← The Briefing with Jen Psaki
The Briefing with Jen Psaki
'CHERRY PICKED': Former officials knock Trump's document dump
00:48:33
Jen Psaki talks with Michael Feinberg, former assistant special agent in charge with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Ken Dilanian, MS NOW justice and intelligence correspondent, and her fellow MS NOW host Chris Hayes about the facts and context behind Donald Trump's criticisms of U.S. election security.
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- [00:00]
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- [00:29]
Jen Psaki
You know that thing where you get an amazing pair of shoes at a really great price and want to tell everyone about it?
- [00:35]
Angie Hicks
Yeah.
- [00:35]
Sierra Miller
So do we.
- [00:36]
Jen Psaki
Here at Designer Shoe Warehouse. We'll give you something to brag about, like the latest styles from brands you love or the trends everyone's obsessing over or shoes that make you feel like, well, you. So go ahead, show off a little. Find shoes that get you and prices that get your budget. Head to your DSW store or dsw.com today. DSW. Let us surprise you. As all of you know, Donald Trump is about to deliver a primetime address. And normally this would be a moment where we would anticipate big news from the person who occupies the Oval Office about a war or a pandemic or an economic crisis. When you're in a White House, these are selective moments a president typically takes to speak to the American public. We are not in normal times, as you all know. And this speech is not going to be about this country, and it is not going to be about the American people and the challenges people face. In all likelihood, it will be about Donald Trump's obsession with his own election loss in 2020, about his refusal to give up on debunked conspiracy theories about that election, and about his efforts to make it harder to vote in the next election because he thinks his party can can't win on the merits. We all have seen that. And there's also reason for him, including today, to feel that way. A new Washington Post poll out today finds Trump's approval rating is hovering around a dismal 37%. Whew. And a Marquette University poll taken last month finds that voters prefer Democratic control of Congress by 8 points. We don't know exactly what the president will say in this speech, but we do know that at some point, he's expected to release some kind of declassified intelligence documents about the 2020 election. We do know that, and we're all gonna be waiting for that, and we're gonna be reviewing that as well. I would note that there has already been a declassified report released about exactly that. You can all read it, it's online, just Google it from 2021. We also know that Trump plans to surround himself with, with a hand picked group of people from his national security team, some of whom, and you can see them all on your screen right there. We talk about them on the regular. Have zero experience in intelligence matters, yet a number of them are advising him on what intelligence, raw intelligence, he may release. And we also know that ahead of the speech today, the White House hosted a group of about two dozen election deniers, people who have spent years bolstering his unsupported claims that the 2020 election was stolen. We discussed and we debated whether we would take even a minute of this speech because in the past he has used nearly every public speaking opportunity to spread lies and conspiracies. But we can't just pretend it isn't happening. It's like we can't pretend any day what he's doing isn't happening. We know that this speech will be showing up in the feeds of millions of people across the country. Many of them may be your friends and your neighbors. And we decided that just over 100 days from an election, it's important to confront what we are dealing with live and in real time. We may pull out of the speech at any moment and we are going to watch this with a group of experts who are prepared to combat the lies and dismantle the conspiracies right away. We're also going to speak with Senator Mark Warner, the ranking Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, and Senator Raphael Warnock. Because when Trump says something that is misleading Trump, or unethical or just plain false, we want to arm you with accurate information. Okay, well, we are, we're going to turn over to the president now.
- [04:17]
Donald Trump
Millions of people pouring in from all over the world, including criminals of all types and 11,888 murderers, many of whom killed more than one person. We had transgender for everybody. Many men and women, sports crime ravaging our cities. And the whole world was laughing at us as a nation. But not anymore. Two years ago, our country was dead. Now we are the hottest country anywhere in the world. America is respected like we have never been respected before. We have more money being invested in the United States than at any time in, in the history of our country. More Americans are working today than ever before. This week it was announced that inflation saw the largest monthly decline in more than six years. Just happened, was just given out. The media reported it and we accepted the best in six years. The tax cuts in our great big beautiful bill are saving hardworking families thousands and thousands of dollars. Like with the provisions, no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, and no tax on Social Security for our great seniors. Along with the interest deduction on a loan used to purchase a car, but only if that car is made in America and a 100% expensing for our job creating businesses. Our stock markets are at their highest point in, in many years, but we can actually say of all time. And your 401ks pensions and retirement accounts are setting records every single day, the highest in history. For years we paid the highest price for prescription drugs anywhere in the world. Now we pay the lowest price under my most favored nation's policy because I was able to get the rest of the world and the pharmaceutical companies to act responsibly. Drug prices are coming down by 70, 80 and 90%. Trumprx.gov, this will ultimately reduce the cost of health care. You have to go to trumprx.gov and take advantage of it. But the cost of health care is coming way down because of what we've done with prescription drugs and with Trump accounts. Every child in America now has access to a tax free investment account to save for their future. Billions and billions of dollars are being invested, put in by companies and individuals to take care of our children so that at age 18, they will have potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars in their account and they'll get off to a great start in life. So for that, go to TrumpAccounts.gov and sign up your child or any child you'd like to sign up. Our previously wide open borders have been transformed into the most secure borders in the history of our country. With zero illegal aliens being admitted to the United States in the past 14 months. That is zero. Nobody thought it was possible. We had the worst border in the history of our country and now we have the best. Crime is plummeting nationwide. With the murder rate at its lowest level since 1900 or more than 125 years ago. We're making a record investment in our armed forces and we have the strongest and most powerful military by far anywhere in the world. I built it during my first term and, and unfortunately we're forced to use it now. We won in Venezuela, which is now working with us to produce millions and millions of barrels of oil. We are likewise winning big in Iran and you will see the fruits of that labor very, very shortly. America is back and doing really well. But we still have a major challenge that must be urgently addressed because no country could be great without fair and honest elections. You have to trust your country, because if there can be no trust, there can be no greatness. And that's very simple. No trust, no greatness. For many years, I've called for bold, swift and decisive action to protect the integrity of America's elections. Every American deserves to know that when they cast their vote, that vote will be counted accurately in a system. And that is to make that system secure. One where cheating and interference are not just difficult, but virtually impossible. Unfortunately, the system we have today falls catastrophically short of that standard. Tonight I'm announcing the immediate declassification and release of critical intelligence, revealing shocking vulnerabilities in our election infrastructure. This evidence shows that the election system we have dangerously exposes and really exposes like levels never thought possible to hacking, exploitation and foreign interference. Just as disturbingly, this vital information has for many years been covered up and hidden from you, the American people, our beautiful, our great American people. But that all changes right now. The documents we will release starting tonight have been gathered by the White House Government Transparency Task Force, a great group of people, along with the staff of the President's Intelligence Advisory Board, supported by our top intelligence agency chiefs, who have all personally reviewed the findings we are presenting this evening and fully confirmed their authenticity. You can see these documents for yourself@WhiteHouse.gov that's WhiteHouse.gov. go check it out. Our purpose in disclosing this information is not to weaken confidence in election, but to earn that confidence by confronting vulnerabilities and correcting them very, very quickly. And that's what we're. The documents cover five major areas of concern. First, they show that over a period of years, Starting during the 2020 election cycle, the People's Republic of China carried out what is believed to be the largest compromise of election data in history, resulting in China's illicit acquisition of 220 million US voter files. That information includes names, addresses, phone numbers, political party preferences and other sensitive data that would be needed to register to vote and engage in other nefarious activities, which is exactly what was happening. This data loss presents an unprecedented election security nightmare. The intelligence even shows that China has signed a data exploitation unit specifically to this new project. Compounding the travesty, the second set of documents we are releasing reveals that members of the deep state, very, very famous group of people, many cases in our intelligence agency work to actively suppress and downplay information about the extent of China's sinister election meddling, covering it up from both the President and The American people, like nobody thought was possible. U.S. spy agencies began learning about the compromise of voter registration files in 2020 when they discovered that tens of millions of voter data. Think of that. Tens of millions of voters data in 18 states have been bought, stolen or hacked by China. Yet those responsible for sounding the alarm instead kept the information secret and hidden. They did not disclose to me as President or anyone else and to the best of our knowledge they did not inform Congress. In fact, all they kept saying is this is the most secure election in the history of our country. A standard, very pat line that was divvied out. To say the COVID up of this colossal security breach is even more disturbing in light of the additional information showing that China engaged in other election related activities to undermine my first administration in our 2020 campaign. They did not want and they just didn't want it. They fought like hell not to have it. Donald Trump to win. And for good reason. As the documents we are releasing show, CIA reporting explicitly stated, and I quote, in mid-2018, the Chinese Communist Party's policy was to leverage all domestic and foreign ele that were opposed to the US President in an effort to reduce the US President's votes and make him resign or prevent his reelection. Isn't that nice? Also in mid-2018, China was working to influence the results of the US midterm elections and later the results of the 2020 presidential election itself. Separately in mid-2019, the Chinese government's strategy against the United States was was focused on undermining domestic confidence in the US President. They wanted to just make you sound like your president wasn't so hot when actually your president has done a great job and they did everything possible to do exactly that. Going on this document says, and this is by the CIA. The strategy included efforts to use Chinese contacts with big U.S. companies to influence U.S. business leaders to turn against the President of the United States of America. The Chinese government sought to identify US journalists who had reported negatively on the US President and pay them large sums of money to write more negative articles about him. As many as they could and they didn't care what they said. The Chinese government wanted US President to lose the next election. And the reason they wanted me to lose is because they knew I was wise to them. Charged them billions and billions of dollars worth of tariffs and built the strongest military anywhere in the world. We have the strongest military anywhere in the world. These are exact quotes from the CIA reporting. The name of the person doing the quote is now under review. But it gets even worse. Raw intelligence obtained by the FBI in 2020, yet buried by rogue bureaucrats, stated that China's activities even included an attempt to manufacture illegal ballots for Joe Biden. Documents show that during this period, dozens of significant CIA and NSA reports about China's election targeting were kept out of the presidential briefing. These were briefings I would get almost every day. Everything was kept out that was of importance. One email among intelligence analysts admitted that they had, quote, deliberately massaged the presidential daily briefing to withhold information regarding Chinese activities related to the election. Another official inside the FBI wrote that she was running, quote, a shadow government, unquote, to keep intelligence about China's election meddling from becoming known and to keep it away from the honorable press. Other officials who witnessed such efforts perceive the motivations to be blatantly political. Recently we found significant numbers of burn bags in formation. And this is a group of bags that were used to destroy information given by President Barack Hussein Obama to be burned. It was supposed to be burned. These bags were supposed to be at a different level by different people, incinerated and checked, but it never happened. Maybe we got lucky. We believe this was not done on purpose, but rather through gross incompetence of the people that were supposed to burn the bag. But the findings are stunning. Today I'm asking the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Department of justice, the FBI, and the CIA to investigate how and why such crucial information was hidden, to fire those involved in the COVID up, and to file criminal charges, if appropriate, against these people. Yet concealing China's meddling was only the beginning. The third set of documents we are releasing proves that for many years, Americans were blatantly lied to about the security of our election infrastructure, including electronic voting machines and ballot counting systems. Dishonest, almost all. They're vulnerable and they're easily compromised. And people within our government knew that. Tonight we're publishing a series of previously classified US Intelligence community assessments and other
- [18:45]
Jen Psaki
reports proving that President Trump deliver a speech to the country where you heard him portray an intelligence community that he is portraying as hiding information from him. There is no evidence of that. We're going to talk with somebody who is actually working in the FBI about that. We're also going to talk to Kendelane about all of his reporting about the past year. I also just want to note because I noted this earlier, but the intelligence community under Trump during his first term put out a declassified report. And in it they said, we have no indications that any foreign actor attempted to alter any technical aspect of the voting process. Again, that's according to a declassified report on the 2020 election from back when John Ratcliffe was the Director of National Intelligence. Trump is talking in part, and I want to turn to you here, Michael. He's talking in large part here about raw intelligence. Intelligence. They can be tips, they can be just calls that come into the FBI. A lot of those are just thrown out, thousands of them, even on a daily basis. Explain to people watching who just heard him kind of portray a universe where the intelligence community is hiding information from him, how this actually works, why raw intelligence wouldn't be even presented to a candidate or put out publicly.
- [20:01]
Michael
Yeah, so the intelligence community collects easily hundreds of thousands of data points any given day. They collect it from human spies, they collect it from signals intelligence.
- [20:12]
Senator Raphael Warnock
They.
- [20:12]
Michael
They collect it from electronic signatures and environmental variables in any given geographic area. And a lot of what they get turns out not to be true. So if I call the CIA or I call the FBI with a tip, there is a record, a documentation of what I said, but that doesn't mean it's been verified, that doesn't mean it's been analyzed, and most importantly, that doesn't mean that it's true. So what we could be seeing happening here is essentially they take all the conspiracy theories that made their way to the intelligence community, were looked at, vetted, found wanting, and therefore jettisoned. And they're declassifying those, but potentially not declassifying the information that disproves it. And we're really at a point where because of the nature of the individuals heading these agencies, we can't take their words at face value anymore. And to the extent that he's alleging a deep state cover up, it's really important to note every single thing he is describing happened during his first administration. So if the intelligence community was against him, which I don't believe, having worked in it at the time, and if people were obfuscating what was actually going on, or selectively editing the President's daily brief, those were the people he picked and put into power. So unless he's gonna start blaming his own appointees instead of the career professionals who did their job like apolitical patriots every day of their careers, there's no reason we should take anything he's saying right now seriously.
- [21:58]
Jen Psaki
He also said something, and this struck you. I knew, Ken, when we were watching here together, about access to voter files. Now, I worked in politics long enough to know you can by voter files. That's what state parties do, and it works differently in every state. But talk to me about your reaction to that, because he made it seem, again, like it was a big conspiracy. And we're here to kind of break down all the BS around that 100%.
- [22:21]
Ken
And that goes to what he's trying to do here. He's creating this perception that there is this deep state conspiracy so that even if some of the things he said were true, they don't mean what he's saying they mean. And for example, this issue, he's told us that the Chinese have obtained 220 million US voter files in 18 states, either bought, stolen, or hacked. But as you just said, a lot of these voter rolls are available for download. They're not secret records. Just because you obtain a voter record doesn't mean that you've hacked into an election system or changed the result of an election or are in a position to commit voter fraud. What the Chinese are doing, as Michael knows, but probably can't talk about with this information, they for years have been gathering personal information on Americans. Remember, they hacked in the federal personnel database years ago. They've hacked into health insurance companies. They're doing that.
- [23:09]
Jen Psaki
The 2012 campaign, 100%.
- [23:11]
Ken
They're doing that not to change elections in the United States. They're doing that to compile a database so that they can identify American intelligence officers, so that they can target business people for exploitation, so that they can do the things that their intelligence agencies want to do. But as you just said, the intelligence community looked very hard at this, and they saw no evidence in 2020. And nothing Donald Trump said contradicts that, that China tried or did anything to change the result of an election in any state. What they did was they mounted an influence operation, as did Russia was trying to get Donald Trump elected, and Iran was disfavoring Trump and favoring Biden. China, this report said, was relatively neutral, may have leaned against Trump in some instances, but they've been doing that for years. They're doing that right now. That's not the same as changing votes or hacking into voting machines.
- [24:00]
Jen Psaki
This is also part of this speech is not happening in a vacuum. I think everybody watching knows that it's a part of ongoing efforts here to poke questions into our voting system, to put questions into how the systems have operated in the past. Walk through with us. I guess both of you could help us here. All of the other things that are happening, there's the SAVE act that he's trying to push through. There's the effort to seize voting machines, as he did in Fulton County. What else are you Seeing as a former law enforcement officer here in terms of what tools he's using.
- [24:34]
Michael
So the biggest thing that alarms me was a statement that Todd Blanche made some weeks ago in public, on the record, where he said he saw no problem with armed federal agents, in particular ice being at polling places. That is against the law. When I was carrying a badge and a guy. On behalf of the United States, we were warned every two years, do not display anything identifying yourself as a federal law enforcement agent, even when you go vote in your personal capacity. There is such a noxious history of law enforcement being used to suppress votes during the Reconstruction and Jim Crow eras that eventually a statute was enacted preventing us from being anywhere near a polling place. The fact that Todd Blanche misstated the law to the American public in an effort to allow armed agents to be at polling places is really alarming to me because aside from voter intimidation, I fail to see what legitimate purpose they could serve.
- [25:42]
Ken
Well, the other major thing that's going on is this massive FBI investigation that you referenced, where they seized the ballots and 600 boxes of voting records in Fulton County. And now, as I reported recently, Cash Patel has ordered a surge of FBI analysts to do records checks in this case. And he set a deadline of 17 July. We don't know why he set that deadline. We don't know exactly what these people are doing. There's been reporting that they're trying to do signature matching. It looks like they're on the hunt for anything they can say about fraud in that election. If one or two noncitizens voted in Georgia, but nobody thinks that there was meaningful fraud such that would change 12,000 votes. And that was the margin in that race. And Republicans in that state investigated this many times over, and they found no evidence of that. And yet here you have the FBI devoted to that. And to me, that's not really about 2020. That's not changing. That's about sowing doubt in American elections going forward. And that's what he's doing tonight.
- [26:40]
Jen Psaki
Certainly a big part of it. I just want to bring Chris in because Chris has been listening to this while we've all been talking about what we just heard. Chris, thank you for listening to it. First of all, what have you heard over the last, I guess, 10 minutes or so since we called out of that speech that's disturbing to you. What stuck out to you?
- [26:57]
Chris
Well, it got worse. I mean, in a little bit, it's a little bit like trying to argue with, like, a raving crazy person standing naked next to you. On the subway claiming they're Jesus Christ, that they're not actually Jesus Christ. Like, well, you know, Jesus Christ was born 2,000 years ago. You're standing like it's so off the table of what is plausible, rational. But one of the really insidious sections right after we got out is him basically saying, essentially, I'm paraphrasing here, that a whole bunch of foreign entities, Iran, China, I think North Korea have the ability, the capability of essentially a mass hack of the voter system to change overvotes. Now, my understanding is that that's just completely not true, that there is no assessment of that. I'm not an expert in cybersecurity, but what's insidious about that, right, is he's creating the rationale to claim a loss is the result of some hack, right? That's very clearly what this is about, right? So he's trying to undermine confidence in the system. He's trying to create some sense that there's vulnerabilities there so that in the future a loss he can say was the result of this nefarious foreign actor. And it's very clear that that's what that section of the speech is trying to do.
- [28:14]
Jen Psaki
No question. I mean, it is trying to lay the predicate for the future. It is trying to rewrite the past. They're all completely related. We got to take a quick break. We're going to keep monitoring. We're going to be back with expert analysis. We've got some fact checks to talk about. Stay with us.
- [28:33]
Angie Hicks
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- [28:50]
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- [29:18]
Donald Trump
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- [29:44]
Senator Mark Warner
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- [29:46]
Donald Trump
Visit textnow.com for terms and conditions.
- [29:54]
Jen Psaki
Joining me now is Virginia Democratic Senator and Vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Mark Warner. There are few people who know more about intelligence and threats to our election system than you. I'm grateful you could be here with us. Let me just start by asking you what you made of the president's speech tonight.
- [30:14]
Senator Mark Warner
Jen? Yeah, I'm not saying this is a Senate, I'm saying or a Democrat or whatever. As an American, I'm embarrassed. I'm embarrassed that the President of the United States tried to speak to the whole nation with a whole series of falsehoods, accusations, I believe aimed at trying to undermine America's confidence in our system and probably is a prelude because if we have a free and fair election in 2026, he and his allies will lose in a dramatic fashion. And this is not the normal back and forth. This is whether, you know, Franklin said, you got a republic if you can keep it. We're going to decide whether we can keep our republic. And if we simply blow this off as another Donald Trump rant, we do that at our own peril. The last 10 years plus, I've been either chairman or vice chairman of the Intelligence Committee, we have investigated all of these allegations. Virtually everything he talked about tonight we have reviewed in a bipartisan way. And if you take a half sentence, the notion of intelligence is you get thousands of inputs and then the intelligence community comes together and analyzes and decides what is true and not true. And Donald Trump ignored all of that. And the irony of this is most of the accusations he's making about 2018 and 2020, Donald Trump's appointees were in charge of the intelligence community. Why didn't they find any of this so called allegations? And then just the plain ignorance and factual misrepresentations. When he says, oh my gosh, countries get access to our voter files. You know what, you can buy these voter files. There's no need to hack. I buy the Virginia voter files on a regular basis. If you were going to be a statewide candidate, they are open to any entity. And the fact that you accumulate all these voter files, which in many states, if you pay the price of the public information that somehow leads to manipulation, is so completely false. I just implore my Republican friends, if they got any sense of dignity about our system, speak up and tell the truth. Because when you make these kind of accusations about China and he ignores, conveniently, Russia, you know, China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, every election cycle, try to influence our elections, they put out false information, they promote stories. Russia did it on behalf of Trump in 2020, Iran did it against Trump. North Korea just wanted to screw with the whole system. China, there are various accounts of what they wanted to do. They have plenty of potential to try to amplify false narratives. But these documents, he's claiming, we've seen them, and the conclusion of the intelligence community, the conclusion of the Trump intelligence community was no influence that changed any votes, no interference, no attempt to try to successfully change votes, hack systems.
- [33:35]
Jen Psaki
He was also briefed on this as well at the time.
- [33:38]
Senator Mark Warner
Matter of fact, he was briefed on January 7th. And the irony here, and I may be disrespectful, but John Radcliffe, his current CIA director, was the Director of National Intelligence. So this conclusion, bipartisan conclusion that most of this has been public, was signed off by his current CIA director. So is he going to be on this hit list of victims? We'll see. And the idea then that he put forward on the ability to hack. Every system has some ability to be hacked. And that's why our system was so smart, the founders were so smart to say keep it at the state level, the local level, so there is no national system. He has, since he's been reelected, has single handedly dismantled much of the election protection security system that candidly was set up during the first Trump administration. I give some of his people credit for that. He's dismantled the foreign influence malign influence center at the Director of National Intelligence, gotten rid of the FBI efforts, the NSA efforts. There was even an obscure group called the Elections Assistance Commission where you train people on how you upgrade your systems. We actually have an annual hackathon where people go in white hat and black hackers to try to, you know, see if they can hack a voting machine so they can then learn. He recently fired the Democratic members and forced the Republican member to resign. He's cut back on all the cybersecurity agency protections. One of the guys after the 2020 election said, safest election in American history. In 2020, he got fired for telling the truth. We are in such unprecedented, dangerous grounds that this has nothing to do with Democrat and Republican. This has to do with whether we want to maintain free and fair elections in our country.
- [35:29]
Jen Psaki
I wanted to ask you. And our team is going to let me know if we have this ready to play. But. Okay, let's play this for you. Because I think the big question here, Senator, is what happens from here? And what does he do from here? And near the end of this speech, he said something that I found to be probably one of the most alarming things he said. But I want to play it for you and talk about it.
- [35:51]
Donald Trump
My administration is in the process of notifying the states whose election data was compromised by the People's Republic of China and many others. We will be working closely to mitigate any harm. And we're taking swift action to ensure that sensitive voter data is better protected so we can never be bought, we can never be hacked, and we can never watch a stolen election again. Tomorrow, the Secretary of Homeland Security will hold a briefing to outline his department's recent work confirming cyber vulnerabilities in our electronic voting systems.
- [36:34]
Jen Psaki
I mean, Senator, when I hear mitigate any harm, I think of him going to Fulton county or sending the DNI to Fulton county, not their role. When I hear sensitive voter data is better protected, I hear. Sees it. We don't know what he's going to do. But what are you hearing through that and what can be done about it?
- [36:51]
Senator Mark Warner
What I'm hearing, what I'm hearing is a president that's flailing and failing. His policies are roundly rejected by Americans, frankly, of all political stripes. And if we as Americans don't push back and say, no, we're going to have a free and fair election, we're not going to turn the safety of our system uniquely has been the fact that we have a distributed system. I don't want to nerd out here. That cannot be compromised at a national level. And we have so much documented evidence of this administration's efforts to dismantle all the assistance to increase protections at an unprecedented level. And we have states like Idaho and others pushing back Republican states saying, don't try to nationalize these elections, which could be then compromised at a national level. And I think, I fear. And I've been, Jen, I've been on your program many times talking about this for the last nine or ten months. This guy will not win a free and fair election. So he will do anything to intervene to corrupt our elections, to try to, for example, with the so called SAVE act, which is a voter disenfranchisement law that would make Jim Crow look pale in comparison. You know, you bring all these things together and then you're going to have a Department of Homeland Security, check the voter files. Do you trust the same Department of Homeland Security that allows ICE to kill Americans? Documented or not? This is the time when we got to stand up and step up. This is not the normal back and forth. And I'm pretty, I am not only embarrassed, but if he is able to execute this without legal pushbacks, without, without the ability of fact checkers and please, I welcome everything I've said tonight to be fact checked. And I would also point forward that virtually every document he's talked about that I'm aware of, we have seen in a bipartisan fashion.
- [38:57]
Jen Psaki
And, and well, we're going to, Senator, we're going to talk to somebody.
- [39:00]
Senator Mark Warner
There is not, there's just, just the final thing is the conclusion was there was no vote changing. There was no manipulation. That was the case when and if this was so bad and awful and China was against him, then why did Donald Trump win in 2024 and why
- [39:17]
Jen Psaki
did he go there a couple months ago and be so soft to them? There's that question. Senator, I know you're going to look at these documents. We're going to talk, we're going to take a quick break. We're going to talk to somebody who's been pouring through.
- [39:27]
Senator Mark Warner
We've seen these documents, Jen.
- [39:29]
Jen Psaki
We've seen, yeah, you've seen them. That's important for people out there to know.
- [39:33]
Senator Mark Warner
We have seen them. There may have been a internal memo from one analyst to another and that's their job is to disagree. But we have seen the conclusions they have been made. They've been briefed to this president when he was still president on January 7, 2021. And the amount of disgraceful presentation he made tonight. This is a man who has lost the faith of the American people even as some of his hardest core supporters. And I fear he will do virtually anything to retain power.
- [40:08]
Jen Psaki
Senator Mark Warner, a pleasure as always. Thanks for talking to us and breaking it down. Stay with us. We'll be right back.
- [40:18]
Sierra Miller
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- [40:48]
Angie Hicks
hi, I'm Angie Hicks, co founder of Angie and one thing I've learned is that you buy a house but you make it a home. Because with every fix, update and, and renovation, it becomes a little more your own. So you need all your jobs done. Well. For nearly 30 years, Angie has helped millions of homeowners hire skilled pros for the projects that matter, from plumbing to electrical roof repair to deck upgrades. So leave it to the pros who will get your jobs done well, Angie, the one you trust to find the ones you trust, find a pro for your project@angie.com let's check in on the Serta counting sheep.
- [41:20]
Senator Mark Warner
Why aren't we counting anymore?
- [41:22]
Michael
Well, the all new SERTA Perfect sleeper has the Q4 support system that helps relieve aches and back pain.
- [41:27]
Senator Mark Warner
We'll never get Count it again.
- [41:30]
Donald Trump
Nope.
- [41:31]
Ken
Serta, we make the world's best mattress.
- [41:40]
Jen Psaki
Okay, I started the show telling you we were going to be here with the best experts breaking down conspiracies, debunking crazy things that come out of Donald Trump's mouth, and also fact checking whenever we can. So we're going to continue to do that because our colleague Ms. Now senior national security reporter David Rhode has been looking at these documents, the ones Mark Warner says he has already seen, because they saw them on the intelligence committee and talking to people about them. So David, let me bring you in. You've been talking to people about these. You've been looking at them. What have you found so far?
- [42:12]
David Rhode
I'm talking to current, sorry, excuse me, former officials and they recognize these documents also. They appear to be legitimate. They're massively redacted. So it's very hard to make any sense of them. What I'm looking at right now on my screen, it says sensitive government agency that's been like labeled at the. This is not on the original document. It's something that the Trump administration put on it. But the bottom line is they're heavily redacted. And I'm hearing from former officials that this is information that's been out there before. There's one case about reporting in Albany saying that China was creating fake driver's licenses. And the problem is that the source of this information was making up stories about COVID and that's why that was sort of withdrawn and not prosecuted. And essentially I have this former senior official who was involved in looking at different efforts to influence the elections is saying they've cherry picked pieces of intelligence and built a narrative around them without including the information that doesn't fit their narrative. And many of these other documents are just routine emails. There's several from an individual who complained that the. And I just want to back up, and this was said earlier, if any of this is true, the person biggest, who's. Who's in the most trouble here should be John Ratcliffe.
- [43:31]
Jen Psaki
President Trump, who oversaw the intelligence community at the time and wrote the reports. Oversaw the report.
- [43:38]
David Rhode
So during Donald Trump's first term, John Radcliffe allowed China to get $200 million voter records. Those voter records are public. Again, I'm hearing that there's one, you know, two senior officials I'm talking to. I want to describe them more who are like, this is all public. This all occurred under John Ratcliffe. And right here I have. This is the dissent that John Ratcliffe submitted in 2021 to the analysis that was done about foreign influence operations in 2020. And his only complaint in this document is that the effort by China to influence public opinion, you know, disinformation bots, that kind of thing is larger. He thought that the effort China made was larger than the main assessment. This was also made public that this should have been a bigger topic, that they made this effort. There is nothing in John Ratcliffe's dissent about votes being switched in any state by China. Nothing.
- [44:37]
Jen Psaki
In fact, in the 2020 report, they make clear that there were not votes changed. Right. The one that was his report. I just wanted to mention one thing that you just mentioned, which in case people, as people are following the story, is this conspiracy about driver's licenses. Because this was a Cash Patel favorite a year ago, this conspiracy that there were these Chinese driver's license or the Chinese were trying to give people fake driver's licenses and their theory was to vote. But really, I think, and Ken did some of the reporting on this. This was for people who were under the age of 21. And some of them, part of the.
- [45:09]
Ken
There were a couple of strands. So there were some, you know, drivers fake IDs seized and customs places and borders around the country. And the FBI report tried to link those with this information from this source that, as David said, was discredited. And those were actually driver's licenses meant for teenagers who were trying to get into bars.
- [45:29]
Jen Psaki
Yeah.
- [45:30]
Ken
And this report was withdrawn by very senior officials at the time because they deemed it not credible. And guess what? The Trump administration fired all the people who did that for that reason.
- [45:39]
Jen Psaki
It is. It is. We'll keep. We'll keep. We're going to keep at it. We are going to take a quick break. When we come back, I'm going to talk to Senator Rafael Warnock, certainly a man who is representing a state where Trump is always focused on pushing his conspiracy theories. We'll talk to him about that when we come back. Joining me now is Georgia Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock. Senator, thank you for being here with me tonight.
- [46:11]
Senator Raphael Warnock
Great to be with you.
- [46:12]
Jen Psaki
Let me start by asking you if you watched the speech, what you thought of the speech. What's your reaction?
- [46:18]
Senator Raphael Warnock
I saw a pretty desperate man talking tonight. Donald Trump is a failed president and his support is collapsing before his very eyes. He's seeing the same poll. He's seeing the same polls I'm seeing. And as you move across Georgia, you're hearing it from the people of Georgia. He came to my state, said that he would lower people's costs on day one. We're now nearly two years into his presidency and people are struggling. And he seems, he's clearly much more focused on his own power than making people's lives better. I spoke yesterday with the leader of one of our food banks and he's saying he's seeing unprecedented numbers of people, working people who are in line getting food for their families. Donald Trump doubled the premiums of some 1.2 million Georgians who are trying to afford health care. And so Georgians are getting poorer and poorer, sicker and sicker. And because of his corruption and self dealing, he and his family are getting richer and richer. And we intend to hold him accountable come November.
- [47:27]
Jen Psaki
I know one of the ways I think about your jobs is that you're holding people's hands and guiding people, both when you're preaching and also as a senator, somebody representing the constituents and the people of Georgia. And I know Trump's address came on the eve of the anniversary of Congressman John Lewis death, which I know you are certainly tracking. But for people watching, the civil rights icon passed away six years ago tomorrow, which is hard to believe. And you were at a roundtable today with faith leaders and political figures about who are talking about Congressman Lewis's legacy. One of the things you pointed out which really has stuck with me is that the Trump administration and the speech tonight is a really good example of this, is trying to weaponize despair. I thought that was such an apt description. Tell me what we do about that.
- [48:18]
Senator Raphael Warnock
Well, I mean, they're doing a lot of things right, but they are trying to convince us that they've already won. They're literally flooding the zone, as we've heard them say. They're weaponizing despair with the hope that people won't stand up. And so I'm calling on people. This is a moral moment in America and our children and our grandchildren are going to ask us, what were we doing when the President of the United States was behaving as an arsonist, literally setting fire to our democracy? Did we stand up? Did we raise our voices? I had the honor of being John Lewis pastor. I presided over his funeral. Sometimes we look at those wins and we talk as if those civil rights wins were inevitable. They were quite improbable. I think often about him crossing that bridge with brute force under the color of law. On the other side of that bridge, he kept walking, he kept pushing. And so that's what we've got to do in this moment in a smart and sophisticated way. We've got to keep walking, keep showing up. And I think, you know, Georgia saved the country in 2021. Donald Trump can't get over it. His feelings are deeply hurt. Even though he won in 2024 and come November, the American people are going to hold him accountable and his enablers in Congress are going to hold them accountable again.
- [49:37]
Jen Psaki
To that point, I mean, it's like he sends out Trump. That is an evil bat signal, I'm going to call it, where he starts to project things. And then you hear it from people like Senator Tommy T. Who told Newsmax today that we probably have four or five senators that didn't legally win. They shouldn't be. Here it is. How do we break the fever of that? Do we ignore it? Do we fact check it? Do we. What do we. How do we handle something as absurd as that?
- [50:07]
Senator Raphael Warnock
Tommy Tuberville ought to be ashamed of himself. You know, this is really embarrassing to watch. And this is somebody with whom I worked when I, when I could to get some things done for Georgia and Alabama. But, you know, as equally disheartening is the silence. We're hearing him say this kind of ridiculous thing. But you've got a whole range of Republican senators right now who know that this is nonsense that they heard the president spewing tonight. They know that he is setting fire on our democracy, and they are silent. Martin Luther King Jr. Said, Silence is betrayal, and they are betraying the grand experiment on the 250th anniversary of our country's founding. At some point, you ought to be more than a Democrat. You ought to be more than a Republican. How about show up as an American, as a patriot, and speak up as the president is sowing doubt in an election that he knows he's about to lose?
- [51:09]
Jen Psaki
I don't have much time left, unfortunately. I could talk to you forever, but what are you Are you worried the president's gonna go to Georgia next week where he's expected to come and sow more election doubt, do more things to scare people about participating in the process?
- [51:21]
Senator Raphael Warnock
Well, that's what he's been doing all along. I mean, he literally called my state and asked for 11,780 votes. Yeah, he's got a lot of nerve coming to Georgia next week. You know, we've got folks who were hoping he'd do something about affordability around housing. He wouldn't even bother to sign the bill. He's not doing anything for health care. He's not doing anything for people's costs. And he's coming next week to do a rally. How about show up and actually do something for the people who elected you?
- [51:49]
Jen Psaki
We wish he would. Senator Raphael Warnock, thank you for being here. Really appreciate it.
- [51:53]
Senator Raphael Warnock
Thank you.
- [51:54]
Jen Psaki
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.
- [52:03]
Angie Hicks
Hi, I'm Angie Hicks, co founder of Angie, and one thing I've learned is that you buy a house, but you make it a home. Because with every fix, update and renovation, it becomes a little more your own. So you need all your jobs done well. For nearly 30 years, Angie has helped millions of homeowners hire skilled pros for the projects that matter, from plumbing to electrical roof repair to deck upgrades. So leave it to the pros who will get your jobs done well, Angie, the one you trust to find the ones you trust. Find a pro for your project@angie.com.