← The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell
The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell
Lawrence: Secret White House meetings won’t end Trump’s Epstein crisis.
00:42:51
Tonight on The Last Word: Trump officials met at the White House and discussed Jeffrey Epstein. Also, The New York Times reports Donald Trump delayed a Medicare change after receiving a $5 million donation. And Trump adopts Project 2025’s warped view of U.S history. Lisa Rubin, Ken Vogel, and David Blight join Lawrence O’Donnell.
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- [00:00]
Kelly Ripa
Hey there, it's Kelly Ripa. And if you've been listening to my podcast, we are knee deep in season three. And if you haven't heard it, it's time to get on board. After years of interviewing celebs on camera, I finally get to bring you the real conversations that take place when the cameras aren't rolling. Where else are you going to hear Michelle Obama talk about keeping her girls out of Page Six? Hilaria Baldwin's hilarious reaction to Alec running for office? Or Jeremy Renner's lucid hallucinations about Jamie Foxx? Nowhere else. It's raw, it's honest, and best of all, it's off camera. And believe me, that's where you get the good stuff. So download. Let's talk off camera with Kelly Ripa now. Wherever you get your podcasts, Bubba Wallace.
- [00:44]
Lawrence O'Donnell
Here with Tyler Reddick. You know what's more nerve wracking than waiting for qualifying results? Waiting for the green flag to drop. Instead of pacing, you rev up with Chumba Casino's weekly new releases. It's like a fresh set of tires for your brain. Play for free@chumbacasino.com let's Chumba.
- [01:01]
Unknown
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- [01:09]
Lisa Rubin
The Last Word with Lawrence O' Donnell starts right now. Hey, Lawrence.
- [01:13]
Lawrence O'Donnell
Hey, Jen. And I say this for you and the control room. As I was just listening to you, your volume was going up and down on my end of it. So I'm hoping that we are going to fix that. But it's not going to be a problem at for the beginning of this program because.
- [01:31]
Lisa Rubin
Because you're gonna talk loud?
- [01:32]
Lawrence O'Donnell
Well, no, because Lisa Rubin is joining me in the studio so I can hear her with my actual in the room ears instead of through the wires ears. And so it's all gonna work. It's all gonna be fine. Good.
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Lisa Rubin
That's the thing with technology. It's not always perfect. We do the best we can. Right.
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Lawrence O'Donnell
And it's working right now, so I. Good. I should get to it while it's working.
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Lisa Rubin
Get to it.
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Lawrence O'Donnell
Thanks, Jen. Thank you. Well, the dinner meeting scheduled for Vice President's residence last night about the Epstein situation didn't happen at the Vice President's residence thanks to a leak from inside the Trump White House. The Trump administration that indicated Vice President Vance planned a dinner meeting at his residence last night with White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, the Trump FBI Director, the Trump Attorney General and the Trump Deputy Attorney General, who was Donald Trump's personal criminal defense lawyer. Todd Blanche, who is the only criminal defense lawyer in history to represent a president of the United States in a trial where that person was convicted of crimes by a jury of his peers. NBC News is reporting that no gathering occurred last night at the vice president's residence, which was the worst possible choice of venue for such a meeting because it is so easy for the press to just stake out the driveway there to monitor the entrance of the vice president's residence to see who's coming to dinner. NBC News is reporting that a group did meet to discuss the Epstein situation at the White House last night, which is the way that meeting should have been planned in the first place. But it's important to note that even then, even when they kept it indoors at the White House, with no one able to watch who was coming and going, someone, at least one person or more, inside the Trump White House, inside the Trump administration, is leaking about these meetings, about the scheduling of these meetings, and about them actually happening. Someone in there working for Donald Trump wants news organizations to know that the Trump White House and Trump Cabinet members are desperately trying to figure out how to rewrite history to erase Donald Trump's friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, who said before he died in prison, I was Donald's closest friend for 10 years. Rewriting history is a larger project for the Trump administration, which we will get to later in this hour with Yale historian David Blight. But rewriting Donald Trump's personal history is even more important to Donald Trump. But photographs don't lie, and that is Donald Trump right there sitting beside Ghislaine Maxwell in that photograph, taken right in the middle of Ghislaine Maxwell's years of reign of terror against children who she personally molested along with Jeffrey Epstein. Jeffrey Epstein wasn't the one luring those children into his home. That was Ghislaine Maxwell's job. And that's what victims testified to under oath in federal court when Ghislaine Maxwell was convicted by a unanimous jury of sex trafficking. Donald Trump's own Justice Department has said Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein had over 1,000 victims, an uncountable number of victims. They don't know how many more, over a thousand, how many thousands it might be. Jeffrey Epstein was raping girls on an almost daily basis for decades, and he was doing it when he said he was Donald Trump's closest friend. Today, the White House press corps once again failed to ask Donald Trump about his friendship with Ghislaine Maxwell. And why his criminal defense lawyer went to Florida to question Ghislaine Maxwell before granting her a transfer to a prison that one former federal prison official calls a country club that's in Texas, close to Ghislaine Maxwell's family. A minimum security facility which does not allow sex offenders like Ghislaine Maxwell. Unless the President of the United States wants that particular child rapist who he used to be friends with, to be given special treatment. Which is what Donald Trump's old friend Ghislaine Maxwell is getting tonight from Donald Trump's Justice Department. The White House press corps got to ask exactly six and a half questions today. They wasted those questions, of course. One was about tariffs that, as usual, produced a non answer. And the other questions were about Vladimir Putin. With the White House press corps foolishly pursuing questions like this is your deadline still standing for Vladimir Putin to agree to a ceasefire tomorrow? Or is that fluid now? To which Donald Trump said, it's going to be up to him. Those are his words. Now. It is not news that Donald Trump does not ever make demands on Vladimir Putin. It is not news that Donald Trump does not have deadlines with Vladimir Putin. It is not news that, as far as Donald Trump is concerned, when it comes to Vladimir Putin, quote, it's going to be up to him. That's the way it has always been with Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. And so White House reporters shouldn't be wasting their questions on junk like that. It has always been up to Vladimir Putin. When Donald Trump asked Vladimir Putin publicly during the 2016 presidential campaign to please hack Hillary Clinton's emails, Donald Trump knew it was going to be up to him. It was going to be up to Vladimir Putin. And Vladimir Putin immediately delivered. At an idiotic Trump campaign rally in 2016, Donald Trump said, russia, if you're listening, and then publicly begged Russian spies and Russian hackers and Russian government officials and Vladimir Putin to obtain and release Hillary Clinton's emails, and they did, nothing like that can possibly happen in Russia without Vladimir Putin deciding that it should happen. 12 Russian officials were indicted in the United States for that theft and for their interference in the presidential election. Interference that could only have been ordered by Vladimir Putin. And so Donald Trump's real answer about Vladimir Putin every time, no matter what question you're asking, is always going to be, it's going to be up to him. The White House press corps questions revealed absolutely nothing today. Nothing. But White House reporters did exactly what Donald Trump wanted them to do this time. Exactly. They didn't speak a word about his friends, Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. Not one reporter brought them up today. Another victim's lawyer, Robert Glassman, filed a letter concerning the Trump Justice Department's request to unseal the Epstein and Maxwell grand jury testimony. Robert Glassman represents a victim who testified in Ghislaine Maxwell's trial under a pseudonym, as other witnesses did to protect privacy. That victim, known in the courtroom as Jane, testified that she met Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein while at a summer camp when she was 14 years old. Yes, 14 years old. That was the entry age for many of Ghislaine Maxwell's victims and Jeffrey Epstein's victims. Here is some of Jane's testimony. When you were 14 years old and there were times where you were alone with Maxwell and Epstein, what kinds of sexual conduct would occur during those incidents? Answer. It would be them leading me to a massage table and showing me how Jeffrey likes to be massaged. Question. Who would tell you how Jeffrey likes to be massaged? Elaine. And Jeffrey. How did he like to be massaged? Answer. Like he liked. Like, very hard. Like, like rubbing his shoulders really hard and, like, twisting his nipples hard and rubbing his feet hard and, like, his head. Who would give you instructions? Ghislaine and Jeffrey. What kind of instructions would they give you? Just showing me what he likes, what men like, what women like, sort of touching on breasts and touching his penis. What was Maxwell's demeanor like during these incidents? I would say that it seemed very casual. Like it was. Like it was very normal, like it was not a big deal. Question. And when she behaved like that, how did that make you feel? Answer. Well, it made me feel confused because that did not feel normal to me. I'd never seen anything like this or felt any of this, and it was very embarrassing. You know, it's all those mixed emotions. When you're 14, you have no idea what's going on. During these incidents that we've been discussing, did Epstein touch your body? Yes. Where did Epstein touch your body? He would touch my breasts. He would touch my vagina. During these incidents we've been discussing. When you were 14, did you touch Epstein's body? Yes. Where did you touch his body? Everywhere. During these incidents, did Maxwell ever touch your body? Yes. Where would she touch you? Answer. I would say mainly my breasts. The prosecutor at Ghislaine Maxwell's sentencing hearing said Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein, quote, were predators together. They molested kids together. And Donald Trump is now publicly entertaining the possibility of pardoning his old friend in. In that Photograph Ghislaine Maxwell. Donald Trump has been offered numerous opportunities to say that he would not do that, to say that he would not pardon a child molester like Ghislaine Maxwell, like his friend Ghislaine Maxwell. And Donald Trump has refused to say that Donald Trump is publicly holding his pardon power over Ghislaine Maxwell, so that she knows very clearly that she must never say anything negative about Donald Trump as she continues to hope for a pardon or an elimination of the remainder of her sentence. In the past, Donald Trump has said something about Ghislaine Maxwell that he has never said about any of her victims. Like Jane, who you just heard from, about Ghislaine Maxwell. Only Donald Trump said, I wish her well. Did Donald Trump send his criminal defense lawyer to Ghislaine Maxwell to personally wish her well? The Democrats and the House of Representatives who support a subpoena to the Justice Department to obtain the Epstein files, are also urging a subpoena for the testimony of Alex Acosta, who served as the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida, who agreed to a plea bargain with Jeffrey Epstein. The first time Jeffrey Epstein faced federal charges that did not even require Epstein to serve time in prison. That was the result of the plea bargain. No real time in prison. He was allowed to leave a minimum security facility every day, the place where he slept at night. He was allowed to leave there during his short service of that sentence to go to his office in Florida nearly every day. Jeffrey Epstein continued raping children after that plea bargain that Alex Acosta arranged for him. Alex Acosta then went on to serve as Donald Trump's first Secretary of labor during the first Trump presidency. Alex Acosta's name is conspicuously absent from the list of former Justice Department officials, including Republican officials, whose testimony has been subpoenaed by the House of Representatives. But no White House reporter has bothered to ask Donald Trump what he thinks of his friend Alex Acosta making such an easy plea bargain deal with his friend Jeffrey Epstein. Leading off our discussion tonight is MSNBC legal correspondent Lisa Rubin. Lisa, there's so much ground to cover here, and I want to, you know, just open it to you to take it in any direction you want. But let's begin with this. Alex Acosta conspicuous absence from the subpoena list.
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Lisa Rubin
It's particularly bizarre, Lawrence, because in 2019, the Department of Justice's Office of Professional Responsibility opened an investigation into the conduct of Alex Acosta and four other lawyers acting under his supervision in the Southern District of Florida. That's the office where he was the US Attorney, and they issued a 350 page report as a result of that investigation. Because what they were looking into was did Alex Acosta commit professional misconduct in negotiating the very deal with Jeffrey Epstein that you were just mentioning? Now, Alex Acosta was extensively interviewed by the Office of Professional Responsibility. He was given an opportunity to submit written responses to written questions, which he did. He was also given the opportunity to review his interview transcript, provide comments on that as well, and see a copy of the draft report. And yet House Oversight has never mentioned whether or not they've taken a deep dive into that report or requested the background materials, much less subpoenaed Alex Acosta or on his own. I will tell you, I've read a good amount of that report. And Alex Acosta was asked why he cut that deal with Jeffrey Epstein. And he said that it was to prevent a manifest injustice, that he didn't want to step on the prerogatives of state prosecutors, but rather he saw federal intervention there as sort of being a backstop where the state had failed. I guess my question to Alex Acosta, were I a member on the House Oversight Committee, would be, what, sir, about that deal do you think prevented a manifestation injustice? What part of that deal was justice for the victims? Was it the part that said you weren't going to make the deal public and thereafter conceal it from the victims who had cooperated with your investigation and that of the Palm Beach Police Department? Was that the part that prevented the manifest injustice? Or was it the part where you gave him such a short stint in prison that he thereafter negotiated it down even further, as you said, to only sleep there and have daytime release? It's perverse, it's wacky. And I can't for the life of me understand his omission from that list.
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Lawrence O'Donnell
And nothing about the plea deal that Alex Acosta made with Jeffrey Epstein stopped Jeffrey Epstein from continuing to rape children?
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Lisa Rubin
It doesn't appear that way at all. I mean, certainly some of the conduct of his that was at issue in the later prosecutions extended to a period beyond that period of time, so.
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Lawrence O'Donnell
And how does Alex Acosta's investigation, Ms. Ghislaine Maxwell, because she doesn't get charged until years later by another U.S. attorney in New York.
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Lisa Rubin
Well, that's not clear to me either, because at the time, prosecutors were looking into certain alleged co conspirators of Jeffrey Epstein's. In fact, four of them are named in that non prosecution agreement and none of them are named Ghislaine Maxwell. And that may be because at that point in time, there was someone else in Palm beach who was sort of acting in a Ghislaine Maxwell like capacity, someone who was principally responsible for the recruitment of these young women during that period of time. Again, we're talking about 2006, 2007, when the Southern District of Florida was doing its investigation. But we certainly know from other victims, including at Ghislaine Maxwell's own trial, that a decade prior, Ghislaine Maxwell was in fact the madam of the house. Right? She was the one who recruited, for example, Virginia Giuffre, who is no longer with us from Mar a Lago, where she was doing a summer job as a spa attendant, basically handing out towels in the locker room. She's the one Donald Trump considers stolen property. And as for Ghislaine Maxwell, she's the one he wishes. Well, there's something really, really backwards about that. I want to say one more thing about that Office of Professional Responsibility report, because it extensively talks about the back and forth between Jeffrey Epstein's lawyers and the prosecutors. And at the time, Jeffrey Epstein's lawyers were trying to get out of the requirement that he register as a sex offender. And one of the things they said to the prosecutors as they were cutting the deal was, that's off the table for us because, you know, it's been important to us that Jeffrey serve his time at a federal prison camp. And if you force him to register as a sex offender and plead guilty to a sex registry qualifying offense, he will be precluded from serving in a federal prison camp. Why do I mention that? Because even in 2007, it was obvious as day to the people representing Jeffrey Epstein that being a sex offender and being in a federal prison camp didn't work together. Right? You couldn't be a federal sex offender and be in a federal prison camp. And yet here we are with Ghislaine Maxwell in that exact situation right now. And the Bureau of Prisons and the Department of Justice was, will not explain why she got a waiver allowing her to now be at federal prison camp in Bryan, Texas.
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Lawrence O'Donnell
And of course, in Trump world, it's one of those explanations we don't need. It's like Vladimir Putin world. We know where that comes from. We know how a sex offender gets into a prison in the federal system that they're not supposed to be in when that person is a friend of Donald Trump, which she was. So, as we go forward, Lisa, what are you looking for in terms of developments, let's say, with the House of Representatives, when they come back in September because day to day, it's very hard to say what's happening next within this administration. There's the crazy J.D. vance meeting, which, oh, by the way, couldn't possibly have solved anything. No matter what they discussed in that meeting, they couldn't possibly have come up with a solution. So they've paid the public price for scheming around that kind of meeting, which was a hopeless meeting to begin with.
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Lisa Rubin
It was also a highly improper meeting to begin with. Right. Our colleague Kendallane said the other day that the way that this Department of Justice and this White House are behaving has shattered the post Watergate norm of insulating the Department of Justice from political pressures. And I would go further than that. Not only did they shatter the norm, it's like both sides are walking through that shattered window routinely, day by day by day, but leaving it as a crime scene for all of us to see. In terms of what I'm looking for next, there are Democrats on House oversight that today for the first time said you should bring in the victims and you should give any victim who wants a voice an opportunity to testify. And many victims will not want that. They find the drip, drip of new information or new things that the administration is floating to be akin to their own public waterboarding. Right. Some of them will not invite that, but others of them may want that. And if this administration is really bent on some form of accountability or transparency, that certainly would be something that they would advise their GOP colleagues in the House to do. The other thing I'm looking at, we keep focusing on the subpoenas to individuals for their testimony. I'm far more concerned with the subpoena to the Department of Justice for their materials because that subpoena goes well beyond what we consider the Epstein files and would encompass all the communications that have been created since the beginning of this administration about Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. And many of those documents, a, won't be privileged, and B, as you well know, the House of Representatives doesn't recognize an attorney client privilege, doesn't recognize a deliberate process privilege, the sort of things you can use to protect documents from coming out in litigation. That's off the table in Congress. So let's see if the Department of Justice plays ball with House oversight or not. I'm going to predict that they don't. But what will be most interesting to me is how the Republicans then behave when there is that standoff about cooperating.
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Lawrence O'Donnell
Lisa Rubin, thank you very much for starting us off tonight. Really appreciate it. And coming up, what does a $5 million donation to Donald Trump buy you? The answer is a lot more than $5 million in profits. That's next.
- [23:15]
Scott Aukerman
This is Comedy Bang Bang the Podcast, the promo, and in 30 seconds, I'm gonna tell you why you should check out the show. I the host Scott Aukerman have a lighthearted conversation with fam. Celebrities like Jon Hamm, Alison Williams, Phoebe Bridgers, Jason Alexander, Natasha Lyonne, Bob Odenkirk, just to name a few things go a little off the rails when different eccentric characters and oddballs drop by to.
- [23:39]
Lawrence O'Donnell
Be interviewed as well.
- [23:40]
Scott Aukerman
Each week is a blend of conversations and character work from your favorite comedians, as well as some new hilarious voices. Comedy Bang Bang the Podcast Listen every Monday wherever you get your podcasts.
- [23:53]
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- [24:23]
Lawrence O'Donnell
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Lawrence O'Donnell
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Lisa Rubin
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- [24:57]
Lawrence O'Donnell
What does a $5 million donation to Donald Trump buy you? Well, for one thing, a seat at a candlelit dinner at Donald Trump's Florida residence in March, which was billed as having very limited space. And for one healthcare products company executive, it bought him another year of excessive payments from Medicare given to his company by Donald Trump. Donald Trump has repeatedly lied in saying that he wants to eliminate waste, fraud and abuse in the federal government and in Medicare. Here's what he said. We're cutting three things waste, fraud and abuse.
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David Blight
We're not changing Medicaid and we're not.
- [25:44]
Lawrence O'Donnell
Changing medication, take care, and they also did not cut waste, fraud, and abuse. A New York Times investigation into unstudied and very expensive bandages found that spending on what they call skin substitutes for seniors on Medicare is one of the largest examples of Medicare waste in history. Private insurers rarely pay for skin substitutes, arguing that they are unproven and unnecessary, but Medicare routinely covers them. Spending on skin substitutes exceeded $10 billion in 2024, more than double the figure in 2023, according to an analysis of Medicare data done for the Times. Medicare now spends more on the bandages than on ambulance rides, anesthesia or CT scans, the analysis found. Last year, the Biden administration introduced a new policy that would cover bandages only if high quality research could show that the product actually worked. The policy was supposed to go into effect this April, but Now, after a $5 million donation, Donald Trump has delayed the Biden rule. The New York Times reports that at a dinner for donors hosted by Trump, a CEO of a company that sells expensive bandages made a of discarded placenta got a chance to speak to Trump. He also brought copies of a flyer urging the Trump administration to reverse a plan to restrict Medicare reimbursement for the bandages and criticizing former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. For having rammed through a policy that would create more suffering and death for diabetic patients on Medicare. The next morning, Mr. Trump posted the flyer on his social media site. It was not just symbolic. About one month later, the Trump administration announced it would delay until next year the Biden administration plan to limit Medicare coverage of the bandages known as skin substitutes, saying that it was reviewing its policies since April, the month when the Biden initiated change would have otherwise gone into effect. Medicare has paid doctors and other medical providers more than $2.3 billion for skin substitutes. Joining us now is New York Times reporter Ken Vogel. Ken, thank you very much for this report. I know how difficult it is to do this kind of work and to get at this data and these details. What else did you learn about this particular reimbursement being continued?
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Ken Vogel
Yeah, the Biden administration had initiated this rule change to the Medicare reimbursement rate, so it would have been really bad for these companies. And they were raising a ruckus about it as soon as the announcement came out last year. And they went in very aggressively for Donald Trump. Some of them had never given to Trump before and they made these huge donations, sometimes corporate donations, to the Trump super pac. There was an earlier instance last year with the same company that we wrote about whose executive went to this dinner at Martin Mar A Lago in March, where in. In late May of last year, they had made a $1 million donation to sort of a predecessor PAC, which at that point was helping Trump in his election campaign. And just a few weeks later, Trump initially tweets out something going after this proposed Biden rule change. So that's when these folks in this industry realized that they had potentially a friend in Trump. And who knows whether he actually believed that this was something that, you know, was in the best interest of seniors and diabetics in particular, as is, as his post said, or whether, as was the case with this post that we wrote about, he was literally just parroting the. The talking points of the donors who had given him a bunch of money and got in his ear at one of these exclusive dinners. I mean, in the case of the flyer that you mentioned that Trump posted, that was actually delivered by this guy, this executive whose company had given $5 million, Trump didn't even attribute it. He just took a photo, literally took a photo of this flyer and put it up on his True Social page without indicating where it came from. Almost as if it was his own words, when in fact it was the words of a donor who had just paid a bunch of money to get access.
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Lawrence O'Donnell
Medical costs can always surprise us, but I have to say I've never seen anything quite like this. The product we're talking about can cost, according to one item in Your report here, $11,283 per square inch of this product. That's how you get up into billions of dollars really fast.
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Ken Vogel
Yeah, there were two products that were around that same price that were offered by this company. It's called Extremity Care. It's a suburban Philadelphia company. And overall billing, this is not just since April, when the change would have gone into effect before it was delayed, but overall billing through Medicare for these two reimbursements through Medicare for these two types of patches was $1.4 billion to just to this one company for two products. So not to the company, but for the reimbursement to the doctors, which ultimately redounds to the benefit of the company. So you see how lucrative this space is.
- [31:24]
Lawrence O'Donnell
And completely missed by Elon Musk, but not missed by Donald Trump. He apparently knows what he's decided to do here. Ken Vogel, thank you very much for joining us tonight.
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Ken Vogel
Pleasure.
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Lawrence O'Donnell
And coming up, Donald Trump has decided that our greatest universities are his enemies. And he wants to rewrite history using an approach similar to what the Third Reich used in Germany during the rise of Adolf Hitler. So says our next guest, Yale history professor David Blight, who wants to bring what he calls Donald Trump's history department out of the shadows and expose their lies. That's next.
- [32:05]
Kelly Ripa
Hey there, it's Kelly Ripa, and have you been listening to my podcast? We are knee deep in season three, and if you haven't heard it, it's time to get on board. After years of interviewing celebs on camera, I finally get to bring you the real conversations that take place when the cameras aren't rolling. Where else are you going to hear Michelle Obama talk about keeping her girls out of Page Six? Hilaria Baldwin's hilarious reaction to Alec running for office, or Jeremy Renner's lucid hallucinations about Jamie Foxx. Nowhere else. It's raw, it's honest, and best of all, it's off camera. And believe me, that's where you get the good stuff. So download. Let's talk off camera with Kelly Ripa now. Wherever you get your podcasts.
- [32:48]
Unknown
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Lawrence O'Donnell
I need a coffee.
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Lawrence O'Donnell
Or your money back.
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Ken Vogel
Back.
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- [33:50]
Lawrence O'Donnell
The world got great news from Harvard this week, as we have countless times over the centuries, with Harvard researchers coming up with new ways to save our lives. Harvard gave us the smallpox vaccine in 1799. The dean of Harvard Medical School, Dr. John Warren, was the very first surgeon to use anesthesia. And now Harvard has delivered a breakthrough in Alzheimer's research. A Harvard Medical School study published yesterday in the journal Nature has found what could be the Holy grail of Alzheimer's. A way to prevent and even reverse Alzheimer's disease. That is what they've observed applying what they have found in studying the brain tissue of Alzheimer's patients and experiments with mice that have shown the possibility of restoring memories lost to Alzheimer's, the senior author of the study, Dr. Bruce Yanker, told the Boston Globe. It seems to somehow turn back the clock. Dr. Bruce Yanker, a professor of genetics and neurology at Harvard Medical School, also told the Boston Globe that Donald Trump terminated the federal grant supporting his research. Unfortunately, this will significantly limit our progress going forward, said Dr. Yanker. Donald Trump's father spent his final years lost to Alzheimer's. Donald Trump, who shows possible early signs of that damage, might spend the final years of his life crushed by Alzheimer's. And Donald Trump has decided that we don't need any more Alzheimer's research because Donald Trump has decided that Harvard University is his personal enemy. He has been guided in that thinking by an historian named Kevin Roberts, who is now the head of the Heritage foundation, which created the Project 2025 guidebook that Donald Trump has been following. Kevin Roberts published a book just after the presidential election, which with a forward by JD Vance saying every Ivy League college should be burned. Our next guest says Donald Trump is following not just Project 2025, but the approach that Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich used to control Germany. In a new article in the New Republic, Yale history professor David Blight lists the eight key factors that the Nazis used to achieve power, as described in Richard J. Evans Trilogy on the Third Reich. One of those factors was the destruction of dissent and academic freedom in universities. Another was, quote, the public Manipulating and Recrafting of history. David Blight won the Pulitzer Prize for his biography of the escaped slave Frederick Douglass, who became, among other things, an advisor to President Abraham Lincoln. Many of David Blight's other books, including A Slave no More, include invaluable details about the most cruel period of American history that Kevin Roberts wants to rewrite now in a way that would soothe Donald Trump's flawless ignorance of American history. It seems that David Blight's scholarship in Kevin Roberts scholarship once overlapped at the turn of the century in 1999, when Roberts earned his PhD in American history with a dissertation titled Slaves and Slavery in the Evolution of Atlantic World Identities, 1791-1831. Kevin Roberts Proclamations now are unhinged from scholarship or law. He now says, our rights come not from courts but or constitutions, but from God. David Blight now believes it's time for historians to leave their libraries and their classrooms and publicly strongly defend history itself. Professor Blight writes, these assaults on history have moved at a startling pace, if a bit under the radar of public attention. The Trump White House, with the assistance of Project 2025, has attacked the institutions that historians most cherish. They include the National Archives, the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian institution and its 21 museums, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Fulbright Fellowship Program, and the National Park Service. This is only a partial list and should also include universities themselves and public schools, which many Republicans are determined to erode or destroy. David Blight says Heritage and Kevin Roberts are Trump's history department, and Professor Blight wants to bring Kevin Roberts and Trump's history department out of the shadows. Professor Blight writes, I respectfully invite him to join a small group of historians in a series of discussions, debates. He can choose his companions, and we will choose our participants. I challenge him to a series of civil debates in major television or podcast outlets, or especially a public venue before the 2026 anniversary of American independence. Joining us now with a preview of such a debate is Yale University's Sterling professor of History and Black Studies, David Blight. Professor Blight, thank you very much for joining us here tonight. This is a striking proposal for a professor to say, let's get out there. Let's get out there and have this discussion publicly. Let's have it in a way that the country can hear it and judge. What brought you to this point and to this idea?
- [39:44]
David Blight
Well, thank you, Lawrence, for having me back on. What brought me to this, first of all, was the viciousness of the attacks that Kevin Roberts has made on us, on my profession, on American historians, on the last half to three quarters of a century of revolutions in scholarship of which he was part with that dissertation you just cited. But what also brought me to this proposal or invitation to Mr. Roberts is that I don't see what else we can do at this point. This isn't about facts and evidence. I mean, it is at the end of the day, we hope, but it's not about interpretations that may differ. This is a political fight. What President Trump did in the March 27 executive order about restoring sanity to American history, crafted essentially by the Heritage foundation, was to declare political war on the practice of history, on the teaching of history, on American scholarship. And Mr. Roberts has been very much the vanguard of the far right's attacks on all things liberalism, the liberal mind, liberal politics, the liberal quest for knowledge to use reason to discover new ideas. And so I thought, why not challenge him to come out, come out of that Heritage foundation building there in Washington, come debate us. He can choose the first moderator in the venue. We'll choose the second moderator in the venue. But let's have it out. What is American history? What should it be? What are its dominant narratives? And how did they develop? And why is it that the far right chooses so vigorously, even viciously, to attack how we understand our past? What is it about history that makes them want to control it, to kind of lock it up in a box? And there's only one door in. What is it about the past that makes it so dangerous to their visions of a social order and a social order at the end of the day, that will not represent the beauty of American pluralism, the genius of American pluralism, the genius of the separation of church and state. Mr. Roberts is a great proponent of Christian nationalism. He's very explicit about that. So hence I used this article that Michael Tomaski was so kind as to solicit and indeed asked me to bring together about a dozen American historians and I mixed the generations, all of whom now have written essays about doing history, writing history, teaching it in the time of Trump. And it will be the September issue of The New Republic. Eleven historians weighing in. My lead essay invites Mr. Roberts to come out into public and have that kind of debate.
- [43:03]
Lawrence O'Donnell
Professor Blight, we have to squeeze in a commercial break here. We're going to be right back with more from Professor Blight. We'll be right back. Back with us is Yale history Professor David Blight. Professor, you wrote in your piece. For more than 50 Heritage's leadership has dreamed of this moment, a presidential administration willing to destroy and then remake the nation's heritage in the service of right wing triumphalism. That was news to me. I didn't realize that they've been at this project for so long.
- [43:37]
David Blight
Oh, they have. And let's not forget what their name is. It's the American Heritage Foundation. They weren't always this vigorous about control ruling American history, but the Trump administration has given them an opening. It is sort of their dream. This is a presidential administration now willing to use power to dictate history. Not history represented by the best and the most thorough, evaluated, reviewed scholarship, but history born of power, history born of a need to control what young people are going to think about their country. I think what they're really up to, Lawrence, at the end of the day, short term, they want to control American history. Long term, they are actually rolling back the Enlightenment itself. The Enlightenment. Let's, I mean, just name any six principles of the Enlightenment, the use of reason, rationality, the belief in religious freedom, the belief in the doctrine of consent, the belief in sovereignty, sovereignty, representative government, liberty, equality. Those great principles, fledgling as they were of the 18th century, out of which the American Revolution was born. The Heritage foundation and the Trump administration wants to roll most of that back into a kind of prescribed history that is not about reason or not about mutual tolerance, not about learning about new peoples, new places, new ideas, new paths. And it's also a problem because they believe this is all zero sum. If you have a lot more women's history being taught, or black history or Latino history, Native American history, you must therefore not be teaching about white people. Well, sometimes that's true, and academics do have some things to answer for on what we've done with curriculums. But it is not a zero sum game. The American national narrative is and virtually always has been a pluralistic narrative about all sorts of peoples trying to become any Pluribus Unum, for better or worse, trying to become one people living under rule of law, another Enlightenment principle, living under a written constitution, an Enlightenment principle. American history has always been really diverse and messy and complex and conflicted and full of violence and full of difficult stories. But people can handle it. Students can handle it. I just worked this summer with three different teacher institutes, that's secondary teachers who come together for a week. One in Philadelphia on the Constitution, one at Gettysburg on Civil War memory, and another one here at Yale on black history and Latino history. Teachers want this history and the students can take it. And historians now, as never before, have to get outside of our libraries and get outside of our classrooms and fight for this. There can be no surrender of these basic ethics of how you do history and what it's all about.
- [47:06]
Lawrence O'Donnell
Yale Professor David Blight, thank you once again for joining us. It is always an honor to have you here.
- [47:12]
David Blight
It's my honor, Lawrence. Thanks.
- [47:14]
Lawrence O'Donnell
Thank you. We'll be right back. Professor David Blight gets tonight's last word.
- [47:22]
Unknown
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