Transcript
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Rachel Maddow (0:30)
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Angie Hicks (0:36)
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Rachel Maddow (0:37)
I knew I could trust him to change Pop Pop's tube.
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Rachel Maddow (0:45)
really happy to have you here. I don't know how much you've ever thought about rabies before, but I think everybody knows enough about rabies to know that you just, you just really don't want to get it right. Rabies is a catastrophe for any animal that gets it, whether it's a raccoon or a fox or a bat or a dog or anything. But it's also a catastrophe for any human who gets it. If you get bit by a rabid animal, it is not just a bad metaphor. Rabies will almost always kill you. It will kill any human who contracts it if that person does not get it tried treated quickly enough. I mean, safe to say it is never a good time to get rabies. But if you are going to get rabies at some time in your life, do please try not to get it while Donald Trump is President of the United States. Because in his infinite wisdom, among all of the other things he has done as President of the United States, Donald Trump has now for some reason broken the United States government to the extent that we're no longer doing rabies testing for the country anymore. In the federal government, there are some state public health labs that can do some rabies testing of various kinds, but it's the federal government, it's the cdc. It has always been the CDC that is the gold standard lab for this kind of thing. It is the CDC that confirms rabies infections. It's the CDC that tracks them nationwide. I remember we had a big outbreak of rabies nationwide last year was the CDC's tracking data that showed that it's the CDC that does all the high end and complicated testing around terrible and rare diseases like rabies. And you can still see some of that legacy today of what the United States used to be capable of before Donald Trump took a wrecking ball to even this part of the US Government. If you go to the CDC website on rabies today, there's like, you know, CDC rabies page. It's, it's a very, you know, straightforward thing and there's like public facing parts of it and animal just bit me, what should I do? But this isn't, you know, ChatGPT or Google or WebMD. This is the CDC. And so the CDC not only has regular public facing information about rabies, it also has specific information, quote, for professionals, for laboratory professionals, specific information and instructions about specimen packing and shipping, how to properly and how to properly and safely collect and ship rabies specimens to the cdc, how you package your specimen and what exact thing you send to the CDC according to these packaging guidelines. It all depends on what exact kind of rabies testing the CDC is going to be doing on the specimen you're sending them, right? I mean, they are the nation's lab for this stuff and for every other complicated and terrifying and rare virus or pathogen that you've never heard of. But now, thanks to Donald Trump, if you're a health professional who goes to the CDC's rabies page because you need to, and you click through to find out how you need to package and send in your specimens to get, say, your human rabies antibody titer, if you click through to that, what you will find today is that you get an error message. Attention, this test order is unavailable until further notice. And then you can click through to see all of the other unavailable test orders, things the CDC used to test for, that they no longer have the capability to do under Donald Trump, thanks to the severe cuts to the cdc, the attacks on the agency, the pressure on its staff under Donald Trump, the United States federal government has now stopped diagnostic test, diagnostic testing for rabies, for mpox. Remember that MPOX or monkeypox outbreak that was so scary, They've stopped their testing for that. They've stopped their testing for even more rare and more complicated stuff like the parasitic worms that cause snail fever and the virus that causes sloth fever. Who even knew sloths got fevers? I mean, maybe you think you're never gonna get any of those things, and I sincerely hope that you don't, and I don't either. But if any of us either ever, ever did contract one of those things or were exposed to one of those things, the CDC is supposed to be where your tests go. So the scientists at the CDC can figure it out. The world's gold standard laboratory used to be, but now Donald Trump and the Republicans have taken over from this government. And so now we're losing those capabilities. Reporting from Apoorva Mandevili at the New York times, quote, the CDC's rabies and pox virus teams have lost many of their members. By July, the CDC's rabies team will be down to just one person with the clinical expertise to advise state and local officials. The pox virus team will have none. The former head of one major public health lab telling the New York Times, quote, if we have an emergency, all of a sudden, God help. Why do we have to ask God to help us in this moment and not the cdc? Plus, God, why are we getting rid of this kind of capacity? Why are we dismantling our country's, our government's ability to do stuff that we need? I mean, here's another example. The US Government has just had to make a formal declaration to Congress about something it has had to designate a major cyber incident. A major cyber incident, a hacking incident basically, involving sensitive surveillance systems at the FBI. It's reportedly China that is behind it. Here's the reporting from Politico. Quote, the determination that this is a major incident under the federal data security statute known as fisma, suggests the hackers successfully compromised swaths of sensitive data stored directly on FBI systems, likely marking a major counterintelligence coup for China. FISMA requires agencies to tell lawmakers to tell Congress within seven days about any digital intrusion it has determined is likely to result in demonstrable harm to U.S. national security. When an agency declares a major incident under fisma, it is also supposed to trigger an interagency cyber response mechanism. It is unclear whether that has happened or if the hack has since been contained. Yes, a major cybersecurity incident. Successful compromise of swaths of sensitive data stored on FBI systems involving sensitive surveillance systems. And it is unclear whether the interagency cyber response mechanism that is supposed to happen once this sort of designation is made under federal law. It's unclear whether that response has happened. It's unclear whether we have anyone to participate in an interagency response like that anymore. It's almost like the United States government might be well served right now if the Trump administration had not totally dismantled our government cybersecurity expertise, firing the head of the FBI's cyber unit, gutting that department, and reassigning its agents to go arrest immigrants instead. Democratic Senator Mark Warner, he's the head of the Head Democrat on the Intelligence Committee in the Senate. He gave a big sort of uncharacteristically hair on fire warning about this in November. You see the release from his office here on Senate floor. Warner sounds alarm on political purge of FBI, collapse of US Cyber defenses under Trump. In that speech, he warned that more than a third of the of cisa, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, had been fired or pushed out. The administration removed the leadership of the NSA and the Defense Intelligence Agency and had left U.S. cyber Command without a permanent commander and had disbanded the Foreign Influence Task Force, completely collapsing our US Cyber defenses. Why do that? And so now, yes, FBI Director Kash Patel, fresh off his personal Gmail account, being hacked by Iran. So we all got to see his weird personal photo album of him doing strange things with cigars. Yeah, cash. Patel's right. Personally, in the middle of all this, hey, maybe we shouldn't have dismantled all of our cyber expertise as a government. And why did we do that anyway? Oh, and when it comes to foreign influence campaigns, also mentioned there by Senator Warner, foreign influence campaigns and foreign disinformation campaigns, again, hey, you know, maybe it turns out we shouldn't have dismantled our country's capabilities for fighting that kind of stuff. Quote, the Trump administration is scrambling to respond to a global information war with adversaries like Russia, China and Iran. Administration officials appear increasingly worried that a growing number of anti American narratives are taking root worldwide. The State Department has now ordered every American embassy and consulate to do more to push back against foreign influence campaigns, warning that they are fueling hostility toward U.S. security interests. The push amounts to a stark reversal for the Trump administration over false and deceptive content from foreign governments and others online. After taking office in January 2025, Trump administration officials dismantled government departments dedicated to fighting foreign influence operations. Those targeted included teams of disinformation experts at the FBI, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the State Department, whose Global Engagement center had exposed numerous covert disinformation efforts, including ones by Russia and China. But when Trump got back to the White House, he shut that down. They shut down the center, the global. The Global Engagement center at the State Department, and all of the other disinformation experts all over the federal government, eliminating that capability from America's national security arsenal. And now apparently they're realizing, oops, maybe we needed that. Maybe we actually needed that capability. We used to have to compete with and defeat foreign disinformation campaigns. So they're advising US Embassies around the globe to try to Stand something like that up really soon. Turns out we're really hurting without it. Maybe you shouldn't have gotten rid of it. Maybe the United States actually needed also our cybersecurity expertise. Maybe those scientists who worked in the rabies lab at the cdc, maybe they actually did something we might need to be able to do as a country. Maybe we shouldn't have gotten rid of that either. And now we're into the wartime part of it. Right? Because a president who's been doing things like that to the whole of the US Government, you think he's doing a lot better when it comes to the military. The military while we're at war. After Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Still sounds crazy to say it after Trump and Hegseth crowed for days and days that the United States had, quote, complete control of Iranian skies and, quote, uncontested airspace over Iran after Trump said, quote, their air force is gone, their anti aircraft equipment is gone. We're flying wherever we want. We have nobody even shooting at us. Now, of course, we've had Iran shoot down an F15 fighter and the resulting rescue mission, an A10 Warthog, was also shot down. Two C130s and some number 1, 2, 3, 4 US Special Operations MH6 helicopters also destroyed in that rescue mission. That's on top of the $300 million AWACS plane the Iranians blew up while it sat out in the open undefended on an air base in Saudi Arabia, in easy reach of Iran's missiles. Also, the three Countam 3 USF 15s that were shot down right at the start of the war by our allies in Kuwait because apparently these guys forgot to do basic deconfliction with our allies to tell them not to shoot down our planes, and they shot down three of them. Dozens of American troops have been wounded and some killed thanks to Iranian missile and drone attacks on what appear to have been essentially unprotected US Bases in the region. Again, in easy reach of Iran's missiles and drones. The United States bizarrely started this war on its own terms and on its own timeline without first preparing its own bases for the inevitable Iranian retaliation with missiles and drones. So much so that US Military commanders are scrambling to find hotels and office space for US Troops to sleep in in the region because they can't sleep at their US Military bases because the bases aren't safe. Even though, again, this is a war that we started on our own terms and on our own timeline. Nevertheless, someone forgot to harden the targets at all the places where tens of thousands of US Military personnel are stationed. Again, from within easy and obvious reach of Iran's weapons, While the President keeps saying, oh, don't worry, they can't fight back. They have no capability. They have no anti aircraft equipment. Quote, we literally have planes flying over Tehran and other parts of their country and they can't do a thing about it. He keeps saying these things while US Planes keep going down. It's not at all clear that he understands why that is or that there is a contradiction between those two fact patterns. The one he's asserting about Iran's capabilities and the one Iran is demonstrating in the sky. Trump gave Tehran a deadline to open the Strait of Hormuz on March 23, or he said he would obliterate them. Then that deadline came and went. Then the deadline became April 6th. That's today. Then over the weekend, the deadline became tomorrow, April 7th. There's no explanation from the President as to why these supposed deadlines keep changing. But honestly, there's no indication from the President that he necessarily understands that it is important that he keeps constantly changing these deadlines. I mean, does he fully understand that that's what he's doing. When he says Iran can't shoot down our planes? What does he think has happened when they shoot down our planes? Does he get the conn between those? I mean, it's one thing to think about the commander in chief maybe not being all there, right? Rambling, swearing, jumbled thoughts, changing deadlines, no explanation for what the war is for, no seeming understanding of what's happening in the war. But then beyond that, beyond his apparent incapacity to explain, let alone manage what's happening. On top of that, there's what he's simultaneously doing to the US Military, which has a little whiff of what he's done to the rabies lab at the cdc. I mean, the Fox News weekend host Trump put in charge at the Defense Department just chose to fire the army chief of staff, the top general in the army, right in the middle of this war that we are not winning. He also fired the head of the Army Training Command and the Army's top chaplain. For some reason. This comes after we lost the three star general who was the head of strategy for the Joint Chiefs, which came a couple of weeks after we lost the head of U.S. southern Command. That came just days before we lost the Navy Chief of Staff and the head of U.S. special Operations Command and the top U.S. air Force commander. That came after we lost the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency and The head of the Navy SEALs, the Naval Special Warfare Command. That came after we lost the Chief of Staff of the Air Force and the aforementioned head of U.S. cyber Command and the Director of the National Security Agency. And that came after we lost the chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the commandant of the Coast Guard and the Vice Chief of Staff of the Air Force and the Army's top military lawyer and the Air Force's top military lawyer. And, and, and, and, and of course, there's been a benefit to all this. Top leadership in the Pentagon being fired or being pushed out by Pete Hegseth. And the benefit, of course, is that Trump Cabinet members can then take their houses. They've all decided to move into US Military housing. So you fire the generals and the commandants and stuff, at least you can take their house. So there's that. That's good for America. The strategic and even cognitive incoherence of the President and the Defense Secretary, those top civilian officials in charge of the military. Those are worrying things, right? Less worrying, thankfully, when we can count on a professional, excellent, non political, meritocratic military. Right, you can have lousy civilian leadership to an extent, if you can count on an excellent professional military to know what to do and to do it well despite bad leadership. But in this case, our country is simultaneously taking these wild swings directed by Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth, with no apparent foresight about what kinds of consequences those swings will bring, while also Trump and Hegseth are fundamentally destabilizing the US Military itself, leading to scenarios like we are in now in which Trump had no idea Iran had the capability of shooting down any of our planes and leading to what we're in now, where U.S. military commanders in the region are just hoping our troops will be safe in hotels, billeting them in hotels, in civilian hotels, since apparently we forgot that we might need to keep them safe on their bases. How are these guys doing taking care of, of the troops and the veterans who come home from war? This is the lead from NPR. Quote, More than 10,000 veterans lost their homes to foreclosure since May of last year when the Trump administration shut down a key safety net in the VA home loan program. Quote, the Trump administration was warned this would happen at a hearing in March 2025 before the House Committee on Veterans Affairs. A representative from the Mortgage Bankers association warned about it explicitly, quote, foreclosure, period. That's really where it's going to come to. Nevertheless, less than two months later, the Trump administration shut down the rescue program anyway. Since then, more than 10,000 US veterans have lost their homes through, through foreclosure sales. Yeah. It is not that they are doing any better with with veterans or with the military than they are with the cdc, rabieslap or with the FBI or with any of it. They are breaking all of it. And now we are seeing what it's like for them to try to wage what is turning into a major war with a government and a military that they have broken. I mean, look at how they're treating deploying troops. There's a brigade at Fort Polk, Louisiana that is getting ready to deploy. They're just about to start their last pre deployment training before shipping out. Staff Sergeant Matthew Blank is part of that brigade. He's 23 years old, but he's already a staff sergeant. He enlisted it at 18. He's been in the military for five years. He's already had deployments to the Middle east and Europe before this next deployment. Happily this past month, Staff Sergeant Blank got married. Big wedding in Texas. Very, very happy couple. Looking forward to starting a family together. Last week he and his wife had their appointment at Fort Polk to get their married housing. Get her her military spouse ID instead. When they showed up at Fort Polk to register to get her military id, ICE agents handcuffed her and took her to an immigrant prison. She has no criminal record of any kind. She was born abroad. She has lived here since she was a toddler. She teaches Sunday school. She's a few months from finishing her bachelor's degree in biochemistry. She is happily newly married to not only a US Citizen, but an active duty US army staff sergeant who is about to deploy. And how did he spend this weekend? He spent this weekend at the barbed wire gates of the Trump immigrant prison where they have now locked up his wife. Because you know, they're going after the worst of the worst. This is the one thing the US Government is still even trying to do right. And this comes after the US Marines had to scramble to try to undo their announcement last week that the Marines would also have ICE agents stationed at the gates of Parris Island Recruiting Depot in South Carolina where they apparently planned to arrest family members of newly minted U.S. marines who were graduating from Marine basic training. They were going to arrest family members of those new Marines when they showed up for graduation. For their loved one getting out of Marine Corps basic training. Welcome to the United States Marine Corps. Thank you for volunteering to give up your life for this country. We are locking up your family. We're going to pick them up at graduation they announced that ICE agents would be at the gate at Marine basic training graduation. They then had to try to walk it back. They said it was an internal communication failure.