‘The wheels are coming off’: Trump already less popular than after Jan. 6

Home to the Rachel Maddow Show, Morning Joe, the briefing with Jen Psaki, and more voices you know and trust. MS Now is your source for news, opinion, and the world. Learn more at MS.now. Tonight on All In. His approval rating, look at this, 33 percent. That's down five points in just a month. Donald Trump's losing streak continues. you got to win the midterms. Because if we don't win the midterms, it's just going to be, I mean, they'll find a reason to impeach me. Tonight, sinking polls, higher gas prices, and the self-inflicted uphill battle to hold on to the House. The Republicans have now lost the fight. The Democrats will now have net more seats because of the mid-decade redistricting fight than they would have otherwise had. And Navy veteran Senator Mark Kelly joins me as Donald Trump ditches his Secretary of the Navy in the middle of a war. Plus, RFK Jr.'s CDC buries a report showing the benefits of the COVID-19 vaccine. I terminated the COVID vaccines because they didn't make any sense. COVID is gone. An All In starts right now. Good evening from New York. I'm Chris Hayes. Every single day, Donald Trump digs the country deeper and deeper into his mess. And in the last hour, we learned that the Secretary of the Navy, a guy named John Phelan, has been fired by the Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth in, we must note, the midst of a war that has not ended. A war to which we have directed an enormous number of our naval assets to the theater in nearby Iran. According to the Pentagon, we are conducting an active naval blockade there as I speak to you this evening. And this firing, of course, comes just three weeks after the Army Chief of Staff was also fired. Senator Mark Kelly, who spent a quarter century in the Navy, will join me with his reaction later in the hour. This firing comes at the tail end of what has been a truly awful 24 hours for Donald Trump, even grading on a curve for what has been, generally speaking, a pretty rough year for this president, Trump had an absolutely brutal day yesterday. It was one of those days that can sometimes, in hindsight, look like a kind of political inflection point. Over the past couple days, he's had just a series of horrendous polls showing the number of people who support Donald Trump, the president of these United States, is getting smaller day by day by day. The most favorable of the surveys of the president was from The Economist and YouGov showing Trump with a 38% approval rating. That was as good as it got. And as we often say on the show, and the favorability numbers begin regularly starting with a three, that's when the wheels start coming off the whole political project. NBC News Survey Monkey had the second best numbers for Trump, with his approval hovering at 37%, although in that same poll, half of all respondents said they strongly disapproved of the job he's doing. Reuters Ipsos had its own poll showing Trump at 36% approval. That puts it somewhere in the middle of the results we got. Angus Reid Global and Verisite both showed something similar with Trump at 35% approval. the Associated Press, NRRC, had Trump even lower at 33%, meaning just one-third of voters are on board with the president's agenda, and rounding up the bottom in ARG poll with Trump at 32% approval. That's all within the last 24 hours. Now, 32%, that's the outlier of this group, it's the lowest. But I mean, there's clearly a trend here, right? All the numbers in the 30 range, right now it's a losing streak rivaled only by the New York Mets. Sorry, Mets fans, I love you. You get the point. People are unhappy. And just for comparison, at the lowest point of Trump's popularity during his first term, we had to look this up today in the immediate aftermath of January 6th. You remember that, right? His approval rating was 34 percent, which means, according to some polls, he's already right now less popular than when he led a violent insurrectionist mob to try and overturn the results of the election he lost and refused to call the mob off for hours. Even if you trust the rosiest assessments of his presidency, he is rapidly approaching that point. I gotta say, the situation is starting to begin to look a little George W. Bush-like in the lame duck period of his second term after he launched two disastrous wars when the previous president's approval ratings started to dip into the mid to high 20s. I'm not sure if something like that's even possible, to be honest, in our current polarized environment. I thought the floor was around 38 or 39. But if things continue on the same track, who knows? There are signs everywhere you look that voters are just plain fed up. According to one new survey, that was the Strength in Numbers Verisite poll I mentioned a moment ago, 55% of the country, a clear majority of sports, impeaching the guy. Now, again, these are polls. There's response bias, and there's room for skepticism here. Their polls are not perfect. They're a snapshot in time. We've seen there's been polling error before, ones when people are actually doing things like voting. But again, just like look at the data in the aggregate. You don't need a graduate degree in political science to see what's happening. Donald Trump was already pretty unpopular, and then he, out of nowhere, with no real explanation, at three in the morning with like a taped address, started a disastrous war for no discernible reason, which has left more than 6,000 human beings dead, a million displaced, and sent gas prices skyrocketing. Right now, they're averaging more than $4 a gallon nationwide. That's up nearly a dollar from a year ago. And there's a little sign this problem is going to resolve itself anytime soon. That's the weirdest thing about where we are right now. Trump has essentially no leverage to get Iran to reopen the strait-of-hormuz. The United States is still blockading the strait itself. And with the U.S. doing that, Iran has made it clear it will keep it closed. There's reporting today it might take six months to clear it, even after they come to some deal because there's mines in there. And the reality is it's better that we're not in active conflict with them right now, right? That from an ethical, human, financial, strategic cost, the act of war are being eschewed. But there doesn't seem to be any kind of meaningful progress outside of Trump's announcement of an indefinite ceasefire either. There's no talks happening. We're just kind of stuck in this geopolitical holding pattern, a sort of frozen conflict that could switch on any moment. No end in sight. And it's bad on its own terms. And also, people don't like it. The median voter, it seems, is starting to sound a lot like this woman who spoke to a reporter in a very red Pennsylvania town last month. If you could say something to President Trump and he was going to hear you right now, what would it be? You are a worthless pile of s**t. And you voted for him how many times? Three times. That was my bad. Apparently, I'm an idiot. Can't get enough of that sound here. Head all in. You're now also seeing the second order effects of higher gas prices. This is something to really watch. People have been warning about this, right? We've sort of been waiting for this to build. With the rapid rate of inflation when it comes to food prices, according to a new analysis from Bloomberg, the cost of food increased nearly 8% year over year just last month. That is a bad result. And certainly not great from the guy who promised to bring down prices of what he calls groceries, a word he thinks he invented, on day one. It does not help Trump's case. He's also constantly posting online like a maniac. And I don't know, are they getting more maniacal or not? They're very long. They're very long. Look at that. Now, to some extent, that kind of thing has always been baked in, right? It's like taking for granted now that no one likes how the guy comports himself online. Who could? A common refrain during the last election from Trump supporters was, you know, mean tweets and cheap gas. As in, we'll take the former if it means we get the latter. But we don't have cheap gas now. It's expensive gas and very long mean tweets. Very long. To some extent, I think the White House saw this coming. which is why they pulled the emergency ripcord ahead of the November midterms. Trump's plan for surviving all this was this insidious, toxic attempt to rig the election maps in favor of Republicans in states like North Carolina and Texas. But even that didn't work. First, California countered the Texas redistricting plan by having voters overwhelmingly support rewriting their own maps to be more favorable to Democrats, to balance out what Texas did. And then just last night, Virginia did the same thing. Unlike in those red states, The voters themselves actually chose to do this. They ratified at the polls to fight fire with fire. And there are some pending legal challenges, specifically a Virginia court trying to block the certification of that referendum. But when all shakes out, we'll see. But it looks likely the Democrats will net four new seats when all is said and done. And their message in the closing stretch, they knew what the message that was going to work. It was explicitly anti-Trump. We all knew four more years of Trump was trouble, but we couldn't imagine how bad it would really be. Cutting health care and education, firing federal workers, hurting our people. And now Trump is rigging elections so he can hold on to power. Virginia, we can stop you by voting yes in the special election. Yes levels the playing field and stops Trump's power grab. We saw what was coming. Now we need to fight back. Vote yes. Those ads were effective. It won just by a few points. I mean, it was close. And even after the referendum passed, one particularly outspoken Virginia State Senator Luis Lucas centered her victory lap around the president. If we lose these elections, you know, the House and in this case the House, it's going to be a disaster. It's such a b*********. Don't call it a comeback. I've been here for years. I'm rocking my pants. What's up with fear? Trump himself fought the referendum with an argument that it would lead to his third impeachment. That's the only thing he seems to care about. But the White House has a message for all the Republicans who think Trump didn't do enough to campaign against the new maps. Back off. He's a busy guy. Why did he campaign more actively against this referendum? Why not spend time on true social encouraging people vote no before the vote than raise concerns after? Look, the president has a lot on his plate, a lot on his schedule. He did host a telephone call prior to the election the night before, but he's made his position on the result of this election clear. The midterms are still a few months away. Trump is nearly three years left in his presidency. Anything can happen. I mean, truly. But if yesterday serves as any indication, Trump is in for a rough go of things. Philip Bump, senior data editor and columnist at CT Insider. Michelle Goldberg opinion columnist at New York Times And they both join me now It good to have you here You know I think you and I have been on the same have thought that polarization means there a higher floor for national politicians and that Bush collapsed And that really is sort of late second term, Lehman, he's a lame duck, we have the global financial crisis, that something like that wasn't really possible anymore. But I am beginning to rethink it a little. Well, and I also think it's significant that we've seen such a defection of the MAGA influencers. Yes. Right. You've seen, you know, Tucker Carlson, Alex Jones, Megyn Kelly, to some extent, all of, you know, some lesser ones. They've kind of all turned on him. And there's been a question of how many followers or how many people they're actually influencing because most of the Republican base has stayed loyal to him. But it does seem like there's at least some erosion. Right. And so you have you have kind of people creating a permission structure for people who are still very, very devoted to the America first ideology to start, I think, recognizing just what a disaster he is. And that's what you see with a lot of these influencers. They're sort of saying Trump changed. I know. It's so funny. Because they went wrong. How did we not? I just don't get it. But it's because they can sort of even they can no longer pretend that any of this is OK. You know, part of what we're seeing, too, I think, Philip, you know, we saw this in Virginia, right, with this this referendum. There's also like there really was this kind of like. Stunned, punched in the nose feeling to a lot of the opposition, the Democratic Party and a lot of like elites and CEOs and all this stuff in that first year. That there's still some of that you still seem to know, but there's less and less. I thought this was a fascinating moment. The Virginia Democratic Speaker of the House, Chris Lasavito, who is like Trump's campaign manager and likes to troll people on Twitter, like, you know, said something nasty about him on Twitter and mentioned the fact that he'd actually served time. He was a former felon. And he's like, eat another L while you hang out with MAGA pedophiles. And it's just like, I'm winning now. You hate it. Like, people are not intimidated, which is another part of—when you're talking about that power structure, that was another part of the power that he had. Yeah, I mean, one of the things we've seen over the course of the last 15 months is an increasing willingness of Americans broadly to stand up to the power that Donald Trump's trying to exert. Right. Not the elites, not the people that had power that aggregated through institutions, certainly. We saw a lot of them sort of lean backwards on behalf of Donald Trump. But Americans themselves said, you know, to hell with this. And so we're seeing that, and we're seeing that in the numbers. And I think the most interesting part of the recent poll numbers we've seen is not just the top lines, but the fact that the support among Republicans has gotten so soft. It has softened, yes. For example, you know, last year in the NBC poll, 67 percent of Republicans said they had a very favorable view or they strongly approved of Donald Trump. Now it's 50 percent. That's a big drop. And once that starts happening, it opens the door for all those influencers who are scrambling for the power vacuum that's going to exist as soon as Donald Trump's out of power. They start jumping onto it and it makes things much worse for the president. The other thing that's so crazy about this is, again, the horriest cliche in politics is about the pain at the pump and the price of the pump and gas prices. And in 99 times out of 100, the president can't do much about gas prices. Right. Except. This is the one exception. Like they came up with a way to unilaterally jack up gas prices. This is you've got the Iranians like trolling the White House. This is them taking shot at Vance's advance who was going to come and then didn't. Iran is doing like a Mr. Bean meme as he's like looking at his watch. They're doing all these, you know, Lego movies. But beneath the propaganda wars, the straits still closed. There's no resolution. It's blowing my mind that they seem to be like they're just going to sink into this interminable status quo of four or five dollar gas. And I mean, what a humiliation for the United States that Iran will not deign to meet with us. Yes, it's a good point. Right. That J.D. Vance sits on the tarmac for hours and they're like, no, we won't even negotiate with you. I mean, that's kind of where Donald Trump has led us. And I think they seem to think that this status quo is somewhat sustainable, but I'm not really sure it is. I mean, because if you talk to energy experts, their hair is on fire and they don't understand why the markets are sort of so sanguine about all of this. And that eventually there's going to be some kind of the physical reality is going to intrude on people's optimism. And we're starting to see, I mean, those numbers on food inflation, which we're going to see, you had a few announcements of airlines today saying we're looking at like 15% to 20% increases in prices this summer. Like, you know, again, if you're looking at how you could drive the sub-30. Right, right. Yeah, no, you're right. I mean, and I think one thing people need to recognize, and the war is what, 50 days old, something like that. Those tankers take a long time to transit, right? They take a long time to get across the ocean. Six weeks. Yeah, exactly. So when what six weeks, 42 days, right? Like it takes a while. And so the effects of the closure of the street are still making their way toward the United States. So things are almost certainly going to get worse. And again, A, what's the plan? And B, even if the plan were perfect and went into effect now, you're still going to have the lingering effects of that for the next couple of weeks. I think, you know, there's Republicans who are angry that Trump didn't lift a finger to help them in Virginia. This is Politico. You'd be hard pressed to find a single Republican tonight who doesn't think the GOP should have done more in Virginia. It actually hurts more that it was so close. Very sad. The biggest thing to me also is that he doesn't care. He cares about one thing, which is consistent every time he talks about that. He's going to lose the House. He's going to get impeached. He doesn't want to get impeached again. I think he does think it's shameful. I think it really drives him crazy to have a third impeachment, which I think he's probably staring down the barrel of. But other than that, he doesn't care. And that's the other calculation here. If you're a Republican, it's like, you understand, man, this guy's not going to lift a finger for you. Well, I think he did care about this, but I also think that he probably thought they were going to lose and didn't want to associate himself with the losing side, which you often see with him. But it's also that, like, how do you imagine his numbers getting higher, right? Because in the past, as you said, you know, he had this 34 percent approval rating after January 6th. You had all these Republicans kind of pretend they're going to wash their hands of him. But then he's getting back into power and you get a better gap back. You better get back on board the train. There kind of is no prospect of that. Right. Right. He's just getting further and further away. And that's where and that's where the other part of this, which is he is a lame duck. Whatever he wants to say about he's going to run a third time at 81 or I mean, and that that also, as we've seen with president after president, that eats at your power, you know, as much as anything. Philip Bump, Michelle Goldberg, you both coming up as Donald Trump suddenly ditches his secretary of the Navy in the middle of a naval war. Senator and Navy veteran Mark Kelly joins me next. to all of your favorite shows. Subscribe to MSNOW Premium on Apple Podcasts. Tonight, as the U.S. Navy is conducting a blockade in the Strait of Hormuz, an award Donald Trump started, MSNOW reports the head of the Navy has been fired. Dane Phelan removal was driven by his poor relationship with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and other senior Pentagon officials, a person familiar with the matter said. Earlier today, the Pentagon released a statement announcing that Phelan is, quote, departing the administration effective immediately, they gave virtually no explanation. It is just the latest upheaval at the Pentagon under Pete Hegseth, who has been firing top generals and other senior military officers, including the Army Chief of Staff just a few weeks ago, as this war continues. Sarah Mark Kelly is a Democrat of Arizona, former Navy captain, serves on the Armed Services Committee, and he joins me now. Sarah, it's good to have you. And first, just your reaction to the rather sudden firing of the Secretary of the Navy in the midst of a war in which a majority of the country's naval assets are in the theater of war. And we are actively engaged right now at this moment in a naval blockade. Yeah. And on top of that, Chris, we've expended an extraordinary number of munitions, Tomahawk cruise missiles, SM3s, other things. So we've got a problem and it's up to the Secretary of the Navy to make sure the Navy is trained and equipped adequately, you know, for threats against our country, you know, whether it's, you know, there in the in CENTCOM or in the Western Pacific with regards to China. So this is bad timing. I'm pretty sure I know why this happened. We have a secretary of defense who was ill-equipped for this job, the most unqualified secretary of defense ever. And who knows, like, the real rationale for why, you know, this happened. I would suspect there might we might find out at some point that, you know, Secretary Phelan had some opinions and offered some suggestions on policy that the secretary of defense didn't like. We know the Secretary of Defense has had pretty tense showdowns with other secretaries, including, you know, the Secretary of the Army. Very well reported that they had a standoff over promotions of women and black officers who were up for promotion and that were being blocked by Pete Hegseth. We all know that he fired the Army Chief of Staff just a few weeks ago. So it is striking, and maybe I'm wrong, but it seems like a lot of tumult and upheaval, particularly in the midst of active conflict. Yeah, I mean, it's chaos. It's not surprising. You know, firing Randy George, who was the chief of staff of the army, he was one of the most professional, qualified members of the armed forces in a time when we're at war, when this administration has even suggested that we would put troops on the ground in Iran. not the time to get rid of the chief of staff of the army, the leading uniformed member of our biggest fighting force. It makes absolutely no sense. Hey, these guys are flailing, you know, from the top down, the president, the secretary of defense, they do not know what to do. And that's what happens when you have a president that gets us in a conflict without any kind of strategic goal without a plan without a timeline with no exit strategy I mean what the goal today It probably they probably good if we could get the Strait of Hormuz back open which was open in February. It's because of this president that people across our entire country are now dealing with the higher costs of gasoline and diesel. And because of that, food prices are starting to rise. You talked a little bit about that. People can't afford their lives. And this president, with this secretary of defense, has made it a lot worse. The secretary of defense also announcing this week that he's going to get rid of mandatory flu vaccines for the U.S. armed forces. You noted that General George Washington believed that vaccinating his troops against smallpox was the key to winning the Revolutionary War and our independence. a founding father from 250 years ago to better understanding of science and military readiness, Pete Hegseth, did strike me as a truly bizarre move for people that are going to be serving next to each other in close quarters. I mean, I've I know offices where it's like strongly encouraged people get flu vaccines and they're not going to be like in barracks together in war. Right. Imagine the flu running rampant on a submarine or an aircraft carrier or in a army battalion. I mean, that puts all of us at risk. It affects our national security. And, you know, here's the thing about science. Science doesn't care if you don't believe in science. You know, that's the way the flu is going to work. It doesn't care. And vaccines work. And it was a requirement in the military that you get a flu vaccine. They're safe and they're effective. I mean, George Washington, you know, realized that there was, you know, a huge advantage if he would inoculate his troops for smallpox. That was 250 years ago. And this secretary of defense, you know, has to I mean, how is he going to relearn that lesson? You know, this is what happens again when you put unqualified people in very important jobs. President United States posting something today from one random person on True Social urging you to be held accountable and lock him up. I imagine at this point the president saying that kind of rolls off your back because it's sort of become de rigueur for him. Does it even rise to the level, does a staff member even show it to you at this point? I barely looked at it. Somebody mentioned it to me. I think I looked at it when I was going to respond to it, right? And I, you know, I had some kind of response that I approved. Yeah, it doesn't matter at this point. The president thinks he can intimidate me. He picked the wrong guy. I'm not backing down. You know, right now I'm defending the constitutional First Amendment rights of over 2 million retired veterans and really kind of all of us. The president didn't like what I said, so he wants to silence me. But I mean, in this case, I'm not going to be silenced. I'm suing Pete Hegseth because when they they fail to indict us criminally. And then he is trying to reduce me in rank and take away my pension after 25 years of service. And I'm not having it. You are one of the few people I get to talk to who has been in outer space and been in zero gravity and gotten to look out the window of a spaceship at a little blue marble of Earth. And given how compelled all of us were by Artemis, I mean, it really felt like a magical moment across the world. Were you jealous? Were you like, you know, I wish I was up there? Absolutely. You know, the last I was there for the rocket launch. I was about two and a half miles away. And the last rocket launch that I saw with people on it in person, I saw in the rearview mirror, you know, from Space Shuttle Endeavor, where I was the commander on Endeavor's final flight. So, yeah, I was really jealous. I certainly would trade 10 days in the Senate for being on that trip around the moon. But here's the thing about that. That crew and NASA and all the people behind them made this thing look easy. It's not easy. It's really, really hard to fly faster and further than anybody else, hit a target in the middle of space, and then rely on Sir Isaac Newton to take you around the moon and back. It's not like they have a lot of extra delta V to be able to just fly back to Earth. You're relying on physics and math and science, by the way, a reminder to Pete Hegseth about what we can do when we believe in science. You know, I'm talking about the flu vaccine here again. So, yeah, I mean, it was a great moment for our country. I think it was at the right time. It was needed. It's one of those unifying moments that bring us all together. Senator Mark Kelly, who has been in space. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Thank you. Still ahead, how Republicans shot themselves in the foot and made the midterms even more challenging for them. Next. Listen to your favorite MS Now shows anytime as a podcast. Enjoy new episodes of Morning Joe, Deadline White House, and The Rachel Maddow Show. Every small D Democratic muscle that we have is flexing. Plus the last word with Lawrence O'Donnell, the beat with Ari Melber, the weeknight, and more. on the go, wherever you get your podcasts. For ad-free listening to all of your favorite shows, subscribe to MS Now Premium on Apple Podcasts. Gerrymandering was Donald Trump's big plan to keep Congress Republicans stay in power, but he did not expect Democrats to respond in kind. He started in Texas, Republicans legislated five more red seats into existence. Missouri and North Carolina each added one to the tally, Ohio redistricting will give Republicans a net game of eight or nine seats nationwide, according to data from The New York Times. But look how Democrats have responded. California voters gave them five more safe districts. Federal courts gave them one in Utah. A state court has halted last night's win in Virginia for now. But if it goes forward, Democrats will have neutralized a Republican threat nationwide. They may even come out with a little bit of an advantage. Now, a lot of this is up in the air, not just because of the courts. In Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis is still pushing Republicans to redraw the state's districts in a special session. It's not clear they can do much more to their map, much less do it legally. Besides, the whole exercise has proven incredibly unpopular with the voters, which is one reason Republicans are melting down. It was the political team at the White House that brought pressure to bear on Texas and the Texas Republicans started this mid-decade redistricting fight. And guess what? The Republicans have now lost the fight. The Democrats will now have net more seats because of the mid-decade redistricting fight than they would have otherwise had. Can't believe I'm saying this, but Eric Erickson is right. So it was former Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer who posted after Republicans lost the Virginia redistricting vote, quote, all this was foreseeable and avoidable. We should not have started this fight. And now Democrats are actually poised to pick up one or two House seats just from redistricting. That's before, again, even seeing how the voters in November will actually feel about the representatives, which is, of course, the whole point here. Ari Berman's Mother Jones National Voting Rights Correspondent, he wrote the book Minority Rule, the right wing attack on the will of the people and the fight to resist it. He's been covering this very, very closely. And he joins me now. So, Ari, is that your sense right now of, you know, there's a court order tonight from a lower court state judge in Virginia temporary blocking the Virginia referendum. My understanding and expectation is that they think the state Supreme Court will probably reverse that ruling and this will likely go into effect. Is that your read on where things are headed? Yeah, that's right, Chris. The court that blocked the referendum from going in effect is the same court that tried to block the referendum from happening in the first place and was overruled by the state Supreme Court. So the expectation is the state Supreme Court will allow the referendum to go into effect. It would really be astonishing for voters to approve this plan and then the court to block it after the fact once they let it go through. There is going to be a lot of litigation and we don't know what will happen. We don't know what will happen in Florida. Is our read of where this has netted out right now in line with yours, which is basically we're back to something neutral, maybe a slight Democratic advantage? Yes. And it's really astonishing that Democrats have fought Republicans to a draw and may even win this fight. That was unthinkable last summer when Texas redrew based on pressure from Trump. Then Missouri did it. Then North Carolina did it. And this just seemed like it was a freight train moving forward. And the goal of Republicans was to pick up 12 new seats that would basically offset any kind of coming blue wave. And they haven't even come close to that. They may even come behind. And it's worth noting, as you said in your intro, this wasn't one part of their strategy. This was their strategy. This was really their only strategy to try to prevent Democrats from taking back the House. It has so far failed spectacularly. Now it looks like they're going to lose the House. I would expect Trump to take a number of other efforts to try to interfere in the midterms. But I don't think those will ultimately be successful either. Yeah. On that front, he says in a post today, a rigged election took place in the great Commonwealth, Virginia. You know, Republicans are winning and then in the end they lose. and then I got to read this just because this is amazing. He said the language in the referendum was purposely unintelligible. And then he says, as everyone knows, I am an extraordinarily brilliant person. And even I had no idea what the hell they were talking about in the referendum. And neither do they. I found it pretty, pretty easy to understand. You know, he's going to call it rigged and he's going to whine about it. There's a lot of concern about what they do on the midterms. now that this part has seemed to fail. Where are you on your concern level on that? Well, it's very concerning because Trump keeps lying about rigged elections. It's just we expect it. We've become so numb to it that we know, OK, it's coming. The Trump tweet is coming. And they going to try to do other things For example the seizure of ballots in Fulton County Georgia That a preview of the kind of things they want to do The reinvestigation of the 2020 election by high-level election deniers in the administration is aimed at much at subverting the next elections as it is relitigating the one that Trump lost. And so there's going to continue to be a multifaceted effort to try to interfere in the midterms. But I think the important thing to notice Trump is now operating from a position of weakness, not a position of strength here. His actions will become more extreme because he is running out of options. He can't run on his record, so he is going to continue to try to interfere in the process. And that will become more and more obvious to people what Trump is doing. That's why Democrats were able to succeed in this redistricting war in the first place, because it was so obvious how craven Trump was that Democrats had to respond in time. So, yes, I'm expecting many more types of interference in the midterms. But I think now that Dems have neutralized the gerrymandering threat, it'll be easier to counteract the other threats as well. You know, there's some inherent tension right between a desire for, you know, voters to choose a representative as opposed the other way around. The fact that both Virginia and California democratically controlled states had like fair maps on the books. Right. And there's a lot of people trying to sort of catch Democrats in some supposed hypocrisy. I just want to get to finish here quickly. Your response to AOC's response to a reporter asking her about this, this tension. Take a listen. Do you make a Republican saying that? You guys getting. Oh, wow, wow, wow. Totally unconstitutional. Democrats have attempted and asked Republicans for 10 years to ban partisan gerrymandering. And for 10 years, Republicans have said no. What they're just mad at is that they have been accustomed to a Democratic Party that rolls over, doesn't fight, and takes everything sitting down. Fair point. Yes, because Democrats tried through the Freedom to Vote Act to ban partisan gerrymandering at the federal level. Every Republican voted against it. Every Democrat except one voted for it. So it was very clear the parties had different positions on this issue. Gerrymandering is ultimately bad for democracy. But what's worse for democracy is one party completely rigging the rules and the other party not being able to respond. And it's telling that in the two biggest states where Democrats redistricted, the voters approved it. Something that didn't happen in Texas, Missouri, or all the other Republican states that have done this kind of thing. All right, Ari Berman, that was great. Thank you so much. Still to come, how Bobby Kennedy's CDC buried a major vaccine report and what it means for the future of American health care and public health. That's next. Two weeks ago, we brought you the news. The CDC was delaying publication of a study showing the benefits of the covid-19 vaccine. Well, now they've outright canceled it. An HHS spokesperson said the report that was scheduled to be published five weeks ago is being withheld due to, quote, concerns regarding the methodological approach. That's despite the fact that the exact same methodology was used in a report about the flu vaccine published six weeks ago and also in December for a report about the COVID vaccine's effectiveness for kids. The report had already cleared the CDC's scientific review process, but Kennedy's HHS still hit the brakes, something CDC officials say is highly unusual to do at that point. I mean, it looks to all the world like HHS is doing exactly what we think they're doing, right, in the most egregious way possible. Censoring science because that science shows what we have all known, that vaccines work to reduce hospitalization and death. But Kennedy and his Maha acolytes are committed to suppressing that science because they are in the clutches of an insane and crankish conspiracy theory that every day endangers Americans' health. Dr. Dmitry Daskalakis served as the head of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the CDC until he and two other senior colleagues resigned from CDC last fall to protest Kennedy's policies. And Dr. Daskalakis joins me now. Let me sort of try to steel man this at least to start, which is, is there a non-sketchy reason or a non-nefarious reason for a report like this to be delayed and then withheld? Simply put, no. This methodology is a methodology that is recognized as the best way to measure vaccine effectiveness. As you just said, CDC has published through the MMWR, the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, vaccine effectiveness using the exact same methodology for flu and for COVID. So this is suppression of data. Why do you think they're doing it? I mean, I think that there is a vendetta against mRNA vaccines and against COVID vaccines. I mean, if you think about some of the testimony that we heard this week, we heard that from the secretary that mRNA vaccines don't work to prevent respiratory infections or their bad outcomes. And that's, you know, blatantly untrue. The mRNA vaccines, which is a new method of creating a vaccine that was developed, really kind of came to fruition with COVID, but is now being researched in a bunch of other ways. There's big headlines this week about an mRNA vaccine on pancreatic cancer, making some really remarkable progress in what has been one of the most dire and incurable forms of cancer. at the same time that my understanding is that this HHS has essentially launched a war on mRNA research. Yeah, I mean, they absolutely have. And if you actually look at what they did, they defunded mRNA research specifically in pandemic influenza and other pandemic viruses, and instead invested in a flu influenza vaccine platform that at best has phase one study results, So very preliminary. So, you know, there is serving a base. There is a base of people that, you know, that really have a vendetta against mRNA vaccine. And I think this is an attempt to appease that base. mRNA vaccines work, period. Yeah. What what I don't think I quite under. Do you understand the vendetta? I don't think I do. Yeah, I mean, I feel like I was in the middle of that maelstrom when I was still at CDC and working with some of the ACIP members, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices members, who historically have said that the mRNA vaccines are responsible for all sorts of adverse events and that they don't actually impact anything like the sort of rates of COVID hospitalization, etc. So, I mean, I think that there's a lot of reasons. I mean, without mentioning names, there's one member of the ACIP who claims that he invented mRNA vaccines, and that is an untruth. So, I mean, it's all sorts of crazy. And I think at the end of the day, you know, you can't speak something into existence. So just because Secretary Kennedy says mRNA vaccines doesn't work, don't work, that doesn't actually mean that they don't, especially when they're suppressing data that demonstrate that, in fact, they do. So right. And the farthest is the right word. But the fundamental issue here, right, is that, you know, there's always this tension between sort of career folks and the politicals and an agenda of a president. And then you want like technical experts. Right. Never is that clearer than at CDC. And I thought I want to just play today that, you know, the secretary just won't commit to not overriding scientific advice. Right. This is him being asked time and time again. He won't commit to it. Take a listen. Will the new director, whoever she is, have the right to make decisions independently of those political appointees and or replace them or otherwise reassign them so they cannot continue to actively undermine trust and immunizations? Your characterization of the political appointees is wrong. And the CDC director has that power. Now, so she will have if she wishes to if she wishes to make a decision independently of them, she shall be allowed to make that decision independently. That's correct. Yes. A begrudging yes to the new CDC director, who seems like we've talked about her, a well credentialed individual. But it doesn't seem in your experience or there's any much trust that we're not going to see more political manipulation. Absolutely not. I mean, I think that that is just so much propaganda coming from the secretary trying to justify the fact that he hasn't stacked the entire agency and HHS filled with people who are not just vaccine skeptics, but who are absolute anti-vaccine advocates. I mean, you know, Stuart Burns is someone who is in the office of the director. And as far as I can detect, the only reason that he is there is to really dismantle the vaccine work at CDC. So, you know, the bottom line is like there are people that are assigned by the secretary as senior advisors and other staff that exist simply to destabilize trust in vaccines and the vaccine program. So, you know, you can have a new CDC director, but it doesn't matter how well studied she is if at the end of the day she's not allowed to do her job. Secretary Dmitry, no, Dr. Dmitry Deskalakis. Maybe someday. Thank you. We'll see. Thank you. Stay tuned in just a few minutes. Jen Psaki will be speaking with Senator John Ossoff and Senator Cory Booker. We'll be right back. Before we go, later this week, I'll be sitting down with New York City Mayor Zoran Mamdani for a primetime town hall. We'll be talking about a lot of things, including what he's learned in his first 100 days in office, what the Democratic Party can learn from him. All in America, Mayor Mamdani will air this Friday, April 24th at 8 p.m. Eastern, right here on MSNOW. That does it for All In. you can catch us every weeknight at 8 o'clock on MS Now. Don't forget to like us on Facebook. That's facebook.com slash onwithchris. Stay up to date on the biggest issues of the day with the MS Now daily newsletter. 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