DC Wrap and Nolan Wells Update | The Joy Reid Show!

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Joy Reid Show

Episode: “DC Wrap and Nolan Wells Update”
Date: July 18, 2026
Host: Joy-Ann Reid
Special Guests/Panelists: Mehdi Hassan, Frank Figluzzi, Paul Butler, Dina Dahl

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Episode Overview

This episode of The Joy Reid Show delivers a two-part deep dive:

1. Hour One: An urgent, critical analysis of Donald Trump’s recent actions and a controversial executive order on federalizing state elections, with Mehdi Hassan joining for “DC Wrap.” The hosts discuss the threat to democracy, media reaction, party politics (with a focus on the Democratic split on Israel), and political campaign tactics in key races.
2. Hour Two: An in-depth panel segment on the death of Mississippi college student Nolan Wells—an investigation drawing national attention, raising questions on race, law enforcement competence, and transparency. Joy is joined by a panel of legal and law enforcement experts to break down emerging facts and legal implications.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Donald Trump’s “Autocratic” Turn and Federal Election Power Grab

[04:00–14:00]

• Trump’s Executive Order: Trump tries to supersede the Constitution, seeking to federalize elections by designating certain states (the “swing states”) as compromised by “illegal voting” and “Chinese hacking.”
• Save America Act: Though it failed to pass Congress, the Trump administration indicates intent to implement its provisions via executive fiat—specifically, the forced submission of state voter rolls to DHS for federal scrutiny and purging.
• Implications for Voters: Requirements in the act would purge millions from voter rolls for name mismatches, disproportionately affecting women and married people—“My name now is Joanne Reid. I wouldn’t be able to vote... They would do that to millions of women.” (Joy Reid, 06:30)
• Mark Wayne Mullen’s Threat: Trump’s DHS Secretary threatens fines, penalties, and even jail time for state election officials who refuse to comply.
  • “Those individuals can also be held accountable by fines, by penalties, and even... prison time.” (Mark Wayne Mullen, paraphrased by Joy at 09:07)

2. Debunking Election Fraud Claims

[09:10–18:30]

• Trump’s False Evidence: The administration releases “proof” of China’s interference, but documents actually admit China merely criticized Trump and preferred him to lose—there was no direct interference.
  • “[Their] proof says... China did not intend to try to affect the election.” (Joy Reid, 12:00)
• Fox News’s Reluctant Response: Even Fox News declines to back the claims after costly settlements relating to previous election lie lawsuits.
  • "Fox... they're like, yeah, we're not touching that." (Joy Reid, 14:26)
• Replaying the Georgia Call: Trump’s infamous call to Brad Raffensperger is replayed, underlining real attempts at election interference came from Trump:
  • "I just want to find 11,780 votes..." (Trump, 15:25)

3. Republican & Democratic Party Dynamics

[18:30–35:47]

• Democrats’ Israel Aid Split: “A little over half” the Democratic caucus votes for the Massey Amendment to restrict military aid to Israel, revealing a seismic shift at the grassroots level.
  • “Although I never thought I’d live to see the day when Nancy Pelosi voted against aid to Israel, but she did. So, you know, it’s a sea change.” (Mehdi Hassan, 31:25)
• US-Israel Military Integration: Joy and Mehdi discuss the dangers of merging US/Israeli military intelligence (“kill tech”) and the influence of AIPAC and big donors on candidate selection.
• Campaign Manipulation: The Haley Stevens campaign is accused of “blackwashing” — leveraging Barack Obama’s image and paying influencers to mislead Black voters about endorsements.
  • "Black Americans' love for Barack Obama is being weaponized to try to get an AIPAC candidate in." (Joy Reid, 46:56)

4. Panel Deep Dive: The Nolan Wells Case

[65:00–115:52]

Overview

• Background: Nolan Wells—a young Black football player—goes missing after a July 4th outing on Horn Island, Mississippi; his body is discovered days later. The case draws widespread suspicion and ignites debate on racism, official incompetence, and transparency.

Timeline and Key Facts

• Nolan’s disappearance: Friends return from island trip without Nolan; his phone and keys are in their possession; family is notified late.
• Community Response: Immediate, all-hands search led by the Cajun Navy and national attention from figures like Ben Crump, Byron Allen, Colin Kaepernick, and Tyler Perry.
• Social Media’s Role: Social posts by students, families, and volunteers outpace official updates and drive much of the public inquiry.

Legal and Investigative Breakdown

• Jurisdiction Issues: Event occurred on federally protected land yet FBI takes a supporting, not leading, role—“They’re expending federal resources on threats against Nolan’s friends, but not taking over the murder investigation?” (Frank Figluzzi, 88:15)
• Police Investigation Gaps:
  • “How is it possible police haven’t spoken to key friends and witnesses?” (Paul Butler, 81:21)
  • Lack of forensic rigor: Digital evidence and images are abundant but apparently underutilized (“Cell phones provide so much data—they just really need more people on this,” Dina Dahl, 85:22)
• Inconsistencies and Red Flags:
  • Phone & Evidence Handling: Family, not police, recover Nolan’s phone, which has no content from the day of the disappearance—“Anybody who knows teenagers knows that a teenager and his or her phone is like this...” (Paul Butler, 94:55)
  • Friends’ Behavior: Friends’ social media is scrubbed; their stories are inconsistent about why Nolan stayed behind—and why he left his phone.
  • Adults’ Response: Parents of friends, including a judge, make public statements defending their children and preemptively giving alibis—procedurally questionable.

Racial and Political Context

• Historical Concerns: Mississippi’s legacy of racial violence, recent unsolved cases, and skepticism about fair investigations.
• Comparison to Other Cases: Parallel drawn to Daniel Irving’s drowning in Dallas, where friends were charged for lying, not murder.
• Grand Jury Status: Currently investigative, not indicting; potential for subpoenas and forced testimony.
• Role of the FBI: Panelists express disappointment at the lack of federal urgency, connecting it to current Trump-era politicization of law enforcement.

Notable Quotes

• “The biggest threat to our democracy is Donald J. Trump.” (Mehdi Hassan, 20:10)
• “You have to suspend common sense to believe that he didn’t ask for his phone back if he said, ‘Hey, folks, I’m staying here...’” (Dina Dahl, 99:57)
• “If a teenager does something wrong, it takes adult help to cover it up.” (Joy Reid, 107:17)
• “This is not the Frank Figluzzi FBI. It is the Cash Patel FBI.” (Joy Reid, 115:11)

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Notable and Memorable Moments

• Bingo with Trump’s Speech: The show’s creative coverage of Trump’s address involved “playing bingo” with audience participation (00:30).
• Panel Candor: Guests and Joy candidly call out institutional failings, with humor and exasperation—turning painful truths into compelling listening.
• Social Media Influencing Politics: The episode highlights the manipulation of grassroots sentiment and the challenge of “blackwashing” via paid influencer campaigns.
• Rashida Tlaib’s “Black Delegation” Upgrade: Joy jokingly nominates Rep. Rashida Tlaib for honorary “black delegation” membership after her scathing questioning of Trump administration figure Russ Vought (58:24).
• Moment of Joy: Mrs. Maddie J, a beloved hepologist, gets a gift and shoutout, closing the show on a high-spirited, uplifting note.

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Timestamps for Important Segments

| Timestamp | Segment / Topic | |-------------|-------------------------------------------------------------------| | 00:30–04:00 | Show intro, audience engagement, preview of episode | | 04:00 | Trump’s “autocratic” executive order on elections | | 07:52 | Mark Wayne Mullen’s threat to state officials | | 09:10–14:00 | Trump’s evidence, China claims, Fox News response | | 15:25 | Trump Georgia/“find the votes” call replay | | 18:30 | Start of DC Wrap with Mehdi Hassan | | 22:26–29:58 | Evidence debunking, CIA/FBI/Intelligence context | | 29:58–35:47 | Democratic Party’s Israel stance, military-industrial complex | | 46:46 | Blackwashing, Barack Obama’s image in campaign ads | | 65:00 | Deep dive: The Nolan Xavier Wells case begins | | 72:01–76:55 | Law enforcement, FBI role, investigation gaps | | 81:02–86:32 | Friends’ interviews, phone evidence, legal analysis | | 94:55–99:49 | The role of parents, retrieving Nolan’s phone, timeline analysis | | 107:17–109:13 | Adults’ role, legal implications of public statements | | 113:41–115:11 | Grand jury process, dual autopsies, the role of race and law |

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Summary Tone

The episode is urgent, candid, and often impassioned—blending grim reality checks, wry humor, and deep empathy for affected families and broader communities. The panel’s legal and journalistic expertise is clear, providing sharp, accessible explanations and expressing real frustration at institutional failures. Joy’s voice is warm, witty, and honest throughout.

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For Listeners Who Missed It

This episode is a must for anyone needing to understand current threats to American democracy, the mechanics of voter suppression, the evolving politics of Israel in the Democratic Party, and the tangled, racially charged investigation into the death of Nolan Wells. Rich with insider expertise and sharp analysis, the show draws clear lines between political rhetoric and reality and amplifies community voices demanding justice.

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End of Summary

Transcript

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Okay. Hello everyone and welcome to the Joy Read Show. How is everybody doing? Welcome to everybody that is in the substack chat, that's in the YouTube chat. If you are listening on LinkedIn. Hello to you all as well. Facebook, Twitch, wherever you're listening. We appreciate you guys listening tgif. Big up to everybody that's in the chats. Do make sure that you pop in. Let us know where you're listening from. Let us know whether or not you tuned in last night to see our very unique coverage of the don of the Donald Trump speech. We didn't cover it like anyone else did. We actually played bingo. We had like a bunch of people win. Maybe it's like, like 90 people out of the hundreds and hundreds who, who played bingo with us last night. So big up to everybody who did that. So congrats to all our bingo winners. Make sure that you subscribe because you have to be a subscriber in order to get your prize. So make sure you subscribe. If you were lurking last night, this is your chance to get on board and subscribe so you can get your, your, your 20% off. And also we're going to do that match because Lev promis to give you 20% off at his shop as well, because you guys won bingo. So we appreciate that. At the end of the show, we're going to announce the winners of our free tickets to Viewercon tomorrow, which is taking place in Newark, New Jersey, at njpac. Looking forward to that. I'll be interviewing Ras Baraka, but there's going to be lots of stars from Stars. The Stars Network is one of the big sponsors, so they're going to be debuting some of their new shows, having a lot of, some of the sort of big actors that are in Starz programming. They're going to be there tomorrow, so it's going to be really great. So looking forward to doing that as well. And then in the second hour of the show today, we're going to do a special hour on the Nolan Wells case. So do stick around for that. We have a really great panel. A former FBI director Frank Fagluzzi Paul Butler and Dina Doll, two of our favorite lawyer legal eagles. We're they're going to be our full hour panel and they're going to weigh in on all things Nolan Wells. We're going to give you all the latest developments on that case because that case continues to sort of boggle the minds of lots of folks. So we're going to do that in our two and Mehdi Hassan's coming up in this hour, which is going to be great because we're going to wrap up all the things that happened last night. But before we get to that, let's thank our wonderful sponsors because this show today, the Joy Reach show, is brought to you by our friends at Strawberry Me. Now listen, we all know somebody who is not exactly in their dream career right now. Maybe that someone is you. And sometimes you look around at people and you say, hey, how did they get to where they want to go? When I am still struggling to figure it out. And one of the answers that people who are successful will tell you is coaching is that they didn't do it alone. They had someone in their corner who helped them figure out what to do, what steps to take in order to get to where they want to go professionally. And so that's what Strawberry Me does. They provide you with incredible career coaching. That's one on one. It's personal.

[Dina Dahl]

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[Joy Reid]

It's therapy for your career. Now, a lot of us know that we're capable of doing more than we're doing maybe in our present position or maybe moving to a new one. And listen, I understand being skeptical about career, skeptical about career coaching. I was skeptical about it. But what I found in people that have used Strawberry Me is that it's actually super effective because it gives you that one on one experience to help you navigate your goals. They start with sitting down and saying, okay, what do you actually want? Not what everybody expects you to want, but what do you want? And then they give you the tools to try to take the steps toward that goal. And finally, they help you build an actual plan. Your advisor will help you build an actual plan rather than just waiting for the perfect opportunity to magically appear. So whether you're trying to find a new job, start a new business, earn a promotion, or just completely reinvent your career and yourself, Strawberry Me gives you a roadmap and a dedicated coach who's with you every step of the way. If you'd like to try this career counseling, try to get yourself in gear to just scan the QR code on your screen or head to Strawberry Me Joy. So Strawberry Me Joy, and they'll give you 50% off your first session at Strawberry Me Joy, Strawberry Me. And he's like therapy for your career. Okay, so last night, as I mentioned at the top, the President went full autocrat and he effectively announced his plan to implement his February executive order that Wajahat Ali described, which illegally tries to federal, federalize the election. And you know that elections are supposed to be held in your state. States control elections. But Donald Trump issued this executive order hinting that there was some national emergency that should allow him to supersede the Constitution and control elections federally. He named 18 states. He didn't say which states he meant, but we can deduce which ones. They are the swing states, plus, you know, Georgia, which is the new swing state, to say that there was an in breach on the election in those states. More than 200,000 illegal voters. China, hacking into voter systems and voter rolls, made all sorts of claims, none of which were supported by any facts. But today we get part two. The first one was his sort of wacky speech where he whined about ABC and CNN not taking his speech and NBC not taking it and threatening to s the FCC on them. And then the rest of it was just a lot of his usual gobbledygook, right? His usual bluster. But today we found out what the enforcement of that is going to look like. And what it looks like is that despite Republicans failing to pass the Save America act, which is the act which would federalize elections for states to turn in their voter rolls to the Department of Homeland Security, so that the Department of Homeland Security under Mark Wayne Mullen, who's the person who took over as Homeland Security director from Kristi Noem, they would then get to sort through your state's federal your state's voter rolls. They would get to decide who on those voter rolls is a legal voter who is a foreigner and not a legal voter, scrub those roles and send them back to you with only the voters they say can vote. Remember, the Save America act also would have made it so that if your name is not the same on your voter rolls as on your birth certificate, you couldn't vote, which would wipe millions of women who have married and changed their names off the voter rolls, myself included. My name was Joanne Lomena. Right? My name now is Joanne Reed. I wouldn't be able to vote unless I could go in and do a extra step of proving my identity because they'd automatically say I was an illegal voter. They would do that to millions of women. So that's the other issue. And the Save America act never passed. Republicans saw that it would blow up the system. They didn't pass it. It couldn't get through the House and Senate to become law, but they're going to implement it anyway, as if it is law. Now, I want you to listen to Mark Wayne Mullen explain what the penalties will be if states that have not passed their own version of this Save act, and some Republican states have, but if your non Republican state has not passed its own version of this Save America Act, Mark Wayne Mullen is now going to explain the consequences. Here it is.

[Mehdi Hassan]

I think I like the day they call her brethren Daily Mail. I really don't like the Daily Mail.

[Joy Reid]

I'm sure people are watching President Trump's speech last night, watching your remarks today,

and they're feeling amazed about passing their president.

Can you ensure that the midterm.

[Mehdi Hassan]

First of all, great question. Thank you. When we start talking about can we, can we ensure that the, that the midterm elections are going to be secure? Yes, we absolutely can build confidence in the American people, but the states have to do their part. I will tell you, if the states that choose not to participate with the state program and they, they choose not to participate in securing the elections, we will make sure that we make those states a priority to look at who voted in their states and hold then the election officials accountable. If the election officials, once we gave them the information they need to secure their elections and they chose not to, then those individuals can also be held accountable by fines, by penalties, and even, depending on how far it goes, prison time.

[Joy Reid]

So you heard that, right? The head of the Department of Homeland Security is threatening to jail state officials who refuse to submit their voter rolls to federal scrutiny and fail to scrub who the Trump regime claims are undocumented people or illegal voters off their rolls. And, and how would they know that when they've tried these Save act systems that supposedly automatically scrub the roles? It works the way Doge worked, right? Doge went in and they used CHAT GPT to decide what is DEI. And then anything that ChatGPT returned as DEI lost its funding and people got fired based on ChatGPT searches. No expertise was included. These Save America act systems that Republicans are. So they're obsessed with because. They're obsessed with the idea that they never really lose elections, that they only lose elections because millions of undocumented people vote, which is not a thing, never been proved, is not a thing, because also, why would you reveal your identity by going in and voting when you're not authorized to vote. It's a federal crime. They've never been able to prove that there's been these masses of undocumented voters. But Donald Trump last night claimed that there were 238 approximately thousand illegal voters in the 2020 voter rolls. And that's why he lost, by the way. He lost in 2020 by like 7 million votes. So even if you gave it to him and said, okay, there were 230,000 votes that were unauthorized, that's not enough for you to win the election, buddy, you lost by 7 million votes. But the fact is, even his own National Security Administration at the time found that there, there were no appreciable numbers of illegal votes at all. And I've said this again, that to the extent that we found that there are votes that are unauthorized, unauthorized voters, they've generally been Republicans like Ken Paxton, who's illegally voted for years using his son's address. And last night, they released what was supposed to be proof, proof that these undocumented, these illegal votes happened and that China hacked into America's voting systems. Jason, let's put up proof number one. This is two of the items. Now, there's a zip file that they've given everyone access to. You can go on whitehouse.gov I grabbed WinZip for and, and downloaded them. And some of the things that they've downloaded and that other journalists are downloading, they do the opposite of proving what they claim to prove. This piece of evidence that was put forward to prove that China supposedly illegally hacked into US Voter rolls to change the election. What this says, this is some of their proof, is that Russia interfered in the election, attempted to interfere by sowing discord in the United States using mainly online bots, etc, which we knew, but that Russia did that and interfered to try to help Trump, not to try to help Biden, but to try to help Trump in 2020, and that China also attempted to interfere with, by also attempting to sow discord. So let me read the second paragraph. We assess that China prefers that President Trump be defeated like a hot smoking gun, right? In the past few months, it has stepped up public rhetoric criticizing his administration, which it recognized may affect the election. So what he's they're claiming is this interference is public rhetoric in the public domain, criticizing Trump because they don't like him. And then the next part, sentence says, although Beijing, which is the capital of China, did not intend to try to affect the election. So the proof they put out shows the opposite of what they wanted to prove, which is that, no, they did not interfere in the election. Let's look at proof point number two. Proof point number two. And Sam Stein was the first to pull this and put it on X Twitter. And it says one of the documents that Trump has disclosed tonight has a section noting that China targeted the Biden administration. That to the extent China targeted one of the two candidates in 2020, it was not the challenger, it was the sitting president. But that they still did not intend to covertly interfere in the outcome of the election. They. That's in their proof. So what are we talking about here? They essentially attempted to prove that China tried to interfere in the election. And that's what they want to take back to the Supreme Court to say they should be able to federalize the election. Let me let y' all hear how Fox, of all people, because they were one of the few, you know, national outlets that ran the speech. But here is how Fox reacted to Donald Trump's speech.

Sean, you also heard the president make claims that electronic voting machines are vulnerable and easily compromised. Fox News has not seen that evidence yet, is not in a position to evaluate the accuracy of the president's statements and claims at this time.

So Fox, which settled a $787 million case brought against them by Dominion Voting Systems, which is now owned by this creepy Republican who believes that the election was stolen. But be that as it may, and also had to settle with Smartmatic for lying about their voting machines in 2020. They're like, yeah, we're not touching that. Yeah. So they essentially could not even get Fox to go along with their storyline last night. And you should also remember that the only entity, the only person who tried to interfere in the election in 2020 was named Donald John Trump. We're going to play you once again. Donald Trump attempting to bully the Secretary of State in Georgia to try to get him, to find him enough votes to flip the state. Here it is, Jason.

[Mehdi Hassan]

Just want to find

[Joy Reid]

11,780 votes, which

[Mehdi Hassan]

is one more than we have because

[Joy Reid]

we won the state.

[Mehdi Hassan]

I only need 11,000 votes, fellas.

[Joy Reid]

I need 11,000 votes.

[Mehdi Hassan]

Give me a break.

[Joy Reid]

There's nothing wrong with saying that, you

[Mehdi Hassan]

know, that you've recalculated.

[Joy Reid]

Well, Mr. President, the challenge that you

[Mehdi Hassan]

have is the data you have is wrong.

[Joy Reid]

So there we have it. This was Donald Trump and that actual video is an hour plus long where he's trying to goad and bully not just Raffensperger, but other Georgia state officials to try to change the election results. And Raffensperger and the other state officials kept telling him, you're wrong, Mr. President. There was no significant fraud that would have changed the election. You just lost. And he couldn't accept it. Also want to remind you that Donald Trump's own lawyer, Jenna Ellis, who actually got indicted for being a part of the conspiracy to try to flip the election, she was part of that RICO case that was brought in Fulton county that's now been put by the wayside because of the challenges to Fani Willis. But at the time, she was swept up in that RICO case because there was a conspiracy, conspiracy in Georgia and several other states to put forward fake electors, send those fake electors to the Electoral College, and have Donald Trump declared the president based on the fake electors. She was one of the people caught up in it because she was one of Trump's now disgraced lawyers. Listen to Jenna Ellis in her own words. Again, this is a conservative Republican attorney who was on Donald Trump's side and on his team explaining why. What she was told about the plans coming out of the White House after Donald Trump lost the election in 2020

[Mehdi Hassan]

and at the time, period where they were going to start to discuss what

[Joy Reid]

was Dan Scavino's role at the time,

I believe his title was social media director for the White House. It became deputy chief of staff at the time that the conversation. Conversation in question took place.

[Frank Figluzzi]

Okay, and when was that?

[Joy Reid]

The conversation was around December 19th of 2020 at the White House Christmas party. And I emphasized him. I thought that the, the claims and the ability to challenge the election results was essentially over because he said to me in a kind of excited tone, well, we don't care and we're not going to leave. And I said, what do you mean? And. And he said, well, the boss, meaning President Trump, and everyone understood the boss. That's what we all called him. He said, the boss is not going to leave under any circumstances. We are just going to stay in power. And I said to him, well, it doesn't quite work that way, you realize. And he said, we don't care.

Okay. The boss, Donald Trump says, we are not going to leave. We're just going to stay in power. He was told, well, you can't do that. It doesn't quite work that way. And the answer that Jenna Ellis received was, we don't care. We're just going to stay in power. So that is the. The same president, different team, because now he has a team that won't tell him that it doesn't work that way. He now has a team that tells him, sir, it'll work however you want it to work. And he has issued this executive order which, which purports to, on the non evidence that we saw put forward by the White House, say that a foreign government, China, interfered in the election in 2020. Again, they interfered to hurt Biden, but that this interference that they can't even prove is why they should be able to federalize elections. And that is where we stand ahead of the 2020 mid of the 2020 of these midterms this year, the 2026 midterms, right ahead of our midterm elections, we have that plus the threat from Mark Wayne Mullen that any state that doesn't on its own comply with a Save America act that is not law, risk going to jail. Joining me now is Mehdi Hassan, who is a journalist, of course, editor in chief and CEO of Zateo. Mehdi, how are you?

[Mehdi Hassan]

I'm good.

[Frank Figluzzi]

Surviving.

[Joy Reid]

Surviving. So we watched the Trump speech so that everyone didn't everyone else didn't have to. I want to first get your takeaways from what you heard last night and what are the threats to the electoral system that in your view, emerged from it.

[Frank Figluzzi]

So I think the number one threat is that they want to use all this nonsense to basically interfere themselves in the 2026 midterms and then after that, the 2028 presidential. What we learned last night is that the biggest threat to our elections and our democracy is not Xi Jinping is not Vladimir Putin is not much Hamani, the current leader of Iran. The biggest threat to our democracy is Donald J. Trump. He made that very clear. The man sowing doubt and distrust in our elections is Donald J. Trump. The man lying about whether or not they're secure, mocking the head of the cybersecurity and infrastructure agency on his watch. He did a I don't know if you noticed joy in the middle of very boring read. You know, when he's doing teleprompter speeches, he's super boring. He's not like his campaign self at a rally. So he's reading from this prompter and then halfway through, he stops to do an impersonation of Chris Krebs, who was the head of the CISA, who told him in 2020 that this was the most secure election in American history. He can't handle that. So this is a man who wants to so doubt, he wants to lie. They want to claim that there are a quarter of a million non citizens. Turns out CNN did A fact check. It's more like 28,000 on the rotor rolls. They want to say all this because they want to have the excuse to try and take over voter rolls. They want to have the excuse to try and threaten election officials, as you just mentioned, Mark Wayne Mullen, DHS Secretary, did that today. They want to have the excuse to send ICE to polling stations because all these non citizens are voting. So we need ICE at the polls to intimidate and deter black and brown voters. So they're laying the groundwork for it. The only good news I have for you all and for your viewers is that the speech was a dude, it was a flop. And the reason we know that is because Fox and Friends completely ignored it. This morning there were zero mentions of Donald Trump's big speech that was much heralded live to the nation and his most loyal supporters. His favorite morning show completely ignored it, partly because they had to pay $787 million last time they made false claims about elections. So I think that's the bad news is they're clearly laying the groundwork to try and f with the elections in November. The good news is the speech was a dud. The evidence they supplied was clearly not evidence. The best part of the intel that they put, quote unquote, intel on the White House website is actually undermined his own claims. It said China wasn't actually interfering to change votes around. It actually said Russia was very keen to elect Donald Trump. Do you notice, Joy, that Donald Trump confirmed Russiagate yesterday?

[Joy Reid]

He did, he did. And what was so fascinating is that the first pieces, and we just put them up a little while ago before you popped on of evidence, evidence, quote unquote, that they released. Sam Stein was one of the first to put them up on social media. And then I availed myself of WinZip to go through some of the rest of the releases today. And what I found was what we already knew and that Chris Krebs was absolutely right, as was the head of the FBI, Christopher Wray and all the rest who said that the interference, the attempts at interference, what Mueller said it came from Russia and that Russia attempted to interfere in order to help Trump or that they preferred that Trump win and that China preferred that Trump lose, but that all that China did was make public statements criticizing Donald Trump. Last I checked, making public statements criticizing Donald Trump is not election interference.

[Frank Figluzzi]

Well, what's interesting, the really interesting part of all of this in terms of kind of the documents, first of all, it's not just Chris Krebs and Chris Wray, people who Donald Trump turned on. Chris Wray was his own handpicked director of the FBI. It's a man named John Ratcliffe. John Ratcliffe is the current Director of the CIA. In Trump's first term, he was made Director of National Intelligence, a job for which he had no qualifications. But he was made DNI. And in January of 2021, the intelligence community presented their briefing on the election to Trump. It was declassified in March. Your viewers can go look at it online. And it says in there, bullet point number one, there was no foreign interference by any foreign government. No votes were changed by foreign government. It says in bullet point number four or five, China did not interfere in the election. And that intelligence briefing was given to Donald Trump by John Ratcliffe, the man he currently has made director of the CIA. So maybe John Ratcliffe of 2026 should have a chat with the John Ratcliffe of January 2021, because, you know, the receipts are there. The intelligence report was produced by a Republican dni, by the way, and you know this better than me. You covered it. Msnbc. Marco Rubio was the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee that put out a report saying Russia tried to influence the last election. We should be clear, in our terms, influence means you say stuff on social media. You kind of try and, you know, try and manipulate public opinion. Interference is your hacking systems. You're changing votes. There's no evidence that any votes were changed in any American election. There is evidence of foreign influence campaigns by multiple governments, including allies. And I would point out that Donald Trump has cut the budget to all of the FBI and CISA agents that were supposed to be looking out for foreign involvement.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah. And indeed. And the other thing that I think people have to keep in mind whenever we talk about this is that the person in charge of the federal government during this period, if there was rampant foreign interference, foreign meddling and national security threats that were unanswered, they were unanswered by Donald Trump. He was the president. This was his reelect. So this is not a thing where you can say Joe Biden was not in power with doing it.

[Frank Figluzzi]

Well, my two favorite observations for the past 24 hours that many have made. Number one, they want us to believe that when Barack Obama was president, Donald Trump won fair and square. When Joe Biden was president, Donald Trump won fair and square. But when Donald Trump was president, he was robbed by the deep state. Like, that's what they want us to believe. The dumbest people in the world. And number two, the other really, really Interesting point when it comes to kind of the craziness of all of this, when you have Trump coming out here with these conspiracy theories and then he says, this is my favorite line from yesterday's speech. 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.

[Paul Butler]

Hmm.

[Frank Figluzzi]

Raw intelligence for the FBI. If we're quoting raw intelligence and the FBI these days, they there's a bunch of it in the Epstein files about Donald Trump being accused of abusing children. We as responsible journalists and I said this on our stream last night, we say, well, hold on, guys, that's unverified. It's in the FBI, it's in the Epstein files. It's not verified. It's tips that the FBI got, some of which they went and interviewed the women, but it's never been in an official intelligence report or a criminal indictment. So we always say that also because Donald Trump's really litigious. But we say that. But if Donald Trump's now saying we could quote raw intelligence from the FBI, does that mean we could do it from the Epstein files for him?

[Joy Reid]

And indeed, also I'd like to know what raw intelligence is in his ballroom and in the bathroom at Mar a Lago, because last I checked, he also took some of that home as well. And then the other piece of it, I think that also has to be. It's easier to believe that something nefarious happened in an election when it's close, like Nixon, Kennedy. Right. When it's by a hair, there's all these places where you can figure somebody might have interfered. But, Jason, if you could just put up the 2020 versus the 2024 elections or the margin by which Donald Trump lost, the 2020 election was massive. We're talking about a seven plus million dollar defeat. Where in there does. Even if you give him the full 230,000 illegal voters, how does that change a $7 million blowout?

[Frank Figluzzi]

Yeah, I mean, they don't accept that. That's why they. Oh, he was in a basement. How could he have a loss by that many votes to a man in a basement? Like, I had Jamie Raskin, Congressman from Maryland, on the show last night and he made the point that the way we deal with this, we have to win big. Too big to rig. We have to win so big Democrats. And that they won't be able to question the. Of course they will. I mean, with respect to Congressman Rasman, he knows very well that even if they win a landslide in November. Republicans won't accept it. I mean, Donald Trump is a man who did not accept that Ted Cruz beat him in the Iowa caucuses in 2016. Like, he's never accepted defeat from anyone, forget Democrats, not even from fellow Republicans. I don't know what happened in his childhood with Fred Trump, but, you know, the man is a perpetual loser who cannot accept defeat. And I think that's a key point. By the way, you mentioned earlier the 2020 point about Donald Trump being president. Isn't it amazing that across the board, the Republicans want us to believe? Much of the narrative online from right wingers these days assumes that Donald Trump stopped being president in 2019. Right. They're always like, oh, COVID lockdowns were so bad. Who was president in 2020 when we did COVID lockdowns, that was Donald Trump. They were like, who? The election was stolen in 2020. Who was president in 2020 when the election was stolen? Donald Trump. We can go through the list of how many times they just pretend that one last year, he just gets a kind of get out for 2020. That didn't really happen on his watch.

[Joy Reid]

He took a gap year. Benny, I don't know what you're talking about.

[Mehdi Hassan]

Yeah.

[Joy Reid]

So let's talk about the Democrats for just a moment. And this very interesting thing happened that in my lifetime, I could not have really genuinely imagined, and that is that more than 100, more than a little over half of the Democratic caucus voted no, voted for this Massey amendment that would cut off aid to Israel, military aid to Israel. And I put these three headlines up because I think they all go together in an interesting way. Right. So Israel without Lindsey Graham has lost its fiercest supporter, says the Washington Post. The guy who's been, you know, pushing the hardest, other than Donald Trump, for Israel to get its way, and also other than most of the Democratic leadership. And then, of course, you have this pretty dramatic shift in the Democratic Party where the progressives were on the, you know, the slight majority side, even though, you know, I guess it wasn't enough because Republicans said no. That's happening. While the Democratic leadership is going along with the idea of effectively merging US and Israeli military intelligence, Kill tech, sharing ours with them and taking theirs into our system. This seems so incredibly dangerous and insane. What do you make of what's going on? Sort of schizophrenia on the Democratic side when it comes to Israel?

[Frank Figluzzi]

Well, it's not schizophrenia on the part of the people who are cynically trying to rebrand or rewrite the relationship. Right. So You've got people like Rahm Emanuel, lifelong supporters of Israel, going to Israel and saying, well, we're not going to give you aid anymore because they're fine. And Netanyahu says this himself. He's fine now. He says, okay, don't give us any aid, because they're going to switch to this new relationship where instead of aid and instead of them just buying our weapons, we'll have this integrated system where they're part of our defense establishment, which makes it very hard for any future president, whether President AOC or whoever it is, to unpack that, to untangle that. And I think that is very dangerous. Congressman Rohan and others have sounded the alarm on what's going on with some of these bills. And we need to ask guests when they're on the show about these things. I think the broader picture is that, yes, the Democratic Party as a whole, I. E. The grassroots, the membership, the voters, the base is changed. A lot has moved on Israel, and the party in Congress has not followed them yet. A chunk has, but a big chunk refuses to. I mean, the really big story is that about 100 members of Congress didn't vote for the amendment. We're fine to keep sending $3 billion to a country that is accused of genocide, that is accused of apartheid, that has killed seventy hundred, two hundred thousand. We don't know how many people killed in Gaza. They're fine with that. They're fine with a military that is accused of, you know, raping detainees, annexing land in the West Bank. We can go down the list. They are fine with that. And I think that's what's insane. Although I never thought I'd live to see the day when Nancy Pelosi voted against aid to Israel, but she did. So, you know, it's a sea change.

[Dina Dahl]

It's.

[Frank Figluzzi]

It is seismic, as one of those headlines put it. Now, the issue is, will the party establishment be able to find a way to resist the rabble? Like, how do we keep public sentiment at bay? Like, how do we. How do the elite stay in charge of this conversation? They're not just going to roll over and accept it, nor are the big donors who are involved in this. You look at what's happening in Michigan with Haley Stevens, The New York Times says yesterday $28 million dropped by APAC and its allies in that race to support Haley Stevens. So you can have as much public support as you want for the Palestinian people as long as the people going to Congress, going to Washington, D.C. are funded and backed by people who support Israel. That's a problem. And that's a massive Democratic disconnect. It's a Democratic dysfunction. I would argue if. And by the way, the media plays a role here. You see these headlines from like, you know, the Axios and the Punchbowls and all the D.C. congressional reporters, like, there's a split in the Democratic Party. Actually, there isn't a split. If you look at the polling, the Democratic Party is overwhelmingly on one side of this argument. There's a split in Congress because multiple members of Congress just don't care about the views of their constituents, don't care about international law, don't care about American law which says you cannot sell weapons to a country that's engaged in human rights abuses.

[Joy Reid]

You know, and you know, and the video of Bibi Netanyahu being jeered inside of his own Knesset because they would not pause, I guess, you know, giving a break to ultra Orthodox Jews to serve the military. I think we have that clip. And, you know, it was sort of dramatic the way she. He's told, you know, get out. And he walks out shortly after that. Now, that wasn't about genocide. Let's just be clear. You could turn it down.

[Frank Figluzzi]

That's about saying, we want more Israelis to be in the idf.

[Joy Reid]

Exactly. And so there is this sort of strange thing in which he's being jeered effectively from the right. Right. Like he still seems to be in jeopardy. The safest country, the place where he is the safest is the United States, despite the fact that he is an adjudicated war criminal. I don't understand how the Democratic Party, which is the party of compassion, is comfortable with that, but the Democratic leadership is.

[Frank Figluzzi]

It's funny that you say comfortable in the United States. I mean, our former colleague Kristen Welker last Sunday morning woke up, heard about the death of Lindsey Graham, and said, I need Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel on the show. I need a foreign leader on an American Sunday show to talk about the death of an American senator. Bizarre. I mean, we didn't ask the prime minister of Belgium to come on the show to talk about Lindsey Grant. The whole thing is very bizarre. The way in which Israel is treated as a 51st state, the way in which Netanyahu gets, you know, standing ovations in Congress, the kinds that he can't get in the Knesset at home, the fact that he gets softball interview questions from American media interviewers like Dana Bash on CNN recently, whereas on Israeli media, they actually do ask much tougher questions, even though Israeli media is super right wing as well. But they at least try and ask some tougher questions to their own prime minister the than we do. So I think there's a weird, bizarre disconnect there when it comes to Netanyahu. My worry though, of course, is that even on the liberal left where people are changing their views on Israel, they are making it all about Netanyahu. Which is a mistake because this is not just about Netanyahu. This is about the entire Israeli political establishment being behind this genocide in Gaza, being behind the war in Iran, being behind the ethnic cleansing in Lebanon. It's also about an Israeli country that is structured in a way in which Palestinian citizens of Israel are discriminated against. And of course, Palestinian residents of the west bank and Gaza remain occupied illegally for decades after decades. And you look at, for example, the elections that are coming up in Israel later this year, you look at who the possible other prime ministers could be. Naftali Bennett, this guy, Gaddy Eisenkop, former Israeli Chief of staff. These are all people who have themselves either committed war crimes or praised the commission of war crimes. They are not people who are going to come in and be doves or liberals. And I think people like Bernie Sanders, who I have a huge respect for in the way in which he's dragged the party on arms sales and on aid to Israel. But even he frames his rhetoric always as we shouldn't be arming Netanyahu, we shouldn't be supporting Netanyahu. As if Netanyahu disappears tomorrow and Israel becomes this kumbaya, liberal, utopia, peace loving, sandal wearing, Palestinian respecting country. It doesn't look at the polling. There's a genocidal fervor amongst the Israeli public at large. They support transfer, which means ethnically cleansing Palestinians from the west bank and Gaza. Many of them support ethnically cleansing Palestinian citizens of Israel from Israel. If you look at the polling. So the country's heading in a very dark direction and we shouldn't be helping them go in that direction. Nor should we be lying to ourselves and pretend that it's just about Benjamin Netanyahu and Itmar Ben gvir. Even liberal Zionists in Israel are full of genocidal, fervent. And you don't have to take my word for it. Watch Israeli tv, read Israeli newspapers.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah, indeed. And the other piece of it is I keep trying to sort of get to the crux of what the affection is about other than people in this country who feel an affection for Israel based on what happened in World War II, which is not the origins of Zionism. And I Have to constantly remind people on this show that the origins of political Zionism far predate the Nazis of the 1940s. And in fact, some of the extremists in the early days of Israel, before it was formed, they were willing to partner with the Nazis and accept mass transfer of Jewish people out of Europe into Palestine. They were willing to partner with them. Right. And so there's something else that's there. And in the US when you have Palantir, just zealous and excited about what Israel is doing to the Palestinians, excited what they're doing in southern Lebanon, clearly they just want to test their kill tech. But is there something more to this military industrial complex? Is that what the affection is about? It's a great laboratory to test weapons on people that you don't think are fully human. You don't give a damn what happens to them.

[Frank Figluzzi]

From the military industrial complex point of view.

[Paul Butler]

Sure.

[Frank Figluzzi]

Anthony Lowenstein's written a fantastic book on this. If people want to look more into how Israel tests weapons in Gaza on Palestinians and then sells that tech abroad and that is replicated and it's used as literally a laboratory, I think that's the name of the book. So, yes, from a military industrial complex for sure, but I think it's much wider than that on a political, social, cultural level. You know, you go to Hollywood, you take Hollywood. Hollywood's a really interesting example. Hollywood is a place where liberals dominate, where liberals have stood up to Trump. I often compare. I'm of Indian descent, as you know. I often compare how Hollywood stood up to Trump. Bollywood in India, for example, rolled over Narendra Modi. We actually have a film industry actors who have actually stood up, whether it's Robert De Niro. Go down the list of people who have kind of called out Trump loudly in the first term and the second term, but not when it comes to Israel, Palestine. When it comes to Israel, Palestine. The vast majority of Hollywood have either shut, you know, you know, looked away, stayed silent, or actually complicitly supported Israel. Many A list stars have supported Israel. You saw Gwyneth Paltrow just do a weird ad for Israeli real estate in the middle of a Jazzar. And there's a handful of people like Javier Bardem and Mark Ruffalo. And we go down the list who, Emma Stone who've spoken out, but they're in a minority. And again, you look at that and you think, well, hold on. These are the same Hollywood liberals who are ready to stand up when it's abortion on the line, when it's democracy on the line. When it's, you know, go down the list, they are quote, unquote, woke. They are progressive. They are proudly. Except when it comes to Palestine. You know, there's a phrase for it, pep progressive, except Palestine. And that you really have to. That's really bothered me because I understand why far right Republicans like Israel, I understand they like the idea of killing Muslims, they like the idea of killing Arabs, they like the idea of this kind of supposedly white, although many Israelis are not white, we should be clear. But in their imagination, this kind of white European, Western bulwark against Muslim, Arab advancement. I understand why Christian evangelical, white Christian evangelicals think that, oh, Jesus is going to come back according to our literature or our beliefs. If we back Israel, I get, I get the military industrial complex, we get weapons and money out of this war is good for the bottom line. What I will never get, what I will always struggle with, as someone who is on the liberal left, as part of that coalition, I remember more to the left than most liberals. But as I move in that world, whether it's in our media industry, whether it's, you know, in America, in polite society, that is one thing that I will never be able to get my head around, how people who hearts can bleed for the Ukrainians, for the people of Darfur, but when it comes to Palestine, and now by extension Iran and Lebanon, but specifically Palestine, there they go. It's complicated. It's. There's nuance. This goes back decades. There's a lot of history here. It's biblical, it's hard. There's human shields. There's all of that crap that they just automatically regurgitate on command, which they don't believe, they haven't stopped to think about, but they do it when it comes to this country. Is it racism? Is it fear of losing your job? Is it, Is it, you know, I don't know what it is mixture of all of the above brainwashing, I don't know, but it really does bother me. And that's really. Until we, until we win that battle, and we are winning in a sense, but we haven't won. But until we've won that battle, I think we will still struggle to really get any really proper change in policy across the board.

[Joy Reid]

Indeed. Mehdi Hassan, it's always a pleasure. Thank you, my friend. I appreciate it. And thank you for being willing to, as I am, watch the horrors of Trump so that we can translate them to the people who can't stand to hear his voice. Thank you very much. My Friend.

[Frank Figluzzi]

Thank you, Joy.

[Joy Reid]

Appreciate you. Yeah, it is a thing I just can't understand. I have a clip video that I've produced for social media that's going to go up shortly, that Lara Trump said that people, that this vote, this 103 Democrats who voted to say no to another 3 billion of aid, that that is effectively the return of Nazism, that that is Nazism, not fascism that her father in law is implementing. And that's not what's Nazism, is not sending the money. And then she added that because Democrats, 103 Democrats voted to not send the money, that means that Jewish people are terrified to walk the streets of New York. How she got from A to X I have no idea. Because that doesn't make sense. You're saying unless we allow Israel to kill at will as many men, women and children as they want, bomb as many churches as they want, bomb as many mosques, hospitals, schools, unless they're allowed to wipe out as many Palestinians as they want in Gaza, as many Arabs as they want, including Christians in Lebanon, as many people in Iran as they want, as long as they can kill as many people as they want. And unless settlers, right wing settlers, can take as much land as they want, as many farms as they want, kill as many people as they want, and be supported by a foreign military, the idf, in doing so, unless we send that foreign military unlimited funds, then Jewish people in New York City, in the US Are afraid to walk the streets because it's Nazism. I do not understand how that works. That does not make sense to me. I can assure you I am here in Harlem right now. Jewish people are perfectly safe walking the streets of the United States. But Netanyahu has made folks a lot less safe because people keep attaching all Jewish people to his genocidal policies. And that is the problem. It's that he's creating a world in which people blame ordinary, regular, nice Jewish people that didn't do anything for everything Israel does. And again, as Mehdi said, it isn't just Netanyahu. That country is expansionist and like religious nationalist in a very scary way. And now we're going to have our military and their military merge. Another thing, I'm going to come bring some guests on to talk about what that means for policing in the United States. Because you do know that for decades the IDF has been training our police. And so even if you don't care about brown Palestinian people and Muslims and you don't care about people over there, know that this same country and their kill tech, that Kill tech and the tactics of the IDF are then taught to American police. It's been a thing for decades. They teach our police how to treat brown and black people here.

[Mehdi Hassan]

So there's that.

[Joy Reid]

Good times, everybody. Let me get one more of our wonderful sponsors, some love, because we do appreciate our sponsors because we absolutely love our folks, including our friends at Irestore. Now, Irestore, they make some incredible products that can really make your sort of soul feel better by giving you a lot sort of more like physical comfort. The one that I love is the Illumina mask, right? And if you have skin concerns, if you wear makeup every day, you know that taking care of your skin becomes like a challenge, right? And trying to like beat back the blemishes and beat back the breakouts, the dullness and all of those things. Years ago, years ago, my good friend, dear friend that I was working with at the GRIO told me, you've got to try light therapy. And I actually didn't believe it. But LED light therapy, for a long time a lot of people have been telling me, like, you've got to try this. So listen, Irestore makes an amazing device that allows you to use light therapy to improve your skin and to reset your skin care routine. And Irestore has been leading the way in red light therapy, literally for more than two decades, helping shape the category with clinically backed devices that are trusted by over 500,000 customers worldwide. And they have these devices like the Irestore Elite, it's the most that are not for face, but also for hair. So the Irish store Elite, if you're looking to really recharge your hair growth and really correct some hair issues, they use 300 lasers and 200 LEDs to help regrow thicker, healthier hair. And as little as three months, you just wear it while working. You just wear it walking around. And then of course, as I mentioned, the Illumina face mask, which is a lightweight cordless packed with two times more LEDs than other top masks. It targets those fine lines, the breakouts and dullness we with triple wavelength light therapy. So just 10 minutes a few times a week for smoother, healthier, beautiful skin. And here's the best part, you can bundle the Irestore Elite and the Illumina face mask together, making it the perfect like it's like a little personal spa upgrade to upgrade your routine. Whether you're refreshing your regimen or finally giving your hair and skin the attention that they deserve, this bundle has powerful results and even a better value for a limited time. So if you want to give it a try, Irestore is offering some huge discounts on their red light therapy devices. Right now. You can save on customer favorites like the Irestore Elite helmet and the Illumina face mask. Just head to irestore.com and use the code Joy. Very simple. Use the code joyrestore.com so please support our show and tell them that we sent you. Give your hair and skin an upgrade, the upgrade they deserve so you can feel confident, fabulous and refreshed. So we were talking, I think, on the other day about this. The not so honest Haley Stevens campaign ads that make it appear that Barack Obama has endorsed Haley Stevens and said that she is there, is his candidate, which is not true. Again, Barack Obama has not endorsed in this race. But the challenge is that when you say something like that, people tend to believe it. And Abdul Al Said is running effectively now, not just against Haley Stevens, but effectively against Barack Obama. And I want to play you a clip, this is from social media that shows one voter being asked as a man on the street who they're voting for and why.

[Mehdi Hassan]

Because Obama says so.

[Joy Reid]

That's the only reason. That's all you need? That's all I got. What's your name, brother? Hollywood.

[Jason]

Hollywood.

[Rashida Tlaib]

I'm saying.

[Joy Reid]

All right, this is depressing. It's very depressing because what's basically happening is that black Americans love for Barack Obama is being weaponized to try to get an APAC candidate in. And, and, and that is a very deliberate plan. It is not coincidental, but that is what's happening. You're also seeing members of the Congressional Black Caucus endorsing Haley Stevens, who again, the ads being run for her are not honest because Barack Obama has literally not endorsed her, but she's running on this campaign that sort of makes her appear to be sort of a pseudo endorsee. The other thing is a guy named David says stuff, who's one of my favorite follows on Instagram, has busted Haley Stevens doing a paid influencer campaign where she's paying people to post content that makes her appear more popular, as if she has the same kind of grassroots support that El Sayed does. He's the one with lots of grassroots support, not her. But she's running this campaign that's making it look like she's the candidate of black Americans, the candidate of Barack Obama, and that she has all these young influencers behind her when that is just not true. She's paying people to create that impression. There are a couple of polls out that Shows her way ahead of Al Said. But I'm going to show them because these kinds of polls can be. It can. It can make you. It can. It can sort of actually dissuade people from voting. And I'm not sure where these polls came from. A couple people have sent them to me, but I would need to know who the pollster is, because sometimes what campaigns also do is they pay for their own polls and their own internal polls. They'll release them to try to encourage people to vote. And so, and so I will say, I think it's very discouraging because at the end of the day, what you need to understand is that when AIPAC pays for a candidate, when they fund a candidate, particularly at the high levels, they're funding her. They're not doing that because they want that candidate to go in and work for the people. They only want them there to vote for more money for Israel. That is why they're voting for them, so that they will be a certain vote for that. Everything else they don't care about. And so you have no idea what you're getting. And people will say anything to get in, but when they get in, their main purpose is to work for this foreign interest, to make sure this foreign interest gets the bombs they want. Yes, Jason, you know, it'd be really, really nice, but I don't think he'll do it if Barack Obama himself came out and said something like, hey, listen, I am not in this race. I mean, just make a statement. I wish he wait. But I'm saying if he waits to make a statement just to basically clarify that, and people are doing early voting and stuff like that, it's going to be a little too late. So I think, you know, he needs to say something, don't you think? Yes, I do. Early voting's already begun. The Obamas, I believe, are in Martha's Vineyard already and they don't get involved in primaries. But I really wish the Obamas would come forward and just make it clear that Haley Stevens does that. No one has it. It's not as if, you know, he's. He's not expressed any preference at all in this race. And I just think it would be nice if, if the president, with the former president, would come forward and say, I'm not involved in this race at all. But because Haley Stevens is running what I think is a very deceptive campaign. And this blackwashing of aipac, I've been thinking a lot about writing about it, this blackwashing of them is actually a little frightening because they're hyper targeting African Americans with these attempts to wash over the genocide that the vast majority of African Americans oppose and that their kids oppose. And they're doing it for by propping up African American candidates, finding black candidates to run against other black candidates, but with the APEC label or attaching the first black president to a candidate like Haley Stevens to play on the emotions of African American voters who are not necessarily paying a ton of attention to the race. And so like that young man, he's not paying attention to all the details about Haley Stevens or Abdul El Sayed. He's not paying attention to that. He just her saw the ad somewhere on his phone or on TV and said, well, that's Obama's person. I'll just vote for her. And that's how she plans to get in. And when she gets in, is she going to care about the hood?

[Jason]

No.

[Joy Reid]

Her purpose is going to be to vote for the bombs, to vote for the money for the bombs. That's all they want, is vote for more and more money, not just for the bombs, but to make sure that we are funding an incredible lifestyle for Israel where they don't have, they have free health care and free education, all the things we don't have, the things we can't enjoy in our community. Do you think the people in Detroit are going to get free health care out of this? No. You know who's offering you universal health care? The other guy. So the guy who's saying, I want to bring what Israel has for health care here, y' all are going to vote against him to put in the lady who, who only wants to make sure Israel continues to get free health care. Wesley Bell, Richie Torres, you know, you guys are calling him out right there. I'm very disappointed in Hakeem Jeffries because he's made it very clear that he's not going to whip against this bill to merge our military with theirs. I find it frightening. Okay, before we get to our hour two, I want to play this clip because it actually this was one of my other options for a moment of joy because remember Russ Vote, the guy who was one of the people who created Project 2025. So I think what he thought that once he wrote himself a job description to be OMB director, meaning he's in charge of the Office of Management and Budget. He, you know, he's person over the budget. He thought that he was going to be lauded. He thought these people all thought they would be riding in like heroes into Westeros and that they would be treated like kings. Instead, they're being treated like schmucks, which is what they do. Served. And yes, no, yes, no, Obama is not the pro apac. That is not true that I know of. I don't know. But anyways, here is how he was treated when he went to Capitol Hill. And what was sort of funny about this is that the treatment was bipartisan. You are going to hear Republican Senator Thom Tillis first and then secondly, when he went over to the House, you're going to hear Detroit Area Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib.

[Mehdi Hassan]

Tell me the one Doge initiative that you think is the best example of the work that was done before Doge was quiesced in cfpb. Or you can go anywhere else, but just give me the best example of what you thought was an exquisite realization of value that came through cuts that worked their way through the Doge office. Well, I do believe that the reductions in force as a tool. Which specific one?

[Dina Dahl]

In general.

[Mehdi Hassan]

Yeah, but, but I want, I want to get specifics. You and I, you and I have different backgrounds. Mine was in enterprise implementation. I did this for a living. And so I don't want a word salad, Anthony.

[Joy Reid]

Well, I'm, it's not word salad, Senator.

[Mehdi Hassan]

CFPB I'm trying to do a reduction for. But I'm just ask you across the board, give me one, one best. Because here's what I'm asking for. The Doge office has been quiesced, okay. But there were a lot of claims of billions and billions of dollars in savings. I simply want to know where you booked them and where I can see it.

[Joy Reid]

I didn't run Doge, Senator.

[Mehdi Hassan]

Mr. You are OMB, right?

[Joy Reid]

I am, but I am not Doge.

[Mehdi Hassan]

You do track, but you do track the. To me. And when I worked in business and we had to implement efficiency, we got engaged to come in, do activity based accounting, whatever was necessary to identify the efficiencies. Then we go to the CEOs and say part of this is going to be a reduction in force. We're going to do this in a methodical manner. The number one thing we want to do is absolutely have a reduction in force that looks at our best and brightest, that 18 to 25% of the organization and make damn sure that they don't get your dollars in Doge savings. And then a lot of people, including you, talk about the Doge savings. I've worked in the business world. My understanding is the last time you worked in the business world was at B. Dalton Books when you were putting yourself through law school. Good on you. But you don't have this experience. And a lot of people that were involved in this do not have this experience. I love the idea of doge, but what I don't love is the idea of DOGE shit that we're picking up because people did it wrong. I spelled it with a dollar sign, by the way, Mr. Chair. But at the end of the day, we've got to be honest with the American people. We had people running through here and talking about all the savings at the

[Frank Figluzzi]

end of the day.

[Dina Dahl]

Book it.

[Mehdi Hassan]

Every single one of these things should have before after net savings and run rate, billion dollars in savings. It's going to be real simple. You don't have to do anything except present to me. I did the budget consultation for the record, in written form, a consultation with the government agency that had the most documented and sustainable savings so that I can go back to North Carolina and explain where DOGE was successful. Because right now I'm picking up a lot of bags of people who are some of the most experienced people leaving. Scientists leaving nih. These random. You were fired. Oh, I'm sorry. You weren't wrong email address. All that stuff is amateur stuff that we would have gotten me fired in my job at Price Waterhouse in a week.

[Joy Reid]

Who do you work for?

[Mehdi Hassan]

President of the United States. No.

[Joy Reid]

You work for the people of the United States. You take an oath to the people of this country. You should be fired because you work for the people, not. Not the President. None of us work for the President. Why do you think the agency was created because of the President? Congress created the agency because of the awful financial distress that had happened on our American people. You can blink your eyes all you want. Last year Americans lost roughly $16 billion to fraud. 25% increase from 2024 on your watch. The highest level on record on your watch. In fact, CFPB has received more consumer complaints in 14 months than in the first 14 years of its existence. Your watch. In May, CFPB deleted more than 2,000 pages from its website. These include consumer advisories, blog post. You didn't do it?

[Jayvon]

No.

[Joy Reid]

You didn't do it? Nope.

We overhauled our website.

[Frank Figluzzi]

Okay.

[Joy Reid]

How is CFPB adhering to congressional mandated consumer protection mission by removing consumer education and other materials from its website?

We did not remove materials from the website. We put it in an archive.

So you didn't remove the know your right. You archived the know your rights for veterans. You archived it.

We archived the you archives the know Your rights, Russell.

For veterans. You guys can get all upset all you want. He doesn't work for the President. He doesn't work for Zell or Walmart. He works for the people of the United States. Shame on you. On your watch, complaints are up. You literally took money away from pockets of our residents. You can blink all you want. You're going to. Your legacy will be the fact that people got hurt under your watch because

you think you were Gentlewoman Thomas. Listen, she said Russell. She didn't even call it Mr. Secretary. She said Russell. I. I moved to the black delegation. Can we please move to the black delegation? That from now on, Rashida Tlieb is now Rashida. Because you know if she was in the hood, she'd be like Rashida. But I think we need to move to the black delegation. And she gets an upgrade from Rashida to Rashida because damn. And Tom Tillis, look what retiring will do for you and your ability to tell the truth. He's retiring from Congress, from the United States Senate. And now he could say whatever is the truth. And yeah. She said you can blink all you want, Russell. Oh, I love. That was almost our moment of joy. She said you could blink all you want, Russell. From now on, everyone should just call him Russell. Nobody should call him Mr. Secretary. Mr. Secretary. No, Rashida. I think we need to move that to the black delegation. Let's find out if we can go ahead and do that. Move on to hour two of the Joy Reacher. Woo. That was. That was. That was beautiful. Welcome to hour two of the Joy Reach show. Do be here. Be sure you should at this point now want to hit that like and subscribe button. And we would appreciate you also hitting the share. And then when you hit share, just do the little all so that you can always know when we are live. Also don't forget that we're at the end of the show going to let you guys know who won our free tickets to go and see viewercon. I think I'm told that there are additional viewercon winners. Let me announce who the viewer con winners were. Juliet Evans, Nicole Small Rodriguez, Yukima Hughes, Nikki Hamilton Moore, Bettina Prida. And then we've got other folks. Renee Hall, Sada Robinson, Liam Ford Fuente and Tanisha Phillips. So. So we're gonna. I. I was told I need to let everybody know who won. So thank you all who played bingo last night. And then I believe the next thing. Oh no, I'm sorry. Is that the free ticket giveaway? That's a free ticket giveaway. Sorry about that. Yes, I will do it again at the end of the show. Sorry, I'm a little bit ahead of myself. Let me let you guys know that this hour of the Joy Reach show is brought to you by our friends at Wild Alaskan Company. And look, if you are like myself, going pescatarian, trying to eat fresh, eat healthy, one of the things you want is high quality food, especially in this era. Now y' all see what the FDA is doing. It's scary to eat a vegetable right now in this country. So we really want to make sure that if we're eating things, we're buying things that are fresh, that are healthy and with great, easily accessible ingredients. And we are really trying to eat healthy over at the Reed household. And so wild caught high quality seafood delivered to our door at the schedule that we are, our crazy schedule is a beautiful thing. Each Wild Alaskan box comes with individually portioned fillets, vacuum sealed, easy to prep, great for any meal, no matter how quick or elevated. All of their fish is quick frozen. It's frozen in Alaskan waters which are still clean and fresh. And they that helps lock in the freshness, texture, flavor. Key Ingredients like omega threes, they are with no GMOs, no antibiotics, no additives every order. And this is important, support sustainable harvesting practices and Alaskan fishermen whose history is tied to the region and and to the practice. Now, we have enjoyed Wild Alaskan because you can cook an amazing food and meal prep. I'm not a big fan of meal prepping if it's like a lot of work, but the way they portion things out, it's beautiful. Easy to meal prep, easy to prepare, fabulous. And Wild Alaskan is so confident that their fish is the best, they will offer a 100% satisfaction and money back guarantee. So you can try your first box risk free. So go to wildalaskan.com joy for $35 off your first order of premium wild caught seafood. That is wildalaskan.com joy For 30 $35 off your first order. That's wild. Thank you Wildlasting Company for sponsoring this episode. So we told you that we were going to spend the next hour really digging into the Nolan Xavier Wells case. So let's just go back for those of you who have not been following every inch of it, every moment of it. Nolan Xavier Wells graduated in just 2025 last year from Ocean Springs High School in the coastal Mississippi town of Ocean Springs. And that's just east of Biloxi, Mississippi. He then enrolled in Southwest Mississipp Mississippi Community College, where he was a wide receiver on their football team. And then this July 4th weekend happened. So on the evening of July 3rd, Nolan headed up to Horn island for a boat trip with a group of friends after, because he was a good kid, cooking his family a salmon dinner, according to his mom. It was a hug and a kiss and he left. That's what Christine Wansley, his mom, said. That's what she told the Associated Press. He joined his friends for a boat trip to Horn Island. And Horn island is a federally protected barrier island. It's known for its untouched beaches, shifting shoreline and quiet isolation, per the ap. And it was not uncommon for Nolan to visit the island with his friends, per the family, who also told us the same. And photos showing Nolan and his friends, the friends that he went boating with, they're all over the Internet. This is the main one that you've seen really popping up everywhere. And that is the group of friends that he was with. Now, Nolan was supposed to return to school after the holiday weekend to start training for the upcoming football season. That was what his dad, Elmore Wansley, told us and ABC News and the Associated Press. And Elmore said that basically he worked so hard on the football field and he was taking football so seriously that he wanted, he and his, his wife wanted to give Nolan one last sort of hurrah weekend of football fun before he had to buckle down for the football season. And instead of coming back with his friends, he went missing. So his friend group returned to the mainland on the afternoon of the 4th of July without Nolan. His family reported him missing that night after they received a phone call at around 11pm on July 4 from one of his friends. Now, after the first hours passed without any answers, Nolan's mom turned to social media, posting desperate appeals for information about her son's whereabouts, posting what he was wearing. And in A post on July 5, Christine Wansley said that she and her husband now finally had possession of their son's cell phone and that they had traveled to the island to search for him. So here we're going to put up the July 5 post from Christine Wansley. And she posted pictures that showed her son with the friends. The family wound up enlisting the host of the Cajun Navy, which is a local search group that helps find missing people and just helps people navigate the water. Here is what the organization posted on their public Facebook page on July 5, And that is C2. Oh, do you have a Jason? Oh, okay. I think I'm. Good morning, Josh.

[Mehdi Hassan]

5-7-20, 26.

[Dina Dahl]

Really important.

[Mehdi Hassan]

I know you guys are going to be out on the boat today. Enjoy your day. If you're going out towards Horn Island, I need you to keep your eyes out for 18 year old Nolan Wells. Black young man, about 6, 180 pounds, was last seen on that north end of Horn Island. Got guys, he hasn't been found, okay? He was last talking to a girl on that north end. He went out to Horn island with some buddies yesterday out on a boat. He's not been heard from in close to 24 hours. So guys, if you're out there fishing, if you're out there, you know, jet skiing, doing whatever you guys are doing, keep your eyes out for Nolan. Family's gonna be out there in the boat searching. We're gonna try and get some air assets up there. We know there's surface assets around. Coast Guard's been notified. Local police have been notified. Guys, please, please keep your eyes out. Look at the poster, look at the pictures. Let's see what we can do. Let's find this young boy. His mother's worried sick. Let's do what we do, guys. Love each and every one of you. Be safe. I hope you all still have ten fingers and toes. Let's do work.

[Joy Reid]

So that was the post that I pulled off of the Cajun Navy's Facebook page in which it was an all hands on deck search for Nolan Wells. Now, despite the sort of community all coming together to try to search for this child, this young man, the case immediately exploded into a racial controversy. Particularly in a state like Mississippi that has a bad history. Mississippi has the history of the most lynchings of any state, including that hanging bridge where several young black Mississippi, Mississippi men, women and men and women were lynched by white mobs in 1919. Of course, the infamous lynching of Emmett Till as well as recent controversies including the case of Demtravion treed, a 21 year old black college student who was found dead hanging from a tree on the campus of Delta State University in Cleveland, Mississippi on September 15, 2025. And the case of course of one year old Cohen Wiley, who was fatally shot by Senatobia police in a Walmart parking lot in senatobia, Mississippi on July 14, 2026. The officer was responding to a shoplifting call alleging diapers had been shoplifted. The officers killed the toddler, critically injured another woman in the car. Those cases have gotten far less national attention than Nolan Wells case. But per local source that I spoke with over the course of this week, many in the Community believe that Nolan Wells case, you know, really sort of blew up nationally because it involves a mixed race group of friends and, you know, affluent white Mississippians as well. So needless to say, the whole situation is fraught. And Nolan's parents, Christine and Elmer Wansley, who we interviewed on the show, they hired attorneys, including at the national level, Ben Crump. And they went to the national Action Network for support, which of course triggered some folks and major celebrities jumped in to help supporting their GoFundMe, which media mogul Byron Allen did to the tune of $100,000. Colin Kaepernick came in to fund moving Nolan's body to Washington for a private autopsy because the family wanted their own separate autopsy from the one being conducted in Mississippi. Tyler Perry is paying for the funeral, which is expected to take place on Monday if that date doesn't move. The family has met with the local officials and secured a grand jury investigation. But lots of people are questioning why Nolan's death wasn't immediately treated as something more than an accidental drowning. People also questioning why did his friends leave him behind, allegedly to spend time with another girl and say that he chose to stay behind? And why did he not take his phone? Why did they have his phone? Lastly, of course, we have the friends who went boating with Nolan privating their social media pages, and one of the moms putting out a Facebook post, which was sort of unusual. And then it sort of provided an alibi for her son and his friends, but was giving information. So that's where we start tonight. Let me very quickly, before we bring our guests in, I want to. I want to let you listen to this interview with the Sun. And now this is one of the men who unfortunately found Nolan's body in

[Jason]

like three feet of water. And then within a few steps, you could be in 20ft of water. And if all of a sudden your feet aren't under you anymore and the current starts carrying you, it can. It can drag you out pretty fast, pretty violently. I can't speak to whether it's damaging the investigation because I'm not part of it. One thing that I thought was interesting at the press conference today, the lawyers found. These lawyers were complaining that they weren't having a lot of communication from the sheriff's office. At the same time, the lawyer's been on a pressure bashing the sheriff's office without any evidence, saying that they can't be trusted and that they can't run a fair investigation without any evidence, without any of why that might be true. You're just Saying it try to keep their fundraising up, presumably. So that kind of irresponsibility needs to stop. Yeah. So we got contacted on the evening of 4July, and I believe it was a, like a family friend or member of a family of. Of Nolan's that got in touch with us and ultimately put us in touch with his mother. And we were able to talk to her and kind of get the. Get a briefing on everything she knew at that point. The next morning we obviously we had known that they didn't find anything overnight. So we started making plans to put a boat in the water and we talked to a couple of our local volunteers in Mississippi for our Mississippi chapter who went out. Two guys went out in the boat and drone and canvassed the island and did a great search around Horn island and didn't find anything that day. That was Sunday the 5th of July. So we made a decision since we were getting further away from the last time Nolan. On Monday morning, we put a plane up and that's what we did. And we were flying for a couple hours a great around three different barrier islands when we noticed the command post being set up on the beach and when Nolan's body had washed up.

[Mehdi Hassan]

What do you remember most about the

[Joy Reid]

conversation Nolan's mother had with your incident coordinator?

[Jason]

Just, you know, frantic, wanting to know why her son didn't come back. You know, why was his phone showing that he was on land, but she can't get in touch with him and come to find out that he had stayed behind, was supposed to catch another ride, left his phone and keys on the boat that he rode out there on. But we now know he ever did come back.

[Joy Reid]

Joining me now, Paul Butler, the Albert Brick professor in Law at Georgetown University Law Center. Also one of our absolute favorite legal analysts, Frank Fergloozzi, former assistant Director of Counterintelligence for the FBI and the host of the Fire and Figlusi show on Substack. And also another one of our favorite legal analysts, Dina Dahl, host of the legal and political podcast Mistrial on the Midas Touch Network and co host of the Supreme Court focused podcast Unprecedented on the Legal AF Channel. Three of our favorite people to talk to in the world. Thank you all for being here. I want to start with you. Frank Friglozzi, you thank See, I am the only person who gets to call Frank Frankie Figs, because that's what we used to call him back at msnbc. So no one else gets to call him that but me. But it's so good to see you, Frank.

[Frank Figluzzi]

Been A while. It's been a while.

[Joy Reid]

It's been a while too long. So one of the things that strikes me is that the place where Nolan and his friends were hanging out is federally protected land. So it's federal property. And one of the things that struck me about the way that this case initially sort of played out is that there wasn't immediately a federal response. But is that wrong? If a person dies on federal property, is there usually an immediate FBI investigation?

[Frank Figluzzi]

So, you know, you went there, and I was going to go there, so let's do it. Yes, this is federal property. It's part of the National Gulf Islands Seashore, and it's controlled by the National Park Service. So, yes. And I gotta tell you, I'm observing this more and more under this administration, which is to take kind of a supportive role and a backseat, even when there is clear FBI jurisdiction. We don't have to go any further than the Nancy Guthrie case out of Tucson, Arizona, where I've said publicly numerous times, I don't understand why the FBI didn't grab this case when it was likely a kidnapping. But here we are. And I don't know how many complex murder investigations this. This sheriff's office handles, and I would want to learn more about that. But what we know so far about the FBI involvement is that they're in a support mode, that they're. They're examining, helping examine digital evidence. We don't have further explanation from them on that. We can only assume it's GPS coordinates and cell phones and any other devices, but we don't know how far that's gone. The big question I have on the digital side is when you've got this many people who've been interviewed and somewhere between 100 and 200 people attending July 4th festivities on the island, and the sheriff saying, last I looked, about 60 interviews have been conducted. One of the things the FBI would do is collect or ask permission for people to give up their images and phones from that day so that you could then overlay that with facial recognition to find Nolan somewhere in those images.

[Jason]

Right.

[Frank Figluzzi]

If you've got that many people partying on the beach and a lot of cameras and videos and photos, presumably somebody captured Nolan's image somewhere, even inadvertently. Facial recognition can do that and say, we think we've got a positive ID or a near positive ID on Nolan's face, that's something I would love to know if it's being done, but I've not heard that that's the case.

[Joy Reid]

Jason, I'm sorry to skip but if you could put up C8, because what's now started to emerge is that images from that day. And so these images apparently have turned up on social media that are of July 4th. So now belatedly, you are seeing these images put forward. Does this help in some way for people to start putting forward images? Do these images do anything from an FBI standpoint?

[Frank Figluzzi]

Well, one of the things that images do is prompt public response. Right. I know those people. That guy said something weird after July 4th or before July 4th. I know who that is. My cousin's sister knows that person and should be interviewed. That kind of thing helps a lot with familiarity and prompts response. Whether or not that's happening, I don't know. The sheriff's spokesperson has said he's. He's pleased with the public response and cooperation so far. But yeah, that I get out. I. I'm all a big fan of crowdsourcing, crime solving. Get it out and let's have the public help with this. The question is whether the law enforcement investigation is. Is capable and competent enough to do that.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah, I agree. And by the way, you mentioned Nancy Guthrie. I promise you, Twitter is going to find Nancy Guthrie before the FBI. That is my opinion, because I don't know what they do for a living in this point. But let's talk about that. The point of who's been spoken with Paul Butler and who has not. So there is this video that was one of the first kind of viral things to go viral. This is C5. You could put it up. That is this video. You can put it up. And you can, you can take it down, Jason, if you don't mind that you can hear somebody saying, where's my effing phone? Initially, Paul, attorney Ben Crump alleged that that seemed to be Nolan. But one of Nolan's, his actually best friend Jayvon, went on TMZ and gave an interview about that interaction. Let's play C6 if you could.

Jason.

[Frank Figluzzi]

Jayvon, have you seen the video that's been going around social media where people think that they're hearing an argument between people and they're wondering whether or not Nolan is one of the people in that argument? You just described that you had another friend, not Nolan, another friend who was in and got into a dispute. Is that video the other argument that you were talking about?

[Jayvon]

Yes,

[Frank Figluzzi]

but is that Nolan in the video?

[Jayvon]

I can't tell. It's too far away. But in that video, I feel like it's. The voices are too clear, like from the side. It's too Clear for it to be that far away, for it to be Nolan arguing. And then also that altercation. It sounds just like my other friend that got into an altercation on the boat, and they were trying to, like, as he was in the altercation, I was calming him down. They were trying to get him out off the island. They were trying to get him back to land because he was just losing it. So.

[Frank Figluzzi]

Describe that. That's kind of interesting. What was that about?

[Jayvon]

He was just very hostile. Like, he just. He was, like, really, like. Like mad. Like, they were trying to. Like, the parents on that boat were trying to get him out.

[Frank Figluzzi]

I'm curious if the police have. I know they're. They said they're still investigating.

[Dina Dahl]

Have they?

[Frank Figluzzi]

Did any investigators ever speak to you about what you saw that.

[Rashida Tlaib]

That day?

[Jayvon]

No, sir.

[Frank Figluzzi]

Really?

[Dina Dahl]

Okay.

[Frank Figluzzi]

Cops have not talked to you yet?

[Joy Reid]

No, sir.

[Rashida Tlaib]

That's odd.

[Jayvon]

I don't see why the cops. I don't see why the cops would have to talk to me. I mean, obviously, like, you know, like, I had said my plea, like, because whenever I had talked to the people at Sunherd, it was whenever, you know, the body was discovered and the autopsy people and all those people were there.

[Frank Figluzzi]

Well, I'll tell you why I'm surprised, because you knew Nolan well, and you knew that he was friends with these guys who were the last ones to be around him before his body was found. And I would think they would at least want to know. Hey, just the things we're asking, you know, did you ever hear of any of this stuff? It's odd to me, just to gather information that the cops wouldn't have contacted you.

[Jayvon]

Yeah, and that's fine.

[Dina Dahl]

I'm.

[Jayvon]

I'm completely fine with that. I. Like I said, I have nothing to hide. Like, that's my boy, and I want him to find justice. Like that. Like, this whole case thing, like, whatever. Like this whole situation, none of this adds up to me. So, like, it's really hard, like, for, like, people to just, like, keep on saying things when, like, none of. None of it adds up, honestly, so.

[Joy Reid]

Okay, I want to play one more clip before I go to you, Paul, because he says none of this adds up. He knows all the kids. He said it doesn't. He's not sure that that sounds like Nolan, and no police have spoken to him. Now let's play Jason, another one of the friends who purports to answer the question of who that is. Jason, if you could play. I think this is C7 for the first time since Wells Body was found were hearing from a friend of the 18 year old who was with him on the day that he died, Tristan shepherd, who says that he was with Wells on the fourth of July, but declined to speak on camera because of the threats that he says he's been receiving.

[Mehdi Hassan]

We did no wrong here and we

[Joy Reid]

don't understand how we're getting so much hate behind it. We all cared and loved no one and nobody wanted to see no one die.

[Mehdi Hassan]

Nobody wanted to see his life be taken so short.

[Joy Reid]

So is anything odd about what these friends are saying, Paul, in your view,

[Dina Dahl]

it's shocking that investigators haven't spoken to that young man who apparently has information that's relevant to a crime that or to a possible crime, to a disappearance that they're trying to investigate. And it doesn't give me a lot of confidence about the investigation. I don't know if it's a competency issue or another issue, but it's very concerning. So we don't have to rely on a teenager's analysis about whose voice is on a video. We have forensic techniques that should be able to fairly quickly provide investigators with that information. So there is a. A grand jury investigation, not a grand jury criminal indictment at this point, but a grand jury investigation of this case. And one of the things that should immediately happen is that forensic analysis of that video. And joy to Frank's point, in that video, we see many people all around that island. It was from 100 to 200 teenagers partying. So the sheriff's theory appears to be that Nolan drowned. Now, that's weird for a number of reasons. One, he was a good swimmer. He was in great shape. But the main reason it's weird is that if all of those people were around, how could no one have noticed, heard and come to his aid if he were in that kind of trouble? So lots of things that don't add up. It doesn't mean that there was foul play necessarily, but the way that we find out whether there was foul play is with an investigation that's conducted with integrity. And based on some of what we're seeing now, I think there are concerns. There are good reasons to be concerned. Concerned about this investigation.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah. There's lots of questions that seem to be being answered, Dina, on social media rather than coming from investigators, which is odd. The sheriff hasn't said a lot other than immediately saying it was a drowning and sort of passing it off as an accident. And that, I think is one of the things that triggered people's skepticism. We're also now learning Mainly from Facebook. I have spent a lot of time on Facebook in the last couple days. Friends of the young woman. Her name is Katie. This is C9. Jason and I found her Facebook page, but did not want to reproduce the Facebook page. So we don't want people going on her Facebook page and bothering her. But now the allegation, which is mainly coming from Nolan's friends and from her older sister, that she was the last person to see to be with Nolan, to be known to be with Nolan, and that Katie, who allegedly met Nolan that weekend, did not know him before, might have been the last person to be with him. I don't know if she's been interviewed by the federal authorities. I believe she has at least had one interview. But wouldn't this be a good place to start? Like, shouldn't this grand jury or shouldn't investigators be tracking her down? I literally tracked down her Facebook page in 10 minutes.

[Paul Butler]

Absolutely. And I think to kind of reiterate Frank and Paul's point, whether or not it's the federal or local officials, they seem to have far, not, like, not enough people on this case. I mean, there are so many people there at that party, and they each not only need to be interviewed, but every single cell phone needs to be reviewed, and the location data, the. The images. So who, whoever they have, they haven't stuffed it enough.

[Jason]

And I.

[Paul Butler]

And to your point about social media, I think the collective knowledge of social media actually does tend to really uncover things. I mean, TikTok basically solved what happened with Gabby Petito. Right. Years ago. So I think sharing information online is actually going to be very helpful in this case. And it is possible that the social media community might find out and uncover things before law enforcement. But like, in this day and age, crimes are really proven through this kind of forensic evidence. This cell phone. Cell phones provide so much data. People really aren't convicted in trials anymore. Based on eyewitness testimony. It's all about your cell phone pinging over a tower. And it's amazing the kind of information that they can gather from your cell phones. And they have teenagers, so, you know, they all have their cell phones. They're taking pictures all the time. They're posting things all the time. They're sending messages, snapchats. They just really need to have more people on this because they really probably have a trove of evidence that they can comb through and probably find out quite a bit.

[Joy Reid]

And one would think they would have done that right away and they'd probably be further along long had they done it immediately. So let's get into that because the cell phone is a big issue and where the cell phone was pinging and where the cell phone was. But I'm going to put a pin in that for just one second because I want to first play, Frank, one of the newer pieces of evidence that's come forward. And I also want to note, just put a pin in the fact that the FBI is now reportedly investigating threats. They haven't said against whom, but one can sort of surmise who they. Who they're investigating threats against. So they are involved on that side of it. But that's interesting that they're, they're proactive there. But this video came out, I believe NBC was the first to get it, and it showed what happened with the boat that these young men were on and why they had to be essentially towed back to land. This is C10 Jason. New audio shedding light on the moments before some of Nolan Wells friends left Horn island off the coast of Mississippi. A mom of one of the friends last week said the group left without Nolan when their boat began malfunctioning. We're sinking. Can you all please come? NBC News has obtained audio as part of a records request that details the group calling for towing assistance. And is everybody on board in good health otherwise? Yeah, yeah, everybody talks. So. So, Frank, the other thing that was said, and this is also going around social media, is that the families are claiming when Nolan met this other young lady, Ashley, he decided to go off with her and left his phone and his keys on that boat. And then that boat was in distress and was towed back and the friends took the phone and the keys with them. Anything about that strike you as odd or as investigatorily helpful?

[Frank Figluzzi]

So yes and no. If you're planning, you know, if you're boating and you're planning on being in the water, you're going swimming, you're going to be at the beach. You're worried about theft of your cell phone. You don't want to get your cell phone wet. Then, yes, boaters will tell you they stow. They stow their cell phone. Sometimes they wrap it in plastic and they stow it safely. So. So not so much there. But at the point where he decides, hey, I'm not going back with you, is it possible he forgot to ask for his phone, hey, let me go retrieve my phone. I'm going off with this girl? Yeah, that's possible. There's been reports that there's no surprise the young people and July 4th and maybe some alcohol has been consumed at least one of the friends is pictured drinking or holding a can of what looks like an alcoholic beverage. So, yeah, you know, I'm interested in this girl. I forgot myself when that's all possible. I think where I'm struck by two things. First, one thing you said that has to be addressed, based on my experience in the bureau, is the FBI has decided reportedly to investigate threats against the young people who were with Nolan, who it appears, are white, but they're going to expend federal resources on interstate communication of a threat, but they won't apparently take over an investigation of a murder or possible murder that occurred clearly on federal property. That strikes me as extremely odd and needing an explanation. Now, as for the young lady, I'm also struck by the fact that Nolan's mom, who I believe spoke with the young lady, said that the young lady said to the mom, it was just a high and a by. Right. So you've got his friends saying. Nolan's friends saying, well, he seemed really interested in this young woman. And so what is that what happened? Was it high and bye. So here's what I would be doing, and I've done it myself. When I've led possible homicide investigations, the digital wins the day. Yes, but I'll tell you where I've gotten the confessions. When you couple it with digital evidence, and that's the polygraph. And the FBI polygraph examiners, I believe, are the best in the world, the best trained in the world. And that's where you get the confession. When you present your digital evidence and you present your discrepancies in stories. And now you hook somebody up to the machine. That's where you get the confession, and that's where the FBI should be coming in and offering that.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah. And the other piece of it, Paul, is the friend that said, we did nothing wrong. We did nothing to Nolan, sort of proactively said that to the journalist. Now, we didn't hear the full conversation, but that seems like an interesting thing to sort of lead with. And yet Jayvon saying something about this doesn't add up. So the friends, one who allegedly also posted the last sort of cell phone text with Nolan, where he's not responding, obviously he doesn't have his phone. Can't. You've got another friend that posted see you soon before they wiped their cell phone page, but you can't see him soon. You have his phone. You know that you have his phone because you all took his phone. So there's a lot that's odd. And I want to get into this phone thing. So here is an interview with Nolan Wells dad where he talks about the kind of hoops they had to jump through to get this phone back. This is the 11.

Okay.

[Rashida Tlaib]

So the situation with the key. When we got to the house, a few of his friends, they were already there, and they were at the door in the house asking questions. So when I walked up, they were getting no. Things getting kind of tense. So I turned to them and told them, I need you guys to calm down. I need. I don't do this to me right now. I need them to kind of trust me so I can. They can give me something. So I was able to calm him down. So the guy that's. He's in one of the pictures, but he came out of the room, have sleep or whatever, have. Well, I think Jacks or whatever. And I said, look, I'm known as father. I'm here to get his keys so I can get his car. I said, he's like, his car was in New York. His car was parked in New York. So he was like, I don't know, man. I know it's like my brother. I said, well, if Nolan was like your brother, would you please go in your room and see if you can find my son's keys so I can take his car home. He walks off two or three minutes, come back, I can't find the keys. I said, okay. So at that point, I get the boys and I get to move them out the house because. Because I didn't want them to go into the house and start tearing up these people houses because then there would be a whole new situation. So walk outside by the car. One of the guys that was in the house with us, he was on the phone with a girl. And the girl told him that Nolan's keys were on top of this. Jack Sky's Xbox in the house because apparently she was there with him earlier. So he goes back up to the door by himself, and five minutes later the kids come out. So now I feel like you done lied to me. So now I'm really like in distress with you. But as far as that night goes, if I knew anyone who had a boat, I would have went out that night looking for my son. We tried, but I just. I don't have. I don't have friends with boats, but if I knew someone with one, I would have went out that night. And this so happened that his coach saw all the stuff on Facebook that next morning in the car, contacted me at like 5 in the morning, asked me did he Want to go out? And I told him yes. So within an hour he was at the dock, we met him and we went out, we docked the boat, got off the boat, walked on the island, walked a pretty nice stretch, came back, got back on the boat, went around the island, look, came back around and where we went to the. That's where apparently they say that his body floated up. I don't know a lot about water currents or whatever, but I would have, I would think that we would have saw his body. And on the trip there, there was a, a family that stayed at night on the island, like actually 10 and out on the island. So if he was left, he would have saw that family on the island and it was two of the boats docks. So he would have had.

[Joy Reid]

So Paul, your thoughts? And I apologize, that was not an interview. That was obviously the press conference that they did with National Action Network. Your thoughts?

[Dina Dahl]

First of all, how tragic that the parents are doing the investigation because. Because apparently law enforcement didn't step up immediately. You know, the cliche is the first 48 hours. So reportedly the last time that Nolan was seen was at around 3 o' clock on the 4th of July. His body wasn't found until July 6th, two days later. So the parents have very legitimate questions about why it wasn't found earlier, especially since it reportedly was found close to the shores. And so, you know, there are theories that it was planted there later. We have no reason to think that that's true. But in the absence again of an investigation that we can have confidence in, of course, all of those kind of conspiracy theories kind of take on life. And to the point about the, the phone, again, that's another instance in which the parents had to do the investigation. They did it well. And they are the people who recovered the phone, not the sheriff and not any other investigative agency. And when they saw the phone, what did they find on it? Nothing. From that day, Joy, you raised teenagers. Anybody who knows teenagers knows that a teenager and his or her phone is like this. And again, I take Frank's point. If you're on a boat, maybe or you're at a party where people are in the water, you don't want the phone to get wet or damaged. But all day, especially Nolan, according to his parents, was an avid user of social media. He was posting all the time. And I the teenagers, I know you're at a party with all these kids, you're going to post something, you're going to be snapping photos and especially if that's the thing that you do that you know for. So why is there nothing on this phone? Again, Mr. Crump has hired his own experts and they have access to this phone. So we'll have more information about whether anything was wipe from this phone, hopefully really soon.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah. And just to reiterate, when we spoke with Christine, Nolan's mom, she made it very clear that he was a very heavy phone user. He had her. He was encouraging her to post more often, and he was an avid Snapchat user. Jason, let's play C12 because this is. We were told the same thing, but I think this is clearer audio of what? A sort of a clearer explanation, a more succinct explanation of how Christine Wansley was able to get the phone or able to find out where the phone was. And here we go.

[Frank Figluzzi]

You have Nolan's cell phone and messages were deleted.

[Joy Reid]

How could you tell messages were deleted?

[Frank Figluzzi]

Well, his parents got the phone back.

[Joy Reid]

And that's something that's important, Michael, because they tracked his phone on Life 360.

So Life 360. But whenever. So when I received the phone call from Warren, I immediately called my friend Tashima and I said, hey, have you guys seen Nolan? Because her two sons, Jaylen and Jayvon, they grew up together. They played City League sports together. When they got into school, they played together sports together. And so she was like, hey, like, okay. The boys were pulling up the location from Snapchat. So the Snapchat location looks completely different than the Life360 location. So when I pulled up Life360, it was different. It was showing everywhere the phone had been. Like, it had. I was like, well, it's showing that he's back on land. Like, I'm not. He's like, but no, he didn't come back with us.

[Frank Figluzzi]

Well, how were you able to get the phone?

[Joy Reid]

So we, we tracked it and my friend Tashima went and picked it up.

So this is confusing, Dina, because the phone, I would assume, pinged back on land, because the boys brought it back with them when the boat broke down. Sort of. I'm sort of going through the logical sort of events here. They had the phone on the boat. The boat has an electrical problem, they get towed back. They have his phone, they go back to Warren's house. And just for all of you to remember, it was about 11 o' clock that night that this young man, Warren, apparently called Christine Wansley to say, I guess to raise the alarm that Nolan was not back with them. Right. And that is when this whole investigation begins. But can you make sense of these discrepancies regarding the phone sort of pinging on land, pinging on sea. Is it as simple as I've just said? It just. It. It was pinging on land because he was. His phone was back, but not him.

[Paul Butler]

Yeah, I mean, that sounds exactly right. I mean, it sounded like there was a difference between his Snapchat location and his life. 360.

[Joy Reid]

That's weird.

[Paul Butler]

Yeah. I mean, and that maybe has something to do with if they did change any settings in the Snapchat or. Or erase it. And so definitely that's something that forensic people look into. But I'm going to just reiterate the same thing that Paul said in terms of. It's. It's. You know, there's always like a how. Because you do apply some common sense to these cases, right? And this idea that even if he wanted to stay behind, that he didn't bring his phone with him. It's. You. You just. You can't believe it. They are so attached to their phones, these teenagers. I mean, all of us, frankly, are attached to our phone these days. And if he thought he was going to stay behind, that would make it even more of a reason to want to have the phone. You know, you don't know exactly what happened, but that seems to just be a lie. And so once you have the one lie, then you wonder, you know, what are you hiding? Right? And it could be more innocent than, you know, murder, right? Could be that they just left him and they just didn't even bother to tell him they were leaving or something. But, like, there was definitely. You have to suspend common sense to believe that he didn't ask for his phone back. If he said, hey, folks, I'm staying here, and that starts to unravel their story.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah. And Frank, here are the things that I cannot make sense to me. Thing number one, if the idea is Nolan stayed behind to meet a girl, the thing you need to keep up with that girl or to have further conversation with a girl you just met is your phone without your phone.

[Frank Figluzzi]

You need the digits, as they say. Jodi.

[Jason]

Right?

[Paul Butler]

You need the digits.

[Joy Reid]

You're on the water. Are you going to write the number on your hand? It might wash off in the water. What are we doing? Right, so you need your phone to keep track with the girl, or maybe you want to take a picture with the girl. Maybe you want to take a selfie with the girl. So you need your phone for that. So that's number one. Number two, if the friend Tashima has to track the phone using two different apps, and then she goes to retrieve the phone. If the phone is in the same place as the keys, why did dad have to come back and demand the keys? If the friend of the family comes, and if the same person has them, and I don't know that it's the same Warren. If it's the same person that has both the keys and the phone, but someone has the phone, and someone has the keys, and each of those parents had to take proactive action to get those things back. Why wouldn't the friends. If you love your friend and something's happened, I would think the kids that I grew up around, that our kids grew up around, would immediately call and say, you know, Ms. Reed, I have, you know, your child's keys. I have the phone here. Get it back. They're holding on to the keys, and they're holding onto the phone, and they have to be asked for them. That makes me wonder. Well, y' all made your social media private, right? Because if you. If he was snapping, maybe that snaps also on your phone. If y' all took selfies together, maybe those things are also on your phone. All the phone contents missing. And also there has to be all this work to get the phone and the keys. It's weird.

[Paul Butler]

Yeah.

[Frank Figluzzi]

It raises suspicions, and that's why we're here talking, isn't it? We don't know the details of who knew what when. And teenagers being teenagers or young. Young people here and maybe consuming some alcohol, maybe they don't have a clue. You know, always. Never. One thing I've learned is never assume nefarious intent when. When you've got. You got a bunch of kids who really are maybe clueless as to what's just transpired. But, yeah, you would think the. And the phone are in the same place. And, yes, they would be easily volunteered as, yes, we're sorry. Here they are. I don't know, but I want to. I got to say this, just as the family was able to say, hey, there's been some deleted stuff, we think, on this phone. Right. You can check your trash on your phone and see if it's been deleted. And then, rest assured, the FBI forensic examiners will absolutely, definitively tell us, yes, there's been deletions here. A coroner or medical examiner will also tell us, with regard to Nolan's body, this body was drowned. This body has water in its lungs because Nolan was alive when he went in the water and he took in water or. No, this body was deceased when it went in the water. All of that will come out with the autopsy results.

[Rashida Tlaib]

Right.

[Joy Reid]

And, Paul, there's another case that's very similar and analogous that happened in Dallas. And this young man was named Daniel Irving, and he went out boating with friends, with two. Two teenage friends. He's black, they were white. And people are calling it kind of a similar parallel case. He drowned. He was. His body was found, and the two friends were charged with lying to investigators about it. Now, this was a case that seemed to be an accidental drowning. The two other kids panicked. They didn't know what to do, and so they lied. And they are now being charged with a crime for that. The parents of this young man want them charged with murder. But that is a similar case. Like, it's a possibility that something accidentally happened and everyone started panicking. Right. But if that is the case, as in this Texas case, can that still be a crime?

[Dina Dahl]

Yes, it can be a crime if people lie to investigators or are not forthcoming with what they actually know. And just to reiterate Frank's crucial point, lying doesn't necessarily implicate anybody in a homicide. We know that teenagers brains are not as developed as adult brains, and it actually takes male brains even longer to develop than female brains. Brains aren't fully developed until they're 25. And that matters with regard to things like how kids appreciate risk and how they respond to danger. So the line or the apparent cover up could be just because they don't want to get into trouble, or it could be for other reasons. But the other implication of the idea that teenagers aren't as mature as adults is law enforcement is really good at getting teenagers to talk and really good at getting them to give up what they know. So one thing I want to know is, has every kid who was on this island been hauled into the grand jury, or are they going to be hauled in the grand jury? Are they cooperating with law enforcement? Are they lawyered up? Again, not evidence of guilt, but again, if people have anything to hide and they're concerned about this young man who was very popular and who had a tragic death, we certainly hope that they are cooperating.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah. And Dina, we've talked a lot about these teenagers. I want to talk about the adults, because if a teenager does something wrong, it generally is going to take adult help for them to cover it up. Right. And you can blame the teenagers all you want, but there are a lot of grown people who are taking actions that are odd as well. Because if I knew that my friend's child was missing, I, as the mom, would reach out to the other mom and say, let me help you in any way I can. Let me get that. Keys, the phone. Let me help you jailbreak the phone. If you can't get into it, what can I do to help? Right? We're all friends. So that brings me to this lady. Her name is Ashley Cole, but her actual title is judge. She's a judge. So she's a lawyer like you all. She knows the law. And I, as a layperson, have always been told if anything happens, don't talk, say nothing. Definitely don't make a public statement. If you don't know where this is going, you don't speak. And I would think she's had the same education. She posted a whole Facebook page in which she appears to give an alibi. She starts by saying that she and her husband were not on the island. Asked by no one, but she volunteered that. Then she says that her son did nothing wrong. She explains why they wiped all of their Facebook accounts, why they privated all their accounts, because she said she fears death threats and that this may be one of the cases the FBI is investigating. But then she does like a weird thing and she kind of gives her son an alibi. She kind of explains what happened. She says that they left around 4:30pm because the boat was taking on water and they had an issue with the bilge pump. Nolan made a decision to stay on the island and return home with another group of friends. This is the source of that story. The mom. Is that odd for you?

[Paul Butler]

You know, I think that it's kind of like sometimes doctors are their worst patients. I think sometimes lawyers could be, you know, you. You think that I've got this, right? This is. I'm a professional. I've got this. She should certainly not have given that post. And whether or not, you know, how much her circling the wagons first of all, made them look a lot more suspicious. Right? Just putting that out there from the get go, you know, you. That did not make sense. But also, you don't really know what her son told her, what her son didn't tell her. And now there's a statement that can be read in a court of law. I mean, she absolutely should not have said anything. I mean, the facts in this case do not. Do not add up. I mean, to your point about the adults, right? I mean, that's the sad reality, is it's the adults that failed. Seems like the children failed with at least not being as transparent, regardless of what they seem to be hiding. Not being maybe as transparent about actually what happened, happened. And then the law enforcement, you know, because to Frank's point about the autopsy, the body was there for so long. And yes, they can still determine whether or not somebody drowned or not, but physical alter, you know, scratches or whatever, that's gonna. They could have that. They're gonna have a lot less information. It's gonna be a lot harder to determine if there was a fight, what kind of fight, and the injuries after his body being there so long. And if law enforcement had put the resources. If it wasn't these parents having to go on morning shows. Right. And getting like they had to enlist the help. I mean, that's the tragedy here, is that this should have been. If. If they had all done what they were supposed to do immediately after, we wouldn't be like having to sort it out ourselves, which is never good. It's not good for the kids or anybody, and certainly not for Nolan and his. His family.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah. And Frank, look, in a federal. In this kind of federal property, at least according to one of the sources that I spoke with, who has association with the parks sort of world, in the federal government, an adult would have had to put in a permit for the boat. And so it's not as if the teenagers could just on their own, head on up there. There had to be some adults involved in permitting to be there on that boat. I would assume an adult owns the boat.

[Jayvon]

Boat.

[Joy Reid]

These kids don't own a boat. So there are other adults. And so if you're investigating this case, would you want to maybe talk to the person that owned the boat?

[Frank Figluzzi]

Oh, for sure. Let's get the circumstances of what the young man said to the owner and where we're going and where we're coming, when we're coming back, and who's going to be with us and all of those circumstances and what they may have told the boat owner. You know, obviously there's a problem with the bilge pump. What else did they tell the owner of the boat? I also have to tell you, and I know this is where politics get into play, and this is why the FBI should be taking this case. When you've got a judge involved and now the sheriff, who has to work with that judge, presumably, in all their cases, do they interview that judge? Do they ask for a neutral party? Do they ask for the state to come in and do the interview? Lots of issues here, but really very few answers. I'm waiting for autopsy results, of course. We all are. And when you throw a judge into this mix. And yes, Dean is right on Point, that judge locked herself in to essentially her son's story or gave her son the story. Whatever the case, she's locked in. And I love my sons and I believe them, but when they were 18 year olds, Joy, I don't know if, I don't know if they could rely on what they were saying. I'm not going to put it in writing, for heaven's sake.

[Paul Butler]

Right.

[Joy Reid]

Because if something wrong happened, is she not an accessory? You put yourself in the story, ma', am, and people are pointing to the stepmother. But that's a mom. Last question to you, Paul. If you could just explain to us how a grand jury works. If it's not a criminal grand jury, what does it have the power to do? And if there are two opposing autopsies, if they don't agree, the one in the state and the one that is being paid for by Colin Kaepernick, then what?

[Dina Dahl]

So grand juries have two functions. They investigate crimes and they charge people with crimes. At this stage, based on what's been reported, the grand jury is only investigating, but it has power to subpoena witnesses, to subpoena evidence documents, cell phones, to do forensic evidence. It has power to reveal what happened here. And so, again, it's really important to have confidence in the process, if that confidence is deserved. And Dori, you wrote a book, a fabulous book about Medgar Evers and, you know, the troubled history of state investigations of crimes involving black people in Mississippi. And this is a time where ordinarily we would welcome the involvement of the FBI as an independent, impartial and fair supplement. But this is not an FBI that we can have that confidence in. So I hate to get political. I don't mind getting racial, because this is partly about race, but this is also partly about Donald Trump and what he has done to damage our criminal legal system. Equal justice under the law, equal protection under the law, and confidence in the government itself.

[Joy Reid]

Indeed, it's not the Frank Figluzzi FBI. It is the Cash Patel FBI. And you know, to circle back to Frank, what you said about Nancy Guthrie, if it had been a conservative talk host's mom, one would suspect that there might have been more urgency, and in this case, there seems to be more urgency about, you know, investigating potential threats against some of the family members rather than finding out what happened to this child. This has been such an incredible panel. I so appreciate you all spending the hour with me. Paul Butler, Dina Dahl, Frank Fogluzzi, you guys are all stars. Thank you. Thank you, thank you. I appreciate you both and Wish you an amazing, safe and happy weekend.

[Dina Dahl]

Thank you, Joy.

[Joy Reid]

Thank you very much. I hope you guys have enjoyed that. We decided we wanted to bring our A game and get an A list panel to get you some expert conversation about what happened to this young man, Nolan Wells. We'll keep you posted. The funeral service was initially scheduled to be on Monday. We will let you know if that moves, if it changes. There's been some thought that it might move, but we shall see. So before we go, we have two more pieces of business to do. Piece of business. Number one is to once again let you know who has won our free tickets to hang out with me tomorrow in new jersey at njpac@viewercon. And the winners are, from YouTube, Juliet Evans, Nicole Small Rodriguez, Yukima Hughes, Nikki Hamilton Moore and Bettina PETA. And from the other platforms because they didn't want it to be all YouTube. So we decided to sort it out and make sure people from other platforms, meaning Twitch or Facebook or substacks, if you came from one of the other platforms, we wanted you to get a chance as well. And those winners are. Don L, Renee Hall, Sadia Robinson, Liam Funte, and Tynesha Phillips. I will see all of you tomorrow at njpac. Please make sure you point yourselves out to me so that we can say, hey, take a selfie, do all the things we so appreciate, each and every one of you. And also those of you who played bingo with us yesterday. That was a lot of fun. We're going to do more games if you guys want more games. Let us know in the chat if you guys would like to see more games. But we'd love to play a game, y'.

[Mehdi Hassan]

All.

[Joy Reid]

We're trying to bring the fun back. Donald Trump took away the fun. We're trying to bring it back. Okay, before we go and get to our, our moment of joy, I have to, I have to play this video. Jason, you can put it up, but I'm not going to play. We have the sound down so you can just see it. So this is a wild story. So 19 years ago, Argentina's star player Lionel Messi did a photo shoot. He was 19 years old at the time. And the folks who did the photo shoot, they did a contest for anyone to have their baby be in the photo with Lionel Messi. The woman who won is the mother of lamine Yamal, who 19 years later will be facing Lionel Messi in the World cup final. You cannot write this and list miss this man. Mr. Yamal has a 3 year old baby brother who has taken over the world. This baby is a superstar. There's a lot of music behind this, so we couldn't play the music. But when I tell you he does it, according to his brother, he doesn't even know that he's trending and that he's become a global superstar. He just acts like this. And the brother has said this is just how he acts at home too. So he's just doing his thing and being himself. He is so cute. He's so joyful. He loves his brother so much. And look, if you. If there's no other reason for you to root for Spain other than Argentina is horrible. Sorry. It's just horrible. And. And fr. And Fone Mike Fanon is rooting for Argentina.

[Jayvon]

Tina.

[Joy Reid]

So we're against each other on this one. But look, you gotta root for Spain, y', all in the final. If for no other reason than the weird coincidence that not that 19 years later, 19 year old Lamine Yamal will be facing the guy that he met as an infant, Lionel Messi, in the final. And guess what? Both of their first championships, you know what number they wore on their jerseys? 19. I promise you, you cannot make it up. You cannot make it up. Viva Espana. Viva Espana. We are voting for Spain because if for no other reason, then we love that little baby and we want that baby to cheer and it's going to be so much fun if you're rooting for Argentina. Sorry, I still love you anyway. All right, let's play our moment of joy. And our moment of joy is quite personal this week because one of our favorite people on Earth is Mrs. Maddie J. And when I tell you we were so excited that Mrs. Maddie J did that came Q and A, which let us know if you want to do that again. Mrs. Maddie J took your questions and answered them to make sure that all of y' all could be amateur heists and make sure that the heas don't get to your mans. And she took all those love questions and so we decided to send her a little gift. And that little gift that we sent her showed up in her social media and. And Maddie. Mrs. Maddie J. Our favorite hepologist is our moment of joy.

[Paul Butler]

Okay.

[Rashida Tlaib]

Okay.

[Jayvon]

Bam.

[Joy Reid]

Good morning, Joy.

[Frank Figluzzi]

If you listening or is Jason. Listen, I'm doing some representation y' all gonna get. Y' all Joy recut and wait till the fall without bus. If y' all ain't seen my jacket,

[Joy Reid]

y' all ain't seen my jewelry.

[Frank Figluzzi]

Oh, my God, it's like a letterman.

[Mehdi Hassan]

Jack.

[Dina Dahl]

I'm gonna bust up off in the

[Frank Figluzzi]

place just like this.

[Joy Reid]

I'm busting out in the jacket. Jacket. Fashionista. Love her so much. And that wig is fierce. Mrs. Maddie J. We love you, Mrs. Maddie J. Every time we go on Mrs. Maddie J's social media, she makes us feel joyful. Jason spotted it this morning, so. Yes, I did. Yes, I did. I had to bring it home to you, man.

[Jason]

That was great.

[Joy Reid]

I love miss Maddie J. I love miss Maddie J.

[Jason]

Thank you.

[Joy Reid]

Love, love, love her. All Right. Thank you, Mrs. Maddie J. We love you so much. We want you to come back and do more Q and A because the people all got more love questions. Thank you.

[Paul Butler]

Love you.

[Joy Reid]

All right. You all have a Great weekend. The 19th. That is the day for the for the final, and we will be rooting for Spain at our house. We try to root for all the African teens, but you know what we want? Go Espana. Viva Espana. Viva Espana. We want Lamina to take home the win. Thank you all for tuning in. God bless the family. We know the funeral is coming up as well for Nolan well, so blessings to that family. We give you our deepest condolences. Sending you lots of love. And let's see. God bless and God help Mississippi. See y' all Monday. Have a great weekend. See you. On the next the joy read show.

[Rashida Tlaib]

Getting back to the basics. Grassroom level Let me dig a little deeper with the shovel Plenty can't tell from the trees that I'm hard to detect Like a black hole in a dark injustice anywhere it's a threat to justice everywhere let me make this clear I got a bone to pick and I'll never fear the threat of poverty they don't want to talk about it they wrap the party so I'm a real talk about it for show.