← The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell
The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell
Lawrence on USAID cuts: With Musk and Trump, 'soulless mindless entities are what you see'
00:36:59
Tonight on The Last Word: Elon Musk’s time at DOGE is marked by a series of failures. Also, the ultra-wealthy buy influence with Donald Trump. And the Trump administration disbands a task force create to find, seize, and liquidate sanctioned Russians’ assets. Gabrielle Emanuel and Evan Osnos join Lawrence O’Donnell.
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- [00:01]
Lawrence O'Donnell
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- [00:46]
Joe Scarborough
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Lawrence O'Donnell
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- [00:51]
Joe Scarborough
Download Today well, the crisis facing this country and the world tonight is the complete collapse of mental acuity in the President of the United States. The current President this weekend, the President of the United States endorsed a social media post that says there is no Joe Biden executed in 2020. Biden clones, doubles and robotic engineered soulless, mindless entities are what you see. Needless to say, Donald Trump is the only president in history who can publicly embrace and accept and believe such insanity without immediately provoking a rush of questions by the White House press corps and news organizations around the world about the sanity of of the American President. Which means that the insanity of the current American President is now officially taken for granted in the news media. No huge banners on the cable news network that recently devoted itself to the issue of presidential mental acuity. That network did not dare devote itself to the mental acuity of Donald Trump. That network decided that the mental acuity of Joe Biden last year is a more important story. Now. No one at that network suggested that Joe Biden was ever incapable of doing the job of President. Their critique of Joe Biden is that he was incapable of delivering a sharp and polished television debate performance which would have been true of every single president prior to John Fitzgerald Kennedy. What was lost in the relentless coverage of the Biden Trump president presidential debate was that after Joe Biden paused so long that he seemed frozen that for the rest of that debate, no one appeared to pay attention to the rest of that debate and the rest of that debate, Joe Biden actually made perfect sense and Donald Trump did not. Donald Trump did not tell one true thing during that debate. But that doesn't seem to matter to the focus on Joe Biden in that debate. And I can understand that. Joe Biden revealed in that debate that he was four years older than the last time he ran for president and he was slower, much slower, and he was way more than four times smarter and more capable than Donald Trump ever was. That was also apparent in that debate. And we all know, as do the pushers of every anti Biden campaign theory out there, that it would be impossible for Joe Biden on his worst day to tweet that Donald Trump was executed in 2020 and that Trump clones, doubles and robotic, engineered, soulless, mindless entities are what you see when you look at Donald Trump today. What we do know is that we could surely engineer a robotic, soulless, mindless entity to be smarter than Donald Trump. The overwhelming majority of the American news media has absolutely no problem now with Donald Trump saying, there is no Joe Biden executed in 2020. Donald Trump didn't actually write those words himself, but he found those words in his poisoned social media feed and he decided to fully endorse and embrace those words. The New York Times remains one of the news organizations that finds that kind of behavior in a president strange, though not worthy of big front page headlines. And so the New York Times ran a story titled Trump amplifies another outlandish conspiracy theory. Biden is a robotic clone. And here is the most important line in that story. The White House did not respond to requests for comment on the post about Mr. Biden. That, of course, would be impossible for any other White House if the president amplified, quote, another outlandish conspiracy theory. If any other president said that a previous living president is a robotic clone, that White House would not be able to simply refuse to comment. But that is how fully Donald Trump has crushed political reporting and political coverage in this country. And because he has crushed it, he can, in publicity terms anyway, get away with anything, and he knows it. Donald Trump is behaving like someone who believes he can get away with anything. Listen to a bit of Joe Biden's last interview as President of the United States in the last week of his presidency. We'll play that for you. Now, we leave it to you to decide if you're seeing a Biden clone, a double, or a robotic, engineered, soulless, mindless entity. And while you're at it, you can decide if that entity is smarter Than Donald Trump. A better president than Donald Trump, and would be a better president than Donald Trump. Today. Today I asked Joe Biden why he decided to take the risk to become the first president in history to visit a war zone that was not controlled by U.S. troops. When he visited Ukraine, I didn't think.
- [06:21]
Marco Rubio
That.
- [06:23]
Donald Trump
Putin would dare take out an American president. I was worried, concerned about a radical element within Ukraine that was under the control or working with the Russians might try to do. That's why we went so way out of our way to get the best people to travel in that 10 hour ride in that train. But I thought it was important that we demonstrate to the rest of the European leaders, stand up, man. We can stand up and do this. We can prevent this from happening. My concern was if we didn't go, we didn't show up, then who leads? What happens? And I didn't think, by the way, I think it was, I've got to go to Ukraine, but I think was important that we treat Ukraine like an independent country. Wanted to talk to them. I wanted them to know that we were with them and it was the best way to do that.
- [07:35]
Joe Scarborough
That is a description of presidential decision making. That is the kind of presidential decision making that this country got used to for centuries under thoughtful presidents, regardless of party affiliation, whatever. You're wondering about how well Joe Biden did his job as president. Whenever you wonder about that separate and apart from his job as a presidential candidate, which he did not do well, you can always find that, that last interview of his that he did as president on YouTube, where, among other things, we reviewed the major presidential decisions that he had to make. You can check that video whenever you're wondering how Joe Biden was actually doing the job as president and what his mental acuity was like in the last week of his presidency. And in every one of Joe Biden's responses in that interview, you will find the kind of careful thoughtfulness you have a right to expect in a president of the United States. It is the kind of thinking that Donald Trump has not been capable of for one day of his life. We went from the man you just saw on your screen to a man who claims that Joe Biden was executed in 2020. Now, if you want to rush to Donald Trump's defense and tell us that that was a joke, then please explain why, as the New York Times reports, the White House did not respond to requests for comment on the post about Mr. Biden. If you want to rush to Donald Trump's defense, you are going to have to guess at a defense, you're going to have to make up a defense that Donald Trump himself has not offered. You have every right to believe, as a result of that single post alone, that Donald Trump is completely deranged and has no idea what day it is or what country he lives in. That is as defensible a reaction to Donald Trump's post as the notion that it's a joke. Neither one of those reactions can be proved. But what is undeniable by anyone, anywhere, the still breathtaking stupidity of Donald Trump to find that post in the poisonous flow of his social media and decide that that's the one, that's the one he wants to push that day. That is a man whose stupidity knows no bounds. That is the man whose stupidity never bumps into decency, which would then prevent him from doing the indecent, the stupid. In fact, Donald Trump can be counted on tomorrow to be stupidly indecent about something. It was another day in the Trump presidency. So, of course, a very rich criminal got another Trump pardon. You know how much money you have to steal to get 50 years in prison these days? $200 million will get you there. Where do you steal $200 million? There's no bank that has $200 million for you to steal. Place you can steal $200 million is the federal government. And the place to do it is in Florida with all those Medicare recipients. In the biggest Medicare fraud in history at the time that it was committed, Lawrence Duran pleaded guilty in 2011 to a Medicare fraud scheme that involved $200 million in false billings. And Donald Trump decided last week to give Lawrence Duran a get out of jail free card immediately. The guy who got the longest prison term in history for Medicare fraud and has served nine years of the 50 years he was supposed to serve. For Donald Trump, that was enough. That was enough. Remember Elon Musk lying to you about all the waste, fraud and abuse he was going to find in Medicare? And he didn't find any. Zero, absolutely none in Medicare. He didn't even find any Medicare fraudulent billing. And there's actually always some Medicare fraudulent billing around the country, which federal officials have been very good at policing, investigating, and prosecuting. So while Elon Musk was pretending to find fraud, emphasis on fraud, in the federal government, Donald Trump was busy deciding exactly when to let the biggest Medicare fraudster in history out of prison. That is the reality of the Trump presidency. It is the presidency that rewards fraud, especially fraud against the federal government. Joe Biden never pardoned anybody who stole $200 million from the federal government. And Joe Biden never appointed anyone to anything as incompetent and reckless and cruel as Elon Musk, who bid his farewell to his formal engagement of service with the Trump administration on Friday in the Oval Office, where his physical behavior gave many indications of possibly confirming the headline that emerged in the New York Times that very day on the campaign trail. Elon Musk Juggled Drugs and Family Drama we await an explanation of Elon Musk's physicality, including his inexplicable gazes at the ceiling and head twisting at the ceiling in the Oval Office. The Fox White House reporter who appeared to be the master of ceremonies of the press corps in the Oval Office on Friday because he was allowed to ask many more questions than anyone else seems to be on his way to ask about the New York Times breaking news about Elon Musk's drug use. There is a New York Times report today that accuses you of blurring between.
- [13:19]
Marco Rubio
The New York Times.
- [13:19]
Lawrence O'Donnell
Is that the same publication?
- [13:22]
Joe Scarborough
Notice that the Fox reporter immediately stopped when Elon Musk ordered him to stop and wait. Elon Musk then went into a lying soliloquy about the New York Times, ending with a direct order to the Fox reporter to quote these were his words, Move on. And the Fox reporter did exactly what Rupert Murdoch is paying him to do in that situation. He moved on when ordered to move on by anyone in Trump world. That is the same Fox reporter who gleefully joined in the screaming at Joe Biden or his press secretary in the Biden White House. Every reporter working in the Biden White House knew they could scream at Joe Biden or scream at the White House press secretary and not be kicked out of the Biden White House permanently or ever. And like children who know they won't get in trouble if they do it, they did it. They screamed at Joe Biden and his press secretary. And like children who know they will get in trouble if they do it, they don't dare do it now because Donald Trump has crushed all of that. And so Donald Trump and Elon Musk got away with another lying session without any serious challenge from a single White House reporter. Not one of whom asked Elon Musk how it felt to kill children. Not one of those White House reporters covering Elon Musk's farewell from government service asked him to reply to Bill Gates description of Elon Musk as the world's richest man killing the world's poorest children. That is Elon Musk's singular achievement in government because Elon Musk decided to destroy the United States Agency for International Development, the agency that was feeding more starving children in the world than any other agency. More starving children in the world depended on surplus food from the United States to survive. Food we do not need and cannot consume. Food we have overproduced in this country. And Elon Musk decided to take that food away from them and let them die. And that is not news to the White House press corps. No one is counting because Elon Musk fired the people who were counting. Collecting statistics in advanced economies is relatively easy, with advanced methods, relatively accurate. But in many parts of the world, the most impoverished parts of the world, statistics can be hard to come by. Not every baby gets a birth certificate. Not every baby gets a death certificate. The people who would be counting how many people Elon Musk killed by killing USAID were the very people who Elon Musk fired from USAID. So Elon Musk commits the greatest crime of the 21st century against the poverty population of the world and fires everyone who would be able to quantify for us the enormity of the crime. The New York Times reports, quote, Mr. Musk's drug consumption went well beyond occasional use. He told people he was taking so much ketamine, a powerful anesthetic, that it was affecting his bladder, a known effect of chronic use. He took ecstasy and psychedelic mushrooms. And he traveled with a daily medication box that held about 20 pills, including ones with the markings of the stimulant Adderall. According to a photo of the box and, and people who have seen it, he had a whole box full of drugs that he could have been using when he was taking life saving drugs away from children. The New York Times account is about the drugs Elon Musk was taking during the presidential campaign. NBC News has not independently confirmed the New York Times reporting. Elon Musk has not actually denied a single word of the New York Times reporting. The New York Times says, quote, we provided Musk with multiple opportunities to reply or rebut this reporting before publication, and he declined. The New York Times reporting suggests that Elon Musk took flight on a campaign stage with Donald Trump the first time he was up there because he was possibly on Ketamine or Ecstasy or Adderall or psychedelic mushrooms or all of the above at the same time. The Times obtained a text message before Elon Musk joined the Trump campaign, in which Elon Musk complained about the investigations of his businesses that the federal government was doing at the time. The Biden administration views me as the number two threat after Trump. I can't be president, but I can help Trump defeat Biden, and I will, he added. And the rest of the his tragic history. The richest person in the world poured money into a presidential campaign, more money than anyone else in the history of political contributions. And he did it to end the investigations that the federal government was aiming at his business activities. And of course, Donald Trump ended those investigations, because you get what you pay for with Donald Trump, especially if you're the richest person in the world. The worldwide cruelty campaign launched by Elon Musk and Donald Trump now includes deporting people who have never committed a crime to countries where they have never lived and do not speak the language. Elon Musk seems to believe that cruelty is the antidote to empathy, which he considers a great human weakness. Elon Musk told the comedian Joe Rogan, quote, the fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy. Abraham Lincoln did not know that. Abraham Lincoln believed he should govern with empathy. So did Franklin Delano Roosevelt. So did most presidents, some better than others. It was empathy, coupled with geopolitical and public health wisdom, that led President George W. Bush to create the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS relief, which saved 26 million lives in Africa alone before Elon Musk decided those lives were not worth saving.
- [19:55]
Lawrence O'Donnell
Has anyone in the world died because of what Elon Musk did? Yes or no? Reclaiming my time? If you won't answer, that's a loud answer.
- [20:03]
Marco Rubio
No one has died because of usaid.
- [20:05]
Lawrence O'Donnell
The people who have died as a result of cutting off the oxygen of a woman in Burma and denying HIV AIDS treatment to those in Africa, they are dead now, at the hands of Elon Musk and his co conspirators.
- [20:20]
Marco Rubio
Who does more food aid than the United States.
- [20:22]
Elon Musk
Sir, why are you asking me questions? My job is to ask you questions.
- [20:25]
Marco Rubio
You're the one that's claiming that we're.
- [20:26]
Elon Musk
Going to Secretary, I'm reclaiming my time.
- [20:28]
Joe Scarborough
Secretary.
- [20:28]
Elon Musk
I'm reclaiming my client. This is why I'm introducing the Rubio Act. So you focus on the one job that the Senate gave you to serve as our Secretary of State. Because you are clearly distracted. Okay. After the last few months, I understand why President Trump has such colorful nicknames for you. You're obedient, you're following the rules. You will do anything the President tells you to do without regard for the law, the Constitution, America's security, or standing as a leader in the world. Unlike you, I do not fear crossing Donald Trump. I refuse to give up on these children.
- [21:02]
Joe Scarborough
Marco Rubio did not tell the truth to the committee and the proof that he was not telling the truth is that he has changed his story. After that testimony, the Washington Post fact checked Marco Rubio's testimony, saying there is no dispute that people have died because the Trump administration abruptly suspended foreign aid. One might quibble over whether tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands have died. In his testimony, Secretary of State Rubio tried to contradict reporting from Africa. From the New York Times, Nicholas Kristof. Nicholas Kristof responded to Rubio's testimony, writing in the New York Times, let me help Rubio with the truth. Meet Evan Anzu, a five year old boy who was born with HIV in South Sudan. I mentioned Evan in a calm in March from South Sudan. This was a child as precious as yours or mine. Evan's life was in our hands and for five years America kept him alive with antiretroviral medicines costing less than 12 cents a day through the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or pepfar. This was a program started by President George W. Bush and has saved more than 26 million lives so far. And it turned the tide of AIDS around the world and built enormous goodwill toward the United States. Then along came President Trump and his freeze on most humanitarian aid in January. How could a five year old orphan possibly obtain medicine on his own? Evan weakened and soon died of an opportunistic infection. Marco Rubio told the House Committee, no children are dying on my watch. Evan died on his watch. Evans of all ages are dying on Marco Rubio's watch and no one is counting. And so we don't know as of tonight whether it's tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of Evans. But we know it will be in a New York Times column titled Elon Musk's Legacy is Disease, Starvation and Death. Michelle Goldberg reports. Brooke Nichols, an associate professor of global health at Boston University, has estimated that these cuts have already resulted in about 3,100,000 deaths, most of them of children, and will most likely lead to significantly more by the end of the year. This is what Musk's foray into politics accomplished. If there were justice in the world, Musk would never be able to repair his reputation, at least not without devoting the bulk of his fortune to easing the misery he's engendered. Musk's sojourn in government has revealed severe flaws in his character. A blithe dehumanizing cruelty and a deadly incuriosity. Bill Gates has seen starving children in Africa many, many times. And has devoted his life and his billions to trying to save them, which makes Bill Gates verdict on the current richest person in the world so important and powerful. Bill Gates, the former richest person in the world, said the picture of the world's richest man killing the world's poorest children is not a pretty one. And the picture of the richest person in the world carrying around his drug box of ecstasy, Adderall, psychedelic mushrooms, and then taking life saving drugs away from the poorest people in the world is a picture only Donald Trump could have created. And with Elon Musk and Donald Trump, soulless, mindless entities are what you see. We'll be right back. Joining us now, someone who's been there, Gabriel Emanuel, global health correspondent for National Public Radio. Thank you very much for joining us tonight. We are facing a challenge where no one is really counting what is happening in Africa. And anecdotal reporting of individual cases is where we begin. What have you found in your reporting?
- [25:12]
Gabriel Emanuel
Yes, so I started out with this clear discrepancy that you laid out. We have researchers, academics who are saying tens of thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands dead, Secretary Rubio telling Congress that no one has died. So I started calling people on the ground from Bangladesh to Ethiopia to Guatemala to try and find out what is happening. And what came back were stories, stories of people who have indeed died, most likely as a result of aid cuts. So let me tell you about one person. There is a family that lives in the far northeastern part of Nigeria. The mother's name is Mariam Mohammed and she is a widow with two boys. The younger one is a seven year old boy named Baba Ghana and he had sickle cell disease. But most of his life he was this cheery boy who she told me loved riding his bike to school and at home. And one night in Febr, the boy developed a fever. First thing in the morning, she rushed him to the hospital to what was a US Funded clinic where he had received care before. When she got there, the gates were closed, it was shut down. And the security guards told her this clinic is no longer operational. What had happened is that the previous week they had received a stop work order from the US Government. Now, Maryam did not have money to go to the government hospital which charged for medical care, and instead her 7 year old son, Baba Ghana died a handful of hours later that night. And when I spoke to her, she was obviously beside herself. And I spoke to the older brother, nine year old Umar, who was in tears when we spoke. And he, he just said he misses playing with his little brother. Now, we don't know the specifics. This boy was never evaluated that day when he went to the clinic and it was closed. But I did speak to the boy's doctor and he doctor J. And he told me that he believes they could have saved the boy. Now, sickle cell disease happens when your red blood cells are deformed and things can deteriorate very quickly, as they did in this case. But very rapid medical attention can save lives and it often does. So that's just one story of multiple that I've heard.
- [27:35]
Joe Scarborough
As we go forward, what is your how should we approach this situation where we're not going to have the kind of statistical information information we would hope to have?
- [27:46]
Gabriel Emanuel
Right. It's very hard to pin down exact numbers, especially when we're talking about far flung places and when the systems that used to gather this data are no longer in place. And I think the the real answer here is it starts with talking to people on the ground. Doctors, nurses, religious leaders have a very good sense of what is happening on the ground. I found in my reporting. So do people who used to run programs that have now been sh down. So those are the types of people I've been talking with to try to piece together what's happening on the ground.
- [28:21]
Joe Scarborough
NPR global health correspondent Gabriel Emanuel, thank you very much for joining us tonight.
- [28:26]
Gabriel Emanuel
Thank you.
- [28:27]
Joe Scarborough
And coming up, the New Yorker's Evan Osnos will join us to discuss his on the unprecedented corruption that he has been finding in the Trump presidency, as have other reporters. His detailed account appears in the New Yorker under the title Donald Trump's Politics of Plunder.
- [28:48]
Lawrence O'Donnell
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- [29:19]
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- [30:22]
Joe Scarborough
A vivid, grotesque portrait of ruling billionaires that is how Democratic Congressman Marcy Kaptur of Ohio describes the new members only club in Washington, D.C. called Executive Branch, which is set to open this month.
- [30:36]
Marcy Kaptur
Mr. Speaker, I rise to share the latest photo of the founding of another billionaire private club here in Washington, D.C. in Georgetown for the super rich, spearheaded by Donald Trump Jr. J.D. vance and their billionaire buddies. You can join for the low price of half a million dollars. They offer the richest of the rich a red carpet to buy influence and their way to power. This Executive Branch club isn't just an insult to the working class, it's a vivid, grotesque portrait of ruling billionaires focused on totally enriching themselves and neglecting our nation.
- [31:20]
Joe Scarborough
Our next guest, Evan Osnos, writes in an article in the New Yorker titled Donald Trump's Politics of Plunder. Seasoned practitioners of Washington Pay to play have been startled by the new rules for buying influence. In December, a seat at a group dinner at Mar a Lago could be had for a million dollar contribution to Mega Inked, a super PAC that serves as a war chest for the midterms. More recently, one on one conversations with the President have become available for 5 million. The return on investment is uncertain. A government affairs executive told me, what if he's in a bad mood? You have no clue where the money is eventually going. Another lobbying veteran described the frank exchange as outer borough mafia shit. Trump has sold influence so briskly that the political machinery cannot keep up. Joining us now is Evan Osnow, staff writer at the New Yorker and fellow at the Brookings Institute. He is the author of the Haves and have Dispatches on the Ultra rich. Evan When I was reading the veteran lobbyists of Washington who were people I didn't want to deal with when I was working in the Senate, I just said, no, no, no, I'm not going near them. They are offended by the money changing in the temple now. This is beyond anything they ever dreamed of.
- [32:41]
Marco Rubio
They are bewildered as one of them said to me, to use a tactical term, he said, this is bonkers. I think there is a point at which the frank, naked exchange of influence for money has just, just exceeded even. What are the calluses on a pretty cynical community in Washington that's used to the idea of this. This is now a period in which essentially anything goes. And you're seeing it in a whole range of ways. You know, it began really with the inauguration. Look, the inauguration fund, as you'll recall, raised a record amount of money, $250 million. Inauguration funds aren't like campaign finance. They're, you know, get a huge amount of attention. These are sort of loosely regulated slush funds. In effect, the single largest donor to that was a company called Pilgrim's Pride. This is a poultry processing company. And sure enough, lo and behold, a couple months later, the administration announced that it would not be adding new salmonella inspections and it would be getting rid of what it called unnecessary bureaucracy. You know, look, there may be no connection there, there may be no quid pro quo, but it sure is hard for the American public to understand what's going on and whose interest is the administration acting in.
- [33:55]
Joe Scarborough
And there was, prior to now, there was no legal way to put money in politicians pockets. You could put it in their campaign accounts and yes, they could use their campaign accounts to lease fancy cars for themselves and stay in hotel suites and they could really use it for every meal they wanted to have with their families or everybody else. This is way beyond that. This is, you can now just put money directly in Donald Trump's pocket.
- [34:21]
Marco Rubio
There is never been anything like a cryptocurrency auction for dinner with the President. I mean, the notion, the words that just came out of my mouth are so unrelated to the history of the American presidency, it's almost hard to just talk about it in the normal context. We're dealing with a moment in which the full monetization of the presidency poses us with a problem, poses us with a real fork in the road. Will Congress find a way to say this is unsustainable, this is untenable, or will it just allow this to go on until it produces a crisis? Will there come a point when all of a sudden the lack of new salmonella testing begins to have a daily impact, an impact on people's health, on their, the food they're eating at home? At what point does the rubber meet the road?
- [35:06]
Joe Scarborough
We have to squeeze in a commercial break. We're going to be right back with Evan Ostos.
- [35:11]
Lawrence O'Donnell
Building a business may feel like a big jump. But On Deck small business loans can help keep you afloat. With lines of credit up to $100,000 and term loans up to $250,000, OnDeck lets you choose the loan that's right for your business. As a top rated online small business lender, Ondeck's team of loan advisors can help you find the right business loan to fit your needs. Visit ondeck.com for more information. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by On Deck or Celtic Bank. On Deck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.
- [35:42]
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- [36:10]
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- [36:44]
Marco Rubio
So.
- [36:46]
Joe Scarborough
Evan Osnos is back with us. What is klepto culture? Capture. Klepto capture and who captured it?
- [36:54]
Marco Rubio
It was a task force created in 2022 after the invasion of Ukraine. And the idea was pretty simple. The United States and its allies could seize assets belonging to Vladimir Putin or his cronies, things like yachts and apartments and houses around the world, and then sell them off and give the proceeds to Ukraine. Donald Trump quietly disbanded this task force after coming into office, meaning, in effect, that he is signaling to the rest of the world. We are no longer going to try to dissuade Putin's allies from Putin's cronies from participating and supporting the war effort. In fact, they're not going to try to give any money to Ukraine at all. And I think it signifies something larger too, Lawrence, which is, in effect, you see Donald Trump both at home and abroad saying, I no longer recognize the category of white collar crime. It doesn't matter to me, it doesn't. I don't regard it as legitimate. And you see this in the fact that they're no longer enforcing the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. And he is, of course, giving pardons, as you've talked about, to people who have been convicted or pled guilty to crimes that have defrauded people out of tens or in some cases, hundreds of millions. I mean, take the case of Trevor Milton, somebody who received a pardon recently. He had been convicted of defrauding people by pretending to have an electric car that was speeding along when in fact, it was rolling downhill. It has relieved him of an estimated $680 million in restitution. That's the kind of person that's getting a pardon.
- [38:22]
Joe Scarborough
The Trump children, before the first Trump presidency, there was that ceremony at Trump Tower where they were pretending that they would just not try to profit from the presiden. At least they were claiming they were not going to try to profit from the presidency. Now they're actually publicly, in effect, saying, we are going to. We're going to open this club. We're going to do all these things. Everything we can do.
- [38:45]
Marco Rubio
The White House has a stock statement they give out which says, in answer to any question about this, that the president has put his finances in the control of his sons. However, the reality is Donald Trump is actually listed as an advisor to one of the family crew, crypto ventures. And anytime that Eric and Don Jr are overseas making deals, talking about it, they are doing it on behalf of the Trump family enterprise, let's be honest. And every foreign power that is making deals with them is not doing it on the basis of Eric and Don Jr. S long history in business. They're doing it on the fact that it's their representatives, in effect, of the president. Even if the White House says there's.
- [39:22]
Joe Scarborough
Some, and those sons do not have independent income sources, it's all out of the Trump pile. Their father gets the biggest cut of that pile.
- [39:32]
Marco Rubio
And let's remember, there are ways that people who want to put money into the hands of this family can do it. One of the examples being, of course, Jeff Bezos Co. Amazon, which decided to cut a deal with Melania Trump for $40 million to make a documentary, reportedly 28 million of which will end up with the First Lady. This is something we've never seen. I think we have to begin to imagine that the profiteering in the presidency is going to be a feature for the next three.
- [40:03]
Joe Scarborough
And it sounds like an ongoing story. It's a beat that's just going to have to be covered in this administration.
- [40:09]
Marco Rubio
It's constant and there's new things happening all the time. And the challenge for the public, and I think for journalism and for civil society is to keep the focus on it. If you allow it to become regarded somehow as normal, if we define down the standards of the presidency, this will have an impact not just for the next three years, but for every politician who comes afterwards. That will become what we are in this country. And that's something that people have to decide. Are they willing to shrug?
- [40:38]
Joe Scarborough
Your reporting has met the challenge that we face. Evan Osnos, thank you very much for joining us. His new book tomorrow is called the Haves and have Dispatches on the Ultra Rich. The New Yorker's Evan Osnos gets tonight's last word.
- [40:55]
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