Maddow on Trump's unbridled chaos: 'We are having some drama at the moment'

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let's plan your wedding together. I'm really happy to have you here. We are having a moment of

sort of unbelievably dramatic news. News that's like if you were pitching a movie,

the people you were pitching it to would say no, that's too over the top we can't do that.

Denmark reportedly sent soldiers just a few weeks ago. They sent soldiers to Greenland

armed with explosives and blood supplies. The explosives were to blow up the runways

at airports in Greenland and the blood supplies were an anticipation of combat casualties

in a conflict with the United States. That is if the U.S. could find a way to put U.S. troops on

the ground in Greenland without landing on the blown up airfields. Think about that for a second.

I mean, Denmark, it's freaking Denmark. They are literally and officially our ally, but they had

to send troops out with live ammunition and blood supplies and live explosives, not for an exercise,

not for training, but on a real deployment on which they planned to disable the airfields in Greenland

to protect their territory against us against the United States. You may also recall that Denmark

is in NATO. So if Trump actually does try to use military force to take Greenland,

we will be at war with all of NATO. But now I guess we know how it would start.

Too dramatic, too far-fetched? Oh wait, there's more. Consider Hungary right now. The authoritarian

leader and Hungary, Viktor Orbán, keeps getting visits from top U.S. officials. He just got one

from Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who is supposed to host Vice President JD Vance very soon.

Trump did a creepy video endorsement for Viktor Orbán this weekend. Our government is doing

everything they can to try to sort of fluff Viktor Orbán right now to prop him up, because Hungary

is having elections next month. And if Viktor Orbán allows those elections to go forward,

it really looks like he's going to lose. So our authoritarian government is trying to prop up his

authoritarian government with these big public shows of support. But because the news is the way

it is right now, I also have to tell you that Russia is approaching this same task with a bit more

style. New reporting from the Washington Post this weekend. Headline to tilt Hungarian election,

Russians proposed staging assassination attempt.

Quote in the run-up to Hungary's pivotal election in April, Russia's foreign intelligence service

last month began sounding the alarm over plummeting public support for Hungarian Prime Minister

Viktor Orbán, whose friendly ties to Moscow have long given the Kremlin a strategic foothold

inside NATO and the European Union. Officers from the SBR, Russian military intelligence,

suggested that drastic action might be necessary to help Orbán, a strategy they called the

Game Changer. SBR operatives said the Game Changer would, quote, fundamentally alter the entire

paradigm of the election campaign. And what was the Game Changer? The Game Changer was, quote,

the staging of an assassination attempt on Viktor Orbán.

Washington Post reporting that to try to help Orbán in his election, the Russians

have already mounted social media campaigns to boost Orbán, much as they did for Donald Trump.

They've used fake allegations against Orbán's political enemies. They've used fake AI-generated

videos to spread wild smears against opposition candidates. But they also apparently were plotting

to fake an assassination attempt against Viktor Orbán in order to get people to rally behind him.

Too dramatic? Too over the top? Not believable enough? Oh, but wait, we've also still got the

straight of Hormuz shut down, choked off as a result of the U.S. President, Donald Trump,

inexplicably starting a war with Iran for reasons he has yet to explain, and with goals,

he has yet to credibly articulate. This weekend, President Trump announced

a no-if-sans or butts ultimatum that if Iran doesn't open up the shipping lanes in the

straight of Hormuz by today, by Monday, Trump promised he would commit a capital-W capital-C war crime.

He said he would bomb Iran's civilian power plants, starting, quote, with the biggest one first.

That was the ultimatum as of Saturday. He would do that today, unless the straight of Hormuz

opened up today rolled around, and even though it's not even yet Taco Tuesday, Trump nevertheless

backed down. He announced that he has delayed his planned war crime because there are now new talks,

he says, happening between us and the Iranians. The Iranians say, no, there aren't any new talks

going on. Suspiciously, Trump won't say who these supposed talks are with, but he says they're

definitely going great. And even though he says they're going great, now he's also sending 4,500

sailors and Marines over there, and the New York Times is reporting that he's considering

calling up the 82nd Airborne as well.

How well are the talks going? However well, Trump says these phantom supposed talks are going,

watch what he does, not what he says. And if you do that in this inexplicable war, it really seems

like Donald Trump has started something he has absolutely no idea how to finish. And aside from

everything else this war is doing, there is a very real prospect. It is going to crater, not only

our own economy, but the world economy, with Trump having no plan for that whatsoever.

To put it lightly, we are having some drama at the moment.

I mean, because of the president and his Republican Party's policies in Washington,

two million Americans have lost their health insurance, just since the beginning of the year

for millions more health care has become dramatically, dramatically more expensive,

specifically because of Republican policies. The Federal Reserve just announced that there has

been, quote, zero net job creation in the private sector over the past six months. Zero jobs created

in six months in the private sector. One Trump supporting Republican sheriff in California has

just seized the ballots from the last statewide California election in his county, not because the

sheriff's office has anything to do with election administration in Riverside County or anywhere else,

but because that sheriff and his deputies have guns and badges. And they say they heard something was

wrong with the election. So in Riverside County, California, that Maga sheriff just seized a thousand

boxes of elections material, including more than 650,000 ballots. As American air travel absolutely

melts down, not only because the price of jet fuel is skyrocketing thanks to Trump's war of choice

in Iran. No, as American air travel today absorbs not only that, but also yet another

Trump era fatal collision at yet another airport this time, a runway collision at LaGuardia in

New York, which killed two pilots and sent 41 people to the hospital as TSA security lines tonight

exceed four hours just to get through security at Houston's airport as Atlanta advises travelers

on domestic flights that they're going to need at least four hours lead time at that airport.

Before just domestic flights, today in the midst of that meltdown, President Trump told Republicans

at a campaign event in Tennessee that he did not want the TSA crisis to be solved. He said he

did not want there to be any talks about resolving the TSA crisis and funding TSA agents

until Democrats agreed to pass new restrictions on voting rights. He said Republicans had to get

this done, quote, for Jesus. Okay. MSNOW is reporting tonight that the ICE agents Trump has sent

to the airports supposedly to help with the TSA disaster. The ICE enforcement and removal

operations officers, the ERO officers that they've sent, they quote, do not have the ability to

check travelers identification or screen passengers. So what are they there for?

Other than creep everyone out and crowd the food court and, you know, remind the poor

beleaguered TSA agents who actually are trained to do this job that they're not being paid to be at

work right now while these random bros from ICE who can't actually do anything are being paid

their full salaries to stand around and creep everyone out and add to how crowded it is in the

terminal without actually doing anything to help at all. So the news right now is dramatic.

You might even call it melodramatic. Everything seems to be just happening on this grand scale.

But here's also part of what's going on that is unfolding more quietly without melodrama.

It's definitely got moral drama and it's the kind of story we can only get from people who are

watching very, very closely. This story starts with a guy in Minnesota,

man named Nick Benson, who would not mind if I described him to you as a plain spotter.

He's a plain buff. He's an aviation geek. He studies planes. He looks at flight data.

You know, at some airports there are little places set aside for people to view the take-offs

in landings. Those are for people like Nick Benson. In the Minneapolis area where he lives,

whenever he gets the chance, he goes to the Minneapolis airport and he takes photographs of

interesting planes coming and going. This is his passion. Like most people who live in and near

Minneapolis, Nick Benson has also been horrified by what Trump's federal agents, Trump's ICE agents

and Border Patrol agents have done in Minneapolis and their attack on that city.

And as part of Nick Benson's contributions to his community's fight against ICE, their fight back

against this attack by the federal government, Mr. Benson has been documenting ICE flights

out of Minneapolis's airport. He's been doing it ever since ICE surged into Minnesota in December,

along with other local plane spotters. Nick has watched and kept count. He's kept a record. He's

documented it as people made their way from the tarmac up the steps into one of these deportation

planes over and over and over again. He says many of the people he's seen put on these planes are

put on in shackles, both men and women. The long hours that he's put in waiting at the airport

going through flight data mean that Nick Benson has been in almost a unique position, not just to

document those disappearances, those flights, but specifically to follow up on a story that

absolutely tore people up all across this country, the story of five-year-old Liam Conejo

Raymos. You'll remember the story of Liam Raymos, right? Nick Benson was able to follow that up

and uncover something about that story that nobody else in the public has been able to see.

When I said the name Liam Raymos, you instantly pictured him, right? This is Liam Conejo Raymos,

standing in his neighborhood, blue bunny hat, black and white check coat, Spider-Man backpack,

and one of Trump's federal agents standing behind him with his hands on the backpack.

A snowy street in Columbia Heights, Minnesota. This happened while Trump was crowing about how

the people being taken by his masked agents are all terrible criminals and monsters,

the worst of the worst. And there's little five-year-old Liam and his bunny hat in his backpack,

the real picture of who they're picking up. The day after school officials took that photo,

they announced that Liam and three other local kids from the same school had been grabbed by

ICE agents along with their families. And then we learned that within one day of them snatching

him off the street, ICE had already taken Liam and his father all the way from Minnesota to Texas.

They'd taken them to a notorious prison, the Dilly Detention Center, just outside San Antonio,

a place where they lock up men and women and children where prisoners have testified to horrific

conditions. And if you've followed this story of a little five-year-old Liam, you might remember

that we know how Liam and his dad got out of Dilly, right? You remember this? A week after they were

taken, Texas Congressman walking Castro visited Liam and his dad at Dilly. I sent out this heartbreaking

picture of Liam not looking well in his father's arms. There was continuing national uproar over

this case, over what had happened to this little kid and his family. And then just days after

that visit from the Congressman, on February 1st, the Trump administration decided that they were

going to release Liam and his father from Dilly. And the government flew Liam back to Minnesota.

And you might have seen the images from that, right? Liam getting to visit the cockpit of this delta

flight he was flying on his flight home to Minnesota. A crew from ABC News was there as the very,

very nice pilots who were very kind to him, gave him a lot of attention and let him sit in the

pilot's seat and gave him his own little pilot swings. In the case of little five-year-old Liam,

the public pressure worked in a way. Instead of being stuck in Dilly for weeks or months or longer,

things moved faster for him and his family. Liam was taken off the street, Minneapolis,

flown across the country, imprisoned, then freed from the prison and flown back home all

in less than two weeks. It went fast because of the national uproar. But back home in Minneapolis,

that plane spotter, that activist Nick Benson, he had this nagging question. Because in all of his

weeks and weeks of watching ice flights leave the Minneapolis airport watching the men and women

and shackles go up those tarmac stairs, Nick said he'd never once seen a kid boarding one of those

flights. He'd never seen a little kid like a five-year-old like Liam. So then how did they do it?

How exactly did ice ship Liam and his dad from Minneapolis to Texas and so quickly within 24

hours after they grabbed him off the street? We know they sent this little boy to prison in Texas.

How did he get there? How did he get from standing in his bunny hat and his black and white coat and

his spider-round backpack in Minnesota to a Trump prison camp one day later? How did they do it?

Well, now thanks to Nick Benson, we can see that part of the story. We can have a view now into the

machinery of Trump's system for locking up little kids, for locking up families, a view that we've

not had before. And it's because Nick Benson knows the Minneapolis airport like the inside of his

own car, right? Because he knows the flight schedules, he knows the layout of the gates,

he knows roughly when Liam had had to have traveled. And because of all that, because of what he's

been doing, Nick Benson was able to tear this thing open. Quote, pursuant to the mini, excuse me,

the Minnesota Open Records Law, I request copies of video footage of the following areas of the

Minneapolis St. Paul International Airport. January 21st, 2026, 530 AM to 10 AM. Any footage of or

that would show vehicular traffic entering or exiting gates 222 or 269, exterior ramp areas,

interior gate areas, jet bridges near gates F11, F13 or F15. Nick Benson filed his Open Records Law

request under Minnesota state law. He paid his $359.04 in processing costs. And what did he get?

He got dozens of hours of footage from half a dozen different surveillance cameras,

all showing the Delta Airlines passenger terminal or the operations going on just outside

the terminal's windows. And the hours leading up to that morning's nonstop flight from Minneapolis

to San Antonio. And he went through all of that footage and look, there he is. Recognize the jacket.

Heading for gate F13, the Delta flight to San Antonio and his black and white checked coat.

That's Liam Conejo-Ramos and his dad. There's no sound with this footage, but you will see three people

with Liam and his dad, three people who seem to be taking them through the airport to be clear.

We don't know whether they're federal agents or contractors or something else, but there they are

with Liam and his father. They're checking in before the flight. They're waiting in the terminal

with all the other travelers. At one point in the background, you can see Liam laying his blanket

down on the floor. I think it's so he can lie down on the blanket. Sometimes he gets up to look out

the window with his dad, Liam's like any other kid at the airport except for where he's going,

except for the fact that US President Donald Trump is sending him to prison at age five.

Finally, Liam and his dad and these minors line up with the other passengers and they head off

for their flight. A boy, his dad, his Spider-Man backpack, a nonstop Delta Airlines flight

from Minneapolis to San Antonio on the way to family immigration prison.

Nick Benson went through that footage. He shared it with an excellent aviation journalist

named Gillian Burkell who broke this story last week. Gillian Burkell has tracked apparent

ice flights all around the world to places like Espotini in Ireland, Espotini in Africa and Ireland

in Egypt. She told us this was the first time she had seen this other part of what they call ice

air. Not the flights on on charter aircraft or contract aircraft that load up people in shackles,

right? But this other part that is happening quietly around all the rest of us unsuspecting

passengers on passenger airlines in regular airports flying prisoners to Trump prison camps to

be held without trial, including little kids. We contacted Delta Airlines for comment. They

told us what they told Gillian Burkell that that government air travel is often booked via third

parties like travel agencies. They said airlines may not have advanced notice or detail as to who

may be flying and for what reason. Delta also, and we should have seen this coming, they've

pointed us back to that happy ABC news report about Liam and his dad being flown home from

Dilly on a Delta flight. That's the one where the pilots were so nice and they gave Liam his little

wings. Delta was very happy to promote its involvement in Liam's homecoming, but not so much

their involvement with sending him to prison. We also reached out to the Department of Homeland

Security with a number of questions about the video from the Minneapolis Airport and how the

government manages commercial airline travel with federal agents transporting prisoners against

their will, including minors. We haven't heard back well that you know if we do.

What we do know is that what we can see in that video of Liam and his dad at the Minneapolis airport,

we know that that is not an isolated incident. We know that ICE is moving immigrant families

in little kids on domestic commercial flights. And we know that because many of the families

in prison that that hellhole facility in Dilly, Texas have described in legal declarations that

that's how they got there. And one long running legal case about conditions for kids in these

immigration prisons, there were declarations filed just this past Friday. Families in prison

at Dilly, they don't say what airline they were brought there on, but they describe being brought

to the regular commercial airport alongside other passengers, but they're being forced onto flights

by mysterious escorts, two or three escorts. And who knows who those escorts are, they generally don't

identify themselves, nor will they tell the families where they are going. They just force

them onto the planes. In one declaration from December, a woman describes being locked up with her

nine-year-old daughter for nearly two full days in a room in the Miami airport. And then three

unidentified people escorted the woman and her daughter through two different airports and two

different flights. These were regular commercial flights on regular commercial airlines with

other passengers. And on one of those flights, the woman said she desperately handed a flight

attendant a vomit bag on which she had written a plea to call her husband and tell him that

she and her daughter had been taken. And they were headed to San Antonio. She hadn't been allowed

to make any phone calls for two days. This was her last desperate attempt. And the flight attendant

mercifully did it, called the woman's husband. Even if the airlines don't want to talk about it,

the family's being shipped to Dilly on these flights are talking about it. And now this new

footage of Liam in the Delta Terminal at Minneapolis St. Paul Airport makes it just impossible to ignore.

You may remember we have covered a lot on this show pressure campaigns that have been brought to

bear on commercial airlines and airports that were facilitating these ice flights, these deportation

flights for Trump's federal agents. People were pretty upset to discover, for example, that

Avello Airlines, you know, an Avello Airlines plane they might have been taking on vacation.

Might be used on a different day to fly out a plane full of people in chains who Trump's agents

had snatched off the streets or rammed off the road or pulled out of their car windows.

People were also upset that an aviation company called DataList was going to lease

airplane hangar space at their local airport in Delaware. They were upset about that because

DataList was also flying these flights, these deportation flights for ice. And in both of those

cases, public outcry worked. Avello got out of the deportation business. They sold all their

planes, many of them dies. Now they're back to trying to be a normal passenger airline again,

trying to wash that moral stench off themselves. DataList, as far as we know, they still fly

for ice as well, but they don't also try to fly retail passengers. And after the pushback from

the public, they backed off their plans at Wilmington Airport as well.

In the Trump administration may no longer care what voters think of them. They may think that

Donald Trump and his ilk are never ever going to be subject again to elections that control whether

or not they still hold power. But commercial public-facing companies, they very much care

what their customers think of them. They have to. Back in the first Trump term 2018, commercial

airlines discovered that that first Trump administration was using their flights to transport

immigrant kids who had been separated from their moms and dads. And a bunch of airlines,

when they discovered that their flights were being used for that purpose, they told the Trump

administration that they wouldn't do it anymore. They asked the Trump administration to stop

doing that. Delta, at the time, said that family separation policy did, quote, not a line with Delta's

core values. Well, that was then. How about now? Delta, are your core values? Are your customers

okay with this second-term Trump policy of family incarceration? Delta, with the help of your

planes. How about the other big airlines? Are your customers okay knowing they could be flying

on one of your planes? Right? Headed to a beach or a wedding or to visit their family.

And in the next row, there's the five-year-old and his dad that ICE just grabbed from outside

their home and are transporting to a hellish Texas prison against their will. Everybody okay with this?

In addition to Delta airlines, we reached out to United and American airlines as well to ask

whether ICE is also moving migrant families on their planes as well. Whether companies have a

position on it. We have not heard back. As for Liam Ramos and his family last week, lawyers for

the family said they're appealing a deportation order. Their lawyer tells us the appeal of that

deportation order could take months or even years. She says the government does appear to be moving

with remarkable speed on this case in particular. She tells us that if the Trump administration follows

the law, Liam and his family cannot be deported while their appeal is pending. But that's a big if

if they follow the law. One other thing, Liam's family lawyer tells us today. She says that in

addition to Liam and his father still coping with the trauma of this ordeal, contending with anxiety

and troublesleeping and all the rest of it, she says Liam no longer wants to wear his bunny hat

when he's out in public because it's now recognizable. And he does not want the attention that it draws.

This weekend, this Saturday, Liam's hometown of Minneapolis will be the flagship protest in what

is expected potentially to be the largest single day of protest in American history.

June of last year, that was the first No Kings protest. That drew an astonishing

five million people across the country. You might remember that was June 14, the first No Kings day.

That was the day Trump tried to throw himself a weird North Korea style military parade for his

own birthday. That sad low turnout event was wildly overshadowed by five million Americans

turning out at protests against Trump all over the country. And then there was the second No Kings

day in October. That one did not draw five million people. That one drew seven million people.

The flagship protest in October was in Philadelphia, the birthplace of the Constitution.

Seven million people turned out on No Kings Day in October.

And that was before Trump bulldozed the East Wing of the White House. And before he tried to arrest

six Democratic members of Congress. And before we learned that in addition to bombing random

votes in the Caribbean, he was also deliberately killing the survivors of those bombings,

which is a war crime. It was before he invaded Venezuela and announced he was taking their oil.

It was before he started an apocalyptic war with Iran. It was before he renamed to the Kennedy

Center for himself and then announced that he would close it. It's before he blew up health

insurance for millions of American families. It's before he effectively made the Nobel Peace

Prize winner give him her prize. It's before he sent the FBI to seize the ballots from Atlanta,

Georgia. It's before he posted a video online depicting President Obama and his wife Michelle Obama

as if they were apes. It's before they killed Renee Nicole Good. It's before they killed Alex

Freddie. It's before they took Liam. This Saturday it will be Minneapolis as the flagship.

But there are more than 3,000 separate protests planned all over the country. This Saturday,

no kinks. More ahead. Let's do this.

What do you know about the family detention center in Dilly, Texas? It's where our government

imprisons immigrant parents, children, and even newborns, a place with putrid drinking water,

food with bugs and worms, and even a confirmed measles outbreak. These conditions are unsafe and

inhumane. The Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services, or Reises,

is the only legal aid provider inside Dilly day in and day out. We're there right now,

defending immigrant's rights to do process and filing emergency petitions to free families

illegally detained. You can fuel our fight to protect the rights of our children, our neighbors,

and all of us. Donate at freeallfamilies.org. That's freeallfamilies.org.

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Pick up a pack today. Angel Saft.

So this is just about 45 seconds. Just watch this. This is part of how they are promoting it.

Our demonstration of moral strength is in opposition to the tyranny that threatens our very

existence as a country. And this kind of gathering can unite us in a moral movement to save

America. And we will not stand down, not now, not ever. I've got a question for you.

Are we friends? Are we gonna march out now? That's right. What we are doing here today is

as American as apple pie. You're standing up for our rights. You're standing up for our neighbors.

That is a video put out by the indivisible movement promoting the No Kings Day protest

this Saturday, this weekend. This is going to be the third one. And all across the country,

people have been doing kind of guerrilla promotion about that protest this weekend. In Chippewa

Valley, Wisconsin, local organizers there showed up with shovels and dye and made this very cool

sign in the snow. No Kings 3 March 28th. But we ain't afraid of no stinking blizzard. Wisconsin is

ready for no Kings 3.0. Bundle up and get your bunnies out here. We'll be waiting for you.

In Sunnyvale, California, they're advertising Saturday's protests with this sign over

a local highway overpass. This is Waterville main this weekend. People promoting this

everywhere. At the first No Kings Day protest last June, organizers say more than 5 million people

showed up at marches and rallies all across the country. Then the second No Kings was in October.

Just four months later, organizers said more than seven million people showed up. How many people

do you think you're going to show up for the third one this Saturday? Each of the dots on this map

marks where an individual No Kings protest is being held in the United States. There are so many

protests that from a distance the map is basically useless. The only thing you can see is areas where

no one lives a couple of them. There were 2,500 protests at the first No Kings. There were 2,700

protests at the second No Kings. Organizers say for this one, there are already more than 3,100

protests planned all over the country. The flagship one will be in Minneapolis, the place that has

spent the last four months showing the rest of the country what it looks like to stand up and fight

back tonight. Bruce Springsteen announced that he will be performing at that flagship protest.

Joining us now is Ezra Levin. He's the co-founder of Indivisible, one of the grassroots groups

that has helped lead the organizing for the No Kings protest. Ezra, it's nice to see you. Thanks

for being here. Great to see you, Richard. Indivisible does lots of different kinds of organizing.

How do these large, very decentralized No Kings protests will now have the third one of them,

this Saturday? How do they fit into the overall movement to oppose Trump and to limit his freedom

of movement as president? Rachel, that's a great question because I think actually people tend to

underplay and overplay the role of massive one-day protests like this. I would say No Kings

is a tactic, an extremely important tactic that can accomplish a couple of things. One,

it can bust through that bubble, that air of inevitability, that Trump, that this regime

is invincible, is unstoppable, is all powerful. You don't look all powerful when you're facing

the largest non-violent protests in American history in every nook and cranny in the country.

So, sending that message is great, is key, is why I'm excited that there are more than 3,100

protests already planned for Saturday. But the second thing it does, the second thing it does

that I think is just as important, is it doesn't just gather millions of people in one place.

I love that spring scene is playing in the Twin Cities. I love we're going to have a big

New York event in Chicago event in San Francisco. That's great. I'm from rural Texas. I love that Kyle

Texas has an event. I love that the reddest and most rural parts of the country also have protests

because the day after No Kings democracy won't suddenly be saved. Trump will still be in the

White House. This illegal and unconstitutional war will still be going on. His secret police

force, Goon Squad, will still be terrorizing American communities. So we need to build.

This is why it's important to be organizing where you are and why we recommend. If there is not

a No Kings protest within 30 minutes or so of where you live, you should probably be organizing

your own both to make the point on March 28th, but also to start organizing your own community

for what comes next. In terms of the sort of atmosphere in the country, I will say that it's

two different but related feelings that it creates in me to see a gigantic protest of a million

people in New York or someplace where there's lots of people have come together, and also to see

five people out in a street corner in a rural place where there doesn't have a lot of population.

It's kind of the same feeling in terms of the import of it. As I wanted to ask you,

one of the things that's happened between the last huge No Kings Day protest and this one this

Saturday is of course the killing of two protesters in Minneapolis and the brutalizing of protesters

and some other places. Do you think that's affected the way people are thinking about showing up for

this kind of event? Oh, absolutely, but I don't think the way that Trump and his folks all across

the country who are launching these campaigns of terror and communities thought it would.

Two days after Alex Prattie was murdered in the Twin Cities, you could imagine people all over

the country said, oh my gosh, that's sad. I'm mad about that, but I've got to protect myself.

I'm not going to show up. I've got to hide. I've got to not be targeted by this regime.

Instead, we saw the exact opposite, Rachel, the exact opposite. Two days after Alex Prattie was

murdered, we saw more than 200,000 people joining No Kings eyes on eye training to get trained

up on exactly what Alex Prattie was doing, exactly what Renee Good was doing. If there is a shift

though that I've seen is how the Republicans are responding to No Kings. It's really interesting

because in the lead up to No Kings 2, they spent two, three weeks talking all about No Kings. How

this is, we're going to be a violent protest. We're going to demolish the country. They had to call

out the National Guard, and of course, that's not what we saw. We saw powerful joy for millions

of people around the country, but you'll see right now I challenge you. Find one national elected

Republican who has said the phrase No Kings in the last month. I don't think you'll find that

person because the word has gone out. Do not talk about this because if we don't talk about it,

then there's no conflict. There's no conflict. Press won't cover it. If press doesn't cover it,

then people won't find out about it. If people don't find out about it, they won't show up.

That's a smart strategy on their part. I think we've got to adapt our tactics to recruit folks

ourselves. I do hope people will text No Kings to 5, 9, 7, 9, 8. Find out where your event is,

and then text three people who never attended a protest before. They're not activists. They're not

organizers. They might not even be political, but they don't like what's happening in this country.

Text them and recruit them to No Kings on Saturday. Invite them to join you.

As for 11, the co-founder of Indivisible Ezra, good luck this weekend. Keep a

surprised. We'll have you back soon to talk about it. Thank you. Thanks, Rachel.

All right, much more news ahead. Stay with us.

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learning program out there at the best price. Tonight the US Senate has confirmed as the new

Secretary of Homeland Security from Oklahoma Senator Mark Wayne Mullin. He replaces Kristi Nome,

whom President Trump fired earlier this month. Nome's top advisor, Cory Lewandowski,

is at the center of new reporting alleging what sure looks like a series of proposed kickbacks

and other kinds of financial corruption within the Homeland Security Department. NBC News reports

that some Homeland Security contractors have told the White House that Cory Lewandowski told them

he wanted to be paid in exchange for helping them get Homeland Security contracts. When the

companies refused, they say Lewandowski then blocked them from being granted government contracts.

Lewandowski has denied these claims roundly and adamantly. A statement on his behalf says in part

quote, Mr. Lewandowski adamantly denies ever demanding any payment or compensation from any

potential former or current government contractor. The statement says the allegations are quote not

supported by a single piece of evidence because there is none. I should tell you these reports

have none the last spurred a congressional inquiry by Democrats on House Oversight.

But alongside those allegations, there's a second sort of mysterious financial update we have for

you about the Homeland Security Department and specifically how the Trump administration has been

buying up warehouses all over the country to use as Trump prison camps to hold people without

trial. Well now in at least two of the places where they are trying to do that in Utah and Georgia

local press are reporting that the Trump administration agreed to purchase these warehouses to turn

into Trump prison camps. But they appear to have purchased these facilities for way way way more

than the facilities are worth. In Georgia, for example, the Trump administration has agreed to pay

$129 million for a vacant warehouse. Just a little over a year ago, that same property was valued

at just $26 million. A fraction of what the Trump administration just paid for it.

Same thing over in Utah, the Trump administration agreed to pay more than $145 million for a warehouse

there. According to local property records, that warehouse is only worth around $97 million,

meaning the Trump administration potentially overpaid for that one by, oh say, $48 million.

Why the overpaying? These proposed Trump prison camps have been wildly unpopular in the communities

where Trump has been buying up these warehouses. As you see here in Utah, there have been multiple

protests against the plan conversion of this Salt Lake City warehouse, which the White House appears

to have massively overpaid for at a time when the agency that paid for them is being accused

of rank corruption and self-dealing at the highest levels. What's going on here and do these

two dots connect? More on this in just a moment, stay with us.

Nate Bluen is a state senator from the great state of Utah. His South Salt Lake City constituents

are wildly against the Trump administration's efforts to put a massive Trump prison camp

in a warehouse in Salt Lake City. A prison camp to hold thousands of people

indefinitely and without trial. Senator Bluen is one of the local officials who's attended protests

against that facility. And last week at one of those protests, he specifically called out the

inexplicable $150 million price tag the Trump administration agreed to pay for an empty warehouse

in Salt Lake City, which appears to be tens of millions of dollars more than the property

is worth. He said, quote, out there, someone is making a whole bunch of money profiteering

off the suffering of human lives. Joining us now is Utah State Senator Nate Bluen, who is also

a candidate for Congress this year. Senator Bluen, thank you very much for being here. I appreciate

you taking the time. Thank you, Rachel. Appreciate it. So what do your constituents think about this

proposed facility? I know that Salt Lake City felt like it dodged a bullet. There had been an

original plan to buy a warehouse that had then been scuttled after the owner of sort of talked

out of it, but then ice came in and bought a second facility. How do your constituents feel about it?

People feel betrayed. This happened out of nowhere. We saw overnight this transaction for,

as you called out earlier, $50 million over the appraised value of this site. And people are so frustrated.

They want leaders who are going to step up and be accountable for the decisions that they're

getting made. And we have not had any of that accountability here in Utah. Our governor recently

invited this in and said that he supports having such a facility, but we have had strong local

leaders in Salt Lake City and Salt Lake County standing up and speaking out against this and

really making sure that our constituents feel heard. And then we have the opportunity to get involved

in this process and to actually make a difference. As you also mentioned, we did shut down a

similar facility months ago and for this to come out of nowhere. And again, for somebody

to be making tens of millions of dollars off of it is just so unconscionable in the current environment.

Well, let me ask you about that price tag part of it. It does seem unusual that they seem to be wildly

overpaying for a facility like this, but it is also a pattern that we're starting to see emerge

with other facilities that they're buying around the country. Certainly, there's been reporting

similar to what you found in Utah in Georgia just over the past few days and we've seen it in other

places as well. Do you as a state senator, does anybody acting locally in Utah have any

recourse to try to figure out how the price was arrived at? Who in your words might be profiteering

off of this type of planned facilities? Is there any way to follow the money here?

Well, you know, I am running for Congress and I think that's where we're going to make this

difference is we need to lean in with the power that Democrats are going to take back in

November and to hold hearings and to hold everyone accountable to abolish ICE and to make sure

that we are actually going after the people who have made these decisions and establishing where

this money is coming from because this is taxpayer dollars that are getting spent far over the

budgets of what we should be spending and frankly, we shouldn't be spending any money on these

sorts of internment camps. Utah has a history with internment camps and we don't need more of them

in our backyard. So I think we need to be exercising every single option here. We need our local

governments to step in and say no to permits and, you know, for infrastructure, for water,

for the safety needs that these are going to bring along. At the protest I was at just last week,

we saw people lining the streets and trucks were having a hard time getting by. This is frankly

bad for business. That's the least in my concerns here, but that sort of disruption needs to become

the norm as long as we see the Trump administration and folks playing along. My opponent in this race

has taken tens of thousands of dollars from private prison corporations. You know, we need to

elect leaders who do not, who are not going to be accountable to these corporations that are

making money, the billionaire class and splitting us up and really driving us apart. So it's

important that we do have these strong people to speak up for our communities for South Salt Lake

and others in particular that are going to be targeted here. This is happening in one of

the more diverse neighborhoods in Salt Lake City and I think everything I've heard from my constituents

that I represent right now from the folks that I'm speaking with as I'm running for Congress

are speaking out loudly against this. They see ISIS overreach. They see all of the things that

are happening and believe that this is an agency that has lost its social license to operate

and so to move forward with something that would lock up 7,500 people, 800,000 square feet. I've

walked around this thing. I mean, it takes time to just get around one side of the building and

to imagine what's happening in there is just so criminal to me. Utah State Senator Congressional

Nate Bluen. Thank you very much for being here. Stay keep keep us surprised. We'd love to have

you back to talk about this again. Thank you. Check out Nate for Utah.com if you want to learn more.

We'll be right back. Stay with us.

All right, that's going to do it for me tonight. Why have I asked my electrician? I found on

Angie.com to bury my pet hamster. 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.

This is very strange. Angie, can one you trust to find the ones you trust?

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