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00:03Good evening once again. I am Stephanie Ruhle and welcome to the Midweek Nightcap. Check your
00:07calendar because we are now 278 long days away from the midterms and tension in Minnesota is
00:14still high, high, high. The Department of Homeland Security has confirmed that investigators are now
00:20reviewing new footage of an altercation between someone who appears to be Alex Preddy and law
00:26enforcement 11 days before his death. We have obtained the video from the news movement. We do
00:31not have any context as to what led up to the interaction. This is a moment the news movement
00:38filmed on January 13th in Minneapolis showing a man who appears to be Alex Preddy interacting with
00:44federal immigration agents 11 days before Border Patrol shot and killed him. Our footage was
00:51analyzed by the BBC whose facial recognition technology confirmed his identity to a 97%
00:57degree of accuracy. Please remember this was 11 days before Preddy was shot dead by Border Patrol
01:05agents while he was peacefully protesting. There's currently no indication that the officers on
01:11Saturday recognized him from the earlier incident. We also have learned that the two agents who shot
01:16Alex Preddy have been placed on paid administrative leave. They'll be out of work for three days
01:21on desk duty as the investigation proceeds. As backlash is continuing over the response to the
01:27shooting, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz sat down with our colleague Jacob Soboroff to talk about the
01:32arrival of Tom Homan in Minneapolis. Here's a clip. Tom Homan called me, not something Bravino or
01:40Noem would ever do. Um, but the fear I have with that is, is, is, is it, we going to
01:45get more of the
01:45same, but, but more efficient at this oppression? Well, he's one of the most extreme people when it
01:51comes to immigration policy in the federal government. That's right. And I think that's the fear. I think
01:54right now though, that Tom Homan's taken his marching orders from the president and what I understood
01:59and the reason that I believe there's an opportunity for something to do here, because just to be very
02:04clear, what the white house wants is for these scenes on the streets to stop because it's tanking
02:11their approval ratings. And according to the president, it looks bad. Meanwhile, the star
02:17tribune reports that the FBI has taken over the investigation into the attack on representative
02:22Ilan Omar during her town hall in Minneapolis yesterday, where a man lunged at the congresswoman
02:28and sprayed her with some sort of liquid. All right, let's bring in our nightcap. Jason Johnson joins us.
02:33Politics and journalism professor at Morgan State University. He is also an MSNOW political
02:38contributor. Daniel Ko, former White House deputy cabinet secretary during the Biden administration.
02:43He is running for Congress in the state of Massachusetts. Peter Goodman joins us. Global
02:47economics correspondent for the New York Times, journalist Sean Avalon. He is the host of the
02:52Bulwark podcast. It's a must listen. How to fix it with John Avalon. Okay. Yesterday,
02:57President Trump suggested that he will deescalate things in Minneapolis. And today he said that the
03:04mayor there was playing with fire. Is he serious, John, about deescalation? Or is he merely saying
03:11that yesterday because the country is fired up, but his mission and his message, well, that's not
03:17changing. Donald Trump has never been the adult in the room in this conversation. Well, he's old.
03:23Yeah. Oh, he's, he's, he's elderly, but not an adult. I mean, he's, he's always been tone comes
03:28from the top. What ICE has been doing in the streets are because Tom Trump has set that tone
03:33and it filters down through Stephen Miller and Kristi Noem, uh, to Bovino and the folks on the
03:37street. Um, if he's concerned about what's been happening in Minneapolis, it's all about me, not we.
03:42And so don't take for one second, uh, him sincerely trying to say he's trying to deescalate. If he
03:48could deescalate, he could order a stand down. He hasn't done that. In fact, they're just trying
03:52to get voting records through Pam Bondi and, and, and, and the coercion and freedom caucus
03:57talking about the insurrection. We're going to get to both of those things. Um, in that same vein,
04:04Joaquin Castro, Congressman Joaquin Castro posted this image today of visiting this five-year-old boy
04:09and his father who were detained last week by ICE. They're currently in a Texas detention facility.
04:15So Greg Bovino may have left Minnesota, but images like this are going to do nothing to make the
04:21American people feel like this mission has been dialed back in any way. Absolutely not. And look,
04:26this president likes to talk about America first. Nothing's just America first, like shooting
04:30Americans in the face. Okay. He ran to stop the chaos, but he's instead sewing it. And to your point,
04:35he has this messiatic complex that everyone's going to see him as a savior and no one's buying
04:40it anymore. He's murdering protesters in the street while they're exercising their first amendment
04:44rights. You know, he's claiming that inflation is solved on TV yesterday. Inflation is not solved.
04:49It's still 2.7%. And he's threatening our NATO allies with ridiculousness like Greenland to try to
04:54distract from the Epstein files. Right? So, you know, he tries to think of himself as a savior. He's
04:59clearly not. And his approval rating show that Americans aren't buying it with 37%. The jig is up
05:04and no one sees this president as the savior that he hopes to be. Reminder, side note,
05:09the Epstein files are now one month and I think two weeks overdue. We're still waiting. Stephen
05:15Miller, who is all in on this, he did issue a statement last night starting to say that the
05:22CBP agents may have diverted from a certain protocol before the killing of Alex Preddy.
05:29Does this show you that this administration is worried about how this is coming across to the
05:34American people? You got the governor of Texas saying, hey, hold on now.
05:37Greg Abbott himself.
05:39When Greg Abbott is saying, maybe you guys have gone too far, it's an indicator that they're going
05:43too far. When Stephen Miller feels compelled to say anything, it's a sign they've gone too far.
05:48Look, as everyone else said, the last time Trump de-escalated is when he came down the stairs of
05:52Trump Tower to run for president. He doesn't know how to de-escalate anything. He's not interested in
05:55that. But I do think that there are enough people and you see it on the ground. Every single interview
06:00I've seen with business leaders and folks who didn't care about politics and people who are
06:04clearly Republicans and gunners are saying, this is crazy. You're attacking my neighbors. And if
06:09you're hearing that in Minnesota, then you're also hearing that in Texas and you're hearing it in
06:13North Carolina and you're hearing it from business leaders. So that's what this administration is
06:17hearing. This is not popular with anyone. And they finally have to backtrack. Now, whether or not
06:22shifting around the leaders is going to do anything one way or another, I don't know. But I think that
06:26they realize that they have gone too far in this particular instance and they've got to change the
06:29rhetoric and they're probably going to have to change the policy. But are they really backtracking?
06:33The Justice Department has already said it will not open a civil rights inquiry into Freddie's
06:39killing. And I think it's important for folks to understand because I think we forget this.
06:43The Civil Rights Division does not just investigate discrimination in voting, education, housing.
06:48This group is specifically there, among other reasons, to investigate cases of police officers
06:54using excessive force against civilians. The exact kind of incident we're talking about here.
07:01And they've said, no, no, no, no, no. We're not going to open that investigation. Nothing to see here.
07:05He's trying to have it multiple ways. I mean, this is a president whose brand is extremism. I mean,
07:11this is classic populism, right? I'm not going to be defeated or impeded by decorum, precedent,
07:18the law. I'm going to give you the people what you want. And certainly his base has really been
07:24delighted by his extreme crackdown on immigration. However, we are now rubbing up against other issues
07:33that are very significant to his base, such as gun rights. I mean, the idea that we're going to
07:38justify what looks to most people who've seen the video like a brazen killing of a guy and justifying
07:44that based on the fact that he happened to have a handgun, a handgun he was legally permitted to
07:49carry in that state, that's not going to play well with certain parts of his base. The same can be
07:56said about states' rights. I mean, this is not a country, especially the further west you get,
08:01where large numbers of people are delighted by the prospect of the feds coming in guns blazing
08:06and taking over. So he's cognizant of that clearly. And, you know, is this really de-escalation?
08:12I'm with you guys. De-escalation is not a big part of the Donald Trump playbook,
08:16but it's certainly an attempt to at least distance him from some of the immediate consequences of
08:22this thing going badly around. Or, John, is this where Donald Trump ultimately was always going
08:27to take us to, right? He started on the escalator in Trump Tower with Mexicans, our rapists and drug
08:34dealers. There have been, I'm not going to say countless, but many, many opportunities for
08:38comprehensive immigration reform in this century, and it hasn't happened. In the last two years,
08:44the Senate put forth a comprehensive deal, and it was Trump who said to Republicans,
08:49don't you touch that. So should we not be surprised that under Donald Trump's leadership
08:54and knowing who he is, of course we would end up here targeting people who look and sound different.
08:59Of course this was the slogan and the signs at the convention saying mass deportations now.
09:05This is exactly what was going to happen. When people said that troops are going to be used
09:09against American citizens in the streets, this was what was warned about. In fact, this was what
09:15was promised. And that's one of the reasons why we got to really make sure that we stop this
09:20reckoning right now. And if Congress wants to play a constructive role, don't just freeze the ice
09:26funding. Pass comprehensive immigration reform. Build a wall with a big gate. Let's get this system
09:31fixed. Which citizens, business leaders, Americans across the board have been asking for.
09:36But what Trump is doing is not creating divisions between citizens and non-citizens. He's creating
09:40divisions between people who look like him and people who don't look like him. Remember his
09:44Thanksgiving Day tweet where he talked about 53 million foreign, foreign people in this country
09:49being mostly gang leaders and mostly drug cartels. That census number he cited, 25 million of that 53
09:57million are American citizens, right? He celebrated on CNBC when the jobs numbers came out that fewer
10:03foreign born workers had jobs. He said that was a good thing. This is a very protracted strategy.
10:08What he talked about about Somalians in general, Somali Americans saying that they were all garbage.
10:12It is not a coincidence that Ilhan Omar is facing this kind of discrimination because that is exactly
10:18what Donald Trump is doing, dividing us on racial lines, on gender lines, on what you believe in.
10:22That is his vision to sow that chaos. He's always been this guy. Like none of this is surprising to
10:28me. Everyone's paying attention has seen it. But what I think the difference is and why I think
10:31we're seeing, again, what I think is at least some semblance of verbal escalation is because for
10:36once it is crystallized into a policy that people are unhappy with. And this is not bad. I just like
10:41Americans. Yeah, you know, you finally piss people off because here's the thing. Philando Castile,
10:46he had a right to have his gun too. People didn't respond this way, right? I just wrote an op
10:50-ed for MSNOW.
10:51Now, 46%, this is YouGov back in November, 46% of Americans say they want to abolish ICE,
10:57not reform it, not change it around, abolish it. That is an extreme. And that was before these
11:02shootings. Okay. ICE is less popular than the IRS and the IRS has 125 year head start. Okay. So when
11:08you get to a point where the American people are saying, I don't just feel bad about this. I'm not
11:13just upset about the images, but there is a policy issue. There is a policy division that I want change
11:19because of this. That is why they're actually backing up. And I don't think it's going to,
11:22I don't think it's going to end this, but I think it is why we're hearing people like Stephen Miller
11:26talk differently. Then try to make sense of this. The House Freedom Caucus, you mentioned it not long
11:32after the killing, posted, if Democrat-run sanctuary cities continue enabling communist agitators,
11:39assaulting ICE and federal law enforcement, then it is time to invoke the Insurrection Act to maintain
11:45law and order. That's the headline, right? I mean, the fact that the Freedom Caucus
11:50is saying you, the president should invoke the Insurrection Act, but they have consistently
11:54threatened to do. This is the Stephen Miller Fantasia, you know, fantasy baseball.
11:58Have they looked who the people are who are protesting? Right. Right.
12:01People getting shot. They noticed, by the way, look a lot like Donald Trump in terms of your.
12:06Well, I think this is, this is a, you know, the law abiding American citizens with no criminal record.
12:10Uh, and the constitutional rights are being violated, but the Insurrection Act is a real threat.
12:15Right. I mean, put aside the, the, the angry absurdity of calling protesters communists. I got
12:20it. I got, I got not a lot of time for communists. There's a real death toll behind them. You're
12:24talking about Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot. This is not people who are protesting the streets of Minneapolis.
12:28But then the Insurrection Act is a real deal threat to American democracy. The fact that members of
12:33Congress are floating that, encouraging the president to invoke it. That is something to be wide awake in America
12:38about. Okay. I want to know what the international community is saying, because now there are reports
12:42that ICE agents attempted to enter the Ecuadorian embassy in Minneapolis. That is a violation of
12:49international law. One of the many reasons the United States is the superpower that we are, that we are
12:54the most attractive country to do business in, to invest in is because we respect and follow the rule
13:01of law. That sense has definitely taken a beating in the last few months. So I've been doing a fair
13:09bit of travel. The last couple of months, I just came back from Davos, the World Economic Forum, got a
13:14chance to talk to a lot of European and Asian and Persian Gulf business types and diplomats. I mean,
13:20certainly this is furthering the sense that this is a very different America than the one that we grew up
13:28with, that sense of American exceptionalism that applies to the rule of law, the independence of
13:34the Fed, the fact that we have accurate statistics and therefore we're a good place to invest. We now
13:40look like a great big economy with a lot of money and a lot of wealthy people and a lot
13:45of innovation
13:45and not a whole lot different from every other country on earth. And in fact, increasingly, I've heard
13:52people say, we've adopted the guys of the China that Trump has spent a lot of his career criticizing.
14:01We've adopted the sort of bad parts of that model and not many of the good parts.
14:06Danielle? Well, look, Democrats, here's the most frustrating thing. Democrats get a lot of heat,
14:11especially after 2024, for not focusing on the issues that people care about, right?
14:16Is that heat justified?
14:18Well, we can talk about that a little bit more, but I think in this case for Donald Trump,
14:23let's take the case of Alex being a veteran ICU nurse at the VA. The VA, 79% of VA
14:30hospitals have
14:31nursing shortages. Last year, average wait times went up 20%. They lost 3000 nurses from FY24 to FY25.
14:41So what's Donald Trump doing? Is he focusing on really helping veterans and empowering our veterans?
14:45Well, he's proposing to increase the defense budget $500 billion. No, instead,
14:49he's literally murdering ICU VA nurses that are desperately needed. This is a classic example
14:55of where his priorities are completely crooked. People understand that they're picking up on that.
14:58And I think they're really frustrated by it. Internationally, one, that's leading to nurses
15:02from places like the Philippines and Indonesia, not wanting to come here, which is a huge thing.
15:06It's affecting students who don't want to come here and don't want to pay any more money. And at a
15:10bigger
15:11sort of macro level, it's people not wanting to come here for the Olympics. It's people not wanting
15:15to come here for the World Cup. Across the world, I literally was having this conversation with a
15:19friend of mine who's a policy person over in England. And she's like, you know, we've got
15:22conferences and things that we're rearranging as to whether or not we do want to go to the United
15:27States to do this. I'm talking to the mother of my goddaughter, who is in Mexico, who's like,
15:31hey, you know, the dollar has fallen from like it was $1 is 21 pesos four years ago. Now it's
15:361750.
15:37I have friends all over the planet. I have colleagues all over the planet. Our reputation
15:41is mud. And it's not just mud because of Donald Trump. It's mud at a basic business and cultural
15:47level because they're like, how the heck did you guys do this twice? But it's also mud,
15:51not just that we did it twice, that Congress is allowing for their responsibilities to be usurped.
15:56I'm going to say it again. The reason people believe in the United States of America is because
16:01we have three separate but equal except now. So they're saying, where are the other branches?
16:06That's another reason. And the conservatives are the ones who are dismantling the American
16:10exceptionalism that they always talked about and that I believe in. Right. I mean,
16:14American exception is being lit on fire by Donald Trump. The rule of law. This is something
16:18conservatives say they always support. There was a conservative George W. Bush appointee
16:22federal judge, said that ICE has violated almost 100 court orders in the month of January alone,
16:28more than some agencies have in their entire existence, he said. So this isn't an accident.
16:32This isn't a PR problem to contain. This is fundamental to who Donald Trump is and what he's
16:38doing to our country. I'll tell you who wasn't saying that though at Davos, business people,
16:42CEOs, not just of American companies, but companies around the world, because the sense is that rule of
16:50law can actually be a hindrance. And if you have a transaction minded president, you can buy your
16:56way, you know, oh, I buy some world liberty, financial crypto, and suddenly I can get advanced
17:01chips that previously I wasn't supposed to be able to get. But that's even short-sided events.
17:04They're going to get what they want out of Trump today, but long term, that's bad news.
17:08But we can't expect any CEO to be long term. Not these days. All right. Everybody is sticking around.
17:14Coming up later in the show, stocks are at record highs. Jason brought it up.
17:19And the dollar has been plunging. We're going to break down the Fed's decision to hold interest
17:22rates steady. But first, right after the break, with the midterms just months away,
17:27the FBI executes a search warrant on a Georgia election hub for records related to the 2020 race.
17:33The 11th hour just getting underway on a Wednesday night.
17:44The FC files, were they released? No. But today, the FBI searched an elections office in Fulton County,
17:51Georgia, one of the flashpoints of the 2020 election count. A spokesperson for the county
17:56says the bureau was executing a search warrant for records related to that election. MS now obtained a copy
18:02of that warrant. It was seeking all physical Fulton County ballots from the 2020 election,
18:08as well as the tabulator tapes from the voting machines. Just last week in Davos, if you remember,
18:13the president again claimed without evidence or an audience that even cared that the election was
18:20rigged and added the following quote. People will soon be prosecuted for what they did. Our nightcap is
18:27still here. I want us not to forget that Donald Trump told the Georgia Secretary of State to find
18:34nearly 12,000 votes, basically to reverse Joe Biden's 2020 win. And now suddenly we have the FBI
18:40seizing five-year-old ballots. Daniel, what's going on here? This is all a distraction machine. This is
18:46all part of it. Obviously, he has his own personal vendetta. But as long as people are talking about
18:50this, they're not talking about the fact that the EPA just announced that they're rolling back a rule
18:54that would allow smoke emissions to go in any state without any kind of regulation. He's basically
18:59legalizing secondhand smoke again, right? He keeps doing this over and over again. In the Department
19:03of Labor, where I used to work, Trump has eliminated the Women's Bureau completely. The Women's Bureau
19:08existed to make sure that we were fighting for things like equal pay, that we were getting
19:12pipelines and apprenticeships for women in different industries. Totally gone. He doesn't want people
19:18paying attention to that. He wants people looking at all these distraction machines. And candidly,
19:21a lot of the media is buying that every single day. We can't get distracted.
19:24Yeah. The only thing I'd say is this is more than a distraction, right? I mean,
19:28the reason that everyone in the White House and DHS lies immediately about who they kill in
19:34the streets of Minneapolis is because lying has been the litmus test for loyalty in this
19:38administration. And the number one lie you've got to agree with is that Donald Trump won the 2020
19:43election. So now they've got the power of the federal government. They've got the FBI reopening this.
19:46And so this is more than a distraction. There is an institutionalized lie around the last election,
19:54on January 6th, that every single member of this government has got to raise their hand and say,
19:58it's true. And that's the sign of a decline. And we have an election coming in nine months.
20:03What does that, what message does that send to voters that federal law enforcement is now seizing
20:09ballots from five years ago? It's a crafting of a narrative. Yeah, I agree. It's more than a
20:13distraction because we can now say as a fact that the federal government, the Department of Justice
20:20is looking into potential fraud in the last presidential election. That is now a fact. Now,
20:27it's also a fact that there's been no evidence that there's been any fraud. So this is a concocted
20:31narrative, but headed into the next election at a time when fewer and fewer media outlets are actually
20:39fact based. That's now part of the conversation. So this also feeds into other narratives where you
20:47have people who are not Trump supporters saying he's trying to steal the 2026 election. That's what
20:52people take from this. And I'm, I'm going to micro target this down to Georgia. Georgia's had enough
20:56issues when it comes to fair voting. I mean, Stacey Abrams and Brian Kemp, where you had a guy who
21:01was
21:01secretary of state while he was running for office, there were all sorts of missing voting machines and
21:05issues in Georgia in general. So when you have the FBI come in, it actually increases the level
21:10of cynicism that people have there, that their votes are going to be counted, that their votes
21:13are going to matter and that anything that they're trying to do is going to matter. But in the grander
21:17scheme of things, what did Pam Bondi say that you had to do in Minnesota in order to make ice
21:22leave?
21:22Give us your voter rolls, give us your tax information. This is part of a larger strategy. It ain't
21:28a distraction. It's just that they're throwing multiple balls in the air. What rationale does Pam
21:32Bondi honestly give that if immigration is the number one issue? Oh, we'll, we'll send them home.
21:38If you give us your voter rolls in theory, in theory, she could be saying, we're trying to find
21:44people who aren't here legally, who are voting. I mean, it's nonsense. It's the kind of thing you'd
21:47find in some weird echo chamber. But isn't somebody who's voting illegally, wildly different from who
21:53they claim they're going after hardened criminals. I can't imagine that MS 13 gang members are lining up
22:00to go vote in Suffolk County, Long Island. The, the, the, the, the Department of Justice is trying to
22:05get voting records and voting rolls from numerous states right now. And, and, and it ain't up to no
22:10good. It's got nothing to do with, with, you know, cracking down on, on undocumented immigration. It's
22:15got certainly nothing to do with criminality. We got enough time, difficult time getting American
22:19citizens to vote. Uh, so this is not related to that. This is about a power grab and, and they're
22:25creating, they're sowing the seeds of doubt around the 26th election and they're trying to do their own.
22:28And cynicism diminishes turnout. Exactly. Exactly. That's the larger issue. If I think
22:35that if, when I talk to young people who think that their vote doesn't matter, it's when they
22:39see things like this, that they say, oh gosh, you know, yeah. They're going to be off that in two
22:44weeks. Um, that's what they, that's what they claim. The fact that we're so fired up about this
22:48is exactly what he wants, right? That's what I say by distraction machine. He knows that this is a
22:52third rail issue that Democrats love to get spin off the ground and Republicans love to get, get
22:56spin off about. He knows it can then allow him to do all kinds of other stuff that he actually
23:01wants to do to disable our democracy. Like what I mentioned about the women's bureau,
23:05but also that people aren't talking about the Epstein file.
23:08Is it connected to Jack Smith testifying last week?
23:13I don't think these things are either, or I think these guys have always been very good at flooding
23:17the zone. I don't think that it's a, first off, I always say this. It's like, it's like in
23:22Ghostbusters or like, don't think about anything. Thinks as a stay puff marshmallow man. Whenever
23:25you say this is, this is distraction from the Epstein files. It means you're thinking about
23:29the Epstein files, right? You can't distract people from something that they have cared
23:32about for six or seven years now. I don't think any of this stuff works as distraction. I think
23:36what it does is it just keeps people of limited resources, the law firms that he's tried to push
23:41around the politicians and the activists, it keeps them spread thin so they can't focus on particular
23:46issues. But I don't think there is one thing that ever pops up in this administration that's
23:50going to make people forget about Alex Preddy. I don't think there's one thing that's going to
23:53pop up in this administration that makes people not think about 2026 of the Epstein files. There
23:57is no such thing as a distraction in a society that's addicted to these little machines. People
24:01can keep multiple ideas in their heads at once. This administration just thinks that they flood
24:05people enough, you won't have time to stop them. Well, the DOJ already tried to get these ballots
24:10last year through a subpoena. Fulton County judge refused. Them demanding it now, is this just
24:15another example of them saying, we're not waiting, we get what we want? Look, the entire idea behind
24:21this administration is that might makes right. That's what they're doing. Is that what?
24:26Might makes right. They've inverted Abraham Lincoln, right? You know, and that is the essential
24:31idea. I mean, Stephen Miller said it, Donald Trump said it. Yeah, we're not going to comply with your
24:36court order. We're going to go take it. But in this case, it's all about doubling down on a utterly
24:42discredited conspiracy theory because that's been the ticket for admission to everybody in
24:46this administration. It's the foundational lie. But the real danger is it's bad for our democracy.
24:52It is the foundational. I do remember during the transition when Howard Lutnick and Linda
24:56McMahon were charged and Howard Lutnick said the number one qualification for any person who wants
25:02to be in this administration is loyalty to Donald Trump. Not experience, not expertise, loyalty to
25:08Trump. And that's what he got. Nobody's going anywhere. When we return, ah, it's Peterson's turn.
25:14Fed Chair Jay Powell defends his decision to keep interest rates unchanged despite intense pressure
25:20from you-know-who in the White House. Plus, Jay Powell's surprising advice for his successor when
25:26the nightcap returns.
25:31Time now for Money Power Politics. Despite relentless attacks from the President,
25:35the Federal Reserve met expectations and held interest rates steady today, meaning they did
25:40not cut. Chair Jay Powell defended the decision saying, quote, the economy has once again surprised
25:45us with its strength. We should note that last year, the Fed cut rates three different times.
25:50Powell also offered some words of advice to the next Fed chair, very surprising,
25:55who could be announced as soon as next week. Watch this.
26:00Stay out of elected politics. Don't get pulled into elected politics. Don't do it. Our window into
26:09democratic accountability is Congress. And it's not a passive burden for us to go to Congress and
26:17talk to people. If you want democratic legitimacy, you earn it by your interactions with our elected
26:25overseers. Okay. Powell has not sounded this optimistic about the economy in quite some time.
26:33That's true. The economy, despite all of the stuff we've been talking about for months, tariff threat,
26:40uncertainty, chaos, it seems to be holding up fairly well. Unemployment's still low. The economy's
26:49growing dramatically. I mean, the question really is beyond that, beyond the next quarter, which is
26:56the only way that publicly traded corporations process reality, what is the long-term damage?
27:02When does the reckoning come for the erosion of faith in American governance that underpins
27:10all of the stuff that we're talking about? You know, Fed independence, it's not a binary thing.
27:14It's not like either we have it or we don't. The fact that Jay Powell feels the need to come
27:20out and
27:20say, hey, whoever you are, whoever's going to get this gig next, stay out of politics. That underscores
27:26that we're already there in terms of the rest of the world, central banks on the other side of ocean,
27:34sovereign wealth funds, thinking about where to put their money. They've already discounted
27:41the U.S. dollar as the sacred beyond reproach thing that we all grew up thinking of it as.
27:50This is the great danger. Whatever prize the next Fed chair gets, if they view it as a way to
27:57be
27:57popular and compliant with this president, they're sawing off the limb they're sitting on.
28:03Right. The real danger we're facing is down the road. We are saying late. We're laying the groundwork
28:07for the U.S. dollar to not be the world's reserve currency. When that happens, that's an economic
28:13apocalypse that we have not ever had to deal with. And that's going to make the financial crisis look
28:18like a happy Tuesday. Right. And but but what? Well, all for the for the sake of a quarterly earnings
28:23report or a higher. I mean, everybody knows this is B.S. what's going on. But the music playing and
28:28they're all
28:29dancing. But you're OK. You're running for office. The economy is complicated, right? Because you have
28:34the S&P topping seven thousand. At the same time, gold is skyrocketing. But housing affordability is an
28:40issue. Obviously, health care costs are huge. It's complicated. And again, the dollar is falling.
28:45And Trump is underwater 18 points on the economy. He's underwater 28 points on his management of
28:49inflation. So people aren't feeling the so-called great economy that's out there. And look, I think it is ironic
28:55and shows the sad state of our country when people are giving Powell praise for basically doing his
29:00job as being an independent Fed chair. Right. What's sad about this is that the Fed is the last
29:06institution that Trump hasn't fully corrupted yet. Right. You look at what's happening with Congress.
29:10It's basically a rubber stand for Trump. Same goes with the Supreme Court. You look at what happened
29:14in the State Department and USAID being gutted. Our place in the world and our place as a world leader
29:18is completely gone. That is what people are seeing. They're horrified by it. This Fed is basically the
29:23last stand. And it's very unclear where it's going to be in the next few months.
29:27I don't know one person who feels good about the economy. You can give me all the fancy numbers
29:32that you want. Okay. I'm going to introduce you to a few crypto bros. They feel great.
29:38I will say, and I've always talked about this. We've talked about this on the show,
29:41how people make their financial assessments of the world by their friends, their families,
29:45their neighbors, what just happened during Christmas where everybody was tightening their belts.
29:49The feeling that you see in the world, in the culture, in the music, it ain't one of people
29:55feeling like they have a lot of money right now. Folks are concerned. They're anxious. Kids are
29:59concerned. They're anxious. And I will add this because I think this is, this is the long-term
30:03impact. This goes into the whole problem with affordability, right? Everybody, whether it's crypto
30:08bros or finance bros or everything else like that, every time you hear a Republican or a policy person
30:12say, look at these great numbers, blah, blah, blah. And I'm not feeling that at home. It makes me more
30:17angry. It makes me more anxious. It's making me think you're not listening to me. And that's going
30:21to be a problem. You can tell me that unemployment is at 2.3%, but if I go to work
30:25every day gripping
30:26the desk because I think I'm going to get fired and I don't know if I'm going to keep my
30:28kids in
30:29school. I don't know if I can help my daughter with her therapist for her autism and everything
30:32else like that. If that's how people are feeling and that's what our culture is saying,
30:36it doesn't matter what the numbers say.
30:37Can we go back to the fact that Jay Powell felt the need at the podium to say to that
30:41next Fed chair,
30:43stay out of politics? The fact that he needed to do that, has that already shown that whomever
30:49is the next Fed chair, it's going to be assumed their goose is kind of cooked. Because for you to
30:54get that job, right, it's basically that, you know, it could be Kevin Warsh, it could be Kevin
30:58Hassett, it could be Rick Reeder. But from the sources I talked to, right, whether it's, well,
31:02I saw Rick Reeder again down at Mar-a-Lago. Donald Trump's not going to let anybody have that seat
31:07unless they basically wink, wink, nod, nodded, you're my daddy.
31:11I mean, why has the US been seen as the ultimate repository for the world's savings? In large part,
31:19because of belief that the Fed, they can get stuff wrong, they've gotten stuff wrong lots in our
31:25lifetimes, but they're not doing it for political reasons. They're making an assessment that's based
31:31upon their understanding. There may be ideology involved, but not political pressure. And that's
31:38God now. And whatever happens from here, that genie's already out of the bottle. We have experienced
31:45a Fed chair having to stand up to a president clearly trying to bully. And last thing on this
31:52is that the CEOs of financial institutions in America have been almost entirely silent. I mean,
32:00Jamie Dimon way after Lisa Cook. Finally, when we have this criminal probe against Jay Powell's,
32:08well, you know, Fed independence is good. Didn't say much more than that. Got very testy at Davos
32:13when he was pressed to amplify that. So they've been silent. And that is the tell right there.
32:21Hold on, John. They've been silent. And last week when I was calling sources to say who's in the lead,
32:25two different people said to me, well, Don Jr. and Eric are really pushing for Rick Reeder.
32:31And no knock on Rick. I've known Rick for a long time. He's a great guy. But
32:34what the hell does Don Jr. and Eric have to do with anything?
32:38No, this is this is a khaki stock receipt that we're dealing with right here. I mean,
32:43it's absurd. If it wasn't a novel, you'd say it's too much of a dark satire to deal with the
32:46U.S.
32:47economy because, of course, it's on all of us. Yeah. The CEOs who've been turning a blind eye,
32:52who've been, you know, sucking up to Trump because they could do it in the name of fiduciary
32:56responsibility to their shareholders, the ones who doesn't want to go see the Melania movie on
33:00a Saturday night. Clearly, they're all going to be doing that. But the real deal also is the growing
33:06gap between Main Street and Wall Street. The real populist anger is about and here you can do all
33:11the A.I. spending and goosing you want. You can do all the, you know, optimistic assessments
33:16about the trajectory of technology, but it's going to come out of real people's eyes.
33:19The layoffs we saw today and get more of that. And so this is a really dangerous powder keg
33:26situation for our country, for our culture and for our economy. And the CEOs who've been
33:30turning a blind eye to the attacks on the Fed are complicit. I'm going to add to that because
33:34this is this takes us back to Minnesota. This stuff is happening all over. It's happening in
33:38Memphis. It's happening in Charlotte. Businesses are shutting down because of these ice rates,
33:42right? You've got people, you've got activists right now in Minnesota saying the government needs
33:46to do something about, about rent being due on the first because people haven't worked in weeks.
33:50That kind of economic impact is going to last no matter what people say from Wall Street.
33:54But Jeff Bezos had a hell of a time at Paris Fashion Week. Everybody is staying put. When we return,
33:59the president threatens Iran with what he is calling an armada while his secretary of state gets grilled
34:05trying to defend the president's actions in Venezuela. We're going to get into it all right after the break.
34:15President Trump once again is escalating tensions with Iran. Today, he posted a threat on social
34:20media warning that a massive armada is heading to the country, urging Iran to agree to a nuclear deal.
34:26Meanwhile, Secretary of State Marco Rubio testified before Congress on Venezuela today,
34:31clashing with lawmakers, including Republican Senator Rand Paul over the U.S. capture of Maduro. Watch this.
34:39If a foreign country bombed our air defense missiles, captured and removed our president
34:45and blockaded our country, would that be considered an act of war?
34:49It's hard for us to conceive that an operation that lasted about four and a half hours and was
34:54a law enforcement operation to capture someone we don't recognize as the head of state, indicted
34:58in the United States, wanted with a $50 million. My question would be if it only took four hours
35:03to take our president. It's very short. Nobody dies on the other side. Nobody dies on our side.
35:08It's perfect. Would it be an act of war? We just don't believe that this operation
35:13comes anywhere close to the constitutional definition. We're always going to do what's
35:16best for the United States in America. We're always going to protect our system. Our arguments are
35:19empty then. The drug bust isn't really an argument. It's a ruse. The war argument, not a war is a
35:25war,
35:26is a ruse. It's not a real argument. Rand Paul is not getting invited to a screening
35:32of Melania. Does that defense make sense to you? No. And look, I think when we talk about
35:36people feeling out of touch, they see what's happening with Venezuela and this regime change
35:41conversation. Look, people remember Iraq. We should not underestimate people's bitterness
35:47about what happened there and how much it costs. It costs $3 trillion, by the way, that would have paid
35:51for child care for every single family in this country for 10 years. It would have had 15 million,
35:58could have paid for 50 million affordable housing units in this country, which would have stabilized
36:01rents in every single major city, and it would have covered every uninsured American. People are saying,
36:06my prices are going up. I'm stressed. I can't pay for child care. And we see a president literally
36:11putting out meme videos of jacking heads of state of other countries and celebrating about it. And they're
36:16remembering what happened last time we did that. Okay, then let's talk Iran. Would taking out the
36:22leader of Iran be a good thing? I mean, look at what the protests are. Look, the Islamic Republic
36:27of Iran is a force for evil in the world. But Donald Trump seems to be motivated by self-interest
36:33and a desire to change the conversation, right? We took out Maduro and nobody's actually doing the
36:37work of stabilizing that country. It's very unclear what the hell's happening. And by the way, good for
36:42Rand Paul for being consistent in his principles and not subordining them to partisanship,
36:46like most of his colleagues, right? I mean, he's calling it out, right? I'll go deep cut. John
36:50Hague, former secretary of state, way back when under Teddy Roosevelt said, American foreign policy
36:55goes down to two things, Monroe doctrine and the golden rule. What Rand Paul was pointing out is
36:59they're not applying the golden rule to anything. They're not thinking about whether, you know,
37:03whether if our American president was kidnapped, it'd be an act of war. And now we're talking about
37:06teeing up Iran. So that that's just an invitation to chaos. And I think it's probably driven by a
37:11desire to, you know, change this conversation at home. Saddam Hussein was a bad guy.
37:16Yeah. No one's having up any parades for the wonderful leadership of Saddam Hussein. However,
37:22if there's one thing that we learned from the Iraq war, it's unless you are planning to stick around
37:27That's it. For a long time, invest a lot of money with a serious plan to build something that is
37:33lasting. Then all sorts of terrible things can result from simply removing the head of a government.
37:41Does anyone believe that this government, if you think about the George W. Bush administration
37:46back in the early 2000s, does anyone think that this particular cast of characters in Washington
37:51is going to go do some grandiose nation building exercise in Iran? And we don't want them to. No.
37:57OK, here's my question. The White House has assured us over and over that all of Iran's nuclear
38:03capabilities have been obliterated. If that's the case, why would we need to reach a nuclear deal?
38:09And why do you want a nuclear deal when the last one is the one that you tore up,
38:16even though that's giving you the result that you have now, which is no nuclear weapons? The whole
38:20thing makes no sense. Right. But I think what it speaks to is, I think a lot of our foreign
38:24policy
38:25people are also sort of caught up like from 20 years ago. Like they think Iran is still a boogeyman.
38:29They think that you can just sort of talk about foreign drug dealers in South American countries.
38:33You're not moving the country that way anymore. No one believes that we're going to go into other
38:37countries and get cheaper gas like we used to in the 1990s. I think the whole thing is foolish.
38:41And at the end of the day, all you end up doing, and we've been talking about this all night,
38:45every single time we do this, whether it's Venezuela, whether it's Iran, whether it's Greenland,
38:49whether it's Ukraine, it makes every other business and every other country around the world say,
38:53this is not a safe place to put my money, time or resources. But does Trump like it? Because
38:57like Venezuela, he likes to see people celebrating in the streets and thanking him, which is what he
39:02did get after Venezuela and what he would likely get in Iran. He wants it more than any other place
39:08than right here at home. He said that he wants, like Kim Jong-un, he said this to be praised
39:13by his
39:14people. But the reality is his approval rating is the lowest it's ever been. It continues to go down.
39:18I think he's in deep trouble. Everybody is sticking around just a little bit longer. When we return,
39:24to the people braving the streets of Minneapolis written by none other than The Boss. Keep it here.
39:37The last thing before we go tonight, the streets of Minneapolis. Bruce Springsteen has released
39:42an anti-ice protest song. In a statement, he said he wrote and recorded the song over the weekend,
39:48quote, in response to the state of terror being visited on the city of Minneapolis. I want to
39:53share just a bit of that song with you.
39:58Against smoke and rubber bullets
40:02In the dawn's early light
40:06Citizens stood for justice
40:10Their voices ringing through the night
40:14And there were bloody footprints
40:19Where mercy should have stood
40:23And she dead, left to die on snow-filled streets
40:28Alex Pretty and Renee Good
40:34Okay, The Boss has never been shy about voicing his political views, especially about Donald Trump. But this song,
40:41I mean, he is specifically walking us through what happened both to Renee Good and Alex Pretty.
40:47Within days of it happening. It is...
40:49Bross is bringing back the quick-turn folk protest song. This is straight out of Woody Guthrie.
40:54And it's powerful. People should play it. And it's meant to be an anthem. And I think it will be.
40:59It's not just Bruce Springsteen. I got to add somebody else that I paid attention to when I was a
41:04kid, which is Ice-T, who had a song that came out two weeks ago. And again, we remember he
41:09had Cop Killer, which was terrifying.
41:11And our parents told us not to listen to weird kids. He has changed it to Ice Killer. I don't
41:15suggest or anyone advising any sort of violence. No, no, no. This is key. This is key. But it's the
41:19same sort of rhetoric that we had 30 years ago that expressed people's anger. And what I think is important
41:25is when you have icons at any level, I don't care if it's Bruce Springsteen or Ice-T,
41:28who's played a cop on Law & Order for 25 years. As I say, Ice-T. On Law & Order,
41:32thank you very much. It's not like this is a violent guy. But when they step up, right? On the
41:37other hand, we got people like Nicki Minaj. She's not doing anything. But we have these icons like Ice-T
41:41and Bruce Springsteen saying, hey, it's time to fight back. And I think that's great for this country.
41:45I only wish the equivalent powerful people in business would have the guts to step up right now because we
41:50need it just as well.
41:51Last word to you.
41:51Yeah, exactly. It's interesting that, you know, Olivia Rodrigo, Bruce Springsteen, you know, they're actually speaking out about this administration
42:00while pretty much every CEO of a large publicly traded company is bringing tribute to the White House and getting...
42:07Well, we're not hearing from CEOs. We're hearing from the actual boss. Take note.
42:11All right, gentlemen, thank you so much for joining. On that note, I am signing off from all of us
42:15here at MS Now. Thanks for staying up late with us. See you at the end of tomorrow.
42:30We'll see you at the end of tomorrow.
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