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The Rachel Maddow Show
NEW: Hegseth divorce papers bar 2nd wife from publicly 'disparaging' statements
00:47:02
A closer look at Trump defense secretary nominee, Pete Hegseth's, divorce papers from his second wife shows language forbidding them from saying disparaging things about each other in public, which matters right now because of recent claims that raise questions about Pete Hegseth's character. Rachel Maddow talks with MSNBC legal correspondent Lisa Rubin about this new reporting.
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- [00:00]
Rachel Maddow
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- [00:30]
Mel Robbins
Usaa. I got to tell you, we actually have a breaking news story we are going to bring you this hour that relates to Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump's embattled nominee to be the new defense secretary. Mr. Hegseth is scheduled for a confirmation vote tomorrow in the US Senate. We are going to break some new news tonight about his nomination. This is a story that I would be bringing you right now if it was ready to go. I'm not just stringing this along, stringing this out pointlessly. We are finishing that reporting right now, but we are going this story for you before the end of this hour. So, again, breaking news about Pete Hegseth's very controversial nomination to be secretary of defense. The vote on his nomination is supposed to be tomorrow. We're going to have that story for you later on this hour. We are just finishing up the last reporting on that right now, but stick with me on that. All right. So one thing that's going on in the new administration is that the new president is acting very quickly to do a lot of things that are very unpopular, things that things that you wouldn't say run on as your platform if you were actively running for office. This week, US Veterans, including the founder of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, Paul Rykoff, started reporting publicly on what appears to be Trump's new hiring freeze at the VA at the Veterans Administration, quote, job offers to new employees that have a start date after February 8th are now being rescinded. This includes some folks who've already moved to new cities with their families, doctors, nurses, counselors. This is throwing a massive hand grenade, Rykoff says, into the largest health care system in America, one which serves millions of American veterans. It's already hurting morale and retention. It will impact recruiting at VA forever. It is reckless and stupid. And he says, quote, it's intentional. This is how you drive people out of VA and make sure they don't want to work there, which for many Trump, people, has always been the plan. If you want to shrink the workforce and privatize the va, this is how you accelerate it. Hiring freeze at the VA affecting doctors, nurses, counselors, everybody. Veterans have been sounding the alarm on that this week. And then look, hey, turns out sounding the alarm and pushing back sometimes stops them from doing some of the worst things they want to do. Today, after the outcry from veterans and members of Congress, including Republicans, Virginia backtracked on this, they decided after it was a full freeze from the beginning, they decided instead. Now they'll exempt about 300,000 health care specific jobs from this freeze. And that apparently is something they had not intended to do until they got a furious and very public pushback against what they had otherwise tried to get away with. A salutary moment. Stick a pin in that. Right. Whatever the country thought they were voting for when they voted for Donald Trump for president. I think it's safe to say that screwing over veterans and messing with their health care, messing with veterans health care was probably not part of the sales pitch, right? But Trump did try instituting an across the board hiring freeze at the va. So people who want to work for veterans in that system were being told, no, we're being shown the door. Only outrage and public pushback backed them off that. And when Paul Rykoff, founder of iava, again signals that this is something that folks in Trump's orbit have wanted to do, demoralizing, shrinking, weakening the VA workforce is something they've wanted to do because they wanted to effectively get rid of the va. They've wanted to privatize it. Indeed, he is on solid ground in saying that Trump's nominee to run the VA is Doug Collins. His nominee to run the Defense Department is Pete Hegseth. Again, we are going to have some more news on Pete Hegseth coming up later this hour. But both of these nominees for the second Trump term for VA and for defense, both of them have crusaded to privatize the va, which means effectively ending the VA because, yeah, sorry, veterans, there's money to be made here somewhere. So we're going to privatize it and get rid of the system that's been taking care of American veterans since, oh, I don't know, the 1790s. I mean, stopping doctors and nurses and counselors from working at the va, trying ultimately to get rid of the va. This is not a thing that is a popular idea among the American public. This, I don't think, is what people thought they were voting for. You know what else isn't a popular idea. Bird flu, bird flu. Today In Long Island, New York, a duck farm that has been in operation since 1908 shut down. They had to shut down to start the process of euthanizing their entire flock of 100,000 ducks. Because at that farm in Long Island, New York, they've got a confirmed outbreak of bird flu. And bird flu has now killed more than 130 million birds in the United States in all 50 states, in 28 states. They're now testing their dairy cows for it as well because it has jumped from birds to cows, which means one of the risk factors they're now alerting people to for this thing is consumption of or contact with raw milk as a risk factor now for bird flu. Nearly 70 people in the United States have been infected with bird flu thus far. We've even had deaths of people's pet cats because the cats have drunk raw milk meant for human consumption. The raw milk was from cows infected with bird flu. It gave the cats bird flu, and then the cats died. Because of all that very bad and now very fast moving news about this new epidemic, the CDC just sent urgent guidance to American hospitals advising hospitals that when people appear at the hospital with flu this flu season, people shouldn't just be tested for normal flu. They need to be tested for bird flu as well, because that needs to be handled differently. And anybody who tests positive for bird flu needs to be separated from other patients. Hospital staff need to know about it in order to wear appropriate protective clothing to protect themselves. I say the CDC just sent that urgent advice to American hospitals. But when I say they just sent it, what I mean specifically is they sent that advice last week while President Biden was still president. Because now that President Trump is president, he has ordered that the CDC and all US Health agencies should no longer release any information to anyone on anything, not just to the public, but to scientists and doctors and hospitals. And that includes the CDC's flagship health alert publication for doctors and scientists called MMWR Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. This week, CDC was scheduled to publish several, several MMWR reports, including three about this burgeoning bird flu outbreak that is happening and rapidly progressing. Right now. Those alerts, those MMWRs, are not going out. They were as of last week. And what was going out as of last week was alarming as of this week. With Trump in charge. No, he has ordered that all information be stopped, including scientific information, to advise hospitals on how to deal with this emerging epidemic. Is that popular? Is that a good idea? Is that perceived as a popular idea among the American people. Is that what you thought you were voting for? You may have noticed recently at the grocery store, you might have even noticed new headlines recently about the price of eggs really jerking suddenly upward. Right now, average egg prices have just shot up to nearly 40% higher than they were this time last year. That's not generic inflation. That's specifically because of bird flu. But all communications and instructions and data and information about trying to contend with bird flu, all of that has been shut down on Trump's orders. So when he says, oh, the last election was all about the price of eggs, I'm pretty sure this isn't what he meant. But that's what we're getting now. While meanwhile, Trump's nominee to run Health and Human Services for the US Government reportedly approached one of the nation's largest raw milk producers, asking him to please become an advisor to the FDA in Washington. This is a man whose company has been the subject of at least 11 different lawsuits stemming from contamination of his raw milk products. This farmer has also been the subject of 13 recalls, including for E. Coli and Listeria and Campylobacter and salmonella and, yes, bird flu in his raw milk. His products are currently barred from sale in California for making so many people sick. One salmonella outbreak his company is being sued for resulted in 171 people being sickened, including some people who got kidney failure. Now, we are in the midst of the most serious outbreak of bird flu we have ever had as a country, one that is rapidly growing and affects multiple species, including now humans. It is not infecting just birds, but cats and people and cows. This is an epidemic where the CDC is advising hospitals how to deal with people coming in with flu, making sure they're tested for it, telling hospitals how they can protect patients and protect their own health workers. The CDC is warning that raw milk from an infected cow, not only just drinking it, but potentially even just being splashed in the face with it. Yikes. They're saying contact with raw milk from an infected cow is one of the ways people can be exposed to this emerging epidemic of bird flu. And while that is how the last administration was trying to get their arms around this emerging threat as recently as the end of last week, this new administration this week says, first of all, let's get the raw milk people here to Washington to advise the fda, presumably on all the benefits of raw milk. And in the meantime, stop releasing any information on this bird flu thing, anything. Honestly, it sounds scary. Maybe if we don't talk about it, Maybe it'll go away. And by the way, pay no attention to the price of eggs. The new president's decision to also issue full and unconditional blanket pardons and commutations to people who beat and tased and shot pepper spray and bear spray at police officers on January 6. This is also not turning out to be a popular move. Polling after the election showed the American people broadly did not want him to do that. Polling since the inauguration, since he's done the pardons, shows it's something the American public is very much still against. We've got news later on tonight about how that story is not just bad for the country in the eyes of most Americans, bad for Trump politically right now, but it's going to stick with Trump for a long time. Yet. It turns out that some of the people he pardoned committed their January 6th crimes as just one crime among their many crimes. And so now the courts are already having to contend with whether Trump's blanket pardons for these people who committed violent crimes for him at the US Capitol. Courts have to decide whether these folks have also been immunized by Trump, whether Trump has also rendered them unprosecutable for their non January 6th stuff, like having sawed off shotguns and unregistered AR15s and illegal silencers and fragmentation grenades and all the other props and keepsakes they were eventually found with after what Trump describes as their day of love, breaking windows in the U.S. capitol Building and defecating in its halls. In addition to these new cases that are about to have to be adjudicated concerning all the other crimes that Trump's pardoned violent felons committed. We also today got yet more pushback from the courts against Trump on this. Yet another federal judge not only rebuking Trump for what he did with these pardons, but actually refusing to go along with part of his de facto directive to the courts. He's told the courts they need to drop all these cases and drop it in such a way that these charges can never be brought again. Last night, we told you about one federal judge who said, no, she absolutely would not do that, that Trump didn't have the law on his side and she wasn't going to go along with it. Now a second judge has said the same thing. Super interesting development. We'll have more on that coming up. But I mean, here we are today, the third full day of Donald Trump's second term as president. And this is one of the things that's emerging. You know, Democrats take note. This is not A guy who came in with a ton of political capital that he could afford to waste. He got less than 50% of the popular vote. His approval rating at the start of his term is lower than that. He's then come out of the gate doing the most unpopular thing imaginable. And it isn't something that's just going to be over and done with. It's going to stick around as a controversy and indeed get worse over months and potentially years to come, as we now have to litigate all the additional violent and weapons felonies. These guys who beat up cops, who Trump nevertheless wants to like invite to the White House. This is somebody who is not starting with a lot of political capital and is not building up more to make himself stronger here. He, in fact, appears quite flummoxed by this whole thing. He appears quite surprised by the fact that the country, even Republicans in Congress, are not reacting to the pardons the way crowds at his rallies did. Oh, turns out people don't like this idea. This is a president who is misreading the room, who doesn't have political capital to burn. And the decisions that he's making right out of the gate are things that are making him weaker and not stronger as he starts to try and govern. So that is one thing that is emerging about how he's starting this second term with a series of broadly deeply unpopular decisions that has consequences for how much he's going to actually be able to get done, because that has consequences for how much pushing back against him is going to work. The signs so far for pushback are pretty good. Look at what happened with that VA hiring freeze. But there's another thing that is emerging, too, in this first week, and this is a different kind of mess. This is one for which I think we need a little bit of expert help to understand what this means for our country. Presidents usually make their first call to a foreign country, to Great Britain, which is, of course, our closest overseas ally. In Trump's case, of course, he did not do that. He chose for his first call Saudi Arabia. And there's lots of things to say about that. One thing to say about that is Donald Trump is currently partnering with a real estate company linked to the Saudi government to build his next big Trump golf course hotel thing in the Middle East. And so, yeah, his first call is to the government that is helping him build his new golf course. He then placed his second call today, you might think, sort of inexplicably, he placed his second call to El Salvador. Why was El Salvador his second call. Well, presumably it's because the new president of El Salvador is kind of trumpy. But who knows? It may also have something to do with the fact that he's a cryptocurrency booster. Trump's good friend and his newly appointed Commerce Secretary manages the assets for a huge crypto firm. And that huge crypto firm managed by Commerce Secretary designee Howard Letnick, that huge crypto firm, just announced that it's moving its headquarters to El Salvador. Oh, this is a firm that has faced all sorts of difficult questions from federal regulators in the Biden administration about their particular, you know, fake currency being linked to the financing of terrorism and evading Russian sanctions and money laundering and the sale of precursor chemicals for illicit drug manufacturing. So it's already going great, that particular cryptocurrency. But the banker for that cryptocurrency is now going to be Trump's commerce Secretary, and the firm has just announced that they're moving to El Salvador. And then the President of the United States made El Salvador one of the first two calls he made in his new presidency out of all the countries in the world. Weird, right? Trump followed that later today by an executive order directing the US Government to explore the possibility of building a US Government stockpile of cryptocurrency. He calls the crypto guy linked to his crypto commerce secretary, linked to the crypto commerce secretary's crypto firm, and then he makes this big announcement about the US Government buying a huge stockpile of cryptocurrency. What does that mean? Imagine that you collect Beanie Babies, little toys, you know, like they're filled with, I don't know, pellets or something to make them seem beanie, like, in texture. I never really understood it. I don't know. But you love Beanie Babies. You collect Beanie Babies. One of the problems with your Beanie Baby collection, while you love it a lot, is that it's not valued at very much. Nobody wants to buy your Beanie Babies. Nobody wants to pay you any money for your beautiful collection. And it's not just that. Nobody's quite sure what Beanie Babies are for. Part of the problem you're having with the valuation of your collection is that the market for Beanie Babies has developed kind of an unsavory reputation for, among other things, people getting scammed. It's become a real magnet for scammers. A lot of people have lost a lot of money and really been taken advantage of. But you've got this collection. You're kind of Saddled with these Beanie Babies. Now, you thought they'd be a great investment at some point, but now you're stuck with them. Imagine that. You then hear today that the United States government has announced that as a strategic imperative, the US Government is going to buy a huge, multi billion dollar stockpile of Beanie Babies because they're such a valuable commodity to trade. And America really believes in this market and really needs a ton of them because so many people have made so much money off Beanie Babies. So we're going to just buy a ton of them using the resources of the government, the largest economy in the world to do it. They're going to buy up and stockpile hundreds of millions of dollars worth of this thing that you have. Between the call to the random country that has a crypto booster as president and the announcement about the Beanie Baby, I mean, cryptocurrency stockpile that Trump wants to explore for the US Government today, crypto valuations once again shot way, way, way up. And this happened less than a week after Trump himself minted his own digital meme coin, which instantly on paper at least, made him billions and billions and billions of dollars richer than he was this time last week. The Wall Street Journal, right wing pro Trump editorial page says Trump's crypto gambit as president is a, quote, howling example of how Trump is, quote, inviting trouble with what looks like remarkably poor judgment. The Journal says, quote, start with who may be buying the tokens. A business or foreign official with interests before the federal government might seek to curry favor with Trump by announcing plans to buy millions of his token to pump up the price. Or worse, imagine them whispering to Trump that he's made the purchases since crypto holdings don't have to be disclosed. If Trump's regulators, meaning the Trump administration, then acts in a way that aids crypto or aids the person who is seeking the favor. Trump will be accused of aiding the buyer in service of presidential self dealing. How? You know it's the Wall Street Journal, right? Oh, yeah. The tragedy here is that he'll be accused of self dealing.
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Simon Johnson
Yeah.
- [22:05]
Mel Robbins
And that's the real danger here. The accusation, not the prospect that that's exactly what he will do. Donald Trump took over a quarter billion dollars from Elon Musk during the campaign and then, among other things, announced that he would put one of Musk's guys in charge of NASA. Musk, of course, runs a space company, so that's handy. He also just installed Musk's Doge organization in the White House in a way that will make its actions not subject to, to foia, not subject to Freedom of Information act requests, which means, effectively, we'll never know what they do. They also can hire anyone on any terms and at any salary. And we won't know that either. The executive order, incidentally, creating this new organization for Elon Musk, Trump's biggest donor, has also dropped all reference to cutting costs. Remember, that was ostensibly the whole reason that Elon Musk was being brought into government. He was going to be like the king of austerity. He was going to cut trillions of dollars out of the government. Well, that's not part of the executive order creating his agency. Nothing about cutting costs, nothing about cutting waste, fraud, abuse, none of that. In fact, we have no idea what he's going to be doing there. And under the rules by which they've created this thing, we won't be allowed to know what he's doing there either. Sweet gig, especially if you're already getting billions of dollars from the US Federal government. Donald Trump is back to receiving uninterruptedly obsequious media coverage from our friends at Fox News. He has stuffed his administration full of a comically large number of people who work at Fox. And now his hand picked FCC chairman just announced that he would revive broadcast complaints against all the other three major broadcast networks, but not against Fox. Trump's son's girlfriend will be an ambassador to Greece. Trump's son in law's father will be ambassador to France. A Secret Service agent who's a member of Trump's personal Secret Service detail is the person he just chose to be director of the entire US Secret Service. Four of Trump's personal defense attorneys are being installed in the four top jobs in the US Department of Justice. So there's this other thing that's going on, right? One thing that's going on is he's doing a lot of things that are really unpopular, which is weakening him politically. It means that he's ripe for pushback and it means that Republicans ought to be able, it ought to be possible to sort of wedge other Republicans in Washington apart from him while he continues to do things that they find indefensible and they don't want to answer are for. So that's interesting. There's also this other thing going on and all those other things that I just described, none of them are popular, but they all seem to be sort of a different kind of thing as well. And one of the ways to think of it, one of the names that political scientists and political economists put on this kind of thing is the personalization of government, people with connections to Trump, things that relate the government doing things that relate to Trump personally, the government doing things, and Trump doing things as president that have an impact on people who are personally connected to him. This government under this president is shaping up to be less a rule of laughing and more a sort of club, right? How well do you know Trump? How close are you by blood or marriage or money to Trump? Were you Jared Kushner's roommate in college? Well, you could be America's hostage envoy. Did you spend a quarter billion dollars on Trump's campaign? Okay, well, would you like NASA in a bowl or on a plate? Would you like a fork or just a straw to slurp it up? I'm considering changing my position 180 degrees on crypto. I used to talk about it as fake and a scam and a Ponzi scheme. Now I'm promoting it with all the power of the US Government. And, yeah, I don't feel embarrassed at all about the fact that that has happened in the immediate aftermath of the crypto coin with my name on it. It's the personalization of policymaking, and the shamelessness of it is part of the point, right? Part of what you're advertising is that in order to get anything from this government, you better have some personal connection to Trump. You better do something for him. The personalization of the government, which they do not treat as a scandal, they treat as their system. You can tell which arguments are going to win, which positions are going to get adopted, and which people are going to be put in place based on the personal and business connections of the people involved to the one guy at the top who is already not showing himself to be interested in doing things that are particularly popular. It's not like he feels constrained by public opinion here, right? Price of eggs, anybody? Pardons for people who beat up cops, cutting the va, cutting healthcare. He doesn't appear to care about doing very unpopular things. He doesn't care about public opinion. What he cares about is the personal things, the personal connections for people who can do things for him, who he will then do things for. The personalization of power is something that we are now seeing in action. It is also something that happens all over the world and that has the advantage of meaning that it is very well studied. This is a phenomenon that political scientists and political economists understand. So if you want to know what this personalization of power, this personalization of government is likely to do to us as a country what it's likely to do to all of us who don't have a personal connection to Donald Trump. Well, I have just the Nobel Prize winner standing by who actually knows the answer to that question. And that's next.
- [28:22]
Planned Parenthood
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- [29:24]
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For the Rachel Maddow show comes from the International Rescue Committee. The IRC works in more than 40 countries serving people whose lives have been upended by war, conflict and natural disasters. In places like Gaza, Ukraine and Sudan, displaced families are experiencing war, extreme hunger and life threatening injuries. The ongoing violence, bombardment and blockade in G have caused more than 2 million Palestinians, half of them children, to be without clean water, food and critical medical care. The lack of safe water, medicine and healthy food contributes to the spread of diseases and children are especially at risk. In Gaza, the International Rescue Committee is directly delivering water, sanitation and hygiene services and has launched direct nutrition and child and women's protection programming. The IRC works around the world to help families in crisis by delivering critical supplies such as therapeutic food, clean water, cash assistance and more. Your donation will help support this work and help children and families survive. Donate@rescue.org Rebuild Want the same expert advice.
- [30:26]
Rachel Maddow
You get from the pros in the store while shopping online@discounttire.com Meet Treadwell, your personal online tire guide that matches you with the perfect tire for your vehicle. Get your best match in one minute or less with Treadwell by discount Tire. Let's get you taken care of.
- [30:43]
Mel Robbins
Last year three men won the Nobel Prize in Economics and I am no economist, but in the simplest possible terms, what I understand about what those economists found in their work and why they won the Nobel is because they showed effectively, they proved that when a country starts to tailor its economic policies, its government policies, to serve the interests of a small group of elites, the rest of the country suffers, the country doesn't grow, and the economy ends up lousy for everyone. They used research and economic models and game theory to show what many people sort of intrinsically suspect, which is that when you have less small d democracy and more oligarchic concentration of power, everybody ends up worse off. Here in the news right now, this week, we're watching a newly elected president pretty proudly using his power and influence not only to directly benefit himself, but also to benefit the richest people in the country. And the reason I think he's pretty proud about it and he's not treating it as a scandal is because he's promising the sort of theory of the case they're presenting is that everybody else is going to be better off because of what they're going to do for themselves. What can this past year's Nobel Prize winning economists tell us about what we're seeing today and what we really should expect for our country? Joining us now is one of those economists, Simon Johnson, professor at mit. Professor Johnson, I appreciate your time. Thank you.
- [32:15]
Simon Johnson
Thank you.
- [32:16]
Mel Robbins
I know that I'm grossly oversimplifying your work, but I'm trying to give me credit, apply it to a real world situation we are living through in real time. Am I being fair in terms of giving the broad strokes of it?
- [32:31]
Simon Johnson
Absolutely fair. I thought that was a brilliant summary, actually.
- [32:34]
Mel Robbins
Oh, God. Thank you. Let's end this now. When the government is used to enrich not only government leaders, but also people who are already at the apex of government power, the apex of economic power, what does that tend to do to a country's economic health?
- [32:55]
Simon Johnson
It's stultifying. I mean, it is, as you just said, Rachel, fairly obvious perhaps. And in some cases in economics, the obvious answer is the correct answer. But you often have. In many countries, this is true historically, this is true. Around the world today, you have a group of people, an oligarchy or a cabal of some kind. Some political people, some economics people are intertwined in various ways and they're looking out for themselves and they're lining their own pockets in various ways. And I think one of the biggest mistakes that people have made when they looked at these situations again across a lot of years in many countries, they say, oh, look, they're going to make a ton of money and that'll be good for the rest of us. Well, no, actually they make a ton of money for themselves and the trickle down effects for everybody else are minuscule.
- [33:40]
Mel Robbins
Is that just because there's a. Effectively, I mean, and this is weird in the crypto era, but there's effectively a finite amount of money in the world and when you concentrate it, that means less for everybody? Or is it a different idea? Is it that when the government and the economy is structured to channel all the gains to the very top, you end up with a system where people can't move within the system, where nobody is able to move into the upper ranks. It reduces mobility, opportunity and ultimately innovation. The kind of thing that drives growth for the economy overall.
- [34:15]
Simon Johnson
Yeah, I would say it's the second one which is, think of it as monopolies, but really, really big monopolies. Pervasive monopolies are monopolies that are not only about economics and prices, but also about politics and social mobility. So a small group of people holds all the opportunities for themselves. They do well, by the way, some of them doing incredibly well. And then they have vast wealth overseas and so on subsequently. We've all heard those stories. But do they allow new people to rise? Do they allow new companies to be created? Do they do anything for new jobs that pay decent wages? No, they don't care about that. In fact, often they find new activity to be threatening because it may undermine their monopolies on the economic side and it may undermine their grip on political power. So better for them to completely quash initiative and entrepreneurship and funnel all the opportunities to a few incumbents. I think that's exactly what we're seeing in the tech sector in the US right now.
- [35:05]
Mel Robbins
Let me ask you to say a little bit more about that because I think that's key because I think some, again, for those of us who aren't economists, a lot of this analysis sounds like, yeah, it's bad when you have a lot of inequality. Having a lot of, you know, having a class of wildly wealthy people means that other people aren't getting a fair shot. There's an element here though, that is forward looking and it is about not just there being rich people, but there being rich people who the government is serving rich people who the government, rich people having captured the government. And the thing that was so shocking, I think, to Americans who even paying a casual level of attention to politics this week was to see like the governor of Texas and the governor of Florida stuck in the overflow room at the inauguration while the three richest men in the world and their wives and girlfriends were sitting there right next to the president. The idea that the elected government that we think of as the locus of political power in this country is essentially being supplanted just by money, and that the people with money are just taking everything for themselves. And the elected class, with all of its flaws, is on the outside. That sounds like it's not just about inequality. It's about creating a sort of permanent stultifying effect that means that our economy is going to suck for a really long time.
- [36:28]
Simon Johnson
Yeah, absolutely. So you could ask the question and you could debate for a long time who's captured whom? Did Big Tech capture Trump or vice versa? But actually that's not the right question because they've become intertwined and they're helping each other. It's mutually beneficial. They have funnel money into Trump's inauguration and his crypto and whatever, and in return, they're going to get privileged positions. They will not be regulated or in any way that will restrict them. They'll have a lot of opportunity. Mr. Trump has said that he will squeeze or pressure other governments, like in Europe, to reduce the taxes on Big Tech, for example. So it's a symbiotic relationship for half a dozen, a dozen people at the top of the economy and their interest in developing technology that helps the rest of us in creating more new good jobs more broadly, or anything else that challenges their monopolies or challenges their political positions. Their interest in that is, of course, in fact, they really, really don't want anything that will challenge their economic or political strong positions right now. Yeah.
- [37:27]
Mel Robbins
If there's only six gigs in the whole country for people to make a ton of money, you don't want to do anything that's going to challenge your ability to have one of those six gigs. Simon Johnson, Nobel prize winning economist, professor at mit, thank you so much for your work and for helping us understand it today. It's really invaluable. Thank you.
- [37:45]
Simon Johnson
Thank you.
- [37:46]
Mel Robbins
As I mentioned at the top of the show, we've got some breaking news about Pete Hegseth's nomination to be Defense Secretary. This is new news you have not heard elsewhere. We're about to break it here. That's next.
- [37:58]
Rachel Maddow
Want the same expert advice you get from the pros in the store while shopping online@discounttire.com Meet Treadwell, your personal online tire guide that matches you with the perfect tire for your vehicle. Get your best match in one minute or less with Treadwell. Treadwell by Discount Tire. Let's get you taken care of.
- [38:14]
Mel Robbins
Hey, it's Mel Robbins, Host of the Mel Robbins Podcast let's just cut to the chase. There is a change you want to make right now, but you're waiting to feel motivated. You don't need motivation. You've got me. You can change your life anytime you want. And when you're ready, the Mel Robbins Podcast is here to help you with inspiration and simple science backed tools to help you create a better life. Listen to me and you'll feel motivated. All right. Listen to the Mel Robbins Podcast now on the SiriusXM app. Download it today.
- [38:45]
Rachel Maddow
Auto insurance can all seem the same until it comes time to use it. So don't get stuck paying more for less coverage. Switch to USA Auto Insurance and you could start saving money in no time. Get a quote today. Restrictions apply.
- [38:58]
Mel Robbins
USA the kind of drunk that you take work folks to a strip club and so drunk then that you try to get up on stage and dance with the strippers. The kind of drunk that stop the uber because you're going to vomit drunk. Look, I understand there are people who have alcohol problems, but we cannot trust the safety of our country to someone who demonstrated repeatedly using very bad judgment with alcohol and doing it in ways that truly have incapacitated him. Senator Elizabeth Warren at her most memorable last night here on this show, speaking on the subject of Pete Hegseth. Mr. Hegseth is the co host of a weekend morning show on Fox News and now the nominee to be Defense secretary in the Trump administration. Despite concerns like the ones expressed by Senator Warren and other Democrats on the Armed Services Committee, Pete Hegseth's nomination advanced today in the Senate largely along party lines. There were two Republican senators, Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins, who joined all Democrats in voting no against him today. That means if one more Republican joins the two of them in the final vote tomorrow, the vote on him will be tied. But he'd still get through because J.D. vance as Vice president, would break the tie in Pete Hegseth's favor. If two more Republican senators said no, though, Mr. Hegseth's nomination would fail. Even as the Hegseth nomination has continued to move forward, so has the reporting that has Democrats and a few Republicans questioning whether he is an okay pick to oversee the entire US military. Mr. Hegseth has been dogged by a long list of allegations, each of which he has denied. He denies allegations of excessive drinking, including by work colleagues who said he was frequently drunk, sometimes very drunk, at work functions, and that he had alcohol on his breath even at his morning show job. He denies alleged mismanagement of two nonprofits for veterans. He denies an allegation of sexual assault in a 2017 case where prosecutors didn't press charges, but where Mr. Hegseth did reach an agreement with the woman who had gone to police. The agreement included a payment to her that she should be quiet about it. Today we learned how much he paid. Answering a written question from senator Warren, Pete Hegseth said that he paid this woman $50,000 for her silence. But new questions this week about Hegseth began with a story first reported by NBC News. Here's the headline, Quote, senators receive affidavit containing new allegations. Pete Hegseth, who denies the claims. The sworn affidavit comes from his former sister in law, woman who was married to his brother. She submitted the affidavit at the request of the top democrat on the Senate armed Services committee. NBC News reporting. Quote, Danielle Hegseth described in the affidavit allegations of volatile and threatening conduct by Hegseth that made his second wife, Samantha, fear for her safety. In the affidavit, the former sister in law details instances in which she says she was, quote, a witness to and even a victim of emotional abuse by Pete Hegseth. She says she personally witnessed him abusing alcohol numerous times. That reporting is what Warren was responding to so memorably last night. An attorney for Hegseth denied the story, telling NBC News, excuse me, telling NBC News that Hegseth's ex wife, quote, has never alleged that there was any abuse. She signed court documents acknowledging there was no abuse. She recently reaffirmed the same during her FBI interview. The ex wife herself told NBC, there was no physical abuse in my marriage and, quote, I have not and will not comment on my marriage to Pete Hegseth. For the record, NBC reports that she gave the FBI a prepared statement that said Hegseth has had and continues to have a problem with alcohol abuse. But the question of whether Hegseth's two ex wives were able to publicly discuss details of their marriages to Pete Hegseth that came up during his senate hearing.
- [43:27]
Lisa Rubin
In finalizing divorces from your first and second wives, were there non disclosure agreements in connection with those divorces, Senator? Not that I'm aware of. If there were, would you agree to release those first and second wives from any confidentiality agreement? Senator? It's not something I'm aware of. But if there were, you would agree to release them from a confidentiality? Senator, that's not my responsibility.
- [43:52]
Mel Robbins
Turns out that while this is not a full non disclosure agreement, there is something in the divorce papers from Pete Hegseth's second marriage that is worth knowing about, given how his confirmation hearings have gone. Check this out. This is the divorce decree from 2018 in the Minnesota court system. MSNBC legal correspondent Lisa Rubin was able to obtain this today. You can see the decree contains a quote, parenting plan setting out how the Hegseths would handle taking care of the kids after the divorce. Part of that plan includes, quote, avoiding derogatory comments, quote, both parties agree to not say anything negative about the other parent to or in front of the children or allow third parties within their control to do so. In addition, both parties will refrain from engaging themselves in any public discourse, including through either traditional media or social media, disparaging the other party, and will take reasonable steps to encourage friends and family to refrain from doing so. They both signed this document, Pete Hegseth and his second ex wife, Samantha. Again, to be clear, this clause is not a full non disclosure agreement. A lawyer for Mr. Hegseth, Tim Parlatore, tells MSNBC, quote, it is a limited non disparagement agreement. These are two legally distinct concepts. There's nothing inappropriate or inaccurate about Mr. Hegseth's answers to the committee. It takes some significant imagination and intellectual dishonesty for anyone to consider this to bear on the credibility of his testimony. Testimony. Both parties will refrain from engaging in any public discourse disparaging the other party. Senator Kaine provided a statement to MSNBC as well, saying, quote, that clause in a divorce settlement could expose someone to severe consequences for sharing unflattering information about an ex partner. Even if that information is true, the existence of this agreement, which has not been previously reported, seems important. On the eve of Pete Hegseth's confirmation vote tomorrow in the United States Senate, one that seems to hinge on just one or two votes. MSNBC legal correspondent Lisa Rubin joins us next. Stay with us.
- [46:14]
Lisa Rubin
In finalizing divorces from your first and second wives, were there non disclosure agreements in connection with those divorces, Senator? Not that I'm aware of. If there were, would you agree to release those first and second wives from any confidentiality agreement? Senator? It's not something I'm aware of. But if there were, you would agree to release them from a confidentiality, Senator? That's not my responsibility.
- [46:37]
Mel Robbins
Not my responsibility. In his confirmation hearing, Trump nominee for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth faced questions over how much his ex wives could talk about their marriages to him was relevant to the confirmation proceedings because of claims about abuse in those marriages, claims that Pete Hegseth denied Msnbc legal correspondent Lisa Rubin dug into divorce records and found not a full non disparagement agreement, but something else that does seem worth knowing about. Joining us now is Lisa Rubin, MSNBC legal correspondent. Lisa, it's good to see you. Thanks for your reporting on this. Can you describe the document that you found, tell us how, how it fits into the broader picture of reporting on hcsath?
- [47:17]
Tim Kaine
Well, I think, Rachel, let's talk about first, I want to clarify something. This is not a full non disparagement provision. In fact, it's a very broad non disparagement provision. What it's not is a non disclosure agreement in typical fashion, in terms of how this fits into the larger reporting about Hegseth. Hegseth has been dogged by all sorts of allegations about his past, which you recounted in your earlier segment, including ones related to his two marriages. The fact that Hecseth had denied that he had non disclosure agreements might be technically correct, but we talk a lot about the difference between the letter of the law and the spirit of the law.
- [47:53]
Mel Robbins
Non disclosure versus non disparagement is the distinction.
- [47:56]
Tim Kaine
That's correct. But functionally, even though this doesn't say either one of them can't say anything functionally, this operates almost as if it were a non disclosure agreement because by agreeing not to engage in any, and this is the, quote, public discourse that would disparage the other spouse, essentially Samantha Hegseth has her hands tied. She is precluded legally from saying something that could be construed by Pete Hegseth and his legal representatives to be damaging to him. And as we know, Pete Hegseth and his lawyers have alleged multiple times to multiple people that the things they have said in the public are themselves defamatory, if not violations of other agreements that he has entered into with them.
- [48:41]
Mel Robbins
And this matters in the confirmation process because of claims about his relationship with his ex wives, particularly his second wife, that are things that raise questions about his character for the time.
- [48:52]
Tim Kaine
Yeah. And I want to put this into context, particularly with respect to Samantha Hegseth's one and only public statement in regards to that affidavit submitted by her former sister in law. That's an affidavit in which Samantha Hegseth's former sister in law says that based on things that Samantha said to her as well as things that she observed, she believes not only that Pete Hegseth has an alcohol abuse problem, but that he was abusive to Samantha. Samantha Hegseth's statement to NBC says there was no physical abuse during my marriage. But she doesn't deny any emotional abuse. She doesn't deny that she feared for her safety, which is another allegation that Danielle Hegseth makes in the affidavit. She doesn't deny even that she had a code word that she used with friends and family in case she ever needed an escape plan. With respect to that fear of Pete Hegseth, all she is saying in her public statement is that there was no physical abuse. There is not a lot of contradiction between that statement and what Danielle Hegseth Danielle Hegseth has an allegation of one instance of sexual abuse and she herself draws a distinction between physical and sexual abuse in her affidavit.
- [49:59]
Mel Robbins
Briefly, have you heard anything from Capitol Hill tonight?
- [50:01]
International Rescue Committee
I have.
- [50:02]
Tim Kaine
I've heard from Senator Tim Kaine's office because Senator Kaine was asked what this means to him. He said not only can he understand this language as sort of a disincentive for someone to speak, but a spokesperson for the senator commented to me tonight when I asked, do you think Hegseth was untruthful or misleading in his answers to the questions Senator Kaine asked him during his testimony? The response on the record attributable to a spokesperson for Senator Tim Kaine is, yes, he does think that, Rachel.
- [50:30]
Mel Robbins
That's important, given that his vote is slated for tomorrow. Lisa Rubin, MSNBC legal correspondent, thank you for this reporting. Thanks for helping us get it on the air. I know it was a bear to get it sorted tonight, but we've got every I dotted, every T crossed and I really appreciate your work on this.
- [50:45]
Tim Kaine
Thank you very much.
- [50:46]
Mel Robbins
I'll be right back. Stay with us. That's going to do it for me for now. I will see you again tomorrow, 9:00 Eastern. Right here.
- [50:56]
Rachel Maddow
Auto insurance can all seem the same until it comes time to use it. So don't get stuck paying more for less coverage. Switch to USA Auto insurance and you could start saving money in no time. Get a quote today, restrictions apply.
- [51:08]
Mel Robbins
USAA.