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Deadline White House Season 2026 Episode 99
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00:03By the way, today is the six-month anniversary of the Epstein Files Transparency Act.
00:08We've taken out two dozen CEOs, an ambassador, a prince, a prime minister, a minister of culture.
00:23And that was just six months. I got seven months left in Congress.
00:34I have never seen a happier concession speech in my life.
00:38Hi again, everyone. It's five o'clock in New York.
00:41It's a political victory that might come back to bite Donald Trump in the you-know-where.
00:46That was Kentucky Congressman Thomas Massey conceding defeat last night in a Republican primary.
00:51After being defeated by a candidate, Donald Trump personally recruited to run against him because he was mad at him.
00:56Massey angered Donald Trump by being one of the main drivers in Congress for transparency around the Jeffrey Epstein Files.
01:04Massey is hardly alone, though.
01:06Republican members of the Indiana State Senate and Republican Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana have all met the same fate
01:13after Donald Trump deemed them insufficiently loyal,
01:16even though they did all sorts of things that their history suggests they didn't agree with, all in the service
01:23of loyalty to Donald Trump.
01:24So while Trump and his allies are celebrating their losses as a sign of the president's political strength, political strategist
01:33Dan Pfeiffer warns of this.
01:35Quote, yes, the incumbent president can influence primaries inside his own party.
01:39And yes, Trump is getting rid of people he believes wronged him.
01:43But spending nearly $20 million to defeat a Republican in a district Donald Trump won by 35 points is not
01:51the flex people think it is.
01:53At best, this is a pyrrhic victory.
01:55And Trump's revenge tour is a big problem for the GOP moving forward.
02:00Trump is on a Trump is a massive drag on his party.
02:03And to win, many Republicans will need to show some independence from the deeply unpopular president.
02:10The smarter, savvier, less megalomaniacal leader would give his party the room to do what they need to do to
02:17win.
02:17Trump is incapable of doing so.
02:20And the GOP will pay a price for that.
02:22And Trump's quest for undying loyalty may have blocked his own agenda before the midterms are even finished.
02:29As Politico reports, quote, yesterday, a conquered and consequently unbridled Senator Bill Cassidy joined Democrats to become the 50th yes
02:39vote on a war powers resolution,
02:41opposed Trump's ballroom funding and reconciliation and called Texas's AG Ken Paxton,
02:47Trump's freshly endorsed challenger for John Cornyn's Senate seat, a, quote, felon.
02:53That is likely just the beginning.
02:55Lawmakers ignored the president's demand to attach the Save America Act to their housing bill.
03:01And Majority Leader John Thune is pushing back on yet another Trump demand to fire the parliamentarian.
03:07Even administration ally Senator John Kennedy expressed doubt about DOJ's $1.8 billion anti-weaponization fund.
03:16Now Cornyn could join their ranks.
03:18This closing of the ranks is happening as we speak.
03:22Politico is reporting that Senate Republicans are dropping the $1 billion in funding for Trump's pet project,
03:28that gilded ballroom, the picture of which Trump carries around like his favorite little whoopie.
03:35Donald Trump's unflinching demand for loyalty, even at the expense of his own party's political success and agenda,
03:42is where we begin the hour with some of our favorite experts and friends.
03:45He's staff writer at The Atlantic, video podcast host David Frum is back, and Alex Wagner is still with us.
03:52David Frum, let me ask you about this.
03:55Sometimes I have some trepidation.
03:57You know, I don't know that it's a good thing to flag some of these things.
04:01I feel like this is in the Democrats' interest to have some of these absolutely unpalatable people win primaries
04:09so that the Democrats can prevail in general elections, but Trump's unstoppable.
04:14And this is who he is, and he clearly doesn't care about his party or his party's political fate.
04:19But I wonder what you make of the men who tried to sort of straddle loyalty and some shell or
04:28shadow of conviction
04:29and were voted out of office anyway.
04:32Trump is winning more and more of less and less, and the penny has to drop.
04:39I mean, I don't have a lot of sympathy for the plight of John Cornyn, for example, who was never
04:44a profile in courage.
04:45He was a normal Republican who tried to do normal Republican things, but never stood up for the American way
04:51and the way that Mitt Romney did, or even Bill Cassidy, who did vote for one of the impeachment convictions.
04:56So, and yet, and Cornyn also did things like name highways for Trump and other self-abasement.
05:02But yet he represented the American system working the way the American system is supposed to work.
05:06He is what you would expect a Republican from Texas to be, and he's not surrounded by this stench of
05:10scandal that Ken Paxton is.
05:12And still, Ken Paxton's scandalousness called somehow to Trump, and Cornyn looks like he's going to lose.
05:20But these victories are very, I think Dan Pfeiffer is right about this, these victories are very short-sighted.
05:25Trump got handed another defeat just today when a U.S. district court told him that,
05:32no, the Presidential Records Act of 1978 is not unconstitutional.
05:35You have to keep records and you have to turn them over.
05:38You can't use them as your personal property.
05:39You have to turn them over to the National Archivist at the end of your presidency.
05:43I think there is something where some gravity is reasserting itself,
05:48but he does have that control of more and more, of less and less.
05:52Yeah, I mean, Alex, even the redistricting gambit, which he seems more committed to
05:58than sort of elevating the political prospects for his own party,
06:03has this double-sided real political impact.
06:08And it is not, I don't know that anyone has explained to Donald Trump
06:11that when you change the maps, you make a 10-point wave adequate,
06:17where a 15-point wave in the past might have been required.
06:20And I wonder what you make of all these moves that, politically at least, for Trump,
06:24represent two steps forward, possibly three steps back.
06:28It's almost as if, Nicole, he doesn't care about the Republican Party.
06:32I mean, which is weird, right?
06:34Not because it's surprising that Donald Trump doesn't care about people other than himself,
06:38but because there is the very real possibility, one that he's keenly aware of,
06:42that he will face an impeachment trial,
06:44that there will be oversight committee hearings dragging up all of the clowns in the administration
06:48to clown themselves further in front of the American public.
06:52I mean, there are real costs to losing both houses of Congress, one or more.
06:56And Trump seems to be so focused on his own vendettas
07:00that he's forgotten about that very, very looming reality.
07:03I mean, the latest New York Times polling, setting aside the approval rating,
07:08shows on a generic ballot, Democrats have a 14-point edge among likely voters.
07:13That is really meaningful.
07:15And Dan Pfeiffer, who you quoted at the beginning of this segment,
07:17has a grace piece on that on the message box substack.
07:20That is legitimate.
07:22And that means that these sort of meddling around the margins,
07:25as Republican leaders are doing in these congressional districts,
07:28could actually make congressional districts more competitive
07:31by putting spreading Democrats around.
07:33You have more, you know, this could redound to be a major problem
07:37for Republicans come November.
07:39They have assumed they're going to hold together the coalition that they had in 2024.
07:42Not if you look at the polling.
07:44Trump is hemorrhaging support among young voters, independents, and voters of color.
07:49The coalition that brought Trump into office
07:51is not the coalition that's going to be there for him in November,
07:54including and especially right now,
07:56when he's doing everything he can to shred that coalition.
07:59Well, and even the pillars of this coalition, David Frum, are gone.
08:02I mean, he's lost 25 points among white, non-college educated voters,
08:07which since 2015 has been a central plank of his political coalition.
08:14And he's got this other thing hanging over his head,
08:17which is the end of the Voting Rights Act.
08:19You know, the effect event.
08:20It's not formally ended, but it's very sick.
08:23It's like a list.
08:24It's listing to one side.
08:25Political scientists have been arguing for decades,
08:28but what would be the practical real-world effect of eliminating the Voting Rights Act?
08:32What the Voting Rights Act does, or at least the portions that are in trouble now,
08:36what they do is they effectively crowd a state's African-American voters
08:41into one or two or more districts where they represent a supermajority.
08:45So the people of those districts are guaranteed
08:48that they will be able to elect a fellow member of their group to the United States Congress.
08:52But what they also do is they then make the rest of the state less minority,
08:59less liberal, less Democratic,
09:02and give Republicans advantages in all the parts of the states
09:05that are not crowded into the Voting Rights Act districts.
09:07And political scientists have wondered,
09:09well, if you ended this and you had more race-neutral allocation of seats,
09:14that might actually move a number of Black and therefore probably Democratic voters
09:19into other districts and make the whole state more competitive.
09:22Others, political scientists have said, no, no, you're wrong.
09:25Academics do that.
09:26We're about to find out the answer to that question
09:29that has been argued in academic papers for 40 years.
09:32We're about to get a real-world answer in 2026.
09:34What happens when, instead of having 70% or 80% African-American voters in one or two districts,
09:40you have substantial numbers of Black American voters in more districts?
09:45And, Alex, it's not what civil rights activists wanted.
09:49It is what the Supreme Court has delivered.
09:51It is the changed battlefield heading into the midterms.
09:56Yeah, and I think that there are sort of multiple conversations to be had around this,
10:00those that pertain to the actual sort of horse race of it
10:02and those that, you know, look at the sort of moral underpinnings of the Voting Rights Act
10:08and the degree to which we owe minority communities representation of their choosing,
10:12given the systemic injustice that's been perpetrated on these communities for hundreds of years.
10:16But that's another conversation.
10:18The reality is we are living where we are.
10:19And Ron DeSantis in Florida could have made the Florida map that much more competitive for Democrats,
10:25unwittingly, a true dummy mander.
10:27Can I just say one thing, though, as we look at the sort of weird,
10:30I guess, silver linings to all of this.
10:33And while it is great that Tom Tillis and John Cornyn and Bill Cassidy have found their spines again
10:38because they are walking out of office or being tossed out of office,
10:42let us not give a pass to the Republican Party in the Senate
10:46that the only people who can decuck themselves away from Trump are the people who are leaving Congress.
10:52It is outrageous that the only people in the Senate, in the Republican Party,
10:56who feel like they have the, I keep using the wrong words, the backbone to stand up to Trump.
11:02They're the right words, Alex.
11:03We just trained not to use them on television.
11:06They're the right words.
11:08I mean, this is right.
11:10The bar is so low.
11:12Yes.
11:12Yes.
11:13That you only find your conscience when you're leaving.
11:15I mean, that's, it's good, I guess, that they found it on their way out the door.
11:18But that's not a party.
11:20That's a, that's a group of cowards.
11:22It's not even a group of cowards.
11:24It's, it's, it's a mob organization.
11:27And Jim Comey has been indicted, I don't know, two or three times,
11:32described the group around Trump as la cosa nostra, right?
11:35Like our, our, our thing, our family.
11:38It's, it's, it's not a functioning organization.
11:43You know, you're talking about academics.
11:44There are no academics, David Frum,
11:46who look at people who only do what they view as more right after they've left the organization
11:52that is functional, right?
11:53There, there, there, there is no one who only does on their political deathbed, the right
11:57thing, who would say that, that, that the thing is healthy while they're in it, if they
12:01can't do what they believe to be right.
12:02Right. And I, I have struggled personally with how to sort of welcome people into the pro-democracy
12:08coalition at various stages.
12:10When those of us who were in the coalition in 2015 faced all sorts of derision from Republicans
12:16who, you know, liked or either liked or, or thought that, that Trump was sort of the show,
12:22whether they liked it or not.
12:23But this idea that, that this is what strategists said in the Cornyn race, what's the return
12:28on investment for Trump's at one Cornyn support about Trump's late stage Paxson endorsement.
12:33I don't understand why you take this risk versus sitting back and doing nothing.
12:36Now you've created an enemy for six months when you have a razor thin majority.
12:40I mean, the reason you do it is because you are a, a man child obsessed with revenge, that
12:45there are still people looking for the why is amazing to me.
12:49Right. Well, that's the question. Your question about what is the moral judgment? That's a
12:53complicated question. I let, I don't have, I don't think we have time for it right now,
12:56but here's the question. And I actually asked this in the first Trump administration of an
13:01outgoing Republican lawmaker in, in the Cornyn situation. Look, okay. Nevermind principle,
13:07nevermind courage. What about petty vindictiveness? And what is stopping, what is stopping John
13:13Cornyn and Bill Cassidy from saying right now, you know what? You took away my political
13:16career. Um, you know what ballroom? No, I'm a no on the ballroom. I I'm a no on the slush
13:23fund. You know, I'm just going to, I've got six months here. My, my job in the next six
13:26months is I'm going to have a little petty vindictive fund. Where is that? I mean, there's,
13:31as you know, there's a lot of that in politics. It's usually not declared, but it's a powerful
13:35motive. And sometimes it can often, it leads to bad, but sometimes it can lead to some fun.
13:41Yeah. I mean, and it can also clean up their legacies, which are at best tarnished for whatever
13:48comes next, Alex. Yeah. I mean, look, I think there is the practical reality of not having the,
13:56you know, Trump acts over your head anymore and how liberating that is. There is the sense that this
14:00petty man child in the white house deserves to have his own comeuppance. And then there's also the added
14:06benefit that I think when Republicans see other Republicans acting honestly and with integrity,
14:12perhaps it will be inspiring to them too. Cause as we've learned anything in the Trump era,
14:17there is safety in numbers, right? If he has three Republicans who will go against him,
14:22maybe there's some others, Susan Collins waiting in the wings to show that they have some integrity
14:27left. Who knows? Anything could happen. Anything could happen, which is why we're here. It's all
14:32changing all the time. This is something that's changed really quickly. In concert with Trump
14:38doing things that are wildly unpopular, going to war with Iran without communicating with the
14:42country, why we're there, how long we'll be there, what success will look like. The brazen corruption,
14:49I can't come up with a better or cleaner word for it. And people's feelings about their economy,
14:56the broader economy and their personal economy. In April, Donald Trump's approval and handling of the
15:00economy was 38%, now 33%. That it might be the fastest drop since he's been a national political
15:06figure, five points in a month. His overall job approval rating has dropped the same number,
15:1138% to 34% in the same amount of time. And whether or not he's focused on the things
15:16people care about,
15:17the problems they're facing, almost 70% of Americans say no. So the arches, the ballrooms,
15:23the color blue he's selected for the reflecting pool, these are not America's priorities, David.
15:29Yeah. Yeah. And one more, and this is a point I think you can really pound home in a way
15:33that
15:33people can understand. The no tax on tips giveaway, which we've all heard so much about from the Trump
15:38people, it expires in 2028. But something he really cared about, which is the no tax on Trump
15:44and no tax on Trump's children, that's forever. The deal he has purported to strike over his,
15:50the leak of his returns. By the way, the reason he's so mad about those returns is because when they
15:55happened, they revealed absolutely disgraceful behavior in the returns and caught him in a series
15:59of lies, including that he was on the edge of bankruptcy when he ran for president in 2015. He
16:04was not, he was in a desperate condition. That's one of the reasons he ran. But that deal he's
16:09purported to strike includes a no audit provision for him, his entities and his children. Donald Trump
16:15in 2016 and 2017 paid $750 in federal income tax. That's probably not the right figure. And it's
16:22probably not a figure he would have been able to get away with if he hadn't been elected president
16:26in 2016. He's now said, even after I leave office, no audit. If I put down $750, you have to
16:31take the
16:31$750. And now he really does have the money and $750 would be an outrage. But that's what, if he,
16:37if he puts it down, there's no one in the IRS will ever be allowed to challenge it according to
16:41his own deal. So tax on tips, no tax on tips, temporary, no tax on Trump forever. I think people
16:47will
16:47understand that. I totally understand that. And it's why his numbers seem to fall every time a
16:52new poll is taken. All right. No one's going anywhere. When we come back, we'll all still
16:55be here, but our friend Miles Taylor will join the conversation as well. Also ahead for us,
17:00how Democrats can use Donald Trump's endless and shameless and very public facing, embracing
17:06corruption, self-dealing and grift to pummel the Republicans in the midterms. It's already breaking
17:12through and sinking in with the American people. Plus the growing fears about an actual
17:17Ebola outbreak in Africa that has already sickened hundreds, including one American
17:22and the questions it's raising about how Donald Trump's cuts to USAID and the CDC have hampered
17:28the response to this newest deadly outbreak. We'll get to that story later in the hour.
17:33Deadline Whitehouse continues after a quick break. Don't go anywhere.
17:41Actions will always speak louder than words. Actions will always tell you what politicians value
17:46more than rhetoric does. And everyone's sitting around waiting for this golden age to happen.
17:52It's not. Okay. Not for you anyway, for him and his family, his allies. Oh, they getting fat while
17:59you starve. Okay. And that's why our taxpayer dollars going to this weaponization fund to compensate
18:05his allies should piss you off. Okay. You should be outraged. You should actually be in the street
18:11protesting against this. Okay. Not only is it corrupt, it is a blatant slap in the face to the
18:17economic hardships you folks are facing. Okay. Trump told you he don't care what you're going
18:22through financially. All right. He's not even acting like he sees what you're going through. All right.
18:27He's not even, he's not even detached from people's economic struggles. He just doesn't care.
18:33He's pushing for financial windfalls for his allies, his family, not you.
18:41That was Charlamagne Tha God yesterday and his program, The Breakfast Club. We're back with David
18:45and Alex. I mean, Alex, he, he, he crystallizes the piece of it that I think a lot of political
18:51journalists are missing. It's not that no one has gone into the oval and said building an arch and a
18:57ballroom and a reflecting pool and taking the plane from Qatar, um, while people are suffering sounds
19:02bad. He has taken that in and said, I don't give a rat's behind. I mean, he's taken it in
19:09and he has
19:10said, um, both to multiple reporters at a briefing. And then in a friendly Fox interview where he was
19:16given a rather embarrassing opportunity to clean it up. I absolutely meant it. And I would say it again.
19:22He described it as a perfect statement. So I guess it's like at some point, the story isn't about Trump.
19:29It's about the rest of us. And I wonder what you think it says that Republicans still fall in line.
19:35Yeah. I mean, I guess it's pure cowardice because it's not going to win them elections. It's going to lose
19:41them control of Congress. And it's a betrayal of the people that they've been elected to represent. I mean, I,
19:47I,
19:48I am with, I think David was, was really nailing it when we were talking about the reasons why the
19:53corruption are, is so just beyond the pale right now, right? You can list all of the,
20:01the outrageous maneuvers of this administration, this president, but I do think in conjunction with
20:07the economic lived reality and with Sarah Longwell here, I think the corruption on its own would be
20:13cause for deep concern. But the thing that really resonates with the American people is the
20:17corruption taking place at the very same time that summer is upon us. They can't afford hamburger
20:23meat. They can't afford to drive on a family camping trip. They maybe can't afford their air
20:29conditioning bill and they may not be able to take their kids to the doctor at the same time that
20:34the
20:34person who was elected to do one thing and one thing only has not only failed in that mission, but
20:41is
20:41failing with impunity and with a self-congratulatory spirit that is nauseating. And it's a combination
20:48of those two realities. It's the collision of those two things that I think is going to be absolutely
20:52devastating, not just for the Republican party, but for the legacy of this presidency and the legacy
20:57of the GOP. Well, I would have one more proof, David. No, go, go ahead.
21:02To Alex's point about the cost of food and the cost of fuel, we can see what Americans are doing
21:07about those costs. They're actually not cutting back yet that much on their expenditures. They're
21:12financing them. Americans seem to be collectively deciding this seems to be a temporary hiccup.
21:17Maybe it'll go away by the fall. So they're continuing their present patterns, but charging
21:22more. And we're seeing rising credit bills, but we're also seeing rising interest rates and the
21:28beginnings of some serious signs of trouble in the credit market, rising car loan defaults, for example.
21:33So when you think about what is the environment going to be like in November, unless there's some
21:38miracle by by September and October, Americans will have figured out, no, things are not getting
21:43better. I over borrowed over the summer to pay for food and fuel. I have to cut back. And by
21:48the way,
21:49I'm facing a soaking on my credit card bill because as high as the interest rate charges were before,
21:55they're now even higher because long term interest rates are higher.
21:58David, what I was going to ask about was the third group. And I thought about this when Donald Trump
22:04kept saying like a verbal tick, the country is so hot. I keep hearing how hot the country is.
22:09I kept wondering, like, why is he hearing that? He's hearing that from his feedback loop in 2.0,
22:14which is, you know, the omelet line at Mar-a-Lago. You look at Jeff Bezos's interview with Andrew
22:21Ross Sorkin today, lavishing Donald Trump with praise. I mean, Trump is in a monogamous relationship
22:27with this sort of new oligarchy. And I wonder, you know, again, at some point, this isn't about
22:32them. It isn't about Trump. It's about the rest of us. It seems to be leaving, you know, I don't
22:36know
22:36what, 70, 75 percent of Americans available to a politician who says you're getting screwed and
22:43simply points to the things you've pointed at since we've been on the air. Yeah, well, that that
22:48feedback loop may not even be saying what they really think. I mean, does Jeff Bezos, who's a pretty
22:53astute decision maker, does he really look at Donald Trump and say, that's somebody who would
22:57make the manager of an Amazon warehouse in Topeka, Kansas? Would I give that guy a middle-level
23:04management job in my company and be confident that he wouldn't be stealing from me? I can't
23:10believe that Bezos thinks that way. Some of the tech bros do seem kind of romantic, and some of
23:17them take substances, and they may have passed the point of making astute judgments. I don't
23:21think Bezos has passed that point. So why does he say that? Because one of the lessons of the
23:28Putin regime in Russia is however big the oligarchs are, whoever controls the army and the security
23:33services and the nuclear weapons is bigger. So you want to stay on that person's good side as long
23:38as he controls the army, the security services, and the nuclear weapons. Alice, let me show you
23:44just a little snippet, but because snippets are all we have. This is a snippet of Republican
23:49defiance of Donald Trump. Republican Congressman Fitzpatrick saying he's going to kill the $1.8
23:55billion slush fund, for which Todd Blanche won't rule out money for violent insurrectionists.
24:03What are you making of this $1.7 billion fund for... Bad news. We're going to try to kill it.
24:08You're going to try to kill it? Yeah. Wow. Okay. And how?
24:11Well, we're considering legislative options. We're going to write a letter to the AG to start,
24:17but we're considering a legislative option. Okay. We're trying to unpack exactly, you know,
24:22what the legal machinations are, but can't do that. You know what? Like nine years ago,
24:29I would have said, letter, that's lame. You're nine, I'll take it. He's going to write a letter.
24:33He's going to look at legislative options. It is tragic that it is news, but that's a Republican
24:39say no to Donald Trump's $1.7 billion slush fund. You know what? Whatever form the jumping off the
24:47ship takes, we'll take it, Nicole, because Congress is the body. We will put it on prime time.
24:55Because, look, it is indicative of a party that's maybe finally waking up to the fact that creating
25:00a $1.8 billion slush fund for insurrectionists is not the right thing to do for both the party
25:06and the American public. I was talking to Michael Fanon today for my podcast, and the idea that
25:11Michael Fanon, who was beat unconscious and tased by January 6th insurrectionists, now has to use his
25:18tax money to pay these people reparations, is literally the textbook definition of unjust.
25:25I mean, you need a reparations committee to study this quote-unquote reparations committee. The
25:30wrongdoing, the moral stain that this thing represents, should be enough to shock anybody's
25:35conscience, to say nothing of the fact that it totally castrates the entire legislative branch.
25:41You cannot have the president self-appropriating $1.8 billion to give out to stooges. Like, that's
25:46just not how, that's not how the separation of powers works. So, yeah, I mean, I'll take it. If it's
25:52like
25:52a letter that's being written that eventually amounts to actual legislation, let's go.
25:57Well, yeah, and we've been joined by- That's such a point that Alex made, because there's a legal
26:02question about this $1.8 billion. What is it? Where does this money come from? It's not an
26:07appropriation. Congress hasn't voted. It's not a settlement, because there was no case. The reason
26:11Trump withdrew his case was because the courts were going to say, look, we only have, federal courts only
26:17have jurisdiction over what the Constitution calls cases or controversies. If it's the same person on both
26:23sides of the versus sign, there's no case or controversy. So we have no jurisdiction. If
26:28there's no jurisdiction, there's no lawsuit. If there's no lawsuit, there's no settlement. So what
26:32is this fund? It's not an appropriation. It's not a settlement. It's just a pure taking by the
26:36executive. It's stealing. It's the executive reaching into the Treasury saying, here's something
26:40that isn't nailed down. I'll take it. And that's probably not legal.
26:46Former DHS chief of staff, Miles Taylor, has joined our conversation in progress. We couldn't
26:52finish this up without you being here. The idea that we still cover it as news when there are just
26:59a couple of hiccups and burps and gasps of defiance or objection to Donald Trump is part of a larger
27:07fabric of what we've been covering. But the fact remains that the conduct is now so outside the
27:13realm of what they can sell politically to the electorate and what is perhaps legal that you are
27:20starting to hear Republicans object to things Donald Trump wants to do.
27:23And I think perhaps legal is even generous. I mean, there's a more dramatic word for this.
27:31And it goes all the way back to one of our presidents, James Madison. He wrote in the
27:36Federalist Papers that if an executive had this type of unilateral power over how to spend taxpayer
27:45dollars, it would be tyranny. That's what he called it. And he explained that the reason
27:50that the appropriations power that David Frum just mentioned was given to the Congress and not to the
27:55president was it was the most, in his words, quote, effectual weapon against tyranny. Donald Trump has
28:02taken that weapon away from the United States Congress. He's done it unilaterally. There's no
28:07clearer definition of high crime and misdemeanor than that.
28:11Yeah. But I guess the other side of it is Congress has let him.
28:15They have. They've been willing. And I think that's the big story of the second term.
28:19Right. It's not just one man who's off the rails.
28:22Right. It's a party that's complicit. And the fact that we've only seen one Republican in the
28:27Senate really come out and blast this slush fund when, as David just noted, it's probably the biggest
28:33heist in American history of any kind, of any sort. It tells you a lot about the United States
28:39Congress, the Congress that spent most of its legislative time this week talking about the
28:43ballroom, trying to get ballroom funds passed instead of inflation and wars or this heist.
28:52We're glad you're here, David Frum and Alex Wagner. Thank you for starting us off this hour.
28:56Mile sticks around a little bit longer when we come back. The Ebola outbreak in Africa is getting worse,
29:02thickening hundreds, including an American. And there's real concern that Donald Trump's cuts to USAID
29:07and global health organizations have already made it worse. We'll explain after a short break.
29:17I like this stuff. I really get it. People are surprised that I understand it.
29:22Every one of these doctors said, how do you know so much about this?
29:25Maybe I have a natural ability. Maybe I should have done that instead of running for president.
29:31This is Donald Trump during the coronavirus pandemic, during his first term. And whatever else you think
29:37of Donald Trump, whether you voted for him or not, whether you like him or not, a public health
29:43policy expert, he is not. Now, why does that matter today? Well, there are record numbers of measles
29:51cases in our country right now. They affect kids. There's a hantavirus outbreak in the world being closely
29:58monitored. And there are mounting concerns over a deadly Ebola outbreak in Central Africa. And it is clear to
30:06everyone paying attention that Donald Trump has rendered the United States of America and the rest of the world
30:11less prepared and less safe by the things he has done. By shuttering foreign aid and USAID meant to keep
30:18diseases under control by monitoring them and understanding them and, in the best case scenario,
30:23keeping them far away. And he has done that because he thinks those steps were, quote, radical and not
30:29aligned with American interests. Perhaps nothing is more aligned with American interests. The Ebola outbreak
30:36of a rare strain of Ebola, currently with no vaccine or treatment, has already killed more than 100 people
30:42in the Democratic Republic of Congo. It has also sickened hundreds more people, including an American
30:48doctor who has since been taken to Germany for care. Meanwhile, an international relief group says
30:55Donald Trump's cuts are partially to blame for the outbreak, forcing them to cut down their work in the
31:01now epicenter and leading to delayed detection of the disease itself. While a group made up of now
31:07former USAID staff says it, quote, would have been there with gloves and gowns and body bags and
31:14medicine, leading door-to-door contact tracing, making sure burials are safe, stopping the spread.
31:21But Donald Trump shut down USAID, calling it, quote, waste and abuse. Turns out it kept us all alive,
31:28end quote. For the record, the State Department denies that cuts to USAID have hampered the response
31:35to the outbreak. Joining us at the table, medical contributor, Dr. Van Gupta. He's a pulmonologist
31:40and global health policy expert. Miles is still here. Just tell me what under a Democratic or
31:47Republican president who hadn't gutted USAID, basically eliminated USAID, what would be happening
31:54and then help us understand how, what Trump and I guess Musk was involved in this in the beginning,
31:59what their cuts have done to our ability to respond.
32:02Sure. Absolutely. So I would say there's an interagency here at work, Nicole, you know this
32:06well, where it's USAID, a PEPFAR program under the State Department, basically doing more than just
32:14treating disease. I mean, there was very noble causes that in which these entities would form,
32:18but they built laboratory infrastructure, Nicole, across the global South and parts of Africa,
32:23where we would have early disease detection of, say, a rare variant of Ebola. That's what they did,
32:29and far more than just providing medication. They also, in 2014, for our viewers, worked closely with
32:35the U.S. military. The U.S. military, I'll say this as a reservist for the Air Force, played a
32:39vital
32:39role in the last pandemic or the last outbreak of Ebola in West Africa for command control support,
32:46logistics, moving things around, medical supplies. That's critical. None of that is being talked about
32:52right now because none of that is happening. So there's an interagency response spearheaded by USAID
32:57and PEPFAR, where all this medical equipment is being distributed. U.S. military is the backstop
33:03actually moving things around, supporting patient care. None of that is happening, certainly not at
33:08the level it was happening 10 years ago, and here we are. And so what I would say is more
33:12even more
33:12broadly, preparedness weakens quietly and fails visibly. In this case, they wanted it to weaken loudly,
33:20and what we're seeing happening is quite visible tragedy. 600 cases, 130 deaths. It's going to get
33:27worse before it gets better. What is the current status of the Ebola outbreak, and what is the risk
33:33to people traveling or people living and working there, and what are the risks to us here?
33:37Well, I'd say that the risk is concentrated to Sub-Saharan Africa, so specifically the three
33:43countries that we keep talking about now, Congo, South Sudan, and Uganda. Some concern about Rwanda and
33:48spillover just because there's a large border between Congo and Rwanda. So regionally, major
33:52concern. It's focused, Nicole, specifically in the eastern province of Congo, where there's
33:58failed public health systems. There is crowded, high-density populations. So the concern here
34:03is also they don't have a lot in the way of diagnostic testing that our government would have supported at
34:08scale. So are we underdiagnosing cases? Probably. Hospital capacity is a meager fraction of what's
34:14needed. What you need is what the American doctor who's been evacuated to Germany, thankfully,
34:19is getting, which is advanced ICU-level care. That's what is required to save lives. So we're
34:24going to see more cases, likely, tragically, a lot more deaths, but it's going to be concentrated.
34:29And I think the American public needs to keep in mind that the risk to them is still very minimal,
34:35especially with border closures, screenings at airports, which makes sense.
34:39What part of Donald Trump's brain thinks that this chaos and these threats to global health are good
34:48for America? I don't know. It's the same Donald Trump who says he's an expert on the Bible. He's
34:52an expert on trade. He's an expert on taxes and the law. And he's also a health expert. So, you
34:57know,
34:57that's the direct answer. But, you know, realistically, I don't think he actually, even after managing or
35:06mismanaging COVID knows the magnitude of dealing with any of these health crises. And as soon as
35:14the Hantavirus news broke, it's the first thing I wrote about. The next day after that story broke
35:18is I was out there saying, look, we're not ready for something like this to happen again on his watch.
35:25Many, many lives were lost because of that mismanagement. And as we were talking about during
35:30the break, there were 20 years of preparations after 9-11 for a pandemic and how the United
35:37States should respond. When COVID happened, Donald Trump threw the playbook out the window because
35:42it was too bureaucratically complicated for him and created a task force that struggled to reinvent
35:47the wheel in the midst of crisis. I worry that would happen again.
35:51Yeah. And put himself in the middle of it, going to the briefing room,
35:55ask if we get the bleach in our lungs. No one's going anywhere with to sneak in a short break.
35:59Well, I'll be right back on the other side.
36:05Todd Blanche could not commit to saying that people who beat law enforcement officers
36:09would be available. These funds would be available to them. It's an insult to people,
36:15not just to me, not just to my coworkers, but to the American people. The American people
36:19watched with their own eyes and they saw what happened on January 6th.
36:24It feels so obvious that it's difficult to find the words to explain why, like why
36:28should the federal government pay millions and millions of dollars to these people that tried
36:34to usurp democracy here? Why should we pay them millions and millions of dollars for attacking
36:40me and my colleagues, causing deaths, violence, destruction? And why should we pay people who
36:47were, had their day in court and many of whom pled guilty to these crimes? It doesn't make
36:52any sense to me. And I just hope that we're able to stop it.
36:58Miles, it feels like another Rubicon crossing. The announcement of a fund for which there is no
37:04legal means for the funds to be dispersed, no legal means for this to be described as a settlement.
37:09He didn't settle with anybody. As folks have explained, he represented himself on both sides.
37:14Um, and audacity doesn't come close to it, but the scandal really, I mean, Michael Fanon called
37:21it an effing disgrace of taking taxpayer dollars and giving them to people who carried out violent
37:28acts against cops. How do you take something that represents such a new bottom and put it into
37:36context for people who are maybe just starting to tune into how Trump is governing in the second
37:40presidency, second term? Well, and they get to keep it secret. That's the other piece.
37:45The people who try to defend him, defend him, defend him, get to that point and say, well,
37:49that feels a little fishy. Well, yeah, it feels a little fishy. The whole thing feels fishy.
37:54But Nicole, you put it in the context of other things that have a legitimate purpose that we've
38:00tried to create as a U.S. government for restitution. The 9-11 Victims Fund. I know you've reported
38:06about this for years how hard it was, how long it took to get Congress and frankly, former Republicans
38:12I used to work with and for in Congress to approve money for first responders who are dying of cancer
38:17from here in New York City after 9-11. It was like pulling teeth. And now here's the president. He
38:23wants
38:23to give cash to criminals and they're not saying anything and he's doing it overnight. That's really
38:28alarming. But let me give you another number. This amount of money, the 1.8 billion is about how much
38:33we spent every year at the Department of Homeland Security to protect the nation against weapons of
38:38mass destruction. OK, nuclear weapons, biological attacks. In fact, it's bigger than that core
38:45number. He's spending more than gets spent to protect you from weapons of mass destruction,
38:50to reward criminals, to go let them buy new cars on the taxpayer dime while those cops that we saw
38:56got
38:56nothing. When you look at the, I don't know, the corruption in plain sight, the politically toxic
39:05nature of what Todd Blanche sort of begrudgingly said, OK, you're calling it a slush fund. What
39:12does it say to you about the people around Trump? Well, I mean, it really does say that they're willing
39:17to go to prison for the guy. I don't say that lightly. I mean, Todd Blanche would have had to
39:22have known
39:23that adding this addendum to the slush fund, in addition to just the obvious, in my view,
39:29criminality of the fund itself, but this addendum that allows Donald Trump to avoid tax scrutiny for
39:34the rest of his life. Forever and ever. Forever and ever. And his family members, which hypothetically
39:39means they never have to pay taxes again because they can never be audited again. He had to have known
39:45in signing that document that it was going to put him in a world of hurt legally in the long
39:50run.
39:50But what did he know that we didn't, Nicole? And I suspect that he knew or was told that he
39:58would
39:58get away with it. He might have a pardon. He might be protected. There are layers to how corrupt this
40:05is.
40:05We don't fully know how this all came about. We don't know what the conversations were like behind
40:09the scenes. But this is why an investigation is more than warranted. It's one of the most obviously
40:15corrupt acts in the history of the republic. Would you bet that Todd Blanchett has already
40:20been pardoned or pre-pardoned? I don't think he's been pre-pardoned. I think Donald Trump
40:25wants to dangle the pardons out till the absolute last minute. Like any effective mob boss, he's going
40:32to keep the possibility of protection as a possibility because then people will keep doing what he wants.
40:40I'll tell you your insights are having been inside our dark brother, but they are super important.
40:47Dr. Gupta, your insights and expertise on the damage we've done around the world is invaluable.
40:52Thank you for being here. Well, unfortunately, we're going to continue to need to need that expertise.
40:59We're going to make a quick turn to Ken Burns, who says the founders would have some thoughts about
41:04this moment in American history. Don't go anywhere. We'll show you that on the other side of a break.
41:12My guest on this week's episode of the best people podcast is Ken Burns. Ken has spent his life and
41:18career pouring over the history of our country. Take a listen to what he told me about how the
41:23founders would react to this moment. The founders would less be surprised by someone taking authoritarian
41:33power than they would be by the abdication of what they correctly said was that after their poetic
41:40preamble, article one is the legislative and article two is the executive. That would be the manager
41:47carrying out what the executive, what the legislative wanted. And that is not happening. And we're seeing
41:53even the courts go into that realm. Washington had three pleas. You know, he said avoid partisanship,
42:00no foreign entanglements and leave office, please. That's that's his message. And those things are
42:08a good starting point. And they're all on the line. The entire conversation is available right now on
42:15YouTube. You just scan the QR code on your screen to watch or you can, of course, download the
42:20conversation wherever you listen to your podcasts. One more break. We'll be right back.
42:25you
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