transcript

Speaker 1:
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Speaker 2:
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Speaker 3:
[00:50] Tonight, on All In.

Speaker 4:
[00:54] New polls show people are not confident that our government is competent. And the president's approval rating stands at 42 percent.

Speaker 3:
[01:02] Donald Trump reminds everyone who's in charge with a major announcement.

Speaker 5:
[01:08] We've stripped all of the paints off, had 200 years of paint, and we've redone it, and it's beautiful.

Speaker 3:
[01:15] Tonight, congressional Republicans start to break with Donald Trump as the president eases into lame duck mode.

Speaker 5:
[01:23] I won't go on a long story about that because a couple of people said he kept talking about the pen. Actually, many people found it interesting, and some people thought I was doing too much of a weave.

Speaker 3:
[01:33] Then Senator Chris Biden-Holland joins me on Trump's Iran mess.

Speaker 5:
[01:39] And they said, we will agree to open this trade, and all my people are happy. Everybody was happy except me.

Speaker 3:
[01:45] Plus, a stunning new reporting on Kash Patel's FBI investigation to a New York Times reporter and Congressman Robert Garcia on the Trump family grift happening right out in the open.

Speaker 6:
[01:57] Joining us now is Foundation Future Industries founder and CEO Sandcat Patak and the company's chief strategy advisor, Eric Trump, President Trump's son.

Speaker 3:
[02:06] But All In starts right now. Good evening from New York. I'm Chris Hayes. You may not see it right now, but I can tell you Republicans are growing restless. They are calculating where their political fortunes lie. And it comes down to a single question. When will the survival of their careers depend on forces other than Donald Trump? Now, for much of a decade, they have answered, not yet. But at some point, Donald Trump will not be the sum total of what it means to be a Republican. And he may be, we may be hurling toward that moment today. As the nation sours on the president, more members in his own party grow willing to tell him, subtly, cajolally, no. I mean, this all really started with Trump's slow rolling of the Epstein files last year, uniting conservatives and liberals in Congress against him, that huge rebellion, right? The discharge petition, the vote against him, leading many to ask about the nature of the president's friendship with the very noted child sex trafficker, Jeffrey Epstein. The Epstein debacle has led former MAGA stalwarts like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert and Thomas Massey to break publicly with Trump. It even led to the firing of Attorney General Pam Bondi, a role now being performed by Trump's former criminal defense attorney. Today, the theoretically independent watchdog of the Department of Justice announced a probe into how the department identified and redacted the Epstein files it released. It remains an issue that haunts sitting members of Trump's administration. Today, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who has admitted to visiting Epstein's island with his wife, kids, and nannies, plural, was on Capitol Hill to defend Trump's flailing economy, and he got tough questions about both stories.

Speaker 7:
[03:50] These are huge historic numbers.

Speaker 8:
[03:51] Well, let me reclaim my time for a moment, Mr. Secretary, because I know, but you can't even tell us how many jobs we've lost. So I don't know about what we're seeing in the future.

Speaker 9:
[04:00] I didn't mean to be theatrical. Don't laugh.

Speaker 10:
[04:02] There's nothing funny about it.

Speaker 9:
[04:03] Don't laugh at my situation about a thousand families out of work.

Speaker 11:
[04:07] I just wanted to ask, why did you publicly claim, following your nomination, that you were never in a room with him after 2005?

Speaker 9:
[04:15] Whatever questions you have, if you would give them to your colleagues, I will answer them. But today, I am here to testify about the budget.

Speaker 3:
[04:24] No abstain questions, please. I don't want to talk about why I said that the first time I met him, I was so creeped out with him that I never wanted to hang out with him again, and then I got caught lying about that because I was on the island with my kids, and my wife, and our nammies. But if Latinx cheerleading doesn't make you feel better about the Trump economy, you're in good company in this country, according to data that even Fox cannot ignore.

Speaker 4:
[04:46] New polls show people are not confident that our government is competent, and the president's approval rating stands at 42 percent. He's way behind on inflation, the economy, and government spending.

Speaker 3:
[04:59] We're now at the point in this administration where some Republicans are openly blasting Trump over his unilateral war in Iran, many prominent MAGA influencers with huge online followings are turning against him. He's then lashing back out of those former supporters saying, quote, they're not MAGA, they're losers. He's calling them low IQ. Of course, just to think about this, those podcasters and influencers, right? They are making their own calculations, not that dissimilar from politicians about their audiences, where the audience is at, where their future audience will be at, and their livelihoods. Right? What's going to make them money? It just so happens Trump doesn't have an historical hold on that audience. Many Republicans are still hopping mad over their loss this week in a Virginia redistricting referendum, which only happened because Trump pushed so hard on red states like Texas to do this mid-decade gerrymandering, creating a redistricting arms race Democrats are now poised to win. Another dumb war Trump picked and lost. It was all reverse engineered to keep Trump from losing Congress, and, this is the only thing he cares about, getting impeached. Just like his bill to take federal control of all the elections, the Save America Act, the thing that Trump said was his number one priority, that he was going to have a legislative boycott of everything until it was passed. Well today, this is interesting. So today, Republican Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana tried to insert that act into the federal budget bill that Congress is currently debating, and he failed because four Republicans joined Democrats to shoot it down. But again, who really cares about legislation when you've got a ballroom to build? As Trump fawns over blueprints and posts endless renderings of his future palace complex, he's leaving it to those increasingly wrestled House Republicans to do the other stuff like passing a budget. As one Trump ally in Congress, Troy Nels, told The Hill Today, House Speaker, quote, Mike Johnson, has a very difficult job. He has the second toughest job in the world. The Lord Jesus couldn't lead this delegation. You mean Republicans might need divine intervention? While the head of their party is picking a fight with Supreme Pontiff, the Catholic Church, today in an exclusive interview with MSNOW, even Trump's first vice president admitted Trump was not the good guy in that fight.

Speaker 12:
[07:09] Well, I found the language in the image is offensive. I think the president was right to take one image down. And his ongoing argument with Pope Leo I think has abated to a degree. And I welcome that.

Speaker 3:
[07:29] If you know Mike Pence at all, if you followed his career, that's about as slashing as he gets. That's the equivalent of him throwing up two middle fingers. Today, all of Trump's petty grievances abated to a degree while he dozed on and off as he likes to do in the middle of a press conference in the Oval Office as his aides spoke on. And again, mid-afternoon, who can blame them? If you keep asking yourself, how are we doing this still? What is this? When will the fever break? It hasn't happened yet. But again, Americans are rapidly turning against Donald Trump, so much so that we are, I think, quite clearly entering a lame duck period. One of the longest I think we're ever going to see in American politics where every Republican politician's calculations for self-preservation are going to shift away from Trump inexorably as well. MSNOW political analyst Claire McCaskill previously served as Democratic Senator from Missouri. Charlie Dent's former Republican congressman from Pennsylvania, and they both join me now. Charlie, I want to go to you first because I don't want anyone to mistake what I'm saying here as like, oh, Republicans are going to grow a spine or they're going to find their- We're past all that. I don't think any of that matters. We're talking purely dispassionate calculation of self-preservation, self-interest, and future political success. Do you think calculations are changing at all right now? And if not, what would it take for them to change?

Speaker 13:
[08:54] Well, calculations have to change for any Republican House member who represents a district that Donald Trump won't buy about 10 points or less, maybe 12 points or less, because they know that they will need some separation from the president. If they don't find separation, it's likely that many of them will lose their races. So for those members, tying yourself tightly to Donald Trump is a recipe for defeat. Now, there are members who are in very safe seats, who can continue to tie themselves to Donald Trump. Their margins may shrink a bit, but they will still be re-elected. So yes, there are Republicans who do realize they need separation. And also, many Republicans are not running again because they understand that the dynamics of this election cycle are just so bad, particularly given the fact that independent voters are turning against Republicans in big, big numbers. Plus, the fact, of course, that we saw what happened with all these special elections and the off-year election, there's been no good news.

Speaker 3:
[09:50] What do you think of the Senate side, Claire, because obviously there's a big uphill battle for Senate Democrats to win back that body. I think it looked really unlikely three to six months ago. It now looks, again, an uphill battle but doable, and I think also begins to start to change the calculations of senators a little bit at the margins, although maybe I'm wrong. What do you think?

Speaker 14:
[10:12] Well, first of all, the ones that are in trouble have had some separation from Trump. You know, Dan Sullivan, and that's the other thing, Chris. I don't think we're giving enough attention to some of these states that are really in play.

Speaker 3:
[10:26] Yeah.

Speaker 14:
[10:26] Alaska is in play. You don't hear a lot about Mary Fadal on national media. You hear a lot about Texas. You hear a lot about Maine. You hear a lot about Georgia and North Carolina. But Sherrod Brown is basically neck and neck in Ohio. Iowa, we've got two good candidates running in Iowa. As long as unity remains the watchword, as long as we stay together after these primaries like we have in Texas, I think Iowa is definitely in play. We have way more states in play that I think most people ever dreamt we would. Now, we just need all the people who support candidates to see the map as large as it really is, and not fall in love with one candidate, but try to help as many candidates as possible, because the dark money is going to be overwhelming for Republicans. The Republican war chest between Trump, who knows if Trump will spend his money for it though? He didn't spend any money in Virginia. So I don't know if he's going to keep his money to give to his kids or just to put in his bank or whatever he thinks he can get away with. But the Republicans are going to have more dark money than Democrats, so small donations are going to really matter.

Speaker 3:
[11:36] Yeah, hundreds of millions of dollars right now already piled up. The other thing, as I'm watching this play out, Charlie, it's very funny. The president, so I've never seen someone in my life. I'm thinking of any job I've ever worked. I've never had a co-worker, a team member, a boss as checked out of the stuff of the job as the president is right now. I mean, it's just so evident. He's replacing the walkway outside. They have a big thing about the reflecting pool. He wants to talk about the ballroom. He wants to talk about the arc. The people in the house are like, hey, could we, we're thinking of some legislation, sir. What do you think about like, it's, they don't care. They could not care possibly less. And I think part of what's interesting, I'm curious what you think. The question of like, what even are you doing at this point? Again, from a legislative standpoint, without Donald Trump, he has defined the goals so much for so long.

Speaker 13:
[12:30] Well, I think the real challenge for Republicans, one thing that Donald Trump is doing to hurt them every single day by not focusing on the economy and affordability and the things that voters care about, he's obsessed with the arch, the ballroom, renaming the Kennedy Center. And by the way, most Americans are never gonna go to the ballroom. They're not gonna get sick of the Kennedy Center. This has nothing to do with their lives. It speaks to a detachment. So he's doing things constantly, fighting with the Pope. I mean, doing all sorts of things that just seem to be alienating voters who have real economic concerns right now. And it's also distracting too, because here we have to get the Strait of Hormuz open and it seems like that's an afterthought compared to the ballroom. So right now, again, if you're a Republican in Congress saying, please, Mr. President, stop hurting us, because that's what he's doing to them.

Speaker 15:
[13:23] He's doing damage every day.

Speaker 13:
[13:24] The president's approval rating is down in the 30s now.

Speaker 3:
[13:27] He 100% cares more about the ballroom, than the straight-ahorn moves. I don't even think that's debatable or contestable. To your point, he's at 33% in the new AP polling. And right now, to talk about the priority issue, right, Claire? The budget bill they're trying to vote on in the Senate, the one that Kennedy tried to attach the SAVE Act to, is this sort of narrow bill to put tens of billions of dollars towards ICE, essentially, and CBP and the DHS. And again, this is at a time when whatever people think about immigration, Trump's under water on it. I can't think of a thing that's less priority right now for most folks than that, than funding ICE and CBP after they've already been funded.

Speaker 14:
[14:11] Yeah, in a lot of communities, large and small, they've seen people who have been in this country for decades, paid their taxes, been contributing to the community, their kids play ball together, they go to church together. They're seeing them swept up. So it isn't the bad guys that are getting deported. It's a lot of folks that have been contributing to America that are getting deported. And so he is underwater on immigration. And the reason he's not talking about things to make their lives better economically is I don't think he really cares. I don't think he, I do honestly believe, I mean, look what happened today, Chris, or yesterday. They fired the secretary of the Navy while we're in war. And you know why they fired him? Because he's not going to get the battleships done in time to put Donald Trump's name on them. And once again, we're back to the theme. It has to be, have his name. It has to be something that has gold on it. It has to be something that's gilded up. And that's really what he is now as a president. And frankly, I would debate somebody with a fair amount of passion, I'm not sure he even cares if he loses the midterms.

Speaker 3:
[15:25] Oh, no, I think he doesn't want to get impeached, but over and above that. And I think one last thing here on the incentives, Charlie, Thomas Massie is facing a primary challenge and Donald Trump hates him and he talks about how rotten he is and he's endorsed his opponent. And I kind of wonder, it's one thing if you're Susan Collins in Maine, right? Or you're a frontline member. The thing you said, which is the vast majority of those in the House and even the Senate are in pretty safe seats where a primary challenge matters. I wonder if that Massey outcome is going to matter. If Massey wins that, if he wins it easily particularly, but if he wins it, whether that changes the calculation?

Speaker 13:
[16:01] Well, Tom Massey is an immovable object. He's an iconoclast and he has a brand in that district. And they know him. So I do think if anybody is going to defy gravity here with Donald Trump in the primary, it might be Tom Massey because he does have a strong connection to his voter base. So I think there are a lot of people there who like both Tom Massey and Donald Trump in that district. And so I would not be at all surprised about that. So keep an eye on him.

Speaker 3:
[16:31] Claire McCaskill, Charlie Dent. Great to have you both. Thank you. Coming up, the president is focused, as we said, on everything. The arc, the reflecting pool, except the war that he launched. Remember that one? Senator Chris Van Hollen joins me next.

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Speaker 2:
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Speaker 3:
[18:08] Today, the Commander in Chief, our wartime president, delivered an Oval Office address to the American people on a matter of grave importance.

Speaker 5:
[18:18] I thought I'd bring up a subject of interest. I do a lot of this as president and try and save money. And one was the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, which everybody knows. That's where Martin Luther King made his great speech. Here's a picture of it. You probably recognize it. Right now, it's got no water in it because it was in terrible shape. It was filthy dirty. I said, what we're going to do is I'm going to call all three of these people that have worked for me in the past doing swimming pools. That's all they can do is a swimming pool. And I said, give me a good price. We scrubbed the surface of the existing granite that's been there since 1922. We then grouted all of the granite, fixed it up, took about two weeks. And now we have a nice clean surface on which we're putting a industrial grade swimming pool topping.

Speaker 3:
[19:17] Life during wartime under Donald Trump, his apparent lack of interest in the war may explain the shifting strategies. Talks are happening, then they're not. Iran is blockading the Strait of Hormuz. Now we are blocking the Strait of Hormuz. Maybe we're blockading the whole world of Iranian ships. Iran is opening the strait. No, actually Iran is closing a strait. No, wait, Iran is actually firing at ships in the strait. There are no negotiations. Negotiations are about to start. Now negotiations are off. Situation remains, again, completely unresolved. In fact, just today, a third US aircraft carrier arrived in waters near Iran. We're stuck right now in this kind of frozen conflict with a definite ceasefire. No guarantee, crucially, of lasting peace, right? We might go back to war at any minute. The President of the United States wants to make it very clear, even though he said, oh, six weeks, we'll be out of there. He is in no hurry. So today, he says, I'm possibly the least pressured person ever to be in this position. I have all time in the world. Iran doesn't. The clock is ticking. A deal will only be made when it's appropriate and good for the United States or America, our allies, and in fact, the rest of the world. Senator Chris Van Hollen is a Democrat of Maryland. He sits on the Foreign Relations Committee, and he joins me now. Senator, do you understand what the current policy posture or strategy of the US government is to bring the conflict to some kind of actual resolution that might put the country on good footing and relieve some of the incredible pressure of oil prices and other prices?

Speaker 18:
[20:44] Chris, the short answer is no, an emphatic no. And of course, President Trump had no idea what the real goal was when he started this war, along with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. And he has no idea what he's doing, which partly explains why he wants to talk about everything else, right? Why he wants to talk about the ballroom, why he wants to talk about the reflecting pool. Meanwhile, the war is costing us all dearly. We're less safe, we're worse off. And when we talk about the price of gas going up for Americans, the president said, and that's not so bad. Well, it may not be so bad for the billionaires in his cabinet, but it is stressing the pocketbooks of Americans across our country.

Speaker 3:
[21:33] You just mentioned the cost, and aside, obviously, from the price of gas and the price of diesel, which has been even more acute, and then we're seeing that sort of cascade through other systems in terms of fertilizer, food and the like. Three or four weeks ago, I think I've had you on and members of the Democratic caucus about a supplemental actually pay for the thing, because we've used a lot of munitions, cruise missiles and things and the like. Talk about $200 billion in Pentagon. I've noticed in the last few weeks, there's been no proposed legislation, nothing's been calendared, and it just went away. Where did we end up on that? They got to get you guys to appropriate it at some point, right? Did I miss something?

Speaker 18:
[22:12] You're not missing anything, Chris. They've decided just to shut up about it because they know the American people don't want to hear how much more this war is costing them, not just in higher gas prices, but $1 billion plus a day in taxpayer money. And so all of that has seemed to quiet down. You know, last night in the Senate, we were up till about 4 a.m. and what they were focused on was stuffing this illegal ICE operation with tens of billions of dollars more in taxpayer money, not talking about ending the war, not talking about bringing down prices, talking about just giving this ICE operation more and more money. This is the vehicle you might have thought they would try to put some of the money for the war in, but they didn't. And so, I'm not gonna support, I'm not voting for one dime for this illegal war that Donald Trump started.

Speaker 3:
[23:13] I guess the question I keep coming back to is like, we know the costs are real. When you deploy that many ships and US service members, and you fire that many missiles, right? Like, you're spending money. At some point, they will have to come to you, right? I don't know when, but do you have a sense of like, the check will come due at some point, presumably?

Speaker 18:
[23:38] Absolutely. And look, we are depleting a lot of our munitions in this war. And of course, at a billion dollars a day, it's going up at a rapid clip. They've talked about a $1.5 trillion defense department budget, Chris, which I assume also includes money for this illegal war. I would point out that the defense department is the one government agency that has never passed a government audit, certainly not in recent history. And so they want to give Pete Hexeth, who clearly doesn't know what he's doing, $1.5 trillion of American taxpayer money. And I think every American, regardless of party, should be looking at that and going, we are not going to fund that department at $1.5 trillion, a huge increase over the current amount.

Speaker 3:
[24:32] Yeah, that would be basically a 50% increase. I mean, an unprecedented increase for just sort of non, you know, not World War II type situation. You've been very outspoken about the other front of this war, which of course has been Israel's invasion in Lebanon, where they now occupy almost 20% of the country. There's a ceasefire today. There's a ceasefire as of today that's going to extend for another three weeks, announced by Donald Trump today after a meeting of Israeli and Lebanese officials. One of the troubling things is Israel has said sometimes government officials and others that Gaza is sort of the model for what they're going to do in Lebanon. And we've gotten news about, you know, homes being demolished today. As a Lebanese reporter killed in Israel, there are of course hundreds of reporters killed in Gaza. Are you concerned about the sustainability of the ceasefire there and about the enduring occupation of the country if, again, that conflict gets frozen in a kind of similar way to what's happening in the street?

Speaker 18:
[25:31] Yes, Chris, I'm very worried because you have, you know, Prime Minister Netanyahu and this extremist Israeli government talking about the occupation of Southern Lebanon, right? They've talked about the Yellow Line, the Latani River. And as you said, their second Minister of Defense, Katz, said he wanted to do in Southern Lebanon what they had done in Ra'afah. I've looked over Ra'afah. I've been to the crossing there between Egypt and Gaza. And it is leveled. It has been reduced to rubble. And so when you have the Netanyahu government talking about doing to Southern Lebanon what they did in Ra'afah, we should all be worried. As you pointed out, we're also seeing journalists killed in Lebanon. One more just the other day. Despite efforts to evacuate her, it looks like the medics were blocked. And as you point out, this is not the first journalist killed in Southern Lebanon, and hundreds have been killed in Gaza. So I very much worry about everything that's happening in this region. And people have kind of forgotten about what's happening in Gaza. It remains a humanitarian disaster.

Speaker 3:
[26:47] Yeah, and to your point, that same Israeli Defense Minister today saying, Israel is ready to restart the war with Iran at essentially a moment's notice, which again, hangs over all this because in the absence of any sort of resolution or signed deal, that's always basically just a day away, depending on what move the President of the United States is in, Senator Chris Van Hollen. Thank you very much, appreciate it.

Speaker 18:
[27:09] Thank you.

Speaker 3:
[27:10] Still ahead, the crazy story of how Kash Patel apparently sick the FBI on a reporter who wrote about his girlfriend.

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Speaker 2:
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Speaker 3:
[28:30] As scrutiny mounts on Donald Trump's hand-picked FBI director, Kash Patel, some people have started calling him not me, J. Edgar Boozer, We're getting stunning new reporting in the New York Times. The Bureau launched an investigation into one of the Times' own reporters last month after she broke a story about Patel, quote, using Bureau personnel to provide his girlfriend with government security and transportation. The FBI told the Times in response, quote, while investigators were concerned about how the aggressive reporting techniques crossed lines of stalking, the FBI is not pursuing a case. After the story broke, Kash Patel went on Fox News to get himself sanitized. Well, that sure doesn't sound like you.

Speaker 20:
[29:11] I'm reading that they're going after you, that you used the FBI, because you didn't like a story about your girlfriend. And is there any truth to that? Because I've known you a long time, it just doesn't sound like you.

Speaker 21:
[29:24] Absolutely not. The reality is, and thanks, Sean, is that this same reporter delivered a baseless story which caused a direct threat of life to my girlfriend. We are going to protect not only me and my loved ones, but every American that is threatened.

Speaker 3:
[29:38] Christopher O'Leary is an MS NOW National Security Intelligence Analyst, served as an FBI Special Agent for many years. He joins me now. It's good to have you here. So first, just the sort of substance reporting here is, there's reporting on the fact that Patel is using Bureau resources and the plane, right, to have his girlfriend travel, to travel to be with her. And then the New York Times reports that the reporter who wrote that was then investigated within the FBI for possible criminal stalking charges until people either inside the DOJ or FBI were like, You can't do this. What's your reaction on that?

Speaker 22:
[30:10] The reaction is this was most certainly a directive from FBI headquarters. There's no special agent in the field that's going to initiate this investigation on their own. Number one, special agents who join the FBI join it because it's a vocation. It's not a profession. It's a calling. It's something that they do for the country. And they swear to protect and defend the Constitution, not violate some basic concepts of freedom of the press or freedom of speech, which Director Patel seems to do comfortably. The other issue is if an agent of field office would have opened this investigation, it would not have gotten past their chief division council. It never would have gotten to DOJ.

Speaker 3:
[30:52] Right.

Speaker 22:
[30:52] So...

Speaker 3:
[30:52] Right. It must have come from the top down.

Speaker 22:
[30:54] 100%. And the other issue that he's having is this is not the New York Times, the only people reporting this information. This story has been out there. He has acknowledged that she has a security detail, which is completely inappropriate. And frankly, it's fraud, waste and abuse of government resources. We're in tax season now. Our taxpayer dollars for four special agents to pay for their billet, their salary, administrative costs and operational costs. They're GS13, so it's roughly 250,000 a piece. So just for four incredibly capable agents are dedicated to this. We're talking a million dollar baseline. But also at what cost? What are they not working? What are the other national security priorities that the FBI is supposed to be dedicated to and these resources are being used to protect his girlfriend? Listen, she might have threats against her.

Speaker 3:
[31:52] Yeah, and I'm sympathetic to the fear of that for sure.

Speaker 22:
[31:55] Fire, private security. It's not his spouse. She doesn't live in the same city, doesn't live in the same state. And at the end of the day, he's abusing his 15 minutes of fame.

Speaker 3:
[32:04] Yeah, it's a good point that the underlying facts here are that there is a FBI detail that he has acknowledged and also that she's been flying on the plane. He's been flying on the plane, which again, is just publicly available information if you have the tail number of the plane. Like that's also not fabricated. Now, the other reporting that we have that hasn't been trouble is from that blockbuster Atlantic story. Patel has said it's, not only has he said it's false, he's sued for defamation. He's seeking $250 million in compensation. One of the, and again, he says it's completely false, but one of the most disturbing parts of that is this reporting for the Atlantic, which I'd love for you to respond to. A request for breaching equipment, normally used by SWAT and hostage teams, rescue teams to quickly game entry into buildings, was made last year because Patel had been unreachable behind locked doors, according to multiple people familiar with the request. What does it mean to have the FBI director unreachable behind closed doors, if in fact that's true, which he says it was not?

Speaker 22:
[32:58] So, number one, I've actually heard that story independent of this reporting, as have many of my colleagues. So, it's not, you know, she just...

Speaker 3:
[33:07] That's notable.

Speaker 22:
[33:08] She did a great job of corroborating it and getting...

Speaker 3:
[33:11] Right.

Speaker 22:
[33:11] Listen, you know, I would never have talked to the press in my entire life when I was still in the FBI. But the standards that she used, getting multiple sources, making sure it wasn't circular and reporting, I mean, her story holds up. And again, I've heard it from multiple sources myself. So, there's credibility to it. The other issue is the detail does not have access to his residence, which is highly unusual. Normally, if you go back to the previous directors, the security detail has a security room there. They're internal. They don't have access to it, from what I've been told. They didn't have a key to the residence from what has been reported. And from what she reported and what others have shared, they did have to get breach equipment to go in. Now, you know, I only have that from second and third-hand sources. I haven't dug into it. But the theme is kind of commonly known. And the other problem, this isn't an isolated incident. He has, I mean, demonstrated publicly that he doesn't have the judgment or the disposition of the...

Speaker 3:
[34:20] You're referring to the hockey locker room situation, which is on tape.

Speaker 22:
[34:24] Once people stop reporting about his embarrassing episodes, stop embarrassing the FBI and the United States of America.

Speaker 3:
[34:30] Well, you know, I've known junior White House staffers, I mean, 24 or 25, who are, you know, low on the pack, who sleep with their phone, like, here on their chin because...

Speaker 22:
[34:40] I did it for decades.

Speaker 3:
[34:40] Yeah, right. I mean, that's standard. If you were the FBI director, right, you've got to be reachable 24 hours. Is that like a standard expectation of a job?

Speaker 22:
[34:50] Never a question ever before. And, you know, whether directorate, director, Comey, director Mueller, all the ones that I served under, the detail would have had access and would have been trusted partners to the director.

Speaker 3:
[35:06] So the detail having access, right, because presumably there could be a situation where someone is really deeply asleep or even like, you know, you come down with the flu and you're really out of it, right? That you would have to have a person that can go to the director and say, we've got a real situation.

Speaker 22:
[35:19] And ask yourself, why wouldn't you let them have access to some?

Speaker 3:
[35:22] You know what? That's a great question. You know what? Great question. I will ponder that, Christopher Oliver. Good to have you here. Still to come, the Trump family's corruption in really plain sight, just kind of rubbing it in everyone's faces, to be honest. I'm Congressman Robert Garcia on The Latest. Somehow, almost improbably at this point, the grift and corruption of Donald Trump and his family just keeps getting more and more brazen. Today, Eric Trump went on Fox to celebrate one of the companies that he backs, that he's a strategic advisor for, landing, amazingly, a $24 million Defense Department contract from Donald Trump's Pentagon. And then he was congratulated for it by Maria Bartiromo.

Speaker 6:
[36:09] Foundation Future Industries, a robotic startup, aims to develop these autonomous humanoid robots. The company just secured a $24 million contract with the Pentagon for its phantom robot to begin tests with the Marine Corps and help troops breach enemy sites more safely. Joining us now is Foundation Future Industries founder and CEO, Sandcat Patak and the company's chief strategy advisor, Eric Trump, President Trump's son. Congratulations to you both. Thank you so much for being here.

Speaker 20:
[36:39] Thanks for having us, Maria.

Speaker 3:
[36:42] He's the chief strategy advisor. I wonder what strategy they used to get the contract from his dad. Congressman Robert Garcia is a Democrat of California, ranking member of the Oversight Committee. He joins me now. I mean, Congressman, at the dawn of the nation, like back in the earliest years, there were scandals about government officials steering contracts, public contracts to their family. This is the oldest kind of graft in the world. And I know nothing about whether this company got it fair or square or not. But the appearance here at least seems to merit some investigation.

Speaker 7:
[37:17] We're actually already investigating this. This is the most corrupt administration in history. I mean, this is just so blatant. It's so obvious and they're not even hiding it anymore. I mean, Eric Trump becomes a strategic advisor for defense firms and they're winning contracts out of the Pentagon. I mean, give me a break. Jared Kushner travels the world. $2 billion to invest for an investment fund the Saudis have made nothing from, but he's made over $100 million already from the Saudi money for his own firm. Donald Trump Jr. traveling around, opening up enterprises, opening up hotels, in same countries where Donald Trump is trying to do diplomacy. I mean, this is all just corruption. They are enriching themselves. We know that Donald Trump is infinitely more wealthy. The sons are infinitely more wealthy. Jared Kushner and Ivanka are infinitely more wealthy than they ever were before he became president this second time. And so all of this has to be investigated. There has to be accountability. And I hope that his base of supporters see that he's ripping off the American public to enrich himself and his friends.

Speaker 3:
[38:27] By the way, there's another, I actually only learned this today because again, it's easy to lose track of when I saw the Eric Trump one, I was like, oh right, I saw the story about how they've got like a defense contractor that they've, but they're actually another one. So there's this one, but then he and Don, I think, they've got a drone interceptor company that's trying to sell drone interceptors to the Gulf States being attacked by Iran. This is another company also looking for defense contracts with allied states that need drone interceptors because of the war their daddy launched.

Speaker 7:
[39:02] People should be very clear, your gas is going up right now and people's prices on gas and groceries continue to skyrocket and especially around gas because of the war. Donald Trump and his family are actually profiting from the war. There's illegal trading going on because of the war. So there are a lot of folks at the center of that is the Trump family that are actually enriching themselves with contracts as the American public are suffering. This war is costing over a billion dollars a day. It's going to cost over a hundred billion dollars before the system, this entire thing is over. And the people that are enriching themselves are the Trump family. And so people need to understand that the incredible grief that is happening here, and it's now being done completely open. Everything, they don't care. They're on Fox News bragging about it.

Speaker 3:
[39:56] There's polling on this that caught my eye today. Because I think, you know, I think it has sunk in a little, but I would say more than nothing, but not enough. So here's which the percentage of people that view the administration is very corrupt. The first Trump administration, 36 percent. The Biden administration, 33 percent. Second term of registration, 46 percent. Now that is notable, and it's a notable increase, but it does make me think there's still a lot more public education to be done. And something that strikes me as an oversight committee that had subpoena authority and a majority and a Democratic majority, it would be a huge role for that oversight committee. You generally view it that way?

Speaker 7:
[40:35] 100 percent. I've told people, people ask, what are the top two investigations that you'll be launching when we take the majority in as chair? One is going to be the Epson investigation, and the second is going to be Trump family corruption. And we're going to zero in on the Trump family grift and corruption. They're ripping off the American taxpayer. They're literally stealing resources from our agencies and enriching themselves and their family. And the American public has to know that this is wrong, that presidents and their families don't do this. This is not the way things are supposed to work. And so the accountability piece is incredibly important. We're going to have to go after them. Folks like Jared Kushner, he's literally the president's Middle East envoy and is traveling around the world enriching themselves. They have a crypto scheme where folks, foreign governments are essentially likely just pouring in infinite amounts of money with no checks and balances. We have no idea who's paying who for what. So our foreign policy in many ways is now being directed by who can actually pay the Trump family more. I mean, this is where we are right now and the rest of the public, including his base has to understand that he's stealing your wealth and your hard-earned labor so he can pay himself and his family.

Speaker 3:
[41:47] Yeah, I just want to say this about Jared Kushner. Obviously, he had a sort of official role in the first Trump administration. On his way out, he has this investment fund, gets a $2 billion investment from the Saudis, an investment that they had to override the veto of their own investment committee to give. The own investment committee for the sovereign wealth fund said, we should not give this guy the money. They did. He then announced with the second Trump administration, he wouldn't be raising any more funds. This was going to be the thing that stopped there being a conflict of interest if he played a role. But then quietly has been raising funds. I mean, not even that quietly. So they even blew through that soft sign. And now he is the person, like he's showing up in Pakistan. He's negotiating essentially US. Middle Eastern policy, as he's also has his, he's giving PowerPoints about why you should give him money.

Speaker 7:
[42:35] And it's not just the Saudis, by the way, the Saudis have put $2 billion into that fund. Other Middle East nations have also been putting money in towards that investment fund. And he spends that investment fund as he sees fit. There's been reporting that has been clear that he, that the Saudis have actually made no real money back from their own fund. But Jared Kushner certainly has. He's made over 100 million already off that investment fund. And he is the person in charge of policy, of what's going right now around the Middle East. He's the one that's trying to broker ceasefires. He's the one that's actually talking on behalf of the administration. And so the corruption is so clear. The fact that they can't see it or don't care is what I think the American public should be outraged about. And it's certainly what oversight and House Democrats are going to be zeroed in as we investigate this in the months ahead, but also certainly when we're in the majority.

Speaker 3:
[43:28] Congressman Robert Garcia is on that oversight committee. Thank you. By the way, we have an update to a story we brought you recently, and it is the rare bit of good news, so we want to break it to you. American Kuwaiti journalist Ahmed Shihab-Eldin, who has been in prison in Kuwait since the beginning of March, has been acquitted of all charges against him, according to his sister's lawyers. He was detained because he posted a video on social media, and he is now expected to be released imminently. That's after 52 days of detention. Unequivocally good news for him, his family, for freedom of speech and journalism, and we look forward to seeing him reporting again very soon. We'll be right back. This afternoon, I sat down with New York City Mayor Zoran Mamdani for Town Hall in my home borough of the Bronx. You can hear the whole thing tomorrow night on a very special edition of All In. But for now, here's a little preview of Mayor Mamdani on his relationship with Donald Trump.

Speaker 19:
[44:23] For all of our political disagreements, we have one agreement of chief importance, which is that we love the city. And with the president, I'm honest, I'm direct, and I try and always bring it back to what would actually benefit the city. So when I'm sitting there with the president and I'm talking about the opportunity to work together to deliver more housing than we've seen in a single housing development since the early 1970s, I'm also speaking about the fact that I think that ICE raids are cruel and inhumane, and that the fact that that morning they had detained a Columbia student is part and parcel of why this is not something that is actually serving the interests of public safety. So I gave the president a list of five names of people who were detained in or around Columbia. He called me 30 minutes after the meeting and said, I've made the decision to release the student that you brought up.

Speaker 3:
[45:08] It was a really fascinating, wide-ranging conversation about the mayor's vision for the city, what it could mean for bigger national ideas and themes. We also spoke to a bunch of real New Yorkers, some of whom support the mayor and some who don't. You don't want to miss All In America, Mayor Mom Donnie, right here on MS Now, tomorrow night at 8 p.m. Eastern. That does it for All In. You can catch us every weeknight at 8 o'clock on MS Now. Don't forget to like us on Facebook. That's facebook.com/all In with Chris.

Speaker 10:
[45:34] Why have I asked my electrician I found on angie.com to bury my pet hamster, Nibbles, in our yard for me? Because I was so moved by how carefully he buried my electrical wires, I knew I could trust him to bury my sweet Nibbles after his untimely end. Nibbles, gone too soon. May he scurry in peace.

Speaker 18:
[45:51] Hey, sorry about your pet, but I just wire stuff.

Speaker 10:
[45:54] Nibbles would have loved you like a brother.

Speaker 1:
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