New scrutiny on Noem, Lewandowski's 'close relationship' amid DHS chaos

Subscribe to MSNOW Premium on Apple Podcasts for early access, ad-free listening, and bonus content to all of MSNOW's original podcasts, including the chart-topping series The Best People with Nicole Wallace, Why Is This Happening, Main Justice, and more. Plus, new episodes of all your favorite MSNOW shows ad-free, and ad-free listening to all of Rachel Maddow's original series, including Rachel Maddow Presents Burn Order. Subscribe to MSNOW Premium on Apple Podcasts. Tonight on All In. This facility is one of the tools in our toolkit that we will use. The face of immigration overreach in America now fully mired in scandal. When her blanket wasn't moved to the second plane, a Coast Guard pilot was reportedly fired and told to take a commercial flight home. Tonight, Kristi Noem, Corey Lewandowski and the enormous stakes of the DHS shutdown. We intend to proceed with impeachment proceedings if Kristi Noem is not fired. Then the Epstein contagion keeps growing. What did the president know and when did he know it? Did he call the chief? Look, it was a phone call that may or may not have happened in 2006. Plus, new polling shows America prefers Biden to Trump. and new alarm over a White House push to make pollution cute again. I'm proud to officially name the undisputed, when did this come out, Mr. Speaker, the undisputed champion of beautiful clean coal. When All In starts right now. Good evening from New York. I'm Chris Hayes, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem has been very busy this week getting in front of microphones trying to save her job. Yesterday, she was in Southern California to trumpet the department's good work as its funding is about to lapse. But the event was drowned out by a throng of protesters outside blasting whistles and bullhorn sirens. Good afternoon, everybody. I think you're asking about detention facilities and the standards in it. Are you talking about our funding bill? I heard you ask about Operation Metro Surge and CBP and ICE. And what was the 287G? A little hard to make it out, but that did not stop her. Today, Noam held a press conference in Phoenix claiming the DHS is now an election police force. Although the Constitution gives states the primary responsibility for running their elections, Congress also gives authorities and duties to the federal government. Now, as the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, those authorities lie within my department and the responsibility lies with me. Somehow, the Constitutional Republic managed to stand for more than 200 years without a Department of Homeland Security to oversee elections. I got to say right now, Kristi Noem is, and believe me, it's crowded, frontrunner for the worst, most incompetent and inhumane cabinet member of my lifetime. She's trying harder than ever to project strength because she's unpopular, and this is important, even within the Trump administration. The latest evidence of that comes from one of the most devastating pieces of political reporting I can remember. A new investigation into the bizarre behavior of Noam and her unofficial number two, Trump confidant and accused sexual harasser, Corey Lewandowski. According to this incredible piece in the Wall Street Journal, who spoke with multiple administration officials, Noam and Lewandowski are causing chaos in DHS, berating senior staff, giving polygraph tests to employees they do not trust, demanding expensive perks, like extremely expensive perks. And in one case, firing a U.S. Coast Guard pilot after Noam's blanket was left behind on a plane, according to people familiar with the incident. The piece also deals with Lewandowski and Noem's close relationship Noting how, quote, after photos in the Daily Mail showed Lewandowski going back and forth Between his apartment and Noem's across the street last year The secretary moved into a government-owned waterfront house on a military base in Washington The pair, who are both married to other people, have publicly denied the reports of an affair But people said they do little to hide their relationship inside the department A DHS spokeswoman said the department doesn't waste time with salacious, baseless gossip. The Journal noted also that Lewandowski and Noem have lately been using a luxury 737 MAX jet with a private cabin in back for their travel around the country, according to people familiar with the matter. A $70 million plane that, in official documents, is earmarked for high-profile deportations, sources told the paper. At the same time, the story relates how even red states like Florida and Georgia have been waiting on funding from DHS for emergencies they've had. Because Noam and Lewandowski have reportedly taken a lead role in reviewing contracts. At one point, I think all contracts over $100,000 had to cross their desk. and several officials inside the department said contracts and grants are being awarded in an opaque and arbitrary manner. And it appeared Noam was keeping tabs on how much TV time she got. Journal says she routinely berated staff if she saw border czar Tom Homan on TV and kept track of both of their appearances to make sure she was on TV more than him, according to people familiar with the matter. The DHS spokeswoman, who would only speak on background, said that was false. And then there was the blanket incident in which Noam had to switch planes after a maintenance issue was discovered, but her blanket wasn't moved to the second plane, according to people familiar with the incident. The journal writes, the Coast Guard pilot was initially fired and told to take a commercial flight home when they reached their destination. They eventually reinstated the pilot because no one else was available to fly them home. Imagine how quiet that flight home was. Then, in an incident last year that rankled some senior staff of the agency Lewandowski, who is not a regular government employee at all He's not a law enforcement officer Made it known to top ICE officials that he wanted to be issued A law enforcement badge And a federally issued gun, according to people familiar with his push MSNOW has independently confirmed that story A top ICE lawyer declined to sign off on giving Lewandowski a gun and days later he was placed on administrative leave. He was later demoted and moved to FEMA, the people said. Lewandowski never got that gun. But, the general says, he has been spotted by DHS staff sporting a badge emblazoned with the words Homeland Security. These are not the acts of ordered minds. And it is all happening as DHS is on the verge of an agency funding shutdown. Tonight. Right. Because there is a very real debate over whether to further fund a massive and growing police force of armed masked agents that have been marauding American cities and streets, disappearing people, killing people on camera and then lying about it. They are also planning a nationwide expansion of detention camps as we are getting more evidence day by day by day of absolutely inhumane conditions at the camps ICE already has. The latest evidence comes from Seamus Culleton, an Irish national who has a legal work permit and is married to an American, but who has been held in an El Paso detention center for five months. He called into an Irish radio show to describe the conditions there. The best way I could describe it is probably like a modern day concentration camp. I've been locked in the same room now for four and a half months. I've had barely any outside time. No fresh air No sunshine I'm in fear for my life down here Honestly because You know People are being killed By the staff here By the security staff You know And you just don't know What's going to happen On a day to day basis A modern day concentration camp That's the characterization Of an individual Who's been in that camp For five months Barely able to go outside So think about that The department that runs that facility The one that Killed two Americans In front of all our eyes And then proceeded to slander them Gleefully. The one that just shot a space laser at a bunch of Mylar Valentine's balloons and endangered civilian aircraft and claimed it shot down a cartel drone. The one that's run by a self-absorbed politician and her special friend with a special badge. That is the department that wants continued funding from Congress. Now, let's be clear. Democrats are not a majority in either house. They do not have a ton of leverage here. They may not be able to sustain the cessation of this funding, a shutdown of the agency, for very long. They got to keep, you know, almost all their members. They can't allow for eight defections. And even in a shutdown, DHS is sitting on this enormous amount of money from Trump's terrible big bill. But here's one idea. I'm just going to throw it out there. It is possible for Democrats to say, along with the demands they have for changes to the behavior of DHS officials, that there's not another cent for a DHS run by Kristi Noem. Absolutely not. She's already unpopular in this administration. You can sort of see that in the reporting. Would removing her and Corey Lewandowski magically solve all the problems? No, absolutely not at all. No way. Would it be a victory politically and morally to actually force one of the worst Trump 2.0 cabinet members to resign in disgrace? Absolutely yes. Congressman James McGovern, Democrat of Massachusetts, serves as ranking member of the House Rules Committee, and he joins me now. It's good to have you here. Happy to be with you. We played the clip of Leader Jeffries before all this came out and after both Renee Good and Alex Pretty were shot and killed and then essentially slandered by the administration, domestic terrorists and like, calling for her to resign or be impeached. I imagine you support that. Absolutely. I mean, she's incompetent. She does not belong there. She should be fired or she should be impeached. I mean, your opening kind of says it all. I mean, this is crazy. This is nuts. The chaos, the lies, the BS, you know, and the egos that are involved here. And she's worried about competition with Tom Holman. Wasn't he the guy that took a $50,000 bribe in a copper bag? I mean, really? I mean, this is where we're at? I have to say, he says it wasn't a bribe, but we don't know what happened with the $50,000. But this has to stop I mean look I somebody who called for the abolition of ICE you know years ago when ICE was separating children from their families You know as you pointed out we survived for over 200 years without the agency We ought to go back to the drawing board. There's no trust in ICE. There's no trust in Christine Ohm. American citizens are being killed. They're sowing chaos and confusion in this country. Enough is enough. You know, and again, I don't know how all this is going to work out, but I can't imagine voting one more cent to support Kristi Noem and her agency. Yeah, I mean, there's a few things right here, like sort of ascending order. One would be like, you know, we won't fund ICE or we won't fund DHS if Kristi Noem continues here. Then there's the list of demands the Senate Democrats have made, you know, about unmasking the agents and stopping these sort of like roving patrols and a number of other things. And then there's like, no, we shouldn't have ICE as an agency. And then Galaxy Brain, there's we should not have the Department of Homeland Security, which was made in the wake of 9-11 and has maybe outlived its usefulness or wasn't that good an idea to begin with. Well, I mean, you know, what we should be focused on is separating funding for ICE from everything else. I mean, the Coast Guard deserves to be funded. You know, TSA deserves to be funded. FEMA deserves to be funded. We ought to do everything we can to separate that. But I can't in good conscience, not just as a member of Congress, but just as somebody who cares about human rights, vote one more cent for this agency. And look, I'm hearing from my constituents. I'm hearing from strangers on airplanes telling me that we've got to do more to push back. And the idea that Republicans are just going along to get along. I mean, I talk to Republicans, you know, offline and many of them are telling me how horrified they are that Kristi Noem is in charge. and that ISIS engaged in the activities that it's engaged in. But when push comes to shove, they're too afraid of the guy in the White House to vote their conscience. And that's, quite frankly, unforgivable. One of the things that's been striking to me, too, is just, you know, look, officialdom and administrations will often shade the truth. Sometimes they'll lie. But the flagrant sea, is that a word, with which they've lied. I mean, we watched them, you know, we watched two people be killed and then we were told lies about what happened. I want to just get your reaction to this story, which I think deserves just a little bit of attention, which is a week after Renee Good was shot and killed, there was an incident in which DHS officials fired a gun at an individual and struck him. And the immediate story was that this individual, along with two others, had basically ambushed their own agents, beat them with snow shovels and brooms, and defensively this agent had to fire. Here's how it was characterized on January 15th by Fox, which was basically working off of DHS's. Attempted murder. An ICE officer is fighting for his life after he was allegedly ambushed with a shovel and broom handle by three illegal immigrants during a traffic stop that quickly spiraled into a foot chase, a violent struggle and gunfire. DHS identified the illegal immigrants. It gives their names. All Venezuelan nationals now in ICE custody. What we saw last night in Minneapolis was an attempted murder of federal law enforcement. DHS Secretary Noem. They were going to prosecute two of these individuals. It went from three to two. And then yesterday, the government said we can't prosecute them because there's some new evidence that's come to light. Today, here's a statement by ICE. A joint review by ICE and the Department of Justice of video evidence has revealed that sworn testimony provided by two separate officers appears to have made untruthful statements. Both officers have been immediately placed on administrative leave pending the completion of a thorough internal investigation. The U.S. Attorney's Office is actively investigating these false statements. So it looks like the whole thing was fabricated. I mean, these people are pathological liars. I mean, and, you know, and they're hoping that we'll all buy it. And this is happening in the United States of America. This is not Russia. This is not China. Innocent people are being gunned down by agents of their government right here in this country. And, you know, and if that's not a line in the sand, I don't know what the hell is. And, you know, again, it's not just Democrats, but we need some thoughtful Republicans to join with us. So we have the votes either to impeach Kristi Noem or to cut ICE's budget or to go back to the big, ugly bill in which they threw $75 billion toward ICE and claw that back. Let's put that toward, you know, helping to put money back into SNAP, which they cut by $200 billion, or they cut Medicaid by a trillion dollars. Let's use that money to actually help people in this country rather than hurt people. You know, you're in you're in a you have very little leverage in the minority in the House, although you've you've served in the House for a very long time and you've been on both sides of that. Right. Majority minority. You know, there was a vote this week in which you got six defections by Republicans to repeal the tariffs on Canada. Pretty big deal. Trump was really ticked about it. And I keep hearing you focus on these Republicans because the only leverage you guys have in the House is can you get three or four of them? And I but at the same time, I hear that I feel like Lucy in the football. Right. Like, is that a real possibility? You know, look, I mean, I think that vote against the tariffs shows that Trump's grip on power is slipping a little bit. And now some of the people who voted with us are not running again. So, you know, I mean, they have a little bit more leeway. But we have to focus on that until we win the elections. We have to win the midterm elections. I get really nervous when I see reporting that Kristi Noem is going to oversee the elections or require all kinds of new hurdles for people to jump through before they can vote. I mean, these people, again, are showing chaos and confusion, trying to intimidate people from voting, trying to scare people away from the polls. I mean, you know, citizens of this country have to be brave and courageous and show up and vote no matter what, because I don't know whether we'll have if we don't win the midterms. I'm not sure whether there'll be future elections. That's that's how concerned I am. Do you how seriously do you take? I mean, Trump has been posting about this today. Kristi Noem was out there clearly trying to save her job because she was talking about the issue that Trump's most focused on, which is how he can use all of the levers of the federal government to essentially make the outcome of the midterms go his way. Yeah, let's let's not kid ourselves. I mean, he's going to use everything he can, whether it's legal or not. I mean, you know, he is scared out of his mind that he's going to lose Congress. And I think he's going to lose Congress. I mean, we're winning major victories in Republican districts and state legislative races all over the country. So he's scared and he knows that if this were a free and fair election, he loses and loses big time. So that's what I worry about. You know, when I hear Kristi Noem trying to insert herself into our elections, what the hell right does she have to be involved in anything? You know, they try to pass this Save America Act bill, you know, again, to try to make it more difficult for people to register to vote and for people to vote. You know, I said on the House floor, America doesn't want to be saved by you guys. Get away from us. You know, leave us alone. You know, let people be able to exercise their constitutional right to be able to select their own leaders. But they're going to do everything they can to try to screw up the midterm elections. By the way, in this bill that they were trying to pass, they have a provision that everything takes effect immediately in this election. We have primaries coming up in a couple of weeks. Yeah. I mean, I mean, this is nuts. Yeah, that's craziness. This is nuts. Yeah. Well, don't be surprised, voters in America, if you show up to your polling place and Corey Lewandowski is there with a badge and a gun. Just push him away. Sitting on a camel. This is the time for courage. Sitting on a camel. Congressman Jim Covern, thank you very much. Appreciate it. Happy to be with you. Coming up, what is Coley and how does it factor into Donald Trump's latest attempts to destroy the environment? That's next. The U.S. military deployed on the streets of America. Whole communities targeted for removal. And when accountability finally came knocking, the burn order to cover it all up. Rachel Maddow presents Burn Order. All episodes available now. All right, ready? Here is arguably, I think, the most important story happening in the entire world right now. And it is embedded in this chart from the environmental analysis site Carbon Brief. So it shows China's fossil fuel and cement carbon emissions over the past decade. And you can see these emissions increase pretty steadily for a while, right? Then in the upper right-hand corner, after 2024, something happens. They stop going up. The line flattens. In fact, China's emissions peaked in 2024 and have since been either flat or falling, which means China is actually decarbonizing, something many believed it could not or would not do. But it is happening, and that is incredibly exciting. That kind of transformation is happening across the world. A recent report found that last year, wind and solar overtook fossil fuels for power generation in Europe. And while we are seeing here in the U.S. record solar and battery build out, it's also kind of a different story here where Donald Trump is dead set on basically dragging us back to the 1950s, subsidizing coal, running PR for the industry with this demonic little mascot, Coley, and repealing the single most important EPA finding that regulates greenhouse gas emissions. And so now here we are. The fate of the planet basically comes down to a battle between the ingenuity and the resistance of the rest of the world, including lots of people here at home and states, versus like the Trump administration, the fossil fuel industry. Senator Ed Markey is a Democrat of Massachusetts. He serves on the Environment and Public Works Committee, and he joins me now. Senator, you know, in some ways I don't cover a ton of climate news coming out of the Trump administration because it's all terrible and all bad. I mean, just it there's it's just like this. You just one bad thing after another. But the significance this week of announcing they are repealing this finding and it's called an endangerment finding from the EPA dates back to 2009, the first year that Obama administration basically says simply carbon pollution endangers public health and endangers the public. How significant is that announcement? It's an existential question that is now being raised by the Trump administration. And they've made a decision which defies logic, defies the law, defies climate science that the whole rest of the world accepts. It's putting Americans at risk for more cancers, more premature deaths. It putting us at risk for more wildfires for greater droughts for more dangerous storms And he doing it on behalf of the oil gas and coal industry which he said in April of 2024 in a campaign event that if they raised a billion dollars for him he would destroy the clean energy industry in the United States And he would destroy the environmental protections which have been put on the books over generations. So that's the decision that he made yesterday. And it is absolutely going to trigger a response, I believe, at the grassroots in our country because he has put climate change back on the top of the agenda for the United States and for the world. One of the most striking things about this administration is the obsession with coal. Now, even if you let's just take away, let's say just take climate change, the biggest challenge civilizationally we face globally, but just put it to the side for the moment and just don't even count that. It's the it's the most expensive fuel. It's it's got the fewest jobs supporting it at this point. Here's here's you know, it's it's it has it's been surpassed by renewables annually. It's headed right into the gutter. It's expensive and it's dirty. And yet they are on this like full scale coal propaganda campaign with this AI created little lump of coal. What is going on there? Coal has met its maker in the marketplace. Adam Smith is spinning in his grave as Donald Trump tries to revive an industry that is being outstripped by wind, which is cheaper, by solar, which is cheaper, by new battery technologies, which are cheaper. And so he is, in fact, looking backwards to a 19th century technology instead of ahead to the new technologies which the rest of the world are deploying, including China. And the reason their greenhouse gases are going down now is because of their massive deployment of wind and solar and all electric vehicles. And the United States is now the last nation in the world trying to prop up the coal industry, which is uneconomical. It's unhealthy for the lungs of Americans. It's unhealthy for the workers in the industry as well. And by the way, the Trump administration is undermining those protections for the coal miners in our country as well. The other thing that's crazy here, we've got so they're very, you know, this administration has basically told the entire tech world and the AI people like go at it, go do whatever you need to do. We're not going to regulate you. Build as many data centers as you want. Use as much energy. I saw a statistic today that 7% of all U.S. energy consumption is now just data centers. And at the same time, energy prices are going up and everyone needs more power. They are actively destroying solar projects. It's not just like they're trying to prop up coal, which is sort of ridiculous and not going to work, but just taking a sledgehammer to nearly completed wind projects and nearly completed solar projects. And just isn't that going to just drive everyone's electricity prices up? Again, not even if you don't care about the climate. Well, he thinks that climate change is a hoax. He thinks affordability is a hoax. Well, electricity prices went up in the United States 13 percent last year. Natural gas prices just in New England went up 30 percent last year. Simultaneously, the Trump administration announced the killing, the killing of all offshore wind projects along the East Coast, including projects that were almost completed, that all they needed was a long extension cord to come in and plug it in so that hundreds of thousands of homes would have that cheap, renewable electricity. And if you add in AI, which is a huge electricity consumer and they can bid the price up for electricity, that's going to cascade down to ordinary consumers, ordinary small business people who are going to have to pay for that much higher price of electricity. So this is an affordability crisis in the energy sector, which Trump is creating. And AI right now is being told they have no responsibility to generate this electricity with wind and solar to reduce pollution and to keep costs down. And as a result, that burden is going to be shifted over to ordinary residential consumers in our country. And come this year, because that's one bill consumers pay every single month, they're going to take it out on the Trump administration. So Republican House and Senate members, beware. That's a good point. Senator Ed Markey, thank you very much. Appreciate it. Thank you. Still ahead, Donald Trump's totally normal call to the Palm Beach police chief. How he tried at the time, back in 2006, to distance himself from his friend Jeffrey Epstein and why I don't think it's working. Next. Donald Trump supporters have struggled for a long time to justify or explain the president's decade-long friendship with the child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. But now they think they have found their alibi. In the three million pages recently released by the Department of Justice, there's an FBI report that I think is arguably the most revelatory document we've seen so far as it relates to Trump's relationship with Epstein. So what it is is a 2019 interview with the former Palm Beach chief of police. His name is redacted in the document, but he's been identified as Michael Ryder. He says that Donald Trump called him to congratulate him after the news first broke that police were investigating Epstein for sexually abusing minors back in 2006. So this week, White House Press Secretary Caroline Levin said that while she cannot verify the call ever took place, the document definitely exonerates her boss. He called the chief in 2006. Caroline, did he call the chief? Look, it was a phone call that may or may not have happened in 2006. I don't know the answer to that question. What I'm telling you is that what President Trump has always said is that he kicked Jeffrey Epstein out of his Mar-a-Lago club because Jeffrey Epstein was a creep. And that remains true in this call. If it did happen, corroborates exactly what President Trump has said from the beginning. And I'm sure many of you, when you read that that alleged FBI report, probably thought to yourself, wow, this really cracks our narrative that we've been trying to push about this president for many years. So we're moving on from that. We're moving on. OK, well, a few things here. Trump has said that he kicked him out of the club. There's no evidence that actually happened. Um, also, uh, totally exonerated, no wrongdoing. Really? You may be wondering what specifically the police chief says that Trump told him. Okay, quote, Trump called Ryder to tell him, thank goodness you're stopping Epstein. Everyone has known he's been doing this. Trump told him people in New York knew Epstein was disgusting. Trump also said that he was around Epstein once when teenagers were present and Trump got the hell out of there. Now, again, according to this document, it's an interview with this police chief recalling this call in 2006, which the White House assists is both alleged may or may not have happened and is also exculpatory. According to what the police chief says about what Trump told him, Trump knew what Epstein was doing back in 2006. In fact, he said everyone knew it and that he had personally witnessed been around Epstein hanging out with teenagers in a way that Trump thought was creepy. So if that's the case, surely Trump had similar things to say when Epstein was arrested the second time back in 2019. No, I had no idea. I had no idea. I haven't spoken to him in many, many years, but I did have no idea. Well, that's odd. I had no idea. I had no idea. I guess he just forgot all about his friend abusing underage girls in a way that was so well known that everyone knew about it. That, in fact, he was in a situation where he sort of saw something he didn't like. I mean, you would think, right, you would remember the time that you were around Jeffrey Epstein and underage girls and got so creeped out you left, right? You think you remember that? This is Jeffrey Epstein we're talking about, the New York finance here. But I'm sure it's just a one-off thing, right? because, according to the document, Trump also warned the cops about his friend, Glenn Maxwell, Epstein's co-conspirator, who is currently in prison for her own trafficking of underage girls. Quote, Trump said Maxwell was Epstein's operative. She is evil, and to focus on her. Whoa, wait a second. All the way back in 2006, Trump was blowing the whistle on the evil Glenn Maxwell? I'm sure he has remained consistent on that, in that opinion of her, over the years, right? jeslene maxwell is in prison and a lot of people want to know she's going to turn in powerful people and i know you've talked in the past about prince andrew and you've criticized bill clinton's behavior i'm wondering do you feel that she's going to turn in powerful men how do you see that working out i don't know i haven't really been following it too much i just wish her well frankly uh i've met her numerous times over the years especially since i lived in palm beach and I guess they lived in Palm Beach, but I wish her well, whatever it is. Oh, I love that detail. I guess they lived in Palm Beach. Oh, you didn't know they lived in Palm Beach, right? OK. He wishes the evil woman well. Maybe he just misunderstood the question. Mr. President, Ghislaine Maxwell has been arrested on allegations of child sex trafficking. Why would you wish such a person well? Well, first of all, I don't know that, but I do know that. She has. She's been arrested for that. Her friend or boyfriend... Epstein. ...was either killed or committed suicide in jail. She's now in jail. Uh-huh. Yeah, I wish you well. I'd wish you well. I'd wish a lot of people well. Good luck. Okay. Well, people change. Maybe he thought Glenn Maxwell was evil back in 2006 and an operative engaged in the sexual molestation of underage girls, but then he changed his mind after she was arrested and subsequently convicted for her role in the very child abuse that he was warning the police about? That would explain why his administration waived Bureau of Prison Regulations last year to move Maxwell to a minimum security prison despite her status as a convicted child sex trafficker And also why he steadfastly refuses to rule out a pardon for Maxwell Or maybe Trump is just feeling nostalgic for his old friends After all back in 2006 it was no secret that Trump and Epstein would party together. They were infamous for chasing members of the opposite sex together. Just a few years prior, in late 2002, Trump went on the record with New York Magazine about how much Epstein liked to date on the younger side. And lest we forget the birthday card to Epstein bearing Trump's signature in the shape of a young nude woman with a poem about how much the two of them enjoyed their shared secret. Trump denies he ever signed or drew that card. And of course, he's not been accused of criminal wrongdoing as it relates to Jeffrey Epstein. But all this does raise many questions. Does this document actually exonerate Donald Trump when he apparently called the police only after he learned Epstein was already under investigation to tell them how terrible his former friend was? That everyone knew, but no one had said anything? Or maybe someone who spent a lot of time with Epstein infamously chasing after members of the opposite sex might be a little nervous that his buddy was being investigated and where that might lead. Maybe calling the local chief of police to express his gratitude was just Donald Trump being honest and relieved, or maybe he wanted to make sure he didn't get caught up in the whole thing himself. If that was the motivation, looks like it didn't work. As President Trump continues implementing his ambitious agenda, follow along with the MSNOW newsletter, Project 47. You'll get weekly updates sent straight to your inbox with expert analysis on the administration's latest actions and how they're affecting the American people. The American people are basically telling the president that they are not okay with any of this. Sign up for the Project 47 newsletter at ms.now slash project 47. It's been another brutal week of polling for Donald Trump. He's at near record lows in at least three different polls. NBC News show his approval overall rating has declined to 39 percent. Economist YouGov has him at 37 and APNORC shows an approval rating of 36 percent. But the thing that has got the sting the most is the Economist YouGov finding that more voters now say Joe Biden did a better job as president by a margin of six points. Fernanda Mondi is a veteran Democratic pollster and political strategist. Maria Teresa Kumar is president, CEO of Voto Latino, and they join me now. Maria, I have to say, because Joe Biden was not popular for much of his presidency and certainly the end, Donald Trump won that election after he dropped out and Kamala Harris ran. I'm pretty, pretty struck by that headline number here one year into the administration. Were you? Not so much because we did a poll actually coming out of December. And one of the things that we found that when you asked what were people really worried about, their number one thing was politics. The second was the economy. And the third was Donald Trump. In the 21 years that we've been conducting polls, Chris, it was the very first time that a president's name was mentioned as a cause of stress. And you couple that with The New York Times coming out and basically saying that, yes, indeed, the American people are paying tariff tax every single day. And then you have it with another headline that for the very first time, high net worth earners, people making more than $150,000, have a 20 percent delinquency rate on their credit cards. And you're starting to see that they're not paying their auto loans and you're starting to see that they're going back on their mortgages. When high net worth earners are saying, wait a second, I'm feeling a crunch. You know that it's only downhill from here for the Trump administration and the economy that he did promise that he's not delivering on. Yeah. And to that point, Fernand, like, I do think it's so striking that this difference, I'm sort of obsessed with this. So Trump's numbers right now are around what they were the last time around. They're a little, possibly a tick lower, right? But the composition, when you look in the data, is totally different. because the last time around, he was like the one thing he had going for him was the economy. He was often like plus nine or 10 on the economy. Again, it was a pretty like low inflation, high wage economy, actually. The economy was doing decently. This time it's become his worst issue. And I wonder whether that means, I guess my question to you is, does it mean he has a lower floor this time because of how central the economy is to people? well chris not only does it mean he has a lower floor what it means is these declining numbers suggest for the first time ever it's now eating into the maga base these numbers that you're seeing trump drop on yeah that's a good point yes that even maga voters are saying whoa whoa you promise prices are going to go down on day one you're going to do all these things on day one and it's now more than a year into the presidency and that's why i think this is in a spiral of irrelevancy and lame duckness that's not going to go away. For George Bush, by comparisons purposes in 2005, it was Katrina. That was kind of the straw member in 2005 into his second reelected term, where after that it kind of all fell apart. This is around Trump's signature issue, as you said, the only reason he was even reelected. And it's not going to come back unless there is a massive turnaround in the economy over the next couple of months. And I just don't see that happening, Chris. Yeah. And even I mean, I think even a massive turnaround in the economy in the short term might sort of leavened a little bit. But Maria, we also know that like there was this there's a thing connected to the economy in 2024, which is this really potent form of backlash politics. Right. This like sense of people there. There's sort of the there were the voters who were the voters paying the least amount of attention to news who were some of the most pro-Trump voters. And there was a bunch of stuff around prices, immigration. And then there was all these like sort of cultural backlash questions, which is why I thought this polling from from YouGov was really interesting. Who better represents America, bad money or Donald Trump? And bad money at beating Donald Trump again, it's just suggests like whatever shifted in his direction 2024 has really shifted back. I mean, I just want to see that again, Because what can Bad Bunny not do at this point, Chris? Like, let's be honest. He's solving world peace. He's bringing Americans together and recognizing that we actually have an opportunity, that if we love each other, we can actually do great big things. Oftentimes, people are citing the people of Minnesota right now that are literally under the gun of the federal government. And yet that community is incredibly resilient. Why? Because they are leading with love, just like Bad Bunny is encouraging us to do. But in all seriousness, I think that what a lot of the Republicans are recognizing in this moment is that not only is the economy not being turned around, but the severe missteps on immigration are very serious. Had Donald Trump said, look, I secure the border. We don't have people flooding in. And had he stopped there, he would actually have a chance at the midterms. But he's 100 percent, you know, but because he he has gone above and beyond, sadly, and really hurting Americans, regardless of status. That is what I will tell you. In California, when you saw the special election on Proposition 50, that is what told me that that Latino voters that voted for Trump, they're going to come back because he is in so much trouble. This Proposition 50 back in November, that's a non-sexy piece of legislation. No one was interested. But Latinos came out and voted on par as they do in midterms. Why? Because they're saying this is a protest vote because what I'm doing right now is I'm going to vote for my safety. We're seeing people coming back saying, you know, I voted for Trump because I wanted to give him a shot on the economy. But now only is not not only is the economy tanking, I can't make my bills, but now I'm getting racially profiled, even if I if I'm an American. And that is something that the Republicans, I think, are really struggling with. That's why they basically said, you know what, DHS, this negotiation we're doing in Congress right now, we're not going to fix it right now. That's why I'm going to go ahead, let it shut down on DHS funding for right now. Let me go home and come back and regroup. Yeah. I mean, let me let me inject a slightly nerdy methodological question here, but out of but out of a desire for real intellectual honesty, Fernand, which is we've seen before that during bad news cycles for Trump, sometimes the polling starts to skew a little bit because of response bias. Basically, people who hate Donald Trump are like super anxious to be like, yes, like to every pollster. Yeah. And I do wonder if we're seeing a volatile period that's maybe overrepresenting. How bad it's gotten for them and whether that that means something for either how Republicans behave, how Trump behaves, how everyone makes their calculations head into the midterms. Well, look, I mean, you mentioned how Trump behaves. First and foremost, what Donald Trump and MAGA, for that matter, is really good at is running against a governing and power, right? They're good at running against when Democrats are in power. Opposition, what they showed from the first term, 2017 to the first part of 2021, they don't know how to govern. So what they do is they resort to what they know, and that's culture war. Every week in the first term was infrastructure week, just like it's now going to be affordability week right from here on out to the midterms. The difference is once they lose these midterms and we're seeing historic gaps, Chris, for the Democratic advantage over the Republican on the general congressional ballot in the midterms, the presidency, in essence, is over. And that's why I think you're seeing for the first time ever open defiance of Trump. What happened with that terror vote in the Congress the other day where you had Mike Johnson totally lose control. It's an indicator that we're getting also close to what I call the IDAGF caucus of retiring Republican House members who are going to say, you know what, enough with this. And that's where you're going to start to see more defections. But behavior wise, the Trump administration is not built to answer policy or governance questions. All they are about is grievance. Fernando Mondi, Maria Teresa Kumar. Thank you. It's great to have you both. Have a good holiday weekend. Thanks a lot. We'll be right back. And that is all in for this week. You can catch us every weeknight at 8 o'clock on MSNOW. Don't forget to like us on Facebook. That's facebook.com slash onwithchris. Subscribe to MSNOW Premium on Apple Podcasts for early access, ad-free listening, and bonus content to all of MSNOW's original podcasts, including the chart-topping series The Best People with Nicole Wallace, Why Is This Happening, Main Justice, and more. Plus, new episodes of all your favorite MSNOW shows ad-free, an ad-free listening to all of Rachel Maddow's original series, including Rachel Maddow Presents Burn Order. Subscribe to MS Now Premium on Apple Podcasts.