"Mixed messages from the Trump administration"

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and the community of car lovers on Instagram.

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Learn more at unitedhealthgroup.com slash commitment.

Hi, everyone. It is four o'clock here in New York.

I'm Alicia Menendez in front of Cole Wallace.

Day 28 of the war with Iran.

And here's where things stand.

Brand new reporting shows that the Pentagon is thinking of deploying 10,000 more troops to the region

as Iran moves to strengthen its control over the strait of Hormuz,

turning back ships that try to cross the waterway.

And there is breaking news here at home as well.

Narani and hacker group claims it has hacked the emails of FBI Director Cash Patel.

For Iran hackers published more than 300 emails and photos from years ago,

from what appears to be Cash Patel's personal email account.

The hackers are the same ones behind a cyber attack against medical device company,

Striker, earlier this month.

In a statement, the FBI said that no government information was leaked,

reiterated their $10 million reward for any information that could lead to the identification

of those hackers.

News of the hack.

It's a reminder that the Iranian regime is waging war on many fronts.

Back in the Middle East, the New York Times reports that, quote,

Iran said on Friday that it had warned three ships not to pass through the strait of Hormuz,

a day after Mr. Trump extended a US deadline for Tehran to reopen the waterway.

And as much as Donald Trump has been talking about striking a peace deal,

and does reporting suggest he wants to end the war,

Department of Defense officials tell the Wall Street Journal that, quote,

the Pentagon is looking at sending up to 10,000 additional ground troops to the Middle

East to give the president more military options.

The force, which would likely include infantry and armored vehicles,

would be added to the roughly 5,000 Marines and the thousands of paratroopers from the 82nd

Airborne Division, who have already been ordered to the region.

It is unclear where precisely forces will go in the Middle East,

but they will likely be within striking distance of Iran and Clark Island,

a crucial oil export hub off Iran's coast.

Mixed messages from the Trump administration as the war rages on is where we start today,

the New York Times diplomatic correspondent Michael Crowley, also with us, US former Secretary of

the Air Force, Frank Kendall. He is now a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress,

former Assistant Special Agent in charge at the FBI and National Security and Intelligence

Analyst, Michael Feinberg is here, he is also a fellow at Lothair, and joining me at the table,

former Democratic Congressman Max Rose. He is a veteran who served in Afghanistan and is now a

senior advisor for vote that's Michael Feinberg. Let's start with you, the FBI Director's personal

email account being hacked how big of a deal is that and what does it signal to you?

For the first time in the past year and a half, I actually feel something

likes sympathy towards Kashpatel in that nobody in general circumstances should ever have their entire

private life put out in public. It's fundamentally not fair or decent, but it is unfortunately the

natural consequence in almost an exhortable one of an administration that has chosen to deprioritize

traditional national security objectives against terrorist organizations and nation states.

In favor of reorienting the entire intelligence community and law enforcement apparatus

against South American cartels and South American immigrants, we've taken our eye as a country

off the ball. There are consequences for that, and we are starting to see that, whether it is the

hacking of the FBI Director's email, the various attacks that occurred in the United States and

Michigan in Virginia, or the United States getting drawn into yet another Middle Eastern

Quagmire. If you stop doing the things your organizations are supposed to do,

and you remove by termination or forced retirements, the people who know how to do those things,

horrible events and terrible choices are going to follow.

Secretary Kendall, that was one big piece of news. Let's turn to the other big piece of news,

10,000 more troops potentially being sent to the Middle East.

Why would he send them if he did not plan to use them?

That's a more credible force for sometimes some operation, a seasoned car guy on, for example.

Maybe doing some raids or some smaller operations in the vicinity of the straight itself.

It's not a force that's going to invade Iran and try to overrun the country.

You'd have to have a force several times, at least bigger than that to do that.

So it does increase the options the administration has, but they're not very good options.

Iran is fighting an asymmetric fight. The cyber attack, you just talked about as a piece of that,

closing those straights of her moves, which I don't think this force can fundamentally reverse

is another part of it. So we're in a type of conflict that for reasons to

mystify me, the administration did not anticipate, did not prepare for, and did not think through

the consequences of. So that's where we are. Let's just be clear, though, Max Rose.

Boots on the ground, on Clark Island, are boots on the ground in Iran, based on this president's

track record. If he is moving those troops, what is likely to happen next?

The president has yet to unexpectedly deploy a military asset and not use it,

which is incredibly scary in this one moment. Let's also remember that this remains

a conflict and a war that Congress has refused to declare or take any part in reviewing.

The notion that this is a short conflict, the notion that a ceasefire is imminent

doesn't seem within the realm of possibility right now, and the president seems to be elevating

the stakes with no regard for not only the cost and the potential consequences, but no regard for

the fact that he ran on their affordability agenda, that he ran on an agenda to oppose all

forever wars. This is why you see his base fracturing to this great degree. This is why you see

the losing special elections left and right because nobody in his party or nationwide

is behind this type of reckless action.

Michael Crowley, I want to talk about the who behind all of this because you have new reporting

today in the Times. You write this quote, it is unclear who in the Trump administration

may be in charge of talking with a battered Tehran surviving leadership. On Tuesday, Mr. Trump

said that Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, would join his special

envoy Steve Whitkopf and his son-in-law Jared Kushner in any negotiations. Mr. Vance is a past

opponent of U.S. intervention in the Middle East, generally, and Iran in particular. Mr.

Rubio, by contrast, is an Iran hawk who has publicly defended Mr. Trump's decision to attack the

country. That jumble of adversaries, a friend, a family member, a dove into hawk reflect Mr. Trump's

improvisational approach to foreign dealings and his disdain for career diplomats and their often

cumbersome protocols. I think improv is a kind way to put at my friend, Michael Crowley. I'm

talked to me about the president's approach here. How it might actually be making things more

complicated. Yeah, hi, Alicia. Thank you. So, look, it's just so different from how any other

president that I can think of would have handled something like this where you would have very

structured diplomacy, most likely led by a secretary of state who was crisscrossing the region.

You know, after October 7, those of us who cover Secretary of State Anthony Blinken were on his

plane constantly doing basically shuttle diplomacy around the Middle East, going to Israel and Arab

capitals. This has also happened in times of war. Colin Powell, as I wrote in that story,

went to, I believe it was seven Middle Eastern countries in the two months after George W. Bush

invaded Iraq in 2003. So, starting the fact that right now, Trump's Secretary of State Marco

Rubio is also his national security advisor and actually not doing all that much foreign diplomacy.

Rubio spends most of his time in Washington, doesn't travel very often. He's made a one-day trip

to Paris today to meet with G7 foreign ministers. Then he's coming right back. He's not going on

any other stops. Meanwhile, you have Steve Whitkoff, his longtime friend from the world of

New York real estate who had no previous foreign policy experience, his son-in-law Jared Kushner,

who did deal quite a lot with the Middle East in President Trump's first term. So, I think you

can grant him that, but otherwise, no experience prior to that. And now he's throwing JD

Vance in the mix as Vice President, who's done a little bit of diplomacy. They have different views.

There's no clear hierarchy or coordination. Again, the Secretary of State, who normally would

be leading these things, doesn't seem to be in a clear leadership position. There have been reports

that the Iranians don't want to see Whitkoff and Kushner again who were doing talks before the war.

So, how is this working? Who is the person who really understands the Iranian system

has been in touch with Iranian officials and has some sense of the context? This is further

complicated, of course, by the fact that Iranian leaders keep getting killed. So, you know, maybe

will grant the Trump administration that, that you don't have the continuity you would normally have.

But I think the general points still stand. And finally, Alicia, maybe the most fundamental point

here is that I think the answer to, well, how does this all add up? Who's in charge? Obviously,

it's President Trump. It's always the President. But in this case, it's a President who conducts diplomacy

on social media, who blurchs things out to reporters who takes phone calls while he's in meetings

with generals from reporters and says things that are contradictory, that are changing, that

sometimes don't make any sense. So, the upshot is he clearly seems to be looking for a diplomatic

solution rather than an escalation to this war right now. But the diplomacy doesn't seem to be

getting any traction. The Iranians so far are not playing ball. There's a lot of opinion that

the Iranians have a growing upper hand. And to the degree that Trump wants a diplomatic out here,

I don't think he's built a structure for himself to do that in a very efficient way.

Secretary Kendall, I am so struck by the Motley crew that Michael Crowley has just articulated

for us that is somehow supposed to bring this all to a resolution. I think you can add into that

analysis what it is that is motivating the President, who Michael Crowley reminds us is fundamentally

the person in charge here. Our colleague, Jake Trailer, has some just incredible reporting on

what current former Trump White House officials are saying. Trump calling the war already one is

mostly hyperbole, said a senior White House official granted anonymity to speak handedly about

the administration's thinking. It's part of Trump just wanting to declare victory and move on.

Quote, Trump is getting a little bored with Iran, the official said, not that he regrets it or

something. He's just bored and wants to move on. Your reaction, Secretary.

Well, you started this, President Trump, and you're not going to get the move on.

The straight-to-roll movies are so close, we're moving larger force structure into the region.

We don't see a solution to this anytime soon. I think that the administration totally misjudged

the fact that the Iranians can make their own judgments about when the war is over,

and it's not going to be over until they say it's over right now. As long as they can put weapons

onto the straight-to-roll movies, as long as they put weapons into the region, and while we've

cut that back a lot with our operations, they can still do it. The military problem right now is

much, much tougher than it was in the first few days of the war. The items have been concealed,

they'll be moved around. A lot of efforts have been made to hide things in this person.

I don't see why the Iranians can't keep up what they've been doing for quite some time.

And shipping companies are not going to risk their vessels in the straight,

until they feel quite secure going through there. That's not going to happen.

The economic impacts are significant. Iran, as we mentioned earlier, has other asymmetric

approaches they can use. Gosh, Patel's email doesn't mean very much, but the infrastructure

of America economically is very important. Attacks on our industry, attacks on our communications

networks, financial networks, et cetera, can have a pretty devastating effect here.

So Donald Trump is not going to get the attorneys back on this and pretend it doesn't exist.

It will be over when they strike some kind of a deal with the Iranian regime,

or the very, very unlikely thing, I think at this point, that regime is overthrown internally.

That was, I think, the intent. When they started this, it hasn't happened, and there's no evidence

it's going to happen anytime soon. regime changebacks was the original stated intent.

Somewhere along the line, the president started talking about denuclearization. It seems now,

like we're talking about opening the Strait of Hormuz, which would not have been closed if not

for the fact that the president had launched these attacks without really being clear about what

his own objective was to send 10,000 troops to ask the American people to come along for this ride

and to want to wrap it up, not with a vision of what that means for the freedom of the Iranian people,

not what it means for safety and security here at home, but because the president has

checks notes lost interest, doesn't seem like a great motivator.

At this point, their stated intent is to bring things back to what they were like 90 days ago.

Of course, they have struggled to find a consistent reason for doing this in the first place.

At one point, it was the nuclear weapons system that they claimed to have destroyed six months

ago. Another point is ballistic systems. Another point is supporting terrorist militias and networks

across the globe. At least the Bush administration had the decency to present one lie to the American

people and hold on to that lie for several years. This administration has failed to even do that,

but overriding all of it was the sense that prior administration's Democrat and Republican were

just not courageous or strong enough to do what this president is doing. The truth is that

they were not stupid enough to do what this administration is doing in the manner that they have

done. It's so reckless, so quick, so urgent, so unconstitutional that now they are left holding

the bag and putting more service members at risk in the process. So Michael Crowley, when the

hawk and the dove and the sun and law and the failed special envoy are all heading out to talk to

intermediaries and adversaries, do they know what their goal is other than finding a short-term

off-ramp? Well, that's the million dollar question. Trump officials insist that their goals are

clear, but when they explain them, their answers often sound at odds with one another and the goals

seem to be shifting. And I think that in their own heads, they may have different goals. So,

does Marco Rubio and JD Vance want the same outcome here? I think it's entirely possible based on

a strong and clear record of things Vance has said in the past that he thinks that this is not good

for the country and should be wrapped up sooner than later. And based on the weight of years of

things Marco Rubio said, I think there's a reason that he might think we should hang in here and

try to make sure we bring down the Iranian regime. There may be a master strategy that's drawn

up in the White House, but the president's constantly changing remarks about how much longer he's

willing to do this, whether he wants to get out of it, what he considers his red lines to be,

suggests that they can't have a clear plan because there's not much evidence that the president

himself knows exactly what he wants to do. Now, that would be consistent with, I'm not saying we

know this for sure, but that would be consistent with the president who began this conflict,

thinking that it would be over quickly and that the Iranian regime would capitulate quickly,

and he could essentially dictate his terms of surrender. And I think it's possible that

when that did not happen, President Trump knew that he had to keep fighting, but he's not exactly sure

when he is going to be comfortable ending the fight and that he'll maybe kind of know it when he

sees it. So that makes to, if that's true, that makes diplomacy pretty tough.

Oh, know it when he sees it, Michael Crowley.

Frank Kendall, thank you both so much for getting us started. Max Rose, Michael Feinberg,

you're sticking with me when we come back. Pete Hegseth's purge of the most trusted, the most

revered members of the military continues. New details on how we personally intervene in

withholding promotions from deserving service members. Plus, the most loyal foot soldiers and

Trump's mega movement are showing their discomfort over the war that is playing out at their annual

conservative convention going on. And later in the show, thousands of protests are planned for

across the country tomorrow condemning what organizers are calling Trump's tyrannical rule.

We're going to get to all those stories and more when Deadline White House continues after this.

That's pure automotive joy. I'm Peter, the owner of Musclecar Junior.

It started as a hobby. Then I started posting about it. Before I knew it, I built a business for

storing muscle cars on Facebook Marketplace. And the community of car lovers on Instagram.

Today, new customers send me what's that message is from all over. Not bad for a hobby.

Learn how meta helps over 35 million American businesses like Peter's grow at meta.com slash community.

Here's a shift worth noting. Better health care is care that meets patients where they are.

United health group is bringing it directly to living rooms. This is a win for patients managing

chronic conditions. And here's the interesting thing. By closing those care gaps, administering in-home

exams and identifying risks earlier, more diseases can be prevented and patient outcomes can

improve. In 2025 alone, United Health Group patients received over 19 million home visits.

Learn more at unitedhealthgroup.com slash commitment. This episode is brought to you by Marvel

Television's Daredevil Born Again Season 2, now streaming on Disney Plus.

Charlie Cox and Vincent Denofrio are back and Kristen Ritter makes her highly anticipated return

as Jessica Jones in an all-new season. As Mayor Fisk tightens his grip on New York City,

he marks Daredevil as his top target. Matt Murdock fights from the shadows, hoping to bring down Fisk's

corrupt empire and reclaim his city. Don't miss Daredevil Born Again Season 2, now streaming only on Disney Plus.

In an administration with a history of racism and misogyny,

Pete Hegseth is blocking the promotions of four army officers, two of whom are black and two

are women. The officers were set to be promoted to one-star generals. The New York Times writes

this about Hegseth's intervention. Quote, the promotion list consists of about three dozen

officers, most of whom are white men, senior military officials said. Hegseth had been pressing

senior army leaders, including army secretary Daniel Driscoll for months to remove the officers

names, military officials said. But Driscoll citing the officers decades-long records of exemplary

service had repeatedly refused. Earlier this month, Hegseth broke the law jam by unilaterally

striking the officer's names from the list. Though it is not clear, he has the legal authority

to do so. The list is currently being reviewed by the White House, which is expected to send it to

the Senate, their final approval. A few female and black officers remain on the list, military

officials said. This is just the latest in Hegseth's radical plan for a maker nation's armed forces,

according to his particular vision of this country. As the Times notes, quote, since taking office,

Hegseth has fired or sidelined at least two dozen generals and admirals. Currently, the chairman

and vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, all five service chiefs, and nine of the military's

ten combatant commanders are white men, a return to the status quo that existed for decades.

Let's bring in senior contributing editor Michel Norris, Max Rose, is still with us, Max,

you are the veteran. I'm going to start with you. What message does this send to our military?

I think it sends the message that the military may not be the meritocracy that it once was.

Remember, these Fulberg colonels went through a very long competitive and arduous process to make

that promotion list and that process is there to make our military the strongest military

in the nation to reject what was once a centuries-old tradition that the only way an officer could get

promoted was through nepotism or bribery or the old boys club. The United States military

actually built a system to reject all of that to say we only promote the best and the brightest

and senior generals made the decision to build out that promotion list and then the secretary

defense unilaterally steps in and legally, illegally or otherwise says that only he knows best and

that was such an egregious decision that the secretary of the army, Dan Driscoll, who President

Trump also appointed is an open rebellion against him. So when your own right flank in the military

is opposed, it just shows how egregious this action is. Michelle Norris, let's stick on Driscoll's role

here. This is more from that time's reporting. The frustrations with Hegseth's approach came to a

boil last summer during a heated exchange between Ricky Buria, Hegseth's chief of staff in Driscoll

about a separate promotion. Buria chastised the army secretary for selecting major general Antoinette

Gantt, a combat engineer who served in Iraq and Afghanistan to take command of the military

district of Washington. That's according to three current and former defense and administration

officials familiar with the exchange, Buria told Driscoll that Trump would not want to stand next

to a black female officer at military events, the officials said. Driscoll was shocked, we should

all be shocked. The president is not a racist or sexist, he told Buria, according to the officials.

Your reaction to all of that. You know, this is sad that we're seeing this, but particularly sad

because we're seeing it as we are involved in military combat. It is not unusual for the secretary

of defense to go over these lists, but technically they are supposed to go over these lists to

prevent discrimination and racism. That is what produced Colin Powell, for instance, when he got

his first star, Clifford Alexander at that point said, bring the list back and make sure that it is

more inclusive. It's usually not to try to bake in discrimination. I don't usually come on air

with documents for show and tell, but this made me reach into my files to find something called

the guide to the command of Negro Naval personnel, which was published after World War II when the

conclusion at that point was that any kind of racial theories in the military is a waste of manpower.

And in this guide, which was produced for the Navy and similar guides for the Army, for the Air Force,

at a time when they were coming out of a period of segregation in the military. And after a huge

global conflict, the military, the US military, the most mighty military in the world decided

that racism and discrimination made the military forces weaker. It quotes, and the quote in this

guide says, in modern total warfare, any avoidable waste of manpower can only be viewed as material aid

to the enemy. I would suggest that Secretary Hadseth and the people who surround him go back and

look at these guides and understand the message that they sent about the importance of making sure

that anyone who is enlisted in the armed forces is able to go as far as their talents will take them.

Well, Michel Norris thought would require reading. So I'm not sure that you're going to be able to

persuade them to do it, but incredible. And thank you for bringing those documents. I don't know

about both of you, but as I was reading all of this reporting, I was replaying in my mind,

Secretary Hadseth's speech to the generals from last year, because as much as this is

shocking on its merits, it is not surprising based on what we have heard from him. Take a listen.

If I've learned one core lesson in my eight months in this job, it's that personnel is policy.

Personnel is policy. The best way to take care of troops is to give them good leaders committed

to the war-fighting culture of the department. Not perfect leaders, good leaders, competent,

qualified, professional, agile, aggressive, innovative, risk-taking, apolitical, faithful to their

oath and to the Constitution. For too long, we've promoted too many uniform leaders for the wrong

reasons based on their race, based on gender quotas, based on historic so-called firsts.

We've pretended that combat arms and non-combat arms are the same thing, foolish and reckless political

leaders set the wrong compass heading. And we lost our way. We became the woke department,

but not anymore. There is an assumption that I need not articulate for you, Michele Norris,

which is the assumption that a person who is a woman or a person of color is not there because

they are excellent, is not there because they have gone through the rigorous process that Max

Rose detailed for us. In his eyes could only possibly be there because they were a DEI higher.

And I think a lot about the fact that not only are these folks being derailed in real time,

but they will deserve a recourse on the other side of this administration.

They deserve a recourse right now, and I hope that they think about that through legal channels.

One of the reasons that people try to get rid of manifest demonstrations of excellence is because

it refutes the idea that excellence should not exist in Brownskin. And the fact that these people

were getting a one-star, the first star is a big deal in the military. It is not something that

happens through hubris. So he's trying to, it seems, get rid of people who would undermine this

heinous theory that the only way people of color can thrive is to grab something that they don't

deserve, to be put in places that are above their merit. And it is particularly galling to hear someone

like peak headsets say this because he would, he talks about DEI hires, I would posit that he

might fall in the category of an LBM higher, loyalty before merit higher or loyalty at LIM higher,

loyalty instead of merit higher because if you look at his own background, it is not in any way

commensurate with the long line of people who have held that position. And so it's sad on several

levels. The military deserves more right now, and I'm very sorry for the people who had this

opportunity snatch from them. The choice to do this next role is while we are at war.

Well, you have a military that's having recruitment challenges. And I think about my own

communities, the fact that there are Latino kids right now who are signing up for the military

because they're hoping to shield and protect their undocumented parents. And then the folks at

the very top are saying there's no pathway for you here. It's anathema.

Remember that it's also hypocritical and contradictory.

Secretary of the Defense Hexat has constantly talked about a commitment to lethality.

They're all we care about is lethality. But then when his generals come to him,

and say, here's who our best and brightest is, turns around and rejects it. I can think of more

of a nonlethal decision to make than that. The truth of the matter is he's the woke one.

The truth of the matter is he is the one that's committed to ideology over common sense, practical

commitment to military effectiveness. He is exactly who he claims to detest and oppose. And that

is what is so sad about this whole situation. My co-host Simone Sanderson often says every

accusation is an admission and to your point, I believe that is true here. Michelle Norris Max Rose.

Thank you both so much for being with us. After the break, Trump using his Department of Justice

today to defend its taking of ballots for an election, he has been spreading lies about for

almost six years now. The very latest on that fight is next.

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million home visits. Learn more at UnitedHealthgroup.com slash commitment.

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there at the best price. Donald Trump's latest probe into his 2020 election loss is facing its

first major legal test. Today, lawyers for Fulton County, Georgia argued in federal court for the

return of thousands of election ballots seized by the FBI earlier this year. As part of the Justice

Department's reinvestigation of Trump's claims of fraud in Georgia debunked by multiple audits,

court rulings, and Trump's own former attorney general. Fulton County says agents misled the

court with transparent conspiracy theories about what happened in Fulton County during the 2020

election in order to obtain a warrant for that unprecedented raid, which included a

patheling appearance by Trump's director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard.

Today's hearing, and whatever the judge decides, it is a test run for Trump's DOJ whose latest

probe has alarmed election officials. It will set a precedent for future elections in Fulton County

and other jurisdictions where Trump has yet to accept defeat. Joining me now host of the Bullwork

podcast, political analyst Tim Miller, Michael Feinberg is back with us as well. Michael,

we're talking about more than 650 boxes of election materials. How can the Justice Department possibly

defend that? I don't think they can, and I hope that the judge over hearing the matter

sees through their arguments. The fact is the affidavit, which supported the search warrant for

this seizure in the first place, should be viewed as fatally defective. It relies upon

the affirmations of somebody in the executive branch who has been a consistently debunked election

denier since the 2020 election, and that magistrate affirmed it in the first place,

gives me conservatively less faith than I had in that particular judicial district than before.

I mean, Tim, the whole thing to me feels like a stretch stress task, of course, not just retrospectively

but prospectively. Yeah, look, I think that's right. This is, I think that it's important to kind of

disentangle what is happening, you know, with MAGA, with their efforts across a lot of different

verticals, because there are some areas in which they're actually pretty effective and competent.

And I think that we've seen that from Stephen Miller and the immigration regime, the deportation

regime, obviously some of the ice thugs they've hired have not been competent, but like the

effort of we're going to do a mass deportation, and they followed through on that.

Roosevelt, with Project 2025, we are going to dismantle the government. They followed through on

that and been successful in a lot of ways, less successful in other places. This, the DOJ

effort to target foes and try to create a rationale for stealing the next election,

that effort so far has been a disaster. I mean, these guys are keystone cops. They've been

rejected by judges left and right. They've been unsuccessful at going after their, the folks on

their enemies list despite trying to. And they've been successful so far in their efforts to try to

unbalance the playing table for the midterm election. I mean, they first tried to do, you know,

they're the midterm redistricting thing. That has blown up in their face. And large part of

things, you have a new son and Abigail Spamberger and others. And I think this effort is in that vein,

right, where they're trying to come up with pretext and rationale to create problems in November.

And so far, they're coming up with Bupkiss. So just let's play that out, Michael Feinberg.

What happens if the FBI can, based on this, just lie their way into seizing election ballots?

Sue, I'm going to confess I have a little less optimism than Tim does about how quickly this

effort may fail fail. It's important to note, the Trump administration, the MAGA movement,

the Republican Party, what have you, doesn't need to steal the election. They just need to cast

the results in one or two major cities in swing states into doubt and create civil unrest and

mass confusion. And once that happens, they can leverage the things they're effective at,

like their private mercenary force, which goes by the name of ICE, to take harsher measures.

We had the deputy attorney general within the past 24 hours say that he sees nothing wrong with

ICE and polling stations. There is an explicit federal law precluding that. Yet our nation's second

highest law enforcement official is arguing that it's okay. We're through the looking glass at

this point. I don't think we can trust anything that the executive branch of theirs about its

intentions to not interfere in elections or to minimize what it is trying to do. I think we need

to be viewing this as a five alarm fire now, because if we wait until something actually happens

or a seat of doubt is planted in the citizenry's mind, we're already going to be too far down the road

to fully combat it. Tim, you know that I generally feel that you are way less optimistic than me.

So if Michael Feinberg is less optimistic than you, then we are in a pretty dark place. But I do

think he's connecting dots that you too often connect, right? Which is each piece of this is a part

of the larger hole, whether it is the president, Republicans demanding nationalized elections,

whether it is redistricting, whether it is what they're trying to do with the SAVAC. I mean, they

are approaching this from every angle with the understanding that any gains they can make

advantage them. And so I wonder sort of where you see us on the ladder of escalation when it comes

to their efforts to mess with these midterms? Yeah, that's true. And they're climbing up additional

rungs on the ladder to go along with your metaphor of escalation of trying to mess with the midterms.

And we've been on the floor with Mark Elias. And for me, I think one thing that worries me in

particular and I've talked to Mark about is this post-election as Mike played out there, you create

doubts about elections happening in certain states or certain cities. And then you challenge

whether or not those people can be seated. I guess, though, I just, I do want to caveat this,

I think it's important to be vigilant. I'm glad that there are people like Mark Elias out there

that are fighting this and many others. And I do think we need to be ready for it. I just think

we should also be clearied about the ways in which they failed and which the ways that

which their political project is failing right now. And you know, it's, you notice, I use this

example a lot. After Doug Masteryato, you probably don't even remember him, he ran against Josh Shapiro

in 2022. He was an insurrectionist. He ran for governor of Pennsylvania. And he was talking like

Trump, like I'm not going to accept the election. This is rigged. It's fraudulent. And Josh Shapiro beat

him by 18 points. And Doug Masteryato just conceived it. Nobody stormed the Capitol in Harrisburg.

Because the election wasn't close enough to steal. And I think that like all of that is a play

here. And I think that that part of the democracy movement, you know, making sure that the people

who oppose this administration turn out in an interim election and turn out in such numbers

that these efforts, these kind of half-baked efforts to try to screw with the election just don't

match, you know, the scale of the opposition. And that's the trajectory I think we're headed on.

I don't believe that that doesn't mean that they shouldn't be vigilant, that there won't be

monkey business, that they're not going to try to pull whatever levers that they can. But I just

think it's important to kind of see clearly or add and not let people get to, you know, hopeless

about the importance of actually voting in the midterms. I appreciate that. And I appreciate that

reframe. Michael Feinberg, as always, thank you so much for being with us. Tim, you are sticking

with me after the break. Has the Republican-infighting bird any chance of an end to the DHS

shutdown be very latest from Capitol Hill? That's next.

After subjecting millions of Americans to long lines and airports across the nation,

while thousands of TSA agents worked without pay for weeks, Donald Trump, in an attempt to clean

up a mess entirely of his own making, just signed an executive order which will pay TSA workers

as the Homeland Security shutdown drags on. That move would not have been necessary if House

Republicans would have voted for the bill pass unanimously by the Senate to fund most of the

Department of Homeland Security, the exception of ICE and Customs and Border Patrol. But House

speak, or Mike Johnson instead, is refusing to bring that bill to a vote, which will extend the

shutdown as lawmakers leave town for a two-week recess. We are back with Tim Miller. Listen,

this has always been a very tricky caucus for Mike Johnson. But they just, they own this now,

right? There's a question about that. Yeah, I mean, this is like the least important element of it,

which is who is winning the spin battle of this in Washington. But to the extent that it matters,

the Democrats have officially won the spin battle in this shutdown in Washington. Just I'd Trump

absolutely own this. The Republicans and the Democrats in the Senate came back together and

they said, look, this is getting out of hand. This is unfair to the TSA agents that they're getting

paid. It's a disaster for travelers. And let's just pay, you know, that does just fun. The other

parts of DHS besides ICE and CBP and deal with those conversations later. It's a totally reasonable

thing. That's what the Democrats have been proposing for a while. Republicans of the Senate agreed.

And now Republicans in the House are holding it up. So there's really only one group of people

that can be blamed for the long lines and the lack of pay for TSA. And it's the House Republicans.

And I don't even really know what they want to plan to get out of it at this point. I guess maybe

they, in theory, they would think that they would have leverage to pressure the Democrats

to find ICE or CBP. But why would the Democrats do that right now when the House Republicans

are the ones holding the back? Right. I mean, I understand your point about this in the broader

context being the least important element of this debate. And yet the reason that it feels relevant

to me is we are reminded over and over again that there is a small part of the Republican caucus.

I mean, the larger Republican caucus, notwithstanding, that makes it very difficult for common sense,

practical, bipartisan measures to move. And you've made the point to me many times,

like this is not a Republican Congress so concerned with legislating. And perhaps given their

priorities, it is best that things aren't just like speeding through there. But in addition to

sort of the role that Congress should be playing in pumping the breaks on this president's

worst impulses, whether that is on Iran, whether that is on tariffs and all of the power that

Republicans have conceded to the executives, there's also just a reminder of the opportunity cost

of their not understanding, Tim, how to get things done. Well, they just can't govern.

This is just fundamentally what they can't govern. And we're in a crisis and you need to have

people watching the can govern. And even if, you know, look, we've been in times before where

you and I had disagreed, Alicia, where people disagreed with who was in Congress. We understood

that in times of crisis, in times of emergency, you need to grown-ups on Capitol Hill who could come

together and say, hey, we need to figure out something to solve this crisis. These guys can't do

that. Like they're not capable of doing it. And so they're to blame for the continued lack of

pay of the TSA agents and the continued lines of people who are going to have to suffer through

this weekend. And you know, look, I think it's an ominous side as things start to unravel

as a result of the Iran war, be that economically or militarily, or both.

You know, there's nobody home on Capitol Hill to, you know, try to reign, reign the president

in it. Nobody's home. Tim is not going anywhere after the break. Another example of Donald Trump

treating the White House as his house. After completely demolishing the East Wing of the White House

for a ballroom vanity project covering the Oval Office in gold and paving over the Rose Garden,

Donald Trump is eyeing even more renovations. The New York Times reports the Trump has, quote,

discuss turning the White House treaty room, historically a meeting place for diplomats and

statesmen, into a guest bedroom with an ensuite bath. The Times notes that it is, quote,

one of the most historic rooms in the White House. Presidents Ulysses S. Grant and William McKinley

used it as a cabinet room. And it was where the Spanish-American war piece protocol of 1898,

the nuclear test band treaty of 1963 were both signed. More recently, it has also been the site

for major wartime addresses by the president, you know, just some minor reservations. We're going

to stay on that story. When we come back, the gradual discomfort of Trump's policies from his

most loyal supporters is starting to accelerate. We got much more of that after a very short break.

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, go and you trust to find the ones you trust.

Find crows for all your home projects at Angie.com.