligence itself to be doing this again. It's going to discredit it from the get go.
- [32:48]
Nicole Wallace
I have more questions for all of you. Laura, I'm going to ask you to stick around if you can. I mean, what if, like, what if Republicans win? Will he say, never mind. The documents I released were my toilet paper. I'm sorry, that got like, what is he going to do if Republicans have a red wave in the midterms and it happened once before in the year 2002. I'd love your reporting on that question. I'm asking you to stick around. We'll all be right back.
- [33:11]
Jacob Soboroff
Can I just quickly say hello to you? For me, being a part of this place has always been about the people, not about the politics.
- [33:18]
Miles Taylor
Why are you holding this sign?
- [33:19]
Jacob Soboroff
You ever been to a protest before? Be safe. People that we cover who allow us to enter their lives. How's everybody doing? Everybody doing okay? How long you guys been in line? I love human beings. To spend time connecting with them is the biggest blessing that I could ask for.
- [33:32]
Ms. Now Announcer
From the field to the studio, Jacob is finally finding the heart of the story. Connect with Jacob soboroff weekends at 10am Eastern on Ms. Now,
- [33:42]
Chris Krebs
we did a good job. We did it right. I do it a thousand times over.
- [33:46]
Jim Acosta
The president says, you're dead wrong about election security. And to him you say, what?
- [33:52]
Chris Krebs
There is no foreign power that is flipping votes. There's no domestic actor flipping votes. I did it right. We did it right. This was a secure election.
- [34:09]
Nicole Wallace
So that's Chris Krebs. He's the former director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. He gave that interview to 60 Minutes in the immediate aftermath of the 2020 election. The administration in which he served was Republican. Was Donald Trump's administration. He was a lifelong Republican, but he had a national security job much in the same way that Miles you did. He was debunking all of Trump's election lies about foreign interference, but importantly, the dni, as Laura, you said, was John Radcliffe. But until May of that year, the person in charge of protecting all the intelligence agencies was Rick Grenell. So Trump was up to his eyeballs, not just in Republicans, but in MAGA Republicans. Laura, is there any reporting that he's going to bring back any of the Democrats who ran those agencies when President Obama was president or President Biden was president and the elections were secure? Cuz again, he's run three times the two Times he won. Democrats were president and they ran all these agencies in charge of cybersecurity and national intelligence.
- [35:09]
Laura Barron-Lopez
No, there's no indication that he's going to bring back any of those Democrats.
- [35:13]
Nicole Wallace
Why not? Those are the only elections he trusts.
- [35:17]
Laura Barron-Lopez
That's true if you go based on what he says and when he's actually won. But to the point that you were making before the break, I just want to address it because we've seen the president's playbook before. When it comes to when he does, when he, when all of a sudden, you know, Republicans win elections, when he wins, and whether or not he would backtrack off of these claims and these falsehoods that he's likely about to spread as soon as this Thursday. Because my colleague Jake Traylor also added to our reporting, saying that the president's speech this coming Thursday is going to be about this, about his allegations of foreign election interference in 2020. And if it turns out that Republicans do well in the midterms, better than expected, if they keep control of the House, then we have the president's playbook there. Because in the past, when he won in 2024, he said, well, we made it too big to rig. So he rationalizes and he comes up with explanations for why when he floods the zone with this disinformation and if he ends up winning, he just excuses it. But I think that when I talk to election administrators, including one I was just talking to today about this coming out, them trying to release these documents, what really stuck with me was that this election administrator said that they really feel like the confusion is the point here, that the chaos is the point, because already they have a lot of voters that are coming up to them asking them about the rules in this upcoming election and if they're going to have to provide their passports. And so, so much of the job of election administrators right now and officials is to simply tell voters, look, the rules for our state, including in swing states, hasn't changed. And so they're just trying to keep up with that level of disinformation right now and tell voters that it is safe and secure and they can turn out and vote.
- [37:16]
Nicole Wallace
Director Brennan, if people can't trust the outcome now, when Trump, with all the lies he's spread, is the president of the United States, when Trump's appointees have a super majority on the Supreme Court, when Trump's MAGA Republicans have a majority in the Senate, when Trump's sycophants have a majority in the House, they never will. I mean, what are we doing here?
- [37:48]
John Brennan
It's very, very worrisome, Nicole, because as you point out, the executive branch and the president has tremendous authority to exert the full weight and influence of the executive branch. And he's clearly trying to do that not just in terms of manipulation of the perceptions of reality, but also using the instruments of governance. And so the next four months, I can clearly see that Donald Trump is going to do everything in his power and beyond that to be able to affect the outcome of the election. And so there is really a question about, in light of what he is doing and how he is putting both thumbs and rest of his fingers on the scale, whether or not that outcome can be trusted. You asked before what happens if the Republicans win? Well, I think there's going to be quite serious doubt that they won fairly just because of what he has done. And this is similar what's happening with the Department of Justice, all the corruption and all the action that is going on there. It really undermines the integrity of any of their actions. So as we get closer and closer to the November election, I expect Donald Trump to use again, whatever tactic, ploy or underhanded maneuver he can. And unfortunately, there are too many individuals who surround him in the White House and too many individuals in Congress and then as you point out, even in the Supreme Court who are willing to turn a blind eye to the obvious and brazen corruption and actions that he is taking.
- [39:18]
Nicole Wallace
Miles, I guess we're, I said we're in a post fact, post truth era. We're also in sort of a post humility era. But culturally, people hate bad losers, people hate cheaters. And he's projecting both to the country in his own base. What does this moment say about culture and about sort of the collapse of both any sense of humor and any morality inside his accomplices in the media, in the sort of Larry Ellison conglomerate in the manosphere, all these tropes about, you know, masculinity are gone when you've got someone cheating out loud in full view of their own base of support and really trying to sell this story that only Obama and Biden and run free and fair elections.
- [40:06]
Miles Taylor
Well, you know what? Let me validate that story, Nicole, because I'll tell you something, you've got two generations of election protection here on the screen. John Brennan, Director Brennan from the Obama administration. And then I was working on election protection in the Trump administration. I have never seen anyone do more sophisticated and impressive work on election protection than the director and his team. And I didn't even witness it in person. I have disagreed with John Brennan on issues on which reasonable people can disagree on policy issues. And I have got to say, when we came in, when we took over in the Trump administration, we were given a gift by this man and his team, an incredibly detailed, thorough analysis of interference in our democracy. He's a patriot of the highest order for doing that. And we then continued to try to protect our elections, not because of Donald Trump, but despite Donald Trump. Let me give you a revelation here on air. In 2018, we knew that these countries that Director Brennan had told us were interfering in our democracy in 2016 were still interfering in our 2018 midterms. But you know what Donald Trump wanted to do? He didn't want to talk about Russian interference because it was helpful to him. He only wanted to talk about Chinese interference. He went in front of the UN General assembly and said China was interfering in our elections. And our agents and analysts were gobsmacked because we also knew so were the Russians. That's the type of president we had. He only wanted to protect against interference that would hurt him and not protect against interference that would help him. So the things you heard Chris Krebs say and his head of the DNI and his FBI chief and his CIA director, they did the good work to protect our elections in 2020, not because of Trump, but despite Donald Trump.
- [42:02]
Nicole Wallace
So, Miles, if he went out in 2018 and told a lie or cherry picked, which is, I think what Laura's describing is planned for Thursday night. How should Thursday night be covered?
- [42:13]
Miles Taylor
It should be covered as twice warmed over, as leftovers. I hope not, every, just every journalist, I hope every American flashes back to that episode I just mentioned In September of 2018, when Donald Trump went out there and he was ranting about Chinese interference. We had no indication that Chinese interference in our elections influenced votes. Did the Chinese try to interfere? Yeah, they did. We declassified it. That information is out there. They tried to meddle. The Iranians tried to meddle, the Russians tried to meddle. But importantly, we don't believe they changed votes or influenced our elections. He's gonna go back to the well on those claims from 2018 and just focus on one threat actor that was opposed to him to try to make this case again. But you know what I hope people see is this is a loser. This is an old man and a loser who cannot handle the fact that he lost an election fair and square. I think that's what's going to come through on Thursday rather than any breathtaking new information cuz I'm going to tell you, it is not there.
- [43:17]
Nicole Wallace
Why then, Miles, would he have not declassified that intelligence if he'd done it in 2018 and he was still the president from November to January 20th at the time?
- [43:28]
Miles Taylor
Well, I don't know. I wish I knew what he took with him down into the basement of Mar A Lago. And we would only know if they would let the results of that investigation be released. But you know what gives me heart, Nicole? We are eventually going to find out. We are eventually going to find out what this man took, the lies he's cooking up behind the scenes, because they cannot sweep it all under the rug. They're gonna try. They've tried to say the Presidential Records act doesn't apply to them. But you know what? You can't erase the people, the people who've witnessed it now, the people who witnessed it then we will eventually know. And in the meantime, we just need to keep heart. We need to keep attention to the foundations of our democracy. We need to push back against the lies publicly.
- [44:10]
Nicole Wallace
And we need to ask why Trump wouldn't just put Obama and Biden in charge of elections if those are the only good ones.
- [44:16]
Miles Taylor
Bring Brennan back. That's what I say. Bring Brennan back.
- [44:21]
Nicole Wallace
I mean, listen, I've covered Trump for 10 years. I would just say this. Anything is possible. Laura Baron Lopez, thank you for your reporting on this. Director John Brennan, thank you for your wisdom. Miles Taylor, thank you for all of your truths. After a break. Protesters are out today in Maine following reports of another deadly ICE involved shooting. We'll bring you the latest on that. Stay with. A deadly shooting at a Biddeford, Maine to tell you about this morning that according to police and elected officials involved ICE agents. He's being identified as a 26 year old man originally from Columbia. The office of the main attorney general says that the man allegedly drove, quote, in the direction of the officer as he tried to flee. But Senator Angus King and Congresswoman Shelley Pingree said they have learned little from federal agencies about the shooting and both believe that agents were not equipped with body cameras. Protesters have descended on Senator Susan Collins office in Biddeford demanding transparency and chanting ICE out. Now we're still learning more about this shooting, but it comes after a statewide surge in federal immigration enforcement began in January. We're going to stay on top of this story after the break. For us, a judge today recommending disciplinary action against Donald Trump's lawyers, including his acting attorney General Todd Blanche. We'll tell you about it next. Don't go anywhere.
- [45:55]
Alicia Menendez
Ever since I was young, I've watched people working hard, chasing opportunity, making sacrifices, doing everything they can to build a better life. And now we're shining a light on what matters most, our economy, our national identity, our democracy, our future. The stakes have never been higher. It's all on the line.
- [46:14]
Ms. Now Announcer
On the Line with Alicia Menendez, weekdays at 12pM Eastern on Ms. Now.