← Deadline: White House
Deadline: White House
"Undermined by his own Justice Department"
00:41:31
August 5th, 2026; 5pm: Nicolle Wallace on how Donald Trump's outright refusal to admit that anything he had done for his Reflecting Pool renovation was wrong, or in this case what the pool contractor he hired had done wrong, is symptomatic of a much larger, more serious issue.
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Host/Announcer
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Nicole Wallace
One of the things was the reflecting
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Vaughn Hilliard
pool hasn't worked since 1922 because it always leaked.
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Tom Nichols
It always leaked from 1922.
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Vaughn Hilliard
You know, it's the largest, longest pool
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Nicole Wallace
ever and all that.
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Tom Nichols
The concept of is beautiful, but it
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Nicole Wallace
always leaked because of the size, because of maintenance, whatever.
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Vaughn Hilliard
Now we have photographs or tapes like moving cameras, right?
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Tom Nichols
We have them where people are on
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Ben Rhodes
the side cutting it with a box knife.
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Nicole Wallace
Hi again everybody. It's a guy who doesn't read a PDB but has a really intimate knowledge of the history of the Reflecting Pool, including things that are totally made up. It's five o' clock in the East. Donald Trump's nonsensical and still very dangerous response and utterances to his reflecting pool vandalism lies have been undermined by his own Justice Department and it is not a story to be ignored is insignificant. His outright refusal to be persuaded by facts and evidence and admit that anything Trump did was wrong, or in this case with the pool contractor he hired in a no bid contract had done, is symptomatic of a larger, more grave issue. Our friend Tom Nichols writes in the Atlantic this quote, it is a warning that the President has encased himself in the hard amber of irrationality that inevitably surrounds authoritarian leaders. He has become detached from reality and that detachment is extremely dangerous. On Friday, a remarkable rebuke of Trump's repeated lies about vandalism came in the form of a filing released by Trump ally and now U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, Jeanine Pirro. Pirro said the pool's holes were due to a botched job by the contractor, not vandalism. But since her findings went against what Trump wanted to hear, the former Fox News host soon found herself having to appear before Trump directly. On Monday evening, she went to the White House, box of evidence in hand, defending herself and going after Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, who had supported Trump's vandalism claims. The New York Times reports this quote. During the meeting Monday, Ms. Pirro, her voice raised at times, directly confronted Mr. Burgum, accusing him of misleading the President. She made the case that Burgum had promoted a self serving cover story to conceal his own missteps. An Oval Office battle royale over holes in the pool liner may seem frankly stupid and insignificant at a time when our country is dealing with a war and an economic calamity. But the ordeal is no joke. People's lives were seriously impacted by the lies told by Trump. The felony charge against former Olympian David Hearn held a potential 10 year prison sentence. Charges against him were dropped, as were the misdemeanor charges for three other individuals. One of those three, Sophie Dennison Gibbe, spoke to the Washington Post and said this quote Dennis and Gibbe said Trump's comments against her and others accusing accused of damaging the reflecting pool, including threatening jail time, made her feel sick. To be called out by the most powerful person in the world, the president of the United States, and called a sick, violent vandal when all I had done was pick up a piece of trash was awful, she said. The abuse of power on display here gets us back to that warning from Tom Nichols. More from his piece quote Trump has now passed from being a stubborn narcissist to a cocooned authoritarian. Political scientists Since World War II have studied the problem of irrational leaders, people in positions of power who seem unable to accept any version of reality that conflicts with their assumptions. Irrational in this sense does not mean stupid or incompetent or psychotic. It refers more specifically to leaders who have become so trapped by their own self regard, so isolated from the outside world, so imprisoned within their own sense of infallibility, that they refuse to consider any arguments or information that conflicts with their beliefs. Donald Trump transforming into a cocooned authoritarian is where we begin the hour with some of our favorite reporters from friends. Senior White House reporter Vaughn Hilliard's here. Also joining us, former deputy national security advisor to President Obama, now the co host of Pod, Save the World contributor Ben Rhodes is here and staff writer at the Atlantic, author of the piece we just read from. Tom Nichols is here. He's a professor emeritus of national Security affairs at the US Naval War College. Ben Rhodes, I thought of the show trials in Russia that we've covered, the manufacturing of evidence of drug paraphernalia, the showcasing of Americans in glass boxes and the knowledge that we all knew the criminality was manufactured. Trump knew that we knew the criminality was manufactured. But Americans were used as pawns for larger geopolitical trading. I guess, for lack of a better word. Do you think that America looks like that around the world?
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Tom Nichols
Yeah, I mean, you know, I've said this before with you, Nicole, but we have a tendency to sane wash Trump. I mean, maybe not on this show, but here in the United States. You know, we have to put him on some recognizable continuum of a Republican Democrat fight or, you know, a leader who's channeling the grievances of a set of people which he is, and therefore not see just clearly how completely upside down things are and how much he is, as Tom writes eloquently in his piece, he's very much an autocrat who's completely out of touch with reality and has to construct his own reality. That's clear as day to people around the world, many of whom have lived under such leaders or have in their history, such leaders. And I think a point I want to make that, you know, you emphasize there, Nicole, is Tom captures the extent to which in those passages Trump has to manufacture reality, that, you know, if he says that the pool was vandalized, someone must be, you know, prosecuted for that. But let's just not forget the fact that there are individual human beings that suffer sometimes greatly because Trump has to insist on a certain reality. So in this case, we just heard someone who had to have their life flashed before their eyes that they might be prosecuted and put in prison as a violent felon simply because they picked up a piece of trash. And even if they weren't prosecuted, I'm sure in addition to the strain of going through that ordeal, who knows what impact it had on their lives and their relationships. But let's, let's widen the lens on this, right? If you are a farmer whose livelihood is destroyed by tariffs because Donald Trump is insisting that tariffs work, he doesn't care. If you are an Iranian schoolgirl going to school in Manob, a bomb is going to get dropped on you because Donald Trump has convinced himself that it's going to be easy to remove the Iranian government. That's the reality that he insists was true when he went to war in Iran. And we can go on down the list. There are real human beings on the other end of his insistence on a reality that is not real. And it is enabled by people like Doug Burgum you mentioned. Doug Burgum is supposed to be a serious person, right? He was a business leader. You know, he was a kind of more, you know, traditional conservative Republican. But because he needs to stay in the good graces of Trump, he has to go along with the idea that, you know, people vandalize the reflecting pool instead of it just being an incompetent project run by a no bid contractor who is a crony of Trump's. Now, that too, is something we see in authoritarian systems, that the autocratic leader is surrounded by a cohort who will go along with saying that black is white, that up is down, that what is not true is True, because they want to stay in the good graces of a leader. That is something that we've seen time and again with authoritarians. Putin in Russia right now is only surrounded by sycophants who tell him everything he wants to hear, because if they don't, they might get pushed off a balcony or they're going to have to self exile to some other country. And so we do have the ingredients here of like an authoritarian system with a strongman leader. But we also have very real human consequences to these decisions, whether it's the reflecting pool or any of these other things that Trump is insisting are true that are not
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Nicole Wallace
Vaughn Hilliard, what was in the white box, the fact that
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Reporter (possibly Nicole or another correspondent)
Jeanine Pirro was bringing what she said was her own effective evidence to make her case in her own defense. And the form of a white box, I think is telling in itself because she understood the severity of Donald Trump's threats and ire with her. And when you're looking, I think, Nicole, at the fact that even Jeanine Pierce, somebody who has propagated a great many of his conspiracy theories in the past, even the Fox producer and the defamation lawsuit from Dominion Voting and smartmatic and records that were produced as evidence, a Fox producer said that she was somebody that parroted conspiracy theories. So the fact is that she's being targeted is, I think, a very clear indication of just how few people inside of this specific White House do tell the president that in fact, he is wrong. Because to Ben's point here, if you go back to the first term we were covering palace intrigue stories, tension, his frustration with chiefs of staff that doesn't exist at the same level like it did during the first administration. For the same reason why there was little internal drama in his 2024 presidential campaign. I reported in 2023 why people appreciated Susie Wiles as the effective campaign manager. It's because she didn't try to block access to Donald Trump. And I one of those moments that sticks out to me was back in 2023, days before he was charged on felony counts related to the Stormy Daniels Hutch money payments. I rode on his plane, the campaign plane back from a rally from Texas. And at that particular rally, he had his hand on his heart is video of the January 6th attack played during the national anthem. And when he got back onto that plane, the campaign brass, they cheered him on. One I remember one staffer holding up the thumbs up saying, great job, boss. And it was at that moment that I realized that there was no tension inside of that campaign much like we see at the White House today, because everybody that worked for him then, as they do now, understood what their responsibility was. And in so many ways, you saw the President respond to Jeanine Pirro this way, because, frankly, there is little evidence to suggest that anybody at the top echelons of this White House explicitly tell the President when he is, in fact, wrong and that his conspiracy theories are allowed to be given breath to believing them is true fact.
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Nicole Wallace
Tom Nichols, you accurately place this conversation in its real moment that we're not covering a narcissistic boob who thinks that January 6th was heroic, but a cocooned authoritarian. Explain.
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Ben Rhodes
Well, he's always been a narcissist. I don't think you need to be a psychiatrist to reach that conclusion. That's just who he is. But there comes a time in some kinds of regimes, authoritarian regimes, where the leader has become so isolated, so surrounded by people, the way Ben and Vaughn are talking about, so unwilling to tell him the truth, so capable of kind of snapping his fingers and making a reality like he did with the pool. It's one reason, by the way, that he's having such trouble with this war. He can't just snap his fingers and make the Iranians play the part that he wants them to play. But this is really dangerous because there is no one around him to say this isn't true or that's a bad idea, or maybe we should talk about this some more. He now has become completely wrapped up in his own power and surrounded by people that are just footmen rather than advisors. That is incredibly dangerous. Look, it's bad when it's the head of a corporation or the captain of a sports team, but when you're the President of the United States and you lose touch with reality this way, because you're simply cut off from anybody and anything that can contradict the reality that that movie that you watch inside your own head rather than what you see around you, that's just astonishingly dangerous. And we've seen it in other regimes. You've seen it in Latin American dictatorships. You know, we saw it in the old Soviet bloc. I mean, it's just who he is now. And, you know, his team has helped make him that way.
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Nicole Wallace
Ben Rhodes, you mentioned the human toll of this. I don't want to lose sight of that. The reflecting pool was an intentional lie told. It would appear with knowledge that it was a lie. And this is what the human experience of being carnage in Trump's lies, which I guess were in service of not humiliating him because he couldn't remodel the reflecting pool effectively. If I'm trying to follow what's public facing, this is from the Washington Post. Dennison Gibbe said she was, quote, publicly humiliated by the arrest and said that it took a toll on her health, on her business and on her as a parent. She said she feared that her 10 year old daughter would hear about her arrest. Quote, I wanted to protect her, Dennison Gibbie said, quote, I wouldn't have been able to tell her it was going to be okay. Though relieved that the charges were dropped, Dennison Gibbe said the experience has left her disheartened. The reality, she said, is that this is a symptom of a much bigger problem and people need to wake up and they need to do it fast. You know, we cover the capitulation of big law firms to Donald Trump every time there's any development. And Times had a big investigation on Paul Weiss, a firm that brands itself and recruits new bright lawyers based on its now seemingly completely inoperative reputation that it stands on the side of little people, the little guy in fights for justice. The consequence of everyone capitulating to Donald Trump is that people like this should have a dozen lawyers offering to defend them in what is clearly a sort of Stalin esque manufactured crime being drummed up by the highest echelons of power in the United States of America. And she's fortunate that Norm Isen took Hearn's case and I think other lawyers represented her as well. But the notion that this is one that we know about suggests to me that there are hundreds more that we don't.
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Tom Nichols
Yeah. And again, I think it's important to always consider, like, what is different about Trump. Right. There have been other presidents that I disagreed with, other presidents who've done things that were mistakes that cost lives. But this is a scenario in which he like, made a decision to do this reflecting pool with this sketchy, no bid contractor and it goes to pieces. And he basically instructs people apparently to go find culprits who are actually guilty of this and they have to be cast as violent vandals or left wing terrorists or something, knowing, right, that on some level, whether he believes himself or not, because, you know, Trump can probably convince himself of what he thinks is the reality. It almost is immaterial whether he believes it or not. That's different. Like this idea that, like, hey, we're gonna go find some people to punish to validate my theory of reality. Like that is just there have been other presidents that you disagreed with. I don't think that any president, certainly in my lifetime, would kind of intentionally be like, hey, we have to go find some people to punish for this thing so that my version of reality is true. Now, again, as Tom points out, like, that's not uncommon in global politics. It's not uncommon in history, but that's where we are. And to your point, Nicole, like, part of what is so disorienting about the second Trump term, we already talked about the fact that he's only got sycophants left. Nobody will tell him the truth. Nobody will stand up to him. Even Jeanine Pirro is only doing it because her own credibility would be completely shot if she tried to go in front of some jury and present evidence that doesn't exist. But at the same time, because there's such fear of Trump, there's been this domino of capitulation. Unlike in the first term, there are not law firms that are going to take on pro bono work to defend people that are being targeted by an authoritarian regime. There are less media organizations, let's be blunt, that are willing to cover the true nature of Donald Trump, and more media organizations that, for either their own bottom line or whatever other reason, are going to echo Trump's conspiracy theories. Like, there are these elements in American society. There's a sickness that has spread across American society of capitulation to power. I don't want to harm my bottom line. There are less cultural figures that are willing to speak up. Right? And so you have these conditions where you have an autocratic leader surrounded by sycophants. You have institutions that are failing. Not totally right. There's still media, it's independent. There's still some law firms, but. But enough that it's harder to hold him to account. And what concerns me, Nicole, is that the man in the high castle, like that castle, is just gonna get higher and more isolated. We're gonna get through this midterm election. He's gonna be a lame duck. Some of that staff will start to leave. That's not gonna change the character of the man in the high castle. If anything, I think he's likely to become more vindictive, more erratic, more isolated, more cut off, more willing to try to use the powers of the presidency to punish enemies, because he knows that that power is gonna go away in two years, in a few months. And that's what should be concerning people. We can't just look at a mark on the calendar of January 20, 2029, be like, oh, we're almost there, because things are going to get weirder and more dangerous between now and then.
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Nicole Wallace
Well, we're also not almost there. It's like almost three years away. Vaughn Hilliard, this is the best news of the day. We get to see you at the top of the hour, filling in for our colleague Ari on the Beat. We'll all be watching Ben and Tom. Stick around a little bit longer with me. Also ahead for US Exclusive, new reporting about the extremely poor conditions American sailors and Marines are facing on board the USS Lincoln, deployed for months now in support of Donald Trump's war with Iran. What military families are saying about the conditions their loved ones are forced to serve in that story. Later in the hour. Deadline White House continues after a quick break. Don't go anywhere.
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Host/Announcer
Now. You can watch Ali Velchi five nights a week in primetime on Ms. Now as he takes command of the 11th Hour.
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Congressman Jason Crow
The breaking news in the last hour,
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Host/Announcer
the 11th Hour with Ali Velshi, weeknights at 11:00pm Eastern on Ms. Now.
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Nicole Wallace
We're back with Ben and Tom. Tom, let me read more from your brilliant piece. You write Iran is a disaster, but Trump's irrationality could create other even more perilous situations. When the water systems in seven states were recently subjected to cyber attacks, Donald Trump blamed his fellow Americans despite evidence of foreign involvement. What if America suffers another mass terror attack and Trump decides that it, too is the work of disloyal Americans instead of foreigners? Will his underlings round people up based on such a delusion? Or perhaps Trump, if his party is beaten soundly in the midterms, will make up his mind that such a loss is impossible and call for invalidating the election's results. He he might even inspire his supporters to violence, as he did on January 6, 2021. Say more about what Ben is talking about. I think trauma, and I think Trump is sort of carrying out trauma on the country, even for people that voted for him because he lied to them and made the biggest fools out of the people who believed him when he promised no forever wars and economic relief. But talk about why it wasn't something that garnered roadblock coverage when he blamed the attacks on water systems, on Americans,
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Ben Rhodes
on Democrats, because sadly, unfortunately, we've all gotten used to him and we shouldn't. I mean, obviously, the people having this discussion here with you right now, we're pretty upset about it. But most of America has kind of learned to just tune him out. Most of the world really has learned to tune him out. And that means that we're not paying attention when the Most powerful man in the world says completely bonkers things because we just assume, and I think partly this is a normalcy bias, that we just assume that nothing could ever get that bad. We just assume that somebody's not gonna let him, you know, start arresting people for vandalizing the reflecting pool. Somebody's going to stop him from rounding people up if there's a terror attack, because, you know, we just, our minds can't get around that notion. And I think in part, Trump accomplished this early in his first term by just fire hosing us with so much lunacy that, you know, people got worn out and they just said, oh, there, you know, to take Ronald Reagan's famous phrase, well, there he goes again. But he's the President of the United States. What he says is policy. There is an entire army, a million people at his command, you know, millions of people working for him in the United States government at his command who will execute his wishes. So when he says these things, even if they are just kind of, you know, crazy pants rants, you have to listen to him. You have to take him seriously, because at some point he will try and put some of those things into action. And the point of my piece is that he's no longer rational. He can't process information. I mean, I think there are people that castigated me for saying, well, he's always been like this, why are you upset about it now? I think it's different. I think in the second term it's worse that in the first term there are people he would listen to or at least back down or that there would be arguments the way Vaughn talked about in the first segment. You don't see those now, that those just aren't happening. And I think he really has become unable to hear arguments that contradict him or process information that doesn't already fit into what he already believes. And a national leader, especially one top the most powerful country in the world with the codes to 1,500 strategic nuclear weapons in his pocket, that's a pretty damn dangerous thing.
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Nicole Wallace
Benrose. I don't think that people say, oh, there he goes again. I think that the first part of the project was making people believe there was nothing they could do. And that's why the capitulation of the universities and the media companies and the law firms matters so much. Because if they have no power, if they went in unbended knee, then what can an ordinary person do?
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Tom Nichols
Yeah, you are made to feel powerless. I mean, to continue the authoritarian theme, cynicism and apathy are two of the most powerful weapons of an autocrat. The cynicism, nothing really matters, or the apathy. You can't really do anything about it. And Trump has spent the better part of a decade engendering cynicism and apathy in Americans. And look, because you can think, well, how bad could it get? It's already bad. We are in a war with Iran that I don't think any American could really describe why we're there. Like, if this had been happening under past presidents, Congress would be stopping him from doing it. You know, but they're so beaten down and they've capitulated so fully, that kind of doesn't even occur to them to use their powers to say, like, we should not be spending tens and tens of billions of dollars on a war that nobody understands why we're doing it. That's creating global economic shortages. Right. Hundreds of thousands of people in this country have been deported and a number of them have been killed by essentially a paramilitary militia that is unaccountable, apparently, to judicial oversight. Like that's happening now. Right. And so I think it is this sense that people are beaten down. People are so used to Trump just kind of demonizing anybody who speaks out. He's brought people to heel. He's made an example of powerful law firms or powerful executives. He's clearly. I mean, it would have been shocking to us a decade ago if someone said, like, I will personally only approve the merger of major, major media organizations if their leaders are kind of sycophantic to me. Well, he's just doing that now, and everybody expects it. Right. And so this is part of what happens. You know, the frog boiling in water. The problem, as Tom points out, is, like, this can keep getting worse. I mean, he's been creating a pretext about, like, left wing terrorism for about a year now. Like, Marco Rubio's chaired summits about left wing terrorism. Stephen Miller has given, like, bloodthirsty speeches about it. You think they're not going to act on that? At some point, they're laying lots of pretexts for things that they could do. And I think that at a certain point, people are not going to be able to ignore this because I don't see Donald Trump going quietly into that good night.
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Nicole Wallace
I don't know. I think we could get him a job as a decorator, and I feel like he'd be happy tacking gold onto the walls. Penrose, thank you. I'm kidding. Of course. I agree with you. Thank you for spending time with us. Tom sticks around a little bit longer. When we come back, moldy showers, food shortages, and no soap. This is how we are treating sailors and Marines according to their families who are on board the USS Abraham Lincoln. Those family members now sounding the alarm about the poor conditions their loved ones are enduring months into combat operations with Iran. The reporter who broke that story joins us next. Now six months into Donald Trump's deeply unpopular war in Iran, which he promised would last weeks, we are hearing from the families of US Sailors and Marines. Those family members are outraged by the horrific conditions on board the USS Abraham Lincoln. They describe long work days, moldy showers, food shortages, and sailors running out of toothpaste, deodorant, and soap. They say their loved ones, our service members, are so exhausted after nine months at sea. See, fighting a war with no end in sight that they fear it could lead to deadly mistakes. Here's how one mom describes her own outrage and a condition she learned from her son over email.
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Military Family Member
Food, obviously, has been scarce. He talked. All he's really told me is there's a time where he was only eating half a cup of rice and two tortillas. The morale is bad. You're not being able to shower. They don't have toiletries. You know, they're having to share stuff. They're exhausted. Trump doesn't want the bad publicity. He knows that. You can't tell me he does not know what's going on over there. You cannot tell me that he does not know that they don't have food. He knows. He knows. Ptech said. Send Pete Hex death over there. Then you come tell us that everything is okay. Because what we're hearing from our children or our spouses or whomever is not
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Vaughn Hilliard
that
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Nicole Wallace
I want to bring into our coverage Pentagon reporter Priya Sridhar, who broke this story. She's also a former officer in the Navy. This is deeply disturbing. And I know you talked to more than a dozen family members. Take us through what you're reporting.
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Priya Sridhar
Yeah, that's right, Nicole. Well, There are about 5,000 sailors and marines who are on that aircraft carrier, the Lincoln. And they just broke a record that nobody in the Navy ever wants to break. And that's the most number of continuous days. At 6. They left San Diego, their home port, in November. They briefly stopped in Guam in December, and then they didn't make another port call until they went to Oman just a few weeks ago in early July. Many of these sailors and marines are working 12 to 14 hour shifts, and depending on their jobs, they're not getting A day off. And when you talk about the flight deck of an aircraft carrier, that's one of the most dangerous places in the military. Whether or not you're at war, you have these really fast paced aircraft that are launching and landing on that flight deck. You have bombs, munitions and weapons that are being moved around at a very fast pace. And you have these sailors and Marines that are being exposed to extremely loud noises for sustained periods of time that can really lead to long term injuries like hearing loss. So really what these families are telling me is that when you couple the exhaustion with the low morale, that's a result of the fact that they just learned that their deployment was extended for a second time. There are concerns that this could lead to accidents that could potentially turn deadly. And then on top of that, the conditions that you just talked about, they're telling me that the sailors and the Marines can't take hot showers, that the toilets are non operational, that for weeks at a time there are no access to working laundry facilities, and that they're having to stand in lines to get into the ship's store for one to two hours. And when they get there, there are no basic hygiene items like toothpaste, deodorant, or so really their frustration here is that they keep hearing from lawmakers and on the media these questions about our stockpiles of munitions and weapons and $67 billion that Secretary Hegseth is asking for, for the DoD and they want their loved ones to be part of this conversation as well.
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Nicole Wallace
Let me play Priya. Your interview with Bonnie York, whose stepson is on the USS Lincoln and who voted for Trump, maybe the government could have given us the information we needed
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Priya Sridhar
to understand what we're doing out there
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Nicole Wallace
and for our servicemen and women to say, okay, this is important, this is what we're doing this for. Everyone saying, well, they signed up for this. This is what it is. And I'm thinking, what are you talking about? They're going to be out there till they complete their mission. What? What are we completing? What have we completed? I'd like to know. I mean, this has been part of the political conversation that Marco Rubio and Donald Trump and J.D. vance and Pete Hegseth have failed to articulate an answer to that Trump voter, that military mom. But I think maybe some people thought that inside the military there was a better understanding. But to hear a mom say quote, what are we completing? Is really, really chilling.
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Priya Sridhar
Yeah, that's right, Nicole. I mean, all of these sailors and Marines know what they signed up for. They know that, you know, the military isn't, you know, they weren't going to go on a luxury cruise or something like that. They know they're at war. But I think what's really concerning to them is they want to have a clear mission. They want to complete that mission and they want there to be an end goal. And really none of the families feel like that has been clearly articulated to them. And they feel like there's just a lack of transparency with this administration about what the purpose of this war is and when they get to come home.
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Military Family Member
There's a lot of news to cover. Money, the economic fallout from the war, Is it temporary power?
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Nicole Wallace
Is this White House for sale?
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Host/Announcer
Politics?
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Priya Sridhar
What is your message to the country right now?
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Host/Announcer
Money, power, politics. With Stephanie rule, weekdays at 9am Eastern on Ms. Now.
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Nicole Wallace
Priya Sri La thank you so much. It's incredible reporting. Thank you for bringing it to us. I want to bring into our coverage Democratic Congressman Jason Crow of Colorado. He served three combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. He's a member of the House Armed Services and Intelligence Committees. Tom is still with us. Congressman, your thoughts?
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Congressman Jason Crow
Nicole, there's really two things, big things going on here. The first is Donald Trump's general disdain for anyone in public service, anyone who's committed to something bigger than themselves. And in particular for Donald Trump, our service members, who he has a particular disdain for, he's called him suckers and losers. He says he likes people who don't get caught, don't get captured by the enemy. This is a man who can't wrap his brain around the very notion that people would serve, they would sacrifice, they would give something beyond themselves. He cannot comprehend that thought. That's the first piece. The second is this is what happens when you stumble into or when you enter into. They didn't stumble into it. He chose this war without a plan. No plan, no strategy, no idea for how they were going to rotate ships through the region, how they were going to rotate aircraft carriers and fighter wings. There is no plan. And now we see the results of that. Our service members are suffering. We don't have adequate supplies to defend the airspace around our bases. The USS Abraham Lincoln, which is one of several large ships in the region, is now on its ninth month at sea. Five of those months have been engaged in five months of combat operations. And the strain on our service members and their families is just building week by week.
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Nicole Wallace
Congressman, there is a lack of basic hygiene being alleged by military families. There's also allegations of extreme exhaustion with a very high stakes mission. How Is it that there's no way to land a bipartisan congressional oversight operation on that aircraft carrier and immediately address those two seemingly grave crises?
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Congressman Jason Crow
Well, because House Republicans are too scared of Donald Trump to speak up and to criticize Pete Hegseth and this administration. Right. Every time we have a House Armed Services Committee hearing or intelligence hearing and we point these issues out, they come back and they accuse us of politicizing it.
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Vaughn Hilliard
Right.
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Congressman Jason Crow
There's not enough food. Oh, that's politics. There's not basic hygiene. Oh, we're playing politics. We're nine months into a rotation for an aircraft carrier way beyond how long it's supposed to be on station. Oh, we're playing politics. That's their M.O. that's what they do. We're going to continue to do it. But what we need is a few Republicans of character and courage to speak up and say, no, this is not a political issue. This is an objective national security issue, a health, welfare and fairness issue for our troops. But on top of it, you know, not only are they not doing their job and they're derelict and their duty, Pete Hegseth and others doing this job, but they're literally stealing money from pots of funding that Congress has allocated for wellness for our troops and their families. We allocated last year billions of dollars for construction of new barracks and new housing on our bases. This administration stole that money for Trump's border wall. We allocated money for tricare, funding for health care for our troops. And time and time again, they reprogram, they take money out of those pots that we put into welfare and quality of life for our troops and their families, and they allocate it to contingency operations for their endless war to border operations. So enough is enough. We are going to retake power in November. We're going to put some guardrails in place and we're going to start doing the right thing.
- [36:39]
Nicole Wallace
Yeah. I mean, Hegseth wants to shoot him in the bum with testosterone, but won't let them brush their teeth. Congressman, thank you. Keep us posted if you have any breakthroughs now that these family members are speaking out, we'll continue this conversation here on this program. I'll give Tom the last word on the other side. Quick break. We'll be right back. Tom, I imagine military families speak out with some sense of the risks of doing so. But let me just share some more reporting about how Donald Trump is treating military families in America from the Associated Press today, quote, more than 50 parents and spouses of active duty service members have been detained since Donald Trump took office a second time. At least six have been deported and one self deported. At least eight immediate family members of U.S. service members remain in federal immigration custody. Parents and spouses of people in the military have generally been shielded from deportation under bipartisan consensus for decades. Experts warn that the reversal could undermine military preparedness even as the United States is at war in Iran. It's hard to argue with Congressman Crow's assessment that Donald Trump despises the men and women of the military.
- [37:58]
Ben Rhodes
I've written many times that Trump, I think, really is uncomfortable around the military because he is uncomfortable with people of honor. He's uncomfortable around people who understand sacrifice. But the person that shouldn't escape accountability here is Pete Hegseth. While our service members are living this way, he's busy wanting to change the stationary at the Pentagon to the Department of War. And as you pointed out, you know, test are testing men for testosterone. I think Congress on behalf of the American people, needs to keep asking him what he thinks his job is as Secretary of Defense because whatever it is, he doesn't seem to be doing it. We're losing a war. You know, morale is bad. Our men and women out there are suffering. And, you know, he's putting out tiktoks of himself doing sloppy chin ups. And I think that's part of the problem that, you know, as long as he serves Donald Trump's ego, Trump is going to keep him there. And Trump himself doesn't really care about the military. And on these deportations, you know, again, we're all old enough to remember just a year ago when this was going to be the worst of the worst. Not, you know, anybody that happens to get caught in the bureaucratic machinery that has been created by this White House to meet quotas of people to kick out of the country. The whole thing from top to bottom is a disaster. And Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth are directly responsible for it.
- [39:36]
Nicole Wallace
Tom Nichols, your piece is going to be in the time capsule that people in 100 years come back and read when they try to understand the Times. Thank you for writing it. Thank you for spending the hour with us to talk about it. Quick break for us. We'll be right back. On the heels of that news that Jack Smith has accepted an invitation to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee next month, my conversation with former acting FBI Director Brian Driscoll, another public servant thrust into the spotlight by Donald Trump's insistence on weaponizing the FBI and the Department of Justice is particularly timely. Take a listen to what he told me. About Jack Smith.
- [40:20]
Vaughn Hilliard
Jack Smith has made heroic efforts and he is not what some people are calling him. He is. He's the man. Whatever he said about me, I could say 10 times more about him than in all the good ways. I can't say I'm a folk hero, but he deserves to be referred to and seen as a folk hero, if not an actual hero. Because the most common career path that I was exposed to for the prosecutors that I partnered with as, as the FBI DOJ relationship, which is nested a lot of real hard hitting prosecutors. They come out of, you know, sometimes an Ivy League institution like incredible students. You know, they'll do clerkship or they'll go to, you know, another law firm or whatever. They end up as prosecutor, a federal prosecutor. They serve for a few years and then they go to a white shoe firm, make a ton of money or. And then move up within the private sector or come back in a leadership position within the doj. Jack could have done that and he didn't. He served for 30 something years as a doer. That. That is rare. He worked his ass off and he did what he was told. And he never violated any of the laws or the rule of law or the ethics and morals that are required of him and people like us by the American people. Jack Smith is the man and he doesn't deserve what he's going through right now.
- [41:56]
Nicole Wallace
The entire conversation is out right now. You don't want to miss this one. Just scan the QR code on your screen to listen or download it wherever you get your podcast. As always, please let me know what you think of this one on bluesky or Instagram. One more break. We'll be right back. Thank you so much for letting us into your homes. We are grateful.
- [42:17]
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