00:00But I want to start tonight with this. Do you hear that? That is the rare and blissful sound
00:08of silence. We rarely get that these days. Because for the first time in his presidency,
00:14Donald Trump has not made a public appearance for three straight days. We're not sure why.
00:19Maybe he's tired. Maybe he's feeling a little low energy. Who knows? But for whatever reason,
00:24the president is taking his longest break from the public eye since retaking the White House.
00:30Now, if you're missing all of those nonsensical updates from the administration,
00:34because sometimes they're interesting to talk about, don't worry, because the president has
00:38surrounded himself with what he calls the best people. Also, his words, not mine. Who are out
00:44there filling the void. People like former WWE wrestling executive Linda McMahon, who Trump
00:50inexplicably put in charge of the Department of Education. It's quite an assignment for her.
00:54Secretary McMahon, of course, testified before the Senate today, and Republican senators
00:59kind of did their level best to lob her softball questions and make it look like
01:04she kind of knows what she's doing. I mean, here was Republican Senator Mark Wayne Mullen
01:09trying to tee her up for an easy one.
01:13What was we ranked in reading and math in 1979?
01:17I'm sorry, what?
01:18What was we ranked nationally in math and reading in 1979?
01:23We were very, very low on the totem pole.
01:25We were number one in 1979.
01:26We were very, very low on the totem pole.
01:32Actually, we were number one. Very awkward. That's the secretary of education, everyone.
01:37Now, in her limited defense, Senator Mullen's question was garbled nonsense. I mean, set aside
01:43the strange verb conjugation about what we was, which ranked, which, by the way, maybe that's
01:48confirmation that our education system needs help. He asked her how the U.S. ranked nationally
01:53when he clearly meant globally. So clearly neither of these people are getting an A in reading
01:57comprehension or, frankly, grammar today. What about math?
02:01We spend $1,58 billion a year on TRIO?
02:10Yes.
02:13That's $1,580 million a year. Is my math right?
02:20I think that's right, sir.
02:21And how long have we been spending $1,580 million a year on this program? More than 10 years?
02:31Yes.
02:33So that's over a trillion dollars.
02:36Okay. I understand that we was not ranked number one in math recently either, but something
02:44there seems off, right? Don't have to be a mathematician. Maybe there's a Democrat on
02:49this committee who can help them out a little bit.
02:53I'm secretary, and I'm not a great mathematician, but I think you were talking about a trillion
02:58dollars. I believe 1.5 billion times 10 is $15 billion. That's a little bit off from a
03:06trillion dollars. I think the budget cuts $1.2 billion for TRIO.
03:11Well, 1.2, that would be $12 billion, not a trillion dollars.
03:15Okay.
03:17Okay. Thank goodness for Senator Jack Reed. Now, Republican senators and Trump's education
03:22secretary just spectacularly failed a math and a reading quiz of their own making while
03:29they were complaining about America falling behind in math and reading. But unfortunately,
03:34Linda McMahon is not the only one of Trump's best people who does not seem up to the job
03:40these days. I mean, here's the headline from the New York Times today. Acting FEMA chief
03:44told staff he didn't know about U.S. hurricane season. And here's more of what the story actually
03:50says. The acting head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency told employees on Monday that
03:55he did not know the United States has a hurricane season.
03:59Now, the Trump administration has said those comments were meant as a joke,
04:04but that was definitely not clear to people in the room. FEMA is now heading into a new hurricane
04:09season with a staff that has been absolutely gutted thanks to Trump's cuts. And FEMA staff are
04:14reportedly also worried about the new director's live experience. I wonder why there? Maybe the new
04:20FEMA director should have Googled his job first to see what it entails. After all, that is what Trump's
04:26equally unqualified social security commissioner actually did and then talked about.
04:31Yeah, it's about social security. And I'm really, I'm really not, I swear I'm not looking for a job.
04:40And I'm like, well, what am I going to do? So I'm Googling social security, you know,
04:45one of my great skills. I'm one of the great Googlers on the East Coast. I'm like,
04:49what the heck's the commissioner of social security?
04:55What the heck's the commissioner of social security? Well, sir, that's you. You are the
05:00commissioner of social security. Now, to be fair, every member of Trump's cabinet seems to be kind
05:06of struggling to do their job these days. And honestly, a little Googling might serve some of
05:11them well. Could be worse. Googling might help them. I mean, take, for instance, Health and Human
05:16Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Last week, we talked about how his much anticipated
05:21and much celebrated at the time by Maha people, Maha report on American health was riddled with
05:27citation errors and at least seven studies that didn't even exist. Well, Secretary Kennedy and his
05:34crack team took a crack at it again. They updated that report to fix those errors, which led to a new
05:40headline the next day. Here it is. The Maha report has been updated with fresh errors. Yes, HHS swapped
05:49out the bogus studies in their first report with several new bogus studies. The actual authors of
05:56those new studies say HHS is still getting it wrong and is misrepresenting their work. So RFK Jr. has now
06:03somehow managed to screw up the same report twice. Okay, so things aren't going great at FEMA or Social
06:11Security, HHS, but surely the Department of Homeland Security is running like a swish swatch, right?
06:18Well, last week, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem sent out a press release claiming that ICE had
06:23arrested a, quote, illegal alien who threatened to assassinate President Donald J. Trump.
06:28It included an image of a handwritten letter, a threat letter that you can see on the screen there
06:34that was sent to the president. Noem claimed that letter was sent by an undocumented immigrant in
06:39Milwaukee named Raymond Reyes. But it turns out local law enforcement officials did not think
06:45Ramon Reyes sent that letter. In fact, they think that Reyes was being set up. This is from a New York
06:51Times story that dropped late today. Quote, not long after the announcement, the government story began to
06:57look shaky. And as detectives in Wisconsin began looking deeper, they came to believe Reyes had
07:04been framed. By this week, Milwaukee County prosecutors had filed identity theft and witness
07:10intimidation charges against another man, a lifelong Wisconsin resident. They said that man had written
07:16several threatening letters that included Mr. Reyes's name in the return address. Prosecutors said it was
07:21an attempt to catch the attention of the Trump administration and weaponize the threat of deportation
07:26against Mr. Reyes, who is scheduled to testify against the man at a robbery trial next month.
07:33So this guy who is actually on trial for a crime basically tried to trick the Trump administration
07:39into deporting the witness who would testify against him. That's what happened. And the Department
07:44of Homeland Security appears to have fallen for it. They did exactly what he wanted. I don't know.
07:51Maybe Christina would be better off solving crimes if she was dressing up like Sherlock Holmes.
07:56She loves to dress up. Couldn't hurt. Maybe she could try it. Meanwhile, Trump's intelligence chief
08:01appears to be struggling with her job as well. As director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard
08:06is responsible for making sure that Donald Trump is up to date on the latest intelligence, which
08:11includes, of course, reading his presidential daily briefing, digesting all of it. But apparently that is
08:18proving very difficult. Since taking office, Trump has taken his daily intelligence briefing less than
08:23once a week, which is far less than previous presidents, including Trump himself during his
08:28first term. And so Tulsi Gabbard is now resorting to what I would call creative methods. According to NBC News,
08:36one idea that's been discussed is possibly creating a video version of the PDB that's made to look and feel like
08:42a Fox News broadcast. A new PDB could not only could include not only graphics and pictures, but also maps and
08:50animated representations of exploding bombs similar to a video game. That is NBC's reporting. In other words,
08:58because Tulsi Gabbard is bad at her job and the president of the United States doesn't like to read,
09:04career intelligence staffers may be forced to put on some kind of Fox News puppet show in order to get the
09:09president to pay attention to intelligence threats against the United States and otherwise.
09:15Just digest that for a moment. And that is really part of the problem with all this. We all know when
09:20it comes to people, Trump is not sending his best. But at least the career public servants who have been
09:26the heart and soul of every administration, Democratic and Republican, should still be able to do their
09:31jobs, right? There's a whole system of dedicated federal workers who actually make the government
09:36function and in turn make even the most incompetent look vaguely competent. But Trump is making it
09:43impossible for them to do their jobs, too. I mean, The Washington Post recently dug into it all the ways
09:48Trump's efforts to increase government efficiency have, ironically, buried federal workers under red tape.
09:55Here's part of what the story says, quote, at NASA, employees recently wrote several detailed paragraphs
10:00across multiple rounds of emails to win approval to buy simple fastening bolts. Fastening bolts, folks,
10:08required multiple paragraphs of emails. At the Food and Drug Administration, once routine tests on food,
10:14monitoring for accuracy and labeling, coloring and exposure to heavy metals were delayed significantly
10:19because the agency began requiring department level approval for expenses at every step. Purchasing samples
10:26to test, paying to ship samples between labs, buying lab supplies. What could go wrong there? It's only
10:32the Food and Drug Administration. At air traffic control towers at two dozen West Coast airports,
10:38officials are unable to easily pay to have their windows washed and shades cleaned, which is obviously
10:43important. At the Social Security Administration, Trump officials and Doge pushed thousands of central
10:49office workers to take lower level positions answering phones in field offices, threatening to fire whoever did not
10:56make the jump, according to emails reviewed by the Post and interviews with a half a dozen agency employees.
11:02So government officials cannot purchase bolts for rockets, do food safety testing, or wash the windows
11:09at air traffic control towers without wading through layers and layers of new Trump-approved red tape.
11:16Workers at Social Security are being forcibly demoted to call center workers because of Trump's workforce cuts.
11:21All of the real people who make our government run and have made governments run for decades
11:26are being squeezed. And all we're left with is the bizarre and clueless leadership of Trump's so-called
11:34very best people.
11:51Radio chatter
11:54You
11:56You
11:58You
12:00You
12:02You
12:04You
12:08You
12:10You
12:12You
Comments