← The Briefing with Jen Psaki
The Briefing with Jen Psaki
Buttigieg to Democrats: Picture life after Trump; Republicans already are
00:42:22
Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg talks with Jen Psaki about accountability for the abuses committed by members of the Trump administration but also thinking to the future after Trump and how Americans really feel about the issues Trump uses as divisive cultural wedges.
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- [00:00]
A
The new year brings new health goals and wealth goals. Protecting your identity is an important step. Your info is in endless places that could expose you to identity theft leading to lost funds. LifeLock monitors millions of data points per second. If your identity is stolen, our restoration specialists will fix it, guaranteed or your money back. Resolve to make identity, health and wealth part of your New year's goals. With LifeLock, save up to 40% your first year. Visit LifeLock.com SpecialOffer Terms Apply Close your eyes. Listen to Monday.com feel the sensation of an AI work platform so flexible and intuitive it feels like it was built just for you. Now open your eyes, go to Monday.com, start for free, and finally breathe.
- [00:45]
B
So much to get to tonight. I have sitting here right across the table from me, Secretary Mayor, I call them both, Pete Buttigieg. There's so many things to talk with him about. Few people whose perspective I would wanna hear more in this moment than his. We're gonna get to that in just a moment. There's a lot I've been thinking about today, and one of them is this. In politics, we spend a lot of time reading tea leaves, all sorts of tea leaves, trying to get a sense of which way the political winds may be blowing. And right now, no matter what tea leaves you look at, I mean, very unrelated tea leaves, the message is the same. Nobody likes what the Trump administration is doing right now. I mean, take for example, first lady Melania Trump's new movie. Melania, that's what it's called. The documentary about the first lady in the days leading up to her husband's second inauguration has had. It is a super sized, ginormous worldwide marketing campaign that has been put behind it. Amazon, which produced the film, has spent $35 million marketing the film. And just to give you a sense on how enormous that budget is, that is 10 times higher than the marketing budget of some of the biggest documentaries in the past decade. There are Melania movie billboards and bus ads and nationally broadcast commercials during NFL playoff games. The film was even advertised on the notoriously expensive Las Vegas sphere. You can see Melania covering the sphere in Las Vegas there, literally one of the most expensive advertising spaces in the world. And this morning, Melania rang the opening bell for the New York Stock Exchange to promote the film, as one does, I suppose, of documentaries. And of course, her husband used the bully pulpit of the White House and his social media accounts with more than 100 million followers to promote the film. Now, here's what he posted on Monday. Melania the movie is a must watch. Get your tickets today, selling out fast. And then there's a link to buy tickets literally in this thing at your local theater. But even with all that promotion, $35 million of ads, the sphere, the stock exchange, Trump aggressively encouraging more than 100 million of his Truth Social, 11 million Truth Social followers, 100 million followers overall to get their tickets today. It turns out it is not tilling out fast really at all. I mean, this weekend, trade groups are estimating the film will only sell somewhere between one and five million dollars worth of tickets in the US So if you're kind of, you have to be a mathematician here for a film Amazon paid Melania Trump $40 million for and then spent $35 million in addition promoting $75 million. That's how much they spent now in the UK one of the chief executives of one of the nation's biggest movie theater chains told the Guardian earlier this week that they had only sold 1, 1, 1 singular ticket for their premier screening of the film at the chain's flagship London branch. One in Australia, one of their largest chains has similarly only sold one again, one singular pre sale ticket so far. That's a total of two from those two locations. Even in Palm Beach, Florida, home to Trump's Mar a Lago Club, the Regal Cinema location in Palm beach has reportedly only sold 13% of the tickets for the opening weekend of Melania's film. Tomorrow. The film premieres at the Kennedy center, and on Friday it opens in 1700 theaters nationwide and another 1600 theaters globally. But again, contrary to what Trump says, those theaters do not appear to be selling out fast. In fact, it looks like not even the MAGA Die Hard crowd, the crowd that buys Trump sneakers, the gold ones, and Trump crypto, lots of it. And Trump branded bibles of all things, because clearly he's the best representative of that. It doesn't seem even like that crowd is going to go see this movie. According to Rolling Stone, even the people who worked on the film want nothing to do with it. They spoke to multiple anonymous sources, people who worked on the film, and here is what they found. Here's what one person said. Quote, One person familiar with the production estimated that some two thirds of the crew members who worked on the film in New York had requested not to have their names formally credited on the documentary. Two thirds. A separate person who will be credited on the film said that after experiencing the first year of Trump's second term, they now wish they had not put their name on it. I bet not now I'm much more alarmed than I was a year ago, that same person said. For good reason, of course. Donald Trump, he's become so toxic that even the people who worked on his own wife's movie cannot stomach associating themselves with him. In particular, the way that Trump's overfunded and out of control team of ICE agents have terrorized the city of Minneapolis. That seems to be a big driving force of people's disgust here, as we've all seen and covered extensively on this show, the fatal shootings of Renee Nicole Goode and Alex Preddy by ACE agents, and the way the Trump administration has smeared their names, refused to investigate the agents responsible, and instead of defended them largely, that news has broken out beyond just normal political spaces and brought politics really front and center in all sorts of non political spaces. And this to me is always a tell. I mean, take for instance the page on the website Reddit called R Catbongos. This is a real thing. Lots of people on this page, that subreddit bills itself as, quote, what? It sounds like a forum where people gather to watch cats being played like bongos. Who knew there was such a page? Now, we all know now for copyright reasons, we aren't going to play actual content from the page. And instead what you're seeing right now is our staff who have reenacted the kind of content you might see on that Reddit page with their own cats, just in case you're not on that particular Reddit page. Yes, I get to work with these people every day. A lot of them have cats and they're playing cat bongos. There's that. But that page gets 110,000 visitors a week. Okay, 110,000 cat bongos. Normally it is not particularly political, to state the obvious, but this weekend a moderator posted this quote, if you still support Trump ICE even slightly, you're not welcome in this sub. Meaning in this subreddit forum we are reaching a point where we can no longer tolerate the people who are supporting or making excuses for this or have them be a part of our lives. That is incredibly telling. Now, in another subreddit devoted to stained glass pictures of projects with anti ice messages like this amazing depiction of an ice cube in flames have been among the most popular this week. Post critical of ICE or critical of Alex Perdi's killing have gone viral in online communities devoted to things like biking and baseball and the Lord of the Rings. Yes, if you are a fan out there, people who are on page, the page that is dedicated primarily to Frodo Baggins, Gandalf and Gollum are talking about ICE raids right now, and they're disgusted by them. This moment has even brought politics front and center in the world of sports, a world where talking politics has typically been taboo because, as Michael Jordan once said, Republicans buy sneakers, too. It's also a world that Trump himself obsesses over because most of the most watched broadcasts are sports. And we have seen athlete after athlete come out to denounce with the shootings in Minneapolis to denounce what the Trump administration has been doing. Yesterday, one of the biggest stars in the NBA, one of the biggest, San Antonio spurs center Victoria Wembanyama came out of practice and said this to the press.
- [08:38]
C
PR has tried, but I'm not going.
- [08:39]
D
To sit here and give some politically correct.
- [08:41]
C
You know, I know. I mean, every day I wake up and see the news and I'm horrified. I think it's crazy that some people might make it seem like, or make it sound like it's acceptable. The murder of civilians is acceptable.
- [09:00]
B
You know, Victor Wamban Yama is one of the biggest stars in basketball, and he is not a frequent commentator about really anything other than basketball. That's the world of sports right now. Just rip, rip roaring mad. In the world of comedy, we're seeing something similar. I mean, do you remember how big of a deal it was when comedian, podcaster Andrew Schultz interviewed Trump in the lead up to the 2024 election? It was seen as Trump reaching through to a giant manosphere audience no one on the Democratic side could reach and just charming their pants off. You can see them all laughing and palling around there on that screen. That's from that interview. Since then, Schultz has been having, well, buyer's remorse. He's been upset with Trump's handling of the economy and foreign policy. He's been upset about Trump's handling of the Epstein files. But here's his episode from today. It is titled Minnesota Ice Killings is the Breaking Point. And here's what that episode is like.
- [09:58]
C
Let's talk about what happened in Minneapolis. ICE murdered an American citizen in cold blood, and then the Trump administration called him a domestic terrorist. Yeah, that's it.
- [10:08]
D
Yeah.
- [10:09]
C
Like, plain and simple. Yeah, I see the administration trying to spin it, and it's disgusting.
- [10:18]
B
This isn't just a moment about whether Democrats are getting an upper hand. It's not a story just about how people in one city are reacting. All across the country in all sorts of different, not typically political, facets of American life, people are extremely pissed off about what Donald Trump and his administration are doing. And those nonpolitical tea leaves also match what we are seeing from more traditional political metrics, like the tens of thousands of people who went out to protest in frigid, sub zero temperatures in Minneapolis last week. We just got word also that the next national no Kings protest will be on March 28th with a flagship event in Minneapolis. And we expect, I think we all expect the turnout to that to be unbelievable. Earlier this week, one of the groups that organizes those no Kings protests, Indivisible, held this virtual training session for how to interact with ICE officers. More than 200,000 people attended that. That's a pretty enormous number of people who want to have an understanding of that. Amazingly, we actually already have actual election results we can look at to get a sense of the country's temperature right now. Minnesota had two special elections yesterday, both for seats in the State House. In one race, the Democrat ran unopposed. And in both cases, districts were deep, deep blue. But check this out. Back in 2024, the Democrat in one of those districts won her race with more than 83% of the vote. And that feels, well, very hard to top. Yesterday, the Democratic candidate won that race with more than 95% of the vote. The other big traditional form of political tea leaf, I guess you could call it, is polling. And on that front, let me turn your attention to new polling out of none other than Fox News that came out just tonight. Fox News has Trump's overall approval rating underwater by 12 points. On the economy, he's underwater by 19 points. On foreign policy, underwater by 22 points. On health care, underwater by 23 points. On tariffs, his signature economic issue, he's underwater by 26 points. On inflation, he's underwater by 30 points. And when FOX News polling unit asked people whether ICE's effort to deport people, people who Fox referred to as, quote, illegal immigrants in their poll, when Fox asked if ICE was too aggressive, not aggressive enough, or about right, 59% of registered voters told Fox News that ICE was being too aggressive. Americans think ICE is too aggressive by an 18 point margin. As the co founder, I kid you not, of the organization Latinos for Trump warned earlier this week, it looks like the Trump administration's brutal immigration crackdown will cost Republicans the midterms. Though I would say there's a long way to go. But it's interesting she's predicting that, that no matter how you measure it, Trump is unpopular right now, deeply unpopular. And what makes the news we got out of Georgia today all the more concerning is because if Trump doesn't think he can win the old fashioned way of earning more votes. He will do everything he can to make himself look in some way like a winner. And the news we got today is that the FBI executed a search warrant at the Fulton County Elections office seeking records related to the 2020 election, which, of course, Trump still falsely claims he won. And somewhere in his little ego, or big ego and little insecurity, he needs to prove that. An FBI spokesperson confirmed to the Associated Press that today FBI agents loaded boxes containing ballots into trucks as part of the execution of that warrant. Now, we don't know everything about exactly what the FBI is doing here yet, but it's important to remember that this is coming as just days ago, Trump's Attorney General, Pam Bondi, demanded Minnesota turn its voter rolls over to the Trump administration, almost as a sort of ransom payment to get ice out of their state. Taken together, it's clear that Trump is actively trying to sow doubt in the security of our nation's elections. That's clear. He is dredging up old 2020 election conspiracies, maybe even using the FBI to give those conspiracies some form of credibility. That is terrifying, but it's also a sign that not only is Trump deeply unpopular right now, but he knows it. Joining me now to discuss all of this is Pete Buttigieg. He's, of course, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, and the former Secretary of Transportation. It's great to see you. Thank you for being here.
- [14:37]
E
Good to be with you.
- [14:37]
B
I just want to start. It feels like two things. Many things are true, but two big things are true at the same time. I mean, Trump's popularity has been dropping for some time. That can make him desperate at times. We've seen this movie before over the last 10 years. But he also is using his power or his bully pulpit to. There was an FBI raid today in Georgia. He has his attorney general. And this is not how it's supposed to work, but it's how it's working in this administration. Requesting voter rolls from Minnesota. It feels to me like these things are related. But what do you, how do you look at it?
- [15:13]
C
I think that's exactly right. Two things are happening. They're related. He's getting weaker and he's getting more dangerous. He's getting more dangerous because he's getting weaker. As he loses more and more favor and popularity among the American people, he's going to continue to try to make up for that using the machinery of government that he controls. But that's Perilous for him. It's certainly perilous for the whole country, but it's perilous for him because Americans are fed up. What used to be a Trump brand has become a Trump stink. That was starting to happen last year. A lot of Democrats won some of those 20, 25 November races because of it. But now you see it in the numbers. You see it in the way that Republicans are, in some cases, running for cover or running away from this administration. This is something, I think, in some ways, Democrats are having more trouble picturing than Republicans. Republicans are picturing life after Trump. And you see that in so many ways as they begin to put some distance between them and his administration, because they're picturing what they're going to be doing, how they're going to answer for their actions after he has exited the political stage. I think that's actually harder for Democrats to picture because we are understandably, so horrified by what's happening right now.
- [16:29]
B
I think you've been traveling around the country a lot. You've been doing smaller events, you've been doing larger events. And I know anecdotally, I hear this, and I imagine you hear this a lot, which is people saying, Donald Trump is going to do everything possible to steal our election. There's not even going to be an election. People have different iterations of that. I don't you want people to be eyes open, but you don't want people to be afraid of participating. What do you tell people?
- [16:52]
C
Yeah, we have to remember that elections are run close to home. They're run by our neighbors, often county officials, sometimes volunteers working together. And that process has a ton of integrity. Does this president respect the integrity of that press process? Of course he doesn't. But let's also remember, the ultimate backstop is the American people. Yes, we would hope it would be Congress. Certainly we look to the courts. But at the end of the day, any of those kinds of maneuvers cannot work if the American people stand unified against them. That's part of why what's happening right now is so important. The political pressure that is working in so many ways, changing outcomes, not on Election Day, later on, but right now, we saw some glimmers of it with Republicans defying Trump, a handful of them, of course, but a few of them defying him on the Epstein files. We saw it in Indiana, where, to my amazement, having gone there, you know, worked on it, held rallies to oppose the gerrymandering. I was still amazed when so many elected Republicans joined unified Democrats and said no to the direct demands of President Trump. We saw it in the vote on the tax credits for the aca, where you had, you know, I was just in western Wisconsin. We did a town hall in the district of Derek Van Orden, one of the MAGA congressmen who won't face his own constituents. He miraculously flipped at the very last minute and changed his vote, even though he's still for tearing down the Affordable Care act, changed his vote to be for the tax credits. And now you're seeing it in, you know, House and Senate members, Republicans saying, we gotta have hearings, we gotta have an investigation. To me, all of this is an indication that these people know they cannot outrun the will of the people. And that ultimately will be our best defense against anything that he tries to pull. As election day draws nearer this moment.
- [18:46]
B
I talked about a number of examples, not just subreddit groups on Katz, but many others where it feels like what people have watched in Minneapolis, obviously the killing of two innocent people, but also just having people pulled from their cars, children put in ice, detention facilities. All of the video we seen captured it feels different to me. I mean, you have seen it break through with sports in so many different ways. Does it feel different to you?
- [19:14]
C
I think so. I think something is turning in the United States of America right now, and it's because these actions aren't just wrong as viewed from a liberal or a conservative lens, they are wrong, period. And that's one of the reasons why I think there's a moment here for conservatives, for libertarians to be standing with progressives and moderates saying that things have to change. After all, some of the things that we have seen, you know, federal agents disarming a man and then shooting him and then lying about why, these are some of the things that come out of the fever dreams of Republican and conservative figures. When they were talking about why we can't have too strong of a federal government or why the second Amendment is so important to them. So this is, I think, an extraordinary moment for people of every different political persuasion to come together and show what it looks like to be a freedom loving country and also just as human beings. To think about the family of Alex Preddy, to think about all of the families of the people who have been impacted, those who have been killed, those who have been hurt. How can you not look at a five year old kid with a Spider man backpack, see what they were doing to him and his family, and not think to yourself, this is wrong?
- [20:32]
B
I was thinking about you. In the immediate aftermath of Alex Preddy's killing and the way that the administration was talking about him, I mean, this is a nurse who worked at a VA hospital. I know you probably know many people who were treated, lives saved at VA hospitals, and he was a VA nurse at 1. He spent his life helping people. And Kristi Noem called him a domestic terrorist. Stephen Miller called him. I just wonder what was going through your head as you were hearing them talk about him like that.
- [21:02]
C
We're talking about somebody who was a public servant, somebody who took care of veterans. And I think any of us who have been in or around an ICU because a loved one is in there knows what an ICU nurse does and knows how, just how incredibly important a role they play when people are at their most vulnerable. And that's what he was doing that day. You know, his very last act was to come to the defense of a woman who inexplicably was being pushed to the ground. Even while she was retreating, he was helping other people. And, you know, what we're seeing these federal agents do goes against everything that we expect of any kind of law enforcement, which is to protect and serve. That's the motto of law enforcement. They are supposed to be protecting people and making people. But when you see these kinds of images, you know, just today, an image of a woman on her porch opening the door while her home is being swarmed by about half a dozen agents wearing more weaponry and tactical gear than we used to take with us when we were going outside the wire in Afghanistan. There's just no way to look at that and think that that could possibly be making this country a better place.
- [22:16]
B
I know you've spent a lot of time thinking about J.D. vance, and he. After retweeting a tweet that Stephen Miller posted on the day of Alex Preddy's killing, calling him an assassin, he's been largely silent. I want to know what you think about it. We have to sneak in a very quick break, I'm hearing, but when you come back, we're going to talk about that. We'll be right back.
- [22:40]
A
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- [23:40]
E
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- [23:49]
C
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- [24:00]
B
We are back, as promised, with former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. Okay, so before the break and you had some time to think about the vice president, one of the things that's been striking to me, and I'm betting you, I mean, he's the vice president of the United States. He retweeted this post that, as I mentioned, Stephen Miller posted calling Alex Preddy an assassin. He's largely been silent. He posted something strange about during the Marco Rubio testimony today where he was critical of people questioning people. But he's largely been silent on this as people are out there observing this and so tuned in as we've been talking about. What do you hope they take away about who the vice president is in light of that?
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C
Well, you know, I think the Trump administration is so far on the back foot that you're seeing two things that are very rare, Donald Trump backing down and J.D. vance shutting up. When you see those two things happening at the same time, clearly something big is afoot. Look, he's somebody who is the vice president, someone who's repeatedly shown himself to be willing to say anything, do anything, and I think wants to be the heir to maga. But this is something that even he can't defend, at least not without knowing that it will undermine his chance of ever being taken seriously by anyone outside that bubble. So I think it is telling that he's gone uncharacteristically silent.
- [25:21]
B
Accountability is obviously a big question right now because you have these two ICE officers who are not. There's no real investigation of them at this point in time. Well, there are some in Minnesota, I should say, but not at a federal level. And there absolutely should be through the civil rights office. There's also events like this. ISIS is terrorizing communities across the Country. Kristi Noem still has a job. Stephen Miller traveled on the plane with Trump yesterday. I could go on. What do you think accountability should look like? Can look like?
- [25:53]
C
Well, one of the reasons why the corruption going on in this White House is not just an academic concern is that when you have that level of corruption, you don't have accountability. And all of our lives get worse. It is astonishing that someone like Kristi Noem still has her job. I still don't understand how she still has her job after she failed to approve search and rescue teams last summer in Texas while Texans were dying in the flooding that was going on, let alone what's going on right now. Of course, ultimate accountability lies with the president, who unleashed these forces not for the purpose of keeping the peace, but for the purpose of creating chaos and deflecting from his economic failures and other problems here at home. Now, Congress is supposed to hold people accountable. We're seeing more spine than usual from congressional Republicans. We'll see how it lasts. But ultimately, it's the American people who will have to hold all of these politicians, from the president on down, accountable for their choices, accountable for endangering lives in Minneapolis, accountable for their priorities. Passing this big budget bill that went through, taking money out of health care while shoveling it into tax cuts for billionaires. And massive funding increases for ice, making it better funded than the entire rest of law enforcement. If this is really about crime, you'd think that they wouldn't make ICE bigger than the FBI itself. But that's what's going on. It has clearly harmed the American people. And the ultimate accountability for that will come from the American people to the.
- [27:25]
B
Point of funding and leverage. I mean, you're not in Congress, maybe blissfully so, you haven't been. But you are a keen observer. And I think people really care about what you have to say about this sort of thing. I mean, there's a big debate right now, as you know, in Washington, over funding for dhs. The government could shut down in two days or have a partial shutdown. Today, Chuck Schumer outlined some Democratic demands. Ending roving patrols by ice, establishing a universal code of conduct around use of force, prohibiting officers from wearing masks and requiring that they wear body cameras. Are you sufficient? Do you think that's sufficient and enough, or what else do you think people in Washington who are in a position of elected office, even if they're in the minority, should be doing?
- [28:04]
C
Well, part of what strikes me is how reasonable these demands are. We're asking that people who are being sent onto American streets with powers of life and death, have to go to a judge and get a warrant, show their face, be properly trained. And I think it also speaks to something that Democrats and Americans understand, which is, look, we are a nation of laws. Of course we have a border. Of course we have immigration laws. And of course those laws have to be enforced. But this is not that. What ICE is doing is in no way part of any kind of reasonable, decent or safe immigration policy and has clearly nothing to do with law and order because of the level of disorder we have created and because of the illegal actions of ice. Or it's not just that they're doing a bad job, they're hurting people or they are doing too much in their law enforcement mission. It is that they are breaking the law, according to a judge who is deciding just how to deal with the fact that the director of ICE appears to be defying court orders and might.
- [29:10]
B
Face contempt proceedings, which is quite, quite something. And I expect accountability for all of these ICE officers and others is going to be on the top of the agenda if Democrats retake control of the House and maybe the Senate. We'll see. Before I let you go, I mean, we talk a lot on the show about how cruelty feels like it's the point. And that can be demoralizing at times. But we've seen in Minneapolis and so many parts of the country across Minnesota, Minnesota, that people have been rising to this moment and standing up for their neighbors. It's also tiring to do that, as you think about, and maybe you have this conversation, I'm sure you do, with people on the road, how to keep this fight going because there's a long way to November and what needs to happen, what do you tell people? What do you want people watching to know and understand?
- [29:53]
C
What I want people to understand is that you are not powerless. This White House does a lot to make you feel powerless. But it is clear that people speaking up, doing things that sound kind of old fashioned, like calling your member of Congress to a count or showing up in the streets, they are changing outcomes, not just later for election Day, but right now. The president backing down, the top commander of CBP being sideliness, sidelined Republican members of Congress starting to talk about hearings and investigations that didn't just happen. That didn't just happen on its own. And sadly, I don't think they just found a conscience all of a sudden. It happened because political pressure works. It works for winning elections, but it works before the elections even happen. And so we have got to keep it up. Of course it is tiring. Of course it is asking and demanding so much, so much time, so much energy and sadly, in the case of many protesters, more physical courage than should ever be asked of an American just exercising their First Amendment rights. But that's where we are. And if you think about what other generations of Americans went through in order to secure and establish the freedoms that it now falls to us to protect and expand, then we owe it to them. And even more than the past generations, we owe it to a future generation. We owe it to our kids generation to be there now in this decisive moment that I think history will record as make or break for whether this country remains a free and democratic nation.
- [31:22]
B
You are not powerless. It's a perfect place to end. And such a reminder that this is a moment people are going to tell their children and their grandchildren about. No question. Pete Buttigieg, thank you for being here with me.
- [31:32]
C
Thank you.
- [31:33]
B
Okay, up next, after news broke today that the FBI raided the election office in Fulton County. We've talked about this a little bit already. My next guest said from Minnesota to Georgia, on display to the whole world is a president and spiraling out of control. Georgia Senator John Ossoff is standing by and he joins me here at the table. When we come back, Try angel stuff for your tushy. It's made by angels soft and strong.
- [32:06]
C
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B
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- [32:25]
A
The new year brings new health goals and wealth goals. Protecting your identity is an important step. Your info is in endless places that could expose you to identity theft leading to lost funds. LifeLock monitors millions of data points per second. If your identity is stolen, our restoration specialists will fix it, guaranteed or your money back. Resolve to make identity, health and wealth part of your new year's goals with LifeLock. Save up to 40% your first year. Visit LifeLock.com Specialoffer terms apply.
- [32:55]
B
This is a Monday.com ad the same Monday.com helping people worldwide getting work done faster and better. The samemonday.com designed for every team and every industry. The samemonday.com with built in AI scaling your work from day one. The same Monday.com that your team will actually love using the samemonday.com with an easy and intuitive setup. Go to Monday.com and try it for free. Yes the same Monday.com. So last week the entire world watched as Donald Trump delivered a rambling and at times incoherent speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos. And there was something he said in the speech which is hitting a little different tonight.
- [33:45]
C
It was a rigged election. Everybody now knows that they found out people will soon be prosecuted for what they did. It's probably breaking news, but it should be. It was a rigged election.
- [34:00]
B
The speech was insane, and so there were a lot of other things to cover. But again, he said people will soon be prosecuted for what they did. That's probably breaking news. That's what he said. Two days after that speech, Trump's FBI director, Kash Patel, fired several field officers and senior agents, including the special agent in charge in Atlanta. And those things might not have seemed related at the time, but then this happened. This afternoon, the FBI executed a search at the Fulton County Elections office near Atlanta. And in response, Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff released this. I suspect today's raid is a continuation of this sore losers crusade, despite repeated audits and independent reviews confirming that Donald Trump was indeed defeated. From Minnesota to Georgia, on display to the whole world is a president spiraling out of control, wielding federal law enforcement as an unaccountable instrument of personal power and revenge. Very well said. Joining me now is Senator Jon Ossoff. So, a judge signed a warrant for this search, which, according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution, included all physical ballots from the 2020 general election in Fulton county, all tabulator tapes from every voting machine, all ballot images during the original count, and all of the voter rolls. That's what we know, according to reporting at this point. Why do you think I just gave. I mean, we all have our theories, but why do you think DOJ is doing this right now? Trump's DOJ is doing this right now.
- [35:22]
E
Jen, thank you for having me. And this is a seismic event. This should have people across the country absolutely shook. This is a huge deal. This is an FBI raid on the Fulton county elections office. His conspiracy theories about the 2020 election have been based in Georgia from the very start. Georgia is where he called the Secretary of State and said, find me the vote that he needed to win in a state he had lost. So much of the big lie that led to the January 6 sacking of the United States Capitol that had a mob seeking the speaker of the House and the vice president to lynch them originated in his lies about the state of Georgia. And here he has the FBI, which there are so many hardworking, diligent public servants in FBI field offices all across the country, but its headquarters now in the thrall of these political appointees, Cash, Patel and Bongino and this guy from Missouri in the deputy role, who are partisan political actors raiding this election office in Georgia, seizing all of this information, all of these records, taking it who knows where. Chain of custody now broken. And here's the thing. This is a shot across the bow at the midterm elections. He tried to steal power when he lost it in 2020. We have to be prepared for all kinds of schemes and shenanigans. We have to be prepared for him to try to deprive people of their voting rights in Georgia, where we have the most competitive United States Senate race in the country. And I am asking people to help me defend this election and voting rights in Georgia, to log on to electjohn.com, electjon.com and contribute to help us fight the good fight and make sure that the people can speak.
- [37:23]
B
Accountability will happen if there's a change in power, unquestionably. I just listed some of what we know. There's not a lot we know right now we know, but I listed all of the different information we know they took, which as to your point, is an enormous eye popping thing people should be very concerned about. Is there anything, you know that we don't know about who they're targeting? Not that this is legitimate or about what they're doing with this information. Anything else that hasn't been covered, we haven't covered or we haven't seen publicly at this point?
- [37:55]
E
No. But I suspect this is yet again, as we've seen across the country, these power ministries of our federal government, law enforcement agencies that in a free society and open society must be apolitical and disciplined about not getting drawn in to vendettas, to partisan vengeance and partisan efforts. He is wielding the American government as an instrument of personal revenge and personal power in a way completely unprecedented for the American presidency. And this, I think, is a continuation of that.
- [38:36]
B
I feel like we're going to learn more in the coming days. It's such an important story we'll continue to pay close attention to while I have you here. I mean, in two days there could be a government shutdown, a partial government shutdown. A big battle, which we've been covering a lot people are paying attention to, is over DHS funding. I mentioned this a little bit earlier, but today Minority Leader Chuck Schumer reportedly said the Democrats are united behind three reforms and roving patrols, tightening the rules on warrants, requiring ICE to coordinate with local authorities, a uniform code of conduct, no Mass body cameras on and agents carry their id. Do those go far enough or do you find them adequate? Are you supportive of them? And where do you think for people watching who are trying to understand what's happening in Washington, where do you think this goes from here over the next two days?
- [39:22]
E
Well, based upon what I'm hearing in Georgia, the outrage at the extraordinary misconduct and the lawless chaos we've seen in Minnesota is not just limited to to Democrats and people who are already minded to be in opposition to this administration. This is a freedom loving country. What is in our Bill of Rights? The rights to dissent and assemble and speak against the government, the sanctity of our bodies and homes against search and seizure without a warrant. And so when you have masked federal agents setting up police checkpoints and demanding papers from American citizens, detaining American citizens without cause, kicking down American citizens doors and raiding their homes and dragging them out into the snow with no warrant from a judge, that makes people upset all across the country of all political persuasions. It's like they are building the libertarian, the conservative's worst nightmare of a leviathan federal government that's totally unaccountable, that acts outside of the Constitution and a society in which individual rights are not protected. And that I think is why we're starting to see, to get to your question, that there are some Republicans in the Senate who are signaling that they recognize the need for some of these legislative reforms. Will they ultimately defy the president to help us enact them? We'll find out in the next few hours and days.
- [40:56]
B
We will learn soon. Senator Jon Ossoff, it's great to have you here as always. Thank you so much for being here. Okay, up next, no Kings is back and it might just be bigger than ever. That's what it's feeling like. The organizer behind this nationwide protest has an announcement to make and he joins me next. The no Kings Coalition, the organizers of last year's massive nonviolent protest just launched its Eyes on Ice training program. And the first training session drew more than 200,000 viewers. The group also just announced another nationwide no Kings protest on the horizon. Organizers are planning a flagship event in the twin cities on March 28th that was just announced. Joining me now is Ezra Levin. He's the co executive director of Indivisible, the grassroots group behind no Kings. Ezra, I was so excited to talk to you tonight for a million reasons and one of them is that you have been so close to the ground of the incredible movement we've seen across this country. You've been a part of harnessing it and helping people understand how to peacefully protest. And what we saw in Minneapolis and what we've seen across the country feels different. I mean, the number of people you just did a training for, I'm sure the number of people who have already reached out about this upcoming protest. Give us an assessment of how this moment, the reaction to the last several days in Minneapolis is feeling to you.
- [42:28]
D
It feels like hope, Jen. It feels like hope. Look, 82% of the American public saw Renee Good's murder on video. Millions of people saw Alex Brady's murder as well on video. And one reaction you could have to that is the reaction that this Trump regime wants you to have, which is to be scared, to be isolated, to stay at home. And instead, what we saw at the no Kings coalition training two days ago, 200,000 people signed up to learn how to do what Alex Preddy and what Renee Goode were doing, showing up in their community to exercise their First Amendment rights. People are not hiding. People are not being bullied into submission by this regime. What we saw in the Twin Cities is organized, nonviolent, insistent people power repelled the regime, bringing the full power of the federal government on to try to achieve its goal. And the people organized and pushed back. I feel hope. I feel hope right now. And what we're gonna see in no Kings 3 is something I've told you twice before. The largest protest in American history. It was true in no Kings 1. Then we beat that for no Kings 2. Largest protest in American history. I'm telling you here, no Kings 3 on March 28th is gonna be the largest protest in American history. Largest protest the Twin Cities has ever seen. It's gonna happen in because people around the country are fed up and they're gonna show up and they're gonna organize.
- [43:50]
B
We've also talked before just about the reaction. The more successful the organizing efforts are and the movement out there is, the more of the crackdown. And we've seen this week that Trump's FBI director announced that he had opened an investigation into the Signal Group chats that Minnesota residents are using to share information. What are you worried about what they're trying to do to crack down on these efforts to organize and train? And what do you tell people out there who are worried about it, too?
- [44:18]
D
Look, anybody who's paying attention has reason to be worried. I hear a lot of terms thrown out like, these are fearless organizers. No, these people understand the risk. And what they're demonstrating is courage. They understand the risk. But they are showing up anyway to protect their community, to protect their neighbors, to protect their democracy. Look, I wish I could sit here and tell you it's all okay. Don't worry about it. They're not serious. They are serious. And that's why we have to show up. But the best way to show up in this moment is together. To not be alone, to join in community. So what I hope people do in reaction to this escalation we're seeing in the Twin cities around the country is to go to nokings.org and join the February 5th training that we have coming up. Go to nokings.org and find your local no Kings protest. Or better yet, if there's not one in your town, wherever you are, good news. You get to be the historic organizer of no Kings 3 protest in your town. You get to tell your kids and your grandkids that on the 250th anniversary of the founding of this country, a country founded by repelling an authoritarian police force, you did your part and you get to do that in your community. That's how we protect ourselves and each other. And you know what? We've done it before. We're going to do it again. Jen, on March 28th.
- [45:36]
B
I know that. Ezra, thank you always for being here. We'll be right back. That does it for me tonight. You can catch the show Tuesday through Friday at 9pm Eastern on Ms. Now. And don't forget to follow the show on Blue sky, Instagram and TikTok.
- [45:53]
A
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