“Kristi Noem fired from DHS”

Hi there, everybody, 4 o'clock in New York, so there are two theories for what's happening

today.

Either, DHS Secretary Kristi Nome is so bad at her job that even Donald Trump, Donald

Trump 2.0, said, you're fired, or, or, her firing could be a distraction from the increasingly

unpopular and controversial war in Iran, which come to think of it, could have been

an effort to distract from the disastrous and bungled cover-up of the Epstein files.

Their partial release might have actually been a distraction from the cruel and deeply

unpopular conduct of federal agents on the streets of Minneapolis, carrying out Donald

Trump's mass deportation campaign and killing two citizens in the process.

Now whether Trump's distracting from a distraction that was a distraction of an unpopular

distraction will let you decide, but here's the news.

Kristi Nome has been fired from her position as the country's Secretary of Homeland Security

in tried and true Trumpian fashion, Donald Trump announced her firing on true social, adding

that she's been appointed special envoy to the shield of the Americas, a position no

one had heard of until a couple hours ago.

Corey Lewandowski is also out at DHS.

As news of her firing was breaking, Kristi Nome was speaking.

There she is.

She was speaking to law enforcement and it wasn't clear at all if she knew she'd been fired.

As while she was talking, she talked about meeting she was going to have in the coming

days as DHS Secretary.

Oh, Corey.

Now regardless, her tenure at DHS will be remembered until the end of time.

It was defined by the mass deportation program that was built to be ghoulish and intentionally

cruel and to market those aspects of it.

It led to the deaths of at least two Americans ripped apart countless families and seemed

to revel in doing so.

It was also defined by lawlessness.

Under Kristi Nome's leadership, Nome and her department defied more than 100 court orders.

They defied judges more than a hundred times.

And her tenure, Donald Trump's approval rating cratered on the issue of immigration.

Once considered, one of his strongest policy issues propelling him to the presidency two

times.

Today, a poll showed that half of Americans support abolishing the department she ran.

Kristi Nome is also the tip of the spear and the gaslighting of all Americans about the

deaths of Alex Freddie and Renan Nicole Good.

Here's a reminder, but Kristi Nome said immediately after their killings.

It was an act of domestic terrorism.

What happened, it was our ICE officers were out in an enforcement action.

They got stuck in the snow because of the adverse weather that isn't Minneapolis.

They were attempting to push out their vehicle and a woman attacked them and those surrounding

them and attempted to run them over and ram them with her vehicle.

An officer of ours acted quickly and defensively shot to protect himself and the people around

him, this individual who came with weapons and ammunition to stop a law enforcement operation

of federal law enforcement officers committed an act of domestic terrorism.

That's the facts.

Those were not the facts, those were lies.

Kindly though, all of that may not have been what did it in the eyes of Donald Trump.

You see on Wednesday, while testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Kristi Nome

was asked about a massive $220 million ad campaign, which was funded by us, the American taxpayer,

and it prominently featured her in shots like that on a horse and full hair and makeup

with the cowboy hat on.

These fairs paid for her to make those ads for herself on horseback or Mount Rushmore.

Nome said under oath, when asked about it, that Trump personally approved that the controversial

ad blitz featuring her in the lead role, but Donald Trump today said he was completely unaware

of that ad campaign.

Quote, I never knew anything about it.

He told Reuters shortly before firing her.

Kristi Nome's replacement is someone you'll soon hear a lot about, I'm sure.

It's Oklahoma Senator Mark Wayne Mullin.

He's a former mixed martial arts fighter, of course he is, who is a staunch defender of

Donald Trump.

That's just getting started.

And that's where we start today.

Former DHS Chief of Staff from Donald Trump's first term as President, Miles Tyler is

here, also joining a senior White House reporter von Hilliard with me at the table, senior

contributing editor Michele Norris.

Michele, my first thoughts went to the families of Renanical Good and Alex Freddie.

You'd like to think that smearing them would have been the thing that got referred.

It wasn't.

We'll continue to unpack any causation or correlation that we are aware of at this hour.

But her legacy will always include those killings in Minneapolis.

But the way that she described them very quickly, without a lot of time to digest what went

on.

Watching that now is surreal.

To listen to her describe what happened on Portland Avenue when René Good was killed,

that they got stuck on the snow, they didn't, that they were firing defensively, they weren't.

Now this will go through the courts and that will all be adjudicated, but people know

what they saw through a multitude of videos that were released.

Whoever is replacing Kristi Nome, if it is Mark Wayne Mullin, if he winds up being approved

by the Senate, they are inheriting a royal mess.

I mean, this is a department that is struggling with morale problems.

We know that from some of the things that have been leaked from people inside, both ICE

and CPB, infrastructure problems, financial problems, the inspector general just released

letters to Congress earlier this week saying, you know, outlining the problems inside the

department.

The homeland doesn't need to be defended.

It is important that, you know, DHS does play an important role, but what happened to

this agency in such a short period of time, and there's a real problem with credibility,

and it's going to be difficult for, I think, for Mark Wayne Mullin to be the person who

brings back that credibility, especially when we were just listening to him yesterday having

a hard time describing why we're in Iran.

He is so loyal to Donald Trump.

That's right.

That's right.

You know, things happen so fast.

We forget that that just happened yesterday.

What they really need is someone who will be able to come back and restore some credibility

to the organization, to be able to remember what the Department of Homeland Security actually

is supposed to be doing, and start rebuilding that department from the ground.

Von Hillier, I won't ask you to get to the bottom of what the last straw was or why it

happened, but just take me through all the things that might have peaked Trump's

interest in her poor performance.

I mean, chief among them, his cratering poll numbers on the question of immigration once

is strong suit.

Right.

And I think that is an embodiment of the struggle for anybody serving in Trump 2.0 cabinet

that Kristi Nome effectively tried to carry out his goals and the agenda of a mass deportation

effort.

But she struggled to do what was legally within the bounds of her abilities to do so.

I don't think that you're looking at somebody that was not an avid spokeswoman for the Department

of Homeland Security.

She made those ads to promote the work of those deportation operations in their immigration

restriction efforts.

But instead, what you had was somebody who was limited by the bounds of judges, somebody

who did not make Donald Trump happy because of the bounds that there was not a greater

mass deportation effort carried out.

And one that oftentimes had bad imagery associated with it, children running from school

in New Jersey, the killing of Alex Prety and Renee Good.

But I think that that is going to be the struggle for Mark Wayne Mullen as well here, because

Kristi Nome in many ways, right, a couple weeks ago, I asked her at the White House about

the Fourth Amendment rights of unreasonable search and seizure and whether folks were

being asked with a unreasonable suspicion for their papers.

And she, her quote, back to me, was very clear that they are doing everything correctly.

So in so many ways, I think that she was a figure that tried to do her best on the Afadonal

Trump and his desires.

But that is where there is such a short straw for individuals, and she could very well

be the first to fall, because if you look at the other one, for example, right, unlike

Tulsi Gabbard and Cache Patel carrying out efforts in Fulton County, she effectively

was unable to prove at any point that there were non-citizens on the voter rolls across

the country, which she herself acknowledged was under her purview.

She did nothing to show that there were cybersecurity threats to vote tabulating machines around

the country, which she also suggested was under her purview.

And so far in so many ways, I think her performance up on Capitol Hill by effectively throwing

Donald Trump under the bus of approving that $220 million ad campaign only added on to

the difficulty she had in garnering the approval of the man that she reported to.

I mean, Miles is dystopian to say that she failed in part because she couldn't find

voter fraud.

There wasn't any.

You know, Bill Barr couldn't find any either.

I never thought I'd find myself defending Kristi Nome, but let me show you something that

was really epic television.

And everything we know about Donald Trump is that from time to time, he's moved by that

which plays on television.

This is Tom Tellus.

I read your book last week.

And honestly, some of the parts of it impressed me, but some of it distresses me.

And I'll give you a good example of one that does.

The passage where you talk about killing a dog that was 14 months old.

I train dogs, all right?

And you are a farmer.

You should know better.

You should know that if you're going out to a hunting lodge and you're putting peasants

out and you're putting dogs out, you don't take a puppy out there.

A 14 month old dog is basically a teenager and dog years.

You decided to kill that dog because you had not invested the appropriate time in training.

And then you have the audacity to go into a book and say it's a leadership lesson about

tough choices.

It's in your book.

We could play it if we had time.

At that same lunch hour, you killed a goat and you killed a goat because you said it was

behaving badly.

You are a farmer.

You don't cast right a goat.

They behave badly.

You should have probably done that before, but my point is, those are bad decisions made

in the heat of the moment, not unlike what happened up in Minneapolis.

I expect we're an exceptional nation.

One of the reasons we're exceptional is we expect exceptional leadership and you've

demonstrated at anything but that in the time that I've seen you responding to the emergency

in North Carolina and across the southeast and acknowledging when mistakes are made and

speaking to soon for the expedient of social media or whatever it is.

Now, Mao's Taylor, the book was available before she was confirmed by the Senate,

but I'll take his disgust at the lack of character in Christy Nome seven days a week.

He basically said, you are a bad person and capable of making good decisions.

Nicole, what Senator Tillis should have said was that Nome will be remembered for treating

Americans like she treats her dogs and let me explain what I mean by that.

Her legacy as the most consequential Secretary of Homeland Security in the Department's

history is taking it from a place that was built to defend against Al Qaeda attacks to

going after Americans under the banner of Antifa and that's what we've seen during her tenure.

We've seen the whole of the Department of Homeland Security reoriented to go after the political

opposition in this country instead of the people who want to kill Americans and in doing so,

she has become the warden of the police state. She's now the lead department for harassing

Americans and surveilling Americans and grifting off of Americans and punishing Americans and in some

cases killing Americans and it's not just CVP and ice Nicole. She has politicized every single

component agency of DHS from the Coast Guard all the way to FEMA, which has withheld billions of

dollars from states just because they're blue states. Literally, the Department of Homeland Security

has stopped helping Americans if they didn't vote for President Trump. That is the dramatic

orientation that has happened under her and whether it's Mark Wayne Bullin or someone else,

that's going to take years if not a generation to undo that type of damage. That is Kristi Nome's

legacy. I mean, that's all of you to stick around. I want to bring into our coverage Democratic

Senator Alex Padilla of California Senator. I had a chance to speak with you after you were

forcibly removed from one of Kristi Nome's press conferences in Los Angeles last year.

And I remember asking you if this is how you're treated with cameras rolling as a sitting

United States Senator, what do you think they're doing to people here in the silent process or here

as illegal immigrants or here trying to gain legal status? And I couldn't fathom that the

treatment would extend to people protesting the treatment of people here trying to gain legal

status or have their asylum cases resolved. What are your thoughts today as even Donald Trump

finds Kristi Nome unsuitable for his cabinet? Right. And you have to be really, really

bad in this cabinet for Republican members of Congress to criticize you and call for your removal

and clearly really, really bad for even Donald Trump to finally say this is enough Kristi Nome

has to go. Look Nicole, after that whole not security press conference that I attended last year

when I returned to the Senate, the two main points I was trying to make was exactly what you just

said. If this is how they'll treat a senator trying to ask you a question, imagine what's

happening when the cameras aren't there to farm workers, to cooks, to day laborers and others

in this mass deportation agenda that's out of control by Kristi Nome's DHS and the Trump

administration. But the other warning that I had and I was praying that I would be wrong about

this is that what started in Los Angeles last summer was the playbook that would extend to

other parts of the country. And it came to Washington DC. We saw images of a surge in Chicago

in Portland, elsewhere, and especially in Minneapolis. And so you're right, there is going to have

to be a lot of work to be done because while Kristi Nome may be gone, the fundamental reforms

they're raining in of ICE agent CBP officers and others still is in the balance. It's not a

coincidence that the one part of the federal government that does not have an approved fiscal

year budget is an apartment of Homeland Security. It's a way to get that done. Let's implement these

reforms, do enforcement by the rule of law and respect for constitutional rights. And let's move

forward. Right now, DHS is as you've indicated in a so many crises. As you said, there's no operating

budget. There is a revolt that is not partisan in nature around the country everywhere they

want to build prisons to hold migrants and undocumented people. There is a revolt from judges

who have now tallied up all of the instances where DHS has defied the courts and judicial orders.

What would you say to your Republican colleagues who may be inclined to be deferential to

one of their own, a fellow senator? Yeah, well, let's first of all return to the confirmation

hearing process that actually means something. I was so disappointed last year when administration

official after administration official was coming through for confirmation and the hearings weren't

serious. The real issues weren't being raised. The question about people's backgrounds

were not the focus. It was a rubber stamp through and through and through and now we're saying

the consequences of that. Just one small disagreement in the premise of your question about the

courts. This isn't a revolt by the courts. This is judges appointed by both Democratic and

Republican presidents standing up for the rule of law and saying nobody. The administration is

out of bounds that has to be called out. It has to be stopped. It has to be raided. That's what we're

seeing. The justice system doing its job and I hope that's at the signal to my Republican colleagues

in Congress. They have to do their job. I know Donald Trump is a Republican president but Congress

is a co-equal branch of government. Their oath of office and their primary responsibility

is to the Constitution and their constituents, not the leader of their party.

I take your note. I stand corrected. Let me ask you quickly. Do you think that what you saw from

Senator Tillis is a nod to simply his retirement or do you think there is a sense that Donald

Trump is a political ball and chain. He's at 36 percent on immigration. He's at about 34 percent.

Approval of the war in Iran is lower than that in some polls. Approval of the handling of the

turning over the Epstein files is lower than that still. Do you think they're seeing that

marching in lockstep is a political loser and do you think it'll change any of their behavior?

Look, if that's what it takes to change some of their behavior, then I guess I'll take it. I wish

what would drive them first and foremost is their conscience that can turn about integrity

and the concerns that they're sharing in private to distribute with Trump and do the right thing.

But look, I'm not politically naive. The primary season has begun and that we've seen election

results not just by including in Texas. I do think there's a lot of Republican office holders

consulted to consider looking at the numbers and what Donald Trump is doing to their

favorability, to the impact of turnout. It's not looking good for November and that's why not

to change topics on you, but Donald Trump and even Kristina are attacking the electoral process

this November. It's the only way to hold on to power. Let's respect the right to vote. Just as

I'm saying, let's respect people's first amendment rights when they're out there protesting standing

up for their neighbors. Let's protect the fourth amendment, right? No illegal detentions or searches

and seizures? On and on and on. I welcome anyone changing the subject any time. It's all related.

Senator Alexbyde, thank you very much for joining us today. The panel six random will bring them

back in on this topic on the other side. We have much more coverage about the firing of Kristina

White today and the former MMA fighter who is, Michelle just pointed out, struggled with the question

yesterday about the war in Iran. We'll ask why Trump picked him. Plus Pete Hegseth is set to speak

at U.S. Central Command, just as the Pentagon has identified two more members of the military,

but been killed as a result of the war in Iran. And one day after Pete Hegseth berated the media

for reporting on those lives lost. Later in the broadcast, the investigation that Donald Trump wanted

his justice department to pursue. Instead of the one they should be pursuing, much, much more to come,

and Deadly White House continues after a quick break. Don't go anywhere.

Are there measures being taken not to eliminate other possible alternatives to leadership?

This is war and we're taking out the threat. You can see this is war. We have declared war.

They declared war on us, but we haven't declared war. We haven't declared war on us,

but war is ugly. It always has been ugly, but we're taking out a regime that's been trying

to attack us for quite some time. But you're not conceiving this as war. We have declared war.

So if we haven't declared war, then I don't see that. The president has asked us to declare war

yet. Who's on first? I don't know. That's the former MMA fighter turned Senator Mark Wayne Mullen.

That was him trying to answer, well, declaring, quote, this is war. And then saying, who said war?

That is Donald Trump's pick to run into departments admired and controversy that Donald Trump's

approval reading an immigration is down to 34%. The majorities of Americans think ICE has gone too far.

We're back with Miles Bonn and Michelle. He's going to make it better.

You know, I don't want to laugh about this because we are a country engaged in

military action overseas that now involves what 12 other countries. So you don't want to laugh

about that. Donald Trump has fived as a war. But it sounds like Avenue Costello. You know,

when you're listening to that, it's really unfortunate. And this is the person that we're

turning to to now run a department that is lost its credibility and is hobbled in lots of ways.

What I hope to see is some of the senators, including the Republican senators,

Tillus and remember Senator Kennedy from Louisiana, who grilled Christie normal. So I hope that

they bring some of that heat to the confirmation hearing, to really look at this department and look

at what it will take to try to restructure DHS. So it's not just the rubber stamp that Senator

Padeo was just talking about. There's too much at stake right now. I mean, right now when we're

talking about this, there's a group of Minnesota lawyers that are in Geneva. In Geneva, talking to

the UN about the impact of ICE on immigrant communities on the courts throughout the United States,

particularly in the state of Minnesota. I mean, this is a very serious problem. And it's

too serious for them to just pass rubber stamp through because he is a colleague of theirs. And

because he's, you know, loyal to Donald Trump, there simply is too much at stake right now.

Let me read you, Miles Taylor. I have to put my glasses on to read this accurately.

Mark Wayne Mullin's confirmation hearing to run DHS would take place in the Senate Homeland

Security Committee, chaired by Senator Rand Paul, who Mark Wayne Mullin recently called a quote

freaking snake. While sympathizing with the neighbor who attacked Paul in 2017,

I think Rand Paul had some ribs broken, but don't quote me on that part of it.

But yeah, so this is happening.

Well, look, not good, not good for his confirmation hearing, but I'll tell you what

Rand Paul knows, Nicole, that in some way, Sherp Reform, he's going to express during his

confirmation hearings, the administration is trying to send an arsonist into a burning house.

No one should be under the illusion that Mark Wayne Mullin is going to go into DHS and clean it up.

And you know this, Nicole. Last year, we launched this thing called Defiance.org to

proud source efforts to counter Donald Trump's abuses of power, fully half the submissions we get

about corruption that we need to try to go after, have to do with the Department of Homeland

Security. Election threats and immigration threats and designated in the political opposition

as terrorists and whistleblowers talking about orth amendment violations and second amendment

violations. And you know, the whole thing, it's a burning building the Department of Homeland

Security and they're sending a guy in there who helped start that fire. It's become a totally

lawless place. Not only is he not going to clean it up, this also comes at a really dangerous moment.

And I want to note something, Nicole, I don't, I'm not playing the violin for Kristi No,

but this comes at a very strange moment. Donald Trump said that he thought about the implications

for US security when he went into Iran. And now he's firing the defensive team here in the United

States. He's leaving us totally exposed. He's putting the Department of Homeland Security in

Torboil at a moment when we know the Iranians will plan terrorist attacks against the United States.

My question in that confirmation hearing is Mark Weimullen prepared to actually get the department

to focus on what it's supposed to do. Terrorists, instead of calling American protesters Antifa and

pretending they're domestic terrorists, that's the big question. We are in a war right now.

This guy can't even seem to figure out what to call it and now we're expecting him to go run

the defensive team. Once again, this just shows the president's total and complete recklessness

with national security. I mean, Vaughn, it's a great point and it's actually one Donald Trump

introduced when he offered the fourth explanation for why the strikes in Iran happen. After Marco

Rubio saying it was because Israel was going to strike after Donald Trump talking about a month

ago about the protesters in the streets after a couple of the cabinet members talking about regime

change and Pete Hickseth just talking about total destruction. He added another rationale. He

said it was tied to the attempt to assassinate him after the strike on Salmani. Is Donald Trump

by saying that indicating that there is a threat to the homeland from Iran?

I think it calls into question number one. That I think that we've known that Iran is

supposed to threat here domestically, the president of the United States himself. If you look back

to October 2024 when the Biden Department of Justice was able to effectively emesicate charge

and convict a man of Michigan who had a plot according to prosecutors that was directed by the

Iranian government to kill him. I think that that really hits at the heart of what Miles is saying

is the operational capacity of the Department of Homeland Security right now. Not only has

there been a gutting of career employees, folks that were furloughed, folks that took last year,

the doge buyout to leave the department, but also literally in real time, the Department of

Homeland Security is still technically shut down. There is no clear avenue in which there are

congressional Democrats that are seeking to agree with this administration to open up the

Department of Homeland Security and to begin funding it again because a couple of the demands,

like for example, requiring warrants for to go in and execute on attempted deportation efforts

here, but I think it also goes back to a really good reporting from our colleagues Laura Brown, Lopez

and Jake Traylor back in December, where part of Stephen Miller's frustration with Kristino

the Department of Homeland Security leadership, including Corey Lewandowski, was their slowness

to spend money that was appropriated through the one big beautiful bill, that $60 billion extra

for Isecure outed deportation efforts here. And so whether it is for counterterrorism efforts

through Department of Homeland Security or whether it's for their deportation efforts,

there is a log gem at the leadership and ultimately at the career personnel level to carry out

the type of activity that is meant to protect Americans here at home. And so while in one hand,

Donald Trump is removing those over frustration with their slowness to act at the same time,

who is going to operationally fill that gap and carry out the demands, Mark Wayne Mullen,

somebody that doesn't have any experience with the Department of Homeland Security or the executive

branch of the federal government. I guess he's made that determination, but it's not clear that

there is a hiring spree of other individuals across DHS here at a time that it's still shut down

to ensure that they're getting not only hired, but also those that are currently serving

are going to be getting their paychecks in the weeks to come.

Miles Taylor, the White House made a point of making sure it was known publicly that Corey Lewandowski

had also been fired. Is it typical for a secretary's staff to also get thrown out when they get fired?

I wouldn't say it's typical. It is typical of Trump, however. I mean, when he went through his

previous purges of DHS, including the ones that I lived through, there was sort of a White House

review of who else needed to get thrown out the door. I would say actually, Nicole, what's really

noteworthy about this is they've always disliked Corey, so it made sense that they pushed him out.

But the fact that Donald Trump announced that he was going to give the secretary this sort of dubious

title as an envoy to the shield, something, something totally made up didn't exist before,

tells you what he's trying to do. I saw him do this with previous DHS secretaries. He wants to give

her some sort of title and off ramp and presumably health care benefits and pay as they way too

literally buy her off, Nicole. That's not airant speculation. I've seen him do that before. With

previous cabinet secretaries, he's fired. He has tried to quickly come up with a sort of consolation

job for them because he's worried. He's worried. They'll go write a book. That's mean he's worried.

They will go speak out and as loyal as Christy Nome has been doing everything Donald Trump wants,

he fears that she will go out there and undercut him. I doubt she even knew she was going to get

this title. Clearly, she didn't know she was going to get fired in that moment. If she was speaking

while she got fired, but Donald Trump will be, I'm sure in the days to come, making phone calls to her,

telling her he's going to take care of her. This is how a mob boss operates. It's how he operated in

the first term. He's certainly doing that again. If I had one piece of advice for Christy Nome,

it would be, listen, you did a lot of bad things, but it's never too late to do the right thing.

Maybe you don't want to take that offer. Maybe you don't want to take that envoy job. Maybe you

want to tell us the truth of what your conversations with Donald Trump were actually like, but I won't hold

my breath. Well, Taylor is a great way. Ron Hill, you're an amazing reporting. Thank you both so

much for starting us off. Michelle sticks around after the break. We are watching US Central

Command, where Pete Hegseth is set to speak about the latest on the war in Iran. A quick break will be

right back. Any minute now, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Admiral Bragg Cooper, the commander of

St. Com will come to the podiums, we're led to believe and deliver a public update on the war in

Iran. The last time that happened yesterday, Pete Hegseth spoke to reporters. He said this about

the six US service members who have been killed. This is what the fake news misses. We've taken

control of Iran's airspace and waterways without boots on the ground. We control their fate.

But when a few drones get through or tragic things happen, it's front page news.

I get it. The press only wants to make the president look bad, but try for once to report the reality.

So the death of six service members in the worst of Pete Hegseth is not, quote, reporting the reality.

12 hours after the defense secretary of defense said that that reporting on the men and women

who have lost their lives serving their country is just an effort to, quote, make the president look bad.

The Pentagon announced the name of a service member believed to be one of those six casualties.

Chief Foreign Officer 3 Robert M. Marzon was 54 years old. He was from Sacramento, California.

To honor Marzon, California's Governor Gavin Newsom ordered all the flags to have staff.

An issued a statement that reads, quote, we offer our deepest condolences to his wife and

family during this time of profound sorrow. The sacrifices made by military families are immeasurable,

and California stands in solidarity with them, united in grief and gratitude.

Major Jeffrey O'Brien was also killed by an Iranian drone strike, according to the defense

department. He was 45 years old. He was from Iowa. His family said this in a statement about him, quote,

Jeff was a true hero in every sense of the word. He was not only a role model to our kids,

but also a goofy and silly dad, always looking for ways to make the kids laugh.

He was an exceptional and caring husband, even finding ways to take care of us, while serving 7,000

miles away. Jeff was also an incredible friend, a dedicated employee, and a man of deep faith.

Every one of these relationships mattered profoundly to him, and he will be missed by so many,

end quote. We learned earlier in the week about the identities of the other four soldiers who

have been killed. Sergeant First Class Nicole Amar of White Bear Lake, Minnesota,

Captain Cody Cork of Winter Haven, Florida, Sergeant First Class Noah Teihens of Bellevue, Nebraska,

and Sergeant Declan Cody of West Des Moines, Iowa, whose sister spoke with the Associated Press. Watch.

I still don't fully think it's real, and I didn't think it was real when they told us.

I just really wish I got to tell my love. And more time, because he was just so amazing, and

he was in front of everybody. It just was like really strong. He, like, he never let his emotions

really show, but I just, I don't know. I can't help but think just he was my little brother,

and he was probably really scared, even if he didn't want people to know.

I just wish he kind of know one more time though. We all loved him.

I'm going to bring into our coverage former secretary of the Air Force,

Frank Kendall. He's a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, the author of the

fourth coming book, lethal autonomy, Michelle still here. It's hard to think of anything to say,

or to follow a member, a family member, but Frank, what are your thoughts?

Nicole, I've had, particularly during the Obama administration, quite a few numbers of

occasions when I went to Dover Air Force Base to meet with the families of people who have lost

loved ones, and to be part of their ceremony that they can fight transfer to college when people

come back and the caskets were taken off the airplane. It brings home to you the reality of war,

and what the cost of sending American men and women into combat actually is.

And if our leadership isn't understand that, doesn't appreciate that, and isn't sensitive to it,

they shouldn't be leading us. It's an awesome responsibility to send our men and women into battle.

It's an awesome responsibility to unleash the incredibly powerful and efficient

killing machine that is the United States military. And it's not just these few American

lives, there are thousands of lives already, over a thousand in Iran, lives in other countries that

are now being attacked by Iran. This was an incredibly, I'm trying to think of a word that fits it.

Reckless, I think, is good. Maybe thoughtless, amateurs, initiation of a conflict by the United

States. It really pains me to see what's happening now, and I don't see an easy way out of this,

at this point. Frank, what is the portrait of a Secretary of Defense who describes

any effort to allow family members to pay tribute to their brother, their little brother,

in that instance, or others as, quote, the fake news media trying to make the president look bad,

end quote. It's ridiculous. The press is reporting what the press reports. This is the reality

of war. This is what happens. And I don't think that the press should shy away from making that clear.

It's hard to fathom that embedding journalists inside the operation is something that would be

on the table. But for Pete Hegseth to stand there and sort of reveal his own thin skin and

that of Donald Trump's, how does the enemy read that? I don't know. It's very hard to say how

they perceive us. Monk has had a very negative view with the United States for a very long time.

Since the government was overthrown, the shop was putting a power decades ago.

We've had roughly a 50-year period with them in power. There's no reason to think that there

was an imminent attack coming. That was ridiculous. But suddenly there was a enough

justification to go into war. And all the double speak we're getting from members of Congress

and so on, you had some of that on earlier, is just being disingenuous with the American people.

We've had thousands of targets now. We're several days into a major air campaign. A number of

countries have been brought in. And we don't know how this is going to end. We haven't had clear

definitions of what the objectives are. We've had a number of different things stated to us.

Donald Trump now seems to think that he's going to personally pick the new leadership over on.

It'll be interesting to see how he does that. It is hard for me to imagine, again, a more

reckless and amateur approach to international relations. And unleashing the enormous power of

the United States military on a country that had not really attacked us.

I've had the privilege of speaking with you on multiple occasions. And it's clear that this is

not just your warnings being realized, but really a scary moment for men and women who have served

in leadership positions at the Pentagon. Is that a fair assessment?

I think it is in many ways. The, you know, Iran has a number of ways to come back at us, right?

They don't have a powerful military like we do. But there are a number of recent metric things

they can do. They can do cyber attacks. They can launch terror attacks. You're seeing them firing

what is essentially harassing fires into the region. And they're going to, they're going to,

they're not going to change the military outcome that way, but they could change the political outcome.

They're going to inflict casualties. And nobody is enjoying this moment in the region right now

where there are cities and their bases and so on and under attack. We could have lone wolves

who just decide on their own to go out and kill some Americans anywhere on the planet.

So there are a number of things that could be done here in response. And it isn't, you know,

this will be a lasting impact on these people. It'll be something that they will carry with them

for the rest of their lives that have experienced this. To hope we launched ourselves off of this

cliff into this conflict without any real understanding of where we were going to land or what was

going to happen next. All right. No one's going anywhere. We are still waiting for that briefing

at the Pentagon to possibly have some of these questions answered. We'll sneak in a quick

break ahead of that. We'll all be right back. Donald Trump campaigned on ending the wars

because he knew at the time that that's what Americans wanted and still want.

And yet here we go again.

We're back with Secretary Kendall Michelle. Michelle, I will never forget the 2015

Republican primary when Lindsey Graham fell. Chris Christie fell. Marco Rubio fell spectacularly

and near the end and they all fell largely at Bushville because they believed in a foreign policy

that supported the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and Donald Trump promised to never again take

the country to war. No more forever wars. And that is why Pete Hegseth's really rather callous

approach to the American public is is even more of a head scratcher. He may not want to explain

why we went to war. We are indeed calling it that now. And that is difficult to explain in short

order. But when the country does go to war, whether you call it a war or military operation,

America goes to war along with the military. And I've been around a long time and you have

to a new talk to former Secretary of Defense and they will tell you that this is one of the most

difficult aspects of their job is preparing America for this kind of conflict and also preparing

families for what they're asking them to do and then figuring out how to talk about those losses.

Pete Hegseth just seems to have abdicated that part of the job in trying to help explain to

Americans what's at stake to help explain to Americans what the potential impacts will be in one

of the things that it robs the military of the capability of the capability of trying to get

Americans to perhaps support the troops. Because that's part of your job at SECDEF also

is to necessarily rally America for war. It's not like a ra ra exercise. But to help understand

the sacrifices that the troops are making and the sacrifices that Americans will be asked to make.

And those six families have made the ultimate sacrifice. And so when he's talking about this in

terms of public relations, it sounds sort of ugly. But he does have a little bit of a public

relation job that he should be doing in trying to help explain what we're up against and what

this is going to look like. And instead of talking about this in terms of four or five weeks,

to help understand that this is going to be something that we are all going to be living with for

a very, very long time. Secretary Kindle, it strikes me that Michelle and I are now very, very

public. We both come back and forth calling it a war, a military operation. Donald Trump called

it a war. I think Rubio is called it by the war and an operation. And they called them a

Doro operation, both an active war. And at Rubio had called it a law enforcement operation

on the Sunday shows immediately following. Why do the words matter?

Well, it matter because the Constitution gives the authority to initiate a war very clearly

with the Congress and not the president. I think presidents for quite some time have

conducted military operations that they consider a short of war. How you can say that about this

one, I think really boggles the mind. The attack on Venezuela was relatively brief, was raid

basically. There have been proportionate responses sometimes to attacks on American installations.

But this is of a scale and magnitude that nobody can convince you. It's not a major operation

here, a major war. You know, we have built two carriers, boobs, we've built a lot of other assets

into the region. I think they expected it to be very short. They were looking for something that

followed the Venezuela model. You know, we over quickly, they'd decapitate the government,

people would rise up, take over, and that'd be it. That's not what they got. And it's quite often

historically that people who start wars end up with wars they didn't intend. Well, I don't

remember Putin just had this experience in Ukraine a few years ago. So here we are. I can't predict how

this will end. It could end very quickly. It could end up with an uprising as was apparently expected.

It more likely, I think, to end up with some kind of a deal, where Donald Trump in order to stop

this, cuts a deal with the existing regime, gets something that he can, as a token anyway,

claim victory, and then we go on. That's the, it could also drag off for quite a long time.

The Iranians, I think, are capable of maintaining the types of military operations they've been

conducting, maybe at a lower level. We can continue the air campaign. We do have plenty of weapons.

And this can go on for some time without a lot of resolution. I think at the end of the day,

it's going to be solved through some political decision and political pressure, both within Iran

and within the United States to get it over with. And those pressures are going to come about

independent of what's happening operation, I think.

Secretary Grinchandell, thank you for sharing your experience and wisdom with us.

Michelle, thank you for spending the hour with us at the table. That's always wonderful for us.

There's lots more news ahead. We will return to our top story, the firing of Kristi Nome.

We're also keeping an eye on that picture that's been on your screen for the better

part of our hour, that upcoming briefing from Pete Hegsuth and St. Combe for an update on the

war with Iran quick break. We'll be right back.