>> has items certain. >> to wow. imprint for certain.

>> hi, everyone. >> it's 4:00 in. >> new york. do you know the. >> symptoms of the measles? >> according to the cdc. >> it takes 7 to. >> 14. >> days for any. >> symptoms to show. but then this happens. first. >> there is a fever, and. >> that could spike. >> to more than 104. >> degrees. a cough, usually runny nose, red. watery eyes. >> then people with. >> measles can. >> expect tiny. white spots inside. >> the mouth 2 to 3 days after the initial symptoms begin. and then what's. called the measles rash. >> it begins. >> with flat red spots. >> on your. >> face at the hairline. >> that. >> spread down. >> the neck. the chest to your trunk. >> and when you have measles, those spots can become joined together as they spread from your head all over your body. when that rash appears, your fever can spike. to much higher than 104 degrees. we share this

information again from the cdc as a public service, because our nation's public health agencies and their employees are the latest target of. >> donald trump's. >> purge of the federal workforce, and the timing couldn't be more potentially catastrophic. there is a. measles outbreak right now spreading unchecked in communities in our country with low vaccination rates. the person in charge of handling this measles outbreak, as well as the bird flu and anything else that wallops our nation's citizens and health system is right now. robert f kennedy jr. he is a person known the world over, not just for his famous last name, but as an active anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist. he was called a predator by an equally famous member of his own family, and breaking over the weekend mass firings in the thousands all across the department of health and human services. the washington post is reporting that some employees are calling it a, quote, valentine's day

massacre. from that reporting, quote, at the fda, hundreds of staffers received termination notices. those terminated in the food program were working on nutrition, infant formula, and food safety response, as well as ten staff members who were charged with reviewing potentially unsafe chemicals in the nation's food supply at nih, between 1000 and 1200 people received letters as of sunday afternoon, and at the cdc, senior leaders were informed friday that 1269 people, nearly 10% of the agency's staff, would receive termination notices. but friday evening, cdc was sent a smaller list with 750 names. now, according to the new york times, quote, the cdc epidemic intelligence service, the disease detectives who track outbreaks all around the world has apparently been spared because of an uproar among alumni after a majority of its members were told friday that they would be let go. all of

this is happening as experts are alarmed about a completely preventable outbreak of measles, which i just described to you, spreading all throughout west texas, 58 cases there in the last three weeks. most of them are among children and teenagers, and all except for four of those cases are among unvaccinated people or people for whom the vaccination status is unknown. 13 people so far have been hospitalized with measles across our country. measles vaccination rates among kindergartners have plummeted since 2019 to now below the level of vaccinations. you need to have herd immunity. those alarming statistics are thanks to the work of anti-vaccine activists, people like rfk, who peddled debunked theories about the measles vaccine on the island nation of samoa two months before an outbreak there in 2019 killed 83 people. most of those victims were children under five. rfk has denied

playing any part in fueling vaccine hesitancy there, but officials in samoa pointed out that he met with anti-vaccine activists during his visit to samoa. now, the outbreak here in the united states is prompting an unusual call from the conservative leaning wall street journal editorial board. they write this quote we are on the record as skeptical of rfk's nomination. the senate confirmed him. now, the best case scenario would be for kennedy to internalize that he is no longer an activist outsider who needs to take provocative pot shots to get attention. he is the nation's health secretary, and there are children in the hospital with measles who should not have to be there. that is where we start today with some of our favorite reporters and friends. director of the center of infectious disease research and policy at the university of minnesota. doctor michael osterholm is back. also joining us, new york times health policy correspondent sheryl gay stolberg is here and host of the bulwark podcast. msnbc political

analyst tim miller is here. doctor osterholm is it's nice to see you, your, your, your your wisdom and your and your face and your appearance will always harken back to the scary days of covid. but this is a very different, i think, scary moment for parents and for families and for the kinds of things that typically don't have a partizan divide, but that is the old normal. the new normal is that parents are educating themselves about the symptoms of measles. we talk about what we understand about this outbreak. >> well. >> first. >> of all. >> nicole, let me just say that we're really at a. point that i would call the perfect. >> storm in this country where we are seeing, just as. >> you talked about, the rapid destruction. >> and at least surely somewhat of. >> a. >> destruction of. >> the. >> public health workforce, we're. >> seeing a public. >> that has a lot of very different views on. vaccines today, of which they're not. >> vaccinating their children. >> and then we. >> have the viruses themselves. >> which today.

>> are still. >> with us. highly infectious. >> and capable. >> of causing. >> the kinds of serious illnesses you just talked about. >> the case in. >> texas is really a harbinger of. >> things to come. >> it's not. the norm now. >> but i. >> think you're going to see. >> more of these outbreaks like this throughout. >> the country. >> as we see more and more children going unvaccinated. and of course, as we see more coming out of hhs, that suggests vaccines are not safe or the vaccines are not necessary. this is a warm up for what. >> i'm. >> afraid is going to be coming down the pike. >> i think people whose kids are older, or maybe lived at a time when, you know, the vaccines weren't debated, you didn't have prominent figures in either party casting aspersions on them. so you sort of did what what what your pediatrician recommended something a lot of most people still do. but i think people don't recognize that there is something between zero vaccines and all the required vaccines and anything. my understanding is that is it

getting off that schedule leads to outbreaks of diseases the world over. and so can you just talk about the insidious impact of disinformation about vaccines on on throwing a family with young kids off that vaccine schedule and how that exposes kids? >> well, i think that part of the. >> problem is. >> it is. >> true that the vaccine schedule is complicated today. we don't want to make, you know, mixed words about that. it is. but the point of it is it's complicated because we're never been in a better position to prevent more infections with different kinds of vaccines for different kinds of diseases. clearly, we believe that mumps, measles, rubella, the standard childhood vaccines, which are highly effective, very safe. and when illnesses like those occur. they can be very serious. you noted right here 13 of 58 people in this texas outbreak are hospitalized right now. that's incredible for young kids. and so i think the challenge we have right now is how do we reach out to parents? how do we reach out to grandparents to help them

understand the safety of the vaccines, the effectiveness of the vaccines, and that if they don't get vaccinated, it's not an alternative where they will likely get infected with time. most of these kids will know one of these infections, and unfortunately, there may be their child or grandchild that ends up in that hospital bed. >> you called it the destruction of the public health workforce. say more. >> well, as you know, right now we're seeing these major cuts occur. you know, i'm not smart enough to know from a budget standpoint whether we need to make cuts or not in employees. but i can surely tell you one thing without having gone to the harvard business school, that you don't do it this way. these are arbitrary. they are not based on what our real needs are. it's taking a machete to where we should be taking a fine surgical instrument. and it's understanding that this is also our future. we're letting go right now in many of our agencies around the government, in young individuals who are the upcoming leaders of tomorrow. and i think that that's an also

another important point that we will have impact from this kind of activity for a generation to come. and that, to me suggests that you can surely fairly call this destruction. >> what what is the you know, we've covered the dismantling of the fbi, intentional and part of the retribution plan that donald trump frankly talked about as a candidate. what do scientists and doctors and public health people believe? the purpose of the purge at hhs and cdc and nih is even about. >> i don't think we really know. i mean, we all have our favorite pet theories about what is happening. but when you look across the board in all the federal agencies, you know, i think we're going to see the spill back on these cuts over the weeks to months ahead when we see more challenges with forest fires and we see more outbreaks that go not only undetected, but really just in

many ways neglected in a way that we would never have accepted six months ago. i mean, for example, right now in this country, there is a major challenge occurring with children developing influenza, developing a condition called acute necrotizing encephalitis. have you seen a word come out of the cdc about this? they've been prohibited from even putting this kind of information out. this is critical information for parents to know. this is a serious complication of influenza infection, for which there are many cases out there right now occurring. parents should know about this. so if they have children who have these signs and symptoms, get them into the hospital or at least the emergency room as soon as possible. that's the kind of thing that is very, very hard for us as public health people to watch, where we know we can do things to make it better, and we're not given that opportunity. >> can you share with with us and we'll push it out far and wide. but the symptoms are i mean, and this has been one hell of a flu season. i've had my carpets professionally cleaned

multiple times as a house that's been hit by it hard. talk about what those what those symptoms are. >> well, basically it's when your children actually, first of all have influenza like symptoms to begin with. that's how it starts. the fever, the muscle aches, the chills. but then there's a certain lethargy, meaning they just are a certain tiredness, a lack of consciousness where it's very hard to arouse the children. those are the symptoms when they appear. you need to seek medical care immediately. and i can tell you, we know anecdotally that there are situations around the country where we have 12 children hospitalized in boston, ten children hospitalized at stanford and many other locations around the country. and the media is not covering it, and nor is cdc. and this is something we can do something about. if parents understand this occurring now and get their children in early, this surely can be a major step in helping to reduce the risk of serious illness and death. and as you've seen, the number of pediatric deaths right now are climbing

dramatically in this country with this flu season. parents need to understand this, and we're not doing that right now. we're not sharing that with them. and i think that's that's a huge, huge mistake. >> i mean, it feels like we can actually have an apples to apples comparison from some of our early conversations during covid when there was the incredibly rare but the acute condition that struck children. and i wonder if you can just tell us the difference why we don't. and i feel like every parent knew about that and was terrified by it. the new york times wrote some exquisite and harrowing stories about kids that were hospitalized, i believe, at mount sinai in new york city. it was multi-symptom inflammatory something. right? but but tell me what the difference was and why we all knew about that and why. i mean, i'm starting to sweat listening to you talk about this lethargy that accompanies the flu in children that no one knows about. >> well, you know, i think, first of all, we're all tired. we're very tired. you know, the pandemic took a lot out of us.

and people just want to move on. you know, there are some of us who have urged that we desperately need to do a post 911 like review of what happened with covid, so we can learn from what mistakes we made. how can we improve on it? we haven't. we've just moved forward. and i think part of that moving forward is also let's just block out anything that's a problem. this way it's not a problem. and unfortunately our lives don't act that way. our kids, our kids, whether they get sick and die during covid or they get sick from influenza and die from it. bottom line is we are here to be vigilant day in and day out. and i think that that's a challenge we have right now because as i said, people are tired. >> cheryl, you've authored some incredible reporting about what's actually happening. can you take us inside these cuts? >> so one of the things that's. >> really striking about. >> these cuts. >> is they. >> are targeting. >> young people and the up and coming talent. >> and nicole. >> these. are not these are not kids. these are not people who are just, you know, interns and

recent university graduates. we're talking about. >> people who are. >> old phds in microbiology and organic chemistry, you know, public health graduate students who competed for very, very prestigious fellowship programs, who moved here from across the country to help improve the health of the american people who are being told you your services are no longer needed. and i also think it's important to look at the context, right. the public health workforce in this country is really demoralized and beaten down, frankly, after the coronavirus pandemic, we saw thousands and thousands of public health workers drummed out of their jobs. some of them attacked, you know, their homes protested, called nazis, etcetera, overworked and underfunded public health agencies are really struggling. and some of these employees, particularly in the fellowship programs at the

cdc, are farmed out to these local and state public health agencies. so they're going to suffer, too. and then if you take a big step back, you talked about measles, but we're also watching a bird flu outbreak that is could be very, very serious. we've just seen the first death in the united states of someone who had severe bird flu. right now, the cdc says the risk to the general population is low. but if that virus mutates and starts spreading person to person, we are going to see a situation that make covid look like a walk in the park. so i think for all of these reasons, the cuts to the nation's public health and also the biomedical establishment, the, you know, the scientists who are in the laboratories doing medical research are particularly upsetting to people like doctor osterholm, who i quoted in my story and who told me that he talked to 42 graduate

students yesterday. he was lecturing them, and they don't know what kind of future they're going to have in public health. they were hoping to go into public health, and they don't know what happens next for them. >> i mean, the contradiction of a country that's never had more urgent public health needs, and a half of the country that's marinated in lies and disinformation and demonizing folks like doctor fauci has never been more stark. and i, i wonder, cheryl, if you have any reporting of any sort of trickle down of seeing a public. i mean, doctor fauci was revered and respected by the republican president. i worked for by democratic presidents before and after him. i mean, i, i, i wonder how that and to become a doctor and a scientist is such a years long journey that obviously a man or woman puts themselves on that path, you know, separate from the political winds. but i wonder how that has impacted people's decisions to be in this field at

all. >> yeah. you know, i've been thinking about that a lot lately. you know, when i was a young medical writer for the la times, i interviewed jonas salk. he was a hero. he developed the polio vaccine and was, you know, lauded, you know, around the world and certainly in this country. and i've been thinking about how did we get from a place where our politics have infected our public health so much that we could go from salk in the 50s, being lauded as a hero to fauci being one of the most polarizing figures in the united states. and i do think that the backlash against people like doctor fauci and it's not just doctor fauci, it's lots and lots of unnamed public health people who also suffered death threats. that backlash affects the way people view public health measures like masking, like quarantine in a pandemic and also like vaccination. and

it's how we got to where we are today with this measles outbreak in texas. it is because people, frankly, like the new health secretary who have sown distrust in vaccines, that people have become more cautious, more distrustful. and we are seeing it happen on a partizan basis. you know, we know that republicans were, in some states were more likely to die from covid than democrats, which is kind of a crazy thing to think about how our, you know, our our public health is now partizan. >> i mean, it's so fitting, though, tim. this is where we are. >> now. >> and it is fitting. >> it's so depressing. and the two things just that stood out to me, listening to, to you guys talk, you know, i mean the there was some element of what used to be, you know, conservatism, right, where we believed in this, you know, their, their incentives, right.

>> that. >> that. >> you know, free that free markets in. >> a, in. >> a country, you can incentivize people to want to go into certain industries. as you listen to sheryl talk about jonas salk, right. there was also this period where we were all growing up, like being a doctor, being somebody that wanted to, you know, help people and protect people was this very valued position in. >> our society. >> and i've got a lot of friends who are doctors, some of my best friends. and, you know, i've worked an infectious disease hospital here in new orleans. and it's like, if you're graduating from med school right now, why would you want to go into this? right? like what? they are making the incentives such that. >> they're trying. >> to repel people from going into a career that serves all of our interests, that serves the public health, that helps your loved ones stay healthy, right? like if we're going to cut funding or put a pause on funding for infectious disease research, if we're going to fire everybody that wants to go into public health or fire everybody that's already gone into it, that's on a probationary period.

who are these folks going to do? you know, i mean, like the incentives are to go into, you know, to do other things in the medical world that are more, more lucrative and like, that's what's going to happen here. there are going to be long term ramifications and like that. so that's one thing. and the short term ramifications are like so predictable. and at the beginning of the segment, you played that wall street journal editorial and it's like, who are these guys like? they they did a editorial last week complaining about trump's tariffs and how trump was trying to pressure for lower interest rates, because that's going to raise prices. you know, both of those things are going to be inflationary. and now they're complaining about rfk. all these guys are doing is exactly what they campaigned on. and like donald trump, campaigned with the country's leading anti-vax activists. he campaigned saying tariffs are a beautiful world like we are getting exactly what he promised. and i think that it is pretty noteworthy that we're already starting to see from some of the folks that supported him, maybe a realization that

they're getting what maybe they hadn't wanted to sign up for all that, but but they did. and now we're stuck with it for four years and probably longer. as far as the long term ramifications of these types of things. >> it's this phenomenon, and we'll talk about it more on the other side, where his critics believed every word he said and his defenders, enablers and supporters didn't. and that, to me explains what you see on that page most days of the week. cheryl, we're going to call on you often for your reporting here. thank you so much for joining us today. we want to thank doctor osterholm as well for starting us off. tim sticks around a little bit longer still to come for us. another top prosecutor at the department of justice has resigned after refusing an order from a trump official as a new letter from prominent doj alum urges staffers to stay true to the rule of law. we'll tell you about that story next. and later in the program, brand new reporting on an oval office meeting with golf people,

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>> that is. >> the reason. >> the reason. >> i thought it's ♪♪ grandma! ♪♪ still taking yours? everyday! made to care for you, every day. nature made, the #1 pharmacist recommended vitamin and supplement brand. five nights a week. >> now is the time. so we're going. >> to do it. >> settle in the rachel maddow show weeknights at nine on msnbc. >> what we do is try to cut right to the bone of what we're seeing in washington that day. one of the country's top prosecutors, the head of the criminal division at the u.s. attorney's office in washington, d.c. that person oversees criminal cases in the nation's capital, has resigned. her name is denise chung. she has been in that office since 2000. she

departed abruptly after interim u.s. attorney ed martin asked for her resignation when she refused to send an order to a bank to freeze assets. she believed there was not enough evidence to do that. chung praised her colleagues in her resignation letter this morning for, quote, following the facts and the law and complying with our moral, ethical and legal obligations, the need to focus on that exact mission, following the facts and the law guided by ethical obligations, is the subject of a letter from hundreds of former federal prosecutors, including former special counsel jack smith. they write this quote as prosecutors, we were rightly prohibited from making criminal charging decisions based on someone's political association, activities or beliefs, or because of our personal feelings about them. against this backdrop, we have watched with alarm as these values have been tested by recent actions of the department's leadership. some of you have been ordered to make charging decisions based expressly on considerations other than the facts and the

law, including to serve solely political purposes. several of you have resigned, and others are wondering what will happen to the department we served and revere. to all of you. we communicate this. we salute and admire the courage many of you have already exhibited, and that will guide all of you as you continue to serve the interests of justice. you have responded to ethical challenges of a type no public servant should ever be forced to confront with principle and conviction in the finest traditions of the department of justice. let's bring in to our conversation former top prosecutor at the department of justice, msnbc legal analyst andrew weissmann. he signed that open letter to current federal prosecutors. we just read from also joining us, nbc news justice reporter ryan riley. tim is still with us as well. ryan riley on the reporting. do we know whose asset she was asked to freeze that she refused to freeze? >> yeah. three sources tell nbc news this had to do with grants that were put out during the. biden administration, involving the environment through the

environmental protection agency. and so but what you're talking about ultimately here is the government ordering. ordering is the key word here, a bank to freeze assets that no longer in the possession of the federal government. and in order to meet that. >> threshold. >> there is a line that you would have you would have to meet. right. and so she was not willing, she said that the evidence did not support writing a letter to the bank, telling them to freeze these assets. and that's why she sort of drew the line here. what the letter that i read, what it lays out is that she was, you know, willing to sign a letter essentially saying that there could should be further investigation here. but what it sounds like is that the fbi was going to be willing to send this to this letter to the bank, but that she and she said that, you know, there could be something more investigation looked into this. but, you know, if you step back for a moment, what you have ultimately is, according to her resignation letter, the deputy attorney general, acting deputy attorney general of the united states is office directing a criminal prosecution and skipping all of those layers that typically go

in in between here. the idea was that there was going to be this opening of a criminal investigation involving a line assistant u.s. attorney within the u.s. attorney's office in d.c, and that was going to be directed by the deputy attorney general's office. so, you know, this is a huge another significant, another significant resignation. she is someone who's very well respected within the justice department and, you know, by her a lot of her colleagues. so this is something i think that, you know, is another sort of warning sign about the way that the trump administration intends to and is using the justice department so far. >> well, i mean, let me read some of what you're what you're laying out from her letter. she writes this, i was asked to review documentation supplied by the office of the deputy attorney general to open a criminal investigation into whether a contract had been unlawfully awarded by an executive agency before the change in administration, and to issue grand jury subpoenas pursuant to this investigation. i was told there was a time sensitivity and action had to be

taken that day because there was concern that contract awardees could continue to draw down on accounts handled by the bank handling the disbursements. i confirmed with others, all of whom have substantial white collar criminal prosecution experience and reviewed documentation provided by the deputy attorney general and determining whether the predicate for opening such a grand jury investigation existed. despite assessing that the existing documents on their face did not meet the threshold, an office of deputy attorney general rep stated that he believes sufficient predication existed, including in the form of a video where statements were made by a former political appointee of the executive agency in question. clearly, this is this is sort of the heart. this is the actual, you know, if criminal prosecutions begin at conception, this is conception, right? is there is there predicate for investigating a crime? and she says no. and they were going to

force her. what does that portend for the department? >> you know, as you're reading this letter, another thing that also just like registered for me is she's she's so obedient with the justice department rules that have been ingrained upon her for that for 24 years, that, you know, even in her resignation letter, she doesn't refer specifically to the entity that we're talking about here, because, you know, that would suggest that that would be outside of the four corners of the law, right? because someone hasn't been charged yet. so she's not going to say, oh, they referred to this video from this former biden appointee. she puts it in this broad language, leaves it to us to sort of as reporters sort of figure out the details of this, even in her resignation letter. right. she's still obeying those those justice department protocols and those rules that are meant put in place to make sure that individuals rights aren't violated and that people aren't being smeared with the notion of a criminal investigation when the facts don't merit a criminal investigation. and that's what she ultimately, you know, determined here is that this was based on the evidence that she had been presented to this point. there was not enough to

tell a bank that there was probable cause, that a crime had been committed here, and to freeze those assets because you know what you're talking about when you talk about the epa freezing grants. and there was a statement from the epa saying they were going to work with doj at one point to look into those, you know, the money that had already been allocated. but that's a political move. that's not about an allegation of actual fraud or wrongdoing. that's basically just saying we didn't like this thing that the old administration did, and we're going to try to claw back some of that, that money. and that's just not how the constitutional order is meant to work. that was the what the old administration did. that money is already out the door. the government, you know, theoretically shouldn't be seizing back money unless there's actual proven, you know, wrongdoing or at least the suggestion, at least probable cause of wrongdoing here. but that's what you have the trump administration trying to do, basically, the justice department being just like another agency within the federal government, when that's not the post-watergate tradition that we have, you know, especially with the working between different agencies that we've seen where they're sort of

partnering up. that's, i think, a common thing that we've seen, you know, with with us attorney ed martin, for example, he's offered his concierge prosecutorial services to dodge, saying that, you know, they'll help out with any threats against them. just very unusual communication lines of communications that we're seeing. >> but i want to make sure i understand what she's alleging. she's alleging that the deputy attorney general asked her to fabricate a crime when she didn't see one. >> yeah. >> i think. >> that's that's a. >> fair way. >> of looking at it. i want to just underscore some things first. denise chung, full disclosure, i've. >> known her. >> for many. >> many years. >> she's not. >> a. >> friend. >> but she's. >> a colleague. >> many people have known her. i think one of the things that you and ryan have pointed out, she's been a prosecutor since for 24 years. >> that means she is. >> used to serving under many different administrations. nobody would describe her as the deep state she is. she is your classic worker. bee person.

>> who you. >> want in government. so this is who you're dealing with. >> somebody who. has dealt. >> with and worked with republican and democratic administrations. so i want to make sure. that's just like what we've seen in terms of the resignations of key people in the southern district of new york. >> that's who she is. >> super reputable, wonderful reputation. second, i want to make sure people understand, though, what is being said here with the import is the fourth amendment of the constitution. i'm not. >> going to get too nerdy. that is. >> all about protecting. >> all of our privacy. >> it requires that there is factual predication before there is a search and before there is a seizure. that factual predication means there has to be probable cause. what denise is saying in her resignation letter is she looked at all of the evidence that was given to her by the deputy attorney general's office, and she did not see probable cause. she did not even see enough to really go

forward at all. she said, maybe you. should look at something, but you. cannot issue a freeze letter. just to be clear, a freeze letter is not some oh, this is a nice little letter. it's seizing an account under the fourth amendment. that is a seizure. it requires probable cause. it is a constitutional prohibition on what the government can do unless it has that factual predication. and she is saying, i looked at this, my career, people looked at this and we could not go forward. and she is being told do it anyway and to for her to resign over this. somebody who is think of the think of somebody who spent that long devoted to the justice department, to public service and to policy. she may have agreed with it or disagreed with from time to time. that's that's, you know, that's what happens when you're in government. you don't agree with everything. but, you know, we've

talked about this. elections have consequences for this. for her to be saying, i cannot do this. it's because it is so over the line. and it's not it is a constitutional prohibition that she is saying, i am not doing that. this could not be more serious, not just because this is like a canary in the coal mine. it's the coal mine coming. it is. you have to put it in context of what we were just talking about. and there's going to be a hearing tomorrow in the southern district of new york. it's all of a piece of really lawless action that's being ordered to be taken by people who have taken an oath to the constitution and are willing to suffer the consequences because they're not going to violate that oath. >> yeah. and i mean, i'm not foolish enough to think, oh, this goes too far for donald trump. but i do think that the rubber will meet the road. she was obviously very good at prosecuting crimes, and he's now down someone very good at prosecuting crimes, because the

people running the department wanted her to make up one. and so i have to take a break. i want to bring tim in and make sure i understand what this story is teaching all of us about the people running the department of justice. we'll have more on this bombshell resignation letter from a top doj prosecutor who has served during times when the country was run by a republican and a democrat and has resigned today. democrat and has resigned today. don't go anywhere. we'll be guest of honor: everyone's here for me! shingles doesn't care. but shingrix protects! only shingrix is proven over 90% effective. shingrix is a vaccine used to prevent shingles in adults 50 years and older. shingrix doesn't protect everyone and isn't for those with severe allergic reactions to its ingredients or to a previous dose. tell your healthcare provider if you're pregnant or breastfeeding. increased risk of guillain-barré syndrome was observed after getting shingrix. fainting can happen so take precautions. most common side effects are pain, redness, and swelling where injected, muscle pain, tiredness, headache, shivering, fever, and upset stomach. ask your doctor about shingrix today. so, what are you thinking? i'm thinking... (speaking to self) about our honeymoon.

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miller, the first sort of chapter of the second trump presidency is being written by individuals like danielle sassoon. and now this prosecutor who has resigned today. let me read more of the letter, and we'll have ryan and andrew decode it where it gets to legally for you and me. she writes this despite expressing some concern about the current lack of evidence of any apparent crime and the need to send out any such letter. the fbi, washington field office personnel were able to consult with necessary individuals, including legal counsel, at their office. i was told that if the fbi, washington field office was unwilling to send out such a freeze letter that you would direct someone from the u.s. attorney's office in d.c. to send out such a correspondence to the bank. however, that contingency did not come to pass, as the fbi washington field office determined they were willing to send out the letter, but asked that i send them an email saying that there

was possible evidence of certain criminal violations. i emailed them and said, based on the information we received, including a video of statements, us attorney's office in d.c. believes that there may be conduct that merits investigation. i mean, the tiktok and the specificity with which she points out something that even non-lawyers like you and i can can understand. she was being asked to manufacture a crime. this is straight up. putin's kremlin tactics. >> yeah. i mean, i'll definitely let andrew continue to decode the specifics of what's happening in this case, but i can help with the players here to help people understand, like who's on the field, the person in the u.s. attorney's office that is making this demand. ed martin eagle, ed martin. so he goes by on social media is a long, a life long conservative activist hack. like, that's what he is. he is phyllis schlafly's

right hand. he was a supporter of the stop the steal effort. he was offering legal help to people that were participating in the cop beatings at the capitol. like, this is this is just taking the wackiest, far right lawyer that you could possibly find off the field and putting him in as the u.s. attorney in washington, d.c. so that is who is making this request. and then, andrew, you know, advocate for denise chung's resume. she's been there for 24 years working under people of both parties. we've seen the other resignations, hagen scott, and he clerked for kavanaugh. and then roberts has multiple bronze stars, describes himself as a conservative republican. danielle sassoon, who you just mentioned, who also has had to resign. she clerked for scalia. so, like, we have serious, you know, conservative legal scholars with with long careers, serious prosecutors of

criminals, and they are being pushed around by pro-insurrection hacks, you know, who are more notable for their tweets and like and that is what's happening and the good and the people with the credibility and the background are now are getting pushed out. and we're going to be left with the ed martin's of the world. and that's a pretty ominous situation for us to be in. >> what happens next? >> well, first i just want to decode where i read that, which is the fbi says, you know what? we'll we'll agree to do this if you, you, the u.s. attorney's. office say that there's probable cause. and denise is like, i can't say there's probable cause. i can say there may be something there. everyone knows that's not probable cause. may is like may and may not. so she's like, i'm not willing to do that. so clearly the fbi wasn't willing to do it. she wasn't willing to do it there. that's these are people who are saying we believe in facts and

law, and we took an oath to the constitution. that's what's going on there. it's like, you know, if you if you are willing to say this, if you've made this independent judgment and this is so remarkable, but this is this is in so many ways, what our government comes down to is that you're counting on people to be faithful to their oaths and look at the facts and say, is this here or is this not? >> it's like a million decisions that you make when no one's watching. >> absolutely. >> right about this teeter totter. and i and i think what's important for people to understand is that people sit on that teeter totter, if you will, every day, and there has to be enough to put it over the edge for someone to be investigated for criminal conduct. and what she's saying with the fbi was saying is that there wasn't. >> right. and that is one of the sort of first lines of defense as to what makes a democracy and what stops us from being a, you know, law of the jungle is that you have people in those positions who are honest, who

are going to be making those factual assessments. obviously, this isn't a question of like, you know, reasonable people can disagree. that's always the case. you don't resign in those situations. this would not be happening if this was a reasonable. people can disagree that that's why you have not seen this except in trump 1.0. i mean, it is just not a case of just, oh, this is a good faith disagreement. this is going to mean that the people, the honest people in government have an enormous sort of target on their back. it is one reason for the letter from the 900 former alumni of the office saying, essentially, we commend you and you're not alone. so that they feel empowered and not isolated, and that people are recognizing the difficult situation they're in. it means that grand jurors are going to. that is, everyday citizens who sit on grand jurors are going to have an extra

responsibility. jurors will have an extra responsibility. and first and foremost, judges. and, you know, they keep on talking about the hearing tomorrow that's going to happen in the eric adams case. the judiciary is going to be continue to be. but i think even more so is one of the very last checks in democracy is going to have a really important role in this administration. >> we've talked a lot about how trump wanted the department to defend and protect him. he said so much. where's my roy cohn? i mean, that was his mantra the first term. what we're seeing already is the other side of that coin using it to pursue perceived political enemies. and there's an update on that we're going to talk about on the other side of a quick break. don't go anywhere. >> all of this can be overwhelming, but it is important to remember there are still checks and balances. there's a lot being thrown at the american people right now, and it is really important to pay attention to it, but it is just as important to recognize

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taking action. >> on people that want. >> to evade. >> who want to help educate these. >> people to evade ice. >> tom homan there, tim miller is talking about congresswoman alexandria ocasio-cortez. he went on a little mini media tour. his next interview was on newsmax, where he called her, quote, the dumbest congresswoman ever elected to congress, end quote, to which she responded, quote, this is why you fight these cowards. the moment you stand up to them, they crumble. homan has nothing. the fourth amendment is clear, and i am well within my duties to educate people of their rights. he can threaten me with jail and call me names all he wants. he's got nothing else. we lift up everyone and anyone sort of standing back and standing up to what is clearly a campaign of intimidation, you know, to say, i've asked the deputy attorney general, this person who was so outside the bounds of the law that a 24 year same person, that

a 24 year veteran of the department of justice in the u.s. attorney's office in d.c, becau that person was asking her to break the law. that is who mr. homan has consulted to see if congresswoman alexandria ocasio-cortez is violating the law by telling people that they have rights. >> yeah, i love aoc's energy there because she's saying i didn't do anything. bring it. you know, you can go on fox and stammer and slur your words and say, you're going to ask somebody in the doj to indict me. it's like, okay, indict me, i what? you don't have anything you didn't do. you didn't do anything like you were just trying to get some cheap views on, like, right wing cable news. like, frankly, i'd kind of rather tom homan be doing that than whatever nefarious plan stephen miller has for the immigration regime. so i like that aoc is doing that. i talked to one of people that was on kash patel's you know, enemies list or whatever recently, and she said the same thing. actually, it was it was like, i

haven't done anything. i would rather you guys just just do it, like put up or shut up. and i think that is a better attitude than some of the accommodation that we've seen in other quarters. and so we'll take that. one of the things you didn't just show up, i just think it's worth mentioning it's been happening this hour. the white house recently just tweeted a video of people being deported and saying that this was asmr, which is like a term for a pleasant sound that people use, that they want to listen to this, they want to listen to the sounds of these deportations, like, these are sick people. they're trying to get attention for their sick plans. and i think that the aoc mindset on pushing back against it is, is the thing we need to be seeing more of right now. >> ryan, let me bring you in on that. i mean, the friction points that have burst into public view around the quid pro quo seeming pro quo pro with eric adams case being dismissed. that led to the resignations of stalwart conservatives to the

resignation today over a case being manufactured. absent evidence. are the first that have that have really that we know about. but i, i wonder what the mindset is inside d.o.j. about the possibility of using the department's investigative and prosecutorial powers to target someone, a prominent critic. >> i mean, a lot of anger and just a lot of, you know, people who are going to stand their ground and, you know, go with the oath that they took and the basis of, you know, the basis of their entire career. right? i mean, the office of public integrity, for example. i mean, the notion that that office was going to just sit down and go along to get along when there's literally integrity in the name is never going to really happen. and, you know, obviously people aren't really able to choose when exactly their moment is when they're going to be faced with that decision and face that line. i don't think that denise chung, you know, came into the office or didn't come into the office yesterday because this

was all on a federal holiday, that she was doing all of all of this work after ed martin sort of gave her a ring. that wasn't necessarily the moment that that that she chose about, you know, some dispute over crawling, you know, getting back aid for environmental programs. that's not like she wrote that in her, you know, in on her, on her planning board a year ago. right. that's not exactly how this where she thought she was going to do the moment, but she knew that there was a line that could that she couldn't be crossed. and that's what she lays out in that letter. so, you know, there's i think everyone's going to have their different lines in the justice department. but i think we're seeing a lot of them being crossed and a surprising number of resignations this early into an administration. >> ryan riley, tim miller, andrew weissmann, thank you so much for spending time with us today. coming up for us in the next hour of deadline. white house, how donald trump is using the power of the bully pulpit as a tool for enriching himself and his businesses. brand new his businesses. brand new reporting on (♪♪) “the darkness of bipolar depression made me feel like life was moving on without me. then i found a chance to let in the lyte.”

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>> it's like there's. >> a whole big. >> oh, you can work from home. nobody's going to work from home. they're going to be going out. they're going to play tennis. they're going to play golf. they're going to do a lot of things. they're not working. >> not working from home. they're playing golf. hi again everybody. it's 5:00 in new york in denouncing federal workers who work from home, donald trump mentioned something curious, playing golf as one of the things he believes federal workers are doing instead of working. while we don't condone anyone's skirting professional responsibilities, trump calling out those for playing golf while on the job feels a little glass house to us because we know during his first term, trump spent a lot of his time ostensibly at work on the golf course. huffington post analysis from december 2020 found that donald trump played golf on his own properties 289 times while he was president, and totaled a taxpayer funded travel and

security bill of $151.5 million for doing so. but besides the rank hypocrisy and questions about who's running the country, there's another factor to all of this. and the reason i'm starting this hour talking about golf. golf isn't just his favorite pastime or an outfit he thinks he looks cool in. it's a big source of money for him. the trump organization owns over a dozen golf courses all around the world, with more soon to come. and the trump family is a business partner with liv golf. that's a league we've covered here in the past. it began just three years ago, which is why with the new york times is now reporting should be on everyone's radar. the new york times explores a meeting that trump arranged earlier this month. quote, the oval office meeting convened by trump brought together the most important leaders in the world of professional golf. jay monahan, the top executive at the pga tour and, via telephone,

yasir al-rumayyan, the chairman of the saudi arabia backed league known as liv golf. the stated goal was to figure out a way to eliminate roadblocks preventing the planned merger between the rival two groups. the new york times continues with this reporting, quote, trump was pushing a merger that relates to his own family's financial interests. that's according to half a dozen former justice department prosecutors and government ethics lawyers. trump's participation in this discussion was a brazen conflict of interest, one of a series that have played out over the past few weeks. with a frequency unlike any presidency in modern times. even the first trump term. that brazen conflict of interest is where we begin the hour with some of our favorite reporters and friends. new york times investigative reporter eric lipton is here. his byline is on that times reporting we've been reading from. also joining us, former congressman from florida, now an msnbc political analyst, david jolly, is here, bbc, us special correspondent and msnbc contributor. our

friend katty kay is here. and here with me at the table for the very first time host of pablo to find out, msnbc contributor pablo torre. why golf? tell me why golf? why trump and why the saudis? >> it's one of. >> his favorite things. >> if not his favorite thing. and this is a story that goes. >> back so true. not genuinely. >> not the office. >> not even his kids. >> playing around. >> being a. >> sports fan is kind of hollow. i know that golf in specific, though, is what he loves. it's what he does. and so this is a story that goes back, you know, i'm old enough to remember 2022 when bedminster, his course right here in the shadow of new york city, was the site of protests by nine over 11 families who said, why is live golf. this league, this this upstart league funded by the saudi arabian private investment fund? why are they coming here to new york city effectively, when, of course, the story of 911 for them has always involved saudi arabia. and donald trump's quote back then was, well, we never got to the bottom of 911.

a bit of a reversal from previous things he had said about saudi arabia before. they were as. maybe entangled with his business interests. but, nicole, this has been something that in the world of sports, i've been tracking for years. the morality around sportswashing saudi arabia, using donald trump's favorite thing, an american institution effectively to basically say how bad? how bad could we really be? all of your favorite athletes are also with us, as is your president. >> and is it the amount of time since nine over 11 that the protests from the nine over 11 families don't hold any sway? or is it the money? or i mean, are there is there any or the slaughter of khashoggi? i mean, is there anything to slow down, live? >> it's a fascinating test of our tolerance for such things. phil mickelson, who's the most famous golfer, really behind live what he said in a conversation with an author, alan shipnuck was, yes, saudi arabia killed khashoggi. yes,

they killed gay people. this is his quote. but we have we have an opportunity to disrupt the business of the pga. okay. so think about that. when it comes to the moral accounting here. golf itself, to its shame, has not been especially concerned with the source of their of their funding here. and so when it comes to bedminster in 2022, i think what you're seeing, unfortunately, is a numbness to stories like this that i think would shock people. certainly in the aftermath of the events in question 911, but also on paper when it comes to wait a minute, you guys are doing this because you want more money from your golf partners, not because of anything resembling a conscience. >> and would live readily. i mean, does trump in on it? does he get a cut out of out of the deal? >> so he has a couple of courses that are business partners with live. they host tournaments there and that's in doral and in south florida. and that's in bedminster, as aforementioned. and so, yes, when it comes to a

merger to come with the pga, because by the way, the pga, which was very, you know, sturm und drang about this, like how dare live. and again, all of their moral compromise come and take our business. what they actually did realize is a merger is in our financial best interest. and so when it comes to trump, yeah, he has he has a couple of tournaments that will absolutely benefit from the reunification of the golf industry. and he will be, as the new york times reporting indicates, a primary beneficiary, given that he is also the person negotiating, perhaps that kind of a detente. >> i mean, i just can't think of anything other than all the parallels and the parallel for ukraine as we talk about this unholy alliance. eric lipton, take me through on what used to be a deal breaker for americans. they didn't like their politicians getting rich off the oval office. but we talk so much about all the things of a bygone era. this story seems to bring that into sharp relief. >> really, the thing that. >> struck us. >> in that meeting that. >> trump held with the pga tour

and then by telephone. with the leader of liv golf. >> was that there's a. law that makes it a criminal offense. if you're a government. >> official to participate in what's called a particular. matter involving specific parties that you have a financial. interest in. >> now, of course, the president is. exempt from the criminal. >> conflict of interest law. he and the vice president are the only two individuals. >> in the executive branch that are exempt. but the. >> fact is. >> that this. >> this particular meeting really. >> served as almost like. >> a textbook. >> example of what the criminal conflict. >> of interest law. >> is, was. >> created to try to avoid was a particular. >> you know. >> particular matter involving specific parties that you have a financial interest in and that could bring you financial benefit. >> so. >> that, you know. >> and it's. >> not the. >> only one, of course. >> i mean. >> you know, the. trump the trump brand. >> is going to be setting up a hotel in belgrade at a site that's owned by the government of serbia. >> and the former. >> defense ministry.

>> site there that. >> nato bombed in. >> the 1990s and has been sitting. largely undeveloped since. >> the trump family has. >> its own. cryptocurrency now. >> which is the same time as the president is. >> appointing the head of the. >> securities and exchange commission. >> that's going to regulate crypto. >> so the. line between their family, personal interests. financial interests and governance. >> is a lot. >> less clear in this in this. tenure than compared to the first term of the. >> president. >> when then it was a matter of people staying at his hotels mostly and buying, you know, drinks. >> at. >> his bar. so it was just the line is less clear this time. >> well, and more foreign. i mean, the saudi sovereign wealth fund is indiscernible from the saudi government's riches. and they've also bankrolled jared kushner's investment. i mean, is it was a remarkable line crossed when trump was enriching himself off taxpayer us taxpayer funds. but he seems to have a much broader moneymaking aperture in 2.0. are there any checks on

that behavior, eric? >> i mean. >> the kind. >> of the whole infrastructure. >> around accountability. >> is largely demolished at this point. >> the inspectors general. >> have been fired. the head of the office of government ethics has been fired. the head of the office of special counsel, who's, you know, this is now going to the supreme court has been removed. the congressional committees, you know, are run by republicans that don't want to subpoena the president. >> to investigate things. >> like this. so, you know, really, other than the courts, there is no process of accountability at the moment. >> to investigate. >> potential violations of ethical standards or norms, even if they're not criminal or, you know, actual legal violations, they're still potentially inappropriate and should be reviewed. >> katty kay, it is, as i said, an ominous sign for democracies. i keep thinking of ukraine. i mean, the negotiations about how the war, the illegal invasion of ukraine and are taking place in

saudi arabia with trump's designees and the russians talk about the, the, the, the unwillingness to even pretend to stand with democracies or the west. >> i mean, i think. >> to some extent what we're talking about in both of these stories, the. commonality is time and amnesia, right? after jamal. khashoggi was killed in. turkey in the saudi consulate just six years ago, there was such an outcry and saudi. >> arabia was. >> condemned as a pariah state by republicans and democrats alike in in this city in washington, dc. similarly with ukraine, when ukraine was invaded, there was a huge amount of support for vladimir zelenskyy. >> he came. >> here and was a rock star who was giving standing ovations. now, in saudi arabia, the future of his country seems to be carved up in what, you know, in my country would be looked like sort of, you know, colonial times where you go out and you

draw rulers with very little thinking about the people who are actually living there. add to that the huge amount of money that gets sloshed around in these deals, whether it's the gulf deal or whether it's the carving up of ukraine, there's going to be a huge amount of money being passed around and both the opportunity for corruption, but also the undermining of our belief, our belief in what is permanent and is right and is, you know, is saudi arabia a pariah for what they did? is vladimir putin a pariah for invading another country? you start, then, to have publics because of amnesia, because it doesn't really matter, because it's far away. begin to question what actually really matters. what are the moral principles on which countries are founded and democracies are founded? >> david, do you want to take a stab at that? what really matters? >> well. >> i think. >> to. >> donald trump, it's. >> a it's a for profit presidency. >> and i think there's. >> no question that corruption

is the. name of the. >> game. >> the. grift and the graft. >> and, nicole, i think about a year ago, i was at the table with you and rick riley, the author. of commander in chief, i believe, the. golf book. and he used a line that is hard to get out of your mind once you hear it, which is seeing someone's approach to golf is like seeing them in biking shorts. it's very revealing, and i think this is an episode that is very revealing for donald trump, because we know at his. >> core. >> he is an amoral person interested in making money off the presidency. and to katty's point, if that means looking past the grievous crimes of saudi arabia and mohammed bin salam, or if it means overlooking the fact that that vladimir putin tried to annex land of ukraine, sovereign territory of ukraine, he will do it. we've seen the evidence of this in the first term. we're seeing it again in this term and the question of accountability. so does that matter to the american people? yes, i think it does. does it matter to their representatives in congress controlled by republicans? no, it doesn't. which brings us back to the recurring theme of this

administration. accountability can be had through the department of justice, which is not going to happen under this administration. it happens through the courts, which is slow and a bit elusive. or the. immediate accountability can happen through the congress. the democrats controlled congress. there would be hearings tomorrow on this. if democrats control congress, they would be opening up impeachment over. impeachment inquiries over some of the stuff we've already seen of this administration. it is because republicans have collapsed on capitol hill that donald trump is actually getting away with this. but the american people care. and i think these types of moments are going to inform the midterm elections in a very strong way. >> i mean, isn't clinton cash one of those famous, iconic right wing books that fueled the anti-clinton? i mean, it is it is hypocrisy on on so many steroids. they're going to have to make more. i mean, i want to ask you, eric lipton, i think the headline on the story, at least online, is about trump crossing all these ethical boundaries with a pliant

congress. can you, can you. yeah. i mean, just just talk about what what would have happened if. i don't know if joe biden had done any of this. >> yeah. i mean, there would be, you know, i guess it depends. if there was a republican congress, then there would have been subpoenas and investigations and special committees, you know, created to just like, you know, the investigation of hunter biden. and although, you know, there were solid reasons and with hunter biden to be doing those investigations back then, but i think that, you know, right now there's a congress that has no appetite for this. the democrats will write letters that they will send to, you know, various offices. they will have press conferences, but they really don't have sufficient power to actually, you know, create, you know, legal, significant response to the things that are happening. they're really just sort of almost bystanders at this point. and the republicans are so closely in line with trump, there's just there's no opening

for a deviation to challenge him at the moment politically. >> i mean, and this is where we come back to uncomfortable and inappropriate questions about golfers, right? i mean, i think david diagnosed the problem. one of the two political parties has collapsed. it's collapsed around what is been reported, meetings that happened that no one denies, reported by by some of the best journalists in the new york times. so we turn to golf and we say, well, does anyone there oppose? are there any golfers with moral objections to merging with liv at trump's direction? >> it's remarkable how this is in my in a microcosm, a parallel to what we're seeing politically. your question about what would the republican party do if this was happening to them? think about it. the america first party allegedly is handing golf to saudi arabia. saudi arabia will be, if it already is the most powerful country in the sport. okay. and so when you add that to this larger question of is this even

vaguely good for fans of golf, the answer has been no. liv golf as a product is not a good product. it's not popular. people don't enjoy it. it broke apart this thing that people love. >> golf the pga. >> yeah, right. >> and so look in that description, i think you can see a bit of the metaphor for the country at large. it's a it's a case study in corruption that benefits nobody but the people who are in that room negotiating this merger. >> is there any sport that you think could withstand the pressure and the money? >> so we're testing that now because currently in the nfl, in the nba they are welcoming. they're testing the waters by selling minority stakes of their teams to private investment funds. and so we've seen the middle east come in to the most american institutions. left right. nicole, we say this all the time in sports. the lone monoculture we have is football is american sports. and right now we're we're actively

testing. do people really care if we sell piece by piece in a way that is not subtle? if we sell this stuff to foreign powers that are not at least once upon a time, they weren't allies to the american interests. and i think right now what you're seeing is, as someone once said, who was very wise, the answer to all your questions is money. and that is the answer pretty much across the board right now. >> it's amazing. i'm going to ask all of you to stick around through a quick break. i want to come back to the, the book about trump as a golfer. oh yeah. because the point was also that you can learn everything about someone by how they golf and trump cheats at golf. so i want to press on that open door that david jolly opened for us also had the alarming risk to u.s. national security posed by donald trump's hand-picked and now confirmed director of national intelligence, and also his willingness to empower and elevate vladimir putin as he tries to reshape the world order

as we know it. former deputy director of national intelligence, someone we quote all the time around here, sue gordon will be our live guest later in the hour deadline. white house continues after a whhave you always had trouble quick bwith your weight?ywhere me too. discover the power of wegovy®. with wegovy®, i lost 35 pounds. and some lost over 46 pounds. and i'm keeping the weight off. i'm reducing my risk. wegovy® is the only weight-management medicine proven to reduce risk of major cardiovascular events such as death, heart attack, or stroke in adults with known heart disease and obesity. don't use wegovy® with semaglutide or glp-1 medicines or in children under 12. don't take if you or your family had mtc, men 2, or if allergic to it. tell your provider if you plan to have surgery or a procedure, are breastfeeding, pregnant, or plan to be. stop taking and get medical help right away if you get a lump or swelling in your neck, severe stomach pain, or any of these allergic reactions. serious side effects may include pancreas inflammation and gallbladder or severe stomach problems.

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the cost. choose spot customizable pet plans. >> you. >> both will love. >> we're going to start with breaking news on capitol hill. >> mounting questions over the future of tiktok in the us. >> president trump has promised to carry out the largest deportation force in american history. >> reporting from. >> philadelphia to. >> el. >> paso in. >> the palisades. >> virginia. >> from msnbc. >> world headquarters. >> here in new york. >> we're all back. eric, i want to come back to you on the reporting. the sort of body of reporting from the first term. and you're now calling david fahrenthold did a lot of this on the emoluments clause and all the conflicts of foreign leaders staying at the hotel. the post office was, was, was sort of a definitive body of reporting that gave a lot of people a lot of pause. and the trump folks spent a lot of time spinning

that away. this seems to be a whole new era, and there doesn't seem to be any pushback from anyone in your story on on the facts or the ethics. just compare the approach to conflicts in the first term to what you covered in the story today. >> yeah, there just seems to be a quite. a fundamental difference from the trump family, including the trump sons and particularly eric trump, who, you know, during the first term, they took this position that they weren't going to do new international deals. and they. >> were hesitating. >> and they didn't even want to create, you know, an appearance of engaging in new transactions with foreigners. now, i mean, they have like four different pending deals with the saudi arabia real estate company. and they, you know, in saudi arabia, in dubai, in oman, and, you know, they they have deals that are pending in vietnam. and there's there seems to be no

kind of hesitation to continue to reach out and to do things that create appearances of conflict of interest. i mean, in, in, in oman, they have, you know, a project that's being built on, on land owned by the government of oman. and even steve witkoff, who is the special advisor. he has previous financial relationships with the sovereign wealth fund that helped buy one of the hotels that he was an investor in. so there's just there's very little dividing line between, particularly in the middle east, their business transactions and their deals are blurring. the financial and the foreign policy. it's hard to divide the two at the moment. >> katty, what could go wrong? >> an enormous amount could go wrong, right? i mean, if you there is a reason that you don't want to think that your elected leaders. and it's why every other elected leader is in the position of having to declare their interests in this way, that you don't want to think that american foreign policy is being dictated to by the

financial desires of the president or the president's family. i mean, you know, the fact we began this, as we were saying, the fact that the head of the saudi sovereign wealth fund is also the head of the chair of the live tour, is also the person who is helping to bankroll jared kushner's own private equity fund. it's very enmeshed. and so at what point are can the american voters think to themselves, right. i know that my vote is being cast and is being respected. and american foreign policy is being driven by my interests and my national security, as opposed to the interests of whoever is in the white house. and, you know, this is not to say that previous presidents have been lily white. they haven't all been lily white. but there was a lot of attention was paid to hunter biden and to his. why did he sit on the board of burisma, and why was he calling up his father with his business associates? and the similar amount of scrutiny needs to be put on the

trump family. but because there are so many of these business interests, a lot of them thanks, you know, to the reporting, we've just been talking about that some of it's being exposed. but there are so there is so much of this that is potentially happening. >> i mean, there's no comparison, though, to donald trump in the oval office merging the pga and live tours. there's not. >> it's pretty on the nose in terms of, hey, you want to know what american sports dystopia looks like? it looks like that. and look, the golf thing, the cheating at golf thing, just to bring that back. >> riley's reporting. >> yeah. look, it reminds me of this whole thing about elon musk cheating at video games, right? so. >> you. >> know. >> you. >> could do that. you can. and you can also eventually admit you were cheating at video games, but not be held accountable at all for doing so, despite it being deeply pathetic to brag about this thing. but the parallel to elon cheating at video games and trump cheating at golf is that their behavior on really low stakes things is instructive when you consider what actually matters. right. this is what they take pride in

personally. so what happens when you're actually making a decision about how to behave or hide something or corrupt something? when it comes to your bottom line, it's deeply troubling and symptomatic of a larger personality and a larger trend that you would cheat at something like golf. it's embarrassing. >> what is. >> the potential for any blowback at a consumer level? i mean, i mean, i feel like sports people need sports right now, right? i mean, i'm counting the days till baseball starts. i mean, i mean, people need their sports and i think they view them as a place where maybe we don't have the political fights with families or friends because we're just on the same side rooting for team. but what what is the potential for a fan base or a team base to say, i don't i don't want to go to a sport or a game or be a fan if my money is going into the hands of the trump hotel in oman. >> yeah. the biggest benefit that trump has in navigating

that particular stew of interests is that people do see it as an escape. and so their instinct is to say to engage with this, to protest it is to fuel something that i use to run away from. i use sports to run away from it. but we have seen protests in sports. >> the nba, major league baseball moved the all star game out of atlanta after they passed a voter suppression law. that seemed like an anomaly, maybe not a trend. >> well, also in europe, when the super league the big i mean, that's a separate episode of your show. but when there. >> was this. >> when there was this proposal to let's change the way soccer works in europe, let's make it so that the very rich people who run these teams don't have to worry about not being in the playoffs and so forth and so on. there were actually fans in england occupying stadiums, and the reason why was because they felt that it would ruin the product. it would ruin the thing they love. and so really what

i'm saying is a warning to sports fans right now, we're seeing in golf the beginning of that. you've seen the fracturing of your sport. you've seen this new saudi backed liv golf thing, which no one really likes. you're seeing a proposed merger at donald trump's knee. i don't think this ends well for sports fans. and i say that because typically when donald trump is acting in his own self-interest, it tends to be himself and his interests that profit, not the people who are paying money to go to this thing they grew up loving with their dad. >> yeah. i mean, and i think, david, this comes back to what you said. i mean, people sports are very lucrative and very expensive, right? it's a ticket that represents a treat, a birthday present. right. it's a memory. it's an investment in, you know, your kid's childhood, taking them to an opening day. and to think that it's got all this stuff behind it now is a liability.

>> yeah. look, sports. >> fans will speak with their pocketbook. and we've seen dips in kind of the sports economy of different leagues depending on different eras. but voters, whether sports fans or not, speak with their ballots. and i think you get a twofer there to see how america responds to this second administration. i what i'm looking for, nicole, and i believe this will come to fruition. i think we are entering a midterm election where money in politics becomes a. very real issue. we see it about once a decade where money in politics all, all of a sudden becomes this very prescient issue on voters minds. and i think what trump and elon musk and others are teeing up here is the threat is from the corruption and the self-enrichment and the conflict of interest and conflict of decision making on the world stage with our own national security. but it also speaks to the wealth gap at a time when people feel like they are being left behind. and the likes of donald trump and elon musk and half of trump's cabinet are the billionaires getting more billions? unless this economy becomes white hot for all different groups of american

people. >> that is. >> the only thing that might save donald trump from this theme developing going into the midterms. i think this could be a midterm where money and politics speaks to the corruption, to the wealth gap, to the conflicts of interest of the administration. and you are already feeling kind of this compelling movement among voters that are saying, wait, i feel like i'm being left behind. and in the first 30 days of the donald trump administration, the rich are getting richer. nobody's checking or holding them accountable for their grift and their graft. and i think those voters are going to show up next november if this economy doesn't get white hot for them as well. >> david jolly, eric lipton, katty kay, pablo torre, thank you so much for being at the table. to be continued. we'll do 2.0 tomorrow. yes. okay. thank you so much. ahead for us, one of this country's leading voices on just about everything, but especially intelligence and national security, on what she sees as the biggest threat posed by a second trump presidency. former deputy director of national intelligence, our dear national intelligence, our dear friend sue gordon will be here.

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love it. i carry it every day and then every wallet. it has like an unlimited lifetime warranty so you don't worry about it falling apart. check it out@ridge.com. >> it's happening right now. it's being rewritten, remade, reshaped as we speak. potentially entirely new world order. the only question is whether it's a permanent one. a decades proven fabric of alliances, mutual security has been doused in gasoline and set to burn to the ground. new york

times is reporting that leaders in europe now accept their new reality, one in which its most powerful ally has begun acting more like an adversary on this new go it alone era. trump's plan to negotiate a peace settlement in ukraine with putin, with neither the ukrainians nor the europeans invited to take part, has forced days. leaders in capitals like berlin, london and paris to confront a series of hard choices, painful tradeoffs and costly new burdens. putting aside the obvious foreign policy implications associated with turning one's back on our allies, there are critical national security questions that impact all of us, as well ones. the new director of national intelligence, tulsi gabbard, is going to be asked at some point to have answers for things like, are americans less or more safe today than we were yesterday or last month? joining our conversation is the former deputy director of national intelligence, sue gordon. we turn to you at dire moments, at

a fork in the road moments for the country. we have taken the other fork and it now seems, and it's been reported out by reporters on the trump beat, that the frantic and valiant efforts by folks like h.r. mcmaster and john bolton and general kelly, dina powell and others to insist that trump affirm america's commitment to article five and to the nato alliance aren't even being endeavored this time. do you see our withdrawal from nato as inevitable? >> gosh, i. >> hope not. >> it it it is. >> a really. >> consequential time. >> nicole. >> and thanks for having me. >> and good to see you. you know, this is both about ukraine and. >> not about ukraine. >> it really is. >> and you. >> said it. well, it's about a world order that i believe has

already changed. and russia and china have. >> and are in. >> the process of establishing their positions. >> and the. >> only one that. >> hasn't really decided. >> on its position. >> is. >> the united states. >> and the. >> consequence of that indecision is playing. >> out now. >> because free and open societies really do. >> depend on the united. >> states to. >> be the partner. >> the standard bearer, the voice. of those freedoms, whether that's. >> freedom of navigation. >> freedom to be sovereign, all those things. and so and so. i think that's what's playing out in addition to a very real and very real for the. ukrainians and very real for europeans, conflict in ukraine. so it's a it's. >> it's super consequential. and it. >> it actually if i, it.

>> is a moment that. >> intelligence and. >> national. >> security is made for, it is where we have the potential to shed insight so that great decisions can be made. but we are rushing to action almost irrespective of outcome. and though. >> the women and men of. >> the intelligence community. >> have been in these consequential. >> moments before providing their craft, their expertise and their insight, it. >> now is. >> up to a bunch. >> of. >> new players to both see the seriousness of. >> the moment. consider the consequence. >> of the actions. and in the case of director gabbard, who has. one of the greatest jobs ever. and i'm insanely jealous that that she has the job i so enjoyed. she has the opportunity

to really put in front of the president. she's like the last voice. the considerations that could help different decision making. >> and then last. >> thing before i shut up. >> and. >> let you drive is i was thinking about this segment today, and i had this weird moment of if we could have replayed 1972 and the decision to normalize our relationship with china, thinking that by making them and welcoming them in to the world economic diaspora, that would kind of modulate their behaviors. what we learned is we were not very thoughtful about what their aspirations were. and we are, in fact, in this moment with them, something we're not even talking. >> about. >> right now, in part because our hubris made us think about what we wanted from that moment rather than really understanding them. >> and i. >> think there's some good lessons there for this. >> well, isn't the hubris playing out in terms of what trump wants from a relationship

with russia and sacrifice? i mean, the idea, the trump story is old and a little tired, frankly, but it always comes back to things that all normal people that have worked for democratic officials and republican officials and all normal americans thought were sacred. i mean, every town in america has a parade that honors veterans of all wars. and if there are any from world war two, they are always the most cherished. and if you go to a baseball game and the veteran that's being honored at that game is from world war two, young old men, everyone goes crazy. it is this thing that shapes how people think of themselves as americans. if you're lucky enough to go to normandy and you walk among those graves, i mean, americans died on the beaches of normandy. fighting what? fighting the people. trump is cozying up with the people. i mean, how do you reckon with that right now,

personally? >> the idea that a sovereign nation was invaded was, had visited. >> upon them. >> not only horrific damage, but cruel damage against their citizens. somehow, with our help and with nato's help and sheer will, have withstood that. and now, in order to achieve peace defined by somehow us, not them, we would suggest that they are in fact, the ones that. need to. make concessions, that that's it's an upside down world. it's upside down. and the consequence of this i, i, i just the

consequence of this and then we'll get to the hopeful signs. the consequence of this is just huge. everyone is watching. all the small democracies in europe are watching to decide who they need to align with. when a threat is made to them, europe is deciding who they're going to partner with. and if people don't understand. throughout my short history of 30 plus years, the numbers of times it was canada or finland or new zealand or japan or somebody else that did a consequential, risky action in order to advance our shared quest. you're not thinking, and if they now are not sure whether we are going to have their interests in mind, especially with a policy that

seems to be we're not going to be present globally, i don't even know how that works out. so it the and think about taiwan watching this and think about she watching this and their decisions. i mean today would we be confident that in a hostile action against taiwan we would respond? i don't i mean that's a tough question anyway. but i think we now know. and then that just changes the balance of power remarkably. and listen, i get it. war is bad. i get it that it costs money. i get all those things. but the consequence of not us in the way that we have been present for those nations in this shared quest of freedom, is really quite shocking. now, here's here's a good sign. these things

do take time. you you tend to get a fair number bites at the apple. i don't know whether we will be able to recover the damage, reputational damage that we've done, whether we'll ever have the kind of trust. because i'll tell you, man, it is a long time. once you've lost trust until you are deemed trustworthy again. and we rely on partnerships to do it. but in the first trump administration, if you remember, the north korea denuclearization talks, you he similarly believed he could get an outcome in a minute. and there was huge effort by the women and men of the diplomatic corps and national security who worked really hard to put information in front of him so that he could see what was really going on below the surface, not just in the

conversation he had by these folks. and in the end, it did change his decision such that he walked away from that. and so that would be my counsel to director gabbard is, you know, you may be new, but the community is not. there is breathtaking wisdom and expertise and craft and energy that can be brought to bear to make sure that anything that we engage in is done so with a mind toward the lasting outcome that is consistent with who we are, not the immediacy of being able to say, you got a peace deal. >> i have to sneak in a break, but i want to press you on whether what is public facing suggests that she would do that. we'll be back with sue gordon on the other side. >> all of this can be overwhelming, but it is important to remember there are

still checks and balances. there's a lot being thrown at the american people right now, and it is really important to pay attention to it, but it is just as important to recognize how many of those things are getting announced. but they're not happening at all, or at least not yet. just try to remember we are not looking at the final score. we are still in the final score. we are still in the first quart ever feel like a spectator in your own life with chronic migraine? 15 or more headache days a month, each lasting 4 hours or more. botox® prevents headaches in adults with chronic migraine. in a survey, 91% of users wish they'd started sooner. so why wait? talk to your doctor. botox® effects may spread hours to weeks after injection, causing serious symptoms. alert your doctor right away as trouble swallowing, speaking, breathing, eye problems, or muscle weakness can be signs of a life-threatening condition. those with these conditions before injection are at highest risk. side effects may include allergic reactions like rash, breathing problems, dizziness, neck and injection site pain, and headache.

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as an individual, donating to the aclu is one of the most powerful things you can do to fight for justice. together, we are a force to be reckoned with. so please join us today. call now or go online to myaclu.org. they've got to get past us. all of us. with the story that just crossed my desk. trump just said this, suggesting tuesday that ukraine was responsible for russia's invasion of the country three years ago, arguing kyiv could have made a deal to avoid the conflict. quote. you should never have started it, trump said of ukraine while criticizing president zelensky, who had expressed concerns that his country was not included in talks between the u.s. and russia tuesday and saudi arabia. quote, i think i have the power to end this war, and i think it's going very well. but today

i heard, oh, well, we weren't invited. well, you've been there three years, trump told reporters at mar a lago, quote, you should have never started it. you could have made a deal. what does that suggest he's getting in terms of the competence and sophistication of the intelligence professional to say something like that of ukraine, who didn't start the war at all? >> that's just untrue. everything he said in that statement, everything is untrue. you know, it's a it's a two part game where, you know, when you're in the intelligence official, your whole quest is not only to come with relevant information, but to find a way to be heard. you know, when i go in, i tell myself, what do i need to make sure he hears, and what do i need to make sure he misunderstands? but but this doesn't seem to be even that normal. nicole and i would just.

i would just say that to director gabbard. i didn't hear anything in her confirmation that suggested that she understood the myriad of issues, not just this one that lands on her that she is going to have to address and be good enough in order to for the nation to get good outcome so that the ripple effect of this will be huge. and then we're over to the middle east and gaza and iran and china. and what about our assessments of technology and how do we bring ai in, and how do you make sure you have a workforce that can deliver that? so i haven't heard her say anything, and i will say that it is moving so fast, and it doesn't seem that the president even wants to hear an idea that is contrary to his. but you've

got to try because you are in this role. what? i said it when i think we first talked. you are not policy anymore. you are doing everything you can to bring the wisdom that makes for good policy. so have i heard her say anything that tells me she understands the magnitude of the issues upon which intelligence will play. i haven't, but i would say you have the opportunity. and again, she's new, but the intelligence community is not. and if i were to tell her she needs to do one thing right now, she needs to engage her workforce. she needs to stop any insanity of just willy nilly getting wary of workforce and remind them who they are, what they serve, and to keep their eyes in the boat. because this moment, this nation requires them to do it. and then she needs to work every day.

but, nicole, whether that's going to be this outcome, i don't know. but the idea. that no matter what piece you believe needs to happen, you would ever start with the line that somehow ukraine's behavior behavior has caused this to happen. that is a really problematic point of departure. >> i am going to say this on tv, because i feel like i have the force of my viewers behind me. we we're going to need you, and i think i have a window into your love of this country and your love of the people behind the intelligence product. and there's perhaps no workforce more voiceless than the intelligence community. so we're going to continue to call on you, and we're going to need you. we're going to need you to talk us through this. so thank you very much for joining us today. to be continued, my friend. >> you're welcome. >> you're welcome. >> quick break head & shoulders is launching something huge. ♪♪

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