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00:01That does it for me tonight on quite a news day. Thanks for being with us. The last year with
00:05Lawrence O'Donnell starts right now. Hey, Lawrence.
00:08Hey, Jen. We have Ali Velshi, who's got the results from Georgia, and we're going to go straight to him.
00:14Great. I look forward to watching.
00:16And Ali, what do we have?
00:17Yeah, let's talk. We've got pretty much all the vote in in Georgia District 14. This is Marjorie Taylor Greene's
00:22district that she stepped out of.
00:24So this is the race to replace her for the duration of this year.
00:27There will be a normal primary for this district in May.
00:31But right now, with 99 percent of the vote in, the biggest vote-getter right now is the Democratic candidate,
00:36the former Brigadier General, retired Brigadier General, Sean Harris, who ran against Marjorie Taylor Greene last time.
00:42He's outperforming his own performance against her.
00:44But this is Georgia. Like most southern states, you have to get 50 percent or more to win.
00:49So Sean Harris advances with Clayton Fuller to the runoff, which will be on April the 7th.
00:54Here's the interesting thing. Clayton Fuller was endorsed by Donald Trump.
00:57But Colton Moore, who is the third-place candidate today, is not inventing the runoff.
01:03He's sort of the Trumpier of the candidates.
01:05But you're seeing an outperformance by Sean Harris against his own numbers with Marjorie Taylor Greene the last time around.
01:12He was at about 35 and a half percent.
01:14He's at 37 and a half almost.
01:16But there are two other Democratic candidates in this race.
01:18So when you add their totals up there at about a percent each, that takes him almost to 40 percent.
01:23So now he's at 40 percent versus the collection of Republicans at 60 percent.
01:27So, again, this is an improvement over what Democrats have done in this very, very Republican county.
01:33I just want to show you where this is in Georgia.
01:35It's the top left corner, the most northwestern part of Georgia.
01:39It's also the most Republican part of Georgia.
01:41It's mostly rural.
01:43It's got Rome in it.
01:44It does have a bit of the Atlanta suburbs.
01:47It's got a little bit of Cobb County over here.
01:49These are all, as you know, fairly blue districts.
01:51But it's got a little bit of Cobb County in here where Sean Harris has done very well.
01:56This was where he won last time as well.
01:58So all in all, it is an overperformance by Sean Harris over his own Democratic performance versus Marjorie Taylor Greene
02:05in the last election.
02:06These two will go to a runoff on April the 7th, Lawrence.
02:09So, Ali, not a good night for Donald Trump.
02:12There's nothing in these results tonight from which Donald Trump can take encouragement.
02:17That is correct.
02:17He has not overperformed versus his own performance in this county, in this district in the last election.
02:25So this is once again, again, it's a very, very, very conservative district, generally speaking.
02:31The Democrats have an advantage in Sean Harris.
02:34You'll remember at one point Marjorie Taylor Greene didn't even have an opponent.
02:37Sean Harris has worked really hard in this district, and he's a former brigadier general.
02:42He sort of speaks the language of rural Georgians.
02:45So he's doing well, and he's building on his own momentum.
02:48Again, the betting markets wouldn't tell you that he's likely to become the next representative from Georgia 14.
02:54But if you look at the example of special elections across the country where Democrats have been winning by more
02:59or losing by less, this is a perfect example not just of losing by less.
03:04But in this particular case tonight, he's the biggest vote getter in the most conservative district in one of the
03:09most conservative districts in Georgia.
03:11Allie Belchie, thank you.
03:12My pleasure.
03:14And now we turn to one of the things on the minds of those voters today.
03:20Donald Trump's war.
03:23They don't know what they're talking about.
03:26They started a war of choice, Donald Trump's choice, and now they, in every important sense, do not know what
03:33they are talking about.
03:34Donald Trump and everyone working for him in Washington on his war continue to demonstrate every day that they are
03:42completely lost.
03:43And if they don't know what they are talking about, that means they don't know what they are doing.
03:50They don't know what they are doing in Donald Trump's war.
03:53The competition for stupidest things said today about Donald Trump's war was won by the guy who is tied with
04:02Donald Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner,
04:04for the title of most ridiculous person ever chosen by a president to negotiate peace in the Middle East.
04:1268-year-old Steve Witkoff is a real estate developer in real life who would not have been chosen by
04:19any president of the United States to do anything,
04:22anywhere, until Donald Trump decided to send him into negotiations, not just in the Middle East, but also in Moscow
04:30with Vladimir Putin.
04:31Steve Witkoff obviously knew nothing about the Middle East or Vladimir Putin when Donald Trump chose him.
04:37And now that he's met Vladimir Putin, he still knows nothing about Vladimir Putin, as he demonstrated so embarrassingly today
04:48when Carl Quintanilla at CNBC asked him why Donald Trump decided to allow Vladimir Putin to take full advantage of
04:58the explosive increase in the price of oil
05:02and profit off of that new price, a new price created by Donald Trump's war.
05:11Do we think that the Russians have shared intelligence about the location of U.S. military assets?
05:18And if they have, why would we be giving waivers on Russian oil sanctions?
05:25Well, I'm not an intel officer, so I can't tell you.
05:29I can tell you that yesterday on the call with the president, the Russians said that they have not been
05:35sharing.
05:35That's what they said. So, you know, we can take them at their word.
05:40But they did say that.
05:42We can take them at their word.
05:47He said that.
05:49Donald Trump's clown of the day, Steve Witkoff, says we can take Vladimir Putin's word for it
05:55that Russia has not been helping Iran target attacks on American military personnel.
06:01That is the single worst thing Vladimir Putin could possibly be doing to the United States in this war.
06:08And Vladimir Putin knows it.
06:10And Vladimir Putin also knows that Donald Trump has always behaved like Vladimir Putin's trained puppy around the Russian dictator.
06:18Vladimir Putin knows that he has lied to Donald Trump, to his face,
06:22and Donald Trump has then gone out to a microphone to tell the world,
06:27I believe, Vladimir Putin, after credible reporting by MSNOW, the New York Times, and the Washington Post,
06:33that Vladimir Putin was helping Iran target the American military,
06:39which led to the deaths of seven American soldiers and injuring 140 American soldiers.
06:45All Vladimir Putin had to do was tell Donald Trump on the phone yesterday that he didn't do it.
06:51Donald Trump might not actually be so stupid as to actually believe Vladimir Putin,
06:59but it doesn't matter because Donald Trump is deeply perverse enough to publicly claim to believe Vladimir Putin.
07:09And so is Steve Witkoff.
07:12Donald Trump's breathtakingly incompetent real estate developer buddy Steve Witkoff does appear to actually be stupid enough
07:21to believe Vladimir Putin and to say on television that he believes Vladimir Putin.
07:27They have no idea what they're talking about.
07:30None of them do.
07:32Least of all Donald Trump, who began his war calling for the, quote,
07:36quote, unconditional surrender, end quote, of Iran.
07:40And a day later said, we've already won, exclamation point.
07:46And now three days after that, three days after saying we've already won,
07:50no one working for him has any idea if we have won yet.
07:57From the beginning, from this podium, we haven't stated how long it will take.
08:00Our will is endless.
08:02Ultimately, the president gets to determine the end state of those objectives.
08:07It's not for me to posit whether it's the beginning, the middle or the end.
08:12He has no idea.
08:13He has no idea what he's talking about.
08:16The only defense secretary in history who had to promise to stop drinking to get confirmed by a Republican Senate
08:23has no idea what he is doing.
08:25He has no idea whether it's the beginning, the middle or the end.
08:28That same secretary of defense brought that same ignorance to the United States Senate today
08:33in a closed-door briefing about Donald Trump's war.
08:39I emerged from this briefing as dissatisfied and angry, frankly, as I have from any past briefing in my 15
08:53years in the Senate.
08:54I am left with more questions than answers, especially about the cost of the war.
09:04And, of course, the question of, is this the beginning, the middle or the end?
09:11After the ignorance-filled briefing with Donald Trump's secretary of defense and Donald Trump's secretary of state,
09:16both of whom have repeatedly been caught in public lies since the beginning of their service in those jobs,
09:23Senator Elizabeth Warren said this.
09:26It is still the case that the Trump administration cannot explain the reasons that we entered this war,
09:34the goals we're trying to accomplish, and the methods for doing that.
09:38The one part that seems clear is that while there is no money for 15 million Americans who lost their
09:46health care,
09:47there's a billion dollars a day to spend on bombing Iran.
09:53Yesterday, Donald Trump tried to tell the world the absurd lie that the Tomahawk missile,
09:59the American Tomahawk missile that hit a girls' school, killing 175 people,
10:05most of whom were the students at the school, was fired at the school by Iran,
10:09to which our first guest tonight, the former Navy combat pilot and former astronaut Senator Mark Kelly,
10:15said Trump has no idea what he's talking about.
10:17No, the Iranians don't have Tomahawk missiles.
10:21Dozens of children are dead.
10:22And the investigation into how this happened needs to be fast and transparent.
10:26That's how we keep this from happening again.
10:28We don't need these deflections from the president or Hegseth running his mouth about,
10:35quote, stupid rules of engagement.
10:38That was Pete Hegseth's phrase about this war.
10:42He said there are no stupid rules of engagement, meaning no rules of engagement,
10:47meaning we can fire Tomahawk missiles at girls' schools if we want to.
10:53One Republican has shown that he knows how to talk about the innocent casualties of war.
11:00Republican Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana said this about the Tomahawk missile attack on the girls' school.
11:07Quote, it was terrible. We made a mistake.
11:10Other countries do that sort of thing intentionally, like Russia.
11:13We would never do that intentionally.
11:15I think the department is investigating it now, and I'm sorry.
11:19I'm just so sorry it happened. It was a mistake.
11:23Donald Trump's press secretary continued her mindless and relentless campaign
11:28to insult America's intelligence today.
11:30She actually said, quote, the president is not making anything up, Nancy.
11:38Donald Trump makes things up every day about drapes and ballrooms and Tomahawk missiles
11:45and the price of gas and the price of everything and girls killed at a girls' school in Iran
11:51and the lie that Americans don't pay his tariffs.
11:55Making stuff up is what Donald Trump does.
11:58That's why Nancy Cordes of CBS asked Donald Trump's press secretary today, quote,
12:05So is he making this up to justify his decision to go to war now?
12:10To which Donald Trump's press secretary said, the president is not making anything up, Nancy.
12:17If Donald Trump is speaking, he is making something up.
12:22And making it up is the charitable way to describe Donald Trump's pathological lying.
12:28Donald Trump's press secretary has the same job that Steve Earley had.
12:34But Steve Earley never lied.
12:36She lies every day, every day, like every Trump press secretary before her.
12:43Steve Earley created the modern version of White House press secretary
12:47when he went to work for the newly elected President Franklin Roosevelt in 1933.
12:52He served in that position for President Roosevelt every day of World War II.
12:58It was actually Steve Earley who gave American news media confirmation on December 7th, 1941,
13:04that Pearl Harbor was attacked that morning by the Japanese military
13:08and the United States was drawn into World War II.
13:11The next day, in a five-minute speech to Congress, President Roosevelt asked for a declaration of war against Japan,
13:19which Congress passed immediately.
13:21Days later, after Japan's ally Germany declared war in the United States,
13:25the president asked for a second declaration of war against Germany, which the Congress passed immediately.
13:32A little over a year after that, before the United States had made any significant progress in World War II,
13:40President Roosevelt announced that the only terms he would accept to end the war
13:44at a time when there was no end in sight and no real progress in sight for the American military,
13:51the only terms the president of the United States would accept was unconditional surrender.
13:58His words, unconditional surrender. And at that point, the world knew exactly how the war was going to end.
14:05It was going to end in unconditional surrender because the president of the United States said so.
14:10No one knew when it would end. President Roosevelt didn't know when it would end.
14:14He didn't know how many years it would take, but everyone knew what it was going to look like.
14:19There would be a signing ceremony. A German official would sign a formal act of surrender.
14:23A Japanese official would sign a formal act of surrender. And today, four days after Donald Trump called for unconditional
14:30surrender,
14:31his White House press secretary confessed that she has no idea what that means.
14:39It goes back to what does that unconditional surrender look like?
14:44She doesn't know what it looks like. Germany was the first to sign the surrender document written by the United
14:53States
14:53and dictated to Germany. Signed by the Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Europe, Dwight D. Eisenhower,
15:04he dictated it. He wrote it. He went on to become President Eisenhower.
15:10Three months later, this is what unconditional surrender looked like in Tokyo Bay on the American Navy ship,
15:18the USS Missouri, with the Japanese generals signing the act of surrender in which the Japanese were not allowed
15:24to negotiate a single word, just like the Germans before them.
15:28That's what unconditional surrender means. That is what unconditional surrender looks like.
15:36Donald Trump's press secretary doesn't know what unconditional surrender looks like,
15:40and she doesn't know what war looks like.
15:43Steve Early understood both of those things.
15:46Steve Early won a silver star for bravery in combat in World War I before becoming the White House press
15:52secretary,
15:52who abolished the custom of reporters being forced to put their questions to the president in writing
16:00and thereby created what is now the modern version of a presidential press conference.
16:07Steve Early opened the door of the Oval Office to let the reporters pour in, usually a couple of times
16:13a week,
16:15and Franklin Delano Roosevelt took their questions without hesitation and without favoritism.
16:19FDR held more presidential press conferences than any other president in history,
16:24and he always knew what he was talking about.
16:27And if he was asked a question about an obscure subject that he didn't know about,
16:31he would simply admit that, admit that he didn't know,
16:35and Steve Early would get an answer to that question later for that reporter.
16:40Americans knew they could have faith in their president's leadership during World War II,
16:45and Americans knew they could take him at his word.
16:51And now Americans know, and White House reporters know,
16:55the president makes stuff up, and he and everyone around him don't know what they're talking about.
17:00The only thing, the only thing that Americans know as the missiles keep flying and people keep dying
17:09is that we cannot ever take Donald Trump at his word.
17:18Leading off our discussion tonight is former Navy pilot and former astronaut Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona.
17:23He's a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and the Senate Intelligence Committee.
17:28Senator Kelly, have you been able to make any more sense than any of your Senate colleagues
17:33about what this war is about tonight?
17:38Well, Lawrence, thank you for having me on.
17:41Not yet.
17:41You know, I've been keeping a running list of about, up to about 12 reasons why we are in this
17:47conflict.
17:48I haven't heard the president give any kind of an explanation for how this is good for the American people.
17:54I mean, folks are having a hard time affording, you know, gas is obviously going up,
18:00and we'll probably continue to do that.
18:01But rent and groceries, you know, how does this benefit everyday Americans?
18:06We've got no explanation.
18:10And Donald Trump was just telling people, you won't even have to be patient.
18:15The gas prices will be coming down very, very quickly,
18:19which I guess in his mind must be, you know, sometime this week.
18:25Right.
18:26I hope that's the case.
18:27It doesn't look that way.
18:29The Straits of Hormuz now have, it's publicly reported, have some sea mines there.
18:34That's going to be extra discouraging for ships to pass through there.
18:39Twenty percent of the world's crude oil goes through those straits.
18:44I would expect gas prices to go up under the situation we're currently in.
18:49Hey, I don't think this president really anticipated well how this would go.
18:54He didn't have a strategic plan.
18:55He didn't even factor Russia into this entire calculation.
18:59You were talking about earlier how the Russians are going to benefit from this.
19:03And I can't imagine there was any thought to the war in Ukraine between Russia
19:08because, you know, we have a president that doesn't think strategically
19:13and he doesn't seem to know all that much.
19:16You know, this talk of unconditional surrender,
19:19I think you highlighted how ridiculous it is and sounds
19:24because it's a ridiculous statement for him to make
19:27and for his press secretary to echo.
19:32Do you believe, as Donald Trump's advisers believe,
19:35and apparently Donald Trump believes,
19:38Vladimir Putin, when Vladimir Putin says,
19:40we did not help Iran target the American military?
19:46Well, you've got to assume the worst out of the Russians
19:50and I would never take them at their word.
19:54Do not trust them in this situation.
19:56They're going to do what is in their best interest
19:59and you have to assume helping the Iranians hurts us,
20:06hurts the U.S. military,
20:08and helps them and their ally Iran.
20:12So what Steve Witkoff said about, you know, trust in the Russians,
20:16that's a, again, that is a thing that makes no sense at all.
20:22And after Vladimir Putin's phone call with Donald Trump,
20:26Vladimir Putin publicly once again proclaimed his absolute loyalty to the Iranian regime.
20:36Yeah, and that's not surprising.
20:40And that is not in our best interest.
20:42You know, we are at war with Iran because this president chose, you know,
20:47this war at this moment without having a strategic plan,
20:52without having a goal, without having a timeline.
20:54And I think we really run some serious risk of this escalating into some sort of ground war.
21:01The president's rationale for this shifts almost every single day.
21:05You know, I heard just earlier, a couple days ago, it's now about oil.
21:09It's been about regime change.
21:11It's been about ballistic missiles.
21:12It's been about nuclear weapons.
21:15But if he does decide to try to remove some of the uranium,
21:19this gets into a much more challenging conflict.
21:24Is it possible, is there any way to do that without actually sending troops into Iran?
21:31No.
21:32I mean, last summer, he said after Midnight Hammer that the Iranian nuclear capability was obliterated.
21:41And myself and others, many others, tried to correct him and say,
21:45well, it was damaged.
21:46It's not obliterated.
21:48That's very hard to do.
21:49Lawrence, I've got a lot of experience, you know, dropping weapons on things,
21:54buildings, ships, bridges, you know, tanks.
21:58It's hard to destroy things entirely with air power.
22:03I find it interesting that it's always the guy who wasn't in the military,
22:09who hasn't dropped a bomb, who hasn't tried to destroy a target,
22:13that thinks he knows more than everybody else.
22:16That capability wasn't obliterated.
22:19And for us to completely eliminate it now, it would take a ground force to do that.
22:24It would be a complicated operation.
22:27And I am very confident that the Iranian people would, well, the IRGC would fight against our troops on the
22:36ground.
22:38I think it's also important to remember, Lawrence, that we're in this because Donald Trump ripped up a deal,
22:45the Iranian nuclear deal, that was actually working pre-2018.
22:51Yeah, the idea that a president would rip up an agreement that Iran was complying with,
22:58all the evidence indicated they were complying with it, over this very issue,
23:02and then go to war over the issue after personally ripping up the deal is something that history has never
23:09seen before.
23:11No, I mean, he put us in this situation.
23:14You know, he tore up the deal.
23:15It was his decision.
23:17They were not enriching uranium beyond the level that they were held to in the agreement.
23:23After that, they began to enrich uranium further, and it's gone up and it's gone down.
23:29But now we're at the point where this new regime, you know, the son of the supreme leader,
23:36the new supreme leader, is at some point going to make a decision if it's in the best interest of
23:40Iran to race to get a nuclear weapon.
23:42And I am extremely worried about that.
23:46That is a real risk we face today.
23:49And how unstable is the region going to be if the Iranians, if this regime, actually possess a nuclear weapon?
23:57So that's the risk here.
23:59And there's only one person that put us into this situation, and he's the current occupant of the White House.
24:07Senator Mark Hilley, thank you very much for starting off our coverage tonight.
24:12Thanks for having me on.
24:13And coming up, our next guest became the first United States senator in history to be tackled and detained by
24:19federal agents.
24:21His offense?
24:22Trying to ask Kristi Noem a question.
24:26California Senator Alex Padilla joins us next.
24:34Carolina and Ken Delaney ends reporting for MS Now finds that about 300 FBI agents who worked mostly on national
24:42security matters have left the bureau since President Donald Trump began his second term,
24:48including 45 who were fired, according to an internal count by current and former FBI employees.
24:54Most of those agents, hunted terrorists and spies, and at least 50 of them, were in leadership roles.
25:03Current and former officials say it's a talent drain without precedent in modern bureau history and one that leaves the
25:12nation vulnerable amid heightened terrorism threats due to the Iran war.
25:17Our next guest, Senator Alex Padilla of California, was an early critic of Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.
25:27Last June, Senator Padilla became the first United States senator in history to be tackled and detained by federal agents
25:38forcibly removed from a press conference
25:43inside a safe federal building in Los Angeles for the offense of simply attempting to ask Kristi Noem a question
25:55about ICE operations in Los Angeles at that time.
25:59Joining us now is Democratic Senator Alex Padilla of California.
26:02He's the top Democrat on the Senate Rules Committee and a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee on the Senate
26:08Budget Committee.
26:09Senator Padilla, thank you very much for joining us tonight.
26:13And remind us, what was the question that you wanted to ask of Secretary Noem that day with her invasion
26:22forces present in Los Angeles?
26:25Sir, Lauren, it's good to be back with you.
26:27And I guess it was a couple of things.
26:29Number one, what the straw that broke the camel's back was during that press conference
26:34when Secretary Noem seemed to be former Secretary Noem not for the first time said that the mission of the
26:43Department of Homeland Security in Los Angeles
26:45was to liberate the people of Los Angeles and California from their duly elected mayor and governor.
26:52How un-American, number one.
26:54Number two, was trying to ask her to share data because we had been getting reports in my office of
27:02the people who had been targeted,
27:04the people who had been detained, the people who had been arrested from so many of my constituents claiming
27:10these are not the dangerous, violent criminals that this administration loves to talk so much about.
27:16There are people, including legal immigrants with work visas, even some citizens who had been detained.
27:22But, yes, undocumented immigrants without violent criminal conviction history.
27:27They were hard workers.
27:28They're raising families.
27:29They're paying taxes.
27:30People who were deemed essential during the COVID pandemic and deserve to come out of the shadows.
27:35Not this type of abusive treatment from ICE and CBP and others.
27:41But as you saw in the video, before I could even get a question out, I was removed from that
27:48press conference.
27:49But we've learned over the course of the last nine months that everything we suspected has turned out to be
27:54true.
27:54And the enforcement activities that started in Los Angeles have only become more cruel, more violent as they spread across
28:02the country.
28:03We now have MSNOW's reporting from Carol Linegan, Ken Delaney, which would be normally the subject of an investigation in
28:12the Senate Judiciary Committee.
28:13But that probably will not happen unless and until the Democrats win the Senate and control that committee.
28:20300 FBI agents work mostly on national security matters, preventing terrorism attacks within the United States,
28:28it's all gone from the now Trump-controlled FBI.
28:32How vulnerable do you think that leads us?
28:36Look, that's a very valid concern that we had before this unauthorized war against Iran.
28:45But now with the various ways in which Iran and its allies could potentially try to hit the United States
28:52back,
28:52it's even a higher priority question.
28:56But it's par for the course with this administration.
28:59The lie to our face about the economy, right, the State of the Union, just a couple weeks ago,
29:04Donald Trump claims the economy is strong when it's anything but.
29:07The cost of groceries is up.
29:08The cost of housing continues to go up.
29:10The cost of health care is spiking.
29:13You know, they're claiming our communities are safer, really, when the administration,
29:19including the Department of Justice, is so unprofessional and so misguided
29:24that career professionals are choosing to retire and choosing to leave and to follow this misdirected administration.
29:33That should tell you a whole lot.
29:35And so instead of the professional FBI agents, other staff at the Department of Justice focusing on things like drug
29:43trafficking,
29:44human trafficking, corruption and white collar crime,
29:49they're being redirected to, quote, immigration enforcement and really rounding up without judicial warrants,
29:58people who are working as essential workers in so many industries and are trying to keep our economy chugging along.
30:09Donald Trump has also said that he wants to shut down the United States Senate
30:15until the Republicans in the Senate pass a voting law
30:21that would require people to bring birth certificates, require people to bring passports with them,
30:28people who don't have passports, people who can't find their birth certificates in order to vote in this country.
30:35And other aspects of it include delivering all sorts of federal vote, all sorts of voting records to Donald Trump's
30:44government.
30:45Are the Republicans going to be able to get this through the Senate?
30:50Look, and here's where it all comes together, Lawrence.
30:53Their record, not just Trump, but the Republican majority that's been so complicit,
30:59their record is so bad, not just unpopular, truly damaging to working families across the country.
31:07Their only hope to hold on to power this November is to change the rules and rig the elections, if
31:14you will,
31:15before the ballot has, the balloting has begun for the general election.
31:20This SAVE Act is anything but.
31:22If it's anything, it's a Save Trump's Ass Act with what their purpose is to,
31:28it's not a voter ID bill.
31:29It's a voter suppression bill, number one.
31:31It would have the effect of making it harder for eligible people to register to vote,
31:36stay registered to vote, and to actually cast their ballot,
31:39to eliminate vote by mail, which is popular amongst both Democrats and Republicans.
31:45And by the way, they continue to say the quiet part out loud.
31:48Donald Trump speaking to the House Republican conference just yesterday or the day before,
31:54saying, pass this voter ID bill, and then we will win the November elections.
32:00That's their goal.
32:01That's their goal, to make sure that only the, quote, right people are voting,
32:05to elect, quote, the right leaders.
32:08We're not going to stand for it.
32:09I will die on the Hill to make sure it doesn't get out of the Senate.
32:13I don't think the votes are there.
32:14Number one, even if we do kill this bill in the Senate, which is my objective,
32:18I also anticipate Donald Trump trying to advance this through executive order
32:22or a trumped-up state of emergency.
32:26We'll fight it every step of the way.
32:28Our voting rights are just too precious.
32:29Senator Alex Padilla, thank you very much for joining us tonight.
32:34Thank you, Lawrence.
32:36Coming up, Donald Trump's election interference campaign has arrived in Arizona with federal subpoenas.
32:42Arizona's Secretary of State will join us next.
32:48Donald Trump has taken his election interference conspiracy to Arizona.
32:52The New York Times reports the FBI has expanded its criminal investigation into purported irregularities
32:58in the 2020 presidential election, issuing a grand jury subpoena for reams of information about voting results in Maricopa County,
33:06Arizona.
33:07The subpoena was issued in recent days to the Arizona State Senate,
33:12which oversaw a sprawling but partisan audit of the vote result that was ordered by Senate Republicans
33:20in Maricopa County in the months after Donald J. Trump lost to Joseph R. Biden.
33:26Joining us now is Arizona Secretary of State Democrat Adrian Fuentes.
33:31Thank you very much for joining us tonight.
33:33What is your reading of this subpoena and what it might be trying to find?
33:40Well, first, thanks for having me. Second, the subpoena is looking for all of the data that we actually thought
33:46the state Senate had turned back over to Maricopa County and they should have after the quote-unquote audit was
33:54done.
33:54But as far as what they're looking for, frankly, Lawrence, it's a little disturbing.
33:59The Department of Justice has been demanding the personal identifying information from me on all of Arizona's voters.
34:06I've refused to give it up. They've sued me. I think this subpoena is an end-around behind the judge's
34:12back.
34:13Unfortunately, I think they may be committing some misconduct here, trying to subvert the regular legal process,
34:22opening up a case just to investigate, quote-unquote, and then grabbing the data on the backside.
34:28And if they're doing that, and that's what our investigation, which we're going to be launching, finds, we've got a
34:36real problem.
34:37What methods do you have for investigating what Donald Trump is doing?
34:43Well, look, we can make petitions to the court and we can try to figure out exactly how it is
34:49that these subpoenas were issued.
34:52Unfortunately, we don't have the sorts of tools that might be available to a regular investigating or law enforcement agency.
35:00But we've got a great attorney general here in the name of Chris Mays, who has sued Donald Trump and
35:06his administration, I think, 37 times already.
35:09And she's going to keep on marching.
35:10So we are at the stage right now of trying to figure out exactly what our options are.
35:16And as we work with the attorney general's office, we will figure that out and execute appropriately to try to
35:21get to the bottom of this
35:22and protect Arizona's voters' sensitive information.
35:26Do you have a worst-case scenario of what Donald Trump's Justice Department could do with these records?
35:36Well, I think what they might try to do is what the Privacy Act of 1974 intends to prevent, and
35:43that is create blacklists,
35:45go after folks who are on these lists since they would have some of that personal identifying information.
35:52But I don't want to alarm anybody just yet, Lawrence.
35:55We don't know exactly what information was handed over to the FBI.
36:00I want to be reasonable here in our approach.
36:03We do not know exactly if the voter registration information in these files contains just the publicly available stuff,
36:11which is name and address, party affiliation, things of this nature,
36:14or if it has the more sensitive information that we are trying to protect,
36:18and that is mothers' maiden names, for example, a whole or part of Social Security numbers,
36:24driver's license number, tribal ID numbers, that's sensitive stuff that we don't want to surrender.
36:28So we want to be really clear in our approach.
36:30We are going to operate within the law, and we're going to make sure to do everything in our power
36:35to continue to protect Arizona's voters.
36:39Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, thank you very much for joining us tonight.
36:43Thank you for having me.
36:44And coming up, federal judge Richard Eaton has given Donald Trump a deadline for refunding his illegal and unconstitutional tariffs.
36:53Our next guest, who brought the case to the Supreme Court that defeated Donald Trump's tariffs,
36:58is owed one of those refunds.
37:01That's next.
37:05On Friday, U.S. Court of International Trade Judge Richard Eaton ruled that Donald Trump must begin to refund tariffs
37:14the Supreme Court ruled illegal and unconstitutional.
37:17The Trump Justice Department told Judge Eaton, who is an expert on international trade,
37:23that U.S. Customs and Border Protection isn't able to immediately comply with his order to refund Trump's tariffs.
37:32CNBC reports that Judge Eaton said during a court hearing,
37:37Customs knows how to do this.
37:39They do it every day.
37:40They liquidate entries and make refunds.
37:43Judge Eaton gave Donald Trump 45 days to set up an automated system to process the tariff refunds,
37:51saying, quote,
37:53These duties must now be refunded with interest, and the clock is ticking.
37:58Further interest is accumulating every day, with approximately $650 million accruing per month.
38:06If the entries are not liquidated before the end of the year,
38:11it is further estimated that $10 billion of interest will have accrued.
38:17American taxpayers will bear this financial burden.
38:22Judge Eaton told Donald Trump and his lawyers to file a report describing their process
38:29to issue the refunds by this Thursday, just two days from now.
38:34And yesterday, two small businesses sued Donald Trump over his 10 percent tariff policy
38:41that he said he was going to implement immediately after the Supreme Court ruled
38:46that his other tariffs were illegal and unconstitutional.
38:49The co-founder of one of the companies said in a statement, quote,
38:52Sudden global tariffs make it harder for us to operate, harder for our partners to sell their crops,
38:58and more expensive for American families.
39:01We joined this case because trade policy shouldn't be made by inventing an economic crisis.
39:06Joining us now is Rick Waldenberg, CEO of Learning Resources,
39:10which has been making award-winning educational toys for the last 40 years.
39:15His company was the lead plaintiff in the Trump tariff case in the Supreme Court.
39:21Rick, welcome back to the program.
39:23Congratulations.
39:24First time I get to congratulate you on this big win in the Supreme Court.
39:28And I have to say, when you see a judge from the Court of International Trade,
39:33where all those judges are actually experts on international trade,
39:36when you see them handling these cases, there's no doubt about the clarity of the situation.
39:43There's Judge Eaton telling Donald Trump's lawyers,
39:45of course you know how to do this, and he's ordering them to automate it.
39:50So that sounds like you can start to expect your refund.
39:55It's always been my expectation we would get the refund.
39:58I'm gratified by what the judge said.
40:01The Supreme Court ruled that the tariffs were unlawful,
40:04which means that the government over-collected taxes.
40:07I think Judge Eaton is really just stating what every American expects.
40:10When the government collects too much in taxes, they have to give it back with interest,
40:14and, you know, let's get moving.
40:16And I agree with him.
40:18And beginning, as soon as people start filing their tax returns every year,
40:23the United States Treasury engages in a much bigger tax refund program than this.
40:29And it is automated, and people get their checks.
40:32They know that the Treasury knows how to do this on the income tax side.
40:36And Judge Eaton, who's an expert on the trade side, is saying they know exactly how to do it on
40:41tariffs, too.
40:42They do.
40:43We've received rebates on overpaid duties and tariffs already through their electronic system.
40:48So the system works.
40:50I think that the declaration submitted by Customs in that case defines a fairly manual process,
40:59which I think you'd have to describe as worst case.
41:01But the judges also pointed out that the government has a lot of computers,
41:06and certainly they process refunds to the tune of many millions a year.
41:10I have heard, can't verify, that it's over 100 million refunds in total, perhaps nationwide,
41:17to the 340 million people that live in this country.
41:20Yes, they can do it, and they need to do it.
41:24I have to say, it is so refreshing to hear a judge who's actually an expert in this
41:30dealing with the Trump lawyers.
41:32They don't get away with anything that they try in front of other judges.
41:38Well, I agree with that, too.
41:40And, you know, there have been various threats of appeals and so on.
41:44But I don't know what the legal basis would be, honestly.
41:47The tariff was unlawful, which is an unlawful tax, which means the taxes were overcollected.
41:53There's a law on this.
41:54It's black and white.
41:55And the judge is right to say to the government, stop horsing around.
41:59You have to give the money back.
42:02Rick Woldenberg, you are owed your refund and you're owed a debt of gratitude from the
42:06people of this country for fighting for the Constitution by bringing this case to court.
42:11Thank you very much for joining us tonight.
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