← The Briefing with Jen Psaki
The Briefing with Jen Psaki
Plummeting popularity sets Trump on a war against the truth
00:42:15
Jen Psaki looks at Donald Trump's poll numbers sinking to deeper depths as Trump grows more vocal about his intention to interfere in the upcoming midterm elections, and doubles down on his goal of making sure his own narrative is the only one people hear by cutting off access to reliable information about his administration.
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- [00:01]
VRBO Narrator
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- [00:29]
Jen Psaki
Department of Rejected Dreams. If you had a dream rejected, IKEA.
- [00:32]
Peggy Flanagan
Can make it possible.
- [00:33]
Miles Taylor
So I always dreamed of having a.
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Jen Psaki
Man cave, but the wife doesn't like it.
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Miles Taylor
What if I called it a woman cave?
- [00:40]
Jen Psaki
Okay, so let's not do that. But add some relaxing lighting and a comfy IKEA hofburg ottoman. And now it's a cozy retreat. Nice. A cozy retreat, man.
- [00:48]
Miles Taylor
Cozy retreat, sir.
- [00:51]
Marty Baron
Okay.
- [00:52]
Jen Psaki
Find your big dreams, small dreams, and cozy retreat dreams in store or online at ikea.us dream the possibilities. So much to get to tonight. Lots and lots and lots of news. And as I was watching today, I was thinking about the fact that if there was any question, any question at all from anywhere, from anyone, about whether or not American democracy is under threat right now. The President of the United States was asked just hours ago about his calls for an unconstitutional federal takeover of elections. He was also asked about whether or not he. He will accept the will of the voters in November. And see for yourself what he said.
- [01:32]
Donald Trump
We can't allow cheating in elections. Now if we need to put in federal controls as opposed to state controls, remember this, they're really an agent. They're really accumulating the votes for who wins an election. If they can't do it honestly and it can't be done properly and timely, they then something else has to happen.
- [01:51]
Miles Taylor
Will you trust the results of the.
- [01:53]
Marty Baron
Midterms if Republicans lose control of Congress?
- [01:55]
Donald Trump
I will. If the elections are honest.
- [01:59]
Jen Psaki
Trump is laying the groundwork. We all know this. We've all watched what he has been doing, and he has really upped his game in the last few days. He's laying the groundwork to undermine the validity of the midterm elections. Make absolutely no mistake about it. I mean, it's the same language he used in the lead up to the 2020 election, the same language he used to sow doubt in the outcome if he did not. And when he says. When you just heard him say if the elections are honest, he means if his party wins, that's what he means. And there's a simple and very obvious reason he's doing this, and it's because he's increasingly unpopular. He does not think he and his party can win on their own. And there's reason he thinks that, because a new Quinnipiac poll out today finds Trump's approval rating is now just 37. And that's three points down from where he was in that same poll just three weeks ago. On every single issue from the economy to immigration to foreign policy, Trump's approval rating continues to sink to new and deeper lows. And so Trump is doing what he has done his entire life. He is trying to lie and cheat his way out of it. He's denying that there is any way voters could reject the path that he and his party have put us on. And that's not just Trump's self delusion. It's an intentional strategy. And a crucial element of that strategy, a critical part of how he tries to lie his way out of unpopularity, is to try and make it so that his narrative is the only one. People here, that's his dream. That's what he wants to happen. And I don't just mean by being louder than his critics or by saying things that are more outlandish than his critics. Since taking office, Trump has done everything he can to cut off access to reliable information about his administration. He banned the Associated Press from the White House press pool. He killed all federal funding for public broadcasting. He shuttered the overseas offices of Voice of America News. He took control of the military news outlet Stars and Stripes. His minion over at the FCC has made mob like threats against broadcast networks that do any sort of critical coverage of his administration. He's threatened news organizations with lawsuits over their reporting, sometimes getting them to fork over millions of dollars that they could have spent on quality journalism. He's put new restrictions on Pentagon reporters, forcing the most legitimate press out of the building altogether and replaced them with right wing propagandists. And that's not to mention what he's done to the White House briefing room, which is make it Kremlin esque. His FBI has even taken the extreme step of raiding the home of a Washington Post reporter who happened to be very well sourced within the federal government that he's currently running. At every turn. He's tried to cut off the public's access to truth, to real fact based reporting about how he's running the country. What he desperately wants is for his warped version of the story to be the only thing out there unchallenged, unchecked, no one questioning it. And the thing is that all of the powerful people trying to get into his good graces know that, and many of them have been more than happy to help him do it. People like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg who allow disinformation to spread like wildfire on the social media platforms they control. Or the executives at abc, Disney who gave Trump millions to settle a BS lawsuit with ABC News and pulled late night comedian Jimmy Kimmel off the air before bowing to to public pressure to reverse the decision. Or billionaire father and son duo Larry and David Ellison, who took over CBS News, paid Trump millions to settle another BS lawsuit and then handed editorial control to a right wing apologist who had no experience running a major news organization and is somehow trying to run one of the most famous and most beloved news magazine shows in the country into the ground. They also canceled a beloved late night comedy show to silence comedian and Trump critic Stephen Colbert. And then there's this guy, the founder of Amazon and the fourth richest man in the world, Jeff Bezos. Now, in just the past week we've watched this man line the Trump family's pockets by spending $75 million on the Melania Trump documentary, which just asked Rotten Tomatoes is not doing so hot. Cozied up to Trump's secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth for a photo op at his spare. There you can see that weird thing on your screen. And that was all before today when Jeff Bezos decided to gut one of America's most storied newspapers, a paper that made its name holding powerful presidents accountable. The Post laid off more than 300 journalists and about 30% of its total workforce. And the cuts reportedly affected all departments of the paper. We're still learning all the people impacted. Among the sections hit hardest were the paper's sports desk, its international desk, and even its Metro desk. Its Metro desk is, of course, the desk where Washington Post legends Woodward and Bernstein broke the Watergate story wide open. Now, among the journalists who lost their jobs today were the Post Cairo bureau chief, along with the paper's entire roster of Middle east reporters and editors. The Post also laid off its Ukraine correspondent, Lizzie Johnson, while she was still overseas reporting from a war zone in sub zero temperatures. That's where she learned that she was going to be laid off. And in a particularly galling mood, even though those are all galling moves, the Post also laid off the tech reporter who covers Jeff Bezos Co. Amazon for the paper. And here's the thing. Anyone who tells you that this was all just about the bottom line is wrong. That's not true. I mean, back in 2013, when Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post, the purchase price was less than 1% of his total net worth. Since then, his net worth has skyrocketed by about 10 times, from $25 billion to an estimated $260 billion. That's what makes him the fourth richest man on the planet. And just to give you a sense of how his spending priorities have changed, just consider that the price he paid to acquire the Washington Post back then was about half of what he spent to construct his big luxury superyacht. Half. As the New York Times Peter Baker points out, Bezos would have only had to spend what he makes in a single week, one week, to keep the Washington Post paper operating as usual for five more years. That's it. That's how rich the guy is. And while today's cuts at the Post have been portrayed as a decision to address declining readership, it was decisions made by Bezos and his leadership team that helped put the paper on that path. I mean, after Jeff Bezos decided to cancel the Washington Post editorial board's tradition of endorsing presidential candidates, a quarter of a million readers canceled their subscriptions. That is a lot. Despite that reaction from readers, Bezos and his leadership team continued their apparent effort to appease Trump. They thought that was a good idea and worked out well. 250,000 subscribers. Let's continue on this path. I mean, a year ago, in what many see as an attempt to placate the Trump administration, Bezos overhauled the Post's editorial board, narrowing editorial coverage to just two topics, free markets and. And personal liberties. Which I will say in retrospect is kind of ironic. I mean, since our tariff loving, authoritarian president has done his level best to destroy both of those things. And then when the FBI raided the home of a Washington Post journalist, Bezos stayed conspicuously silent. But of course, none of that would ever be enough to stop the good journalists at the Washington Post from doing their jobs and angering Trump in the process if needed. Because that's what good journalists are supposed to do. I mean, I spent more than 20 years answering reporter questions on campaigns in the State Department and over years at the White House under two presidents. And sometimes they made me mad. And I knew that when Washington Post reporters like Karen DeYoung or David Ignatius called about a national security scoop, or when I learned that Jeff Stein had gotten his hands on yet another internal policy memo somehow during the Biden administration, or. Or when Michael Scheer had gotten wind of a campaign strategy detail or campaign ad My life was about to become harder because it was news we weren't ready to have out there yet. But the point is, they were and remain excellent, hard hitting, well sourced reporters. That is what they do. Their jobs were never to make my life easier or to make a president of either party feel good about himself. And it certainly was never to make billionaires more money either. It was to report information to all of you. It was to bring to light what was happening inside of government and to hold to account the people leading them. Adults who work in presidential administrations, even when they are being criticized, even when they're annoyed or don't want to pick up the phone, are supposed to understand that, and most of them do. Adults who take it upon themselves to buy legacy media institutions are supposed to understand that. Jeff Bezos used to understand that, or at least he pretended to. Here he was talking about the role of journalism at a code conference just back in 2016.
- [11:34]
Jeff Bezos
You don't want to create any kind of climate of fear or chill with respect to free speech norms. One thing that I think is not appropriate that Donald Trump is doing is, I think, working to freeze or chill the media that are examining him. You know, and it's just a fact that we live in a world where half the population on this planet, if you criticize your leader, there's a good chance you'll go to jail or worse. And we live in this amazing democracy with amazing freedom of speech. And a presidential candidate should embrace that. They should say, I'm running for president of the most important country in the world. I expect to be scrutinized. Please examine me. That's a very important cultural norm. And the cultural norms are. Without the cultural norms, the Constitution is just a piece of paper.
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Jen Psaki
I mean, that all sounds really good and wise. And that was just 10 years ago. Did he believe what he was saying there? Has he gone through some crazy evolution? I mean, those comments, clearly he has. Those comments came three years after Jeff Bezos had already purchased the Washington Post. A paper that already had a long and storied history of holding powerful presidents to account. The paper that broke the Watergate story that ultimately led to Richard Nixon's impeachment. The paper was among the first to connect the dots in the Iran Contra scandal that would forever tarnish Ronald Reagan's presidency. The paper that would go on to break major stories about Donald Trump, from his horrific comments on the Access Hollywood tape to his efforts to pressure Georgia's Secretary of State to find him votes and overturn an election. And those are Just some of the stories the Washington Post has broken and many they won awards for in the last several decades. Now Jeff Bezos appears willing to trample on the legacy of that storied American institution. And one of the people who contributed to that historic legacy was its longtime executive editor, Marty Barron. In the eight years Barron led the newsroom, the paper won 18 Pulitzer prizes and saw its readership nearly double. Today, Marty Barron issued a statement that I think sums up the mistakes made by the paper's owner. And it reads in part, quote, bezos sickening efforts to curry favor with President Trump have left an especially ugly stain of their own. This is a case study in near instant self inflicted brand destruction. It's quite a chilling statement. You should read the whole thing. We'll share it as well. But joining me now is Marty Baron. He is, of course, the legendary former executive editor of, of the Washington Post today. Thank you for being here. When I saw this news, there's really no one I wanted to speak to more and I think no one who's more important to hear from. Let me just start by asking you, and we'll share the totality of your statement. But today, in your statement on the mass layoffs you wrote, this ranks among the darkest days in the history of one of the world's greatest news organizations. And that is a chilling statement. I hope it wakes people up who aren't sure about the impact of this. But tell us more about what was going through your mind as you learned what was happening at the Post today.
- [15:11]
Marty Baron
Well, I thought back to when I joined the post in 2013. It was a great news organization then. It had faced many challenges, but we grew, we grew under the ownership of Jeff Bezos. He acquired the paper about a year after I had been there. And so he invested, he, he, he spoke on behalf of the mission of the Post. He spoke on behalf of the mission of the press in this country, as you just made clear. And so I felt that this announcement today represents a turn back. It suggests that this newspaper with a deep heritage and historically high ambitions is going to retreat. And it's a terrible thing to see a news organization that's been so important to the history of this country retreat the way that this newspaper is doing.
- [16:04]
Jen Psaki
I have so many things I want to ask you about, including the impact and the larger scope here. You mentioned Jeff Bezos and I tried to capture, as you said, what he said 10 years ago. And you and your statement captured how he was as somebody you worked with when you were the executive editor. He Also, I mean, back in 2021, you said. Also you told the New Yorker that when Bezos met with his staff, he said, cover me the way you cover anybody and cover Amazon the way you cover any other company. He's reiterated that on several occasions, and he hasn't interfered in any way whatsoever with our coverage. And that sounds great. I mean, this is a guy who's got a lot of money, who was giving money and helping fund a news organization. And today, one of the people who was laid off was the tech reporter who covered Amazon. And I just. I wonder those of us who are trying to understand what happened, this evolution of what happened to Jeff Bezos, or what is this evolution? What prompted it? How do you explain it?
- [17:00]
Marty Baron
Well, I think I explain it by saying the words Donald Trump. That's what happened, really. Trump came into office again. He had promised vengeance against his perceived political enemies. Jeff Bezos was seen as a political enemy by Donald Trump for one reason and one reason only, and that was the coverage of the Washington Post. We had been very aggressive in our coverage of Donald Trump, and I think for good reason, because he was abusing his power as president. And so we sought out to document that, and we did document that, and that's what a good news organization ought to do. That's why we have the free press in this country. So he feared reprisal, reprisal against Amazon, which is the source of his wealth. And he feared that the source, the object of his passion, which is Blue Origin, a private space company, would not get the government contracts that it needed.
- [17:51]
Peggy Flanagan
And.
- [17:51]
Marty Baron
And so he has sought to navigate this. This administration during the second term. And. And he's done a lot of things that you. You laid them out at the beginning in your introduction. All of the things that he's done, he's done. The problem is that by doing those things, he's driven away the loyal subscribers to the Washington Post, because this is a newspaper that has prided itself on its independence and the behavior of Jeff Bezos and has suggested to the readers that he is not independent at all. He's actually dependent. Dependent on Donald Trump.
- [18:26]
Jen Psaki
I mentioned the 250,000 subscribers that unsubscribed after the decision not to move forward with an endorsement. I talked about this a little bit, but I wonder how. I mean, this is all happening with a backdrop of a lot of other threats to our democracy. And this is one of the things journalists cover, including Donald Trump, talking about federal takeovers of elections, the FBI, FBI going to raid an election office, all Things there are a lot of questions about and a lot of concerns about out there for good reason. And now, of course, as we've been talking about one of our great journalistic institutions, one of the first papers I still have been reading has been gutted. Do you think the news business writ large is up for the challenge of what is coming over the next couple of years? I should say what is continuing to come?
- [19:16]
Marty Baron
Well, I'm concerned. I mean, I think the Washington Post has continued to do a really good job of covering this administration, of holding it to account. I mean, just the other day they had a terrific story on administrative subpoenas that are sought to get the personal data online, data for people who have objected to this administration's policies. It was a chilling story, a very important story and a high impact story. I am concerned about our ability to endure this administration. We're only one year into it. We have three more years to go. And the most recent behavior of the administration has suggested that they will put no limits on their aggressions against the an independent press. You cited in your introduction the raid on the home of Hannah Nathanson, one of the reporters for the Washington Post. They seized all of her electronic devices and they've extracted information from those devices. So and then more recently, of course, we've seen the arrest of Don Lemon, Georgia Fort for covering a protest. We have not seen the use of federal law in that, in that way to arrest reporters who are covering the news. And look back in 2022, Trump spoke about his desire to put reporters who received national security information, his desire to put them in prison. He said that when they were in prison, they would meet their bride, as he put it, which meant that they would be raped and then they would be willing to reveal the names of their sources.
- [20:47]
Jen Psaki
It is, we've crossed a tremendous line. Marty Baron, we have to sneak in a very quick break. First, I just want to play you something from a new interview with JD Vance when he was asked about the killing of Alex Preddy in Minneapolis. Just watch this. And we're going to talk about it on the other side. But why don't we play it first?
- [21:05]
Miles Taylor
Did you plan to apologize to the.
- [21:06]
Marty Baron
Family of Alex Peretti?
- [21:08]
Miles Taylor
For what? For, you know, labeling him an assassin with ill intent. Well, again, describe to you what I said about Alex Preddy, which is that he's a guy who showed up with ill intent to an ICE protest.
- [21:20]
Jen Psaki
I think I will just say that reporter goes on and pushes back and pushes back, and that's what journalism is for. But I think that moment was awfully revealing for a number of reasons. Again, we have to take a quick break. We're going to talk about it when we come back.
- [21:37]
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- [22:20]
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- [23:00]
Jen Psaki
We're back with the former executive editor of the Washington Post, Marty Baron. I played that clip before the break because it to me, I mean, there were lies during the Trump administration, the first Trump administration, certainly ones that were covered very closely by the Washington Post and many other outlets. It does feel different now to me, and I think the last couple of weeks, especially what has been said and what has come out of the administration as it relates to Minnesota, from people, everybody from President Trump to the vice president, even saying they're de escalating and then not moving anybody out, how they're describing two American citizens who were killed. It feels like a particularly challenging time to be a journalist, and you've mentored so many. I was wondering kind of what your advice is for up and coming journalists, for people in the media, for anybody really consuming the news about this kind of thing. How should they be dealing with it right now?
- [23:57]
Marty Baron
Well, it's true. Lying really is endemic to this administration. The good thing now is that you can see that they're lying because people are the streets, people are taking their own videos and they contradict what the administration is saying. And regardless of your ideology, you can see very plainly based on not just one video, but multiple videos from different angles, what actually transpired. And you can see clearly that what the administration says is not clear, is not. Is not accurate. And so as for reporters, look, I mean, we just have to keep telling. We have to keep telling the truth. We have to provide a lot of documentary evidence, collect the videos. Fortunately, right now, in a lot of news organizations, they have these forensic video teams, the Post does, the New York Times does, and they collect a lot of these videos and they can demonstrate what actually did happen on the ground. And so we need to build up those teams. We need to use them more regularly. We always need to tell the truth and explain what the facts are.
- [24:59]
Jen Psaki
Before our conversation, I listed a number of reporters, correspondents and editors who were laid off today. You probably know many of them and many I didn't even mention that we are still learning about. Sometimes to me, it's. You don't know what the impact is of the things that are lost. But you of all people know, as you look at the totality of the news cycle, what do you worry that is going to be missed by these journalists and reporters being cut from the Washington Post and others that may come?
- [25:28]
Marty Baron
Well, I think a tremendous amount is gonna be missed. I mean, when you just start with foreign coverage, look, hardly anybody's gonna be left in the Middle east, from what I can tell. That's crazy. I mean, when you look at this administration's policies, at the top of the agenda is what's happening around the world, what's happening in Venezuela, what's happening in the Middle east, what's happening in Ukraine fracture, the fractures with NATO, all of that. I mean, these are really, really important stories. And we need people on the ground to tell these stories. The same is true. Just take sports. I mean, certainly people are really interested in what's happening with their teams. But the Post also has a tremendous investigative reporters for covering sports and. And that is an area that has a tremendous amount of money. There's a lot of corruption, and somebody needs to cover that. And the Post has done an exceptional job of that. They're not going to cover the arts the way that they covered it before. That's tremendously important. And then there's their own community. And I think it's important to remember that in Washington, look who covered the riots of January six. It was the local staff of the Washington Post. A lot of what happens in Washington is news of national significance. And not only do they have to cover the District of Columbia, but they have to cover Virginia and Maryland as well. How do you do that with so few people I don't even know? So I think a tremendous amount is going to be lost as they essentially engage in a retreat here.
- [26:50]
Jen Psaki
Marty Baron, I'm so grateful that you could take the time tonight to speak with us. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much for joining us.
- [26:59]
Marty Baron
Thank you. Thanks for your interest.
- [27:02]
Jen Psaki
Okay, up next, Donald Trump was asked in that interview, part of which we played, that just aired on NBC, why has his director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, why she was at the FBI raid of an election office in Georgia. And you're really, you're just going to have to hear his answer to believe it. Miles Taylor worked in the first Trump administration. He literally wrote one of the executive orders they are using as a bogus justification for this insanity. So we're going to talk to him all about that. You're going to want to listen to what he has to say. We'll be right back.
- [27:38]
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- [28:56]
Jen Psaki
Okay, I have some good news for you. Donald Trump's plan to gerrymander his way to Republican dominance in the midterms has hit yet another roadblock. Today, the Supreme Court rejected a Republican effort to block California's newly redistricted congressional map. And that map, of course, was put forward as a counterbalance to the redistricted congressional map Texas Republicans pushed through last August, the crown, jewel, of course, of Trump's gerrymandering plan. Now the Texas map gives Republicans Five more seats. The California map gives Democrats five more seats. Well, there's still plenty of movement around, redistricting in both directions all around the country. The Texas, California stalemate pours a whole lot of cold water on Trump's hope of winning elections by just skewing congressional maps in his favor. So Trump appears to be turning to a new plan. And let me show you what I mean. This was Trump in an interview with NBC Nightly News earlier tonight explaining why his Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, was at the Fulton County, Georgia election offices last week personally. While the FBI was of course, seizing ballots and voting records.
- [30:02]
Donald Trump
They are inspecting and checking the ballot.
- [30:04]
Miles Taylor
Why is Tulsi Gabbard there?
- [30:06]
Donald Trump
I don't know. But you know, a lot of the cheating comes from it's international cheating. Let me ask you this. If China or any of these countries are involved in our elections, that would bring her into it. There should be nothing wrong with the fact that they went in, got ballots from a while ago, and they're going to look at it and now they're going to find out the true winner of that state. And you know what, if there was cheating, which there was, but if there was cheating, it should be fraud, because we can't let it happen again.
- [30:38]
Jen Psaki
Just to be absolutely clear here, there was no evidence of fraud in Fulton county or anywhere in the 2020 election. But this is clearly Trump's new plan. Have Tulsi Gabbard seize ballots and claim fraud to justify changing how our elections are run to benefit Trump. But this new plan appears to have already hit a snag. You see, to justify why the Director of National Intelligence would be doing anything like seizing ballots at all. This week, Tulsi Gabbard sent a letter to Congress citing a bunch of specific statutes and executive orders claiming they gave her the authority to do what she is doing. But the co author of one of those orders, executive order 13848, is calling BS. He not only says that order explicitly does not give Gabbard those powers, but he says that what Gabbard put in that letter to justify her actions could be turned around and used against her. He says she essentially just handed Congress a roadmap into how to investigate what she is doing here. Oopsie daisy there, Dulce Gabbard. Joining me now is the person who wrote that, Miles Taylor, former Chief of Staff for the Department of Homeland Security, co founder of defiance.org and of course, as I mentioned, the co author of the executive order, Tulsi Gabbard is claiming gives her the authority to seize ballots. Okay, let's start. But can you just. Let's start by helping everybody out there understand the executive order that you wrote that Gabbard is citing here, what does it actually say, and what was it? What was its intent?
- [32:08]
Miles Taylor
Well, all right, let's go back in time, Jen. 2018 is when we put this executive order in front of the President. And the reason we did is we wanted the president to say to foreign adversaries, if you meddle in our elections, there will be consequences. So what this executive order does is it gives the president the ability to sanction foreign countries that meddle in our elections. You may be asking, what does that have to do with the Director of National Intelligence? Well, there's one little tiny role for the Director of National Intelligence in this executive order to write a report. The order gives the director the authority to write a report 45 days after an election to say whether or not a foreign country interfered. And then it's over to the president and the State Department and other agencies to decide whether to issue sanctions. It says nothing about letting the director go rummage around in ballot boxes. And I would also note that we are not 45 days after the 2020 election. We are more than five years later. Yet they are citing this order in part as one of the reasons Tulsi Gabbard was down there.
- [33:10]
Jen Psaki
And they're trying to follow the same model. I mean, Caroline Levitt said she's gonna write this report, and essentially we're gonna use that as the model on what to do moving forward. They're telegraphing for us, which is quite something. You also said that this letter Gabbard wrote to Congress could be a roadmap for investigators in Congress to use against Gabbard, which I think sounds like good news to people out there who are deeply concerned, for good reason, about this. What did you mean by that?
- [33:38]
Miles Taylor
Well, this letter that she wrote this week, Jen, is not a red flag. It's like a red flag factory. Like, I, I. We could go on for an hour about all the problems with this letter. But let's start with this very important fact, which is that she implicates the President of the United States in this. You just played a clip of Donald Trump earlier today speaking to NBC News, where he was asked, did you know Tulsi Gabbard was going to be there? The president said, I did not know. In this letter Tulsi Gabbard sent to Congress this week. In the first paragraph, she said, my presence was requested by The President of the United States, she implicates her boss. She says her boss, the president, directed her to be down there in Fulton County, Georgia. Now, Donald Trump, in that same NBC interview, said, I had no idea why the FBI agents decided to do it. They did it on their own. Well, if Donald Trump, Trump didn't know, then why did he direct his Director of National Intelligence to be down in Fulton County, Georgia? And if he did know, which Tulsi Gabbard says he did, then does that mean that Donald Trump knew in advance from the FBI that they were going to be seeking a warrant down at that place in Georgia? And why? Which leads me to the next thing, Jen. In that exact letter, Tulsi Gabbard says the purpose of her being there was to investigate foreign interference in the election. But I'm gonna take you right back to Donald Trump's interview with NBC today. He said, when the FBI is done, they're going to determine who really won in Georgia. So wait a second. Is this about the Russians or the Chinese interfering in the election, or is it about a federally mandated recount of the ballots five years later, contrary to the law? Tulsi Gabbard is diming her boss out here, and she doesn't even realize it. To say nothing of the citations of Executive Order 13848, which Donald Trump knows cannot be used for this purpose, because people like me shared that with the White House, shared that with him. And then I add on top of all of that, the fact that in her letter, Tulsi Gabbard says she put the President of the United States on the phone with agents at the scene. If she did that, then most certainly Donald Trump had to know that they were going to be there. And the question is, did the agents know they were going to get a call from the president? Were they under pressure from the president to do what they did?
- [35:58]
Jen Psaki
I feel like everybody watching now is hoping that congressional investigators are going to call you as soon as you get off of this interview and get advice from you on how to pursue this. Let me ask you something else about something else you wrote that also perked my ears here. You wrote that some of what Trump and Gabbard are doing here could be violating state laws, and that could be an avenue for state and local prosecutors to push back, which is so interesting because we've seen state prosecutors be a whole lot more aggressive in a lot of ways about the actions of the Trump administration. Help us understand what that would look like or what they should be doing.
- [36:33]
Miles Taylor
Yeah, I mean, look A couple things, Jen. All of this that we just talked about could not exist. And if the only data point we had was the photograph from Reuters of Tulsi Gabbard there, that would be damning enough, because Tulsi Gabbard was trying to hide herself from being there. She was hiding behind a baseball cap. If she was trying to hide herself, that means she knows she shouldn't have been there. And she's probably hiding something out there. But go further than that, like you just said, there's a very good chance here that they are doing, they're on very shaky legal ground, but they're doing things potentially in violation of state law. States administer elections, not the federal government. And importantly, Donald Trump doesn't have the ability to pardon people for state crimes. He learned that the hard way the last time he meddled in an election. And I would put a warning out there to any of Trump's associates that are involved in this. These investigations will continue. People will look into whether you violated state crimes and not years from now. And one of the things you noted, Jen, is that local prosecutors around this country are starting to wake up. If I could urge people to do one thing, go to defiance.org we just announced an effort this week to bring prosecutors together around the country to look into holding federal agents and officers accountable. This is an extraordinary step. We're talking about prosecutors from Minneapolis and Tucson and Dallas. And the reason they're coming together is that the federal government is no longer policing its own people breaking the law. The public has no confidence that the FBI is going to look into this law breaking. And so now local prosecutors, state prosecutors and state attorneys general are having to step up and say the federal government is meddling in our business and we're going to hold them to account.
- [38:13]
Jen Psaki
Miles Taylor, I think everybody already knew, but now definitely knows why You're a must read. Thank you so much for joining us. And again explaining all that to us tonight. Okay. The Trump administration just announced plans to pull back some federal agents from Minnesota. But the reality on the ground seems to be a whole lot different from what they are saying publicly. And I'm going to talk to the lieutenant governor of Minnesota when we come back. This morning. Donald Trump's borders are. Tom Homan announced plans to withdraw 700 of the nearly 3,000 federal agents in Minnesota. But that sounds good. But here's the thing. We are continuing to see raids across the Twin Cities. Today, educators in Minnesota sued to stop federal agents from conducting operations near schools and near bus stops. And as those educators Made clear the administration's tactics have not actually changed. I had a glimmer of Hope with the 700 ICE agents being immediately withdrawn.
- [39:18]
Peggy Flanagan
Right. That glimmer of hope lasted maybe three minutes. Our principal, who is always out at.
- [39:26]
Jen Psaki
Arrival, got yelled at, screamed at, mocked, videoed and photoed by four ICE agents.
- [39:37]
Peggy Flanagan
A board member of ours was followed from her residence with her 3 year old child in the back of the car. Both are natural born US citizens all the way to her child's daycare.
- [39:52]
Jen Psaki
These are schools we're talking about. Joining me now is Minnesota Lieutenant governor and Democratic Senate candidate Peggy Flanagan. Oof. It is hard to hear this and you are living it every day. That's why we want to talk about it. I mean, considering that ICE agents are still apparently doing things like circling schools and following parents, it does not feel like things are actually changing. Have you seen any noticeable change in federal agents tactics or really their presence on the ground?
- [40:20]
Peggy Flanagan
No. I mean, I think this is a good step in the right direction, but until they are completely out of Minnesota, it's not enough. My child did not have school on Monday or Tuesday of this week because the teachers and administrators are adjusting so that, you know, hundreds of kids and families can do digital learning. And I appreciate that my district is being flexible and supportive of families who need to have their children be protected from federal agents. But this is outrageous, right? They are adapting in a similar way to how they adapted during COVID But the reason that they have to adapt is because of these federal agents. And I think a lot about how there are children now in Minnesota who after ICE leaves will have an ACE score, an adverse childhood experience score, because of the behavior of federal agents. It is outrageous. And as a, as lieutenant governor, I am upset, but as a mom, I am irate. And everyone should be. These are literal children. I talked to a mother of a second grade teacher who told me that her son called her the other day and he said I don't know what to do when multiple times a day I have crying 7 year olds in my classroom because they are so afraid. No learning can happen when that's going on. So I support these teachers and I support education Minnesota as they are calling to get ICE out of our schools. They need to stay away. But ultimately ICE has to get out of Minnesota completely.
- [42:16]
Jen Psaki
We have unfortunately only about a minute left, but there are still two. Even with the removal of 700, there will still be about 2,000 federal agents there. As I understand it from the press conference, there were 100, 750 prior help people understand. And again, I'm sorry this is so short, how disruptive that is. Even with the 700 removed, it's incredibly disruptive.
- [42:38]
Peggy Flanagan
What is the most disruptive are the tactics that these folks use every day. So if there's fewer ICE agents here, but they employ the same tactics, that's unacceptable. And I want to be clear. The federal government has laid this at our doorstep. And long after ICE agents have left Minnesota, they will need to restore, repair and help heal what it is that they have broken. We have to claw back this $75 billion. And frankly, they have to restore what they have taken away from Minnesota's literal children and the chaos and fear that they have caused. ICE needs to be ripped apart, and we have to start over. This is unacceptable.
- [43:20]
Jen Psaki
Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan couldn't have said it better myself. Thank you so much for being here. Really appreciate it. Coming up next, a message from Savannah Guthrie as the search for her beloved mother continues. We'll be right back. Before we go, we have an update on the case of our friend and longtime colleague Savannah Guthrie's missing mother, Nancy. She is 84 years old. She was last seen on Saturday at her home outside Tucson, Arizona, and was reported missing the following day. Local officials have said they believe she is the victim of a crime, but they've not identified a suspect or a person of interest yet. The FBI and a specialized unit of the Border patrol are involved in the investigation. And just this evening, Savannah shared her first public update since her mom went missing with a video message in which she addressed whoever might be responsible.
- [44:13]
Savannah Guthrie
Our mom is our heart and our home. She is 84 years old. Her health, her heart is fragile. She lives in constant pain. She is without any medicine. She needs it to survive. She needs it not to suffer. We, too, have heard the reports about a ransom letter in the media. As a family, we are doing everything that we can. We are ready to talk.
- [44:51]
Peggy Flanagan
Mommy.
- [44:54]
Savannah Guthrie
If you are hearing this, you are a strong woman. You are God's precious daughter. Nancy. We believe and know that even in this valley, he is with you. Everyone is looking for you, Mommy, everywhere. We will not rest. Your children will not rest until we are together again.
- [45:26]
Jen Psaki
We will, of course, update you as we learn anything more. But Savannah, her family and her loved ones are all in all of our hearts right now, in all of our prayers. 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 looking.
- [45:44]
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