← The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell
The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell
Lawrence: Trump’s incompetent SecDef, Pete Hegseth, fails his intelligence assessment
00:42:59
Tonight on The Last Word: Senate Democrats slam Donald Trump for “misleading” the public on Iran. Also, NBC News reports Trump told Sen. John Thune to get him a budget bill to sign by next week. And Trump OMB Director Russell Vought is confronted with a new analysis about children who died of preventable causes after USAID cuts. Rep. Adam Smith, Brendan Duke, and Nick Kristof join Lawrence O’Donnell.
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- [00:01]
Lawrence O'Donnell
This season, let your shoes do the talking.
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Jen Psaki
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Lawrence O'Donnell
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Jen Psaki
Wear on repeat, DSW has you covered. Find a shoe for everywho from the brands you love like Birkenstock, Nike, Adidas.
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Lawrence O'Donnell
New Balance and more. Head to your DSW store or visit dsw.com today.
- [00:32]
Jen Psaki
Subscribe to MSNBC Premium on Apple Podcasts for early access, ad free listening and bonus content to all of MSNBC's original podcasts, including the chart topping series the Best People with Nicole Wallace, why is this Happening? Main justice and more. Plus new episodes of all your favorite MSNBC shows ad free and ad free listening to all of Rachel Maddow's original series, Ultra Bagman and Deja News. Subscribe to MSNBC Premium on Apple podc. Now it's time for the Last Word with Lawrence o' Donnell.
- [01:04]
Adam Smith
Hey, Lawrence.
- [01:06]
Jen Psaki
Hey, Jen. You know, that is exactly why I watch your show is because I'm gonna learn things from you about things I already knew. I already knew about those colors at the White House, but I didn't know that story. I didn't know the backstory. And now we do. Thank you for that. Thank you. Well, I listened to your monologue on.
- [01:27]
Adam Smith
The way home because I always learn things from you.
- [01:29]
Jen Psaki
And now all you need to do for me is write a new season of the west and I'll tell you.
- [01:33]
Adam Smith
More stories if we can agree to that.
- [01:36]
Jen Psaki
All right, we'll get right to that. Thanks, Jeff. Sounds good. Have a great night, Lawrence. Thank you. Thanks. Well, Pete Hegseth was reported to have had such a severe drinking problem while working as a weekend morning host at Fox that he promised Republican senators that he would not drink if they voted to confirm him as Secretary of Defense. And so we're just going to have to assume that Pete Hegseth was stone cold sober today when he said something that sounds like it belongs in the great Comedy Central TV series Drunk History.
- [02:23]
Pete Hegseth
President Trump directed the most complex and secretive military operation in history.
- [02:32]
Jen Psaki
It's the kind of thing that wouldn't be surprising for him to say if he still had his job at Fox and was drunk at a hotel bar. In 2017, a police report about Pete Hegseth being drunk in a hotel bar said that Pete Hegseth told the police, quote, that he was buzzed but not intoxicated during an encounter with a Republican woman who, after spending time in Pete Hegseth's hotel room filed a complaint with Monterey police claiming that she was raped. No criminal charges were filed after the police investigation. And none of that information bothered Republicans in the Senate in any way when it came time to vote for Donald Trump's selection of Pete Hegseth as the Secretary of defense. But all of those senators, all those Republican senators knew that as Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth was going to sound like a character in drunk history. Let's listen again to the stupidest public lie ever told by a Secretary of defense.
- [03:41]
Pete Hegseth
President Trump directed the most complex and secretive military operation in history.
- [03:48]
Jen Psaki
Now, some secretaries of defense, particularly during the Vietnam War, found themselves telling worse lies, more important lies about their plans to win the war that we lost decisively. But those secretaries weren't telling lies that were provably false in the moment that they said them. A presumably sober Pete Hegseth actually said, donald Trump directed the most complex and secretive military operation in history. Donald Trump directed nothing. Donald Trump said go to a plan that has been in place for many, many years. The Defense Department is filled with attack plans and war plans that it usually never uses, but always knows how to execute. Bombing Iran's nuclear facilities is something the Defense Department has known how to do for as long as Iran was susp of possibly developing nuclear weapons. President Obama could have done it simply by saying go. President Obama authorized the mission that took out Osama bin Laden, but that mission was designed by military professionals and was directed by military professionals after President Obama listened to the plan and simply said go. That's the way it works. And that was a much more complex and secretive military operation than the bombing run Donald Trump publicly talked about before he authorized it. There was nothing secretive about the possibility that Donald Trump might approve the bombing of Iran's nuclear facilities. Donald Trump publicly said that he might do that. Franklin Delano Roosevelt did not publicly say that he might approve an invasion of Normandy on D Day in World War II sometime in the next two weeks. There's nothing secretive about a president saying, I might order the bombing sometime in the next two weeks. And there is nothing complex about a single bombing run over a country that has no air defenses left because Israel took them out already. The only thing the President of the United States said before the first atomic bomb was dropped at the end of World War II was go. President Harry Truman had nothing to do with the development of the atomic bomb. That was all done under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. President Harry Truman knew next to nothing about the secretive process of developing that bomb. He just knew that shortly after President Roosevelt died in office. Vice President Truman ascended to the presidency. And that the bomb he found out about when he became president was ready to go. And it was Harry Truman's decision to make. He didn't direct anything about the mission. He didn't figure out what altitude the plane had to fly at so that it wouldn't be destroyed by the effects of the bomb that it dropped. Harry Truman didn't figure out what the weather had to be over Hiroshima and then Nagasaki. Harry Truman didn't figure out how much fuel it would take to get the aircraft back to safety. But each of those bombing missions were the most complex and secretive bombing missions in military history. And they remain that the only two bombing missions in which any country in the world has ever dropped an atomic bomb, the bombing runs over North Vietnam, were more complex, more secretive, and much more dangerous because those bombers could be and were shot down. Pete Hegseth promised Republican senators that he would not drink if he became Secretary of Defense, but he did not promise that he wouldn't sound drunk. The single most complex and secretive military operation in history was in fact the D Day invasion. That has been the subject of hundreds of books, dozens and dozens of movies, none of which can capture the full complexity of the years of preparation and planning and the secretive, intense discipline that made D Day the successful turning point in World War II. That it was Pete Hegseth tried to steal all of that and hand it to Donald Trump. Pete Hegseth tried to defend Donald Trump's claim that Iran's nuclear facilities were obliterated by the bombing. No one in the American military has made that claim. And today Pete Hegseth in effect seized the microphone when the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dan Kaine, was asked about the bombing damage. General, on Sunday, you said, final battle damage will take some time. And you also said, I think BDA is still pending and it would be way too early for me to comment on what may or may not still be there at nuclear facility. That was just over three days ago. So what has changed? Would you use the term obliterated as well?
- [09:10]
Lawrence O'Donnell
Sure. Like I said, we don't do bda. I'll refer that to the intelligence community. And when you're talking with them, I.
- [09:17]
Pete Hegseth
Mean, what changed in the past three.
- [09:18]
Jen Psaki
Days and make you so, sir, I.
- [09:20]
Pete Hegseth
Think I. I mean, I think I explained what changed. There was a great deal of irresponsible reporting based on leaks, preliminary information in low confidence. Again, when someone leaks something, they do it with an agenda. And when you leak A portion of an intelligence assessment, but just a little portion, just the little portion that makes it seem like maybe the strike wasn't effective. Then you start a news cycle, whether it's the Washington Post or Fox News or CNN or msnbc, you start a news cycle that starts to call into question the efficacy. That's why. So you bring the chairman here who's not involved in politics. He didn't do politics. That's my lane to understand and translate and talk about those types of things. So I can use the word obliterated.
- [10:07]
Jen Psaki
Well, he was a paid liar for Fox, so of course he can use any word he wants now that he's Donald Trump's appointed liar. At the Defense Department, Pete Hegseth had a run in with the best reporter who has ever been employed by Fox today, Chief national security correspondent Jennifer Griffin. Jennifer Griffin, in her 18 years of experience covering the Pentagon, knows more about the Defense Department and its operations than Pete Hegseth might ever know. Do you have certainty that all the highly enriched uranium was inside the 4 do mountain or some of it? Because there were satellite photos that showed more than a dozen trucks there two days in advance. Are you certain none of that highly enriched uranium was moved?
- [10:52]
Pete Hegseth
Of course. We're watching every single aspect. But Jennifer, you've been about the worst, the one who misrepresents the most intentionally what the President says.
- [11:04]
Jen Psaki
I'm familiar about the ventilation shafts on Saturday night. And in fact, I was the first to describe the B2 bombers, the refueling, the entire mission with great accuracy. So I take issue with that.
- [11:17]
Pete Hegseth
I appreciate you acknowledging this is the first opera, the most successful mission based on operational security that this department has done since you've been here, and I appreciate that. So we're looking at all aspects of intelligence and making sure we have a sense of what was where.
- [11:34]
Jen Psaki
Pete Hegseth, along with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, CIA Director John Radcliffe, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Kaine, participated in a closed door briefing to all members of the Senate today. After that briefing, Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut said this. Listen to me. It still appears that we have only set back the Iranian nuclear program by a handful of months. I walk away from that briefing still under the belief that we have not obliterated the President. The President was deliberately misleading the public when he said the program was obliterated. It is certain that there is still significant capability and significant equipment that remains. Before he became Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth said that he opposed women serving in the military. In his book Pete Hegseth wrote, we need moms, but not in the military, especially not in combat units. And in November, Pete Hegseth said.
- [12:43]
Pete Hegseth
I'm straight up just saying we should not have women in combat roles. It hasn't made us more effective, hasn't made us more lethal, has made fighting more complicated.
- [12:54]
Jen Psaki
And once again today, Pete Hegseth demonstrated just how obsessed he is with trying to keep women out of combat roles by refusing to acknowledge the women who actually participated in the bombing mission in Iran.
- [13:10]
Adam Smith
Why not acknowledge the female pilots that.
- [13:12]
Jen Psaki
Also participated in this mission? The early messages that you sent out only congratulated the boys.
- [13:19]
Pete Hegseth
So when I say something like our boys and bombers, See, this is the kind of thing the press does, right? Of course, the chairman mentioned a female bomber pilot. That's fantastic. She's fantastic. She's a hero. I want more female bomber pilots. I hope the men and women of our country sign up to do such brave and audacious things. But when you spin it as. Because I say our boys and bombers is a common phrase, I'll keep saying things like that, whether they're men or women. Very proud of that female pilot, just like I'm very proud of those male pilots. And I don't care if it's a male or a female in that cockpit. And the American people don't care. But it's the obsession with race and gender in this department that's changed priorities. We don't do that anymore. We don't play your little games.
- [14:01]
Jen Psaki
Boys and bombers. Boys and bombers was a common phrase. Yeah, maybe during World War II, when we only had men in combat roles, but we've had women in bombers for a long time now. And Pete Hegseth can't quite fit that into his language. He said, I don't care if it's a male or female in that cockpit. Okay, then let's just call them girls instead of boys. Or even better, let's call them what they really are, men and women. America was offered an opportunity today for all of us to do an intelligence assessment of Pete Hegseth. And for most observers, once again, Pete Hegseth failed that intelligence assessment. Leading off our discussion tonight is Democratic Congressman Adam Smith of Washington. He is the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee. Thank you very much for joining us tonight. From your position on the committee, what do you make of the damage assessment of the bombing as of now?
- [15:18]
Lawrence O'Donnell
Well, several things. First of all, we don't really know because we have other ways of getting intel. We're gathering it, trying to Figure out what might the Iranians be saying about it? We really don't know. We don't have eyes on the ground, and we can't be 100% sure. That's number one. Number two, I am quite confident that Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth would lie about it. So we can't trust the thing they say. We had the instance where they did the intel assessment of whether or not Venezuela was launching an invasion against us with gang member members, and the intel assessment came back that, no, they weren't. So Trump fired the intel assessment people because they hadn't given him the answer he wanted. So we know that Pete Hagseth and Donald Trump will claim for as long as is humanly possible that they destroyed this, whether or not they did. And the third thing I think we know is that Iran still has a nuclear program. Was it set back months? Was it set back eight months or a year? I mean, that's going to depend on how many centrifuges they have left and how much highly enriched uranium they have left. But they absolutely still have some centrifuges. They still have some highly enriched uranium, and they certainly still have the capability, which means they still have a nuclear program. And we still have a problem. We still need to negotiate with Iran to get them to stop that nuclear program. And we only have to do that, of course, because Donald Trump tore up the agreement that we had that had stopped Iran from developing a nuclear program. But that press conference is today, and you did a great job of explaining it. But it was an embarrassment on so many levels to have a secretary of defense be that partisan, that political over an important military mission. It was an embarrassment to watch.
- [16:56]
Jen Psaki
So you had a president of the United States publicly entertaining the possibility that he would order a bombing run on Iran's nuclear facilities, publicly entertaining that for days, and then at a certain point saying he might do it sometime in the next two weeks or after the next two weeks. But in any event, repeatedly saying publicly loud enough for Iran and the rest of the world to hear that he was thinking about doing that. Then we get reports of trucks at the facility, trucks capable of removing some of the valuable material they would need to preserve their program. What are the chances that the Iranians would have done absolutely nothing in preparation for the possibility of Donald Trump sending a bombing run?
- [17:46]
Lawrence O'Donnell
Pretty close to zero. I was going to say something like, the Iranians aren't stupid, but they don't have to be that smart to have figured out to try and do something. And that's look there's an overarching problem here. I mean, the way Hagseth approached this press conference with the most secretive, complex military operation in history, which you did a good job of pointing out the absurdity of, but the whole authoritarian tone, the whole, well, it's true because the king said it was true approach. It goes to the broader problem of Donald Trump acting more like a dictator and less like a democratically elected president of a constitutional republic. And it leads to blind spots and ignorance. I mean, if you assume you're right, if you assume the world is going to bow before you, then why would you think about something like you just said, like, hey, maybe if you give the Iranians a heads up, they'll have time to try to figure out how to avoid it. It's the entire approach of the Trump administration. And Pete Egseth fills his role incredibly well in that, certainly for Donald Trump's purposes, but not for the purposes of the American people and our national security needs.
- [18:52]
Jen Psaki
So Pete Hegseth tried to suggest that generals are not allowed to use absolutist language, even when the evidence shows that an absolute, you know, total success occurred, that they're simply not allowed. Allowed to say that. That that's somehow political language. And the general was very careful not to say anything about the idea that everything had been wiped out in the Iranian nuclear program. Is the general in any way prevented from using a word like obliterated if something actually was obliterated?
- [19:33]
Lawrence O'Donnell
No. I mean, he's only prevented in the sense that what he has to say has to be accurate. I mean, obviously with bin Laden, dude was dead. He was on a ship, we dumped him in the ocean. We knew he was dead. We knew that with 100% certainty because we saw the body, we had pictures of the body, so the generals could come out and say, mission accomplished, bin Laden is dead. And if we knew for an absolute fact that all 19,000 centrifuges that Iran had before Israel attacked them and before our bombing run were gone and destroyed, if you knew for an absolute fact that all 60% plus enriched uranium that the Iranians had was destroyed, he could have said that he doesn't know. And Pete Hagseth doesn't know, and Donald Trump doesn't know. But we can certainly look at the evidence of what Iran has done, of what the bombing campaigns could and could not accomplish, and conclude that it's highly unlikely that it was all destroyed. But certainly the president, Pete Hegseth, don't know that it was. If the general did know that it was yeah, he can go ahead and speak the truth. Well, sorry, in normal circumstances, he can go ahead and speak the truth. Working for Donald Trump, you have to be careful about that. You have to make sure that whatever your truth is aligns with Donald Trump's factual views of the world. But in normal circumstances, no, there's nothing prohibiting a general from saying what he knows.
- [20:49]
Jen Psaki
The larger and totally unhinged point that Donald Trump made yesterday was that he believes that he has ended all hostilities between Iran and Israel, has permanently ended them. And as he put it, the war is over. He's pretending, you know, this is VE Day or VJ Day and World War II, and it is completely over. Yeah.
- [21:13]
Lawrence O'Donnell
Well, the interesting thing is Iran and Israel exchanged missile fire twice last year, in April and in October. Both times, the Biden administration helped Israel defend itself, brought together a coalition of folks, and then worked with others to end the hostilities after that. So. So Donald Trump has basically done once what Joe Biden did twice last year. And that's fine, that's good. It's better that Israel and Iran aren't continuing to shoot missiles at each other. Right now. The hostilities are not over because Iran, again, still has a nuclear weapons program. They still have missiles. They are still a threat to Israel. They still support proxies in the region. And that's going to be the really interesting part. Now, Benjamin Netanyahu has reason to claim that the Iranian nuclear program was more degraded than perhaps it was as an initial matter. But this is real life for Israel. They face that threat. And sometime very soon, Israel is going to realistically assess that threat and try to figure out what to do about it. And they're not going to be content to just sit back. So there still has to be an agreement here. There still has to be an agreement. The war isn't over. I've been joking with everyone today. People ask me how I'm doing. I say it's great. The war in the Middle east is over. Donald Trump said it, it's done. By the way, let's remember that the war in Gaza is still going. Israel is still bombing in Syria. They are still occasionally bombing in Lebanon. The Houthis are still occasionally shooting missiles at Israel. And by the way, none. I'm not blaming that on Donald Trump. But let's remember, Donald Trump is the one who ran for office saying he was the magic man. He was going to come in and he was going to make peace happen. The Ukraine war over in a day. It's going to be easy. By the way, did you see the clip the other day when Trump was trying to explain why the Ukraine war wasn't over, he said, well, it turned out that it was more difficult and what a normal person would have said was than I thought. Now he can't say that it was more difficult than some people thought. Not him, not the guy who said he could end it in a day. So I'm not blaming him for that, but the lies and the dishonesty. It's time for the American people to realize that Trump talks a big game. He delivers very little and we need to hold him accountable for it.
- [23:24]
Jen Psaki
Congressman Adam Smith, thank you very much for starting off our discussions tonight.
- [23:29]
Lawrence O'Donnell
Thanks, Lawrence.
- [23:29]
Nicholas Kristof
Appreciate the chance.
- [23:30]
Jen Psaki
Thank you. And coming up today, Donald Trump lied about his budget bill, which he believes is the only way he can get it passed. And while he was at it, he told the stupidest story ever told by a president about his own tax policy. That's next. Want to pull off the season's freshest trends? You just need the right shoes. That's where designer shoe warehouse comes in. Loving wide leg jeans. Pair them with sleek low profile sneakers.
- [24:07]
Adam Smith
Obsessed with the sheer trend. Try it with mesh flats, feeling boho comfy sandals.
- [24:13]
Jen Psaki
Nail the whole free spirited thing. Find on trend shoes from the brands you love like Birkenstock, Nike, Adidas and more at dsw. MSNBC Films presents season two of the hit series from NBC News studios Leguizamo Does America, hosted by John Leguizamo. I'm here to meet with some exceptional.
- [24:35]
Pete Hegseth
Latin people leading the way.
- [24:36]
Jen Psaki
Premiere Sunday, July 6th at 9pm Eastern on MSNBC. Start your day with the MSNBC daily newsletter. Sharp insights from voices you trust, standout moments from your favorite shows, and fresh perspectives from experts shaping the news. Sign up now@msnbc.com the breaking news of this hour is that NBC News is reporting that at a meeting at the White House today, Donald Trump told the Senate majority leader to just get the Republican budget bill passed next week. NBC News reports. During the meeting, which came as Republicans are trying to coalesce around which provisions to include in the bill, Trump stressed too thune that he just wants Republicans to get a bill on his desk for him to sign before the 4th of July that will be interpreted by Republican senators as Donald Trump being willing to accept anything being included or not included in that bill just to get it passed. Here is Donald Trump today lying about his budget bill. They have things whether it's border or economic development or no tax on tips and Social Security and no tax on overtime and all These different things. There are hundreds of things here. It's so good. And we're going to also cut costs. We're cutting $1.7 trillion in this bill and you're not going to feel any of it. And your Medicaid is left alone. It's left the. In fact, the version of the bill passed by the House of Representatives includes the largest Medicaid cut in history that will take health care away from 16 million people. And those same Medicaid provisions that passed the House are now in trouble in the Senate because the Senate parliamentarian has ruled that the Medicaid provisions cannot be included in a Senate budget bill that qualifies for fast track procedures in the Senate that allow a bill to be passed with 51 votes instead of first clearing a 60 vote threshold. NBC News is reporting that the Senate Majority Leader, John Thune, is now falling behind his own schedule and will not be able to bring the bill to the Senate floor tomorrow as planned, which makes it increasingly doubtful that it can be passed before the 4th of July. Donald Trump told a story today about how he came up with the idea that he's very proud of, of no tax on tips. And remember, most American workers do not receive tips. So this is not a tax break for them. It is a tax break for people who Donald Trump likes better than the people who don't receive tips. Donald Trump said it happened in Las Vegas when someone he called, a, quote, young, beautiful waitress told him that she didn't want to pay taxes on her tips. She looked at me, she said, sir, there should be no tax on tips. I said, say it again. There should be no tax on tips. I said, that's the coolest thing I've ever heard. I walked outside, the press was there, as always, waiting for something bad to happen. Hundreds of them. I said, ladies and gentlemen, please announce tonight there will be no tax on tips. There are many reasons why no Secretary of the treasury has ever advised a president to have no tax on tips. You just heard the stupidest story ever told by a president about tax policy. So Donald Trump thinks some income should be protected from taxation and some shouldn't. So a Las Vegas lap dancer's income should be tax free, but a Las Vegas public school teacher must pay full taxes on all income. Same with Donald Trump's idea of no tax on overtime. Public school teachers don't get overtime, so public school teachers must pay full income taxes on all of their income. But if you're in a job that gets overtime, that's free income to you. In Donald Trump's tax policy, there is no rationale for that tax policy. If you're self employed and you work 60 or 70 hours a week or more, you pay full taxes on that income. So no, tax on overtime is not rewarding people who work hard. It is rewarding only some people who work hard, depending on who their employer is. And it is making the other people who work hard pay for the tax break that the people who work overtime will be enjoying. And the people who don't make tips or overtime will be paying for the tax breaks for people who do get tips or overtime, many of whom make more than public school teachers, who make nothing from tips or overtime. This is terrible and unfair tax policy at the lower end of our income scales, which balances the grotesquely unfair tax policy at the top end of our income scales that the Trump budget bill includes, with the biggest tax breaks in the bill going, of course, to the richest people in the world. Joining us now is Brendan Duke, senior director of the Federal Fiscal Policy at the center on Budget and Policy Priorities. He was an advisor to the Biden Harris National Economic Council. Thank you very much for joining us tonight. The bill seems to be in real trouble tonight, both from the Senate parliamentarian and from John Thune having an emergency meeting with the president and then John Thune delaying what was supposed to be the beginning of Senate action on the bill tomorrow.
- [30:56]
Adam Smith
Yeah, this bill is not popular and I think we're seeing that it's fundamentally broken. They're going to try to fix some things to deal with, you know, the Senate parliamentarian. But the thing is, they were sloppy with complying with Senate rules. But that sloppiness also applies to the entire construction of this bill where millions of people lose health insurance, lose, you know, assistance buying groceries to pay for tax cuts for the wealthiest people in America. It's totally flawed.
- [31:26]
Jen Psaki
The tax policy, if we can call it that, which is literally Donald Trump encountering a Las Vegas waitress and deciding that for some reason tips should not be taxed, that there's an income, there's a form of income that we shouldn't tax at all. This is about as stupid a tax policy as you could come up with. And he describes it as having been conceived in the stupid possible way.
- [31:50]
Adam Smith
Yes, this is the dine and dash approach when it comes to helping working class Americans. So less than 5% of workers receive any tips at all and only a fraction of them actually pay federal income taxes. So would get a dollar of tax cut here. Right. So we're talking very meager tax cuts for working class Americans. But this is not just a tax bill. It is a health bill. It is a nutrition assistance bill. The key thing is two in five tipped workers receive their health care from Medicaid and Affordable Care act exchanges. Right. So these guys are going to face losing health insurance in a bill that just gives them meager tax cuts. Right. Snap. Do you know what the number one industry is for employing workers who receive snap, which is assistance buying food? It's the restaurant industry. So I think it's just a total distraction and bad tax policy and just that we should not be drawing these lines. There's no reason why a security guard or janitor should be paying a higher tax rate than a waiter. We have great tools to lift up all waiters, all security guards, all janitors through things like the earned Income Tax credit. Donald Trump is ignoring those tools, though.
- [33:03]
Jen Psaki
Not to mention raising minimum wages and other policies. The, the way Donald Trump arrives at tax policy here is clearly just the way it's going to sound when he says it out loud. He has no idea that he is prejudicially treating some forms of income over others. There are people who have employers who have overtime, but only for some workers, and who can decide which workers are going to get the overtime, which workers won't. It won't be fairly distributed free income with no income taxes on it.
- [33:38]
Adam Smith
Yeah, the employer has the ultimate say over which of their workers get overtime and when. And, you know, I think it's just kind of dividing working class Americans where, you know, something like less than 10% of workers receive, you know, classic overtime pay, you know, only a fraction receive tips. It's dividing these lines. While the average tax cut for millionaires is $90,000 a year, and on top of that, this is undermining the 40 hour workweek, this no tax on overtime idea. Overtime pay is the linchpin of the 40 hour workweek because it disincentivizes employers from having their workers work all that time and kind of understaffing the work site. Right. And so basically this turns it into a tax incentive for overworking workers. So again, this is all about saying, I'm this working class champion, but at the end of the day, the tax cuts for millionaires are $800 billion. The no tax on stuff is like $150 billion. So the tax cuts for millionaires are five times larger than all these populist sounding tax breaks.
- [34:44]
Jen Psaki
Brendan Duke, thank you very much for joining us tonight.
- [34:47]
Adam Smith
Thanks for having me on.
- [34:48]
Jen Psaki
Thank you. And coming up. In five days, the US Agency for International Development usaid, will be officially dismantled by the Trump administration. Pulitzer Prize win columnist Nicholas Kristof, who has been following the devastating worldwide impacts of all of this, will join us next. Want to pull off the season's freshest trends? You just need the right shoes. That's where designer shoe warehouse comes in. Loving wide leg jeans. Pair them with sleek low profile sneakers.
- [35:21]
Adam Smith
Obsessed with the sheer trend? Try it with mesh flats, peeling boho com comfy sandals.
- [35:28]
Jen Psaki
Nail the whole free spirited thing. Find on trend shoes from the brands you love like Birkenstock, Nike, Adidas and.
- [35:35]
Adam Smith
More at DSW.
- [35:41]
Jen Psaki
As President Trump continues implementing his ambitious agenda. Follow along with MSNBC's newest newsletter, Project 47. You'll get weekly updates sent straight to your inbox with expert analysis on the administration's latest actions and how they're affecting the American people. The American people are basically telling the President that they are not okay with any of this. Sign up for the Project 47 newsletter at msnbc.com project47 in five days on July 1, the United States Agency for International Development USAID will be officially dismantled by the Trump administration. Its remaining functions will be absorbed by the State Department, Bloomberg News reports. According to a State Department draft assessment, that process of shutting down, just shutting down USAID will cost more than $6 billion, including hundreds of millions needed to fight legal challenges over the shutdown and dismissal of thousands of its workers. Yesterday, Donald Trump's budget director, Russell Vaught, who enthusiastically helped lead the charge to close usaid, was a witness at a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing. Boston University has put together a tracker of the impact of this sudden shutdown of these programs around the world. Let's review the child death count from the Boston University School of Public Health tracking of the impact of your shutdowns. 77,000 children have died up to today, their estimate from pneumonia as a result of the shutdowns. 70,000 children have died from malnutrition, 59,000 have died from diarrhea, 33,000 have died from malaria, 7,000 infants have died from HIV, plus 118,000 adults. We are talking a quarter million children because of your irresponsible shutdown of programs that Congress had fully authorized and you unconstitutionally shut down in partnership with Elon Musk and the Secretary of State. How do you feel about being responsible for hundreds of thousands of children dying because of your sudden interruption in these key programs? I reject the assertion you chose to shut down programs in the middle that have resulted in hundreds of thousands of children dying in the last few months. I find that evidence horn and few Americans have ever had such a devastating and disasterly impact. New York Times columnist Nick Kristof writes, a child dies of malnutrition related causes every 15 seconds or so, even as 185,535 boxes of Plumpy nut are stacked in a warehouse in Rhode island already paid for by American taxpayers. Navin Salem, chief executive of Adesia Nutrition, which makes the peanut paste and owns the warehouse, says the United States government owns the boxes but now doesn't seem to know how to move them to where they're needed. So the government accumulates storage costs for plumpy nut as children die for want of it. Is there any kind of dysfunction more callous and capricious? Joining us now is Nicholas Kristof, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and New York Times columnist. Nick, thank you very much for joining us tonight. What was your reaction to the budget director's testimony simply rejecting this description of what he's done?
- [39:35]
Nicholas Kristof
You know, I just wanted to drag him on a trip with me and take him with me so you can see the results of it. And I think that but you know, his eyes and generally eyes glaze over at 350,000 people total, which is the latest figure for that Boston University tracker for adults and children alike who've died because of the USAID dismantling. But when you come across one child in front of you who is dying because they're not getting that plumpy nut or you know, there was one village I visited in, in Liberia, I visited the family of a woman named Yama Freeman and I would really like to take him to see that family because she was pregnant, she's a mother of two, there's Yama, and she then hemorrhaged. And the US had provided an ambulance for that county, so it should have been able to rescue her. But instead the the US had cut off fuel supplies for that ambulance who it couldn't move. And so when her family called the ambulance, they said, well, provide some fuel and we can rescue her. And so a bunch of the young men in the village put her in a hammock and put her on their shoulders and they raced down the path toward the hospital and she bled to death on the way. And you know, you multiply that by thousands and thousands and that's what happens when you have this rushed, capricious, unthought out collapse of usaid. You get women in villages like that Qaata in Liberia bleeding to death, unnecessarily leaving two children behind.
- [41:19]
Jen Psaki
You know, Senator Merkley did ask the question that I have been wondering about, and I'm still wondering about it because there was no answer. And it's how do you feel? That's the question for Elon Musk. How do you feel about, as Bill Gates put it, being the richest man in the world, killing the poorest people in the world? How do you and it is just inconceivable that these people can be doing this. But we still don't have an answer on that how do you feel? Question from any one of them.
- [41:48]
Nicholas Kristof
I mean, there's sort of a competition of cold heartedness around the administration, whether it's taking away Medicaid money or, you know, there is a there's certainly domestically and abroad, there is a competition to see who can be most cold hearted. But I think it would be hard to beat the way we so abruptly destroyed an agency, U.S. agency for International Development, that not only projected American soft power, that not only protected us from diseases around the world like Ebola and tuberculosis, but was also saving the lives of six people every minute. And then we just blew it up.
- [42:32]
Jen Psaki
Nick Kristof, please stay with us. We're going to fit in a quick commercial break here. And we'll be right back with Nick Kristof. In Nicholas Kristof's latest New York Times column, he writes, don't guilt trip me is a refrain I heard from many readers of my recent columns from West Africa and South Sudan about children dying because of cuts in American humanitarian aid. We cannot save every dying child or every mom hemorrhaging in childbirth. But our inability to save all lives does not imply that we should save none. A starving child on the brink of death can be brought back with a specialty peanut paste plumpy nut costing just $1 a day. And the anemia that often causes women to hemorrhage and die in childbirth can be prevented with prenatal minerals and vitamins costing $2.13 for an entire pregnancy. Nick Kristof is back with us. And Nick, I find in those comments you've been getting from readers a hint of what Elon Musk and people who are doing this might be thinking, although we haven't heard from them, that it simply isn't our job to have to do this, even though it's incredibly easy and cheap for us to do it. Yeah.
- [43:49]
Nicholas Kristof
Do you remember when Musk said that empathy was the greatest weakness of Western civilization? You know, that's kind of what a lot of those views suggest, that we don't need to worry about people of a different skin color or passport color that we, you know, not only should we not go to heroic links to help them, but we shouldn't provide $2.13 to help somebody. And, you know, I, I hope we're better than that. I hope we manage to claw back some of this funding and we're not going to save every person, but, boy, we can, you know, when we do things right, the way we turn the tide on aids, as you know, with pepfar, I mean, we've done some heroic things. We celebrate a fireman who saves one life. I mean, American citizens, through their tax dollars have been saving vast millions of lives with USAID until now.
- [44:46]
Jen Psaki
And the President's Fund Combating AIDS in Africa was a George W. Bush creation. That was, to my mind, the single best thing he did as president.
- [44:58]
Nicholas Kristof
Absolutely. Absolutely. And, you know, it's, I think, Lawrence, what offends me is that it's not just the, you know, the cruelty is not just economizing, but it's just utter incompetence. I mean, you know, Doge talked about efficiency. In a warehouse in Sierra Leone, I came across 7 million doses of medicine for river blindness that had been donated by Merck. They were, you know, they were free. They'd been transported Merck. They're in this lock warehouse and along with millions of doses of other medicines. And now they can't be distributed because USAID has been shut down and the distribution has been, has been canceled. And, you know, this, this is a free program and we let it slip through our fingers.
- [45:47]
Jen Psaki
Nick Kristof, thank you very much for your invaluable reporting on this, and thank you for joining us tonight. You thank.
- [45:53]
Nicholas Kristof
Thank you, Lawrence.
- [45:55]
Jen Psaki
We'll be right back. Nicholas Kristof gets tonight's last word. Hey, everyone, it's Chris Hayes. This week on my podcast, why Is this Happening? Gia Tolentino, staff writer at the New Yorker, on what this news cycle combined with social media together are doing to our brains. The things that are fake look extremely real. The things that are real are almost unbelievable. And then the result is this slurry in our mind that causes this permission structure to detach, detach from the material reality of the world.
- [46:26]
Adam Smith
That's this week on why Is this Happening?
- [46:27]
Jen Psaki
Search for why Is this Happening? Wherever you're listening right now, and follow.