← The Rachel Maddow Show
The Rachel Maddow Show
'Five alarm fire': Trump attempts to fire Fed board member, inviting economic calamity
00:43:06
Donald Trump is attempting to violate the independence of the Federal Reserve Board by claiming the power to fire one of its members, Lisa Cook, exposing the United States economy to the risk that its credibility will be reduced to the compromised level of Trump's. Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize-winning economist, talks with Rachel Maddow about why Trump is playing with fire he doesn't understand.
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While you're at it, don't wait. Call Firestone Complete Auto Care for an appointment. We will have more coming up on that breaking news story about President Trump attempting, attempting to fire, purporting to fire a member of the board of the Fed, the board of the Federal Reserve. Again, I he is attempting to do that. He is purporting to do that because under a sort of black letter reading of the law, that is not necessarily something he has the legal authority to do, but he is trying to do it tonight. We will have more on that story coming up this hour. Today, this afternoon, the Democratic Governor of Illinois, J.B. pritzker, gave President Trump and the Trump administration a hard shove back after the president threatened once again that he wants to send in US Active duty troops and National Guard not only to the streets of Los Angeles and not only to the streets of Washington, D.C. but also he says now he wants to send them to the great city of Chicago. The Democratic mayor of Chicago, Brandon Johnson, and the Democratic governor of Illinois, J.B. pritzker, have both aggressively and very publicly pushed back against those threats from Trump today. The governor in particular made the kind of, I guess it's I guess you'd say the kind of formal, forceful shove back that might very well go down in the history books. Watch.
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I want to speak plainly about the moment that we are in and the actual crisis, not the manufactured one that we are facing in this city and as a state and as a country. If it sounds to you like I am alarmist, that is because I am ringing an alarm, one that I hope every person listening will heed, both here in Illinois and across the country over the weekend, we learned from the media that Donald Trump has been planning for quite a while now to deploy armed military personnel to the streets of Chicago. This is exactly the type of overreach that our country's founders are warned against. And it's the reason that they established a federal system with a separation of powers built on checks and balances. What President Trump is doing is unprecedented and unwarranted. It is illegal. It is unconstitutional. It is un American. This is not about fighting crime. This is about Donald Trump searching for any justification to deploy the military in in a blue city in a blue state to try and intimidate his political rivals. This is about the President of the United States and his complicit lackey, Stephen Miller, searching for ways to lay the groundwork to circumvent our democracy, militarize our cities, and end elections. Look around you right now. Does this look like an emergency? Look at this. Go talk to the people of Chicago who are enjoying a gorgeous afternoon in this city. Ask the families buying ice cream on the riverwalk. Go see the students who are at the beach after school. Talk to the workers that I just met taking the water taxi to get here. Find a family who's enjoying today sitting on their front porch and ask if they want their neighborhoods turned into a war zone and by a wannabe dictator, Ask if they'd like to pass through a checkpoint with unidentified officers in masks while taking their kids to school. To the members of the press who are assembled here today and listening across the country, I am asking for your courage to tell it like it is. This is not a time to pretend here that there are two sides to this story. This is not a time to fall back into the reflexive crouch that I so often see where the authoritarian creep by this administration is ignored in favor of some horse race piece on who will be helped politically by the President's actions. Donald Trump wants to use the military to occupy a US City, punish his dissidents and score political points. If this were happening in any other country, we would have no trouble calling it what it is, a dangerous power grab. Earlier today in the Oval Office, Donald Trump looked at the assembled cameras and asked for me personally to say, Mr. President, can you do us the honor of protecting our city? Instead, I say, Mr. President, do not come to Chicago. You are neither wanted here nor needed here. Your remarks about this effort over the last several weeks have betrayed a continuing slip in your mental faculties and are not fit for the auspicious office that you occupy. Most alarming, you seem to lack any appropriate concern as our commander in chief for the members of the military that you would so callously deploy as pawns in your ever more alarming grabs for power. I know Donald Trump doesn't care about the well being of the members of our military, but I do, and so do all the people standing here. So let me speak to all Illinoisans and to all Chicagoans right now. Hopefully, the President will reconsider this dangerous and misguided encroachment upon our state and our city's sovereignty. Hopefully, rational voices, if there are any left inside the White House or the Pentagon, will prevail in the coming days. If not, we are going to face an unprecedented and difficult time ahead. But I know you, Chicago, and I know you are up to it. When you protest, do it peacefully. Be sure to continue Chicago's long tradition of nonviolent resistance. Remember that the members of the military and the National Guard who will be asked to walk these streets are, for the most part, here unwillingly. And remember that they can be court martialed and their lives ruined if they resist deployment. Finally, to the Trump administration officials who are complicit in this scheme, to the public servants who have forsaken their oath to the Constitution to serve the petty whims of an arrogant little man, to any federal official who would come to Chicago and try to incite my people into violence as a pretext for something darker and more dangerous. We are watching and we are taking names. This country has survived darker periods than the one that we are going through right now. And eventually the pendulum will swing back, maybe even next year. Donald Trump has already shown himself to have little regard for the many acolytes that he has encouraged to commit crimes on his behalf. You can delay justice for a time, but history shows you cannot prevent it from finding you eventually. If you hurt my people, nothing will stop me, not time or political circumstance, from making sure that you face justice under our constitutional rule of law.
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If you hurt my people, nothing will stop me from making sure you face justice. We've been through darker periods in this country, and this one will end. And if you do something in service of this, what he called. What he called a wannabe dictator, that will be something that Trump's enablers and acolytes have to pay for. They will have to pay for what they do now, when this moment is over and we return to a small d Democratic form of government, which we will shoot that right into my veins. Illinois Governor J.B. pritzker speaking today in Chicago and what I think will probably be seen as a landmark speech, a landmark sort of watermark in terms of Democratic opposition to this president today brushing back President Trump and specifically his threats to start another military occupation of another great American city. You heard Governor Pritzker there talking about the inevitability of Chicagoans protesting against any Trump military occupation, telling Chicago residents they needed to be, among other things, guided by our country's proud history of nonviolent protest this weekend Washington, D.C. residents continued to protest against Trump's military occupation of their city, protesting this weekend under the banner of Free DC this weekend we also saw protests in Washington state after a disabled U.S. army veteran was locked up at one of Trump's immigrant prisons. In Tacoma, Washington, hundreds of his friends and family and supporters came out to support him. Again, this is a disabled U.S. army veteran that Trump has locked up in one of his immigrant prisons in Washington State. In Phillipsburg, Pennsylvania, people protested this weekend against the reportedly deplorable conditions at one of Trump's immigrant prisons in their area. In this case, it's the Moshanin Valley Processing center in Pennsylvania. In the Everglades in Florida, people protested this weekend yet again at the entrance to the Everglades Immigrant Prison that Trump and the DeSantis administration have Buil Judge has now ordered that facility shut down. In a ruling late last week, that ruling says that the so called Alligator Alcatraz facility is operating illegally and must be shut down. In Johnson County, Indiana this weekend, a lot of people turned out for a protest against Trump's plan to build yet another immigrant prison, one that can hold a thousand people at a facility called Camp Atterbury, which is an Indiana National Guard facility in that part of Indiana. At least one Indiana National Guardsman actually turned out this weekend in Johnson County, Indiana to say that he's with the protesters on this one to say that he's against using this Indiana National Guard facility for one of Trump's immigrant prisons.
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When I enlisted, I swore to protect the country and the Constitution from threats foreign and domestic ice. Is that domestic threat.
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An Indiana National Guardsman there speaking with the local press as part of that protest this weekend in Indiana, in California, this was this weekend in Little Tokyo, which is a Japanese American. A historic Japanese American neighborhood in Los Angeles from which Japanese American immigrants and U.S. citizens were rounded up and incarcerated by the U.S. government in World War II. And one of the most shocks shameful chapters of our nation's history. Japanese Americans and others held a never again protest in Little Tokyo this weekend against this administration's mass arrests without due process. And it's not like anybody's having to reach too hard for the historical allegory on this one. I mean, it's the headline in USA Today this weekend. Army base used for World War II Japanese internment will be nation's largest ICE detention center. Here's the headline at NBC News quote, Japanese American groups blast use of Fort Bliss former internment campsite as ice detention center. This was Maryland Today outside the federal facility where a man named Kilmar Abrego Garcia was ordered to show up and present himself this morning to immigration authorities. This after months of Mr. Abrego Garcia Ping ponging around the country and indeed the world, as the Trump administration has spent what appears to be millions of dollars and thousands of man hours repeatedly botching his case and then bizarrely trying to make him pay for their own repeated and now compounding mistakes. There is not a person in the country now who hasn't heard the name Kilmar Abrego Garcia or something, at least about his case. People turned out in force today to support him at this federal building in Maryland and also to try to provide a physical shield and support for his family members, as today a federal judge once again ordered the Trump administration to stop trying to send him out of the country. Mr. Abrego Garcia's lawyer is going to join us live here in just a moment as Trump finds yet more new ways to bungle and botch this marquee case that has become so emblematic of this administration's one to one ratio of cruel intentions to utter incompetence. The President has just fired the director of presidential personnel at the White House, the person in charge of hiring people into the Trump administration. I'm sorry, I misspoke. I said he fired him. He actually named him to be an ambassador. Because in this second presidential term, Trump doesn't fire anyone anymore. When he wants to fire someone, he instead just makes them an ambassador. Ambassador. And it's always because of some kind of mess. Trump's national security advisor, you'll remember he bizarrely added the editor in chief of the Atlantic magazine onto an insane group text about classified forthcoming military operations. Michael Waltz, Trump national security advisor, did not get fired for that. He instead was named ambassador to the United Nations. Trump apparently wanted to get rid of the U.S. attorney in New Jersey so he could give a big New Jersey job to his former personal defense lawyer, whose other legal experience was mostly just working for a parking garage company. Well, okay, in that case, you're going to get need to get rid of the existing US Attorney in New Jersey. So, voila, that existing US Attorney in New Jersey will now be the ambassador to Namibia. Sure, why not? The president's son, Donald Trump Jr. Appears to be no longer dating the Fox News personality, Kimberly Guilfoyle. Well, congratulations, Kimberly Guilfoyle. That means it's time for you to be named ambassador to Greece. The president's inexplicable IRS commissioner choice, Billy Long A professional cattle auctioneer by trade, he astonishingly got confirmed by the United States Senate to lead the irs. Whereupon he arrived at the IRS and there was a sudden widespread revelation. Oh, my God, this man cannot leave the irs. So now, voila. Billy Long is named the new ambassador to Iceland. This is what happens. You don't get fired. You become the ambassador to some country that doesn't deserve it. And now we have this latest one, Sergio Gore, the head of presidential personnel at the White House. He is credited by the administration with vetting, vetting and hiring something like 4,000 people into this administration. And boy, have they vetted and picked some winners. We don't know why Sergio Gore has suddenly been pushed out as the White House personnel director. They've announced that he's going to be Ambassador to India now for some reason. But this follows a bizarre series of reports in the right wing pro Trump tabloid, the New York Post reports in which the Post claimed that Sergio Gore's real name was Sergio Gorokovsky, that he claimed to have been born in Malta, but that he had not actually been born in Malta. He had been born in Soviet Uzbekistan. And again, the New York Post claiming that while Mr. Gore himself was supposedly responsible for background checks and security checks on all hires into the Trump administration, the Post reported that he himself, for months had refused to fill out the paperwork to allow a background, to allow a background check on himself, which meant that he had only been able to get reportedly, a temporary security clearance, and then that reportedly had expired. After the New York Post published its report on Mr. Gore in June, they said he finally did submit his SF86 form to start his background check months late. And then, according to the Post, quote, several sources said that the FBI recently completed a background check into Mr. Gore. The findings of that review stoked internal intrigue over the past week as those findings were, quote, reviewed by West Wing bosses. And now he's been fired. I'm sorry, I mean, named ambassador. Again, this is New York Post reporting and NBC News has not matched it. I am just telling you what the New York Post has reported and not what I can confirm. But if there's ever a Watch what they do and not what they say kind of moment, maybe it's the day that Donald Trump called a press conference in the Oval Office during which he mused out loud about whether his political opponents were fat and then opined on what he called the inherent violence of something he called the quote, chinese carp. Okay, that's what he said. But meanwhile, in terms of what he's doing well, they did just remove the guy who oversaw the of everyone in the Trump administration in the second term. And even one of the most pro Trump newspapers in the country reports alongside that inexplicable move that this gentleman has reportedly been lying about his background in the Soviet Union. And also something about his background check this past week turned out to be a real problem and so he had to be given a soft landing. Yet maybe we could assign just one reporter to write down all the things Trump says. Just one person can write down what he says and maybe all the rest of the White House reporters could report not just on what he says, but on the astonishing things he is doing and that are happening all around him in this shambolic and incessantly scandalous disaster of an executive branch. Yes, the White House occasionally hosts events at which the President says things those can be recorded and written down and covered admirably. There's also stuff they do though. Here's an example of some good reporting on the distance between what the President says and what he actually does. Thursday last week the President went online and criticized Ukraine. He said Ukraine will never be able to defeat Russia in their war with Russia unless Ukraine plays offense. He said, quote, it's very hard if not impossible to win a war without a attacking, quote, there's no chance of winning. So that's the President saying a thing, right? Criticizing Ukraine for not attacking enough in its war with Russia, playing too much defense, not playing enough offense against Russia. That's what he says for what it's worth. But when weighing what it's worth, consider what he does within that same subject matter on that same issue to that same point. In a three by line piece, the Wall Street Journal has now looked into what exactly the might be doing along these lines, not just what the President is saying, but what the administration is actually doing. And what do you know? Turns out that the Trump administration is overtly and explicitly blocking Ukraine from what the President described as playing offense. The Trump administration is overtly and explicitly blocking Ukraine from sending any long range missiles into Russia. Pentagon has quietly blocked Ukraine's long range missile strikes on Russia. Yeah, while he complains that Ukraine's not sending any missiles into Russia. Watch what he does, not what he says. Because is he really deploying the US Military to US cities because of fight and crime? Are all the immigrants he's arresting really Ms. 13 gang members really? Even the ones that aren't? And did he really just find an excellent and totally normal new ambassador to India? Trump isn't announcing any firings Right? Everybody just gets to be an ambassador to something when they get pushed out in this term. But in the military and national security part of the US Government, if you watch what they're actually doing, it is really starting to look like mass firings of everyone with any kind of standing, everyone of consul. I mean, Trump's people didn't just fire all of the senior lawyers in the US Military. They fired or pushed out the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the chief of staff of the Air Force, the second in command of the Air Force, the commandant of the Coast Guard, the chief of Naval Operations, the deputy head of the nsa, the head of the nsa, and the head of Cyber Command, the chair of the National Intelligence Council. Now, just recently, on Friday, they fired the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Chief of the U.S. navy Reserve, and also the head of the Navy SEALs, the SEAL officer who oversees Naval Special Warfare Command, the former commander of Seal Team 8, all fired. How come? And this comes on top of the evisceration of the National Security Division of the Department of Justice and the wholesale reassignment or removal of the FBI's National Security Security core operations. And so how do you cover that? Right? You could. You could try to follow the ball on any one of those firings or reassignments or unit shutdowns, right? Oh, what did Trump say about why that person needed to be fired? What was said in MAGA world about why that person needed to be fired? What could have explained how this person ended up on the wrong side of the black ball here? I mean, you could try to follow the individual story of all of these firings and reassignments and unit shutdowns. The way we can try to discern the story behind any of Trump's newly announced ambassadors as they, one by one, are expelled from some government agency or the White House or from a romantic relationship with one of the president's adult children. And you can follow these stories one by one, or you can look at the big picture and recognize that what's happening here might be quite important, particularly in the national security sphere, right? At the same time, the president is repurposing all federal law enforcement agencies and the US Military into an armed force, in some cases a masked armed force that patrols and polices and occupies US Cities. He is simultaneously degrading the professional core of those entities, degrading the professional core of federal law enforcement, the military, the intelligence agencies, and even emergency response. He is deprofessionalizing the US Military and federal law enforcement and Federal emergency response while he is turning those kinds of forces against the American people on American soil. And why would you do that? I mean, maybe somebody should ask him, although would you believe his answer? I can say if this were happening in any other country, what we would know instinctively was that the reason a leader would do something like that is because that leader wants to use those forces differently than what they've been trained for, differently than what they've been used for before. A leader trying to deprofessionalize the sharp end of the spear, deprofessionalizing law enforcement and the military does so because he wants to remove any professional restraint or internal ethics or culture that might otherwise hold those forces back from what he is now going to ask them to do. Headline FBI plans to lower recruiting standards Alarming agents. Headline FEMA Employees warn that Trump is gutting disaster response. I know it is traditionally exciting to cover the words of a president. It traditionally matters what a president says. It's traditionally important to cover what any president says in any context. With this kind of a president, though, watch what he does, not what he says. As I mentioned at the top tonight, just as we got on the air, he has now purported to fire a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, Lisa Cook, even though he does not appear to have the legal authority to do so. If he indeed blows through the law to seize control of the Federal Reserve in a fundamental way, we are already no longer the kind of country we have always otherwise been. We're going to be talking about that breaking news tonight with Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman. He's going to be joining us live in just a moment. But watch what he does, not what he says, right? I mean, what Trump is doing right now is what JB Pritzker said today when he said, if it sounds to you like I'm an alarmist, that's because I'm ringing an alarm. We have lots to get to tonight. Stay with us.
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I think that you have to have.
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Faith that in the end it'll all be okay. That no matter who wins a presidential.
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Election, we will live in a democracy. The First Amendment will govern what journalists.
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Can say and do. The Constitution will protect the rights of.
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Everybody, if you can agree that most people want those things.
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Our show is about trying to bend the arc toward that end result deadline.
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White House with Nicole Wallace, weekdays from 4 to 6pm Eastern on MSNBC. Start your day with the MSNBC Daily Newsletter. Each morning, read sharp insights from the voices you trust. Catch standout moments from your favorite shows.
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The second Trump administration has gone to unprecedented lengths to radically transform America.
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Stay up to speed with our latest podcasts and documentaries and get fresh perspectives from experts shaping the news. It's everything you love about MSNBC delivered to your inbox. Sign up now@msnbc.com subscribe to MSNBC Premium on Apple Podcasts for early access, ad free listening and bonus content. And 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 Maddows original series, Ultra Bagman and Deja News. Subscribe to MSNBC Premium on Apple Podcasts.
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B
So we got some breaking news just as we are coming on the air tonight. President Trump is purporting to have fired a member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve. Her name is Lisa Cook. She's been a fed governor since 2022. She is the first black woman to serve on the Fed board and its 111 year history. And in that entire 111 year history, no member of the Fed's board has ever been fired by any president. And that's not because presidents haven't wanted to do it. It's because a president is not legally allowed to fire members of the Fed board just because he feels like it's the Federal Reserve Board is an independent body charged with setting monetary policy for the United States. It was created to be independent precisely so presidents could not monkey around with stuff like interest rates. Trump has been threatening for months to fire the head of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, because Trump publicly insists simultaneously that even though the American economy is totally awesome and the hottest it's ever been, somehow also Jerome Powell is responsible for how terrible the economy is or something it's been a little hard to follow. In recent days, Trump has turned his ire toward Powell's colleague Lisa Cook, claiming that his administration has uncovered some kind of evidence that she committed mortgage fraud. Ms. Cook has not been charged with any wrongdoing. She has certainly not been convicted of anything. But tonight, in a letter to Lisa Cook that he posted online, Trump says he's firing her because of the unproven fraud accusations his administration has produced against her. We have no evidence that Trump's accusations are true. But even, even if President Trump, you know, harbors doubts about her rectitude or whatever, it, it's not at all clear that he has the legal authority to fire her on that basis, like I said, no president has ever fired a member of the Fed board before. Trump has announced that he intends to do or is proclaiming himself to have done so tonight. In a column tonight titled. In response to this breaking news this evening, Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman writes this. We are all Lisa Cook. He says, quote, the message here clearly isn't don't commit fraud, which would be laughable coming from Donald Trump of all people, nor, despite what some commentators have said, is it all about revenge. Although Trump is indeed a remarkably vindictive person. Mainly Krugman says, quote, it's about intimidation. If you get in our way, we will ruin your life. Joining us now is Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman, who joins us on very short notice tonight. Mr. Krugman, it's nice to see you. Thanks very much for being here.
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Well, thanks for having me on, though. Not a great occasion.
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No. How serious is this, especially for those of us who aren't economists who maybe follow a little bit what's going on in the market, but don't know the ins and outs of monetary policy and what the independence of the Fed really means. How much of an alarm bell should this set off for regular Americans just learning about this tonight?
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D
This is a five alarm fire because it's not just about Lisa Cook. It's clearly, as I said on my substack, this is about intimidation. This is saying it's a mess. It's not just that he claims he's firing Lisa Cook, although he has the right to do that, but it's a message to everybody else on the Fed's board and basically to government officials of any kind that get in our way. Don't act as an obedient minion of Donald Trump and we will ruin you. We will destroy you. And you know, the, the Fed is, I think it's important to understand that the Fed, the most important thing they do and the most visible thing is they set interest rates. They, they're in charge of trying to keep the economy on an even keel and avoid inflation. But they also do a lot of bank supervision, a lot of regulation, and in many ways, the board of governors plays an even more crucial role there than it does in interest rate policy. So this is basically an attempt to undermine, corrupt, intimidate the whole process by which we avoid banking crises, the whole way in which we avoid financial crises. If this stands, we immediately become a, we become Venezuela, we become Turkey, we become a place where all of this stuff is just at the whims of the strongman in charge.
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B
You wrote tonight on your substack, I could go on at length about the ways rules by intimidation will hurt the economy. Said there's a whole economics literature devoted to the costs. When an economy is dominated by rent seeking, when business success depends on political connections rather than producing things people want. Can you explain. Obviously there's a political cost. There's a what type of country are we cost here, but there's an economic cost here that may not be immediately obvious, I think to people who don't understand how this warping of the independence of the Fed might matter in their own lives, in their own economy. Okay.
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D
The trouble with the Fed, the reason that the Fed is independent is that monetary policy is very powerful and very easy to use. It's extremely, you know, if you want to do something like a spending program or even a tax cut, you have to pass legislation. It takes some time. Stuff needs to get put together. If you want to cut interest rates, what happens is that the Federal Open Market Committee calls the open market desk in New York and says reduce interest rates. And they, they buy and sell treasury bills on the market and interest rates come down, down. So it's basically frictionless. They can instantly move and put that kind of power in a way that's too much power for any politician to have, too much power for the president to have. We do not want a situation in which a president who just wants to inflate the economy ahead of an election or just has crackpot economic ideas can just go and muck with the economy and have, have basically no speed bumps in his way. That's why the Fed is so important. Once upon a time we had a gold standard which did limit that, but created all kinds of other problems. And the modern solution to this problem is that we have an independent, technocratic professional Federal Reserve, which is somewhat insulated from political pressure. And did we just eliminate that today, tonight? I mean, is because if we do that, then this is how countries get 80% inflation is by having a president who wants what he wants, has no sense of reality. You know, if inflation, if the Fed behaves irresponsibly and inflation kicks off, you know that what Trump will do is claim that the data are fake, that it's all fake news and everything is great. So in general, no president should have the power to just arbitrarily control what the Fed does, and least of all this president.
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So.
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D
This is the road to things going completely wild. Not five years down the pike, but months from now.
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Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman, I know we called you nationally to be here tonight on really short notice. It makes me all the more grateful that you could be here. Thank you.
- [36:32]
D
Thank you.
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All right, more news ahead tonight. Stay with us.
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Saturday, October 11th. From New York City, it's MSNBC Live 25. Join your favorite MSNBC hosts, Rachel Maddow, Joe Scarborough, Mika Bruszinski, Nicole Wallace, Ari Melber, Alicia Menendez, Simone Sanders Townsend, Michael Steele, Chris Haynes, jen Psaki, Lawrence O', Donnell, Stephanie Rule, and more. Visit msnbc.comlive25 to buy your tickets today.
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Error after error after error. They said they sent him to El Salvador as a mistake. They conceded it was an administrative error when they deported Kilmer Abrego Garcia from his home in Maryland to an offshore black site, Megaprison in El salv. Then the U.S. supreme Court ordered the Trump administration to facilitate his release from that prison they had mistakenly sent him to. But the administration refused to do it. They said Kilmer Abrego Garcia would never be coming back. Then they brought him back to the US Even though they said they would never do that. They brought him back supposedly so they could prosecute him. But that decision to prosecute him caused a top federal prosecutor to quit, reportedly in protest because he believed the Justice Department was pursuing that case just for political reasons. You may remember that the star witness in that case is a three time felon who was set to be deported. Instead, he was freed from federal prison by Donald Trump in exchange for his testimony in this bizarre case that they decided to bring against Kilmer Abrego Garcia. Well, now Trump has botched yet another attempt to try to make his own mistakes in this case go away. On Friday, Mr. Abrego Garcia was released on bond to await trial in Maryland. While staying with his family this morning, they summoned him to an ice check in and they arrested him there. His lawyers said the government intends to deport him again, this time randomly to Africa, a country, this time to Africa, to Uganda, a country has no relationship to at all. Already a federal judge has put a hold on that as well. Federal judge telling Trump administration lawyers today, quote, your clients are absolutely forbidden at this juncture to remove Mr. Abrego Garcia from the continental United States. The judge then pointed, pointedly asked the government if that order, quote, was understood. Trump administration lawyer replied, your Honor, yes, we certainly understand that this is a man's life and this is what used to be our constitutional republic, both of which are being somewhat shredded by the Trump administration for something that even on their own terms has just Been failure after failure after failure. They effectively lost on this again in court today, but in the process, still managed to tear apart this man's life even more. Joining us now is the lawyer for Mr. Abrego Garcia. I really appreciate, Mr. Moshenburg, you being here. Thank you so much for being here tonight.
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E
Good to be back.
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B
First of all, I just have to ask how Mr. Abrego and his family are doing tonight, given the rollercoaster that they've been on, not just over these months, but specifically today.
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E
Well, it's certainly a terrible rollercoaster of emotions for the family. We all expected that they would take him into custody this morning, even though they claimed it was for an interview. We all sort of understood that this was what was going to happen. But it doesn't make it any more devastating. After waiting nearly half a year to have, you know, their husband, their father, back for just one weekend and then to have him ripped away again on a Monday morning, it's quite terrible.
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I understand that the government seems to have tried to threaten Mr. Abrego Garcia into pleading guilty, whereupon they offered to send him to a different third country and only threatened to send him to Uganda, essentially as punishment for not agreeing to plead guilty. The judge singled that out today as one of the reasons that she wants to block this next attempt to deport him. Can you confirm that that's the kind of negotiation they offered him in trying to push him into this?
- [40:51]
E
It's very punitive. It's clearly punitive. And the law is crystal clear that the, you know, the immigration system is supposed to be civil. It's supposed to be separate from the criminal justice system. And, you know, certainly deportation and especially the threat of which country someone is going to be deported to, it can't be used in a punitive manner. As recently as last week, they were talking about Costa Rica, which had already offered him refugee status. That's a perfectly reasonable option. But then he exercises his right to leave the jail in Tennessee, and now all of a sudden, they're talking about Uganda.
- [41:23]
B
Hmm. Mr. Keltmar, Mr. Abrego Garcia has become essentially a household name in this country. People know his name. They know what he looks like. They know at least something about his story because of the administration's actions, but also because of the administration's repeated mistakes. Just the Kafkaesque nightmare that this has become, that it sort of has served every American to learn something. I have to ask whether that profile, whether the notoriety of this case, I guess, affords either lessons or opportunities for trying to sort this out for him or for any other family, that's worrying that these kinds of tactics might be brought to bear against them.
- [42:07]
E
Yeah, he's certainly not someone who brought this upon himself or asked for this in any way. He was not an activist or anything like that. Right. He, to the contrary, he's someone who understood that his immigration problems were over. And in the past, he won his case in 2019, you know, he won his deportation case. He won an order from a judge. He was here. He had a work permit for over half a decade. It was renewed under the first Trump administration twice. So he had no reason to believe that he was in any type of immigration problem whatsoever. And then from one day to the next, he's, you know, driving legally with his driver's license in Maryland, and then three days later, he's in the middle of seekout and has no idea if anyone even knows where he is, much less that the whole country was, you know, struggling for him and marching and rooting for him and working for him to be brought back to the United States.
- [42:58]
B
Well, those efforts to support him and his family and these legal challenges continue as a federal judge today forbids the government from trying to send him out of the country yet again, at least for the time being. Simon Sandoval Moshenburg, attorney for Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Sir, thank you very much for coming back tonight. Keep us surprised and good luck this week.
- [43:18]
E
You bet. It's good to be back. Thank you.
- [43:20]
B
We'll be right back. Stay with us.
- [43:26]
A
13 of the top 20 cities in homicide rate have Republican governors. None of these Cities is Chicago. Eight of the top 10 states with the highest homicide rate are led by Republicans. None of those states is Illinois. Memphis, Tennessee. Hattiesburg, Mississippi, have higher crime rates than Chicago, and yet Donald Trump is sending troops here and not there.
- [43:55]
B
Ask yourself why Illinois's Democratic governor, J.B. pritzker responding today after Donald Trump threatened to send U.S. troops into the streets of Chicago as part of his spreading military occupation of US it started in la. He says Chicago may be next. Right now it's still ongoing in Washington, D.C. and Trump's military force in D.C. so far includes National Guard troops from at least six states. But Governor Pritzker is right when he says that basically every one of basically every one of those states has its own cities where crime is worse than it is in Washington, D.C. so maybe those governors should look at home before they look abroad. Mississippi's Republican governor sent at least 200 National Guard troops to D.C. the capital city of Jackson Jackson, Mississippi, has the highest homicide rate in the country right now, more than triple the homicide rate in D.C. tennessee's Republican governor has sent at least 160 National Guard troops to D.C. memphis, Tennessee's homicide rate is 60% higher than the rate in D.C. ohio's Republican governor has sent 150 National Guard troops to D.C. ohio actually has not one, but two cities with higher homicide rates than D.C. has. Both Dayton and Cleveland have that distinction. Louisiana's Republican governor sent 135 National Guard troops to Washington. Shreveport, Louisiana, incidentally, also Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson's district. It also has a higher homicide rate than Washington, D.C. the crime fighting pretext of Trump's military takeover of U.S. cities was always ways an obvious pretext with these red state deployments. Honestly, it's increasingly also just a joke. All right, that's going to do it for me tonight. Thanks for being with me.